The Poet Bride

Baltimore, Maryland May 1901

The curious thing about expectations is that it’s often not what fulfills them, but what upends them, that will shape who we become. It was spring of 1901, seemingly just another spring day in Baltimore as I walked home from school one late May afternoon. Humidity choked the air, a sour haze wafting over the gutters, the streets bustling with the usual buggies and passersby like fish all teeming downriver. Approaching our familiar crooked shingle, I was perfectly innocent of the fact that the trajectory of my life was about to change—forever.

I slipped into the shop’s quiet reprieve. The bell above the door jangled, causing my uncle to look up from his counter. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the shade, although the place was generally kept well lit. It had to be, for his line of work.

“Afternoon, Elly.” Uncle Robert lowered his magnifying glass.

“Afternoon, Uncle Rob. Whose pocket watch is that?”

“Mr. Metzger’s.”

I hoisted my book belt up my arm, for it kept sliding down. “I thought you repaired his Lépine last week?”

“That was Mrs. Metzger’s.”

“Oh, right.” I headed for the stairs. “Well, see you at supper,” I called as I climbed. I thought I heard him grunt in response.

Up in the apartment, the smell of clam stew simmered from the cast-iron stove. “I’m home,” I sang, nudging the door shut with my foot. I strolled into the kitchen where I dumped my books onto the old wooden bench. “Aunt Lydia, the aroma in here is simply delectable.” I retrieved my apron from the peg on the wall to help out when I realized we weren’t alone. A man was seated at our kitchen table, as though he belonged there.

“Who are you?” I asked him directly.

“Manners, Ellen,” reminded my aunt.

“Sorry.” I readdressed the stranger. “Who are you, sir?”

My aunt expelled a breath.

The man merely smiled. He had a short beard, tidily trimmed though wiry-looking in texture. His shoulders protruded like miniature mountain ranges beneath his tan suspenders.

Aunt Lydia clacked her spoon around in the pot. “Ellen, remember when I told you we were taking on a boarder?” I nodded, although her back was to me. “This is Mr. Porter. He’ll be staying with us for a time.”

The chair made a ratchet as the stranger stood. My gaze traveled upward. His sheer stature looked frankly too imposing for our matchbox-sized kitchen. He offered a hand, dwarfing mine as we shook.

“Good to meet you, Miss Owen.” His blue eyes were kind.

“Oh.” I attempted to puff a strand of hair off of my face. “Only Elly.”

“Well, only Elly,” he held his smile, “I am only Ben.”

“Now, that won’t do.” Aunt Lydia clanged her spoon down. “No, my niece must uphold respect for her elders.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am.” Mr. Porter gave my hand a final shake before letting go.

I reached back to tie my apron strings together. “He can’t be much older than me, Aunt Lydia.”

“For heaven’s sake, you are eighteen.” She thrust the spoon at me as I approached the stove. “You will address him as ‘Mr. Porter’ and I’ll not hear otherwise.”

“Oh-ho.” Mr. Porter chuckled, resuming his chair. “I’ve eight whole years on you, Miss Elly.”

“Only Elly,” I repeated with emphasis. I threw a grin over my shoulder to let him know I wasn’t cross. “So that makes you six-and-twenty?”

“Stir,” my aunt directed.

I obeyed, facing the stove to swirl the bubbling cream. “And from where do you hail, Mr. Porter?”

“You mean lately?”

“I mean originally.”

“Ah, you wish to know my origins.” He exhaled the word dramatically, and I repressed the urge to giggle. “I’m afraid you wouldn’t find my account nearly as compelling as the narratives you are no doubt accustomed to reading in those dense-looking books over there.”

I stopped stirring. “Well, you certainly seem like an interesting character.”

At this, he laughed, a hearty cadence that seemed to roll out of him with ease. The steam from the pot warmed my cheeks, until Aunt Lydia clamped a lid over it.

