To Paradise

XIX

Late April was the one time the city could be described as soft, and for a few precious weeks, the trees would be clouds of pink-and-white blossoms, the air cleansed of its grit, the breezes gentle.

Edward had already left for the day, and David had to leave as well. But he was glad of the silence—though it was never quite completely silent in the boardinghouse—for he felt the need to compose himself before he stepped outside.

He had been living with Edward in the boardinghouse room for little more than four weeks. After leaving his grandfather and Washington Square that night, he had gone directly to the boardinghouse, but Edward was out. The little maid let David into his cold and dark room, though, and David had sat still for a few minutes before he had stood and begun, at first methodically and then feverishly, an examination of the room, pulling and replacing clothes from Edward’s trunk, paging through every one of his books, rifling through his papers, stamping upon the floorboards to see if any might be loose, with secrets hidden beneath. He found answers, he supposed, but there was no way of telling if they were answers he sought: A small etching of a pretty, dark-haired girl, tucked into a copy of the Aeneid—was this Belle? A daguerreotype of a handsome man with a knowing smile and a hat tipped rakishly on his head—was this Aubrey? A roll of money, secured with a length of string—was this stolen from Aunt Bethesda, or his earnings from the institute? A sheet of crackling onionskin, pressed between the pages of his Bible, inscribed “I will always love you” in a fluttery hand—was this from one of his mothers, his first or his second? Belle? Bethesda? Aubrey? Somebody else entirely? The second trunk, which he had bought Edward, with its brass clasps and leather straps, held the little porcelain bird and a few blank music-composition books, but the tea set he had placed in it before leaving to see his grandfather—a ceremonial gesture toward packing, toward the creation of the new house they would have together—was missing, as was the silver set he’d bought.

He was contemplating what this might mean when Edward walked in, and David turned and saw the mess he had made, all of Edward’s possessions strewn about him, and Edward himself before him with an unreadable expression, and after his first, absurd question burst from his mouth, the only question he could think to ask because he did not know where to begin with the rest—“Where is the tea set I bought you?”—he began to weep, sinking to the floor. Edward picked his way across the piles of clothes and books and crouched next to him, holding him in his arms, and David turned and sobbed into his coat. Even after he was able to speak, his questions came as staccato explosions, one following the next with no apparent logic or order, but all seeming equally urgent: Was Edward in love with another? Who was Aubrey to him, really? Had he lied about who he was, who his family was? Why had he really gone to Vermont? Did he love him? Did he love him? Did he truly love him?

Edward had attempted to answer his questions as he asked them, but David interrupted before he was able to finish any of his explanations; he was unable to comprehend anything Edward said. The only things he had brought with him from Washington Square were the bundle of Edward’s letters answering his own, and the report from Wesley, which he finally retrieved, still sobbing, from his own coat pocket and handed to Edward, who took the pages and began to read, first with curiosity and then with anger, and it was witnessing this anger, Edward’s explosions of “Blast!” and “The devil!” that, curiously, quieted David’s own upset. When he was finished, Edward threw the pages across the room, into the blackened hearth, and then turned to David. “My poor David,” he said. “My poor innocent. What must you think of me?” And then his face hardened. “I never thought she would do this to me,” he muttered. “But she has, and has placed in peril the relationship I value most.”

He said he would explain, and so he did: His parents were indeed dead, his elder sisters in Vermont, his younger in New Hampshire. But, he admitted, there had been a schism between himself and his mother’s sister, Lucy, who was his great-aunt Bethesda’s caretaker. He had lived with Bethesda for a period after leaving the conservatory—“I did not want to tell you, because I wanted you to think me independent; I wanted you to admire me. It would be too cruel if this omission, one motivated by my own fears, becomes the thing that now makes you doubt my truthfulness”—but had left to find his own lodgings after a matter of months: “I am enormously fond of my great-aunt; I always have been. She and my aunt arrived soon after we settled in the Free States, and she has been the closest I have to a grandmother. But the idea that she is wealthy, much less that I have stolen money from her, is laughable.”

“So why would Lucy have said you did?”

“Who can know? She is a spiteful, petty woman, never married, never made a mother, friendless, but possessed of a vivid imagination—as you can see. My mother used to tell us all that we were to be kind to her, as her sourness was a reaction to her enduring loneliness, and we were, all to the best of our abilities. But this is too much, too far. And at any rate, my aunt Bethesda died two years ago; I have not seen my aunt Lucy—my aunt in name only—since; but this is proof, though of the worst kind, that she is still alive and still vengeful, still irreparably destructive.”

