One Glorious Ambition (3 page)

Dorothea’s newest brother, Joseph, screamed into the world during a January storm. Snow drifted near the eaves of the Vermont cabin Dorothea’s grandmother had arranged for them to rent just after Christmas. Dorothea imagined the conversations held between her grandmother, aunts, and uncles as they decided what was to be done about her father and his growing family. This latest settlement was a farm where a drafty lean-to served as a workshop for her father’s floundering printing business. Now, a year later, Joseph’s squalls could be heard even in the small shed where Dorothea sat at the bookbinding table. With each cut of the cloth, each swipe of the glue on the board cover, Dorothea’s mind said,
Pick up Joseph! Pick up that child!

“I should help Mama.” She set her bookbinding tools on the bench and stood.

“Your mother must tend to a few of her duties.” Her father, tall and some would say handsome, ordered her to sit down. “Finish what you’ve started.”

Charles sat across from her at the table, his small hands unable
to do much except offer her the brush when she put her palm out for it. The smell of the glue appeared to make him sleepy. She picked up the paper punch and sewing needle. The crunch of the punch through the paper reminded her of the sound of summer beetles squished when she walked. She tried to distract herself from the feel and the sound by remembering her grandfather’s library, books full of facts and sprinkled with pictures of plants and faraway places hidden beneath thin protective pages. She drew the needle and thread through the latest hole, pulling it tight to hold the document.

Joseph’s crying continued.

This work was as tedious as shelling walnuts, a task that left her fingers stained black for days but with more sustenance to show for it at the end of the day. If they made books for paying clients, there’d at least be some hope of coins. Instead, her father
bought
loose sheets and wrote about his newfound religion. He bound the tracts and then sold them to support his family, but it was never enough to cover even the cost of the paper. At least he hadn’t commissioned Dorothea or Charles into selling the articles on street corners. Yet as soon as the snow melted, her father would head to the village in the late afternoons, tracts in hand to sell, and leave Dorothea to tend to her mother and brothers.

In the year they had been in Vermont, nothing much had changed except for Joseph’s arrival. Dorothea’s mother floated through the days often unaware that a child cried until Dorothea lifted Joseph, changed his napkin, and handed him to her mother for nursing. It was Dorothea who urged her mother to eat so she
could nurture the baby, and it was Dorothea who reminded her that it was time they heated water for washing the family’s undergarments and nightclothes. Dorothea let the sheets go sometimes for a fortnight or more because the effort of heating and stirring the heavy cloth in hot water drained her, made her short of breath, and caused her to cough and feel sick. She could afford none of that. She had to be strong to care for the family.

But Dorothea also saw her mother gently hold her youngest, brushing his dark hair with her long fingers, repeating soft admonitions of “Shhh … shhh.” She didn’t know what it was, but a strange, pulling feeling rose up her spine when she watched this display of affection, felt herself grow small as she observed her mother’s kindness in tenderly stroking Joseph’s fine brown hair. What was wrong with Dorothea that her mother could not give such warmth to Charles or her only daughter?

Still, one day when Dorothea complained about the binding work and her father’s disappearance each afternoon, her mother defended him.

“You should be proud of your father. He works so hard to support us.”

Didn’t Grandmamma support them with her payment at the village store accounts and the rent for this farmhouse?

“But Papa has so little to show for his efforts.” Dorothea set the steaming broth on the bedside table where her mother lay ailing, always ailing.

“This does not diminish his goodness. It’s the work that matters and that his heart is in it.”

Dorothea remembered the interchange as rare both for her mother’s defense of her father and the kernel of wisdom that seeped out between her mother’s sighs, her moments of wild-eyed rage, or endless sleepiness even when she was awake.

This past winter had been different because of heavy snows. Her father spent more time binding the books and less time selling. That kept him around the house more, and it meant even fewer pennies for candles or corn. He brewed the ale necessary in every household, teaching Dorothea the skill “that every wife needs to know.”

“Dorothea!” Her father pounded the table with his fist as she worked in the bindery. “You’ve missed a length. Where’s your mind? Stay with your task!”

“Yes, Papa.” She’d been daydreaming more often, not certain why.

“And you!” He swiped Charles on the side of his head with the back of his hand. “Wake up! This is no time for sleep. Do that at night.”

“We can’t always.” Dorothea raised her voice. “The baby—”

The switch stung across her knuckles. She hadn’t even seen her father grab the willow he kept beneath his desk.

“Speak when you are spoken to, girl. You listen well to your betters. You hear me?”

She sat hunched over, shivering, awaiting the next blow.

“I spoke to you, girl!” She felt the wind of the switch slice the air. She shrank and waited. But it was Charles who wailed.

She opened her eyes. “Don’t hurt him. I hear you, Papa. I hear.”

“You’re a curse. All of you.” He stomped from the lean-to into the house where Joseph cried a hiccup cry, and she heard her father shout at her mother, “Pick up the brat.”

Dorothea motioned to Charles. “Let me see your back.”

Her brother stood and lifted his thin shirt, his spine as bony as a carcass forgotten on the forest floor. He shivered.

“I’ll get salve. It didn’t break the skin this time. Just very red.”

“It stings.” He shook.

