Father arrives at the cellar just as the final act is unfolding. Edwin is savoring the climactic moments. “ ‘Hark, I hear their drum. Fight, gentlemen of England! Fight, bold yeomen!’ ” As he swings his sword, there’s a commotion at the back of the theater, which could be an enraptured audience, but isn’t. He sees his father coming, unconcerned with the hands and feet he may be stepping on. His face is splotched with rage.

Edwin drops his sword and dives for the cellar window. He makes it halfway through before his father seizes him by the legs. The window is at street level. The Negro who collected tickets for them at the play’s beginning sees Edwin emerging and takes hold of his arms to help him out. Edwin finds himself stretched between the two men, kicking his legs in an attempt to free them.

Over the years, as performed by the Booth family, Richard III seems to have had a variety of endings, none of them good for Richard. Father needs only Edwin’s bottom half in order to deliver a beating Edwin will long remember. It doesn’t give him the same strange thrill he gets from Miss Hyde’s cane.

x

Father pays Adelaide Booth the enormous sum of two thousand dollars and considers the matter at an end. Still Adelaide’s attacks continue. Since Father refuses to recognize Richard as his only legitimate son, the courts will have to decide. Three years of residency in the country are required before Adelaide has standing. She and Richard move into a shabby tenement and start the clock.

Adelaide’s next three years are filled with drudgery, ill health, and poor food. Richard takes on pupils—he has his father’s gift for languages—but he’s so mild that his students torment him, so timid that he often goes unpaid. Edwin might actually like Richard if he knew him. Of all Father’s children, it seems possible that Edwin and Richard are the most alike.

But Edwin doesn’t know him, knows only that Adelaide Booth is a street brawler and that they can’t all be Father’s children under the law. It is Richard against himself and June, Rosalie, Asia, Johnny, and Joe.

Back in her tenement, Adelaide drinks steadily. This and tormenting Father’s other family, whom she refers to as the Holmes set, Holmes being Mother’s maiden name, will occupy her for the next three years.

—

The first year passes. Edwin is moved out of Miss Hyde’s warm little classroom and into the tutelage of Louis Dugas, a retired French naval officer high on discipline and presentation. Edwin excels at history and literature. Nothing is done to fit him for a career in carpentry. That plan is thankfully never mentioned again.