The House of Hawthorne (19 page)

On the boat ride home along the meandering river, we are silent. Nathaniel has withdrawn into himself, and I know better than to probe him. He needs space to consider his emotions and determine whether they should be acknowledged. I cannot help but think of the Emersons. Once a man I nearly worshiped, the Emerson of our previous acquaintance is now altered in my opinion. In his treatment of his wife and even of my husband, I sense that he feels himself superior to others. There is a coldness in him that I did not notice before, which I now feel like the wind buffeting against us on the Concord.

Nathaniel shuts himself in his study for the rest of the afternoon, leaving me alone and frustrated. Mary is late with our meal, and the chicken is tough, so I cannot help but snap at her. Nathaniel is so deep in his
innere
he does not notice. Later that night, while he leans on a pillow on the floor reading Shakespeare and I mend his torn socks by the fire, stewing in what I feel is his abandonment, he speaks so suddenly that I start and drop my sewing.

“I never knew I could be so happy on earth,” he says.

I am perplexed that his brooding has resulted in such a proclamation, and in spite of the quick tenderness I feel for him, I set my face sternly.

“I am glad to hear that,” I say. “All these long hours you have kept silent from me, I was sure you were forming a quarrel.”

He closes the book and comes to me, laying his head in my lap and rubbing the sides of my legs.

“I know, my dove, and I am sorry you have to bear the burden of a writer who hates words, a lord who has no occupation, a hapless toiler without real success or learning or notoriety of any kind, beyond a handful of stories that will go unremembered in the space of a decade.”

Softened, I lift his face to mine and run my fingers through his hair.

“You must never apologize for being my heavenly reward on earth.”

“But look at Emerson! He has money, a fine home, speaking and writing engagements, children.”

“Inherited money from one dead wife; a miserable living wife; a hoary cold heart . . .”

“Do you really think so?”

“Of course. Lidian is fragile as a locust shell. There is no warmth between the two of them.”

“Perhaps we just do not see it,” he says. “I cannot express my feelings in front of anyone but you. I know what society thinks of sullen me.”

“Yes, but anyone can look at my adoring eyes to see our affection. Lidian is hollow. Her eyes are blank.”

I continue to stroke his hair, and he goes quiet and looks into the fire. How his face shifts and changes in the light. I lean down and kiss the side of his neck at his collarbone, and he reaches up and guides me to the floor where his pillow lies, and where he takes me with great tenderness.

W
inter has come on with a vengeance, and our dear Old Manse has become a chilly abbey, where we remain cloistered near airtight stoves, wearing fingerless gloves, and marveling over the swelling in my breasts and stomach now that the physical manifestation of our love grows within me. My sickness has subsided, though Nathaniel continues to dote upon me in the most ridiculous manner, and I am pleased to feel a return to lustiness following those weeks of nausea.

One morning when the wind has let up and the sun gives us gentle relief, Nathaniel goes to chop wood, leaving me inside sewing flannels. I sit under our owl Longfellow, and direct commentary on my thoughts to him as a peace offering. His eyes still stare at me coldly. Through the leaded panes I see the naked branches like fingers reaching toward the winter sky. Now that
the orchards are barren and we cannot sell our produce, Nathaniel works at the woodpiles, trying to think of ways to keep us from starving. Desperate as we are, I cannot help but thank God for our abundance of love. I am enthralled not only by Nathaniel’s physical beauty—so apparent as he rolls up his shirtsleeves before raising and lowering the ax—but also by his expressions of love. Though his diffidence in public is painful, he is open and effusive with me in the privacy of our home, and I will never starve for that alone. His love satisfies every aspect of my being.

I am alarmed to notice how thin he has become. He pushes his portions to me at meals for the nourishment of our little one, and brings me treats from the breadmaker in the village when he returns from the post office or the reading room. I must refuse him in the future and insist he satisfy his own hunger.

Nathaniel ceases his chopping and wipes the sweat from his brow, stopping to turn his face up to the benevolent sun. Seeing him in the light, I am seized with inspiration. I place my sewing on the table and hurry to get my sketch pad, which has remained blank for many months. Before I know what has come over me, I am scribbling away at a plan for a painting, and do not notice Nathaniel until he shakes his head like a dog, spraying me with snowflakes and wetting my drawing. I scold him and close the pad so he may not further damage my creation, and swat him away from me.

“You scamp!” I say. “Where did this snow come from?”

“I had just had the thought of how hot I had become, and our
dear sister tree obliged me by shivering in the breeze and showering me with snow. There, I sound like you.”

“You are not like me. If I intruded upon your work and dribbled drops on your writing, I would never hear the end of it.”

His face is contrite. “I apologize. I saw some boys racing over the hills toward the river for skating, and was overcome with my own mischief. Forgive me. May I see what you have drawn?”

I hesitate a moment, aware that if I tell him my plan to paint, he will caution me to avoid activities that might induce my headaches, but excitement overcomes my reserve and I open the pad before him.

“Endymion. Loved by a goddess, father of multitudes, eternally youthful. You, my love. I want to paint it.”

His eyes grow dark as he runs his hands over the page, and he begins to warn me, but I touch his lips with my finger.

“Shh. I will stop if my head aches even the slightest bit. But you must know that I am alive as never before. Our child has given me double vitality. My every nerve is tingly and receptive. I feel as if I could”—I look out the window toward the Concord, the sun glinting off her glassy surface—“skate on the river!”

“Ha!” he laughs.

