Benjamin Franklin's Bastard

by Sally Cabot

  Deborah considered. Benjamin couldn’t physically carry her aboard, but he could cut off her keep if she stayed behind, although it would result in a public scandal that he would surely wish to avoid. What more clever means of persuasion might be brought to bear on her she couldn’t guess at, but to give him—and her—a clear sense of her determination, she reached into the trunk and piece by piece began to return every already packed item to its original place.

  Benjamin came in. He found Deborah unfolding her favorite quilted petticoat and shaking it out. “Ah! My old friend! Yes, yes, yes, you must be sure to take that along—’tis quite damp in London. Are you near finished with your packing? You amaze me. And here I’ve just received word that we’re delayed a week. We leave a fortnight Monday.”

  “Then ’tis just as well I didn’t start your washing.”

  “True.” But there Benjamin happened to peer into Deborah’s trunk and saw bottom. He lifted his eyes. “Now here, you don’t seem so far along after all. Was it not half full this morning?”

  There had been a number of times in Deborah’s life when Benjamin had something important to say to her—The governor wants to send me to London . . . There’s a child . . . Are you my wife yet—and before each of those times he’d taken up her hand first, as if to signal the import of the words before he spoke them. Deborah now took this lesson from Benjamin and turned it back on him; she sat down on the bed, reached up and took her husband’s hand, drawing him down beside her, but there all subtlety failed her.

  “I don’t want to go to London,” she said. “I’ve considered long and just now decided. ’Tis best Sally and I stay here in Philadelphia.”

  A line that usually indicated a mild disturbance—or annoyance—creased Benjamin’s brow. “Come now, Debby. We’ve little time for this; there’s much to be done.”

  “Yes, there is much to be done. This is how I’ve thought of it too. Best you go and take care of your business at London while I stay here and take care of your business at home. Manage your accounts, collect your rents, look after the post office.”

  “I’ve arranged with David Hall to manage my affairs.”

  “Mr. Hall has enough to do with the shop and the press. ’Tis the thing I’m best at. Leave it to me.”

  Benjamin folded his other hand over hers; Deborah looked down and couldn’t see her fingers at all. “Debby. My dear child. Of course you must come. What shall I do in London without you?”

  “Just what you should do with me. And don’t forget you’ll have William.”

  Did he detect the jibe? No.

  “William is not my wife. And you must think of Sally.”

  “How do I not think of Sally? She’ll be all that’s left to me. Sally can’t sail.”

  “I know you have fear of this crossing but only because this is an unknown thing to you; here’s the beauty of an unknown thing—it becomes a known thing with such ease! You only step aboard the ship and there—’tis known.”

  “No, Benjamin. I should be put to better use here.”

  “Nonsense! You’ll be put to better use by my side.”

  “’Tis only three months.”

  “I can’t promise three. I told you. Perhaps six.”

  “Three or six. ’Tis no great stretch when looked at amongst the whole. What of those printers you set up in Carolina and New York? And your tenants on Market Street? To leave them to strangers—”

  “Better than leaving me to strangers.”

  “They won’t stay strange long. Not to you. To me they should stay strange forever.”

  Benjamin leaned in to peer more closely at her—at fifty years of age he’d begun to wear glasses for close work and to complain of the lack of clarity in the images afar. Deborah sat in the space between the two problems, a third problem, but a problem for him, not her; she could not go on being pulled after Benjamin anymore. He was clever enough to see the truth in what she’d just said, and she watched him see it, consider it, shift things around inside his mind; when he began to speak again, the tone of the conversation had changed. He talked of the pain of parting and the debilitating effects of loneliness and the great drag of time he must now live through till he was again by her side. In other words, he’d heard and seen the truth of it and he’d accepted it; he would depart for London without her.

