by Renée Rosen
“I understand. So, then you’ll go see them when you’re well and they’re in the new house.”
He nodded and held out his hands, studying the veins running under the skin like rivers on a map.
She reached over and tugged his sleeve. “I bet you’ll be back home before the summer. Won’t that be nice?”
He nodded and dragged a hand over his face. “Did I tell you we started up a nightly poker game here? We don’t play for money, of course. There’s a fellow here named Stroker. Used to be a banker. Tried to commit suicide after his son died. And my buddy Henry down the hall, he’s an accountant. His father was just like the judge,” he said with a gentle laugh.
“Arthur,” she said, now holding on to his hands. “Why are you changing the subject? Don’t you want to come home?”
He looked at her and pursed his lips. “If I come home, what do I have to look forward to? Tell me, what do I have to come home to?”
“You have me. You have Marsh.”
“And you have each other. I have no one. No one just for me. At least I fit in here. We’re all in the same boat.”
That thought stayed with Delia long after she’d said good-bye to Arthur. And later that night, as she lay awake next to Marsh watching him sleep, all she could think was that Arthur didn’t want to come home. He was going to let life pass him by. What a sad and sorry shame and there was nothing she could do about it. And to think she thought he’d been wasting his potential before.
In the morning she went back to the house on Calumet to have breakfast with Abby and Catherine. Augustus had already left for the day to try and find work. The three of them were just sitting down to coffee when Williams announced a visitor.
Delia excused herself and went into the parlor, where she found Paxton waiting for her. The sunlight coming in from the windows showed the first hints of gray around his temples. He saw Delia and stood up, rushing over to embrace her.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you up this early,” Delia said, keeping her arms to her side. Even though she understood Paxton’s predicament, she couldn’t help but be annoyed by the way he’d turned his back on Arthur.
“I had to come see you, Dell. I keep having this terrible recurring dream about Arthur.”
“Perhaps that’s just your guilty conscience.”
“I have nothing to feel guilty about.”
“Oh no? He asks about you every time I’m there. He writes to you every week, sometimes twice a week. It’s been four months and you haven’t gone to see him once.”
“You don’t understand. I’m married. I have a child. It isn’t natural.”
“It isn’t natural to go visit your friend who’s been unwell?”
Paxton dropped his head to his hands. “I’m torn, Dell. I don’t know what to do. I miss him. I do. But he’s not himself anymore. Even you’ve told me that.”
“But he’s getting better. Much better and he needs you right now. Can’t you at least still be his friend? He needs something to live for.”
Paxton shook his head and ran his fingers back through his hair. She could see the battle going on inside him. He truly was torn. “All right.” He swallowed hard and looked at Delia with tears in his eyes. “Take me to him.”
Later that week, Paxton and Delia went to the asylum. Delia spotted Arthur in the sitting room and Paxton stood back while she went to speak with him. He brightened as soon as he saw her.
She hugged him and kissed him on the cheek, and after exchanging a few pleasantries, she said, “I have a surprise for you. Someone’s here to see you.”
Arthur craned his neck, and when Paxton came around the corner, his eyes grew wide and instantly glassy. “You came,” he said. His voice was breathy and light, almost like a whisper.
Paxton hung his head, unable to look at Arthur. Delia inhaled sharply, worried that this had been a terrible mistake. Should he raise his head, Delia feared that Arthur would see only pity reflected in Paxton’s eyes. He felt sorry for Arthur. She was sure that’s what it was. But then Paxton took a step forward and then another before he broke out in a jog and rushed to Arthur’s side, barely able to speak as the two embraced. It didn’t take long before all three of them had tears running down their faces.
Delia left the two men alone and went to see Arthur’s doctor at the opposite end of the corridor.
“We’re very encouraged,” said Dr. Brooks. “Your husband is making significant improvement, Mrs. Caton.”
“Yes, I can see.”
“Outside of any setbacks—which we don’t anticipate,” Dr. Brooks continued, “we see no reason why we would not be able to release Mr. Caton sometime within the next few weeks.”
“That’s wonderful.” She clasped her hands together. “Have you told him yet?”
“We thought perhaps you’d like to tell him the good news yourself.”
Delia left the doctor’s office and went back down to the sitting room. Arthur and Paxton were seated across from each other, talking and laughing. It was the happiest she’d seen him in months. She could hardly wait to tell him that he would be coming home soon.
“Arthur,” she said, taking the empty seat next to him, “they’re going to release you. Within a few weeks.”
“That’s fantastic,” said Paxton, clasping his hands. “Let’s get you out of this godforsaken place and back home where you belong.”
Arthur studied the backs of his hands.
“Well, say something.” Delia reached over and jiggled his knee. “What’s wrong? I thought you would be happy. You can come home soon.”
Arthur twisted up his mouth and shook his head. “I don’t know. . . .”
“What don’t you know?” asked Paxton.
“Maybe I’m not ready to go home. I have a routine in here. I have people in here who know what I’ve been through.”
