Beauty From Ashes (54 page)

“Don’t talk smart to your mama, Petey,” Eve ordered.

“If she’s so changed, why not?”

“Sound to me like you the one dat’s change,” Eve said, half to herself.

“Maybe I have! For every day of my life since Papa died, I’ve bent every effort to smooth the way for Mama. I’ve thought of almost nothing else. Now I’m thinking about me.”

Anne took a step toward her red-haired

daughter. “Oh, Pete, how dreadful for you! Please tell me how I can make it up to you?”

“If I knew what to tell you, Mama, I would. But I don’t know because I don’t know myself anymore. I know I’m supposed to, but I don’t. One day I’m spinning like a top and the next I’m me again and that’s all I can say because that’s all I know. I know I’m being ugly, I know I look ugly—my face must be as red as my hair—but until someone introduces me to me the way I really am, I’d be ever so grateful if you’d both just be still and let me go to bed.”

By November 1860, Dr. Sam Smith had lived alone in his newly purchased cottage for some four months, with Pete making daily visits as she helped him select new paint colors for the walls and saw to the fitting of fresh slipcovers. Pete was not adept with a needle, but she knew what she liked and Sam insisted their tastes were identical.

“If you only knew how I look forward to the welcome sound of your special knock on my

front door, Pete,” he said when 731 he’d hurried to greet her on the showery autumn morning of November 6—presidential Election Day, which people North and South viewed with far more than the usual curiosity about the name and party of the man who would be President of the United States for the next four years. If their sympathies lay with the Union, they prayed for victory for the tall, craggy man from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln.

If, as did most coastal planters and large slaveholders all over the South, they believed the South’s only hope lay in breaking away from the Union, they prayed to the God who agreed with their politics.

“I always believed that man was made in God’s image,” Pete said as she and Sam sat together in his porch swing. “Now, it looks as though some Americans believe they can remake God in their image. It scares me, Sam, when I even think of how many people in Marietta will vote for John C. Breckinridge or John Bell because they favor the South. Have they all forgotten that we fought a war to win freedom for all Americans? It hasn’t been that long ago.

Sometimes I can’t believe how fast people forget!”

“I can’t believe you came by to see me today just for a history discussion,” Sam said, grinning at her as he held her hand in his. “Would you like to know, ma’am, what this student in your history class got from today’s lesson?”

Pete could never resist his smile, so she smiled back. “If I have to know, yes. What did you learn, Master Samuel Smith?”

“Nothing new, really. But I’ve been reminded once more that there is no reason under the sun why you and I shouldn’t be married right away. Look, lady, you wouldn’t even have to worry about your husband’s going to war! He’s too old. We’re even on the same side in this trouble. You like my little house, I love you with every fiber of my being, so what do you say, Pete? You know I’ll ask again every day!”

“Yes, I know, Sam.”

“Which should also tell you how completely I trust you, Pete. If a man ever put himself at a woman’s mercy, it’s I with you.”

“You’re no more at my mercy than I am at yours.”

“Explain that, please, ma’am.”

“Why do you think I walk or ride 733 these four blocks every day?”

“You’ve been helping with my slipcovers.”

“I hate to sew and fit things!”

“Then why do you come every day?”

“One thing that’s never crossed my mind is that you’re stupid, Dr. Smith. I come every day because I think I love you with all my heart!”

He stared at her. “Pete!”

“I love you, Dr. Sam. I was sure I’d never love a man as long as I lived on this earth, but I love you. I’m here because I can’t find a way to get through a single day without looking at you.”

She was in his arms now, clinging in the exact way she half hated, because the thought of any woman clinging to any man irked her. “I love you, dear idiot. And if you don’t know it by now, then you are an idiot. The very fact that I’m here this minute would prove it to you if you weren’t so thick in the head.”

“But I am thick in the head, Pete. Why is this minute different from any other?”

She pulled away to look directly into his face. “Because I walked out of our house and headed

this way in the rain, leaving poor Mama alone with that old hatchet face, Beaulah Matthews.”

“What’s she doing there?”

