by Denney, Hope
Theodore was a grown rich man in this painting, Zeus on his throne. He reclined in his best suit in Blanche’s stately, oversized leather chair in the library. A decanter and half-drunk glass of brandy rested at his left elbow. He’d filled out and bulked up since the hunting portrait. His chest deepened and waist narrowed down over muscular thighs, which Cumberland had painted well through the ripples in his trousers. He looked at the painter, resigned to being painted one more time but also with a hint of pleasure in his own celebrity. His Marshall hair fell over his forehead in waves and his blue eyes held no boyish wonder at the world around him. He knew the world was his.
“I miss my son,” said Blanche.
“I understand that well,” replied Sawyer. He sounded dazed. “He was a fine friend and soldier. You have suffered the greatest of losses.”
Blanche rested the portrait reverently against the railing.
“We’ve been in mourning for years now in this house. Someone has always just died. It goes on without ceasing with the dye pots, the crepe, and the veils. We try to mourn with grace and civility at Orchard Rest. Do you know how insulting it is that I can mourn my husband for the rest of my life if I so choose but my darling son only gets half a year of honor? I suggested to the girls that we do a full year and they accepted, but it galls me that I am supposed to be over everything in the twinkling of an eye.”
“No one expects you to be over it,” insisted Thomas.
“Yes, you do!” Blanche retorted. She peered down at Sawyer. “It’s the one-year anniversary of his death today. All I required was to sit quietly with my journal and read my impressions of what happened. I wanted to reflect and try to make meaning of it all, but I can’t find my diary. It disappeared weeks ago on the night before the anniversary of my dear brother’s death. They planned it all out. They don’t want to remember, and they don’t want to honor anyone besides themselves.
She gestured at the painting and held her candle closer. Teddie’s face regarded them all self-assuredly. By attaining residence in eternity, none of them would ever attain his favor within the family.
Sawyer moved closer to the stairs, arms out and palms open and empty. Somerset saw that he was convinced he could get Blanche to come down while the rest of them looked certain she would jump off the second floor. Only Joseph seemed calm.
“I’d be upset over that as well,” said Sawyer. “It’s cruel when people don’t turn out as we knew them to be. Today is an important date, and I’m glad you let me know so I can honor Theodore on this day. When I get home again I’m going to indulge in a drink to his memory. Serving under his command is likely the professional high note of my life so far.”
He tested one stair step and waited to gauge Blanche’s reaction.
“I know it was!” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “He was so good, so adept at everything he ever did. He was so intelligent that nothing ever slowed him down. I can’t think of another soul who went from law school to the army and the ministry and then wound up an indigo baron. When Amelia’s daddy needed help with the business, he took over as though we’d bred him for it. I can’t believe that it’s been a year since I looked upon his face. Can you believe they wouldn’t let me see the sweet boy before he was buried?”
Sawyer took two more steps.
“I actually can believe that, Mrs. Forrest. I saw horrible sights in service that I can’t get out of my head. I wish I’d had someone protect me the way your family is protecting you.”
“A mother needs no protection from the sight of her child.” Blanche’s tone went regal, and her head rose at least two inches as she spoke.
Sawyer took another step.
“While I want to assure you that Teddie passed quickly and didn’t suffer, I have to agree with your family in this instance. The explosion in the foundry was violent, and I’m afraid you wouldn’t be able to live with the images of his injuries in your mind.”
Blanche jerked around to face Joseph.
“You’re the one who said I couldn’t see him!”
“It was a sound decision. I identified the remains. I would know if they weren’t fit to be viewed,” said Joseph.
“I think you were eaten up with jealousy. You couldn’t stand Teddie’s relationship with me and you did what you could in the end to come between us. You spent your whole life wanting to be him and never measured up in a single instance.”
“Momma, no!” said Victoria, then quickly added, “She doesn’t mean it, Joseph. She just misses Theodore.”