I collected the good china from the cabinet. We had a guest, after all. As I brought over his bowl, I chanced a closer glimpse of Mr. Porter. His complexion had seen sun but wasn’t weathered. His build was strapping like a laborer’s, but his speech refined as a gentleman’s. I couldn’t place him.

“You may be correct,” he said to me. “Perhaps the full eight years I’ve roamed this earth longer than you have filled in all my empty edges, making me a more well-rounded person.”

I nearly dropped the delicate china in my hands. With a rushed apology, I placed it onto the table. “Filled in all my empty edges,” I repeated. “Filling in all my…” Mr. Porter stared as I attempted to gather myself. “Oh, Mr. Porter, you’ve no idea…” The words tumbled out of me. “I’ve been working on this poem for so long, and you’ve just given me the final line. Would you mind if I used it? I mean, I don’t generally lift others’ prose—that’s plagiarism. Although, that refers to the printed word; I don’t know what they call it when someone’s only spoken aloud—”

“Ellen,” Aunt Lydia snapped, “the linens.”

Absently, I pulled the napkins from the drawer and distributed them around the table. “All I mean is, I’m not in the habit of copying others’ words. I’ve got plenty of my own, you see. But oh, Mr. Porter, I simply cannot tell you how long I’ve been working on this particular poem! Nothing will do to complete it but the very words you’ve just spoken.” I placed the final napkin beside his bowl. “May I have your permission to use them, please?”

He feigned a thinker’s pose. “To grant my permission or not?” He stroked his russet beard. “This is no easy decision for me, Elly. And yet, the fate of your poem rests upon it, no?”

My lips perked into a grin. He peered at me through eyes the hue of the Chesapeake on a clear day. “Is this your first poem?” he asked.

“Oh no, sir. I’ve written dozens.”

“Dozens?” He seized the edges of the table as if for support. “By Jove! Well then, the decision has made itself. I cannot deprive a true poet her inspiration. I must sacrifice my words,” he brought a hand over his heart, “to the name of art.”

This time, my giggle came loose. “Hear, hear.”

He raised his glass to me and drank, his eyes not leaving mine.

“Aunt Lydia,” I turned to her, “I know the cutlery still needs laying out, but the words are on the tip of my tongue and before I forget entirely—”

“Gracious me, go on, then.” To my delight, she shooed me out of her kitchen.

I beamed at them both before hastening down the little hallway to my bedroom. Instead of closing the door, I paused to listen as Mr. Porter addressed my aunt in his jovial way: “I say, Mrs. Owen, if you tell me where to find that cutlery, perhaps I may be of some assistance.”

My heart bounced around like a rubber ball in my chest as I yanked open the top drawer of my writing desk. My work-in-progress would mock me no longer. Carefully, I printed the final line onto the page.

Then, holding it to the window’s light, I reviewed what had taken me months to piece together, a tenuous mosaic of self-expression:

Untitled by Herman S. Yardling No spring as yesterday’s No Tuesday as tomorrow’s If I’ve only but this morn’ to dream Last night to lie starry-gazed I shall let the round-bellied moon cover mine eyes filling in all my empty edges.

A contented sigh floated from me. I set the leaf atop the stack of finished poems, another one complete. I would decide later where to submit it, if at all. Perhaps this one I’d keep safe from the unfeeling gavel of literary editors.

I quitted my room in time to hear footfalls on the stair. The front door to our apartment opened. Uncle Robert hung his jacket on the rack, his brow creased like a well-cherished letter. “Post for you, Elly.”

Speaking of letters…

I took the envelope he proffered, noting the return address. Dread seized up like a stone in my gut as I peeled it open. I skimmed the correspondence, like so many before it. There was no need to read the whole text. After careful consideration… Does not fit our publishing needs at this time… Enclosed is your work as submitted.

Behind the impersonal rejection letter was the last poem I’d sent out, promptly returned to me. I traced my careful penmanship, recalling the evening I’d copied it out, not a single error. As if that would increase my chances of finally proclaiming myself a published poet.

