The Emancipator's Wife (34 page)

“Surely you can work on those while the sun is
actually shining,
and not leave me waiting for you alone in this wretched room in the dark!”

His face clouded in the candlelit gloom. “It's the work I do that will get us
out
of this room....”

“
If
you do it!
If
you do it, and don't spend your days the way you've spent the past hour and a half, sitting around with those idlers downstairs while I waited up here!”

“Molly, I'm sorry....”

“You've said you're sorry and you always end up doing the same thing! Sitting around in the common-room with every drover and law-clerk and pettifogger in town . . . !”

“A man is entitled to his friends, I guess,” retorted Lincoln, “as you're entitled to running about all day with yours.”

At that Mary lost her temper completely and lunged at him, hands striking out blindly. He caught her by the wrists and held her off with the same brutal, easy strength that five years before he'd used to hold off
Professor Kittridge, while she screamed at him, words that she later could not even remember, words of reproach and fury that she wasn't even sure were directed at him. She didn't know who it was, at whom she wanted to scream,
You are always gone, always! You always leave me alone!

He finally shouted at her, in anger of which she hadn't thought him capable, “Any man would leave you alone if he could!” and thrust her down onto the bed. Then he strode from the room, shutting the door behind him. Mary staggered to her feet and yanked the door open again, screamed after him,

“Get out of here! Get out!”

She slammed the door, then slammed it again. Then she stumbled to the bed, fell on her knees beside it, and barely had time to pull the chamber pot out from underneath before she began to vomit, her body
spasming agonizingly in her stays. For a long time after that she simply lay on the floor beside the bed, sobbing and too exhausted to get up, her head throbbing and the room spinning around her.

They had quarreled before, but not like this. She had read in his anger the bitterness of his frustration at being tied down, as his father had tied him.
He didn't even need to know I lied, to turn against me,
she thought in despair.
He was afraid to marry me, afraid of my temper, and now he hates me. . . .

She vomited again and sweat poured down her face, down her aching body. . . .

What is wrong with me?

And she thought,
What I told him was true.

It wasn't a lie after all.

I really am going to have a child.

Lincoln was out nearly all night. Mary lay awake, waiting—listening to the voices downstairs. She thought she heard his laughter before she fell asleep. He must have come up sometime after midnight, with such silent animal stealth that he did not wake her, for she was wakened in the darkness by his voice sobbing out, crying confused words of terror, and she felt his body struggling at her side.

“Mr. Lincoln,” she whispered, reaching over to shake his bony
shoulder, “Abraham . . .”

He came awake with a choked cry and she felt him half sit up, bone and sinew trembling like a whipped horse beneath the coarse linen of his nightshirt. He gasped, “I done my best!” It was the hopeless plea of one who knows that one's best is no extenuation in the face of Fate.

“I'm here,” she said, touching his arm again. “I'm here.”

With a sob he caught her to him, clinging tight with arms and legs, like a drowning child. “Don't leave me,” he implored her, and Mary locked her arms around his ribs.

“Never, my love.”

His big hands closed in the thick handfuls of her hair.

S
HE PASSED A WRETCHED SPRING AND SUMMER.
L
INCOLN WAS GONE
all of April, for the circuit courts, and again for nearly three weeks in May and June. Her pregnancy was a difficult one, an exhausting cycle of migraines, queasiness, and alternating rage and tears. She quarreled repeatedly with Mrs. Beck, with Mrs. Bledsoe, and whoever else came within her range, including both Frances and Elizabeth. When Julia Jayne came to her, breathless with delight, with the news that she was going to marry Lyman Trumbull, Mary burst into hysterical sobs.

Mary tried to explain, but couldn't understand herself, the blind rages that came over her, in which she would say anything and which left her ill with remorse. How could she explain, she wondered, to women who'd never felt the need for bright intellectual sword fights how dreary the feminized world of babies and pregnancy could be? After her quarrel with Elizabeth—from whose house she stormed back to the Globe on foot—she sent a note to her sister apologizing, but received only the briefest and coldest reply.

