by Sally Cabot
And then Franky was dead, but instead of feeling glad, William had only felt as alone as he’d ever felt, and scared, scared, scared; nothing was normal, nothing was right. Next, William’s mother and Min disappeared; they simply went into his mother’s bedroom and didn’t come out. William didn’t mind about Min so much—she was ugly and old and she pinched him when she was cross and she was cross too much—but he grew more and more worried when his mother didn’t even appear at the table to eat.
“Where’s Mama?” William asked.
“Resting,” his father told him the first time he asked it, but later he’d changed it to “Sick.”
“Will she die?” William asked, wanting to get to the bottom of this new event in his life, but his father snapped at him, a thing his father never did. “Of course not. Go and do your numbers.”
So William had been left to drift around the house, feeling like one of those leaves that fell into the river and got turned this way and that, no one caring if it ever got to the opposite bank or not.
AND THEN SOMEONE NAMED Anne came to take care of him, and William discovered that he could like this Anne. He liked the way she put a hand in his hair whenever he came near, or took his hand if they even walked from one room to the next, and when she put him to bed, she sat a long time beside him with her hand resting on his leg or his arm, whichever was nearest.
One night, as Anne sat on William’s bed with her hand on his ankle, William asked if Franky was ever coming back.
“No, William. No, I’m afraid he isn’t. ’Tis a sad, sad thing, and that’s what’s made your mother sick, but after a while she’ll get better. We must give her time, though; we must give her time to make herself well again. Do you understand that?”
William said, “Time is an herb that cures all diseases.”
“Where did you hear that, William?”
“I read it. In Poor Dick.”
Anne laughed, and William especially liked that—a laugh in a house where all laughing had dried up as soon as Franky died. Then Anne said, “You’re as clever as your father, William.”
And those were the second words that stuck. William knew he wasn’t as clever as his father, but after Anne said that he was, he began to think a little differently on the subject; he began to think he might get that clever yet.
21
Philadelphia, 1737
SPRING CAME MILD AND gray, summer came hotter and grayer; only with the August damp did the colors begin to return to Deborah Franklin’s world: Min’s skirt was blue, Benjamin’s jacket brown, her coverlet red. Deborah left her room, clutching her husband’s arm if he wasn’t at the shop or Min’s arm if he was, or even the new girl’s arm if she wasn’t occupied with William. Anne, she was. Anne with her own dead son. Every time Deborah looked at her, she saw another dead boy reflected in those cloud-colored eyes—one look and you got trapped. Deborah said something about the clouds to Benjamin, but he took it wrong and said, “If you don’t trust her, we’ll get rid of her, then.” Deborah said no, she didn’t want to get rid of her. In truth, she’d rather get stuck in that girl’s gray eyes, shadowed by an unknown dead boy, than stuck in her own black thoughts of Franky.
That was Deborah’s trick for the daytime—Anne—but at night the thoughts of Franky would come back to her and she’d wake crying out and flailing at the sheets until Min came and gave her another anodyne—laudanum or perhaps opium; Benjamin tried holding her tight against his solid body, but if he did she only flailed at him and called him things she knew—oh yes, she knew—she’d never dare call him in daylight. She was unsurprised and unsorry and not unhappy when Benjamin took to sleeping in his study, leaving his place in their bed to Min. Min and her anodyne.
Deborah did manage to go out of her room from time to time, but she was still not able to touch William or to address him as she should. She tried—oh, she tried—but every time she reached out to him, her fingers seemed to hold their own memory of that softer, younger flesh, and they’d curl up and draw themselves back into her chest. William would blink at her, as if always on the verge of tears, and she couldn’t bear the sight of it; she’d turn away and let the new girl continue whatever it was she was doing with him—study or games or just silly talk. They’d begun to quote to each other from Poor Dick, as if testing to see who would run out of quotes first—it was the kind of game Deborah had expected Benjamin to like, but he didn’t; whenever he entered a room where it was being played he walked out of it.
