Edwin helps in other ways. He persuades Matthew Canning, a manager from Philadelphia, to take John on. Canning stipulates only that John must perform under the Booth name, to which John agrees and then does not do. He’s making his move now from stock player to star. He begins to tour. His emotional attachment to Richmond, however, remains potent. Even more than Baltimore, Richmond is the city of his heart.

—

“My head is full of Marry Mary marry marriage,” Edwin says to everyone who is not Asia. Asia is pretending an unlikely concern over the feelings of Adam Badeau. Poor Adam—wandering alone and forlorn. Quite given up. Undone by Edwin’s cruelty.

Adam is threatening a retaliatory marriage himself. He’s chosen a woman educated in the French way, which he explains to Mary means a woman without a heart. Mary is distressed by this vision of marriage, so he offers a bizarre counter proposal: He’ll forgo his own wedding, if only Edwin will agree to play London.

Edwin already has plans to do this so it’s an easy promise to make. The woman with no heart is saved.

On July 7th, in New York City, Edwin and Mary are wed. It’s a short ceremony on a gold and silver summer morning. Mary wears a crown of white flowers, her hair loosely knotted low on her neck, tears of joy dampening her face.

Few are in attendance. Not Mother, not Rosalie, not Joe, certainly not Asia—only John is there, and Adam. Adam’s touched to see John’s unabashed happiness for Edwin; how he throws his arms around his brother and kisses him. Asia hears this and thinks that she is glad, glad, glad not to have been a witness. Her whole family is made up of fools.

For their wedding trip, the couple rents a house on the Canadian side of Niagara. Niagara, where Asia was once so happy, is being taken away and given to Mary instead. Edwin invites Mother and Joe to join them.

Asia goes out into the mild summer evening, pushing Dolly’s pram through the square. The sparrows and pigeons are hopping about as the glare of day shades into a rosy twilight. Dolly’s hand has made it into her mouth. Sometimes her sucking is so loud, Asia can hear it over the sound of the pram wheels.

She’s thinking about that happy trip to Niagara. It wasn’t all that long ago and yet, in her own memory, she seems like such a girl. She remembers the godlike feelings she had looking down on the Falls, that sense of perspective and power. She remembers the rainbows hovering about the water by the dozens. The cup to Asia, Edwin had said, but maybe he’d never meant it, maybe he’s never loved her the way she’s loved him.

—