America's First Daughter: A Novel(73)
Indeed, it seemed as if Nature herself commanded me to turn back, because the bumpy earth had split the axle of our phaeton and broke the wheels of our carriage to slow us down. Then the most tempestuous weather we’d ever seen trapped us with a storm of wind and squall, the fury of which was an echo of all the turmoil inside me.
But William hadn’t tried to stop me from going. He’d never even said good-bye. And so this was an ending, I told myself. Turning away from the view, I knew I wouldn’t—couldn’t—look back. But neither could I go forward, for this storm blew for nine days until the only way Papa could calm my little sister was to promise her a puppy.
Papa said, “Come search out shepherd dogs with me, Patsy.”
Why don’t you take your lover? I let the silent question show in my sullen eyes. Then, furiously, I grabbed my coat with an insolent stare. Numb with heartbreak, I scarcely felt the chill of the rain or the blow of the wind when we went clambering the cliffs. Though Papa tried to engage me in conversation, I said next to nothing as we walked together for hours, nearly ten miles in all.
It was a fruitless, awkward search. I had too much dignity to pretend there was nothing wrong between us. My father knew what weighed upon my heart and I knew what weighed upon his. And at long last, I decided that if we were going to quarrel, why not do it here in the howling wind?
When we neared the docks, I opened my mouth to reprimand him for his immoral conduct with Sally and for putting a wedge between William and me. But just as I inhaled to speak the words, we heard a crack sharper than thunder.
Hearts hammering, we turned to see a man collapse upon the beach. My father rushed closer, demanding I stay back, but fear carried my feet forward. It was the most ghastly sight I’ve ever witnessed . . . the body of a man who had, just that moment, shot himself. His pistol had dropped at his feet and he’d fallen backward. The blast completely separated his whole face from the forehead to the chin, pounding it to a bloody pulp. And the center of his head was entirely laid bare . . . red blood, white bone, and blue-gray brain.
Who this dead, mangled man was, or what had caused his anguish, was something I was destined never to know. For my father took me at once in his arms and turned me away from the sight, cradling me against his chest while the rain and hot tears mingled on my cheeks. As I sobbed, my father shielded me from the horror and pulled me from it. When we’d stumbled some distance away, he clutched me tightly. “Oh, Patsy. Would that you had never seen it. Forgive me.”
He murmured the sentiment over and over, the tempest hiding the words from everyone except me until I was sure he wasn’t speaking only of the dead man. Because despite the dreadful shock of the suicide we’d witnessed, and the reminder of my father’s own brush with pistols so long ago, I knew Papa’s grief came from someplace much deeper.
His pain made the lingering doubts about the choice I’d made fly away. I couldn’t have abandoned my father. Neither for Wil liam Short nor for God could I have ever chosen a life away from Papa. The country he’d founded—the land he loved—needed him, and he needed me.
If William had ever truly loved me, this was something he should’ve known and understood.
TWO DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, as we rolled up to the foot of our mountain with carts filled with French treasures, Papa’s black field hands and lighter-colored house slaves collected in crowds to greet us. Dressed in their best church clothes, they almost drew the carriage up the mountain by hand. When the door of the carriage was opened, they received their master in their arms and bore him to the house crowding round and kissing his hands—some crying, others laughing.
It seemed impossible to satisfy their anxiety to touch and kiss the very earth that bore him. They lifted him up into the biting air against his wishes, carrying him to the house while James helped me and Polly and Sally down from the carriage. And in spite of being so heavy with child, once Sally got down, she ran into the arms of her mother.
What did Sally’s mother think to see her children return from France, when they might’ve been free? The Hemingses were all too careful to let such emotions play freely on their faces, but I wondered if Sally’s mother was secretly furious or proud that her daughter was now the master’s mistress.
“Oh, Miss Patsy,” Mammy Ursula exclaimed tearfully as she took in my elegant French dress and my pristine traveling gloves. “Look at the lady you’ve become. We’ve missed you so very much!”
“I’ve missed you, too,” I said, a sudden tightness in my throat. Standing here again seemed almost a dream, and my heart swelled with affection and ached with guilt for having been gone so long. The lives of Papa’s people had been uncertain, at the mercy of those he put over them. They must’ve wondered if we’d forgotten them. If they’d be ripped away from each other and sold off like farm animals. And because of my father’s financial difficulties, we couldn’t even promise it wouldn’t happen.
“Now, come in and we’ll get you settled,” Mammy insisted, leading me up the stairs into the house. That’s when I realized that the neoclassical double-porticoed plantation manor of my childhood was in shambles. Peeling paint, warped wood, crumbling stairs. Looming over a row of slave cabins in much better repair, the once-lovely mansion looked like it might fall off its pillars.
“Mon Dieu!” whispered Polly, who had no memory of the house as it was. I could guess at her thoughts. This was Papa’s idyllic mountaintop refuge he boasted of so often?