Not today, it would appear.

I must’ve been dragging my feet back to the table, for Mr. Porter remarked, “Why so glum? Ought I to loan you a better set of words?”

“What? Oh.” I pulled out my chair and sat. “It’s not that. In fact, your line fit my poem impeccably.”

“Impeccably,” he echoed, closing the lid to the silverware box and returning it to my aunt. “Ah, hello, Mr. Owen.”

“Afternoon, Benjamin.” Uncle Robert entered the kitchen and assumed the head seat at the table. “I hope you’re finding your new lodgings comfortable?”

“Indeed, sir, and your charming family is making me feel quite at home already.”

A single crease in my uncle’s brow unfurled. “Glad to hear.” He mustered a grin. “Welcome to Baltimore.”

I sighed. “Home of the world’s most exclusionary publications since 1837.”

“Exclusionary?” Mr. Porter chuckled in that easy way of his. “My, where did this one acquire such a vocabulary?”

“I’m not a child, you know.”

“Ellen,” scolded Aunt Lydia, doling stew into our bowls.

I dropped the letter beside my napkin, not set on apologizing anytime soon. Something about the manner in which he’d stressed his eight years to my senior had been gnawing at me, after all. We weren’t that far apart in age. My best friend Ida’s brother was six years older; Ben Porter could very well have been my brother.

“I am only saying.” I spread my napkin over my lap. “I’ll be graduating school next week. I’m an adult, same as everyone in this room. Pass the rolls, Uncle Rob?”

The basket drifted my way as Mr. Porter dug a butter knife through his roll. “Congratulations,” he said. “When’s the convocation?”

“There won’t be one. Not enough girls attended this year.” While this had been a sore subject in the past, I’d since come to accept it. A young lady graduating from Baltimore’s School for Girls just didn’t hold the same significance, apparently, as a young man from one of the boys’ institutions.

My aunt took her own seat at last. “Shall we say the blessing?”

We held out our hands. Uncle Robert’s tired fingers clutched my left. My right was swallowed up by a warm bed of calluses. I glanced at the man beside me, curiosity abuzz in my brain.

Our gazes met. His beard twitched, as though we shared a private joke. Then he lowered his eyes and bowed his head. Realizing I was the only one who hadn’t done so, I followed suit.

My uncle cleared his throat. “Pardon our sins, bless the refreshment now before us, and bless us to God’s service. Amen.”

“Amen,” my aunt and Mr. Porter chorused.

“Amen,” I heard myself say. I couldn’t fathom why, but I felt reluctant to relinquish Mr. Porter’s hand. Judging by how slowly his fingers unfurled from mine, I wondered if it was mutual.

We fell silent, the four of us yielding to the music of silverware against china, glasses knocking wood, our thoughts meandering as we ate.

“May I indulge in seconds, Mrs. Owen?” said Mr. Porter, after a time. Aunt Lydia passed the crock to him. Ladling another helping of stew into his bowl, his gaze flickered to me, then snagged on the letter folded by my sleeve. “What’ve you got there?”

I handed it to him. “Read it and weep.”

My aunt huffed. “I’ll thank you, Ellen, not to speak like a gambler at my table.”

“It’s a letter of rejection,” I informed Mr. Porter. “Another. From the Harbour Quarterly.”

He eyed it. “Why is it addressed to a ‘Mr. Herman S. Yardling’?”

“That is my nom de plume.”

“What’s wrong with ‘Elly Owen’?”

“Please, Mr. Porter, you can’t be that naïve. The Harbour would never publish poetry by a girl.”

His eyebrow quirked.

“Elly, please be civil.” Uncle Robert kneaded his brow. “Our boarder has only just arrived. No need to frighten him off just yet.”

“Not at all, Mr. Owen,” Mr. Porter was quick to assure, “I rather enjoy your niece’s candor.”

