America's First Daughter: A Novel(186)
He takes the opportunity I’ve given him to save face, but a bit too far, as always. “I’d live entirely in my own room, making no part of the family and receiving nothing from it in any way whatever.”
“As you like.” Though I’ll insist he take food.
Tom’s eyes narrow. “What about Short?”
No. I will not discuss William. “It’s better for both of us to drop a curtain over the past. There’s enough warmth of heart between us to live in harmony, Tom. But upon such subjects as we cannot agree, we must be silent.”
He nods. And it’s enough.
Truthfully, seeing him in such a state, he could’ve refused all my terms, and it would still have been enough. Because I realize even before my daughters and I get him settled into the north pavilion, that he’s afflicted by more than hunger. He complains of stomach pains and gout, and is so meek and softened of temper that I think he must be dying.
My daughter Ginny is a disapproving sentinel at the door. “Mother, your children shall have a right to interfere if things between you return to their former state. He won’t be allowed to disturb your rest.”
“I’m not tired or in need of rest,” I say, because after two years of grieving for my father I’m finally awakening. I said that I was sick but would be well again, and now it’s come to pass.
Would that Tom were as fortunate.
I see to it that my husband has food and blankets and healthful teas and medicines to ease his pain. I sit by his bedside hour upon hour, day after day, reminiscing about the good times, of which we can both recount surprisingly many.
One morning Tom’s eyes, bleak and teary, meet mine. “Did you love me, Patsy? Did you ever?”
“Oh, I did.” I’m heartbroken by how easily the admission falls from my lips now. “The young man who told me he preferred trees stripped bare of their leaves and kissed me so passionately in a schoolhouse; the young husband who tried to coax a slave girl’s infant to suck at a cloth soaked in milk; the man who rode so hard, worked himself sick in the fields, fought for his country, and wrote poems to his daughters. Yes, I loved you, Tom Randolph.” My throat tightens and tears—real tears—roll down my cheeks. “I loved you truly and deeply.”
As if he’s been waiting for my tears his whole life, Tom reaches out and touches the wetness, smooths it with the pad of his thumb. “Oh, Patsy. My adored wife.”
He weeps.
We weep together.
And when we’re done, he says, “Send for Jeff. I cannot die without making friends with him, cannot leave him in anguish as my father left me.”
My heart fills at that. Jeff comes straightaway. My husband asks for my son’s forgiveness, and my tall, upright boy has the heart to give it. Tom has kind words for me and the children and the grandchildren. We nurse him, stroke his hair, hold his hands. His daughters surround the bed, fanning him of his fever during the day and his sons through the night.
Tom gives some strange directions about his shrouding and burial, then takes them back, fearing they’ll confirm the idea that he’s insane. And he looks to me, a bit fearfully, as he asks to be buried not at Tuckahoe with his kin and his own father but with my father at the head of his tombstone.
“It’s only fitting,” I tell him, moved by this final request, even though I know it will put Tom eternally in the shadow of my father’s monument, as he was all his life.
Then Tom begs for Jeff to stay with him in his dying hours.
All I want is for his suffering to end and for him to die in peace with everybody. Which is just what he does, on the twentieth of June, without a struggle or a moan.
My sons must dig the grave because my father’s people have been sold off. I’m told the auction at Monticello was no less heartrending than the sacking of an ancient city with children wailing and women rending their garments. And I feel as if I hear the echo of their anguish here.
They’re all long gone except for Burwell, who continues from habit to tidy the empty house. Sally and her sons live in Charlottesville now, so I know better than to look for her at the grave site. But once we bury Tom and make the slow walk home past Mulberry Row, my eyes drift to her old cabin, as if I expect to see her standing in the doorway in her apron, those amber eyes saying: “Now it’s done. We’ve both buried our husbands now.”
And so we have.
Every unkind feeling has been buried, too.
No longer an object of terror or apprehension, Tom became one of deep sympathy. But the bonds of affection were so much weakened by the events of the last years of his life, that after the first burst of grief is over, we cannot but acknowledge that all is for the best.
Returning health would’ve brought with it the same passions and jealousies. The Randolph was quite beyond his control. It would’ve poisoned our family and our memory of him. His peace and good end is Tom’s legacy. I’m afraid he has no other.
The whole of his possessions amount to some six hundred dollars’ worth of books and a twenty-dollar horse. And it’s left to Ellen to write an epitaph for him:
THOMAS MANN RANDOLPH, OF TUCKAHOE VIRGINIA.
BORN 1768. DIED JUNE 20, 1828.
HE WAS A MAN OF TALENT AND OF LEARNING.
CHARITABLE TO THE POOR.
A GOOD SON TO HIS MOTHER, AND A
KIND FATHER TO HIS DAUGHTERS.
“NO FARTHER SEEK HIS MERITS TO DISCLOSE,