Only Lincoln seemed to understand. After that single outburst of frustrated anger he seldom lost his temper with her again. He'd do his best to talk or joke her out of her rages, but if he could not, he would simply leave. Sometimes he wouldn't come back till the small hours of the morning, though she would hear his voice, and his distinctive laugh, downstairs. Mary hated him at such times—she would infinitely have preferred a good fight—but the hatred vanished with her anger, clearing up the way her headaches cleared up, and she would apologize in the morning.

“I don't mean what I say,” she promised anxiously, one hot June morning as Lincoln brought her up coffee, toast, and a copy of the
Sangamo Journal
from the dining-room before leaving for his office. It was her one consolation in the final stages of pregnancy, that even Mrs. Beck wouldn't expect her to come downstairs in her condition, and made up trays for her. If Harriet Bledsoe brought them up, the coffee was usually tepid and mouth-wringingly strong—the dregs of the pot—but Lincoln could always talk the landlady into making fresh.

Lincoln, Mary was finding, could talk just about anybody into just about anything.

“In fact I don't . . . sometimes I don't
know
what I say,” she added, a little uncertainly, for this was something she'd never admitted to anyone else. “It's as if someone else is talking—someone I don't know . . . someone I hate. And I think,
Who's saying those terrible things?
And it's me.” She leaned forward on the pillows, looked up at him as he rolled down his shirtsleeves and fetched a sock from the over-jammed drawers of the hotly-contested bureau. “Do you understand?”

He smiled down at her. She'd heard him at dawn in the yard, splitting Mrs. Beck's kindling for her—looking down from the little dormer window at the end of the hall she'd seen him in his shirtsleeves, handling the ax as casually as she herself would wield a crochet-hook.

“I understand there's folks that are that way,” he said. “There was this feller in New Salem, used to pick a fight with anybody, just about. Seemed to be nuthin' he could do about it. He'd only do it once a month or every six weeks, and you could tell he was spoilin' for it because he'd come out of his house without his hat on, so everybody knew. And everybody would just figgur, ‘Here comes old Benson without his hat on, better get out of the way,' same as we say, ‘Oops, it's rainin', better take an umbrella.'” He leaned down and put his hand on her nightgowned side, where the child that would be Robert slept within her flesh, and kissed her on the top of her head. “He wasn't near as sweet as you, between-times.”

Then he was off, to the County Court or the Whig Party meetings, and Mary had to get through another day alone. Another day of wondering how she could possibly look after a child—how she could have been so stupid as to get herself “in a fix,” as they said, and throw away comfort and friends.

She rarely felt well enough to go out, and few visited her. When one is in no position to entertain, Mary discovered, one gradually ceases to be invited. The gay Coterie of her Springfield friends seemed to have forgotten her in the flurry of picnics and dances and parties leading up to
Julia Jayne's wedding.

Bessie Francis came, brought her books and newspapers, and helped her sew for the baby. Her talk of Legislative scandal and Locofoco enormities was the breath of life. But Bessie had her own house to run and half of Simeon's newspaper as well. Mostly Mary was left alone, with her resentment, her headaches, her swollen feet, and the everlasting, oven-like summer heat.

Twice she dreamed of crouching in the darkness of the upstairs hall at the old house on Short Street, listening to baby Georgie crying in the dark. Praying she'd wake up before the bedroom door opened and the men carried her mother's body out, her long dark hair trailing down to the floor.

Robert was born on the first of August, in the upstairs room of the Globe Tavern, with a midwife, Mrs. Beck, Bessie Francis, and Harriet Bledsoe in attendance. The labor seemed endless, the airless room filled with flies. Bessie closed the curtains on the wide windows, to cut down the grilling sun-glare, but the dimness was terrifying, and Mary, alternating between the bed and the birthing-stool that the midwife set up, lost track of time. Pain wrenched her, but no child came; only memories of the smell of blood and her mother's moans—and afterwards that terrible silence.

“Mammy Sally?” she whispered, clinging to Bessie's hands. “Where is she? Why doesn't she come?”

Bessie whispered, “Hush, dear. Hush.”