  38

  PHILADELPHIA HAD CHANGED. EVERYWHERE Anne looked there seemed to be another new industry or shop of some kind—a rum distillery, a steel furnace, a glassworks, a brass button shop, a mustard and chocolate works, even an Italian sausage maker. The streets were lit and paved. The Godfreys, Shippens, Hamiltons, Norrises, and Logans had all built new mansions with sixty-foot frontage and foreign columns and—or so Anne had heard—fancy papering glued to the walls. The Quakers who’d once controlled the town were down to a quarter of the population, the Anglican Christ Church had a new, majestic steeple; the Presbyterians, Lutherans, Moravians—even the Catholics who had never till now been permitted public worship—all had churches or chapels of their own.

  Other changes: Isaac Wilkes had died, crushed by an overturned cart. Allgood, and no doubt Robert, had been lost at sea. Two corders and a shipwright had been brought down by the yellow fever, some said come from the filthy water in the Dock Creek. And yet when Anne passed Benjamin Franklin now and again she saw that past fifty he remained as fit and strong as ever, wigged now and more fashionably dressed, an important man in Philadelphia. Whenever he appeared at the distance in the street she felt the queer pull of the man; they couldn’t be separated by more things—background, education, wife, past adversity—and yet the things that tied her to him were so strong. Franklin was the first man to seek her, to open her, to change her life course for good or ill; he taught her things she could have learned from no other and he could, she knew, teach her more. She could make music from a glass, she understood the travels of heated air, she could swim; but she didn’t understand what this new thing called electricity was, or why sparks were being collected inside jars, or how a metal rod could keep a house safe from fire. She wanted to understand. She wanted to know.

  And then there was the thing that connected them forever and above all: William. The hungry boy had drained her breasts and her heart and now the hunger was all hers—she’d watched, listened, even prowled, and discovered her boy—her boy—growing only handsomer and smarter and more polished every day, meshing seamlessly with the highest social circles. This new air, this study of law he’d undertaken, the shimmering young beauties he took about all seemed to suit him; a good deal of the old sourness had left his features now. Anne still saw nothing in William’s face that told her he remembered her, but she could also tell herself that was just as well; she gleaned what news she could and took a silly pride in her son’s success. It was enough. For now.

  Solomon Grissom had fared well for a time, fathering seven children all told, but his wife, Sophie, had not recovered well from the last. Grissom had brought his son Elisha into the shop to work at an early age, and when Peter moved on to his own shop, Grissom allowed his boy, now sixteen, to take on much of the management role, setting Anne back into her place along with the other new seamstress, Grace, who’d been brought on to meet the increased demand. The change did not sit well. Anne could ignore Elisha’s apparently forgetting every toy or piece of candy Anne had ever bestowed, but she couldn’t ignore his increasingly sharp tongue when Anne resisted his urgings for speed over quality. Grissom, preoccupied with his wife’s health, made only brief appearances in the shop, and when he did appear he didn’t seem able to concentrate his mind; customers began to complain and fall off, but if Grissom even noticed, Anne couldn’t tell.

  Anne had passed forty but had been lucky enough in it, her hair silvering but her health good, her back straight, her teeth sound. She told herself it little mattered what happened to the shop as long as her work continued as it was, but already her long hours had begun to fall off, and she was able to leave the shop well before sunset. O
ddly, the shorter the days became the longer they felt, the more restless her spirit grew; since her enforced swim she’d spurned the river, but now she found herself taking long walks along it at the end of each day, moving northward to the sand spit where Franklin had once taken her. At first she only looked and moved on, but one early summer day she found herself shedding her clothes and swimming, drying stretched out in the sun. One day, however, she found her walk taking a turn in another direction, until one turn and another brought her to Eades Alley and her old door.

  The alley looked the same, smelled the same; the door looked the same. Anne leaned forward and laid her palm against the splintered wood, curious to discover how uneasy she felt as she touched it, as if her connections to this one unchanged place hadn’t been severed as irreversibly as she’d imagined. She left the alley and found herself following the old route to the Penny Pot; she stood at the corner and watched the Pot traffic, about to move on when John Hewe stepped out the door.

