Varina(34)

V too went long years without producing a child, but the reason was no mystery to her. Then for a few years she had babies one right after the other. So, she was different because of children, beaten up by having them and loving them and losing them.

Mary, though, had retained that frail girl shape, still looked slightly like a child who had raided her mother’s closet to try on her best dress. If you looked hard, Mary’s face had slightly broadened, maybe. Wrinkles no deeper than the light crescent press of a fingernail mark against the skin around her mouth and eyes. Under the powder, her color grayed some, but the backs of her hands remained smooth as a teen’s. She still knew so much, having time every day to read as many books and periodicals as she wanted, and to sit around in parlors chatting with witty smart people keeping her on her toes. So to some degree Mary remained nineteen forever—bright and promising, her body intact and her mind free from the permanent grief of seeing your group of babies begin to dwindle away, leaving your wit hard to retrieve and permanently darkened.


MARY TOOK OUT a plump wax paper packet and tore off the corner and tapped a pinch into her red wine and gave it a swirl.

She said, It’s so nice not to have to make excuses. Would you care for some?

—All the rest, please, V said. She reached out her glass.

Mary ripped the packet wide open and shook until the last grains fell, and then she poured them both a splash more wine.

—That will give you some relief, she said. Though I had an accident with it a while back. I sent Phoebe to the doctor to pick up my supplies, and he told her to mix the contents with a glass of red wine. The part Phoebe forgot was that he meant for her to divide the package into doses twice a day for a week, so she mixed it all at once. I remember thinking the wine tasted gritty. Three days and nights I slept uninterrupted, and on the fourth day I woke up much refreshed. The doctor said that killing me would take a lot of effort—which I’ve noted in my journal as an epitaph to be chiseled into my gravestone or an epigraph should I publish my book. But who has the time for that now?

They sat and sipped and talked. It was past midnight, silent outside until a rider went by at a canter, and they stopped to listen as he took the western branch of the road into deep country.

Mary said, It’s all second-and thirdhand, but I hear the end times in Richmond fell pretty bad.

V sat awhile and finally said, Do you think the gods observe us?

—Lowercase plural, or big G singular?

—Either.

Mary said, If you mean watch over us all worried, making sure that everything happens for a reason, then I’ll say hell no. But if you mean punish us whether we deserve a beating or not, I’ll say maybe.

—I mean observe, V said. Form an audience. Judge us mostly on how amusing we are. How funny or sad or tragic or foolish. Or just to find us lacking in entertainment—a disappointment.

—More like a group of critics?

—Maybe. Because however bad we’ve all been—whether the gods jump on us with both feet or the Puritan God fries us in a red-hot skillet—all of us, we’ve made a story of our lives.

—Oh, Mary said, life is mostly just what happens. Choice or chance or fate, gods or not. Like it or not. Things happen, we do what we think is in our best interests or just convenient, and then we live with the consequences. When we finally start taking the long view back down the road we’ve traveled, maybe we repent. Or just dig in our heels and claim righteousness no matter how damning the evidence against us.

Mary stopped and said, But that’s not what we’re talking about, is it? You’re thinking about him, yes? His ruin.

—Some. But also about myself and the children.

—And wherever Jeff is right now, he’s probably worrying more about how he’ll be judged by history.

—Yes.

Mary drank and thought and then raised her glass and professed, History reveals a person’s deeds—their outward character but not themselves. There is a secret self that has its own life rounded by a dream—unpenetrated, unguessed.

V clapped two slow claps and said, Beyond the Shakespeare, is any of that yours?

—The first part, a little.

V said, I’m fading. Coffee?

—Everyone’s gone to bed. We could make some fresh or drink the cold dregs left in the pot from dinner.

—I vote dregs. All I want is a jolt. I still aim to tuck you in.


IN THAT DEGREE of late night transforming to early morning—the oil lamp slightly haloed by the heavy, wet April air gathering outside—Mary said, Young Mister Burton Harrison? He looks worn out. But I imagine when he’s had a shave and not dead-on-his-feet exhausted, he’s probably handsome.

—Well, yes.

Mary studied V and then closed her eyes for two breaths. She said, I’m sensing a story, and we’re both too tired to make me drag it out of you when we both know you’ll spill eventually.

Very dreamy, slow and with many pauses and diversions, V remembered aloud how in the Gray House, Burton’s office was upstairs, just across a narrow hall from her little sitting and dressing room off the big master bedroom. Her room measured perhaps ten by ten. Burton’s office was even smaller, with no exterior windows. But it was an intense space, dim even in daylight, books on shelves and standing in tottering stacks, papers everywhere, desktop covered with letters in his meticulous hand. In her room—whether she had the door open and sat in the chair reading a book or had the door closed drawing up a stocking—she could hear him clear his throat. Coming and going, they often brushed against each other in the narrow hall between their lairs.