“Candor.” Aunt Lydia flapped her napkin over her skirts. “You can call it that.”

Mr. Porter gave the letter back to me, drawing my attention to his rough knuckles in the exchange. I wondered what his line of work was, and where he’d called home before today. “May I ask what you do, Mr. Porter?” I said.

“I sleep a bit. Eat a lot.” He winked. “Sometimes I smoke. I even fancy I can whistle a tune or two.”

“I mean for work.”

“Ah, why didn’t you say so? Longshoreman.” He thumped a suspender strap. “I work the docks.”

My aunt’s pointed frown warned me not to say anything untoward, but I couldn’t imagine why I would. He got to spend his days on a lively wharf under the sun, out with the grand ships at the inner harbor, the promenade teeming with new faces. It seemed so exciting and full of energy. Like him.

“I imagine you happen upon so many fascinating people each day,” I mused.

“Hmm.” He pondered me over his spoon. “Just today.”

“Well, Baltimore is full of intriguing folk.” I turned my roll through the white-gold stew. “Did you know the city was home to Edgar Allen Poe, one of the most celebrated poets of our time?”

“That so?” Mr. Porter rested his spoon. I liked the way he focused on me, as though I were the only person in the room. It felt genuine.

“Not this Poe business again,” protested Aunt Lydia. “The man was found dead in a gutter. Hardly someone to emulate.”

“He was found drunk in a tavern,” I corrected, “and was taken to the hospital to die.”

Aunt Lydia gasped. Uncle Robert poured himself a snifter of bourbon.

“The one on Broadway and Fayette,” I informed the newcomer. I leaned closer to him conspiratorially. “Some say he died of the drink. Others say it was an overdose of laudanum—on purpose. As for me,” I dropped my voice, “I think it was syphilis.”

Bourbon sloshed over the side of my uncle’s glass. He grumbled, swatting at it with his napkin.

“Beg pardon.” I checked myself as Mr. Porter crowed with laughter.

“Truly,” he crooned, “you are a lady to reckon with.”

“Or not much of a lady at all!” Aunt Lydia stood to collect our dishes. At once, I rose to help.

“You stay seated,” she told Mr. Porter, who was also making to stand. “I’ve all the help I need, thank you.”

“Much obliged, ma’am.”

I took up his empty bowl, unable to help but notice the casual fashion in which his sleeves were rolled up, strands of flaxen hair on his wrists and forearms shining like wheat in a field. I carried his dish to the basin, somewhat lightheaded.

Once the table was cleared and the men lit their pipes, I pocketed the Harbour’s letter in my jumper.

Mr. Porter, evidently, was watching. “You ought to feed that to the wastebasket,” he said.

“No, I like to keep them,” I admitted. “This is my fifteenth letter of rejection, evidence of my plight and struggle as a poet. I find them most handy in the throes of self-pity.”

His lips stretched over the end of his pipe.

“And anyway, you’re not a real writer unless you can paper your walls with rejection notes. At least, that’s what my best friend Ida’s brother, Jonathan, says. He just graduated seminary. He’s been trying to publish his book of essays on theology for years.”

Mr. Porter exhaled a plume of smoke, careful to aim it away from my face. “I bet he’s not as good a writer as you.”

I tried not to look too pleased with that statement. “Mr. Porter, you have yet to read my work.”

He sucked the tip of his pipe before lowering it. “If your poems are any reflection of you as a conversationalist, I guarantee you’ll hold readers captive here all the way west of the Mississippi. Would you not agree, Mr. Owen?”

“Oh…quite.” Puffing his own pipe, Uncle Robert shuffled out to the adjoining parlor, clearly not listening.

It was just me and Mr. Porter for the moment, the remnant odors of clamshells, boiled potato and tobacco smoke wafting between us. There was something else, too…a sweetish, heady scent of sweat and skin in the cramped kitchen, blended with a whiff of leather and sea. It was bone-warming and inviting, like sunlight sneaking through a broken breeze.

