The Society of S by Susan Hubbard Page B

appropriate word; in fact, I think now, the pause was for emphasis and effect only — “far less engaged .”
    I smiled back, the sort of scholarly half-grimace I’d learned from him — wry, tight-lipped, nothing like his rare, shy smile of genuine pleasure. “For me, Poe will remain a taste to be acquired,” I said. “Or not.”
    “Or not.” He interlaced his fingers. “I agree, of course, that the writing style is florid, even overblown. All those italics!” He shook his head. “As one of his fellow poets said, Poe was ‘three-fifths genius and two-fifths fudge.’”
    I smiled (a real smile) at that.
    My father said, “Nonetheless, his mannerisms are designed to help the reader transcend the familiar, prosaic world. And for us, reading Poe provides a sort of comfort, I suppose.”
    He’d never before spoken of literature in such personal terms. I leaned forward. “Comfort?”
    “Well.” He seemed at a loss for words. “You see.” His eyes closed briefly, and while they were shut, he said, “I suppose, one might say, he describes the way I sometimes feel.” He opened his eyes.
    “Florid?” I said. “Overblown?”
    He nodded.
    “If you feel that way, you certainly don’t show it.” Part of me was marveling: My father is talking about his feelings?
    “I try not to,” he said. “You know, for all practical purposes Poe was an orphan. His mother died when he was very young. He was taken in by John Allan’s family, but never formally adopted. His life and his work exhibit classic symptoms of a bereaved child: an inability to accept the loss of a parent, a longing for reunion with the dead, a preference for imagination over reality.
    “In short, Poe was one of us.”
    Our conversation ended abruptly when Mary Ellis Root knocked loudly at the library door. My father went outside to confer with her.
    I felt on fire with so much unexpected information: One of us? My father was a “bereaved child” too?
    But I learned no more about him that day. Whatever issue Root had brought upstairs carried him down to the basement with her. I wandered up to my bedroom, my mind spinning.
    I thought of my father reading “Annabel Lee,” and I recalled Poe’s words in “The Philosophy of Composition”: “The death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.”
    And I thought of Morella, my mother, and me.

    Only a short time later, Kathleen telephoned. Her school year had begun, and I hadn’t seen much of her since that last day at the racetrack. School was over for the day, she said, and she needed to see me.
    We met in the belvedere at the foot of the back garden. I haven’t mentioned that place before, have I? It was an open, six-sided structure with a small cupola and rotunda roof that mimicked the larger ones at the top of the house. Cushioned benches were its only furniture, and Kathleen and I had spent many afternoons sitting there, “hanging out,” as she phrased it. Belvedere means “beautiful view,” and ours was well named; it looked out at an ascending slope covered in vines and overgrown rosebushes, their dark crimson blossoms turning the air pink with perfume.
    I was lying across one of the benches watching a dragonfly — a Common Green Darner, though it seemed anything but common as its translucent wings slowly pulsed the air — poised on a cornice, when Kathleen raced in, her hair flying free and her face pink from the bicycle ride. The air was humid, promising one of the thunder-showers that punctuated many late summer afternoons.
    She stared down at me, panting to catch her breath, then began to laugh. “Look…at…you,” she said between breaths. “Lady…of…leisure.”
    “And who are you?” I said, sitting up.
    “I’m here to rescue you,” she said. She pulled a plastic bag out of her jeans pocket, opened it, and handed me a small