Page 31 of Beneath the Poet's House

“Can’t believe what?”

“That Edgar Allan Poe spent time in this house. That Sarah Whitman lived here. You can feel it, can’t you?” He closes his eyes. “Like, an aura. Something of historical significance happened here.”

Saoirse continues staring at him another moment, then closes her eyes as well. Does she feel something? It’s hard to tell; she’s still getting used to feeling anything at all. She hears Emmit walk out of the kitchen and cross the hallway, and she opens her eyes to follow him. He has one hand on the rail above the three short steps to the walkout and is preparing to start down.

“No!” Saoirse says, and he pulls his hand back, surprised. “Sorry,” Saoirse says. “It’s just, it’s a mess down there. Mostly stuff that belongs to the landlord.”

She feels guilty for lying, but she can’t remember if she pulled the rug over the trapdoor, and she doesn’t want Emmit to find the basement. She’s not ready to explain the black-clothed table and pillar candles, the belief—Mia, Roberto, and Lucretia’s, but isn’t her own now too?—that they commune with Sarah Whitman via a weekly séance. She’d like to have spent more than a single night with him before she admits she may owe her newfound poetic abilities, in part, to Emmit’s own face, along with the faces of Poe and Saoirse’s dead husband, projected onto her basement ceiling, during some sort of magic tea–induced hallucination.

“Sorry,” she says again. “Let me show you the rest of the house.”

Emmit fawns over the antique furniture and gothic atmosphere, and spends an inordinate amount of time analyzing the living room fireplace brickwork. She ends the tour at the door of her bedroom. “I’m going to put on fresh clothes,” she says. Then adds, “You can come in if you’d like.” She changes in the walk-in closet, and when she emerges, Emmit is on the balcony, looking down onto Saint John’s Cathedral. She slides open the door and joins him on the small platform.

“I never knew how well you could see the cemetery from the third floor of the house,” he says, more to himself than to her.

“At first, I thought it might be creepy, living so close to a graveyard,” Saoirse says. “I mean, this house is practically on top of it. But the more time I spend out here, the more peaceful I find it. It’s like—” She stops, embarrassed. Emmit turns to her.

“Like what?”

“It’s stupid, but sometimes when I sit here, I feel like it’s the mid-1800s. Like by viewing the world from this balcony, I’ve opened some portal to the past. The feeling has gone so far as to prompt me to go inside, walk downstairs, and cut across the yard to the cemetery. I’m always surprised—and a little disappointed—when I see the lichen covering the tombstones and cracks in the granite, the carvings all but worn away.”

“How exquisite would that be,” Emmit says, “to time travel with so little fanfare? It feels greedy, thinking that way, since we have the luxury of so many wonderful words from that period. We can time travel with all the ease of picking up a collection of Poe’s stories or Whitman’s poems. If anything, it’s the way their words bring us back so effortlessly that makes me feel we deserve more.” He takes her hand, brings it to his lips, and kisses each of her fingers, then turns and stares down at the cemetery again.

“When was the last time you tried it?” he asks.

“I’m sorry?”

“When was the last time you walked down to the graveyard, hoping to end up in 1848?”

“Oh,” she laughs. “I don’t know. A couple of days ago, maybe.”

“Should we try it now? Regardless of what century we arrive in, I’d love to see some of the markers up close. I know this isn’t the graveyard that featured so heavily in Poe and Whitman’s romance. But I also know Poe first saw Whitman here, tending her rose garden, and the fact that I’m staring at that very rose garden right now makes the Goth English major still residing inside me a little giddy.”

Saoirse shrugs. “Okay. Let’s go.” Then, unable to ignore her curiosity, she adds, “Agraveyardfeatured heavily in Poe and Whitman’s romance?” She must have missed this in her research.

“Swan Point. They strolled among the graves together during their courtship. Many believe it was in that cemetery where Poe proposed to Whitman. She talks about the proposal in one of her sonnets, and it’s obvious she’s describing Swan Point.”

They descend through the house, Saoirse deliberately exiting from the front door and walking around to avoid the walkout. Saint John’s Cathedral looms over them on their left. With regard to her comment about traveling to the past, Saoirse feels less foolish with every step. It does feel like leaving the normal world behind when she ducks under the low-hanging branches of a massive elm or steps onto the cracked marker of a weaving stone path. The air feels different in the forgotten graveyard. Still, but expectant. Surrounded by dwellings, buildings, churches, yet an island unto itself.

Emmit walks through the rows of markers with quiet reverence. Saoirse kneels beside an ogee headstone she hadn’t noticed on any of her previous excursions. After brushing away a bit of dirt, she can read the inscription:

INMEMORY OFHENRIETTA

DAUGHTER OFSAMUEL& ROFEBELLAHCHACE

DIEDOCT. 27, 1773, AGED1 DAY

There are more words at the bottom of the stone, but they are impossible to make out. Saoirse stands, not wanting to think about Jonathan, but she can’t help but ponder what words they might have put on their child’s headstone had she given him what he’d wanted.

Or what words might have ended up on hers.

She is pulled from her morbid thoughts by Emmit’s hand on her arm. “You feel it, too, don’t you?”

She knows what he means, but she wants to hear him say it.

“There’s a vastness to this place that extends far beyond the perimeter of the actual graveyard. It’s like we’re standing on something undiscovered. Something that, if we could see it, would shock us far more than the bones and hair and teeth of the bodies buried here, far more than scraps of muslin fabric and dirt-encrusted diamonds.”

This is more than Emmit agreeing that being in this cemetery feels like going back in time. His words feel hyperbolic; she’s not sure she can get behind the idea that they’re standing on anything other than one of countless small, private graveyards scattered across America. Still, he’s so earnest, she can’t help but nod. They walk toward her yard, Emmit lost in thought, half smiling as his eyes linger on each moss-covered marker.

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