America's First Daughter: A Novel(19)
“No, Papa,” I insisted, my fears rising. “I couldn’t be happy here. Not without you.”
“You might be—”
“It’s not true, Papa.” Now anger swirled with fear inside me, forcing me to cry, “I can only be happy with you!”
“It’s only that circumstances might take me . . . elsewhere for a time.” He sighed with a gravity that made me recognize it as a plea. Even if he could hide it from the rest of the world, he couldn’t hide from me his longing for death. It was in the spaces and silences between his words that the truth could be found.
I heard it in what he didn’t say.
And I determined never to give him an excuse to take his leave of this world. “I’d be miserable here, Papa. I find the Randolphs entirely disagreeable. Wherever your duty takes you, it must take me, too.”
For the memory of my mother could not be honored, my promises could not be kept, and my own duty could not be met anywhere else.
Only when his shoulders sagged in resignation, and he pressed a tender kiss to my brow, did my heart finally calm within my chest. The next morning, I shied away from Judith and Nancy, instead following Mrs. Randolph past the schoolhouse into her orderly herb garden. There, in the striped linen short gown and straw hat she wore for gardening, she let me help her tend the raspberry and sweet goldenrod she used to brew her liberty tea. “I suppose now that the war is over, we’ll drink the real stuff again. But my boy Tom has been kind enough to pretend he’s fond of my concoction and I dare say your father likes it, too.”
The warm affection in her voice for her son and my father beckoned my trust. Should I tell her that Papa was unwell? Did I dare even hint at what he’d said the night before? Biting my lip, I debated what path was most right in a situation that was so very wrong. Finally, I stayed silent, knowing she wasn’t the sort to involve herself in the business of men.
Only someone like Colonel Randolph could make things right. And perhaps he tried, in his own way. When the gentlemen took their ease under an awning on the back lawn overlooking the James River, Papa sketched the gardens into a little leather book and I climbed into his lap, where he encouraged me to nibble at the untouched biscuits on his plate.
That’s when Colonel Randolph said, “Jefferson, if you stay longer, we’ll organize a horse race to be followed by an evening of dancing. No doubt, every pretty widow and unmarried girl in Virginia will want an invitation.”
Papa’s pencil stopped midstroke. “No doubt.”
Scowling after a gulp of his wife’s liberty tea, Colonel Randolph added, “Men like us weren’t meant to live alone.”
My father stiffened against my back, his whole body rigid and brittle. With awful clarity, I understood that Colonel Randolph was encouraging Papa to take a new wife. That was how he thought to help matters. He thought a new wife would keep Papa away from his pistols in the night, which meant that he didn’t understand my father’s grief at all, nor the promise that Papa had made at my mother’s deathbed.
My father quietly closed his sketchbook and excused himself with a litany of bland niceties. The next day, Papa announced our departure. I believed he’d finally realized there was nowhere else for us to go but home.
But I was wrong.
Annapolis, 28 November 1783
From Thomas Jefferson to his Dearest Patsy
The conviction that you’d be improved in the situation I’ve placed you solaces me in parting with you, which my love for you has rendered a difficult thing. Consider the good lady who has taken you under her roof as your mother, as the only person to whom, since the loss with which heaven has been pleased to afflict you, you can now look up.
The acquirements I hope you’ll make under the tutors I’ve provided will render you more worthy of my love, and if they cannot increase it they’ll prevent its diminution. I’ve placed my happiness on seeing you good and accomplished, and no distress this world can now bring on me could equal that of your disappointing my hopes.
On a cobblestone street of Philadelphia, sniffling into my sleeve like a little child, I pleaded, “But, Papa, why can’t I stay with you?”
I couldn’t believe what was happening. We’d only been home long enough to pay a visit to my sisters at Eppington before Papa informed all of us that he’d been elected to Congress and, this time, he meant to serve. Now, he meant to leave me in Philadelphia with a Mrs. Hopkinson—a patriotic goodwife supposedly well known for her pious virtues. Had I convinced Papa not to leave me with family and friends, only to have him abandon me with strangers?
I couldn’t fathom why Papa would take me by horse and carriage up bumpy roads and by ferry across treacherous rivers only to part with me here.
In truth, I cannot fathom his reasoning even now.
A wind blew down the alley, howling between the narrow spaces that separated Mrs. Hopkinson’s tall brick home from its neighbors, rattling the shutters. But my father didn’t take it as a sign of foreboding. Instead, he explained, “Congress is sure to convene in Philadelphia or nearby, and we need to attend to your education. I won’t be far from you day or night.”
In this he turned out to be wrong. Congress wasn’t called to Philadelphia, where, in the Independence Hall, Papa’s Declaration had been signed eight Julys before. Instead, because of a mutiny of Pennsylvania soldiers who hadn’t been paid their wages from the war, Philadelphia was deemed unsafe for the legislators. So, Congress was called to Annapolis, and three days later, Papa left for Maryland without me. All I knew, all I could see, was that I’d been abandoned in a huge, bustling city amongst strangers.