America's First Daughter: A Novel(163)
I enjoyed every moment of our harmonious idyll, but when spring thawed our mountain, Papa was restless and called to Burwell. “I want my horse.”
We’d always relied upon Sally to quietly and sweetly dissuade Papa from folly, but the competent and devoted Burwell was too pliant, leaving only me to protest my elderly father’s insistence upon riding. “At least take a servant with you!”
“I’ve been roaming this country since I was a boy. No one knows these lands better than me.” Soon after, he was up and into the saddle, riding off with the air of power he still carried with him even at his age.
That busy day saw me chasing after my recalcitrant boys, who insisted on pelting one another with chinaberries from their grandfather’s ornamental trees. Ranging in age from five to seventeen, my four rowdies were as noisy and dirty as the half-alligator, half-horse men that infested our western country. They kept me so busy that the great clock chimed the dinner hour before I realized my father wasn’t home.
In the parlor, Cornelia looked up from the architectural rendering of my father’s university and dusted her fingers. “I’ll ride out and look for him.”
“Let your brothers go.” But before I could call them, we heard a commotion near the terrace where my father, frail, soaking wet, and muddy, was being helped up the stairs by Sally’s sons. Papa’s good arm was draped over an adolescent Eston, who in the light of that early spring evening looked much like my father in his youth. Supporting my father on the other side was eighteen-year-old Madison.
My tongue let loose before I could measure myself. “What the devil happened?”
“Fell in the river,” Papa said, and nothing more than that. He was shaken, but he didn’t seem injured. Though when we finally sat down together at the table for a meal that had gone cold, he explained, “The horse fell upon me and pinned me under the water. I’m mortified that if I’d drowned on that shallow spot, everyone would think I’d committed suicide.”
I gasped. “That’s what mortifies you?”
Papa’s raised his now bushy white eyebrows. “What’s Hamilton remembered for? That he died in a senseless duel with a traitorous madman. My days are waning, and it would mortify me to perish in an unbefitting way.”
His mind was on legacy . . . and the family he’d leave behind.
That evening he said, “Patsy, arrangements must be made in the case of my death. I must know you’ll be taken care of. I fear Tom won’t be able to provide for you, and whatever I leave will be swallowed up by his creditors.”
I didn’t want to speak of it—could scarcely bear the thought of life without him. “Give what you like to the children and don’t worry for me.”
“You are my primary worry. Ann has already been provided for monetarily if she should get free of her husband, and I’ve made provisions for Jeff in part . . . the remainder of my holdings will be divided amongst the other children, but you’ll have a life estate in Monticello so that you may always have a home here.” My heart hollowed at the thought of living at Monticello without Papa. And into the space of my mournful breath, he added, “We’ll have to see the younger boys into professions. Medicine and the law.”
He was more of a father to the boys than my husband had been. We all basked in Papa’s unfailing kindness. My father could be an exacting man, but he was predictable and steady. I knew how to make him contented. Would that I knew how to do the same for Tom, because in the winter of that year, after three increasingly contentious terms as governor, Tom was finally coming home.
We hadn’t shared a bed in years, and though there was no longer danger of children, I greeted the prospect of his return with acute anxiety. Alcove beds were one of my father’s favorite space-saving innovations, and Papa didn’t understand why I wanted to be rid of mine. I couldn’t tell him that I didn’t want to be trapped between Tom’s body and the wall. Instead, I prevailed upon Papa, night and day on the subject of converting my alcove to a much-needed closet, until he finally lapsed into a dignified but resigned silence that I decided to take as consent to do as I pleased.
Upon setting down his satchel in my renovated bedroom, Tom said, “You’ve changed it.”
These were the first words he spoke upon his return. His spine was stiff as he took in the closet filled with floral hatboxes where our bed used to be. He noticed the lace valances, too, which I’d fashioned from the scraps of an old dress long ruined, and how they now framed the view I enjoyed each day upon waking, in all its bittersweet majesty.
“Do you like it?” I asked of the feminine touches I’d put on this room to make it mine.
“My writing table is gone,” Tom said, quite peevishly. “I see everyone has gotten along here quite well without me. I shall now feel even more the intruder.”
Having predicted this very glum prognostication, I said, “Nonsense. I have a surprise for you that I hope will make you feel as if you have a place of your own.”
We walked together to the north pavilion, where I’d had the slaves move my husband’s writing table. “What’s this?” he asked, genuinely surprised at the neat rows of books upon the shelves, where I’d carefully ordered his science and agricultural journals.
“It’s a study for you. A place for you to read and write in solitude when the noise of the children grows too much. A place to escape Papa’s guests. Your very own sanctuary.”