Mark Dunn - American Decameron

No light.

Were his brother and his brother’s wife waiting him out in the dark, hoping that his drunken rage would subside, that he would simply wander off and let them (and all of their neighbors) slip back into contented slumber?

No, Elijah would not release his brother so easily. He would ring and pound and kick until Randall was forced to come to the door, even if the effort exhausted him.

Like a madman let out upon the street, Elijah did this and more. He took a stone from the gutter and shattered the fanlight above the door into a shower of glass. The rudely awakened neighbors poked their heads out of their own windows and yelled for him to quiet himself.

An officer quickly appeared. Seeing the hysterical man at the door and the broken glass for which the hysterical man was, no doubt, responsible, the officer stepped forward, squaring his shoulders to make his arrest.

Elijah stopped. As he was about to turn, wholly prepared to defend the indefensible, the front door of his brother’s house opened. Randall appeared, pale, groggy, coughing heavily. “Gas. Leaking from the furnace,” he said, his voice rasping, desperate. “All through the house. Help me get Elise and the children out of the—” Randall’s eyes suddenly rolled back. Elijah caught his pajama-clad brother as he collapsed into Elijah’s arms.

Elijah set Randall down away from the glass. He and the police officer dashed into the house and pulled the mother and her children from their beds. They put them out of the house as neighbors telephoned for an ambulance. The rescue was effected in a matter of two or three minutes. Had Elijah not persisted, bent upon waking the metaphorical dead in the house above, those who slept inside would have perished in actuality. The house had been filled with gas from the ill-repaired furnace in the basement. The windows were airtight; an expert glazier — a colleague of Randall’s — had installed them.

The family was rushed to the hospital and all were eventually revived.

Elijah was standing by his brother’s bed when the latter regained consciousness. Randall took Elijah’s hand and squeezed it in silent gratitude. When later the two were able to speak, Randall shook his head in wonder. “You saved our lives. To think that everything that was wrong and bad — your hard drinking, the anger and belligerence that grew from it — were at the root of our deliverance. Who would ever think that it should be your ulcerated jealousy of me which would, in the end, rouse me from my death slumber and restore me to my family and my family to me?”

Elijah didn’t know what to say, except this: that love and hate can be partners in a random, nonsensical universe. And hate — not the everlasting variety but that which rises up in temporal fitfulness, only to recede in reparative repentance — can, on a rare occasion, do good as well.

As for his enraged frenzy upon his brother’s doorstep, Elijah was never asked to apologize. He was, paradoxically, thanked ten-fold.

Ada and her husband Roland Wilmer had been up all night discussing what must be done. The private detective had made his report earlier that day. Now there was confirmation: their daughter Carrie had chosen badly. Their daughter had, in fact, chosen disastrously. Carrie’s fiancé, Scott Goodhue, had a secret, and now Mr. and Mrs. Wilmer knew what it was, though Carrie, they assured themselves, did not. Had it been otherwise, would she ever have agreed to the match?

Granted, Scott came from Brahmin stock. The Goodhues were doing business on the bay before America was even a twinkle in the eyes of her patriotic patriarchs. The Goodhues were first whaling men, then exporters and importers. Their wealth agglomerated with each subsequent generation. Scott Goodhue himself was a successful businessman, the owner of a lucrative fish warehouse. But Scott Goodhue was something else as well. According to the report delivered to Mr. and Mrs. Wilmer, Goodhue was the father of a bastard daughter, born of an Irish maid. The Goodhue family had kept it quiet. Yet the fact of it got out through an anonymous letter addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Wilmer which began, “There is something of dire importance that you must know pertaining to your daughter’s betrothed, Mr. Goodhue.”

Now that the detective had confirmed it, there was no question that Mr. and Mrs. Wilmer should tell Carrie what they had learned and ask her to break the engagement, even with the wedding set for Saturday — only four days away. Even though the scandal of canceling the wedding at the last minute would cast a cloud over the Wilmer family that would not evaporate for many years, far more grievous consequences were bound to result should Carrie be permitted to proceed with the wedding unawares, including but not limited to a humiliating, very public rotogravure divorce.

In the bedroom the Wilmers shared in their large house outside the village of Newton Lower Falls, Ada Wilmer, her face bathed in milky lunar luminosity, agreed with her husband that their daughter should be told the very next day, and that Ada should be the one to do it. The opportunity would come during the two hours that mother and daughter had set aside to take an inventory of the wedding gifts.

It was the first chance the two would have to spend some time together since Carrie’s gown-fitting. In the ensuing days, Carrie’s life as prospective bride had become a whirl of parties and teas and other congratulatory prenuptial soirees lavished upon her by the Newtonian social set.

Ada watched the dining room clock as the minute hand crept past two. She folded and refolded a stack of embroidered napkins and a crisp linen tablecloth and a cambric washstand covering whose poor stitching could not be believed (although there was no mystery to it; it was bestowed by the foreman of her husband’s factory — a man whose wife was notoriously cheap).

At a quarter past Carrie fluttered in, her head in a cumulus, her heart captured and held hostage by the man she believed she would soon marry. “Forgive the delay, Mother, dearest. Shall I dictate and you write, or will you have it the other way around?”

“Sit, dear. There’s something I must discuss with you. It’s very important.”

Ada indicated with a nod the empty chair beside hers. The dining room had become repository for the hundreds of wedding gifts that had been descending upon the Wilmer manse over the last several weeks: silver boxes and cloisonné, crystal vases, apostle spoons and cut glass cake dishes, andirons, a new, self-threading sewing machine, a china tea service, porcelain knick-knacks, a Maytag Pastime Washer, and a large sterling silver punch bowl that Ada wished she could use for the reception because the one the Wilmers owned was old and chipped.

“You seem upset, Mother. Is the rector ill? Has Aunt Violet suffered a relapse?”

Ada shook her head. “I’m simply going to say it, darling. And I want you to be brave.” Ada took her daughter’s hand and held it. “Scott has fathered a child. It goes without saying that it was born out of wedlock, since your fiancé has always been a bachelor.”

“Oh,” said Carrie calmly. She removed her hand from her mother’s clasp and straightened herself in her chair. “I have no idea how you’ve come to know of this, but Scott’s told me already.”

“He has?”

“Moreover, Mother, I’ve forgiven him. He’s made amends. He has promised me that his profligate days are behind him.”

Ada stood abruptly. She gripped the back of her own chair to steady herself. “I don’t mean to cast aspersions on the character of your fiancé, darling, but I can’t possibly think it an easy thing for a man who has exhibited such debauched behavior in the past to transform his character by simple proclamation.”