America's First Daughter: A Novel(190)
We stand there, a breath apart, until Harriet Hemings begins to tremble.
Strolling to my side, the president asks unwittingly, “Are you ladies acquainted?”
Then he introduces Harriet to me by another name.
In terror of discovery, Sally’s daughter cannot seem to speak, and on an impulse, I reach for her hand, squeezing it in soft reassurance and encouragement, bound as we are by a singular secret. “Mr. President,” I say. “You’re so attentive, someone may think you’re courting me!”
“What if I were?” Jackson asks, loud enough that everyone may hear. “After all, I’m the president and you’re America’s First Daughter.”
The guests all laugh at his wordplay, and I flush with triumph at this acknowledgment. It’s a victory as complete as I could ever ask for, tainted only by the bittersweet stare of my secret sister behind her mask.
For if I’m America’s daughter, so is she. . . .
WILLIAM AND I CANNOT MARRY because I promised Tom I’d never take another husband. Nor can we live in scandal. But at our age, who could censure our private visits?
Especially when I travel so often as to never rouse suspicion. I’ve been to Washington, New York, Boston. Why not Philadelphia?
When I go there, William and I stroll together the cobblestone streets I’ve not seen since I was a girl, and my heart fills to brimming at the constancy of his heart. But in other matters, he has changed. “I thought you believed that the races should commingle?” I ask.
“I do. But I fear that whites will never allow freed slaves to achieve equality here,” he says, explaining his latest philanthropic efforts for the colonization of an African nation called Liberia. He’s still struggling with the sin that taints our founding, and I still struggle, too. Though I know I have no right to sacrifice the happiness of a fellow creature, black or white, and I try to do right by all the people in my care, the truth remains that I am a slaveholder, even still, and will probably be until the day I die. It must tarnish me in his eyes, but I feel as if our sparring helps me do better.
When we’re alone, he presses a fond kiss to my brow. “You must have your portrait made before you leave to visit your daughter in Boston. I’d like for everyone to see you so clear-eyed, so pragmatic, your father’s traits in the planes of your face.”
“Who would want such a portrait? And think of the expense,” I complain.
But he won’t hear of it, and before the visit is over, I’m painted for posterity. William observes the final portrait with approval. “Your eyes are sparkling, your color heightened, and your whole countenance lit up!”
Ginny agrees. “Mama, I had no idea the attentions of an artist would do you such good.”
It is not the attentions of the artist, but of William Short, that have invigorated me. The touch of his hand when we dine alone, the candlelight so soft I could almost mistake him for the young son of liberty in France . . . and the darkness of another, kinder alcove bed, where two sweethearts from an imaginary painting long ago finally find their happiness.
But further recollections of this kind are not to be written or spoken of or mused about while my daughter looks on, oblivious. Like my father, I, too, have a secret passion in my old age. Stolen kisses. Clandestine assignations. Love letters that are burnt after they are read.
For our love belongs to William and me alone.
And it is a love that endures.
William reads my mind, a smile of complicit mischief upon his aging face, his eyes still twinkling. “You must be looking forward to your adventure, Mrs. Randolph.”
Indeed I am. For I’m to travel, for the first time, upon a railway train. It is a marvelous invention. A machine of such power and potential my father would’ve wanted to know the workings of it from the engine to the smallest gear. And on his behalf, I’m more excited to see it than I was to see air balloons as a child.
William goes with us as far as Providence, where my children and I crowd together in a little car by the train engine. As the fire is fed and the roar of the machine begins, I wave to William on the platform, which is draped in flags of red, white, and blue.
Then sparks fly through the air and burn little holes in my dress where they land. And I don’t care, because they look to me like fireworks bursting in celebration of our American Independence, and I’m exhilarated with the possibility and promise of our extraordinary journey.
Note from the Authors
MARTHA “PATSY” JEFFERSON RANDOLPH’S relationship with her father, the third president of the United States, not only defined her life but also shaped the identity of our nation. For nearly everything we know of the author of our independence is what she let pass to us in posterity.
She came of age in a time of war. Colonial girls of her age and social station scarcely left the plantation, but she accompanied her father across the country and to foreign shores. At a time when women were dissuaded from involvement in politics, her father made her witness to two revolutions and the secret torments of the men who fought them.
Intelligent, highly educated, and fiercely loyal, she lived an extraordinary life of her own, while defending her father’s legacy. And in his shadow, she became one of the most quietly influential women in American history. We wanted to write that history through her eyes, ever mindful that it would be biased in favor of her father and his politics. Knowing, too, that her perspective would be as flawed as she was. For what Patsy likely believed to be acts of family loyalty or even patriotism can be seen now in a much more troubling light.