William Kennedy - The Flaming Corsage

Edward stopped talking. He stood and took two hesitant steps toward the door.

“Now that you know this,” he said, “can you still tell me to abandon Katrina to satisfy your vengeance against Jake Taylor? If you can, then I think you’re wrong, and I don’t believe I ever said that to you before, or even thought it. Now I’m going downstairs and talk to Katrina and Mama. I hope you come down and join us.”

Katrina had left the parlor. Edward found her in the kitchen, sitting at the table, watching Hanorah at the stove stirring something in a frying pan. The kettle was sending up wisps of early steam and the table was set for five, one extra, of course.

“I saw those children grow up and move off,” Hanorah was saying. “Twenty-six years I was with them, from when I went in there to wash pots. Then they found out I could cook and I cooked for the Patroon till he died, and for Mrs. Bayard until she died, too. Then they closed the place up. I still cook for some of the family when they stay the month at Saratoga, but mostly I only cook for himself, and for this one, whenever he comes to see us,” nodding at Edward as he entered the kitchen.

He walked to Hanorah and looked over her shoulder at the frying pan.

“Bubble and squeak?” he said.

“You don’t like it?” Hanorah said.

“I don’t like it, I love it with a passion I reserve only for beautiful women like yourself.”

“Listen to the mouth, will you?” Hanorah said.

“Bubble and squeak,” Edward said to Katrina, “is this cook’s way of joining potatoes and cabbage in God’s secret recipe. I presume we’re having lunch.”

“Miss Taylor said you didn’t eat.”

“Miss Taylor is Katrina.”

“I just met her, if you don’t mind.”

“You set five places. Is Hughie Gahagan joining us?”

“He might.”

“Hughie Gahagan is dead,” Edward said to Katrina, “but my mother doesn’t give up on him. My father brought him home one night for supper and put him to work in the lock-house. He stayed five years and we buried him out of the parlor. He had nobody else.”

“Emmett brought men home for a meal all his life, especially if they were down on their luck,” Hanorah said. “He still does it, so I always set an extra place.”

Emmett’s step on the stairs silenced the conversation.

“There’s a boat in the lock,” Emmett said as he came into the kitchen. He looked at no one and walked to the kitchen window that gave a view of the canal at the foot of North Street. He stood looking out, his back to those in the room.

“It’s a passenger packet,” he said.

No one reacted. After a while he said, “Cappy White, he’s a hard-luck man.”

“He has more than his share of trouble,” Hanorah said.

“He lost a thousand dollars’ worth of horses in a fire last year. And then Mamie like that.”

“Well, she’s getting about,” Hanorah said. “She walks the block and she does the garden. She sat in the chair this summer in the garden. She leans sideways and pulls the weeds she can reach. Those she can’t she tells Cappy to pull. Sometimes he pulls up the flowers.”

“Cappy and I raced horses on the canal in the winter,” Emmett said, still staring out the window, “and sometimes up at Island Park on a Sunday, when we had the money. We had fast horses them days.”

“We have a very fast horse,” Katrina said.

Emmett turned slowly around and stared at her.

“This is my father, Emmett Daugherty, Katrina,” Edward said. “He sometimes forgets to say hello to people. And this is Katrina Taylor, Papa. I mentioned her to you.”

Katrina nodded at Emmett. “Chevalier is his name,” she said. “He’s a trotter.”

Emmett continued to stare at her.

“We’re having bubble and squeak,” Hanorah said.

“Is it your horse?” Emmett asked.

“No, my father’s,” she said.

“Unh,” Emmett said and he sat at the table across from Katrina and stared out the back door. The brown chicken pushed through the broken screen of the door and stepped into the kitchen.

“That hen is in again,” Emmett said.

“Let her be,” Hanorah said.

The hen came over to Hanorah and moved in a circle near her, pecking at the hem of her dress.

“It’s all right, Biddy,” Hanorah said to the hen.

“My mother’s pet,” Edward said. “A hen that behaves like a cat.”

“She’s a bloody nuisance,” Emmett said.

“She just comes to see me,” Hanorah said. “I bought her as a chick last year at the fair. I saw her born in one of them machines and I paid ten cents for her.”

The hen beat her puny wings and lofted herself onto a chair and sat on its cushion.

“Now she’ll lay an egg on the chair,” Emmett said. “For the love of Jesus will you look at that.”

“She lays the egg for me,” Hanorah said. “She doesn’t know anything about Jesus.”

The hen sat, adjusted her rump, stared at her audience and spoke to it —” toook-a-takaawk ”—shook her rump, laid her egg on the cushion, batted her wings anew, and lofted herself back to the floor.

“She came upstairs and laid one in the bed one morning and Emmett rolled over on it,” Hanorah said.

“Isn’t it good luck, a hen in the house?” Katrina asked.

“There are those who’d argue with that,” Hanorah said.

She picked up the hen and carried it out to the yard, then came back and rinsed her hands under the pump by the sink and wiped them dry with her apron. She picked the new egg off the chair and put it in the icebox with the other eggs and took out the butter and put it on the table. She poured boiling water into the teapot, spooned the potatoes and cabbage into a dish, and took warm bread out of the oven and sliced it. She put it all on the table and said, “We’re ready.”

She and Edward then sat on either side of Katrina, the spirit of Hughie Gahagan separating Edward from his father. Hanorah caught Emmett’s eye and he bowed his head and said silent grace. Then Hanorah passed the bread and the bubble and squeak, and they all helped themselves.

“There’s talk now of a wedding,” Hanorah said.

“There is,” said Edward.

“When did you meet?”

“When we were children, or at least Katrina was a child. Then all of a sudden she grew up and I saw her at Cleveland’s victory parade, and she looked like this,” and he opened his hand to Katrina’s face. “I was conquered, or maybe I was victorious, finding what I didn’t even know I’d been looking for all my life.”

“Did you feel that way, too?” Hanorah asked Katrina.

“I thought him quite perfect,” Katrina said. “I’ve tried to discover ways to improve him, but I’ve found none at all.”

“You may find some. You’re still young,” Hanorah said.

“I’m almost twenty. Juliet, had she lived, would’ve been married six years at my age. Perhaps I’m older than I seem.”

“Where would the wedding be?” Hanorah asked.

Katrina looked at Edward. He waited for her to answer, but she did not.

“We’ve made no plans,” Edward said. “We wanted to talk to you before we did anything.”

“My parents want it to be at the Cathedral Chapel of All Saints,” Katrina said.

“That’s where the Episcopalians go,” Hanorah said.

“Yes. Bishop Sloane is a friend of the family.”

“What do you say to that?” Emmett asked Edward.

“I hadn’t heard this,” said Edward.

“You marry in that church, you’re excommunicated,” Emmett said, and he turned to Katrina. “Do you know what you’re doing to the man, taking him out of his religion?”

“I had no idea,” she said.

“We’ll find a way to solve it,” Edward said.