“Paying a proper call, I’m sure she’d say, but the truth is that she couldn’t let this day go by without using her sharpest knife on Mama because it’s Election Day, and Mama’s made a point of letting her know that she and Selina and I are praying Abraham Lincoln will win the presidency.”

“Why in the world would an intelligent lady like your mother even let the old witch find out about her political leanings? I’d even lie outright to keep Beaulah Matthews in the dark about mine.”

“That’s the difference between you and Mama. Mama has always come right out with what she believes or does not believe.”

“But it would be so easy just to steer old Beaulah in the wrong direction, since your family’s roots are on the Georgia coast, where almost no one will want Lincoln elected.”

“My uncle James Hamilton is for him because he believes in the Union. If Grandpapa Couper were still alive, he’d be a Lincoln man. That’s enough for Mama. Whatever her father believed,

Mama did too. Still does. And I 735 don’t think she’s allowed you to forget that my papa, a British subject, also thought it would be lunacy to break up the Union.”

“I’m sure she’s told me that a dozen times. Somehow I get the idea that each time she tells me, it helps her in a strange way.”

“I guess I’ll never quite get over Mama’s telling you such personal things, Sam. It took years, but she does talk about Papa to my sisters and me now, but it’s usually something quite casual. It’s as though she still has to keep a separate world that’s only for her and Papa. It really touches—and puzzles—me that she tells you her private thoughts. When we talk about the Union or try to persuade Fanny to believe in it, Mama never mentions what our father believed about the Union or slavery. I think she talks to Eve about how he hated the whole idea of slavery.”

“Has Eve ever told you she does?”

“You don’t know Eve very well, do you. She would no more tell anybody else a word about any conversation with Mama than she’d fly off the side of Kennesaw Mountain.”

He smiled. “I love your exaggerations. How about another one? How much do you love me, Pete?”

“More than I should,” she answered solemnly. “Far more than I should allow myself to love you.”

Then she was in his arms again, his mouth devouring hers, and for too long, Pete returned his kisses. On her feet suddenly, she kissed him again, holding his face in her hands. When he began to try to say something to her, she held one open hand hard across his mouth and ordered him to be quiet. “Don’t say another word, Sam. Not one word, please! I don’t know myself like this and I’m not at all sure I should even be here. I know that old hatchet face is giving poor Mama a hard time, and if you try to stop me from going straight home, you’ll be sorry.”

Within five minutes from the time Pete disappeared from his sight into the rainy morning, Sam was doing what he’d vowed he would not do again if only she would keep on visiting him every day. He was drinking alone. As had been true for the past year or so, he could not help drinking too much if he was the only person in the room.

The darkened cork, stained from the port 737 in the tall bottle, made its usual welcome, comfortable sound as he removed it, poured a water glass half full, and felt every nerve and muscle in his body loosen even as he took a long, deep whiff of the familiar ruby red liquid.

A woman like Pete Fraser would—did— drive a man to drink, he thought, feeling lighter in his mind already just knowing the glass of port was there with no one in the room but Sam himself.

As the first long drink began to warm his stomach and ease his mind and his body of the longing for Pete’s strong presence, he began his now habitual rationalizing: “If I’m a real doctor,” he said aloud, “I ease the way for my patients in pain. Somehow I find a means to do that for other people, so why not for me too? Every man needs a woman beside him for comfort, for respite from pain. I’ve found the strongest woman in the world and I need her beside me for all reasons, and she just hurried home to Mama. How does even a strong man—and I’m anything but strong—learn to live without trouble when the woman he loves makes him feel like a helpless boy? And why don’t I feel helpless

when she’s in my arms?

“I’m strong when I’m holding Pete,” he said into the empty room. “Because she’s warm and vital and strong and smells clean and fragrant with the scent of rose water. Pete knows herself, knows why she’s so staunchly in favor of keeping the Union, because she had to become enlightened.”

Pete didn’t happen to be born in the North as he was, into an abolitionist family that never owned a single slave for any reason—had no need of even one. Not so with Pete’s family. Her father had been an unwilling slave owner, a coastal planter. Still, Pete could give you reasons—one, two, three—why she now believed so strongly in the union of all the states. Could quote from the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, using his flowing, musical lines much as a preacher uses the Scriptures as proof texts of the points he is making.

