May the Road Rise Up to Meet You: A Novel

by Peter Troy

  “Mr. Walter Smythe, Mrs. Violet Smythe, this is Miss Ar-ro-yo,” Mr. McOwen said, sweeping his arm toward her as if introducing a duchess just arrived at a grand ball. “She’s a great fan of … Mathew Brady’s.”

  “But I am beginning to appreciate the work of a certain Irish photographer as well,” Marcella joked, and extended her hand to each of them.

  “Smitty’s a friend from way back durin’ th’humble beginnin’s,” Mr. McOwen said. “He was with the Sixty-Ninth too.”

  She couldn’t help but glance quickly at the arm of his jacket pinned up against his shoulder, then, angry at herself for looking, she turned to Mrs. Smythe.

  “That’s a lovely hat, Mrs. Smythe,” she said with the social dexterity garnered from great experience.

  “Violet, please … and thank you,” she replied, looking over at her husband as if he’d neglected to pay her any such compliments. “Borrowed it from Ethan’s Aunt Emily, actually. We don’t get out to many functions like these, I s’pose you could say.”

  “What?” Smitty protested. “Why, just last week there was dinner at the Green Onion.”

  “Oh, that’s right—the Green Onion,” she said with a laugh. “The Delmonico’s of Brooklyn.”

  “They’ve got tablecloths, haven’t they?” he argued with a bit of a laugh.

  “Yes, for all the fine people to wipe their mouths on,” she said.

  “Well—there you go then.”

  Ohhh, I like these people, Marcella thought.

  “Well, let’s get a look at the lads,” Smitty said, stepping forward. “Aww Jesus, lookit Harry standin’ with his hand on that big siege gun … like he ever fired one in his life.”

  “Yes, but there’s such a delicious brutishness to him, don’t you think?” Mr. McOwen asked.

  Smitty looked at him with his mouth twisted to one side and eyebrows pressed down. “What?”

  “I’m afraid it’s an inside joke from just before you arrived,” Marcella said, and Smitty still seemed confused. But Violet smiled and looked over at Mr. McOwen and then back at Marcella.

  “So Miss Ar … Ar-ooo …”

  “Marcella, please.”

  “Marcella. So how long have you and Ethan known each other?”

  I know where you’re going, Violet, Marcella thought. Not that I mind.

  “Just a few minutes,” she replied.

  “Yes, but what a few minutes they’ve been,” Mr. McOwen said.

  Violet smiled at both of them now, her eyes twinkling the way a woman’s do when she’s of a matchmaking frame of mind. They looked over the pictures of the Irish Brigade, and all the while it was Smitty and Mr. McOwen sharing the inside jokes and telling the ladies stories about this particular fellow or that officer. They didn’t speak of any of the battles, and given the empty sleeve of Smitty’s jacket, and Mr. McOwen’s pronounced limp and dependence upon his cane, she was relieved they didn’t.

  At one point Smitty ventured over to some of Brady’s pictures taken from Antietam, and his mood changed quickly. Mr. McOwen stepped up next to him, then took a step away.

  “Jesus, Perfessor,” Smitty said, shaking his head slowly from side to side, “lookit that mess … what you lads musta gone through.”

  Marcella was standing next to Violet, chatting politely, but couldn’t help but notice the pained expression on both Smitty’s and Mr. McOwen’s faces.

  “Ethan was wounded at Antietam,” Violet whispered to her. And as the two men grew more serious looking at Brady’s pictures of the Sunken Road, Violet took it upon herself to fill in Marcella with a short biography of Mr. McOwen, saving Marcella the embarrassment of having to uncover such details herself. There were the wounds, three of them in all, and a mention of how he and their other two friends—men still in the Irish Brigade and alive, thank the Lord—had carried Smitty to the triage tent at Malvern Hill and certainly saved his life. And then Violet talked about how Ethan was a prominent photographer even before the war, and how he and Smitty and the other boys had played for the Excelsiors, and so on. His own mother couldn’t do a better job of lobbying on his behalf, Violet, Marcella thought. But then Violet told her that since Ethan’d almost lost a leg at Antietam, it had been a difficult recovery and that his employer, Mr. Hadley, had arranged for his small part in this gallery show in hopes of encouraging Ethan to embrace his old profession again.

