Winnie died in 1898, and V considered her the last casualty of the Civil War because she had gone down to Atlanta to appear at a reunion of Confederate veterans and fell sick after being drenched during a parade. She joined V at Narragansett Pier where they had spent the summer. Winnie became worse day by day through August, and by mid-September she joined the others in Richmond and was buried with full military honors on the hill above the James River. For V nothing remained, and no new revelations concerning grief were delivered. She wanted to die but had learned long ago—all the way back to Samuel—great loss wasn’t that simple. You couldn’t just wish yourself out of it. You had to go through it all the way, had to let grief roll over you like Mississippi River floodwater until it decided to let you rise to the surface and keep going, more beaten and broken than before.
The next spring, when V reentered the world, she realized that though she’d never wanted to own Beauvoir, Winnie’s death meant she had inherited it. When she went down to Mississippi to deal with the last of her things there, she couldn’t even cry over Winnie’s guitar and a baby doll. And then she remembered the doll was hollow and had been used for smuggling morphine. She moved the left arm just right and the secret compartment opened—empty. She wondered, though, when she might have found it necessary to smuggle morphine. Maybe it was during the war. Everything happened during the war. She kept almost nothing from the house and sold Beauvoir for much less than its value so that it could become an old soldiers home and so that she would never have to go there again.
* * *
A cool September afternoon—days already shorter and the lobby emptier after the end of the racing season. A man walks through the room turning switches, and large glowing filaments loop petal-shaped inside the clear bulbs. Three big checked logs glow red in the hearth.
Laura is leaving in two days and sits close by V on the settle. She’s bundled to the chin in a blue-and-gold brocade wrap, and she says, I’m so anxious about going home that I start trembling every time I try to pack. But I’m sure I’ll be back next year, because my mother has gotten interested in that thing they do back in the basement with the helmets. She thinks it might be the cure for me.
V says, Well, I’ll be here next summer too—I’m already booked—and you will not be doing that thing with the helmets. You’re an adult woman, and I will stand beside you when you say no. And if we have to, we’ll pull out my little suicide pistol and shoot our way out of here.
Laura kisses her cheek and says, I’d be so scared of you if you were aimed in my direction.
—And you remember, V says, anytime this winter your mother causes trouble, you pack a bag and come to New York and stay with me as long as you want. I’ll arrange for a piano in my apartment, and the city will give you energy. It has for me.
James says, Laura, maybe I’ll see you there. You can play me your latest version of “Sunflower Slow Drag.”
—I keep count of the times I play it. I think when I get to a thousand I’ll have it.
—Where are you now? James asks.
—Seven hundred and three.
Laura stands and wanders out into the late afternoon, trailing her pretty wrap on the ground.
V turns to James and asks, When will you be coming to see me in New York?
—I certainly will come, but with the greater distance and school having started for the year I won’t make it so often.
—Goes without saying. But come at least once a month instead of once a week, yes? And we need to have a plan because if we don’t, other things will get in the way. So two or three weeks after I’m settled in the new place—Hotel Majestic—I’ll write and we will set a date. You’ll like it—Central Park is the front lawn, and the view from my apartment is across the treetops. Carriage rides right from the door, and they’ve promised me unlimited use of the library for interviews with writers and meetings with visiting dignitaries.
—I wonder which category I fall into, James says, smiling.
—Both and neither. We’ll have so much fun this winter on our days together—talking and going to museums and concerts and matinees. All of that. Bookstores, I have a half-dozen favorites I want to show you.
Then V hands James a book—Mary Chesnut’s journals, finally in print.
—Read it and we’ll talk in New York, she says. You’ll see why I loved her. It’s been chopped to pieces, abbreviated and smoothed out. There’s no plot and her mind flits from thing to thing, but Mary shines through on every page—a true record of consciousness.
Seventh Sunday
New York CityOctober 1906
JAMES BLAKE WALKS THROUGH CENTRAL PARK UNTIL THE Dakota’s gables rise over the trees and the square towers of Hotel Majestic stand alongside. Leaves have turned colors, reds and yellows rich in the angled light before sunset. Hollow sounds of horses’ hooves—almost pastoral. V moved to the Majestic partly because her previously near-worthless land in Louisiana and Mississippi had started producing more income, and partly because the din and glare from the new theaters on West Forty-Fourth drove her away. She’d complained that her bay window buzzed with light and sound into early morning.
IT’S TRUE—that thing she said about biographies all ending the same.
She wrote James a note three weeks ago, inviting him to visit at the end of October. Said Maggie had offered to come from Colorado and help supervise her move, but V had answered that she was perfectly capable of handling things herself.
But then, according to the papers,
