America's First Daughter: A Novel(116)
What could I say to comfort her or myself when our children fell ill, one by one? My clever five-year-old Ellen, after composing her very first letter to her grandfather, promptly fell into a fever and slowly began to strangle with the rest. The children were afflicted with coughing fits that made their eyes bulge, their ribs ache, and their throats so raw they sometimes vomited blood and sobbed. My newborn baby turned blue in the face and gasped for breath. My Ellen and Cornelia both cuddled together under the last clean, dry blanket I had. In her delirium, Cornelia laughed and sang to some unseen spirit above her. But Ellen had the good sense to be gloomy and terrified by her own hallucinations.
“My God, they are dying,” Tom whispered when I passed him in the doorway to the nursery to fetch some honeyed water for the little ones to sip.
Unwilling to credit his whisper, I asked, “Would you do me the favor of fetching my cloak? The blankets and linens I washed aren’t dry yet. But I can keep the girls warm and covered with my cloak.”
Tom took a deep, shuddering breath, then dropped his face into his hands. “We’re going to lose them. Our precious baby girls.”
“We can’t think it,” I said, almost as weary as I was terrified. Then, edging past him, I hurried down the stairs and into the kitchen to scrape the last of our honey from its jar.
Tom was right behind me, his big frame all atremble, and he spoke in a panicked whisper, “I can’t think of anything else, Patsy. I dreamed it last night. Little coffins!”
How was I to hear such a thing and not sink to my knees? But I couldn’t sink to my knees, because our precious children needed me. “Please, Tom. Please stop.”
“It’s my curse, Patsy. Everything I do goes wrong. Everything I make withers away. Now my daughters,” he cried, grabbing hold of my shoulder and sobbing into my hair. “My daughters.”
He was so strong, so hardened from horse riding and laboring in the fields, that I couldn’t push him away if I tried. It wasn’t as if I didn’t want to cling to him. That I didn’t want to offer him solace—and receive it in return. But in his state, I knew Tom couldn’t help himself, or me.
Stroking his hair, I called to my son. “Jeff, fetch my cloak for the girls.”
A moment later, Jeff came into the kitchen. “They’ll only spit up on your cloak. Why not—” His eyes widened at the sight of his father weeping in my arms.
And Tom roared in a sudden rage that burned away all his tears like a brushfire. “Don’t you backtalk your mother!” Then my husband’s long arm snapped out, and a slap sent our boy reeling back, stumbling for balance.
“Tom!” I cried, half in disbelief as he tore himself away from me and grabbed up our boy by the shirt, pushing him against the wall. I couldn’t guess what had turned his mood so swiftly, but my voice came sharp like the crack of a musket. “Tom.”
My husband never laid a violent hand on our daughters—never seemed to take anything but delight in Ann, who cowered in the doorway, at the edge of tears. But Jeff worked my husband’s every last nerve. I suspected this time, it was simply that Tom couldn’t bear the thought that his son had seen him weep. He stood there, his chest heaving as he glowered at the scared little boy, then let him go with a shove. “Go do as your mother told you.”
With a hand to his stinging red cheek, Jeff ran off for my cloak. And I turned to Ann. “Your father is tired. Won’t you take him into the other room and read him one of the little newspaper stories Grandpapa cut out of the paper for you?”
Pretty Ann bobbed her head in obedience with a little hiccup before leading Tom out. And I was glad he went with her, even if half in a daze. For I was half in a daze myself. I turned back to my pitcher of honeyed water and stirred the honey into it, catching a glimpse of myself in the surface of the water once it stilled.
Then I took a deep breath as something snapped inside me. I’d told myself that Tom would one day recover from the blow of his father’s death and rejection. Just as my father had come through his madness. That given enough love and time, my husband would stand up like the man he wanted to be, and I could lean on him in times of trouble.
Now I knew better.
I could never, ever, lean on him or my sister or anyone else. I hadn’t chosen a life in which I might be cared for and pampered. I’d chosen a different path. And I ought to be grateful to Tom, I told myself, for having obliged me to exert all the strength and energy I had at my disposal. Because in this exercise, the mind acquires strength to bear up against evils that would otherwise overcome it.
Realizing it, my aches and pains and ailments melted away, to leave me in more perfect health than I had enjoyed in years. For if I wanted to hold my family together, if I wanted my children to survive, I could neither be tired nor ill. If I wanted to carve out anything for myself or anyone I loved, I couldn’t lean or waver.
I’d have to be the pillar to hold it all up . . . if only because I was Thomas Jefferson’s daughter.
Washington, 18 April 1802
From Thomas Jefferson to Robert R. Livingston
The cession of Louisiana by Spain to France will form a new epoch in our political course. Of all nations France is our natural friend. Her growth we viewed as our own, her misfortunes ours. But it’s impossible that France and the US can continue long friends when they meet in so irritable a position as they do now. The day France takes possession of New Orleans we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.