  “What these men have been through …,” Violet said, shaking her head. And her words were all about loss now, describing how much joy a simple game of baseball had once brought them, or for Ethan the boat he used to fish in with his father that he now seemed unable or unwilling to sail. Then she seemed to snap to attention herself, the thought interrupted by the sudden awareness of her surroundings once again. “But it looks like you’ve had such a good effect on him,” she said in a more hopeful tone. “Let’s not let them get too deeply into it.”

  She draped her arm inside Marcella’s and walked her over to the two men.

  “Now enough of this gloominess,” she announced. “Ethan, you said there were some pictures of the runaways?”

  “Yes, they’re along the back wall,” he replied.

  “So the piles of corpses are all right for the decent folks t’see,” Violet said, “but the Negroes must be hidden away out of view?”

  Ahhh, Violet dear, Marcella thought, I believe we might well become friends.

  They passed through the crowd gathered around Brady’s photographs, and Marcella could see the difficulty with which Mr. McOwen walked. Then Violet took her arm out from inside Marcella’s and took her husband’s.

  “Oh, you two go on ahead,” she said to her and Mr. McOwen. “I think I left something in the lobby.” Oh, well done, Violet, well done.

  She tugged at her husband’s arm as he began to question what she could have possibly left, before a glance from her silenced him. They were off toward the lobby, and now it was just the two of them again. Mr. McOwen offered her his arm, and she lightly placed her hand inside it, not wanting to hurt his shoulder wound or inhibit his walking with the cane.

  “I like her,” Marcella said as they walked.

  “Violet’s great,” he replied. “I don’t think a lesser woman could’ve pulled Smitty out of it when he came home from Malvern Hill.”

  “I can imagine,” she said. And then thought, Who was there for you?

  His pictures of the Irish Brigade had shown a hint of humanity she felt was missing from Brady’s work. But his pictures of the runaways were utterly haunting. Their eyes seemed to look directly through the camera, as if the wooden box were not an endpoint but a portal to stare into the eyes of all those who would see these pictures. These were not the images captured by just any technician with a camera. These were the creation of one who saw the injustice with as much clarity as she did. She gently pulled her hand from under his arm and moved up close, examining each one as if staring at a masterpiece. He stood a few steps back, no smug expression on his face, or even the pride she believed he should certainly, justifiably, feel. Instead there was tempered anguish. And she couldn’t help but bounce her attention back and forth from one image to the next, looking at his face in between each one, wondering what sort of man it was she had met this evening. And most certainly glad she had.

  Artists, either in spite of or perhaps because of her father’s utter disdain for them, had always interested her. But most of the ones she’d encountered in New York were either as pretentious as some of their patrons, or as rustic and bohemian as the subjects they portrayed. Mr. McOwen struck her as being different—the artist who didn’t intend to be one, but was almost compelled to do so by his unique vision. He could have made thousands a year simply taking portraits of the society patrons gathered right here. But that seemed not to interest him at all. Nor did he seem impressed with his own success, or the accolades Mr. Sacramore, the owner of the gallery, poured on him while Marcella was still mesmerized by his pictures. And then she could see his reluctance turn to anguish,
imagining the pain of receiving such compliments for documenting the suffering of others. When Mrs. Sacramore joined her husband with equally effusive praise, Marcella walked back over to stand beside Mr. McOwen, if only to offer him the chance to change the subject. And as she approached, a tight-lipped, straight line of a smile appeared on his face, leaving his eyes to express his relief.

  He introduced her to Mr. and Mrs. Sacramore, and then somehow, just as Violet had done before, the two of them spoke to her as if she and Mr. McOwen had known each other far longer than these twenty or so minutes. When Mrs. Sacramore invited them to a dinner party at their house the next evening, Mr. McOwen did nothing to correct her mistake.

  “Are you free tomorrow, Miss Arroyo?” he asked, smiling mischievously now. It was the type of presumption she would normally have a witty retort for, but this offer was too intriguing to even think of turning down.

