A Fall of Marigolds

Clara recovers her composure quickly, but Ethan soon realizes that not only has Clara been avoiding news of the fire, she hasn’t been back to the mainland since arriving at Ellis Island. He offers to “accompany [her] on a trip ashore” (166). Clara refuses but realizes that he is right: By refusing to move forward, she has allowed her fears and anxieties to control her.

After leaving Ethan, Clara realizes that she does not know how to make him—or anyone else—understand why she stays on the island. She has “nothing tangible or intangible to prove [she] had lost something precious when Edward died” (167), only her feelings of guilt. She then realizes that she has kept something of Lily’s from Andrew: the book. She decides to take it to him immediately, and he reveals that the book was not Lily’s, but his mother’s, and he had thought he had lost it the day they set sail for America.

Clara returns to her room and washes the scarf, deciding as she does so that when Andrew is discharged, she will wrap Lily’s letter and the annulment document in the scarf and give it to him when he leaves. Clara discovers a small key that had been sewn into the scarf; the key is engraved with a New York City address. Clara believes that she is doing the right thing, that “knowing the truth about Lily would be less grievous—and less prolonged—than mourning a lie” (175). She wishes that she was brave enough to tell Andrew the truth in person.

Clara spends the morning bathing the men recovering from scarlet fever, who are now in the stage of infection when scales form on the rash caused by the disease. Although Clara has become used to seeing men in this way, her “goal at this state of the disease had always been largely singular—rid the skin of the scales using as aggressive an approach as possible” (178).

Things are different, however, when it is Andrew’s turn. He protests at first until Clara reassures him that she will only “be scrubbing [his] scalp, back, and shoulders” (178). Clara, however, becomes aware of the “intimacy of this act,” the only sounds in the room from “[t]he rhythm of [her] hand strokes […] like a swishing skirt on a dance floor” and the “water dripping off his body” (178). Indeed, Clara admits that she “felt a stirring” she “had not felt since [she] had met Edward on the elevator” (178). After the bath is over, Clara realizes she has crossed a line: She has let herself “get too emotionally attached to a patient” and allowed her “loss [to] become entwined with Andrew’s such that [she] was not having a hard time distinguishing between where [hers] ended and his began” (179). Clara reminds herself that she must concentrate on caring for Andrew as a patient only.

During rounds with Ethan, he asks Clara to accompany him on a walk after their shifts are over or to come with him to the mainland the next day. Clara refuses, though she knows he’s just trying to help her. When they get to Andrew’s bed, Ethan sees the book of poetry that Clara had returned to Andrew and recognizes it as the book Clara had brought to their meeting the night before. Clara realizes immediately that Ethan has recognized the book, and when he asks her again to take a walk with him, she feels she has no choice but to agree.

Clara dreads her meeting with Ethan later that day, realizing that he is now aware that she has become overly involved with a patient. When she returns to see Andrew later that day, he offers to speak to Ethan on Clara’s behalf, but Clara refuses. Clara’s embarrassment leads her to think of Edward. She “missed Edward more than [she] had in weeks” and wonders how different her life would have been if the fire had not happened, thinking that by this point “Edward would have asked [her] to marry him,” and she’d be “choosing a dress and planning [her] wedding, not hiding away on this spill of earth, latched onto the grief of another” (187).

When Clara sees Ethan in the dining hall, he reprimands her and accuses her of favoring Andrew. Clara is furious and responds that she treats Andrew differently “because he lost his bride of a week on the ship that brought him here. […] She practically died in his arms!” (187). She then reveals that she lost someone she loved in the fire, and Ethan finally understands the real reason Clara is on Ellis Island.

Ethan is sympathetic but points out that Clara is “in love with [her] grief” (189). Clara is angry, but Ethan continues, pointing out again that Clara treats Andrew differently, and Clara realizes he is right. She apologizes, and Ethan again offers to help her deal with her grief. Clara accepts but does not tell him that she has decided to find a nurse to take her place in the scarlet fever ward, and to have Ethan return the scarf, with the documents inside, and the pattern book to Andrew when he is discharged.