Beauty From Ashes (3 page)

to hope that I’d someday find room not only to grieve for my own mother, but to allow God to turn my grief into something useful? You’re with Him now. Tell me, is He a redeemer God, darling? Can He redeem even my tears and despair and failure? I’ve been failing everyone, even you, because I’ve been so helpless against all this onslaught of grief—one loved one after another, John. Now Mama’s gone, too. Have you seen Mama yet? Where you are? Will you ask God to help me find room to grieve for her, too? To grieve so that I can begin to be me again? How can I possibly help poor Papa with his loss when I’m so numb all over?”

As though afraid to stop talking to John for fear he’d be gone again, she hurried to break the seal on the one-page letter from Fanny Kemble Butler and explained to him that they’d heard not only from Fanny but from Willy Maxwell, too, and from dear, courageous Frances Anne, who was still trying to live without John’s brother, William.

Fanny Kemble Butler’s letter was sent from Philadelphia and dated three weeks ago.

My dear Anne … 25

I’m writing from a dark mood mainly to let you know that from now on, I should be addressed at the newly remodeled Walnut Street house. Should you find time to write, I could not bear to miss receiving a letter from you. I pass my days mostly alone, though, in a near total, locked silence. My husband, Pierce, in conspiracy with the children’s efficient but hateful governess, has laid down such brutal rules for me that I am permitted, due to my rank misbehavior over slavery, as he terms it, to spend only one hour a day with my daughters, who need me so much. if I chance to meet her with my two girls anywhere in the house, I am not allowed to speak to them, so obedient is the governess to her benefactor since she knows I am penniless without Pierce’s dole to me. Anne, I am ashamed to add to your already unbearable sorrow even by telling you that for love of my children and for love of this shallow, selfish man, I literally begged him to allow me to live again in the same house with them. Dear Anne, does this help you in your own black grief? Does it help you at all that your memories of the late, handsome John Fraser are of a love that now can

never die or even tarnish? You have that much. Oh, at least you have that much!

There were a few more agonized lines, but Anne stopped reading. Gifts from God, she knew, did not always arrive in sweetness and beauty. Had God sent Fanny’s pathetic, tragic plaint in order to stiffen Anne’s own sagging spirit? Had she been truly grateful that all her memories of John would, through all eternity, be beautiful and good?

Staring out over the creek and the marshes, she could almost feel the ugly, old skin of self-pity begin to peel away as though it had literal substance—as though her body were shedding it. For long, anxious minutes, she sat there on the dock and felt naked, exposed, afraid, because self-pity, she realized only now, had become a protective cloak; had caused her sense of failure before her own children, who needed her as desperately as the Butler girls needed Fanny. Pete and John Couper and Fanny and Selina needed Anne to be their mother again, needed her to smile and laugh with them. Needed her to help them find a way to bridge the very real grief they

all suffered at losing not only their 27 adored teacher, Isabella, but their sister Annie, their beloved, laughing father—and now Grandmother Couper.

“I’m not the only one who misses John,” she said aloud. “I’m not the only one who misses Isabella and Annie, and I’m certainly not the only one who misses my mama.”

The words were barely spoken into the cloudless, hot day when tears began to flow again, and until her first hard weeping for her dead mother slowed, she couldn’t have seen well enough to finish Fanny Kemble Butler’s unhappy letter if she’d tried. Nor had she noticed that her grown daughter had tiptoed onto the dock and was standing silently behind where she sat.

“Pete! How long have you been standing there?”

“All the time you’ve been sobbing your heart out,” the tall young woman said in an almost matter-of-fact voice. “You were crying for Grandmama Couper, weren’t you?”

“I—I think I was. And for the first time since she left us in April. I guess I haven’t had any tears left for her until now. I’m ashamed of myself, but until a few minutes ago,

I don’t think I really believed that she’s gone, too.”

“And you knew Grandmama would understand that.”

Anne reached for Pete’s hand, pulled her down beside her on the dock. “I’m not sure. You may be right, but I don’t think I’d reached the place where I even considered what your grandmother might be thinking of my dry eyes. I’ve been dwelling only on myself. Can you ever forgive me?”

“You bet,” Pete said in her tomboy way. “After all, you were never quite as close to Grandmama as you are to Grandpapa.”

“What?”