“She does mean it,” said Joseph. “She is correct, though. I couldn’t stand their relationship.”
Somerset thought that Victoria seemed strong enough on her own. She released her hand and went to stand beside Joseph.
“Mother, please come down,” she called. “We’ll do whatever you tell us to do to make things right again. I see now how selfish and thoughtless we must seem to you. We’ll all apologize to you, and we can take the train to Charleston so you can visit Theodore’s grave. If you come down now, we might even be able to catch an evening train.”
Sawyer began to ascend more steps.
“We love you so much. We can’t do without you, Mother!” said Somerset.
Blanche bent and retrieved one of the objects she had put down with the painting and the light. She stood up holding a dark, square-shaped bottle.
“That’s laudanum,” Somerset warned the others. “Dr. Harlow must have given it to her tonight. I used it all the time in the hospital. Victoria, I want you to run to the cellar and get the syrup of ipecac right now.”
“I don’t want to go on like this,” Blanche said. “I need to see my son again.”
She put the tall bottle to her lips and began swilling it.
Thomas rushed at Blanche and tried to wrestle her to the ground, but she fought him with great agility and the hostility of years of pent-up resentment, while Sawyer ran the rest of the way up the steep curved staircase and closed in on her.
“This is the easiest way for me to go,” she pleaded. “I left the landing window open and I’ll throw myself off the balcony. I have a cutlass on me. I’ll cut my heart out if I have to.”
Thomas and Sawyer each took a step back.
“Mother, don’t do this,” yelled Somerset. “Find some other way to punish us.”
“I’m not punishing anyone. I just want to leave.”
Blanche raised the bottle to her lips again and began gulping.
“I’m ending this once and for all,” said Joseph.
He held his loaded pistol in his hands and aimed it at Blanche.
“No, Joseph!”
Blanche lowered the bottle. Her eyes gleamed at the sight of the gun trained on her.
“I don’t care,” she told him. “Dead is dead. Any way out is sufficient for my purposes.”
She raised the bottle to her lips again. Without so much as the grace to flinch, Joseph pulled the trigger, and the shot made a deafening blast in the house. The bottle in Blanche’s hands burst into thousands of crystalline fragments, and Thomas had just enough time to catch his unconscious wife before her body slumped on the floor.
“She’s only cut from the glass, not shot,” announced Thomas. “Sawyer, ride for Dr. Harlow.”
***
Somerset sat on the back steps in plain view of the little white marble stone that bore Theodore’s name. Blanche had insisted on having a stone for him on the plantation although his body was not interred there. Amelia would not hear of sending the body west. She wanted him interred in her family crypt so that she and their children’s families could be buried together one day. She was the permanent object of Blanche’s ire as a result.
Sawyer came out of the house. He was on his way to the stable to fetch his horse. Jim put it up at some point in the night. He paused, appeared about to say something, shook his head, and went on.
“Wait!”
He stopped but didn’t make eye contact.
“I want to thank you for comi
ng to help us last night.”
He nodded.
“Victoria is sitting vigil upstairs. She’s going to want relief in a couple hours,” he said.
Somerset nodded and looked out at the horizon. The thinnest fingers of apricot smudged the night sky.
Sawyer pointed at the tombstone.
“I pity Joseph,” he said. “I meant what I said about your brother, about the honor of his friendship. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of something he did or an old saying of his, and I smile to have had the pleasure of so much good living with so many good irreplaceable people. I miss Theodore, I do, and I know you all miss him night and day in a much different way. Joseph misses him, too, but he doesn’t get the opportunity to feel it because Blanche is always casting it up to him that he isn’t his brother. It’s the saddest situation I’ve ever encountered, and Joseph is the loneliest person I know.”
“It’s not the saddest situation I can think of,” choked Somerset.
Sawyer looked at her.