“In earnest, sir, welcome to our home.” I untied my apron strings. “Your home,” I amended, hanging it up. “I look forward to furthering our acquaintance.”

“Not as much as I do.”

The spaces above my elbows tingled. Something in the low, masculine grate of his voice made me suddenly wish I was more than just the plain, mousy-haired niece of a clock repairman. I longed to be dressed in a stylish shirtwaist with a buttoned-down back and an elegant skirt with heeled shoes, instead of the simple school uniform—black jumper and sensible flat pumps—I had on.

“So you know, Elly,” Mr. Porter rested the pipe, “anyone would have to be a raving lunatic to reject you.”

It wasn’t until he nodded at the folded letter in my pocket that I understood his meaning.

You could smell the harbor practically everywhere in Baltimore. No matter where the stone streets led your steps, its briny stench fanned like an invisible phantom, eager to haunt you home. An open carriage clunked past Ida and me, empty but for the driver, while an American flag flapped happily on a welcome breeze, all thirteen stripes and forty-five stars winking down at us.

“Hurrah for the flag of the free,” Ida sang.

“May it wave as our standard forever!” I chimed in. It was the last day of school, summer was nigh, the afternoon cloudless: all ripe conditions for a bout of public singing.

A string of ladies in white petticoats spared us resigned glances as we belted out the chorus of Sousa’s newest march, The Stars and Stripes Forever. We’d heard the brass band debut it at Federal Hill Park that spring and the catchy tune was about as difficult to shake as a cough in the middle of February.

A hammer clacked in front of the shop, drowning out our patriotic choir. Ben Porter stood on a stool, pounding at the shingle above our door.

I cocked my hat, shielding my eyes from the sun. “Afternoon, Mr. Porter,” I called up.

The hammering halted. “Well, hello there, Elly. I thought that was you I heard singing.”

Ida elbowed my side, her stare convicting me.

It wasn’t exactly by accident that I’d neglected to mention our new boarder to the girls at school. Only, there was something about Mr. Porter’s presence that I’d wished to keep undisturbed, like a fresh sheath of snow in an unfrequented dell. Not because I was ashamed, not nearly—but because I wanted to preserve it, to selfishly pretend his acquaintance could somehow be mine alone.

“Er,” I cleared my throat, “this is my friend, Miss Ida Sewell.”

He tipped his flat cap to her. “How d’you do?”

“Fine, thank you.” She grinned at me.

“Ida, this is our tenant, Mr. Porter.” To him, I added, “Sorry to distract you.”

He stuck a nail between his teeth, straightening the shingle. “You’re always distracting me, Elly.”

Ida’s grin wavered, her lips parting.

I spotted his empty dinner pail by the door. Grateful for the diversion, I lifted it by the handle. “I’ll take this up for you,” I offered. “We’re going inside now.”

“Tell your aunt I won’t be far behind.” The hammering restarted, this time accompanied by him whistling The Stars and Stripes Forever.

Ida slammed the door behind us with a plaintive jangle of the bell. “‘Elly’?” she burst. “He addresses you that way, by name? He lives with you?”

I hushed her, throwing an anxious glance over our shoulders. Thankfully, my uncle wasn’t at his counter. “You make too much of it.”

Her face glowed with relish as we passed an aisle of grandfather clocks in varying states of disrepair. “Why did you not tell me your aunt and uncle took on a boarder?”

I shrugged.

“Are they pressed for money?”

We always were. She knew that.

“Oh, Elly.” She blocked my path. “Most days I can barely get you to close your mouth. Now you refuse to open it?”

I hardly knew what to say. Mr. Porter had been living with us for a week by then, and those seven days had sailed by as if in a dream. Yesterday morning, while tidying his room, I’d resolved to leave the poem I wrote—the one he’d helped me finish—on his pillow. Just last night, I found it on my desk with one correction: Herman S. Yardling had been crossed out, and in its place read Elly Owen.