“Dead? But earlier when you spoke of Bethesda, you said you were enormously fond of her, as if she were still alive.”

“She is not. But can I not be enormously fond of her still? My affection for her hardly ended with her death.”

“And so you were not adopted by a Free State couple?”

“No, of course not! Lucy’s lies about my supposed thievery—conjured out of what I can only imagine is sport and resentment for my youth—appalls, but her denial of my family (and hers, might I add) absolutely sickens. For her to deny my parents that—! She is an unwell woman. I wish Belle were here so she could tell you herself what absolute rubbish this all is, and about my aunt’s character.”

“Well—can she not?”

“Of course, and it is an excellent notion—I shall write her tonight and have her answer any questions you might have.”

“Well, I have more—many more.”

“And how could you not, after that report? (I have only the greatest respect for your grandfather, but must admit I’m somewhat shocked that he would place so much trust in someone who would believe everything told him by one lonely, clearly deranged woman.) Oh, my poor David! I cannot tell you how disgusted I am that this woman’s—mischief-making should have caused you such distress. You must allow me to explain.”

So he did. Edward had an answer for all of David’s concerns. No, he was assuredly not in love with Aubrey, who, anyway, was married to Susannah (His sister! My God, of course not! The depravity in this report!) and not one of their kind besides. The two were dear friends, but nothing more—David would see for himself in California, and “I would not be surprised if you and he should become even better friends than he and I are; you are both highly practical people, you see. And then I shall be the suspicious one!” Yes, he had been in a relationship with Christopher D., and yes, it had ended poorly (“He had become—and I say this not to boast, but as fact—besotted with me, and after he proposed marriage and I declined, he became fixated on me, and I, I am ashamed to say, began to avoid him, for I knew not how to convince him I was not in love with him. Although he was overbearing, my cowardice was my fault, and mine only, and I am deeply remorseful about it”), but, no, Edward had certainly never been with him for his money, nor had his parents ever tried to intervene on their son’s behalf: He would introduce David to Mr. D. so he could ask for himself. No, he would! He absolutely would! He had nothing to hide. No, he had never stolen anything from anyone, least of all his parents, who, after all, had nothing for him to steal, even if he had been that sort of person: “Of all the cruelties of this report, the cruelest is the denial of my parentage, of my childhood, of the sacrifices my mother and father made for me and my sisters, of the slander levied against my father: A gambler? A runaway? A cheat? He was the most honest man I ever knew. For him to be manipulated into this…this criminal is a level of evil to which I had not known even Lucy capable of sinking.”

On and on they talked, and after an hour and more had passed, Edward seized David’s hands. “David—my innocent. I can and will refute everything in these pages. But the primary thing I must disabuse you of is this: I do not love you, I do not want to make a life with you, for your money. Your money is yours, and I have no need of it. I have not ever lived with it—I would not know what to do with it. Besides, I shall soon have my own, and—though I intend no ingratitude—I prefer it that way.

“You asked what I had done with the tea set. I sold it, David, and it was not until afterward that I realized what a mistake I had made, that it was something you had given me out of love, and I, in my desire to prove to you that I could take care of you, take care of us, exchanged it for money. But do you not see that it was done out of my own sense of love? I never want to ask you for anything—I never want you to be in discomfort. I will take care of us both. Dear David. Do you not want to be with someone who will not expect you to be David Bingham but merely beloved companion, trusted husband, dearest spouse? Here”—and here Edward reached into his trouser pocket and drew out a purse, which he pressed into David’s hand—“here is the money from it. I will go buy it back tomorrow, if you wish. It, and the silver set, too. But either way, the money is yours to keep. We shall spend it on our first meal in California, on your first set of new paints. But the important thing is that we shall spend it together, making our life together.”

His head ached. He was overwhelmed. The tears had dried on his cheeks and left his skin stiff and itchy. His limbs felt boneless, and he was taken by a tiredness so intense that when Edward began to undress him and then laid him in the bed, he felt none of the anticipation or excitement he usually did in those moments, just a kind of dullness, and although he responded to Edward’s commands, he did so as if in a daze, as if his arms and legs were moving of their own accord and he was no longer their master. He kept thinking of what his grandfather had said—“They need you: Edward and his beloved”—and when he woke early in the morning, he slipped out from beneath Edward’s arm and silently dressed and left the boardinghouse.

