Page 74 of The Phoenix Bride
There is a shriek from a nearby street. We both flinch and turn to look. The light in the sky has grown deeper, brighter. When our gazes meet again, Sara’s eyes are wide with fear. She shakes her head, as if to return herself to reality.
“Go to your cousin in Mile End,” I tell her. “We’ll be fine.”
She looks uncertain. “You’ll be leaving soon?”
“Yes. As soon as possible.”
I don’t tell her about Jan’s ankle. I take her hand, squeezing it. Sara squeezes back, and kisses my cheek.
“Farewell, then,” she says, and she hurries back down the street.
I watch her leave, uncertain whether I will ever see her again. The fire is coming, and we cannot know who will survive it. I do not want to feel the grief of it all—what has happened, what will happen—not now, not when there is still so much to be done. I take my sorrow and bind it up, stitch it closed, place it somewhere secret so I can ignore it until it inevitably bursts its seams.
In the kitchen, Jan is still sitting on the counter. When he sees me enter, he says, “David, you should leave me here.”
“Don’t be absurd,” I say.
“What are you intending to do? I can hardly walk. Will you carry me down the street, in that crowd, in such a panic—?”
“If I must,” I say. “But we have crutches, somewhere, that my father once used. You can take them.”
“You should leave me here,” he repeats. “I can go at my own pace, once the pain lessens.”
“If you stay, I stay.”
He scowls at me. I scowl back. He says, “You are being an idiot.”
“And you are being a stubborn ass. What sort of friend would I be if I abandoned you?”
Jan sighs. “You would never abandon me, friend or not. That is why you are so extraordinary, David.”
I clear my throat. There is no time for tears. “Stay here,” I say. “We will continue packing. I will fetch you when we are prepared to leave.”
He nods reluctantly. I embrace him, then go to salvage the last few items I can take with me. In the parlor, father’s wood carvings, which I save in favor of the porcelain; in my bedroom, my Talmud, my herbal, and my best hat; in the garden, the strings of glass beads on the hooks, warm to the touch and coated in a thin film of ashes. I take a moment to look at my plants, my ailing basil, my rosemary, my fist-sized lettuces. My throat tightens. Living things, all of them—my life’s work, my greatest achievements—and I am leaving them to the flames.
In the storeroom, Elizabeth Askwith has found a traveling case and is filling it with medicines. She has opened the window, understandably so, as the room is unbearably warm. But it is a lost cause, as the fire has made the wind hot and dry. It gusts in, ruffling my hair as I help her pack. It brings the scent of char with it, and I imagine what the city will be like once the fire is gone, once only a carcass remains—I picture the skeletal beams of the burned-down buildings, and the ashes that will pour out of the empty doorframes, like blood from leaking veins. Soon that smell will be all that is left: a passing whisper of memory, the ghost of a city near gone.
I go to my father’s room last. I know there is little here that I can take with me, but I go all the same. It is the first time I have opened the door since my shiva, and I find a memory trapped in amber: all as it was, bed rumpled, cases full of clothes peeking out from under the bed. I go to his desk and open the drawers,wondering if there might be something small of his I have forgotten, which I can now take with me—a pen, a pin, perhaps even another wood carving. But the drawers mostly contain papers, old accounts and patient notes. I rifle through them regardless, then spot a hint of color. Curious, I pull out a heavier sheet of vellum, high quality, on which is penned a large chunk of Aramaic text. The borders are hand painted in green and red, roses and pomegranates. Signatures have been left in faded brown ink at the bottom.
It is my parents’ ketubah, their wedding contract. I had no idea my father kept this all these years, hidden at the bottom of a drawer. To hold on to such a thing, even after the divorce—I cannot imagine what he was thinking. Or perhaps I can. I remember those first few weeks in London, the incremental fading of the hope in his eyes every time he said,Ana will be here soon, Davi. Your mother will be here soon.
There is only one line in Hebrew on the contract, just above the signatures:Ani l’dodi v’dodi li. I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.
I take the ketubah with me, and I close my father’s door for the final time.
I stand before the mirror in my wedding dress.
“There now, Cecilia,” Margaret says, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. “Have you ever seen a lovelier bride?”
I remember the woman in the pageant, smiling at her husband, haloed with gold. I think that a bride must be in love to be truly lovely. You can paint a face and cinch a waist, but you can’t put joy into someone’s eyes.
When I married Will, my dress was blue, also—a paler blue than this one, which is true cornflower, the color of a sapphire in sunlight. I had flowers in my hair, but they were tiny daisies and wilting columbine; the purple aster and larkspur that crown me now are resplendent, regal, the sort of thing I might expect of an empress. Diamonds around my throat, pearls strung over my shoulders. I am a widow no longer. I am reborn.
I make no reply to my sister, but she doesn’t care. Her mind is elsewhere: on the myriad arrangements she has made for the afternoon, the procession to the church, the ceremony, the feast,the smiling speeches. Sam and I are to be tugged about like kites on a string.See how they fly!Margaret will say, before reeling us back to earth.
There is a knock on the door. The maid is outside, nervous, bearing a dish with a letter on it. The seal is obscured from me, but it must alarm Margaret, because she tells me, “Don’t touch your hair, you’ll ruin it,” before disappearing into the corridor, shutting the door behind her.
I meet my own eyes in the mirror. The blue of my dress only makes them look more gray, darkens them, gathers a storm where the sunlight should be.
