The Flaming Corsage by William Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page A

all, the cause noted by Katrina’s sister, Adelaide: “She’s gotten
over her lovesickness.”
    “That Daugherty is ruining the peace of this family,” Jacob Taylor said.
    Katrina said nothing and after breakfast gave Cora, the chambermaid, her daily fifteen minutes of tutoring in elocution in Katrina’s sitting room.
    “Is it true as Miss Adelaide says that you’re desperate sick in love with Mr. Daugherty?” Cora asked.
    “I’m not such a fool,” Katrina said. “I know the difference between my body and my soul. Love is the soul’s business. I’m sick because my body seems to want
this marvelous man. I would never call it love.”
    “Oh, Miss Katrina, I think you got it backwards.”
    “You’re an expert on love?”
    “I’m commonsensical on it. I loved a boy well and do yet, and it’s body and soul, Miss, body and soul.”
    “You do speak your mind, Cora.”
    “I wouldn’t know what else to do with it, Miss.”
    Katrina’s clearest memory of Cora McNally was of the white stone china cup with the broken handle, a memorable stub of
unmanageable clay. It was the day Geraldine Taylor hired Cora for scullery work (from which she swiftly graduated), and cook was giving Cora her first lunch, setting her chair and dishes at a
solitary place at the drainboard of the sink: a sandwich of turkey scraps and skin dabbed with cranberry sauce, and tea in that unforgettable stone china cup. Cora came in from the scullery, saw
this offering, and said not to cook but to Katrina’s mother:
    “Mrs. Taylor, on the poorest day of me life in Cashel I never ate a meal on the drain of a sink, and if ever a cup in our house broke its handle, we threw it out.”
    Geraldine nodded and said quietly to cook:
    “Sit Cora at the servants’ table and give her a proper cup.”
    And from then forward the Taylor family and its servants knew who Cora was, as you shall
know me, Katrina announced silently to all future obstructionists.
    Katrina’s dilemma: whether to decide in silence to accept the offer of marriage, suffer all losses privately in advance, and move beyond loss, or allow family and peers
to mount the inevitable attacks on such outrageous wedlock. Katrina knew her decision would not be influenced by the views of others. The problem lay in protocol, distortion of which would leave
scars.
    As the days passed, it began to decide itself. Mother must be allowed to invite the Bishop to lecture Katrina on marrying someone outside the religion. Father must be permitted to agree to
finance a tour of the Continent to take Katrina’s mind off the papist lout.
    Katrina looked at the portrait of Femmitie clutching the red rose of love, her shawl over her left shoulder emphasizing the fullness of her right breast; and in Femmitie’s mouth Katrina
read the flirtatious curl of a smile, supporting the legend that Femmitie fled her parents’ unbearably pious Albany home to marry a seductive Boston confidence man (a Dublin rascal
masquerading as an Ulsterman) who made her insanely rich, then was, himself, hanged for murdering a wealthy Presbyterian cleric. These events had been irrelevant to Femmitie’s sensuous smile,
which survived religion, money, and the gibbet. Wrote B: Woman cannot distinguish between her soul and her body. She simplifies things, like an animal. A cynic would say it is because she
has only a body. You are not talking about me, Katrina told him.
    Katrina decided her resurrection from indecision and reclusion would take place two days hence, and she wrote letters organizing the event, the first to Giles Fitzroy, asking
that he take her for an afternoon ride to brighten her pallid complexion, expose her weakened spirit to the restorative of fresh air and sunshine; and the second to Edward, asking that he meet her
at one-thirty in Albany Rural Cemetery near the Angel of the Sepulchre , the one landmark of whose location everyone was certain.
    In her parents’ estimation, Edward, despite his