It was so early that the candles still flickered in the lamppost lanterns, and the light was drawn in shades of gray. He walked along the cobblestones, his boot heels echoing, to the river, where he watched the waters slap against the wooden pier. It would be a damp day, damp and chill, and he wrapped his arms around himself and gazed out toward the opposite shore. He and Andrew had sometimes strolled along the river and talked, though those events now seemed very long ago, incidents from decades past.

What would he do? Here, on one side of the river, was the Edward he knew, and there, on the other, the Edward his grandfather thought he knew, and between them was an impassable body of water, not wide but deep and apparently unbreachable. If he left with Edward, he would forever lose his grandfather. If he stayed, he would lose Edward. Did he believe Edward? He did; he did not. He kept remembering how upset Edward had been the night before—upset but, he reminded himself, not flustered; there were no inconsistencies, or very few, in his reassurances, and those that existed did not seem worrisomely consequential—and how that alone proved his truthfulness. He thought of the tenderness with which Edward spoke to him, touched him, held him. Surely he was not imagining it? Surely that could not be a pantomime? The passion they felt for each other, the fever of their encounters—that could not be a charade, could it? Here was New York, and everything he knew. There, with Edward, was someplace else, someplace he had never before been but, he could recognize, he had been searching for his entire life. He had thought he might have found it with Andrew, but it had been a mirage. He would never have found it with Charles. Was this not the point of life, the reason his ancestors had established this country at all? So he might be allowed to feel the way he did, so that he might entitle himself to happiness?

He had no answers for himself, and he turned and walked back toward the boardinghouse, where Edward was waiting for him. The next several days passed in the same manner: David would wake first and walk to the river, and then he would return and continue his interrogation, which Edward bore patiently, even indulgently. Yes, the girl in the illustration was Belle; no, the man in the daguerreotype was not Aubrey, but an old beau, from the conservatory, and if it bothered David, he would—See? He was doing it now!—burn the image, for the man meant nothing to him, not any longer; yes, the note was from his mother. Always he was full of explanations, which David drank and drank until, by evening, he was disoriented and exhausted again, whereupon Edward would undress him and lead him to the bed, and then the cycle would begin again.

He could not settle. “My dearest David, if you have any further doubts, then we should perhaps not marry,” Edward said one afternoon. “I shall still want to be with you, but your fortune will be safe.”

“So you don’t want to marry me?”

“I do! Of course I do! But if this is the way I might convince you that I have no intentions, no desire, to possess your money—”

“But our marriage would not be recognized in California at any rate, so it would not be much of a sacrifice for you, would it?”

“It would be more of a sacrifice, had I any intentions to steal your money, for if I did, I should marry you now and take everything you own and then leave you. But that is not my intention, which is why I am suggesting it!”

In the coming months and years, he would reflect upon this period and wonder if he was misremembering: Had there not been a moment, an hour, a day, in which he decided, declaratively and definitively, that he loved Edward, and that his love for him would overcome all of the uncertainties that still lingered in his mind, despite all of Edward’s reassurances? But no—there was no single episode, no revelation that he might date and commemorate on paper. It was simply that, with every day he failed to return to Washington Square, with every letter—at first just from his grandfather, but then from Eliza and John and Eden and Frances and even Norris—that he ignored, either throwing them into the fire or securing them, unopened, into the bundle of Edward’s letters he’d brought with him, with every item of clothing and book and notepad he asked to be sent him from his grandfather’s house, with every day he decided not to send a note to Christopher D., asking him to meet and talk, with every week he did not inquire whether Edward had in fact sent a letter to Belle asking her to corroborate his account, and with every week that passed without a reply from her, he was declaring his intention to begin another life, a new life, a life anew.

In this way, close to a month had elapsed, and although Edward had never demanded a conclusive commitment from David that he would accompany him to California after all, David did not protest when Edward bought two tickets on the Transcontinental Express, did not object when his own belongings disappeared into one of the trunks, secreted between Edward’s own. Edward was abustle with activity—packing, planning, full of chatter—and as he grew more industrious, David grew less. Every morning, he reminded himself that he could still stop what seemed now fated to happen, that it was still within his power, however humiliating it would be, for now and for ever; but by evening, he would have been carried along a little more on the slipstream of Edward’s excitement, so that with each day he had drifted farther from land. And yet he was also not desirous of resisting, and why should he? How lovely, how seductive, it was to be wanted as much as Edward wanted him, to be cherished and kissed and whispered to and thought so dear, to never once be asked for or about his fortune, to be undressed with such avidity and regarded with such unembarrassed lust. Had he ever experienced these things? For he had not, and yet he knew: This was happiness, this was life.