As Deborah’s colors returned she began to notice something about Benjamin; since Franky’s death he’d changed into a more solemn version of himself, darker, uncertain even, prone to odd fits and starts; now that he had Min to look after Deborah and Anne to look after William, he spent even longer hours at the print shop. That didn’t surprise Deborah—she’d grown used to his hours—but it did surprise her that her husband’s even longer absences came to her as something like relief. She understood that she must right herself, that the house could not function properly until she did so, but her husband’s staring at her nose didn’t help. He said all the words that she could want to hear: that a boy never had a better mother; that no woman on earth could lose such a son and stay sane through it; that he had the greatest faith in her strength taking her forward. When she bemoaned that they had no image of Franky, he went out and commissioned a portrait from a friend who was able to capture the child from memory; he packed away Franky’s clothes himself so she wouldn’t have the pain of it. He could say and do it all, but a father’s grief was not a mother’s, and the greatest comfort came to Deborah only from Anne’s eyes, full of grief, yes, but with life in them still, promising that life for Deborah.
One day, while William was at his tutor’s and Min was doing the wash, Deborah came upon Anne cleaning out William’s cupboard, removing his clothes and piling them on the bed, her hands sure and strong, her back straight. Deborah lifted her own spine. She must, she must be like Anne. She must gather herself. But how long had it taken Anne to do so?
“How long since you lost your son?” Deborah asked.
The girl jumped, seemingly unaware that Deborah had come to stand in the doorway. She then took so long to answer that Deborah began to feel she’d been wrong to ask it. “I’m sorry,” Deborah said. “ ’Tis not my intention to revive old pain. I wondered only if it was recent.”
“Recent,” Anne echoed. And then, as if she’d been reminded afresh, “Yes. Recent.” But as if to prove her superior strength of mind she turned briskly to the bed where she’d formed her neat pile of clothes and began to sift through it. “I thought, being free this morning, I’d mend William’s clothes.” She picked up a shirt and held it out. “This is ripped at the neck.” She picked up a red wool scarf. “The moths have been here. It needs a darn.” She looked up at Deborah. “Unless he has another? I couldn’t find one.”
Deborah looked at the scarf Anne held in her hand and flushed with shame. This was her duty, and for days—perhaps weeks now—she’d shirked it. She plucked the scarf from Anne’s fingers. “ ’Tis my task. I’ll mend it.”
To Deborah’s surprise Anne reached out and reclaimed the scarf. “William’s my charge. As soon as you’re enough recovered, your husband expects you at the shop.”
“The apprentice is minding the shop.”
“And causing your husband to put in longer hours at the press.”
Deborah hadn’t thought of that. Why hadn’t she thought of that? If Benjamin had to make up for his apprentice’s absence, of course his hours would lengthen. It was her task to mind the shop. The idea weighed first heavy and then light. The shop, not William. The shop, not this dead house empty of its most cherished life.
Deborah left William’s room and entered her own; for the first time in weeks she went to the glass and looked herself over. Her hair looked greasy and dull; her skin yellow; her flesh so diminished her fine, full bosom no longer crested above her shift. She was not ready for the shop. She was not ready for the brig
ht remarks from her customers, none of them understanding what she’d suffered. Deborah crossed to the bed and lay down on it.
Min came into the room with her arms full of fresh linen and dropped her load next to Deborah without the least hint of surprise at finding her lying there fully dressed in the middle of the morning. She said, “ ’Tis time for your dose.” Yes, it was time for a dose, but suddenly Deborah saw herself stripped of the sympathy that had entombed her for so many days, exposed through Anne’s eyes as the indulged creature that she was, collapsing into uselessness while another worked through that same grief each day without excuse.
Deborah sat up. She raised a hand to ward Min and the bottle off. She took up her comb, undid her hair, and gave it a good airing before fixing it back into its knot. She tightened the laces on her bodice, went to the kitchen, and cut a thick slice of bread. She chewed the bread into a paste that even an infant could swallow and washed it down with a cup of beer. She loosened her bodice to ease the nausea and forced a second piece in. She felt no better but trusted that she would soon enough, and that was going to have to suffice. She could do this thing. She would. She must.