I’d stared at his penmanship, the tight way the double Ls were joined, the narrow valleys of the W. I imagined Mr. Porter’s capable, workworn hand taking care to write out my name after a long day at the docks. I’d pressed the paper to my breast in that moonlit moment, wishing the ink could seep into my heart.

I could never tell Ida that.

“Let’s just go up.” I kept my eyes trained on her chestnut locks ahead of me as we climbed the stairs.

In the kitchen, Aunt Lydia was frying fish. The pot hissed as she laid on another filet. The smell and sizzle permeated every room of our small apartment. “We’re home,” I announced.

It felt strange not dumping our schoolbooks onto the wooden bench. We’d returned them to the classroom that day, to be bequeathed to next year’s pupils. Instead, I set down Mr. Porter’s dinner pail. Ida and I rinsed our hands at the basin, brought down the dishes and laid out the cutlery. Then we retreated to my bedroom.

Ida closed the door and assumed the stool by the desk. I occupied the bed, nudging off my pumps with my heels. We gossiped about Annie Dougherty’s plans to become a nurse and Sophia Caramuso’s engagement to a baker in Fell’s Point. Laughter shook us as we recalled the man in the streetcar who wouldn’t stop ogling poor Ruthie Rubinstock on last year’s fieldtrip to Mount Clare.

When we tired of classmates and other stories to reminisce upon, Ida rose and went to the window. “So, where will you be, come autumn?” she asked me.

“Suppose I’ll be dusting the shop and keeping it presentable for Uncle Rob’s customers.”

“You’re going to clean the shop?” Her nose balled up.

“I’m also going to be a poet.” I smoothed down my quilt. “It doesn’t matter what I do by day. So long as I have time to write, I can do anything for room and board. How about you?”

Ida stroked the windowsill. “Mother wants me to get an education.”

“You just got one.”

“At the Women’s College,” she clarified, “of Frederick. You ought to go. You’re smart, Elly,” she contended at my moan.

“I could hardly wait to finish school as it was and begin my real life,” I contended. And I wasn’t the only one. Most girls dropped off after eighth grade, either to help with family or take on jobs as laundresses, nannies, maids. “You know how committed I am to my poetry, anyway.”

“Perhaps college could make you a better poet. It might even give you connections so that you can get your poems publish—”

“I don’t want them published because of my ‘connections.’” I stood, heat rising in me like one of Montgolfier’s hot air balloons. I hated the suggestions from well-meaning friends and teachers lately that my words were not enough, that I should need some toffee-nosed pedigree to make them worthy of being read. “I wish to be published for the integrity of my work. Nothing less…or more.”

Ida relented with a lopsided grin. “No use trying to persuade you, then. It seems you’re attached to the notion of the struggling artist.”

I smiled. It was hardly a struggle. Besides, I wouldn’t voice it aloud, but I didn’t see the adventure in the Women’s College of Frederick, anyhow. I would need a better reason to leave Baltimore—if I ever did.

“Supper’s on,” came my aunt’s summons.

I was growing accustomed to the magical affair of suppers with Mr. Porter at home. That evening was no different, with the exception of Ida kicking my foot beneath the table every time my gaze latched onto his for just a breadth of a moment too long, and especially when he teased me for my use of the word jentacular.

“No such word.” He shook his head stubbornly.

“Is too!” My stomach was sore from laughing. “It is used to describe an immediate breakfast upon waking.”

“It is used by a ringleader to oversell his audience, or not at all. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’” he spread out his arms, ‘welcome to my most splendiforous, jentacular circus!’” He blotted his mouth with his napkin, yet it failed to shroud his grin. “I refuse to believe it is in the dictionary.”

“I’ve one in my bedroom. You may consult it,” I sputtered, and Ida’s foot landed on my big toe.