  “I believe I am, Mr. McOwen,” she replied, and the matter was settled.

  NOVEMBER 2, 1862

  He arrives in a taxi carriage to pick her up on the evening of Mr. Sacramore’s dinner party. Mrs. Carlisle has gone beyond her old sort of looking out for Marcella, having some time ago adopted her as a daughter, in her thoughts anyway … and Marcella’s, too. And now she fills the role of both parents, prodding and poking at Mr. McOwen with her questions. It’s an interrogation designed to see if he’ll crack, if he has any hope of deserving her beloved Marcella. But he holds the line quite well with a certain confidence Marcella noticed in the gallery. It’s not the usual arrogance of her father or brothers or so many of the men he brought around in hopes of marrying her off.

  Whatever it is about him, he meets with Mrs. Carlisle’s approval, and they soon take their leave from her and Catherine, riding the taxi carriage uptown just a few blocks from her father’s house. They converse politely on the drive, and when they arrive at the house, Mr. McOwen opens the door of the carriage for her and offers his arm, smiling comfortably as he does. The first guest they are introduced to is Mrs. Lydia Templeton, whom she’s seen perform at the Opera House on more than one occasion, and then follows a collection of writers and abolitionists that’s unlike anything she’s been a part of before, even at Mrs. Carlisle’s. Here in this one parlor are more truly interesting people than had attended all her father’s monthly parties over all the years she was required to be a part of them.

  Mr. McOwen seems very much in demand, with many of the guests wanting to speak to a man who has actually been there in the thick of the war, as they describe it. But when publishers, or writers, or actresses are introduced, he never lets Marcella be excluded from the conversation. And as the evening goes along, she realizes that it’s the same thing she’d seen the other night, when Violet and Smitty came back while Mr. Sacramore and several other notables were still in their midst. Mr. McOwen treats them all alike, with an equal cordiality, even familiarity, which is most engaging. Neither an ounce of snobbishness nor of crudeness in him. How positively unlike a man, she thinks.

  They eat at a table twice the size of the one in her father’s house, all thirty-six of them comfortably aligned around it. The service is elegant, the meal lavish, and were it not for the far more enlightened conversation, and the complete absence of any discussion of money or business, she might feel as if they were at one of her father’s parties. After dinner is through, they withdraw to the parlor again for what is, in her mind, the true test of whether this whole evening has been real or imagined. This was always the most infuriating time at her father’s dinner parties, the moment the men would go off to the library to discuss truly important matters while the ladies sat around and gossiped and talked about dresses and such. She imagines Ethan with the other men, smoking a cigar and drinking brandy, and it’s as if all that has been so positively impressed upon her up to that moment will be wiped out as soon as the men return. As if, having solved the pressing crises of the day, they’re now ready to grace the ignorant ladies with their presence again.

  But then an odd thing occurs. The men all sit alongside the ladies and Mr. Sacramore stands, and rather than requesting the men join him in the library, he requests that Mrs. Templeton sing an aria for them. And Marcella realizes then that there will be no brandy and cigars, no segregation of the sexes, no girlish gossiping and fashion talk to endure. She smiles at Mr. McOwen, Ethan, as she’s finally agreed to call him.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  She shakes her head. “Oh … nothing. I’m just … it’s nothing.”

  And then Mrs. Templeton saves her from having to explain any further.

  “Oh look at this,” she says, holding up a piece of sheet music, “Voi Che Sapete from Figaro. How I love this piece—but I’ll need an accompanist.”

  Mrs. Templeton looks around the room and finds no one willing, or able, to play. But then, as if on impulse, and inspired by the unique quality of this moment, Marcella volunteers. Ethan stands and begins the applause for her as she steps to the pianoforte.

  “Oh, wonderful. Thank you, Miss Arroyo,” Mrs. Templeton says, and then Marcella finds herself removing her gloves and sitting at the piano, and Mrs. Templeton is leaning over her.

  “B-flat major at the beginning, and then this arrangement gets interesting,” she whispers as she points to the sheet music. “Where is it … oh, there, see the change to A-flat major? And then … here, to G minor for one, two, three, four measures … and then back to B-flat major … and, oh … I’m sorry to get you into this; it’s such a frightful arrangement to play on first sight. I’ve sung it a hundred times, and I still get lost.”