A small pool of red wine spread across the little walnut table Pete had polished only yesterday until it shone. He had poured another drink too fast and missed the rim of the water glass. If Pete were still here in the room, he wouldn’t lose control of his thoughts and actions so

quickly. Pete could keep him focused, 739 transform the jellylike thoughts filling his brain into points one, two, and three.

Without her, he lost control of his own thoughts. Without Pete, nothing was as it should be. Nothing was as it could be if only she would agree to become his wife. … With God’s help, he would find a way to convince her that together both their worlds would somehow right themselves like kites in a good, strong wind. Strong was the key word. No matter how often he refilled his glass, he knew that much. Pete was strong. Everything he didn’t know, she knew, and would always know.

A copy of Robert McAlpin Goodman’s newspaper under her arm, Pete let herself into their house totally unmindful that she had tracked in mud and freshly mowed grass blades left behind by Big Boy and June when they used the big scythes on the front yard yesterday. The headline in the paper had so startled her that every ounce of common sense vanished until she heard her mother call. “Pete, for pity’s sake, look at your feet! They’re caked with the horrible up-country red mud!”

“Oh, sorry, Mama. Blame your friend Mr. Goodman. Look! Just look at that headline in his newspaper! Things are far worse than we thought. It says here that Howell Cobb, President James Buchanan’s Secretary of the Treasury, has left Washington and is headed back to Georgia, vehemently advocating secession! Did you expect that, Mama? I certainly didn’t.” Pete turned a page in the newspaper. “And here it says there’s a rumor that South Carolina may have a big meeting in about ten days to decide whether or not it will secede!”

Pete’s mother sank into a chair, her face stricken. “She vowed she knew something that would show up in our paper soon. Over and over with that smug look on her face, she kept saying that.”

“Who, Mama? Old Beaulah Matthews?”

“Yes. You knew she was here when you fled to Dr. Sam’s and left me stranded alone with her. Pete, is something wrong? That wasn’t a bit like you to do that.”

“Wasn’t it? I’m sure I’d have no way of knowing because I just plain don’t know me anymore. I don’t know what I think, what I want to do, or what I don’t want to do.

Maybe I’ve spent too much of my 741 life trying to decide what’s going to be best for you or for Selina or, until she took complete leave for her senses and fell in love with that mean-spirited Buster Matthews, for Fanny.”

“Have I been that selfish with you, Pete?”

“Yes. I mean no. See? I don’t know what I mean. Until now, I lived a simple, pretty uncomplicated life. But I honestly don’t think you can depend on me anymore, Mama. I know John Couper would give me one of his lectures for saying that to you, but I’d be lying if I said anything else.” For a few seconds Pete studied her mother’s still-pretty but now deeply troubled face. Pete had blabbed too much and knew it. How could she think of a way to change the subject? “What do you think old hatchet-face Mrs. Matthews meant when she said something would be turning up in the newspaper soon? I know Governor Brown may call a session of the Georgia legislature if Lincoln is really elected. I know all those Southern hotheads will stir up the Southern states to secede as South Carolina may want to.”

“You don’t know that, Pete. Mr. Goodman’s newspaper only says it’s a rumor about South Carolina’s seceding. One thing we can be sure of is that Mr. Goodman will print nothing about which he isn’t absolutely certain. You just saw Sam. What does he think will happen?”

“We didn’t talk much about the country or politics or war or anything. Mama, all he wants to talk about is getting married to me!”

“And what about you? Do you talk to him about that, Pete?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. Today, if you want the truth, I mostly kissed him right out on his front porch in the swing without even checking to see if anyone was passing his cottage!”

That night, after the girls were all in bed, Anne opened her inkwell and began what seemed, at least, like an extremely important letter to John Couper in Savannah.

My beloved son,

It’s quite possible that your mother has lived most of her life as a widow behaving like a spoiled,

selfish child, and before I write another 743 line, I beg you to forgive me and to do all you can to convince your sister Pete that I see the folly of my ways and want desperately to change.