Ida and I spoke little as we scrubbed dishes later. Aunt Lydia was wiping down the table at our backs, and the small room was too stifling for conversation. Thereafter, a faint rapping sounded at the shop door downstairs.

I pushed aside the window lace to see a tall man in a suit on the street below. I recognized him immediately by the severe part in his hair. “Looks to be Jonathan.”

“Already?” Ida groaned. “He’s early. Suppose he wants to get me home before dark.”

“Shall I walk you down?” I offered.

“I’ll make my own way, thanks.” She embraced me quickly, then called over my shoulder, “Thank you, Mrs. Owen, for supper.”

“Always a pleasure, dear.” Aunt Lydia wrung her rag over the basin. “Our regards to your parents and Jonathan.”

Ida collected her hat from the rack. “Evening, Mr. Owen.” She nodded at my uncle. “Nice meeting you, Mr. Porter.” With an even glance at me, she left.

Uncle Robert retreated to his bedroom to smoke. At present, Aunt Lydia busied herself with a brush to the stove. I remained by the window, watching my friend greet her elder brother on the street below and depart with him in the waning daylight.

“Would that be the seminarian you spoke of?”

I startled. “Mr. Porter, I didn’t see you standing there.”

“Sorry.” His apology was in perfect contrast to his unapologetic proximity to me. As he leaned forward to match my gaze through the window, I glimpsed auburn coils of chest hair rebelling from his collar, inhaled remnants of talcum powder on his throat. Somewhat dizzy, I relinquished the window lace.

“It’s all right.” I pressed my hair behind my ear, unsticking it from my face. It’d been so hot in the kitchen, perspiration slid down the crevice between my shoulder blades. “I need some air. Care to escort me?”

“What sort of air?”

“The sort that’s outdoors. What other kind is there?”

“All kinds of air.” He followed me out to our small balcony. “Arctic air, tropical air.” He left the door ajar behind us. “Londonderry Air, Air on the G…”

“The air inside your head,” I suggested.

“Oh, Elly.” He clutched his heart. “You’ve wounded me.”

“Only your pride, Mr. Porter.” I grinned up at him.

He smiled back, and it set fire to my evening. The same city streets the balcony had overlooked my whole life suddenly became idyllic beneath the sunset’s peach blush, the handsome horses pulling buggies below and gentlemen passing with their canes and top hats more akin to illustrations in a storybook. How had I failed to notice Baltimore’s charm before?

Then again, perhaps it was Ben Porter’s charm I was succumbing to.

The lamplighter made his way up the road with his long pole. I felt an affinity for those lamps he stoked, their newborn flames, each intimate glow now a beacon against the gaining dark.

Seagulls squalled in the distance. I glanced at Mr. Porter, at both our hands clutching the wrought-iron railing. “You never did tell me where you’re from,” I said.

His elbow grazed mine, though it might have been accidental. “I was born in the City of Brotherly Love.”

“Philadelphia?”

He nodded once. “Good ole Philly.” His tone suggested otherwise. “We moved to New Jersey, briefly; then New York, where my mother unfortunately perished in a factory accident.”

“How awful. I’m sorry.”

“It was some time ago, when I was a boy.”

“What of your father?”

“Never knew him.” He smiled tightly. “After my mother died, the orphanage found a newlywed couple from Cape Cod to take me in. They had some means, and sent me to be educated at a boarding school in mainland Massachusetts.”

“I see. Did you like it there?”

“Liked it fine.” He shrugged. “But then Mr. and Mrs. Porter began having children of their own, and they tired of me, and…well, that was that.”

“They threw you out?” I asked in surprise.

“No.” He shook his head. “Not like that. I simply knew I no longer belonged…if I ever had. I was about sixteen when I left. Been working odd jobs up and down the coast ever since.”

“What of your education?”

“What of it?”