Still, in colder moments—those just before dawn—David could see too that the month had not been without its difficulties. He knew so little, he had never before completed a chore, and there had been times when his ignorance had made things tense between them; he did not know how to boil an egg or darn a sock or hammer a nail. The boardinghouse had no indoor lavatories but only an outdoor washroom, and the first, freezing time David had visited it, he had, unaware, used all the water that was to have been shared among the house’s residents, and Edward had been terse with him. “What do you know?” he had snapped after David had confessed he’d never before built a fire, and “We shan’t be able to survive on your knitting and drawings and embroidery, you know,” at which David had stormed out and walked the streets, tears stinging his eyes, and when he finally returned to the room—it being cold and he having nowhere else to go—Edward had been there (a fire crackling) to greet him with tenderness and apologies, to guide him to the bed, where he promised to make him warm again. After, he had asked Edward if they might move elsewhere, somewhere more commodious and modern, for which he would gladly pay, but Edward had only kissed him between the eyes and told him that they must be frugal and, at any rate, that David had to learn these skills, for he would need them in California, where, after all, they would be living on a farm. And so he tried to improve. But his success was limited.

And then, suddenly, it was five days, four days, three days, two days before they were to depart—their leave-taking accelerated so that they would now reach California only days after Belle’s own arrival—and the tiny room had gone from being full of things to abruptly empty of them, everything they owned packed into three large steamer trunks, the last of which David had sent for from Washington Square. The night before their penultimate day in the city, Edward had suggested that it might be useful to have any monies David might have available secured before they left: The next day, he would leave early to purchase some final supplies he thought they might need, and, it was left unspoken, David would go visit his grandfather.

It was not an unreasonable request; it was, indeed, an inevitable one. And yet that morning, when David left the boardinghouse for what was to be one of the last times of his life, descending the cracked stairs onto the street, he felt as if he had been struck in the face by the raw, dirty beauty of the city; by the trees above him feathered with tiny, bright-green leaves; by the pleasing, hollow clops of the passing horses; by the sights of industry all around him: the charwomen mopping their front steps; the coal boy pulling his cart behind him, inch by slow inch; the chimney sweep with his bucket, whistling a merry tune. They were not his people, of course, but they also were: They were citizens of the Free States, and it was together that they had made their country, their city, what it was—they through their labor, and David through his money.

He had thought to take a hansom, but he instead walked slowly, first south, then east, moving dreamily through the streets, his feet somehow knowing where to sidestep a pile of dung, a scrap of turnip, a scampering feral kitten, before even his eyes did; he felt himself a slim cone of fire, licking his way down the dear filthy streets he had walked his entire life, his shoes leaving no imprint, making no sound, the people parting for him before he even had to announce himself with a clear of his throat. And so it was that, when he finally reached Bingham Brothers, he was quite far from himself, afloat even, and it was as if he were hovering meters above the city, swooping slowly around the stone building, before being landed gently on its steps, and walking through its doors, the same as he’d done for nearly twenty-nine years, and yet of course not the same at all.

Down the hall he walked, through the doors to the bank’s offices, and then to the left, where he met with the banker who was responsible for the family’s accounts, and where he withdrew all of his savings; the Free States’ currency was accepted in the West, but only grudgingly, and David had sent word beforehand that he needed his money in gold. He watched as the ingots were weighed and wrapped in cloth and then stacked inside a small black leather case and its straps buckled.

As he handed him the case, the banker—someone new, unknown to him—bowed. “May I wish you the best of luck, Mister Bingham,” he said, somberly, and David, suddenly breathless, his arm tugged downward by the weight of the metal, could only nod his thanks.

Once again, his story was apparently known, and as he left the banker and made his final walk down the long, carpeted hallway toward his grandfather’s office, he sensed a collective murmuring, almost a hum, though he encountered no one. It was not until he had almost reached the office’s closed doorway that he did see someone, Norris, stepping quickly into the hallway from an antechamber.

“Mister David,” he said. “Your grandfather is awaiting you.”