“But you have people back home who love you,” said Delia.
“But I don’t know how to be out there.” He gestured with his chin toward the chicken-wired windows. “I’m scared. What if it happens again? I lost my mind inside that house. What if something else happens and I can’t control myself?”
“No, no,” Delia said, squeezing his hand and swallowing hard. She knew what he was saying. He’d been trying to tell her for weeks. The truth was that he felt safe inside the asylum, but she had hoped seeing Paxton would get him past his fears. It was too awful for her to imagine that he preferred his life behind chicken wire to the life they’d had together, with or without Paxton. She wanted to take away his doubt, to protect him and make him feel safe. “You mustn’t think like that,” she said. “The doctors wouldn’t be releasing you if they thought you weren’t ready.”
“And you’ll see,” added Paxton, “things will be different this time.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Arthur. “It won’t be the same. Nothing will be the same ever again.”
Paxton looked at him and said, “Maybe the way things were before was part of the problem.”
• • •
Six weeks later, at the start of July, Arthur returned home to Calumet Avenue. Many things had changed in the six months that he’d been away and Delia had tried to prepare him as best she could.
“You’re sure you don’t mind having Abby, Augustus and Catherine here?” Delia asked the first morning he was home. She was sitting on a stool in his bathroom watching while he shaved. As a child she used to sit that way, with her feet on the rungs of a step stool watching her father shave.
“I told you I don’t mind. It’s nice to have the company,” he said, soaping up his shaving brush and spreading the lather across his cheeks and neck.
“You’re sure, now, because if you want I can make other—”
“Dell”—he exchanged his soap brush for the straight blade—“it’s fine. I’m okay. Honestly, I am.”
“Well, then,” she said, setting her elbows on her knees, “what would you like to do today? We could go visit Junior and Albertine. Their new house is lovely. Or we could go to Washington Park. Or if you’d like we could go to—”
“Dell, please. You don’t have to babysit me. I’m fine. I’m going to go to the stable, maybe go for a ride. I’ve missed my horses. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
But how could she not worry? She’d tried so hard to prepare Arthur for coming home, but no one had prepared her. She was relieved about never having to step foot inside that asylum again, but now that he was home, she felt an enormous responsibility to keep him well. The asylum was safe for him. All the sharp objects were hidden, but here, back home Delia feared a million things that could harm him, an insensitive comment, a bottle of brandy, a poor night’s sleep. Not wanting to leave him alone, she explained to Marsh that for now it was better if she slept in her old room on Calumet. She talked with the servants and with Abby and Augustus, asking them to keep an eye on him. She hated to admit that it had been easier when he was away. Now the responsibility was all on her.
In the days and weeks ahead she was forever asking Junior and Marsh to invite Arthur out with them and she was relieved whenever Paxton turned up for a hand of cards or a game of chess. Every morning she observed as Arthur adhered to a strict daily routine, rising at six and doing calisthenics before breakfast, then he’d visit his stable and groom his horses.
Things gradually returned to normal or as close to normal as they could be. After about a month, Delia returned to Marsh’s bed and by October the three of them, Arthur, Delia and Marsh, began going to plays and out to dinners again. On quiet evenings Arthur and Augustus played cards or read aloud to each other. At the start of December, Delia, Marsh and Arthur attended the Swift holiday pageant and as Delia watched Arthur guardedly mingling with old friends, clumsily fielding questions about his state of mind, she realized that it was a big, cold world out there and that she could only protect him so much.
Toward the end of year, in between Christmas and New Year’s, Arthur went down to Ottawa and even took Paxton with him. Delia took that as a sign that it was all right for her to get on with her life.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
1902
On May 6, 1902, Delia found herself surrounded by hushed voices, solemn faces and muffled tears. She had already buried her parents and her father-in-law and now she was burying her friend’s husband. She looked at Bertha, stoic as ever, surrounded by her grown sons, Honoré and Potter Jr., while Potter lay in state.
The funeral services, held two days after he’d passed, were at the Palmers’ home, which they referred to as their castle. Bertha and Potter had transformed that plot of swampland into the most enviable address in the city. Even more enviable than Prairie Avenue. Between Potter’s money and Bertha’s flair for spending it, they had established a neighborhood that people now called the Gold Coast. The home Potter built for Bertha overlooked Lake Michigan. It was the largest residence in Chicago and certainly the most elaborate.
Everywhere Delia looked she saw more flowers, enormous wreaths and oversize arrangements. She and Marsh stood off to the side with Arthur, Paxton and Penelope while mourners waited in a line that reached down the grand staircase, to the first floor and out the front door.
That night Delia followed Marsh upstairs to their bedroom. It had been a long, emotional day and they were both exhausted. The staircase had never seemed so steep and her legs ached when she reached the top.
“At a time like this,” Marsh said as he unfastened his cuff links, “I can’t help but be reminded of my own mortality.”