WHEN DEBORAH ENTERED THE shop she discovered it was Benjamin, not James, who tended it, and she faltered. A man had just entered, a few flakes of snow unmelted yet on his shoulders—Samuel Harris. He would say he’d come for paper and ink but he’d take the almanac if she presented it, and some coffee, and twice now she’d forced him to admire the Franklin soap and believed he was near to taking a cake. Benjamin spied her over Harris’s shoulder and his face opened.
“My dear! How divinely timed your appearance! I was just now worrying how to wrap up Mr. Harris’s package as neatly as you do it.”
Harris turned, saw Deborah, stepped across the space between them, and caught up her hands. “My dear, dear Mrs. Franklin. How my heart aches for you in the face of your terrible loss.”
“You forget yourself, sir,” Benjamin said. “To speak love to a woman whose husband is not two feet from you is not only rash but risky. I shall, however, overlook it this once.”
Harris tipped back his head and laughed. Deborah, whose step had faltered again under the sympathetic onslaught, regained her nerve and continued. “You give away our secret, sir; I believed you to be more discreet. In payment you must take some of our famous soap.”
Harris took two cakes. Deborah slid behind the counter to make his change and wrap his parcel. Her hands shook, but if either man noticed he hid it well. When Harris had gone Benjamin took Deborah’s face between his hands and leaned down as if to touch his lips to hers, but his smile sat too comfortably on his mouth. Two cakes of soap did not bring Franky back; it did not suddenly return the world to the way it was. Deborah averted her face.
22
ANNE’S SYMPATHY FOR DEBORAH Franklin surprised her. It began, she knew, when she’d looked at Deborah Franklin’s face and saw her own. Such pain! She would wish it on no one, even though she could likewise be glad that it kept Deborah in her chamber and away from William. The boy was again Anne’s. And what a boy he was! So handsome she couldn’t take her eyes from him, so bright she must struggle to keep up, and with so much love there for the taking that within a day Anne felt herself made rich from it. Talents she couldn’t know she possessed emerged; she could soothe William’s bewildered tears, or encourage him with his numbers and books, or simply make the poor boy laugh. On his own he began to climb into her lap or slip his hand into hers; he looked to her face for hints as to how best to respond to his mother’s—was his mother angry or just sad? Anne always, always explained Deborah’s behavior as nothing to do with William, and a thing that wouldn’t last, all the while secretly believing—hoping—it would; perhaps that was why Anne was able to look at Deborah Franklin’s neglect of her son with so little resentment.
As to the father, Anne saw at once that William looked to him for one thing: praise. The boy did in fact receive a good deal of praise, but never evenly distributed—the irregular pattern of Franklin’s attention was probably the thing that put William in such a constant state of uncertainty and need, and there Anne could only calm but never cure. To give him his due, Franklin was often distracted by business or company and, now, his grief, but unlike the situation with Deborah, Anne could find in her little sympathy for him; in his hands he held all the power that now mattered in her world. It was true that whenever Anne was able to spy on him unaware it was as if he’d run out of strength to hold up his features—they sagged against his bones, all the old delight long gone from him—but as soon as he saw Anne everything sharpened. Franklin was not comfortable with Anne in the room or, indeed, in the house, and she knew he would work to find a way to be shed of her as soon as he could. Sympathy and fear seldom walked hand in hand.
That the Franklins were not comfortable with each other either grew more and more clear to Anne. One evening Anne and Deborah were standing together at the kitchen table attempting to repair a mop when Franklin entered. He came up behind his wife and laid his hands on her shoulders; Deborah bent her knees, ducked from under him, and crossed to the other side of the table. Anne looked at Franklin and saw something flick across his face like the touch of a whip end, but still she could feel little sympathy for him. She did watch in some awe as he adjusted himself to this new wife; he was no less attentive, but his attention grew less personal; he withheld something of himself from her. For Anne’s part, all her attention went to William, her heart spilling out all the years of hoarded love she’d kept for him.
