America's First Daughter: A Novel(109)
But Jack hadn’t seen fit to bring my sister home. In fact, we’d scarcely seen Polly since her wedding the year before. In that time, Sally had lost poor little Harriet to some childhood illness and borne my father another child—a boy named Beverly. It must’ve been some consolation, but babies were fragile, and Papa had already lost so many children he was apt to guard his heart against loving the new ones too dearly. So, my father centered his anxieties on my sister. “Is she ill?”
“Just a newlywed,” I said, because if it was an illness, it mysteriously reoccurred whenever it served to excuse a visit to Monti cello, and I began to harbor a belief the Eppes family was keeping my sister from us once again.
My husband had cause to know how very much this upset me and as we prepared for bed one night, he attempted to raise my spirits against the specter of a holiday without my sister. “You ought to chaperone the Christmas Ball in Charlottesville, Patsy. It promises to be a gay season.”
I didn’t know about that. I knew Nancy intended to try to find a husband there, in spite of her blackened reputation. And Tom’s littlest sister, Jenny, would come out into society for the first time. I myself hadn’t been out in society in years and couldn’t imagine that it’d make me feel any better about missing Polly or about losing my father to politics for another four years.
But then Tom added, “I’ll go to the Christmas Ball with you. It occurs to me you need a chaperone. One never knows what kind of trouble you might get up to without me, young lady.”
Lighthearted flirtation didn’t come naturally to Tom, and it warmed me to know that in spite of all his own struggles, he was trying to help me with mine. In my nightdress, I sat on the edge of the bed, my fingers trailing along the neckline. “Mr. Randolph, it’s your sisters you need worry about. I’m an old woman of twenty-six years and quite above reproach.”
Tom tugged me against the strong muscles of his bare chest and playfully leaned his face close to mine. “But I might like to give you a stern reprimand or two anyway.”
He wanted me. That hadn’t changed. Not since the day he decided he must have me did his desire wane. Sometimes I thought it was because whenever he made love to me, he was reaching inside me for something more than the love I bore him, reaching for something I couldn’t give. But as long as he kept reaching, I thought it would hold us together.
So that Christmas, we loaded up Jenny and everyone else we could stuff into the carriage. Tom and I danced and exhausted the youngsters, putting them to shame. We were still laughing when we returned, much to the consternation of our children at Monticello, where we’d left them in Sally’s care.
When Tom smooched my cheek, our six-year-old son Jeff—a little heathen who refused to wear shoes even in coldest winter—made an ugly face. His older sister Ann complained bitterly of the unfairness that we hadn’t allowed her to come with us, threatening to go to Phildelphy with her grandpapa who would surely spoil her with cake. And two-year-old Ellen—a child I named after the daughter I’d lost, promising myself to love her enough for two angels—babbled her complaints, clinging to my skirts.
Oh, how I loved my little cherubs, and by springtime, I was expecting another. At this news, my husband leapt from his chair to spin me around. Tom wanted another boy—of course he did. And the knowledge we had another baby coming set him off on a manic fit of activity, building us a new house at Edgehill.
Tobacco was in the ground, and everyone was predicting high prices. “This will be a good year, Patsy,” Tom said. “We’ll get a good harvest, sell at the peak of the market, pay off debts, and live easy the rest of our lives. Just you wait and see.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Varina Plantation, 1 July 1799
To Thomas Jefferson from Thomas Mann Randolph Jr.
There is a story of an ancient king whose touch turned everything to gold. You will recognize in me the makings of Midas, except that everything I touch turns to dust.
NOTHING CAME UP out of the dirt that summer.
What plants did grow were small and sickly things. Most farmers lost their entire crop; we lost most of ours. Tom worked desperately to salvage what he could. In the end, he had to rely on tobacco, which was his undoing.
That summer prices reached dizzying heights, but the odious Federalists had suspended commerce with France—the biggest market for Virginia tobacco. By autumn, prices crashed, and we couldn’t give it away. My husband had gambled and lost, but he wasn’t the only one—not the only one by far. Every man in Virginia suffered that year.
That’s why I burn this old letter.
I thrust it into the flame and watch the edges curl, happy to protect my husband’s too-earnest heart, as he was never able to do for himself. Tom’s bitterness was a cause of much misery in my life, but he came by some of it so honestly that I can’t bear to think of people reading this letter and mocking his pain.
And so I burn it, gladly, to ash.
At the time he wrote this letter, of course, Tom kept from me the magnitude of the financial disaster. It wasn’t a wife’s place to know the particulars. I was meant to concern myself with raising our children—four in all now, including baby Cornelia, who we’d named after the famous Roman matron, in keeping with the revolutionary spirits of the time. But in the midst of chasing after the little ones, I had guessed that he wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage on Varina and tried to comfort him, hushing baby Cornelia in my arms. “You couldn’t know the right time to sell the tobacco, Tom. Nobody could. Besides, the trade embargo with France will expire in the new year and you can sell then.”