“No, maybe not. I want to say I’m sorry for that again as well. I should have listened to what you had to say all along about her being so difficult to live with. I don’t know what I thought you were trying to tell me, but I failed you twice in monumental ways. No, it was three times. As if my bad aim wasn’t enough, I failed you again by not getting you out of here and then once more by telling you what I remembered. I’ll have a long time to think about my errors.”
“Mother spoke of the enormity of a year without the one you love,” said Somerset. “I suppose we’ll all be finding out what an eternity feels like.”
Sawyer walked off in the drizzle for a few yards. He appeared to remember something and stopped.
“You looked well tonight, Somerset. I haven’t seen you in color since you were fifteen. I have the best memory to take away with me.”
He walked out of sight.
Somerset continued to watch the color morphing into dawn on the horizon as she sat in her damp, ruined silk gown. Yellow leached out of the apricot sky, reminding her of the petals of a tulip. It would be a clear morning once the rain stopped completely. Her bones felt weary, and she felt wary of what the next days would bring, but aside from all that she had hope.
She knew from experience that some things had to become as bad as they possibly could before they grew better. She had countless patients go on to be released home to feast on life once more when, in the middle of the night, she would have sworn they wouldn’t outlive their fevers. Sometimes an amputation was necessary for life to continue on unscathed. A missing journal, a lost son, or a lover departing could be the amputations required for everyone else to go on existing.
The door slammed again behind her, and Joseph came out. He looked rested despite having gotten no sleep. Somerset marveled at how much of a soldier he still was despite three years of civilian living.
“Your dress is ruined,” he said.
“It’s only appropriate after our night. Did you manage to dry out?”
“I did. I see the rain is letting up. Did Sawyer make it out?”
“Yes.”
“I take it the two of you are done?”
“Yes.”
“I hate that, Somerset. Can you tell me why?”
“No, but he and I were not who we thought each other were.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes.”
“You won’t be going to Richmond for the longest time now,” said Joseph. “If you can find a bright spot in this mess, that would be it. Mother is on bed rest for the next month, and she’s to avoid visitors, traveling, and all excitement for the next three months. It’s going to be rough going here, I’m afraid.”
“I’d stopped worrying about it so much. I have a dozen roads I can take,” said Somerset. “I can forge my own path out of here if need be.”
“It’s just as well with cousin Myra coming. We’ll need a proper lady of the house with Mother being ill.”
“Do you think we need to telegram and cancel?” asked Somerset in horror. “Plead illness?”
Joseph came over and settled on the step beside her.
“No, I think it’s too late at this point to cancel. We’ll think of something,” he said. “We always do.”
“Do you think Dr. Harlow will tell everyone?” worried Somerset.
“I have his confidences that he won’t. We had a long conversation when we were drying out before the fire before he went home. He’s coming back after breakfast to check on Mother. The Harlows are good people, Somerset.”
“He didn’t pry much, I noticed.”
“He didn’t. I’ll give him credit for that, but Teddie’s portrait was on the floor beside her where she fell. It doesn’t take any imagination to connect the shattered laudanum bottle to the portrait. I nicked up the painting some, though, when I shot the bottle.”
“How did you think to do that?” asked Somerset. She confessed, “I thought you meant to kill her.”
Joseph laughed bitterly.
“I could have. It was the perfect opportunity. I could have said I was aiming for the bottle and simply missed it, and no one would have asked another word about it. Instead I acted in her favor—although I can’t say it was humane towards her—and now she’s lying upstairs priming herself for another round.”
“You’re a good man, try as you do to hide it. Sawyer just spoke about how miserable of an experience it must be to be you.”
“It isn’t as awful as all that. I have the winning hand in this game.”
“Do you?”
“As disagreeable as it is to be compared to him at all times, I just remember how fortunate I am not to be him. Now his was a life not worth living.”
“Excuse me?” Somerset felt perplexed.
