She turns back to the room. The flocked wallpaper she’d always found so cheerful now seems dingy. She remembers how, shortly after moving in, an actress friend of Father’s came to visit. “This isn’t a house,” she’d said. “This is a home,” which pleased Mother so much that roses came into her cheeks. Asia sees that the house is shabbier now, a little worn, a little worn-out.

The fire is dying so she goes to put more wood into it. A splinter drives into her palm and when she pulls it, a drop of blood sits like a bead in her hand. Her blood. Booth blood.

She sees Father seated, right there, in his special chair with its cushion of yellow flowers and winding blue stems. They fight over this chair when he’s gone, the only chair in the parlor with arms. He’s reading to them from the paper. The bits he finds funny he reads in the crude accents of the comic character John Lump. The bits he finds sad he gives high polish. He lowers the paper and looks directly at her. “Are you sure that we are awake, Asia dear?” he says. “ ‘It seems to me that yet we sleep, we dream.’ ” And then grief finally arrives, so that there is no speaking through her sobbing throat and all she can do when Rosalie returns with the boys is to dig out the telegram, streaked ever so lightly with blood, and fling it at them.

—

At seventeen, Asia has a strong and stormy nature. These are the things that matter most to her: the Booth name and reputation, her brothers Edwin and Johnny, and beauty. Asia wants everything in her life to be beautiful—the objects in her home, her clothing, her thoughts. She gets Rosalie to help her cover the parlor wallpaper with white drapes in anticipation of the arrival of Father’s body. She removes every object from the room except for a statue of Shakespeare. It’s a stark set. Father’s final performance.

The body arrives with Mother. Asia and the other children meet her carriage, watch it carried in. Mother lifts her veil, her round face sagging with exhaustion. Asia has come outside without her shawl. She shivers and her breath clouds the air. A trembling anxiety overtakes her, peaking when she looks through the glass lid set in the coffin over Father’s face. She turns to Johnny and sees that his thoughts are the same as hers. Her blood begins to pulse wildly. This isn’t what a dead body looks like. “He’s not dead!” Asia says. Her voice is rising. “Let him out! Wake him up! He’s not dead.” She’s the one screaming, but Johnny is the one Mother goes to, so ashen and shaking that he might topple into her arms.