“I just said I’ve known for years that you and Grandmama kind of had to work on being close the way a mother and daughter are supposed to be. At least in books—and in the minds of people who don’t know them very well.”

Anne studied Pete’s always expressive face. “I wonder if I’ve ever known exactly what you’ve been thinking about—anything, darling.”

Now Pete was grinning her father’s own devilish, somewhat cocky grin. “It may be just as well that you haven’t known everything I thought,

Mama,” she said, the grin broadening. 29 “We’re not talking about you and me, though. We’re talking about you and Grandmama Couper. I knew you hadn’t let it hit you quite yet that she’s really gone. Are you surprised that you hadn’t?”

“Yes! Yes, I am. Surprised and—ashamed.”

“That’s silly.”

“Silly?”

“I don’t want us ever to have to work on being close. I’ve wanted to ask you a hundred times since Grandmama died why you hadn’t cried, but I didn’t ask.”

“And do you know why you didn’t?”

“I just told you. I don’t ever want us to have to work on being friends. I just want our friendship to happen.”

“Pete, I’ve never told anyone this before. Not even your father. But I’ll never forget the day it dawned on your grandmother that she and I needed to start right then and there to be friends instead of only mother and daughter. It was the very day Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler left for the North.”

“Well, did the friendship work better than being just mother and daughter?”

“Yes. I have to believe it did.”

“John Couper said he brought you a letter from Mrs. Butler today.”

“He did. I haven’t quite finished reading it, but I’m afraid she’s anything but happy these days. Oh, Pete, do you think I’m being too optimistic in feeling some new hope? Do you suppose I may be right to have this sense that today—after my ghastly outburst of weeping earlier and after Mrs. Butler’s reminder that at least all my memories of your father are beautiful—I might be able to act more like myself again? That I might be a decent, unselfish mother to you and Fanny and Selina and John Couper—the way I’ve always meant to be?”

“Do you feel that outburst of weeping may have helped?”

“I hope so. Oh, I hope so, Pete.”

“I didn’t ask what you hoped for. I asked how you actually felt when the weeping ended. The weeping just now for Grandmama, too.”

“I feel as though it all helped—some. As though something tight may have been loosed a little. I don’t want to go on acting as though I’m the only person who’s grief-stricken. I need

to be comforting all of you, to be comforting poor 31 Grandpapa. Just think what it’s like for him to wake up every morning in a strange room over at Hopeton, without Mama beside him.”

“Is it harder to lose the person you marry, Mama, than anyone else?”

“Harder? Oh, darling, each grief is different. For a time I believed losing Annie was the worst of all because she seemed to stay so close to me.” Anne got to her feet. “This doesn’t sound right at all, but for months after Annie went away, I thought my grief over her was even harder to bear than losing your father.”

Pete got up slowly and looked straight at her mother. In the terse, direct tone that had almost chastened Anne once or twice since Pete had grown up, she asked, “And how is it now, Mama? Are you still more heartbroken because my sister Annie is dead? I doubt it, frankly. I think you’ll always miss Papa more than anyone else who will ever die before you do. You just think your sorrow over Annie is worse because you could never bring yourself to like the man she married. You must carry some guilt about that.”

For an instant, Anne reacted as though her

daughter had struck her. “Don’t be impudent!”

“I’m not being. I know better than anyone else that I can be impudent, but I also know when I’m being that way. Can’t you face it yet, Mama, that you didn’t really fool any of us where Paul Demere is concerned? Don’t you think I know you hate the idea that Annie’s only child, little John Fraser Demere, isn’t still here with us? That he’s with his father, Paul, and Paul’s new wife? Doesn’t it help at all that Annie and Paul agreed together to name the boy for my papa? Annie didn’t name him John Fraser all by herself, Mama. You know that.”

“Do you have some wild idea that you’re helping by preaching at me?” Anne demanded, turning away from Pete.

As though their roles had suddenly been reversed, Anne grudgingly looked at Pete’s earnest, oddly stern face. The blue eyes—not pale blue like Anne’s eyes but deeper like Papa Couper’s—were not shaming her. They seemed almost to be pleading. Pleading firmly, a no-nonsense look only Pete knew how to give, but still begging her own mother to listen

to reason. 33

When Anne said nothing, Pete asked, “How do you know Annie’s spirit isn’t trying to get through to you about Paul every time she seems to be closer to you than Papa is? We’re Christians. Don’t we believe Annie and Papa and Aunt Belle and Grandmama Couper are all still alive with God? Don’t you think they know about us down here?”