I bit my lip, realizing my hypocrisy for implying he might’ve used or furthered it to advance his prospects. Had Ida and I not just held a similar conversation, with me on the other end? I had my reasons; he, no doubt, had had his.

“How about you?” He tilted his head to regard me. “May I ask why you live with your uncle and aunt?”

“You may.” I picked at the cuff of my sleeve. “Both my parents are dead.”

“Sorry for your loss.”

“I barely knew them.” It sounded cold, but was true. “My mother died of tuberculosis when I was three.” Indeed, I had few memories of her. “Father was born with a weak heart, and when Mother died, his own health took a turn. He couldn’t care for me anymore. Uncle Rob is his brother; as he and Aunt Lydia were childless, they volunteered to look after me.”

A lone gull flapped overhead, its orphan cry lending a fitting dirge to my tale. “Father seldom visited. Aunt Lydia once said I reminded him of my mother so much that the mere sight of me caused him unbearable sorrow. I found out on my twelfth birthday that he had died months before.”

“Elly, that’s tragic.”

I glanced up. Ben Porter wasn’t merely watching me; he was seeing me. His quiet scrutiny prodded the most secret, dormant parts of myself. It was as if, until then, I’d been asleep.

“But I know I’m lucky,” I added. “Uncle Rob and Aunt Lydia have always treated me as their own. They are my true parents. I cannot envision my life without them.”

His graze broke off to study the horizon. His expression was so pensive, I could’ve wept at the poignance of it.

“Oh, Mr. Porter,” I spilled, “I suspected you were a man well-traveled and -versed. I am only sorry the events that led to it were of such a melancholy nature.”

“Well, now.” He revealed that effortless smile of his, robbing my very lungs of their breath. “Life’s too short for melancholy.”

“But have we not had our share?”

“That was the way of our pasts, Elly. It need not be our future.”

I meant to reply, but was stuck on his utterance and the passion that flared it. It wasn’t lost on me that he’d pluralized pasts, but not future. Our future, he’d said. As though his future and mine could somehow be one and the same. Had he meant the inference? Or was I being foolish, parsing words by mistake, reading between lines that hadn’t been written?

A sheen of perspiration blossomed on his brow. The edge of his jaw was half-cast in shadow, granting his lips an inviting curve. I longed to know the feel of those lips, to experience the burn of his mouth, his breath, over mine. And I envied to death any lady out there who might possess that knowledge.

In pauses like these, I thought—when he stood in silence, calm as a firefly’s pulse—he was the moon. Until the sun in him came out and eclipsed it, outshining everything in its splendor. For him alone, I could write a thousand poems.

Perhaps it was that ambition that emboldened me to ask: “May I come visit you at the harbor sometime?”

He crossed his arms genially. “Now, why would you want to do a thing like that?”

“To make a picture in my mind,” I explained. “I think of you often when you’re out. It would be nice to see where you go each day, so I don’t have to merely imagine…” I closed my mouth, realizing how much I’d said.

His gaze steadied over me. I hoped my blush wasn’t too noticeable.

“I’m flattered,” he finally said. His voice, though soft, clapped through my veins like lightning. “Say, Elly,” he squinted over the balcony, “I’ve looked everywhere but still don’t see them.”

“See who?”

“The parade of suitors that ought to be lining up the street for you.” He reached out and, with a finger twice the girth of mine, stroked a coil of my hair, gingerly, behind my shoulder. My heart forgot what it meant to beat. “You are going to turn some man’s world someday,” he murmured.

The fog in my brain deprived me of speech.

“Goodnight.” He withdrew his hand. “And if I don’t see you for your jentacular meal tomorrow, have a good morning.”

I don’t recall whether I bade him a good night in return. All I could dwell on, as he left me on that twilit terrace, was his husky murmur ricocheting between my ears: “You are going to turn some man’s world someday.”

Ben Porter, I thought with a yearning so desperate it was liable to suffocate me, why on earth should that man not be you?