  Marcella smiles at her, liking this woman even more now, and says humbly, “I’ll do my best.”

  Placing her fingers on the opening chords, she glances at Mrs. Templeton, who nods in readiness. She plays the introduction with her usual comfort, and Mrs. Templeton smiles broadly at her, as if realizing that she can indeed play, before joining in on measure. Marcella is only a half beat behind at the first key change, but quickly comes back in form. At the second change, Mrs. Templeton pauses a half beat in anticipation of Marcella trailing, but this time it’s Mrs. Templeton doing the catching up. The remaining key changes are right on measure, and when the aria is complete, the guests demand an encore. They collaborate on another selection from Mozart, and then Mrs. Templeton steps aside, pressing Marcella to play a solo. Unable to slip graciously away, Marcella obliges, playing the simple adagio of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata from memory. She bows politely and decides that this has been enough of a debut for her. But Mrs. Templeton is having none of that, standing back up, urging Mr. Sacramore and the guests to demand another piece.

  “I know you’ve got a better one in you than that,” she whispers to Marcella. “Show them how a woman can really play.” And when Mrs. Templeton finds Chopin’s Nocturne opus 9, number 2, she lets out a playful gasp and then whispers, “Will you dare tackle Monsieur Chopin?”

  Marcella smiles at her, and Mrs. Templeton stands off her shoulder to turn the pages of the sheet music. At her father’s dinner parties, when he forced her to play for the guests, she always felt as if she were being shown off like a trained china doll. He would inevitably comment about how much money had been spent teaching her to play so well or how much it cost to have the instrument shipped over from London. There was always conversation throughout her playing, always dominated by her father, and she never felt like anything more than part of the ornamentation there. But here, not a word is uttered as she plays to a rapt audience. The guests applaud loudly when she’s through, and Mrs. Templeton gives her a knowing smile and a wink. Ethan is smiling and still applauding as she approaches her seat beside him. It is her moment to shine, and he appears to be happier for her than he’d been for his own artistic success just the day before.

  “Well—I am most impressed, Miss Marcella,” he says with a bow. “You play remarkably. I expect to hear you at Irving Hall someday soon.”

  “You exaggerate, Mr. McOwen,” she repli
es, “but only slightly.”

  NOVEMBER 5, 1862

  Despite the thrill of the dinner party at the Sacramores’, or perhaps because of it, she had spent the intervening days working at the hospital and growing increasingly displeased with herself. Pilar was the sort to gush over young men, and Catherine and even Mrs. Carlisle were the sort to romanticize even the most trivial of encounters. But not Marcella. And though Mr. McOwen—as she went back to referring to him in her thoughts—had seemed like no other man she had ever met, it was an all-too-brief window into his real self to yield even a fraction of her emotional autonomy. But she had foolishly agreed to a Wednesday visit—giving up one of her afternoons free from the hospital—and two days were hardly enough to steel herself against the potential dangers of such an engagement.

  He arrived promptly at noon with a thin portfolio of paper wrapped in fine white lace and tied by a red ribbon. And Mrs. Carlisle and Catherine laughed with seemingly excessive delight when he confessed to having his mother and aunt take care of the wrapping. Marcella glanced at them like the meddling matchmakers they clearly aspired to be, but they only whimsically insisted she open the gift right then and there. It turned out to be a piece of sheet music, not just any piece, but Voi Che Sapete, from Figaro, and the wonderful memories of Sunday night returned immediately.

  “You brought me a copy of the piece I played at Mr. Sacramore’s party,” she said, attempting to muster all the indifference that would be merited by a mere bouquet of hothouse flowers.

  And Mrs. Carlisle and Catherine were effusive in their recognition of what a thoughtful gift it was, prompting Marcella to add a coy evaluation of her own.

  “Yes, Mr. McOwen, I suppose I do need to practice it.”

  But he turned his head a little to one side and drew his eyebrows downward into a puzzled expression.

  “Quite the contrary,” he said. “I … that’s not what I …”