“He was handsome, smart, and benevolent, of course, but can you imagine being Mother’s obsession? As flawless as he was, she was forever after him to be Uncle Theodore. There was a thankless task, believe me, although my curiosity is piqued enough that I’m going to find out all about him one day. She was always nagging Teddie, molding him, grooming him to be the savior of the Marshall name, a credit to her family. It’s no wonder he married Amelia and moved as far east as he could manage. Then, there’s the fact that he’s dead and I’m still here. I might have a chip on my shoulder and a glass in my hand, but I feel this wind in my hair and smell those fields flooded with rain. His life was short and brilliant, but I thank God daily that I’m not Theodore.”
Somerset shuddered.
“Don’t you think it strange what trouble people can cause when they’re dead?”
“The person who’s causing all the trouble is upstairs vomiting into a basin, and the next time she decides to die, she might not have anyone around to save her. She’s never threatened to kill herself before. I always knew she’d get to that threat, but I was shocked that she made it there this quick and tried it.”
Somerset made a vague noise as reply, and they sat in companionable silence. Several feet of sky were blooming in the east and the drizzle stopped. A handful of stars no larger than pinheads glimmered in the slate blue darkness, and the moon winked mischievously before disappearing into a bank of gun gray clouds. Somerset knew she should drag herself upstairs and relieve Victoria, but the motivation to stand was gone.
Thomas walked around the back corner of the house. He looked harried, but it was obvious he had changed into fresh clothing because his shirt was free of blood spatter. He approached them with purpose, but the set of his mouth stated he was uncomfortable. Joseph ran the plantation for him, but he had little experience in addressing Somerset or Victoria.
“I tried to spare you from living this day,” he said. “I convinced her that you should be at the ball enjoying yourselves. I hoped you would end up staying with the Russells. I never dreamed she’d try to—well. If it hadn’t been for the excellent marksmanship or the quick thinking about the syrup of ipecac, I don’t know what we’d be doing right now. She’s si
ck to her stomach and has numerous cuts from the flying glass, but she’ll be fine. I sent Cleo to sit beside her so that Victoria could go to sleep, and the little one doesn’t know that anything happened.”
“Yes, sir,” said Joseph.
Somerset examined his face. The lines around his mouth and eyes were more prominent than she remembered. She couldn’t remember the last time she saw him or spoke to him. She was no more at ease with Thomas than she was Blanche, although it was a different type of ill at ease, like trying to converse with someone and finding out they speak a different language. Yet his love was there. He still thought of them in his absence or he wouldn’t have sent them packing.
“I know less than I thought,” he said. His hands were jammed in his pockets like Joseph, and he pushed a piece of gravel along the bricks with the toe of a boot. “I took precautions. When we came to the anniversary of her brother’s death, I hid her journal. I’ve never understood the way she chronicles every detail of the bad and refers to it and over and over again later. Then when Theodore’s death date approached I burned the book, thinking if she couldn’t read about the specifics, her memories and her behaviors would be mellowed. I hoped I could burn the bad right out of our lives.”
Somerset swallowed and tried to assimilate the knowledge that the mild-mannered man who never had a word for anyone had gone to such trouble to try to keep the peace for them. Regardless of whether it had worked, she saw him as a hero. He was a gentle, silent hard worker, and she thought perhaps Victoria’s tender heart came from him. She could not fathom a time in his life when her mother would have been in a position to look down on him.
“What did you ever see—”
Thomas stopped her.
“I love her as deeply today as I did thirty years ago. I thought I could fix the disappointments and letdowns that began far too early in her life. I believed with enough kindness and consideration she would revert back to the smiling lighthearted girl I used to pray to waltz with in Richmond. She was so cheerful she used to put me in mind of a sunflower growing in the fields. I misjudged what her upbringing did to her, that’s all. Mrs. Marshall required so much of her that she never got over it. She gave me five children, and she still gets as excited about a wedding anniversary as a fresh bride. She can recite volumes of poetry by heart. She’s my wife.”
