Varina(63)

Jeff stood up there minuscule and shouting, unreal in the distance, at the center of a parody of an inauguration. But not amusing, only terrifying. The wet black statue of Washington gleamed and expanded, a dark and indifferent god hiding behind his nose and strange hat, unwilling to pass judgment beyond his mere stern presence.

V felt a sort of vibration, a rattle, and wondered for a moment if this was what an earthquake felt like in its early seconds. She touched the window frame of the carriage and it felt still. She leaned out the window and saw the horses standing calm, resting and waiting, half asleep with their ears relaxed. So the vibration, the rattle, the unease rose from inside.

Still half out the window, she said to the driver, Home, please.

The driver twisted around, looked at her, and said, Right now?

V abided within herself a space of time until the driver grew uncomfortable and needed to say something.

—Ma’am, the mister’s talk’s not over. The president.

V said, Now, please. Now is the time to go home.

The reins snapped and the carriage lurched forward and rattled across the cobbles. Eyes closed, V took three breaths through her mouth and then three through her nose and then tried out an idea, a hypothesis. You’ve led an easy life. But everybody suffers. Judgment and punishment have hit with a light touch so far. The tap of a finger.


BY EVENING—the inaugural reception at the Gray House—V’s mood had lifted. A party usually had that effect. She moved from group to group of drinkers and eaters, being witty and gracious and sharp. She stood at a height that most women and quite a few men had to look up to meet her eyes and therefore resented her. Some in attendance found her too flirty with the men and tracked her progress through the rooms by clusters of their delighted laughter. Next morning, the papers noted her early departure from the inauguration ceremony but reported that as hostess for the reception, the First Lady performed with rare grace and unaffected dignity.


V WOKE, COVERS OVER HER HEAD. She reached her hand to Jeff’s side of the bed, but it had already gone cold between the sheets. He’d long since dressed and walked to his office and probably skipped breakfast—which he knew he wasn’t supposed to do. V thought drowsily how no one knows the inside of a marriage except the two people impounded together. Not family, not close friends, certainly not town gossips and the papers. Just the two bound in matrimony, and nobody can trust a word they say to anyone. Some are liars who claim that after forty years they’ve never had a cross word or that they’ve never gone to bed mad. And then there are those couples exhausted and baggy-eyed and not bothering to hide their misery, just struggling to keep their heads above water, trying not to drown in the long aftermath of a bad match. Or those happy and unequal marriages like that of Mary Chesnut where she emerged into her future husband’s world at thirteen so unquestionably lovely and delightful and quick of mind that she swept over him—though he was twenty-one, son of a U.S. senator and later to become one himself—like an incoming full-moon tide, so powerful that he waited four long years to marry her and delight in her entertainment every day until death parted them. But if the marriage is at all between equals, the two will certainly disagree about many things at any moment of the day during their time together. Not just details and facts but the fundamental nature of the marriage, because the flow of power changes constantly, and the loser isn’t always fully aware of defeat until much later.

A moment from the previous night pulsed into her memory. Late—the dregs of the party—she wilted, tired, and unwary and perhaps a little influenced by wine and leftover medication. A journalist, a new face among the press, stepped up and asked a question about her husband, something concerning the rash of harsh criticisms from Jeff’s political enemies in Richmond, which landed vicious and endless with every morning’s collection of newspapers. The journalist spoke with an English accent and seemed in his manner and appearance and clothing simultaneously polished and shabby, and very bemused by our bloody war. A tray of Champagne glasses eased by and V swapped her empty for a full.

What V ought to have done was ask what publication he represented, and then immediately say that his questions should be addressed to Burton Harrison or perhaps to Judah Benjamin. But without thought or filter, she actually said, What those miserable political animals are doing to that beautiful man—a man, let me be clear, I have wanted to kill many times for my own reasons—is disgusting and heartbreaking.

Those words were true—her truth—but also dangerous. The society ladies of Richmond went about like beagles hunting rabbits, noses to the ground, yearning for the least whiff of damning gossip against her. And when they caught a scent they went barking and yelping, breaking down and examining every element of her in order to come up with their own explanations for her darkness, which they twined with musty stories about Jeff’s attraction to dark women.

So V groaned into her pillow, knowing that a passing thought or even a joke about killing her husband could carry heavy consequences. How might the ladies fire that powerful ordnance once in control of it? Some would have called her treasonous. However—be honest—name a marriage of equals without murderous thoughts now and then. Also, the damage from her comment wouldn’t have been only among the ladies. Their men—military and political and wealthy and powerful—already thought V had too much influence, that Jeff’s every action and decision bore her thumbprint like a sloppily iced cake. As if his experience in Washington politics and especially his legendary exploits in Mexico were all nothing. One rumor constantly circulating was that V sat outside Jeff’s office during meetings, eavesdropping. Occasionally true, of course, but only when Jeff knew he would want her opinion later and asked her to sit near the open door and listen. Goes without saying that her sitting on the inner side of the door would have been impossible.