The House of Hawthorne (23 page)

Summer 1849

W
hile I am in Boston in July, visiting Mother and Father with the children, enjoying time with family during the day, and reading the sultry, beseeching correspondence from my husband in the evenings, a letter from him arrives that interrupts our peace. Zachary Taylor, a Whig, has won the presidency, and with a telegram notifying him, my confirmed Democrat husband (though antipolitical to the core) is terminated from the custom house. I return with haste to Salem to support my love in his despair, and enter a war. The Whigs, led by that serpent Reverend Upham, bash my love for claiming to be a simple writer while actually being a political climber; the Democrats defend his honor and innocence. The politicians fight like mongrels over Nathaniel’s ousting, and my love loses.

While Nathaniel calls on our blessed friends who lent us money, wearing his shame like a cloak, I bring the children into
the sunny parlor to show them an old treasure box. Una and Julian bend their heads over the dusty lid of my paint kit, and exclaim as I open it. Inside, brushes rest like bones in an old tomb.

“You both are young, but not too little to begin to learn about art,” I say.

I allow each of them to pick up a brush and caution them to hold their tools with reverence. I show them the colored powders, lay newspapers over the floor where they will work, and allow their dimpled hands to assist in the mixing. Soon, while they delight over the life they bring to the paper, I remove a shade from our lamp, place it on the secretary, and begin to paint a mythic scene on its surface.

Nathaniel finds us late that afternoon splotched with color and aglow with creative inspiration. I have no ache in my head, but only in my neck from bending over my art. When I show him the lamp shade and explain that I know a lady who will pay no less than five dollars to purchase it for her reading room, his eyes become glassy.

“My angel,” he says. “Your kind supplication of our friends has saved us. I am both mortified by my circumstance and gratified that we have so many who love us. And now, to have you doing this . . .” His voice catches.

I place a kiss on his trembling lips.

“All will be well,” I whisper, as he takes me in his arms.

He believes me.

Though it is late in the evening, it is nearly one hundred degrees. Nathaniel’s mother and sisters decide to join us on our walk to the
confectioner’s on Buffum Street, where we may purchase ice cream for mere pennies. Ebe walks ahead with Una, the only member of our family besides Nathaniel with whom she cares to interact. Nathaniel strolls just behind, holding Julian’s hand on one side, and Louisa’s arm on the other. I trail them with Madame Hawthorne, who though sickly has asked to join us. I am glad, because I have been harboring silent fears of her declining health. Over these years I have become fond of her, and fear how the children and Nathaniel will mourn her when she no longer lives on earth.

“I am pleased you joined us,” I say, hiding my alarm at her frail arm. She wears, as always, an old-fashioned black mourning dress for the husband she lost almost forty years ago, but we are all without sleeves in the terrible heat. With her arm laced through mine, I can feel the way her wrinkled skin hangs off her bony frame.

“I am glad I am able,” she says. “I fear the time when I will not be strong enough to join you, so I must take this opportunity.”

“No,” I say. “Do not speak of such things.”

She smiles and stares ahead at her family, addressing me without meeting my eyes.

“I am grateful for you, Sophia.”

Her voice is quiet; I almost cannot hear it above the clatter of horses in the street, the mariners yelling from the docks, and the seagulls crying overhead. Tears prick my eyes at her words. She so rarely utters her thoughts aloud.

“And I for you,” I say, giving her a gentle squeeze.

“You have brought him into the light,” she says. “I would not have thought it possible.”

I am barely able to mutter a thank-you, and must pause to wipe my eyes. She speaks no more, and though my family is happy enjoying the novelty of ice cream and a walk through town, I cannot help but feel dread, because Madame has uttered the words of one who will soon say good-bye.

Within days, she begins to fail.

I run back and forth between her bedside, to fan away the dreadful flies in this hellish heat, and the nursery, to keep the children away from her illness. Nathaniel’s sisters take turns with me—Louisa helping during the day and Ebe at night when she prowls the world—and soon I am also taking shifts at Nathaniel’s bedside, where fever and despair seem to be killing him too. I press a damp cloth to his forehead, praying over one invalid and the next, willing myself to remain calm and not to imagine that my children will succumb as well. Nathaniel is often incoherent and rambles about his aching ear and his pounding head.

“How did you bear your headaches?” he whispers. “I never understood the magnitude of your strength until now.”