Once, as if through a long tunnel of pain, she heard Lincoln's voice, and Bessie's replying, “Not yet. It's just taking longer. You go back downstairs.”

“Is that the truth?” he demanded, his voice hoarse with raw fear. Then immediately, “I'm sorry, Bessie. Just—my sister died this way. Died because they wouldn't send for a doctor.” From the bed Mary saw him in the doorway, framed by the gloom of the hall, sweat on his face and his black hair hanging in his eyes. Past Bessie's shoulder his eyes met hers, and Mary held out her hands to him.

“This is no place for a man,” insisted the midwife firmly. “They only get in the way—and faint, like as not, at the sight of a little blood.”

But Mary whispered, “Please,” and in the end the midwife let him in. He might have no parlor conversation, but he held Mary's hands, stroked her hair and her back with the wordless gentle strength of a man encouraging a mare in foal.

“You'll be fine,” he told her, and though she'd heard his fear about his sister's death, there was something in his voice that kindled belief, and Mary knew, then, that she would be fine.

A few hours later Robert was born.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FIVE

Bellevue 1875

“I
S IT TRUE?
”
M
ARY ASKED
D
R.
P
ATTERSON, WHEN THE NEXT
afternoon, sluggish and aching, she came down to the wide parlor of Bellevue Place. “Is it true that the medicine that I've been taking is mostly opium?”

“Oh, not
mostly,
Mrs. Lincoln.” Dr. Patterson seated himself on the chair across from her, and peered intently at her face. “There's only a little, for medicinal purposes, and of course if it's properly taken there is no more harm in it than a sip of after-dinner sherry. How do you feel this morning? You look tired.”

“I don't feel well,” she said. “I . . . I slept badly, and I'm afraid my neuralgia is acting up again.” Waking, she had hidden the empty medicine bottle. She guessed that John would get into serious trouble for leaving it in her room, though she was honest enough to know that she'd have done everything in her power—up to and including physical violence—to keep him from taking it away from her, when she needed it so. She had been appalled to find it empty. Surely,
surely
she hadn't drunk the whole thing? She couldn't remember. She should have saved it, hidden it for the next time they wouldn't give her as much as she needed....

But she felt the woozy aftermath of one of her “spells” still on her, even as she'd had Gretchen help her dress, and the urgency of her instinct to hoard the medicine frightened her.

“Would you like a little medicine to get you through the morning?”

Mary met Patterson's gaze, trying to read his intent, but in his brown eyes she saw only kindness and concern.
He truly believes that giving me opium is the best way to deal with me.
Her glance passed over his shoulder, to Mrs. Hill and Mrs. Johnston, who sat placidly near the window, gazing out into the grounds.

And what does he give to them?

“No, thank you, sir,” she said. “I think a little walk in the garden will do me good.”

“Splendid!” Patterson rose, and helped her to her feet. “Most of our troubles today arise out of irritated nerves, Mrs. Lincoln. Modern cities are no place for those of delicate constitutions. No wonder so many women find themselves prey to hysteria and delusions. All the hurrying and scurrying, all the clocks and traffic and noise! The best mode of life is quiet, without overstimulation. You do very well to take just a little mild exercise. Would you like Gretchen or Amanda to accompany you, Mrs. Lincoln?”

“Thank you, no. I'd like to be by myself.”

He frowned at that, and gave her a grave talk about not permitting herself to fall into morbid reflection, but in the end let her go. As she walked out into the graveled terrace above the roses she could see Mrs. Wheeler and Mrs. Edouard sitting quietly on a bench beneath an elm-tree. Talking commonplaces, neatly dressed, just as if Rosemary Wheeler hadn't spent all day yesterday howling and pounding on the walls of her room, and Heloise Edouard hadn't been subjected to a “water treatment” every day for a week.

The best mode of life is quiet.
And if you're not sufficiently quiet yourself,
thought Mary,
a little medicine will make you so.

Does Robert know?

Of course he does.

