The Flaming Corsage

Katrina Ruminates on what She has Seen

HE MAKES ME cleverer than I am. He knows things I do not know about Maginn. I don’t know how he knew Maginn came to see me, and I doubt very much Maginn had Felicity in a Pullman. She wouldn’t. Would she? Edward believes he knows the truth about my life without him. “I know of your dalliances,” he once said. “Of course you don’t,” I told him. He will come to know some of what was. His writing is acute, and bright people will admire it, but the clergy will try to have the play closed. No one can say such things publicly. Edward knows this. He is flaunting his play “You made me the villainous eater of broken meats,” he is saying. “Here then, see what raw fish such a man offers you.”

He is obviously finished with that woman. I do like the well-poisoner line. I wish I had said it. He is giving a shape to the chaos that overtook us. What he said at dinner — when the matter is ready the form will come. I wonder did he see me sitting in the theater? He did not come down. Perhaps he thought I would go backstage. No. He would assume I would not wish to confront them all. He must not have seen me. Nonsense, if he thought I could not face up to people. I’ve recovered. I’ve recovered from everything. It’s depressing how total my recovery is; as if the condition had not been serious. No one can know what the wound was like. No one would care to know. Even Edward could see only the blood, the scab, the scar. There will be a photograph of my recovery. It’s depressing how easily we reconcile the unthinkable. I must let Edward know why I never told him about Giles, and Maginn’s doggerel. How to tell him? I want no argument. Tell him also what no one ever knew about Felicity. But I saw it. Tell Edward these things now. Yes. Answer all questions. What was I supposed to do with my life? Was it correct, what I did? Was it worth doing? Write him a letter. A letter, of course. When the matter is ready the form will come.

She left the theater and walked to the cabstand in front of the Armory, full of the memory of significant life on the Hall’s grand stage. There she had seen Caruso and Pavlova and met John McCormack after he’d thrilled her with that old ballad (“Oh! hast thou forgotten how soon we must sever? Oh! hast thou forgotten this day we must part?”). She had watched Duse and Maude Adams and Richard Mansfield and countless others play out their charades of life, she had danced with Edward on the false floor that covered the theater seats for Governor Roosevelt’s inaugural ball. And this week Edward’s people, you among them, Katrina, will come to life on that enormous stage. And everyone’s legend will grow.

Katrina’s hat was so large that she had to tip her head sideways in order to step into the cab.

She entered her empty house, the servants gone until dinner, and left her bag and her hat in the drawing room. She made tea for herself in the kitchen and carried it on a tray to Edward’s office, where she set it atop his desk. She sat in Edward’s chair and took one of his lined tablets from the drawer. She sipped the tea as she considered the questions she would write answers to on the tablet.

“What, really, was my destiny?” she wrote.

She put her head down on the desk in acquiescence to the drowsiness the question evoked in her. She slept for she knew not how long, and awoke smelling smoke. She went to the window of the office and parted the curtains to see the Christian Brothers school next door in flames. It was clear to her that the fire would make the leap to this room in a matter of minutes. She went back to Edward’s chair and put her head down on his desk. The smoke was familiar in her mouth. She had breathed fire before.