I try to quiet him and reassure him that all will be well, but I am aware that the woman who bore him is not long for this earth. I fear what her loss will do to Nathaniel. He is in awe of her, and she of him, but I cannot say whether the two of them have ever expressed these feelings out loud. If Nathaniel were well, I would encourage him to do so before it is too late.

The days pass in the darkness of decline, and the children become more and more unruly. They are disturbed by the drawn
countenances of those who are normally so bright with them, and are left so often alone that they fight and fuss and make a terrible racket. As soon as I empty Madame Hawthorne’s chamber pot and hang the laundry, Julian has spilled my writing ink on Una’s dolly, and her flare of temper can be heard from Mall Street to Herbert. I try never to shout at the children, but it is hard to restrain myself when Una kicks Julian’s little shin with all her might. Ebe finally emerges to help, and removes her favorite to the upstairs room with kisses, much to my frustration at this indulgence of my daughter. Louisa comes downstairs just as Nathaniel appears in our chamber doorway. He is still flushed and looks dreadful, but he is at least standing, and I praise God aloud for that.

“Natty,” says Louisa, “I am afraid the end is not far.”

Nathaniel looks as if he will collapse at this news, so I help him to his mother’s room, which already has the stink of death. It is a stifling chamber on this brutal summer day, and I command Louisa to open the curtains and the window.

“Are you sure the air will be good for her?”

I give her a look that demonstrates how little such a thing matters at this time, and she nods and obeys me. The window sticks, so I hurry to help her, and when I turn around, I am moved.

Nathaniel kneels at his mother’s side, grasping her gnarled hand and crying. Louisa is much affected, having so rarely seen such emotional displays from her brother, and rushes out of the room. Ebe’s figure soon darkens the threshold. She must have left Una with Louisa, for she is alone, but when she sees her
brother’s devastation, she too must go. Nathaniel’s pain is almost as hard to bear as the death of his mother.

She whispers words to him that further break him until he sobs and places his head on the bed. He replies, but I cannot understand him, and I hope they have spoken aloud their love for each other. I know Nathaniel curses the inadequacy of words, but with this display of feeling, his mother will have no doubt of his devotion.

When she becomes still but for a slight, staggered pulsing of her chest, Nathaniel lifts his head and looks out the window where our children now run in circles on the grass below. He looks back at his mother and then out the window, his face a tempest of confusion and despair, his heart divided between the great truth that is reinforced with each passing year of our lives: One hand is open, overflowing with an abundance of joy and vitality; the other is a fist, clutching a void so desperately that the nails dig holes in the skin.

Following his mother’s death, Nathaniel sinks into a terrible blackness of spirit. He is unreachable, and the entire household falls ill. As we struggle to survive this chaos and recover, Elizabeth comes to rescue us.

I nearly cry aloud when I see her aging, round figure walking up to the house. We have been polite with each other these years since my love and marriage to Nathaniel, but I have always felt a chilliness because of her first loving him. I meet her at the door in a quivering state, and the angel hesitates not one moment
before scooping me into her ample bosom in the kindliest embrace I have ever known.

In just days of having her near us, the veil of mourning begins to lift.

She stands behind Una, holding my daughter’s hands, instructing her on how to cut her roasted chicken.

“There,” says Elizabeth. “Now you will not have your mother always do every little thing for you. You are growing. You must do more for yourself.”

Una’s five-year-old eyes are wide and accepting of Elizabeth’s confidence in what she should be doing. I also know Una is glad to have a knife in her possession—something I would never allow under normal circumstances with one so quick-tempered as my daughter.

“I will, Aunt Lizzie,” she says.

Nathaniel looks on with warmth. Though he is still pale, he joins us at table and does not need to rest as often.

“Such charming manners,” says Elizabeth. She praises Una’s moments of good behavior, because she has observed what else my daughter is capable of. My girl has grown even more mercurial with the passing weeks, but I believe that is because of the death and illness in the house. I am certain she will calm down once we are all in full health.

“Me too,” says Julian, face sloppy with gravy and bread crumbs.

I wipe his little cheeks with a napkin and brush my hand over his hair.

“Yes, you too,” says Elizabeth.

My children continue to show off for Aunt Lizzie through
the remainder of the meal, and once the dishes are clear and their nursemaid removes them to prepare for bed, Elizabeth joins me and Nathaniel in the parlor. Almost as soon as we sit with our books, she removes a letter from her dress pocket and clears her throat for our attention.