“No, really.” I stand, overcome with the need to exert myself. “Dr. Wesselhoeft would agree.”

“Is it safe?”

“Of course,” I say. “Let us go observe the boys. Our study will make us better parents to our growing babe.”

Nathaniel helps me into my coat and boots, and we
commence a walk in the winter sun, leaving Mary to prepare our dinner. It is such a pleasure to know the industry of the household continues in another’s hands while we may enjoy each other and the outdoors, though I do not know how much longer we will be able to afford help. Our spirits are high, and we walk without trouble over the rough surface of the frozen river, though the boys tease us and threaten to make us fall by skating too close. One of the boys apologizes, and I tell him that I will call on his mother to tell her what a good son she is raising.

“What is your name?” I ask.

“William Hunt.”

“Hunt. Your parents live on Monument Street.”

“Yes, madam.”

“Half the village is made of Hunts,” says Nathaniel as we leave the boys and continue our exertions. “They must have ten children.”

“We might have ten children in our house of Hawthorne,” I say.

Nathaniel exclaims in horror. “Let me figure out how to feed one little Hawthorne before we have ten.”

“We will,” I say. “Your best writing is about to come. I sense it.”

“I am glad. All I feel is a need to kiss my wife, and drink hot cider by the fire, and read books written by greater men.”

Over hills and through groves we travel. He becomes silly and drops into a snowbank to make angels. While he faces the sky, however, he notices we have lost our sun.

“Dove, let us return to our hearth. I am afraid you have been out too long.”

“A good thought,” I say, reaching around to answer the pressure in my lower back with my palms.

He is up and at my side, using his own hands to knead my back. He pulls the scarf from my neck and kisses me there, whispering promises of a most satisfying rubbing of my entire body once we finish our dinner.

Our return to the manse takes longer than I remember the journey out, and by the time we reach the Concord River, though I try to conceal my discomfort, I am weary and chilled to my bones. The sky is gray, and all hint of sun has left. The hoary gusts are back, and blast us on our descent to the ice. I have never wished for a warm bath so mightily as I do at this moment. We are silent as we tread with care over the frozen river, arm in arm, slipping in places where the boys had not skated. On our way to rougher ice, my boot finds a slick surface, and before I know it, I have fallen, nearly pulling Nathaniel down on top of me. I flinch as a sudden and terrible pain grips my abdomen and renders me breathless.

“Sophia!”

The pain becomes an intense cramp, and I am nauseous and feel a growing dread as my underclothes are filled with sticky wetness. I smell the metallic tang of blood, and once Nathaniel helps me to my feet, I feel it oozing down my legs. Red drops begin to color the frozen river, and I let out a sob. Nathaniel sees and goes pale. He hurries us to the bank, where he lifts me and summons I know not what strength as he runs with me up the hill toward our house.

I have become feral and inaccessible since the accident that took our unborn child.

I slink around Nathaniel’s study like our cat, aimless, distracting, unable to settle down to work or conversation. It was my fault. If I had never indulged in silly impulses—if I had not put our baby in harm’s way—this never would have happened. Nathaniel grieves, but not as I do. He never felt the ripening, the quickening from the inside. The witness of an event has no access to the true emotion of the one who lives it, though he thinks himself capable of imagining all feeling. He scribbles in our common journal now, giving voice to our sufferings in a way he cannot compel his throat to do.

I am curled up in his study at the window, leaning my head on the frigid glass, twirling my ring on my cold, shrunken finger. Tears slide from my eyes as I silently accuse and question the river.

How could you, after all I have done for you? My blessings and benedictions. My defense of you against my husband. Is this your revenge?
Or is this the consequence of the witch’s condemnation? Nathaniel’s ancestor, the Salem judge who ordered the women hanged, was cursed by one of the accused before her death. Are we suffering from her dark magic?

I shake the ridiculous thoughts from my head, and glance at my husband. He sits not three feet away, but it might as well be an ocean. Why does he not touch me? Why does he still work
when he sees my pain? To lose my husband to writing after losing the baby to the icy river compounds my anguish. Day and night, I rise from our bed to wander the house, and the only thing I may count on is finding him bent over the desk he has installed in the corner, facing away from the window, scribbling in his notebooks, oblivious to any human or specter who wishes to haunt him.

He is not the only writer. I will put down my own words.

In a savage motion I use my diamond ring to scrape the window that looks over the Concord, but my hand does not obey my mood. As if mesmerized by a spirit outside of myself, I write:

Man’s accidents are God’s purposes.
Sophia A. Hawthorne, 1843

Nathaniel is at my side now. When I finish, he takes my hands and wraps them around his neck, and leans into me in the embrace I have been longing for. Tears fall and I feel his wordless sympathy, his frustration over his inadequacy and inability to change the situation. With what must be great effort he speaks. “He or she will come back to us.”

I am confused. Does he mean when we dwell in heaven? He sees the wrinkle in my brow and continues.

“Our child meant for us will come back. I am convinced we did not lose this babe. He or she is just . . . postponed. I do not know how I know it, but I do.”

I find his strange words comforting, and I am warmed that he tries to console me.

“When you are ready,” he says, “we will try to bring the baby about again. Only when you are ready.”

I look back at the river, muted in the gray day. The stillness in her currents newly freed from the ice and the absence of light on her surface gives her an appearance of lowliness and shame. I am overcome with the need to move forward in spite of what has transpired.

“Draw me a bath,” I say. “Pour me a bit of wine. Let us look to the future.”