“Thank you, Norris,” he managed. He could hardly speak; the words were choking him.

He turned to knock on the door, but as he did, Norris touched him, suddenly, on the shoulder. David was startled; Norris never touched him or his siblings, and when he looked at the man again, he was shocked to see his eyes were wet. “I wish you all the happiness, Mister David,” Norris said. And then he had vanished, and David was pressing the brass handle on his grandfather’s door and entering the room, and—ah!—there was his grandfather, rising from behind his desk, not beckoning him as he usually did but waiting for him to walk across the soft carpet, one so plush that you could, as David once did when he was a boy, drop a crystal goblet upon it and it would not shatter but bounce, gently, off the surface. He saw, at once, his grandfather’s eyes flicker to his case, and knew he knew what was secured within; indeed, knew to the cent how much gold it contained, and as he sat, his grandfather yet to say a single word, he smelled smoke, earth, and opened his eyes to watch Lapsang souchong being poured into a cup, and his eyes once more stung with tears. But then he realized: There was only one cup, and it was his grandfather’s.

“I have come to say goodbye,” he said after a silence so dense he could not bear it, though he could hear the tremble in his voice as he spoke. And then, when his grandfather did not respond, “Are you not going to say anything?” He had intended to re-present his case—Edward’s denials, how much Edward cared for him, how Edward had assuaged his concerns—and then he realized: He did not have to. At his feet was a trunk of gold, like something from a fairy tale, and it was his, and a little more than a mile from here was a man who loved him, and together they would travel many more miles, and David would hope that their love would come with them—because he believed it; because he must.

“Grandfather,” he said, hesitantly, and then, when his grandfather responded only with a sip of his tea, David repeated it, and then again, and then in a shout—“Grandfather!”—and still the man remained impassive, lifting his cup to his mouth.

“It is not too late, David,” his grandfather said at last, and the sound of his grandfather’s voice—its patience, its authority that David had never before seen need or reason or desire to doubt—filled him with an ache, and he had to stop himself from bending over and clutching his stomach in pain. “You can choose. I can keep you safe—I can still keep you safe.”

He knew then, as he had always known, that he would never be able to explain himself—he would never have the argument, he would never have the words, he would never be more than Nathaniel Bingham’s grandson. What was Edward Bishop against Nathaniel Bingham? What was love against all his grandfather symbolized and was? What was he against any of it? He was no one; he was nothing; he was a man who was in love with Edward Bishop and he was, for perhaps the first time in his life, doing something he wanted, something that frightened him, but something that was his own. He was choosing foolishly, perhaps, but he was choosing. He reached his arm down to his feet; he slid his fingers through the case’s handle; he tightened his hand around it; he stood.

“Goodbye,” he whispered. “I love you, Grandfather.”

He was halfway to the door when his grandfather cried out, in a voice David had never before heard from him, “You are a fool, David!” And still he kept walking, and as he was closing the door behind him, he heard his grandfather not so much call as groan his name, two anguished syllables: “David!”

No one stopped him as he left. Down the carpeted hallway he walked once more, and then through the spectacular doors, and then across the marble lobby. And then he was outside, with Bingham Brothers to his back and the city before him.

Once, when he and his siblings were still quite young, probably soon after they came to live in Washington Square, they had had a conversation with their grandfather about Heaven, and after Grandfather had explained it, John had promptly said, “I’d like mine to be made all of ice cream,” but David, who did not care, then, for cold things, had disagreed: His Heaven would be made of cakes. He could see it—oceans made turgid with buttercream; mountains made of sponge; trees dangling candied cherries. He did not want to be in John’s Heaven; he wanted to be in his own. That night, when his grandfather came to wish him good night, he had asked him, anxious: How could God know what each person wanted? How could He be certain they were in the place they had dreamed of? His grandfather had laughed. “He knows, David,” he had said. “He knows, and He will make as many Heavens as He needs.”

And so what if this was Heaven? Would he know it if it were? Perhaps not. But he knew it was not whence he had come: That was someone else’s Heaven, but it was not his. His was somewhere else, but it would not appear in front of him; rather, it would be his to find. Indeed, was that not what he had been taught, been made to hope for, his entire life? Now it was time to seek. Now it was time to be brave. Now he must go alone. So he would stand here for another moment, the bag leaden in his hand, and then he would take a breath, and then he would make his first step: his first step to a new life; his first step—to paradise.