Marsh’s mortality. That was all Delia had been able to think about since Potter passed. It was the curse of loving an older man. She watched as he undressed, aware of how his body had changed through the years. His once lean, hard build had grown slack, with a slight paunch around his middle. His thick head of white hair was thinning in the back. The third toe on his left foot had grown crooked and now overlapped the one next to it. Recently he’d begun to suffer from indigestion if they ate rich foods too late at night. Yet, his was the body she wanted, the one she had loved through all its changes just as he had loved hers. He was sixty-seven, she was forty-seven, and oddly, it wasn’t until Potter died that she thought of Marsh as someone twenty years her senior.
Marsh pulled back the covers and climbed into bed. “Once I’m dead and gone,” he said, “what will be left of me?”
“Oh, Marsh, don’t talk like that.” Delia slid beneath the sheets and turned off the lamp on her night table.
“It’s a fair question,” he said. “Comes a time in every man’s life when he has to evaluate what he’s done. What he hasn’t done. Yes, I built a business, but now I have no one to leave it to. I’ll be damned if I’m going to keep begging Junior to come work for me. I guess it just goes to show that I haven’t been much of a father. I’ve worked my whole life to build this business and my son—my only son—wants nothing to do with it.”
“But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want you. Junior’s living right next door now,” she said, rolling onto her side. His face was half-lit by his bedside lamp. She noticed how his jaw slacked and the wrinkles that now ringed his neck. “You never go over there. And Albertine’s pregnant again. I would think you’d want to spend time with them. Junior is right there, just waiting for you.”
“But he doesn’t want what I have to offer.”
“You have more to offer your son than just your store.”
“And what about Ethel?” he said, as if he hadn’t heard her. “She married that damn sailor.”
“He was a Royal Naval officer,” Delia corrected him.
“Makes no damn difference to me. He’s still a sailor as far as I’m concerned.”
“And your daughter loves him very much. It’s no different than how you felt about me—only she was in a position to marry him. If anyone should understand, I would think it would be you.”
“And how can I possibly tell her I understand? She isn’t speaking to me now.”
“Write to her. You have to be the bigger person here. You’re the father.”
He reached up and turned off the light by his side of the bed. Delia knew he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He was just as stubborn as Ethel. He went silent and Delia looked for him in the dark, waiting for him to come into focus while her eyes adjusted. She felt afraid just then. She didn’t want to lose him. Not ever. Delia lay awake that night long after Marsh had fallen asleep. She stared over at her aging love, watching the top sheet rise and fall, so aware of his every breath.
• • •
After Potter died, Marsh began making changes in his life, especially where his children and grandchildren were concerned.
Much to Delia’s surprise, he sat down and wrote Ethel a letter. And then another one, and another one after that. It had been over a month now and he was still waiting, checking the post every day, for her reply.
And then there was Junior and his family. Albertine had just given birth to his first and only granddaughter, Gwendolin. She was three months old and Marsh doted on her, always hoisting her up in his arms, bouncing her on his knee. “Every time I see this little one,” he’d said one day, “she changes.” Setting her back in her bassinet, he turned to Delia and Albertine and said, “I don’t even remember Junior and Ethel being this age.” Delia detected the sadness in his voice. His grandsons were growing up fast, too. Marshall III was eleven already and Henry was nine.
“Come here,” Marsh said to Henry, grabbing hold of the boy’s chin. “Let me have a look at that tooth.”
Henry opened wide, giving him an “awwww” while Marsh wiggled the tooth.
“She’s ready to come out,” Marsh said.
“Noooo, Grandpa. Not yet,” Henry protested, and Marsh laughed.
The fo
llowing Sunday Delia invited the whole family, including Arthur, over for supper. She and Albertine sat together on the sofa waiting for dinner to be served. They were watching Marsh, lying on the floor, on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, playing marbles with Marshall III.
“Would you look at them?” said Albertine. “Do you know that last night he stopped by after he left the store just to read Gwendolin a bedtime story? And then he went into Henry’s room and put a fifty-cent piece under his pillow. He said to tell Henry that the tooth fairy had been there.”
“Can you imagine that?” said Junior, coming over to join them. “My father the tooth fairy.” He shook his head in amazement and laughed. “I don’t think he ever played a game of marbles with me or read me a story.”
“I’d say he’s just making up for lost years,” said Delia.
And it was true. Marsh did the things with his grandchildren that he’d done with his father and older brothers back on the farm in Massachusetts. He hiked and fished and went horseback riding with Junior and Marshall III. For the first time in his life, Marshall Field was becoming a family man.
“We’ve never seen him like this,” Albertine said, hoisting the baby up in her arms.
“I just hope he’s happy,” said Delia.
“He’s a Field,” said Albertine with a knowing glance. “Are any of them ever really happy? But,” she said with a smile, “if anyone can make him happy, it’s you.”
Delia blinked back her tears as she reached over, patting the baby’s back. Unlike Ethel, Junior and Albertine had accepted Delia as the woman in Marsh’s life. They never questioned the nature of Delia’s marriage, though she was certain they found it perplexing.
