The Ripper's Wife(22)
Jim and I named our son James Chandler Maybrick, but that seemed such a big name for such a little boy, we always called him “Bobo.” He was the most beautiful child I had ever seen.
“No boy has a right to be that beautiful,” Mama would say when she arrived posthaste from Paris and saw my son sleeping angelically in my arms, smelling of rosewater and milk, and wearing a dainty white linen smock I had embroidered with red roses.
His hair was the same deceptively black-brown as his father’s, thick but straight when I had been hoping so for curls, and his brows were “like two black caterpillars kissin’,” Mama said, pointing out how they almost met above his perfect little nose that turned up just a tiny bit at the tip. I dreaded the day when I would have to pluck them. He was certain to cry; then so would I. But oh, the magnificence of his eyelashes! He was born with a double row of them, licorice black, luxuriant, thick, and looking ludicrously long on such a tiny baby. They actually cast shadows on his cheeks.
Jim jiggled the little gold Egyptian eye dangling from my charm bracelet and smiled and said that double row was certain to bring our boy luck. From the day he was born whenever my son lost a lash and I could find it I always kept it in a gold locket set with an aquamarine heart. Later, when he was older, he would bring them to me himself, presenting each fallen lash to me with a theatrical bow, saying, “Here’s another lash for your locket, Mama; may it bring you the best of luck!” He was so adorable! More beautiful than any angel!
“Sure enough, he’ll be a charmer,” Mama said. “He’s already got bedroom eyes. Look at ’em, Florie, like pools o’ melted chocolate!”
“Oh dear!” I sighed, then laughed until I cried. After all, such worries were years and years away! “As long as he never breaks my heart, Mama, I shall be content!” I said, and covered my sweet angel with kisses. I had never loved anyone so much.
5
Bobo’s birth changed everything. Mama summed it up nicely when I tried, in my own muddled, befuddled way, to explain, “You’ve stopped bein’ a bride an’ started bein’ a wife now, darlin’.”
She was right. That blissful sense of expectancy, of opening my eyes every day to some new, joyous wonder, just wasn’t quite there anymore. In fact, I feared I felt it dying a little more each day. No matter how hard I tried to hold on to it, it was slippery as an eel. I still loved my husband as much as ever, and the beautiful home he had given me, and I wouldn’t have traded my precious baby boy for all the jewels in the world. But . . . It just wasn’t the same anymore....
Jim had his business, important people to see, meetings to attend, his friends and men he was trying to make deals with to wine and dine and socialize with at strictly masculine domains like the Liverpool Cricket Club and the Turkish baths. Sometimes, seeing how tired I was, he even accepted invitations without me. There were many nights when he went out alone and didn’t come home until long after I was asleep. I was busy with the baby, and I was somewhat laggard in recovering from his birth. My energy seemed to flow out with my milk. Dr. Hopper admitted the birth was one of the most difficult he’d ever attended and he had been in some despair for my life, though he’d kept it so well hidden I advised him if he didn’t already play cards he should start right away; with a poker face like that he’d soon amass a fortune.
After Bobo’s birth, I just didn’t bounce back the way I expected I would. Everything seemed to leave me exhausted no matter how much I rested. For the first time in my life I found myself looking forward to stealing afternoon naps. While May laced me into my clothes I’d find myself darting longing looks back at my bed, going through the day counting the hours until I could return to it. Most mornings I couldn’t even rise and have breakfast with Jim no matter how much I chastised myself for not being the wife I had always wanted, and intended, to be. But whenever I spoke to Jim about it, he always smiled and kissed me and told me not to worry my pretty head about it. He’d rather see me smiling and well rested when he came home in the afternoon than yawning, with dark circles round my eyes like a raccoon, offering him his marmalade in the morning. So I took him at his word and started having my breakfast in bed at whatever hour I happened to wake up. Often I remained in my wrapper with my hair in curl rags until half past noon.
And what good would my rising at the crack of dawn have done anyway? Even if I’d been there, smiling across the breakfast table, to greet Jim, would it have really made any difference? The servants still looked to Mrs. Briggs for their orders. They treated me like I was a little girl playing at house and not the real lady of it.
That woman contradicted me every chance she got! Time and again I’d plan a special menu for a dinner party only to sit down and find something completely different being laid upon the table. Whenever I dared question the cook about it she’d get all haughty and say, “Well, Mrs. Briggs said . . .” And when Jim and I threw a ball, I’d sit down with the conductor and plan the music the orchestra would play, only to find, when it began, that the program had been changed entirely. Once I bought a lovely vase only to discover, when I went to fill it with a specially ordered bouquet from the florist, that Mrs. Briggs had taken it upon herself to return it and exchange it for another. When I confronted her, she didn’t deny it. She said my taste was “a tad too flamboyant,” so she had changed it for “something more suitable.” Then, she actually turned to my husband, touched his arm, and asked, “Don’t you agree, Jim?” And he did!