Since his arrival in 1868, this heavenly, white-marble emissary had become the best-known resident of the cemetery, eclipsing magnates and governors, even heroes of the Revolution, and daily drew
crowds of the curious and the reverential, although today only two women were standing off, staring at him. The Angel had also enhanced the fame of his creator, Erastus Dow Palmer, neighbor of
Katrina’s for as long as she had been able to look out the window and see him striding along Elk Street with his walking stick and his great white beard. Instrument of the resurrection, the
Palmer Angel, in flowing white nightshirt, hair of Jesus length, folded wings as tall as his seated self, stared out into Katrina’s afternoon and thrilled her, bringing her again to the edge
of tears with the beauty of his irreality, the perfection of his fingers and toes, the strength and certainty in his mouth and eyes. He was speaking to the known and unknown Marys who had come to
weep over the dead Jesus: “Why seek ye the living among the dead?” he asked them.
Sentinel of salvation, rock of redemption, he knew what he was about. No perfection in bedridden indecision, Katrina. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the clear of heart; you know that. (Yes,
yes, of course. But what, besides clarity, inhabits the heart of an angel?)
“Beauty regards beauty,” came Edward’s voice, and Katrina turned to see him in his phaeton two-seater, looking so spirited, so ebullient, even sitting still: as fine a figure,
she suddenly decided, as she would find this side of the angels. She walked toward him and he took off his hat to greet her and leaped down to take her hand, help her up into the seat beside his
own.
“I didn’t expect this day,” he told her. “Your invitation thrilled me. But how did you get here?”
“I have my slaves,” she said.
His dark-brown eyes focused only on her and she thought he owned the handsomest head of brown hair imaginable, and she thought: I’ll bet he took off his hat to woo me with his hair.
“Do we have a destination?” he asked.
“Where the road leads,” she said, and Edward told his horse to take them along it.
Katrina could navigate all of the cemetery’s vast natural beauty, knew each vale, brook, and ravine, knew the cypress grove, the pond by the elm woods. And she knew many of its residents,
could identify the replica of Scipio’s tomb where Jared Rathbone, Lyman’s old friend and business enemy, was buried, and the thirty-six-foot Doric column commemorating Albany’s
heroic Revolutionary general, Philip Schuyler, and the granite sarcophagus of General James Rice, once of Elk Street, who, dying at Spotsylvania, said, “Let me die with my face to the
foe,” and Thurlow Weed, founder of the Albany Evening Journal , whose Republican politics her father detested, and the very, very rich William James, whose grandson Henry wrote novels
of great convolution that intimidated Katrina, and the banker Billings Learned, Katrina’s favorite capitalist, who wrote on his wife’s headstone: “Wife, I thank my God upon every
remembrance of you.”
These notable graves gave comfort to Katrina in her pursuit of love, perhaps marriage. This gilded world of the familiar dead, a world into which she had been born and raised, filled her soul
with cultivated joy, for her mother had sensitized her to the splendor of an eminent death, which, as all know, perpetuates an eminent life.
But now the beat of her heart also importuned Katrina, and as they came to a grove of blue spruces, with no monuments or people in sight, she said to Edward, “Stop here. It’s all as
I remember. No corner of the world more beautiful.”
While Edward tethered his horse, Katrina climbed down from the carriage and, with blanket in hand, walked to a shaded place beneath the holy trees, whose wood was one of the principal sources of
her father’s abundant wealth. The tall spruces had shed needles and cones in a soft
crowds of the curious and the reverential, although today only two women were standing off, staring at him. The Angel had also enhanced the fame of his creator, Erastus Dow Palmer, neighbor of
Katrina’s for as long as she had been able to look out the window and see him striding along Elk Street with his walking stick and his great white beard. Instrument of the resurrection, the
Palmer Angel, in flowing white nightshirt, hair of Jesus length, folded wings as tall as his seated self, stared out into Katrina’s afternoon and thrilled her, bringing her again to the edge
of tears with the beauty of his irreality, the perfection of his fingers and toes, the strength and certainty in his mouth and eyes. He was speaking to the known and unknown Marys who had come to
weep over the dead Jesus: “Why seek ye the living among the dead?” he asked them.
Sentinel of salvation, rock of redemption, he knew what he was about. No perfection in bedridden indecision, Katrina. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the clear of heart; you know that. (Yes,
yes, of course. But what, besides clarity, inhabits the heart of an angel?)
“Beauty regards beauty,” came Edward’s voice, and Katrina turned to see him in his phaeton two-seater, looking so spirited, so ebullient, even sitting still: as fine a figure,
she suddenly decided, as she would find this side of the angels. She walked toward him and he took off his hat to greet her and leaped down to take her hand, help her up into the seat beside his
own.
“I didn’t expect this day,” he told her. “Your invitation thrilled me. But how did you get here?”
“I have my slaves,” she said.
His dark-brown eyes focused only on her and she thought he owned the handsomest head of brown hair imaginable, and she thought: I’ll bet he took off his hat to woo me with his hair.
“Do we have a destination?” he asked.
“Where the road leads,” she said, and Edward told his horse to take them along it.
Katrina could navigate all of the cemetery’s vast natural beauty, knew each vale, brook, and ravine, knew the cypress grove, the pond by the elm woods. And she knew many of its residents,
could identify the replica of Scipio’s tomb where Jared Rathbone, Lyman’s old friend and business enemy, was buried, and the thirty-six-foot Doric column commemorating Albany’s
heroic Revolutionary general, Philip Schuyler, and the granite sarcophagus of General James Rice, once of Elk Street, who, dying at Spotsylvania, said, “Let me die with my face to the
foe,” and Thurlow Weed, founder of the Albany Evening Journal , whose Republican politics her father detested, and the very, very rich William James, whose grandson Henry wrote novels
of great convolution that intimidated Katrina, and the banker Billings Learned, Katrina’s favorite capitalist, who wrote on his wife’s headstone: “Wife, I thank my God upon every
remembrance of you.”
These notable graves gave comfort to Katrina in her pursuit of love, perhaps marriage. This gilded world of the familiar dead, a world into which she had been born and raised, filled her soul
with cultivated joy, for her mother had sensitized her to the splendor of an eminent death, which, as all know, perpetuates an eminent life.
But now the beat of her heart also importuned Katrina, and as they came to a grove of blue spruces, with no monuments or people in sight, she said to Edward, “Stop here. It’s all as
I remember. No corner of the world more beautiful.”
While Edward tethered his horse, Katrina climbed down from the carriage and, with blanket in hand, walked to a shaded place beneath the holy trees, whose wood was one of the principal sources of
her father’s abundant wealth. The tall spruces had shed needles and cones in a soft
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