The smell of roses and grass washed over her, sun-warmed and soporific. Though it was high spring, the breezes from the Fox River flickered through the trees, cooling the blessed shade. It would be good, thought Mary, to stay here, to never worry about things again. To not be afraid; to not be sad; to feel neither humiliation nor grief—not for long at a time, anyway. The perfect life.

The resting-place she had been seeking for ten years.

“Live and lie reclined

On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.

For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled

Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled

Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world . . .”

She remembered reading Tennyson's “Lotos-Eaters” to her husband in bed, and the far-off look in his gray eyes as he savored the words. This was during the second winter of their marriage, which they'd spent in that tiny rented cottage on Fourth Street. Sleety wind howling outside the windows, Robert soundly asleep in his cradle at the foot of their bed. The lamp burning with a warm amber radiance and Lincoln crowded up close beside her under the heap of quilts: he was perpetually cold, and the room was freezing. One of the good times.

She'd set the book down on the counterpane, and they'd talked about that dreamy land, and what each would do, if offered the chance to live there.

“Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil,”
he'd repeated, one big hand ruffling the fur of Lady Jane, the cat that lay on his stomach.
“The shore / Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; / Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.”

A
FTER A TIME
M
ARY TURNED AWAY, FROM THE SUNLIGHT AND THE
roses of Bellevue's garden, and from that cherished memory, and circled the house, to the corner where the side door was hidden behind a little wall. That was where she'd seen John Wilamet, more than once, standing where he could look out over the garden without being observed from the house. As she walked, she was conscious of Amanda, watching her from the parlor windows.

She supposed that was something that one became used to. Part of the price one paid for this ultimate peace.

As she'd thought, John was standing near the side door.

He saw her come around the corner of the house and made to go in. She called out softly, “Please don't go, Mr. Wilamet,” and quickened her step to reach him. “I wanted to tell you . . . I wanted to ask your forgiveness for my losing my temper at you yesterday. I . . .” She hesitated, looking up at him. His eyes were grave and tired behind his spectacles.

She realized he'd probably spent a worried night, wondering if she really would complain about him to Dr. Patterson, and what she would say. In her Washington days she'd seldom hesitated to complain of fancied ill-treatment. She swallowed, and drew a deep breath.

“When one . . . ceases to take opium . . . what else can one take, for pain? Because I do have genuine pain, you know. All my life I have suffered from migraines, and twelve years ago I was in a carriage accident, and suffered injury to my back and shoulder. I cannot . . .”

The memory of the empty medicine bottle returned to her, and her frantic thoughts of hiding medicine. The memory, too, of the medicine she
had
hidden, in every room she'd inhabited, all those years. She felt her face grow red. In a suffocated voice, she went on, “I cannot be without
some
thing.”

She had turned her eyes down to her small chubby hands as she spoke. Now, looking up again, she saw respect and pity mingled in the young man's face.

“I'll see that you get only as much as you really need,” he said. “But I promise you, you're going to think you need more. And I promise you, too, that you're going to feel terrible.”

“It's so
. . . humiliating,
” said Mary quietly. “To realize . . . to realize what one has become. In spite of oneself, one's best intentions. And you're quite right,” she added, more briskly, “Dr. Patterson doesn't see any reason at all why every woman in this place shouldn't be opiated twenty-four hours a day. We're only lunatics, after all. I'm sure he considers it more restful for everyone concerned.”

“It is,” said John, and Mary stared at him, startled, before breaking into laughter. He laughed, too.

Of course it was. That was why Robert had sent her here.

It felt good beyond belief to laugh again.

Then she sighed, feeling the anxiety that was already beginning to gnaw at her grow stronger, the restlessness in hands and feet that at times could drive her to distraction. Remembering the migraines, and the nightmares from which she fled. The memories of guilt and shame. In a muffled voice she said, “I think I will need a great deal of help.”

“I promise you,” said John, “that I will give you all the help that I can.”

T
HE REST OF THE DAY
M
ARY SPENT IN HER ROOM, AND MANY DAYS
after that. In part this was because she feared that, if Dr. Patterson pressed medicine of some kind on her for her restlessness and pain, she would swallow it gladly—would swallow anything, to be rid of the physical malaise and the horrible darkness.