  Hewe had been one of Anne’s most disappointed customers when he’d discovered she’d given over her old occupation; he’d come back three times before she’d finally convinced him no meant no. She heard he’d lost his wife in the yellow fever epidemic, which no doubt accounted in part for him looking at her now with something of the old hope resurrected, but she could little account for the pleasure she took in seeing him.

  “Here now!” he cried. “Will you see what I see! Have you come to visit me? Perhaps to tell me you’ve fallen back on old habits?”

  Anne couldn’t help but smile. “I’m afraid no.” And yet she stood there looking at the hungry John Hewe, feeling something of the old days stirring her. She’d honored her promise to Grissom, understanding better and better with the passing of the years just what he’d done for her, and not just as a debt owed Franklin—he’d faced down Franklin, after all. John Hewe, though, could be no violation of Grissom’s rule about taking men into her room above the shop; this was something from before the rule, something of the old Penny Pot way of doing that had never involved Grissom at all. And standing in front of the tavern as she was, the older memories began to blank out the ship ones—she could recall the satisfaction of the dance, the game, a game for which she made the rules. But no. “I’m sorry to say—”

  “Oh, bosh! You’re sorry, I’m sorry, we’re all sorry. Come have a bite with me.” He lifted both hands in the air to stop her next refusal. “I won’t pester you anymore about the other. All I’m after is to sit across from you for an hour and remember finer times. Come, eat. A piece of whortleberry pie and my finest wine and a chance to make a lonely old man happy. What’s to argue there?”

  Anne couldn’t help but laugh at the idea of a lonely tavern keeper, but even as she laughed she realized as she stood there in the street that she was lonely, that she’d always liked John Hewe. And she’d always liked whortleberry pie. She followed Hewe inside.

  “TEN SHILLINGS.”

  “Ten shillings! Cheaper to marry you! Come now.”

  Anne pushed back the chair from the private table John Hewe had set up in his private room. The wine had turned the room soft and warm and the bed hangings that framed the bed in the corner—hangings she’d made herself in Grissom’s shop—took on the look of old friends. John Hewe took on the look of an old friend. That didn’t mean that business wasn’t business, and Anne had heard the fancy whores in the London shop windows charged a guinea for a lie down. Perhaps she wasn’t so fancy and she wasn’t in London, but she knew her trade with the best of them.

  “Ten shillings,” she repeated.

  “Gah!” But even as Hewe roared he fished a ten-shilling note out of his pocket, dashed around the table, and grabbed Anne in a fierce embrace.

  “Hold now,” Anne said. “Let me show you the full ten’s worth.”

  Hewe eased back, gave himself over to Anne, and let her lead him as she liked, help him through his old man’s problems, bring him to his desired end. Afterward, as Anne got up from the bed and began to reconstruct her attire, Hewe spoke from behind her.

  “’Tisn’t so bad an idea, you know.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “Us marrying.”

  Anne laughed.

  “’Tis no joke! I mean what I say! Marry me, Anne! Why not? I’ll keep you fed and clothed and warm and you’ll keep me from dying alone. Either the work or the yellow fever will kill me soon enough, and I’d rather you kill me. Come here, feel what you’ve done to my heart.” He caught up Anne’s hand, pulled her back to the bed, pressed her palm against his sinewy, hairless chest; his heart beat like a pigeon’s just before its neck was wrung.

  “Marry me, Anne.”

  Anne shook her head, kissed Hewe’s temple, teased his ear with her tongue, and left, but as she walked back to the shop she thought of that frantically beating heart and the chance that perhaps she’d seen the last of John Hewe alive; the unexpected gloom that followed the thought made her step heavy on the stairs. Or was it simply that Anne was now getting old? She’d always thought her former way of life was there to catch her if she needed it, but as Franklin had once said to her, You can’t enchant us all forever, you know. Could that explain this suddenly acquired affection for John Hewe? Could she settle herself into a couple of rooms above a tavern with a man? No, Anne decided; she’d left it too long.

  SOME WEEKS LATER ANOTHER late-night knock sounded on her door.