“I know it does. I know. I’m sorry. I’m the one that upset Papa.” She wrapped her arms around him, careful not to press against this latest wound. She looked into his blue-gray eyes. “Better now?” She must not daydream. She must concentrate. She must be the mother hen with Charles her chick. Joseph too. She prayed she would be forgiven for causing her brother to suffer.

On April 6, 1816, two days after Dorothea’s forgotten fourteenth birthday, when the roads were clear and the spring melt ran in rivulets down the hillsides, a wagon arrived at the farmhouse. Orange Court’s faded crest was printed on its side.

“Is there meat in there?” It had been months since Dorothea had tasted good meat. Her father was a poor hunter. So rabbit more often than venison filled the family’s watery stews.

“Whatever does my mother want now?” Her father stood at the lean-to door, arms folded over his chest. He rubbed his back against the door. The milder weather with ferns spearing through the forest floor might have softened him. He hadn’t struck either
of his children this week. He’d begun making sales again. He’d even allowed Dorothea to feed a stray cat after she argued that the animal would keep the mice population down. Field mice wreaked havoc on paper and books.

“Maybe she’s sent food.”

He pushed Dorothea to the side. “Is she sending us even farther into the provinces to rid us from her sight?”

The driver smiled at Dorothea and tugged on his beard. “She sent letters ahead. Said you’d be ready.”

“We’ve had no mail for weeks,” her father said.

Dorothea pushed her way around and approached the wagon. She stood on tiptoes to look over the high sidepiece, her hands resting on the smooth wood. There were baskets inside! She could smell the smoked hams. Charles pushed against her skirts. She dropped her hand to his shoulder, holding him to her, patting him in comfort. “Grandmamma sent food.”

“Yes, miss. She sent hams, potatoes. Sacks of wheat.” He cleared his throat, glanced at her father, then said to Dorothea. “And you’re to return with me.”

“We are?” She smiled, squeezed Charles’s shoulder. Her heart felt light as a feather.

“Just you, miss. Her granddaughter, she said.”

“Just me?”

“Take her where?”

“To Worcester, sir. To your sister’s, I should think.” He handed her father a letter sealed with Orange Court wax.

“My mother thinks she can get whatever she wants.”

Would her father fight to keep her, insist that her work was essential for his success? Who would do the laundry? make the candles and soap? plant the vegetables in the garden this spring? Her mother wouldn’t, couldn’t. Her father removed something from the letter, folded it into his blouse, then read out loud beside the wagon. “You’re to live with my sister, your aunt Sarah, and her dear doctor husband. You’ll have a fine time of it.” His lip curled and he spat.

“We’re not going to Orange Court? But that’s what I asked for.”

“You’re responsible for this?” He struck her, the slap like a tree branch, quick and stinging. “About time you learned the lesson that my mother serves her own master.” He began to unload the wagon, tossing a sack of grain over his wiry shoulders and carrying it into the barn.

“May I … go?” She rubbed her cheek. What of Charles? Who would look after her mother and Joseph? Her thoughts bounced around like rocks in a wagon. Her letters had gotten through to her grandmother, but her pleas were only partially heeded. She wasn’t going to be living at Orange Court. She would live with the Fiskes in Worcester. She barely remembered them. This wasn’t what she had prayed for. She squeezed Charles’s shoulder as he looked up at her, those blue-gray eyes they shared wearing confusion. If she went, she’d be saved from gluing the last headband onto a book board, saved from having to punch another hole. But as she looked into her brother’s eyes, the reprieve was like the last
note of a funeral dirge. The mournful song was over. She’d chosen: a future of loneliness without Charles and baby Joseph.

“Don’t forget to feed the cat,” Dorothea whispered to Charles as she pushed her satchel up to the driver. “It will keep Papa happy. And know that I’ll send for you. I will. I just don’t know when.”

Charles nodded and lifted his slender hand. He was the only member of the family to wave good-bye.

The room that cousin Mary Fiske showed Dorothea to was larger than the farmhouse in Vermont. A fireplace invited sitting, with logs crackling as winter seemed destined to crush the New England spring. The bed with four posts and a thick down comforter promised luxury Dorothea had known only as a small child at Orange Court. Even during her week with her grandmother before being sent here, she had slept beneath quilts, but nothing as splendid as the goose-down comfort of this room.

“The maid will help you unpack,” Mary told her. Blond curls bounced from the cluster at the back of her head. Three years older than Dorothea, Mary moved like a fawn, light and graceful on her feet. She likely never took a spill into snow-laden mud.

“I have little to unpack.” Dorothea lifted her carpet valise onto the smooth walnut bench at the foot of the bed. She became aware of the smell of candle wax, and Charles came to mind, causing her throat to close. They’d made candles together. “I’m sure I can do it myself.” She opened her valise.

Mary shook her finger at her. “You must discover how to deal
with maids and gardeners and such.” She fluffed her hair in the mirror as she moved toward the door. “Best to begin now. Maids need to feel useful. Papa will join us for dinner, and then Mama and I will meet with you in the parlor and discuss the rules.” Dorothea blinked at these last words. “Oh, they aren’t odious. They’re meant to get us married.” She giggled. “There are any number of skills required, and Madam Dix wasn’t certain which you had or lacked. We must assess that in order to properly prepare you.”

“Will there be time to attend school?”

“Girls don’t go to school. But there will be a tutor, as Papa is quite conciliatory toward girls. But marriage, dear cousin, is the goal of every young woman.”