“Pete, yes!”

“And don’t you think Annie wishes you could stop the upheaval between our family and the Demeres that’s gone on now for over three years? Ever since Paul Demere began to court the Sinclair woman? Mama, Paul’s married again and there isn’t a thing we can—was

“I know he’s married again! I also know he desecrated the sweet memory of my Annie by marrying so soon after she died.”

“What can we do about that, Mama? Paul was left with a tiny baby. Don’t you think he needed someone to look after the baby?”

“I kept Annie’s child right here until he went galloping off to the altar and took little John Fraser away from me.”

Now Pete turned away. “I’m here to state that’s something I will never do!”

“What? What won’t you ever do?”

“Get married. It just causes sorrow and heartache. I don’t expect ever to fall in love. That’s by far the safest way.”

Anne reached for the slender young woman, now at least two inches taller than her mother. “Pete, Pete, no! Don’t ever say a thing like that. Your father gave me enough joy and beauty and happiness to last me for the remainder of my days!”

Without looking at her, Pete asked almost gently, “Then, why don’t you act like it? Oh, Mama, forgive me! Would you—would you mind if I put my arms around you?”

“Have I ever minded that? Hold me, Pete. Please hold your complaining mother. I know she needs to be spanked, but hold her instead, will you?”

With Pete’s strong arms around her, Anne wept again, but not for long this time. Another load had seemed to lift. In a way only Pete could have managed, her red-haired, tomboy daughter had brought Anne to her senses. Had forced her to face the bitterness to which she still clung. John and Annie and Belle and Mama were all dead.

Paul Demere, with or without a valid 35 excuse, was married to another woman. He was now the father of this other woman’s child, as well as of little John Fraser Demere. There wasn’t one single thing Anne could do about any of it, so what choice did she have but to let go of her bitterness if she was not to go on scarring the valuable young lives of her own children. And Papa! No wonder she’d made the boat trip only once to Hopeton on the mainland, where her heartbroken father now lived with James’s family to comfort him. She had gone just once since her mother’s funeral back in April because she knew perfectly well that instead of comforting Papa the one time they’d been alone, she had demanded comfort of him.

Was she truly beginning to shed the ugly skin of her self-pity as she’d thought? Or was that another selfish figment of her imagination?

“Mama?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Wouldn’t you like to read the end of Mrs. Butler’s letter? You said you hadn’t finished it.”

“That’s right, I haven’t. Your precious brother brought letters from Aunt Frances in Savannah and from Cousin Willy Maxwell

too.” A weary smile played at the corners of her mouth as she looked down at the letters she still held. “I never knew myself to forget to read letters. Not ever before in my long life!” She handed them to Pete. “You read the end of Mrs. Butler’s and then Frances Anne’s, please.”

Hesitating a little, Pete took the letters. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be alone to read them for yourself?”

“I’m sure.”

“All right, if you say so. Where did you stop reading Mrs. Butler’s letter?”

“I’d only begun what’s on the back. Begin at the top. I know she’s allowed to live under the same roof with her husband and two little girls but is permitted only one hour a day with the children.”

Pete snorted. “That’s one lady who should never have married!”

“Just read, Pete. Don’t comment.”

“All right.”

“With all my heart, I hope to make my time with my girls one of laughter and beauty, but most days I fail. Oh, Anne, dear friend Anne,

no matter how tragic your life, keep 37 your children uppermost in your mind and your heart. I cannot for the life of me, I cannot for the love of God in my heart, imagine that I could have done other than write of their plight and try to ease the pain and hardship of the dusky folk Pierce owns, but had there been another way to avoid quarreling with him, for the sake of my beloved girls, I would have tried. Do your best to live in the sheltering fold of that `amazing grace` we share in our mutual worship of the God who is love. By that grace, He will help you find a way to smile again—for John’s sake, for your own sake, and for the sake of your four remaining offspring. Don’t scar their minds as I fear I have caused the minds of my girls to be scarred. I will try to write more cheerfully when again I reach for your understanding heart.