  “Are you alone?” the familiar voice inquired.

  Ironically, Anne was sitting reading Pamela, the first novel published in America—by Franklin, of course—and finding nothing in the woman’s stupid virtue to remind her of herself; she had, indeed, been feeling herself quite alone. She opened the door. Franklin came in and took up both her hands; he kissed the back of each and then kept hold of them, but only because Anne let him keep hold.

  “I come in the heartfelt hope that I find you well.”

  “You do.”

  Franklin nodded. “As I see.” He reached out and lifted a stray lock of hair from her cheek. “How is it, I wonder, that this silver only adds more spark to your flame?”

  Anne pulled back, freeing herself of both his hands. “We all like silver.”

  Franklin laughed. “Anne. My dear Anne. Quite the same, I see. May I sit or do you prefer me to be gone?”

  “It depends why you’ve come.”

  Franklin studied her, seemed to decide some degree of talk must come before the chair, settled his heels a little farther apart and began. “I’m to go to London in a month’s time. I act as assembly agent to the Crown, bearing a petition for a more reasonable arrangement with our colony’s proprietors in regard to taxes. They own vast holdings in this colony and yet they pay no tax toward its maintenance or defense. Would you call that fair?”

  “No.”

  Franklin nodded, pleased. “Would you call it fair that my wife refuses to come with me?”

  “On what ground?”

  “She dislikes the idea of traveling over water.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing as you might like to imagine it. I’ve been naught but true and kind to her since . . .” He let the sentence trail. “She says London should feel too strange to her.”

  “Yes, I imagine it would, to her.”

  Franklin studied her. “Would it to you?”

  “Philadelphia already feels strange to me.”

  “So London would be no great shock, then.”

  Anne peered at him.

  “Will you come to London with me, Anne?”

  Anne was so surprised she sat down; Franklin seemed to take it as an invitation and sat too.

  “So you’re in need of a bed warmer now your wife won’t come.”

  “You may say.”

  “And how long do you expect to be gone?”

  Franklin looked down at his shoes, leaned over, picked a piece of straw off a toe. He straightened. “Six months. Perhaps a year.”

  “Or more?”

  He studied A
nne. “Mebbe so.”

  “And if your wife changes her mind and decides to travel with you?”

  “Then my invitation to you would be withdrawn. Understand the nature of my offer, Anne. As I told you once before, I’m a monogamous creature, not a celibate one. If Deborah stays behind, as I’m quite sure she will, I’ll pay your passage to London and keep you in food, clothes, and rent, in exchange for the usual favors. This arrangement isn’t entirely foreign to you.”

  Yes and no. But that wasn’t the necessary question. The necessary question was, yes or no?

  Once again, Franklin appeared to read the words as she thought them. “Before you answer yes or no, allow me to add one more argument—William comes along to take up a place at the Inns of Court.” He leaned forward, took up Anne’s hands again, and began to guide her onto his lap in the Franklin way of old, even as he did so appearing to allow her to decide where to sit on her own, but Anne had copied the trick too many times to be fooled now. Still, she allowed herself to be settled on Franklin’s knees, allowed him to kiss her mouth and lift her breast, might even have allowed him to warm his hand between her thighs if he hadn’t stopped of his own accord, set her back on her feet.

  “In Philadelphia I’m married yet,” he said. “You see how I stick to my rule. I sail from Philadelphia to the London ship at New York; best you travel to New York ahead of me, by land. I’ll provide the transport; I’ll arrange for the inn along the road.”

  “And who is William to think I am?”

  “Just who you are. An old servant, met by coincidence on shipboard. Whatever else goes on between us won’t trouble him. His mother and he—” Franklin stopped. “He’s a fine boy, Anne. He’ll go far, surpassing me in the end. You may trust that we’ve done right by him. All of us. In London you’ll have a chance to see for yourself what he has and will become. But hold—you’ve not said yes or no!”

  And so Anne allowed Franklin his new little game, pretending she hadn’t answered the minute he’d said William’s name.