And in part, it was because the grief that descended upon her was so incapacitating that she thought she would die of it. It was as if everything that she had fled and pushed aside, all those years, was returning, distilled and fermented by time. Everything that she had been unable to cope with then assailed her now, a night ocean in which she was adrift in the most fragile of canoes.

Without John coming to see her—coming to talk, to hold her hands, to give her small amounts of watered laudanum to hold the worst of the physical symptoms at bay—she did not think she could have endured it.

He came every few hours, sometimes so stealthily that she was certain Dr. Patterson did not know of the frequency of his visits and would not have agreed with either his diagnosis or his treatment. Mostly he simply let her talk, about Lexington, about Springfield—about Mr. Lincoln, and Elizabeth, and Betsey, and her boys. About the horror of her loneliness; about her anger that had all her life run like fire and poison in her veins.

But there were always those times at night, when all the house slept and she could not. When the door was locked and, far off, she could hear one of the other patients screaming. Then all she could hold on to was the memory of that windy night over thirty years ago, and Lincoln turning his head on the pillow to look at her:

“Would you go live in the land of the lotos-eaters, if you could, Molly?”

And she'd replied with the prompt optimism of twenty-five, “Of course not! It sounds flat dull to me.”

His eyes twinkled. “You wouldn't notice how dull it was, you'd be so happy all the time.” His hand stopped scritching Lady Jane's chin and the cat wrapped her paws protestingly around his wrist. One of the first things Mary had learned about her husband was that he always had a cat or two around him, and could never pass up even the straggliest stray. She'd fretted about one of the four currently in residence scratching the baby, but Lincoln had said, “Oh, I don't think they will,” and so far they hadn't.

“Would you go there?” she asked. “To live where you could do nothing, and be happy all the time?”

“It's tempting,” he admitted. “When I get the hypo—hypochondria, Dr. Henry calls it—it seems to me that if what I feel could be evenly distributed through the whole human race, there wouldn't be a smiling face left on the surface of the planet. But it's happened to me enough now for me to know that I won't die of it, and it
will
end—it always does. And it seems to me that if we were all to sit, every man under his own vine and fig-tree, we wouldn't do much to help those that need helping. And you notice, those lotos-eaters don't seem to have families, or children, or friends. Would you trade a whole bouquet of lotos-blossoms for Bobby, even when he's squalling his head off? Or for either of your sisters, even when they're hell-bound to tell you about what a mistake you made marryin' me?”

Mary feigned deep thought. “Ask me the next time Bobby's squalling,” she said.

D
ESPITE HIS INITIAL DISMAY AT FINDING HIMSELF A HUSBAND AND A
father, Lincoln worked hard to do his best at both. He still had his periods of bitter resentment at the loss of his easygoing bachelor life—his silences, his absences, an occasional flash of volcanic temper. But he adapted—outwardly at least—more quickly than did Mary.

When Bobby was wailing, or Mary had to leave some all-too-rare gathering of her friends to go home and care for him, she reflected that Lincoln could adapt because there was less change for him to adapt
to.
It was far easier for a man than for a woman, to be somewhere else.

Perhaps because of the tensions in that cramped boardinghouse room, Robert was a fussy, nervous child. He had been born, moreover, with a left eye that turned sharply inward, a deformation that Mary was sometimes able to ignore, and sometimes—to her abiding shame—was not. From the first heart-sinking moment she saw her son's eye, she felt certain that God had punished her lie by giving her a defective child. Every time she picked him up, in spite of all her will to feel something different, she was overcome by shame.

The infant felt it—she
knew
he felt it—and he would scream and would not be comforted.

But Lincoln had only to lift his son in his huge hands for the baby's cries to cease. With his great physical strength, and his calmly logical intelligence, he had a vast store of tenderness, and an almost womanly patience. He likewise exerted himself in caring for Mary, whether during one of her migraines or merely in her simple day-to-day conflicts with the world; caring quietly and without fuss, as he had the night she gave birth to their son. He would have been, in fact, the perfect husband, if he'd been around most of the time.