AFTER A TIME INSIDE the new, blighted world in which the Franklins lived, some shadows of the old appeared. Franklin had returned to his press as Deborah returned to the shop, and this seemed to give the needed signal to Franklin’s friends and acquaintances—callers began to come, not to mourn with the Franklins, but to talk to Franklin himself. Or to listen to him talk. Or to listen to him think, as it began to seem to Anne, and she listened too, as she’d always listened to Franklin. One night as Anne walked past the parlor door she heard Franklin explaining the workings of northeast storms; on another night she heard him exclaim, “Here now, sir, up on your chair! There, do you feel the greater heat nearer the ceiling? Now, onto the floor. You feel the air is cooler. Do you see how it is that hot air rises and cold air sinks? You see which air goes up the chimney? You see the waste?”
Anne couldn’t hold herself from peering around the doorjamb, where she saw a distinguished gentleman lying prone on the floor, coat twisted up under him and wig askew.
Later that night, after the visitors had left but before the fire had died away, Anne crept into the empty parlor and stood on the chair. Hotter. She lay on the floor. Cooler. She lay there accustoming herself to this new idea until a voice said, “I see you continue as you began.”
Anne leaped up. Franklin stood in the doorway, the fire lighting his face, causing an illusion of the old delight flickering across it. “You always appreciated my little experiments, did you not? I seem to recall you particularly liked my singing glasses. I have an idea to create an instrument using those glasses, fitting them one inside the other, on a rotating spindle, with a tray underneath to hold the water. But horizontal or vertical? I can never decide.”
“Horizontal,” Anne said, already picturing it, a thing like a harpsichord, with the broad, skillful fingers moving gracefully back and forth over the glasses.
“Yes, I believe you’re right. Like a harpsichord.” He wandered off.
AT FIRST ANNE SHARED a room and a bed with Min in the uppermost half story of the Franklin home, not unlike her old space above the upholstery shop. Anne didn’t mind sharing the bed, as she was used to it at home, and besides, more nights than not Min was summoned to attend Deborah Franklin by a bell on a wire Franklin had rigged to run up through the floor. But after a time Min stopped coming to the above-stairs room to sleep at all—she shared Deborah Franklin’s bed, while Franklin retreated to a small bed in his study.
One night, after Anne ha
d slept alone a number of weeks, she woke to the sound of a heavier than usual tread across the floor. She opened her eyes to discover Franklin, shirt to his knees, shawl wrapped over his shoulders, candle in his hand, standing just inside the door. Anne scrambled upright, pulling her bed rug in tighter. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“My son has died,” Franklin said.
The nonsensical thinking that comes with the dark put one word in Anne’s mind. William. But before she could speak her fear, Franklin went on.
“My beautiful Franky has died, and my wife’s turned half mad because of it.”
Anne gathered herself. “Yes, sir, but she comes along. Perhaps you’d best attend to her now.”
“Attend to her! How? She prefers Min in her bed. She can’t bear to blame herself for any least little bit of it, so she fabricates a way to blame me for the whole. ‘We must get the boy his inoculation,’ I said, but she said, ‘No, he’s not well enough,’ and so it went, on and on.”
Franklin stepped farther into the room, and Anne could smell the wine on him.
“I’m very sorry for the situation, sir, but you do none of us any good if you’re found here. You must go below and see to your wife.”
“She blames me because of William. She thinks God punishes me for the old sin by taking the golden child to heaven and leaving the blackened one on earth. Good God, how she frightened me! I looked at her in her madness and actually believed her capable of terrible things. I must be half mad myself. Why, of course I’m half mad; what more proof do I need than the sight of you sitting up here under my eaves? What madness could have overcome me to allow such a thing to happen?”
