America's First Daughter: A Novel(9)
But Mama’s eyes went flat and hard. And when Mr. Short stepped out, tears slipped from beneath her long lashes. “No more, Thomas. I beg you.”
He reached for her. “My dearest—”
“Hear me,” she pleaded. “For this cause, I’ve endured long absences, followed you to cities far and wide, and sewn linen shirts for soldiers until my fingers bled. I’ve buried three children and been dragged from my sickbed and sent fleeing in the dead of night. Decline this offer. Retire to the tranquility of private life. Retire, I beg of you.”
Papa put his hands in her hair, but shook his head. “I’m a gentleman of Virginia. To turn down this offer would give me more mortification than almost any other occurrence in my life. I’ve said that I’d serve my country even if it took me to hell—”
“Which it has,” Mama replied, tartly.
And I dared not move or make a sound.
“Martha,” he said, a plea for understanding in his voice. “I must defend my honor. That anyone should think me a coward or traitor inflicts a wound on my spirit which will only be cured by the all-healing grave.”
The mention of the grave sent my mother’s chin jerking up. She touched the locket at her throat, the one that held the hair of her dead babies. “At what cost, your honor?”
Papa flinched, as if he’d taken a blow. Then the fight went out of him. Staring at her fingers on that locket, he seemed to shrink, his shoulders rounding in defeat, and he sucked in a deep breath that sounded like surrender.
And I knew that my mother would have her way.
Brushing her wet cheeks with his thumbs, he murmured, “Leave off your tears, Martha. You have my promise. We’ll go home to Monticello. We’ll add children to our hearth. I’ll retire to my farm, my books, and my family, from which nothing will evermore separate me.”
It was a promise. And sometimes I wonder how differently everything might have been if he’d been able to keep it. What a different life we’d have lived. What a different woman I might’ve become.
What a different nation might have been built . . .
Chapter Two
Monticello, 20 May 1782
From Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe
Mrs. Jefferson has added another daughter to our family. She has been ever since dangerously ill.
I HOLD THIS LETTER IN SHAKING HANDS, the candle casting a golden glow over a bland description of an event that changed us forever. And though I am tempted to burn it because of the sheer pain it gives rise to, I am instead pulled into the memory of the promises that started it all.
Mama’s auburn hair curled in fevered sweat against her pale cheek, her hazel eyes shadowed beneath a frilly morning cap. And from the confines of her sickbed, she whispered, “When I escape the unhappy pains of this world, Patsy, you must watch over your father.”
She had to whisper it, because Papa would hear no one speak of her dying. Every day he asked if she was recovered enough to walk with him in the gardens. When she couldn’t, he sent slaves to fetch flowers for her bedside. In May, it was yellow jonquil, purple hyacinth, orange lilies, and then red hollyhock. But by early autumn the perfume of crimson dwarf roses couldn’t disguise the fetid scent of sickness in the room.
Since the birth of the baby Mama had borne after we’d returned from the wilderness, Mama had lingered in bed saying she’d never rise up again. Like Papa, I refused to believe her, but in this moment, she reached for my hand to convince me. My hand had always felt tiny in her palm, but now her hand seemed smaller, fragile.
I turned my head, so she wouldn’t see my fear, and glimpsed the small room that opened at the head of her bed where my father spoke with Dr. Gilmer, who treated Mama and asked no more than to borrow some salt and sugar for his pains. Through all the months of my mother’s illness, Papa was never farther from her than this.
The men’s conversation was hushed and somber until some question forced my father to answer with bitter indignation. “No, I will not leave her. I’ve retired. My election to the Virginia legislature was without my consent, so let them arrest me and drag me to Richmond if they dare.”
Dr. Gilmer took a step back at Papa’s quiet ferocity. “I pray it doesn’t come to that, Mr. Jefferson.”
Still, my father seethed. “Offices of every kind, and given by every power, have been daily and hourly declined from the Declaration of Independence to this moment. No state has the perpetual right to the services of its members.”
While my father lectured, my mother pulled me close, sighing, as if the scent of my hair were sweeter than her garden flowers. “Patsy, your father will need you all the days of his life. Promise you’ll care for him.”
I shook my head, blinded by a sudden flood of tears. When one of Papa’s musical little mockingbirds died, Polly thought he’d come back again someday. But now, at ten years old, I knew that when my mother died, I wouldn’t see her again until we met in heaven.
“Promise me,” Mama insisted, eyelids sagging.
I swallowed painfully, once, twice, until finally a whisper ushered forth. “I promise, Mama. I’ll care for him always.”
The words seemed impossible and carried the weight of the world. And of course, now I know just how essential this promise—this duty—has been to my life.
At the sight of tears spilling over my lashes, Mama’s soft hazel eyes went softer. “Don’t grieve, Patsy. Don’t live with an open wound on your spirit as a motherless child, not as I did. Be happy. That’s what I want for you. You’re my strong strapping girl, so like your father. You’ll care for our little doll Polly, and our baby Lucy, too. Won’t you?”