The Widow's War

Senator Presgrove has rented an elegant house in Georgetown surrounded by a lawn so smooth it looks as if it has been clipped with embroidery scissors. It is a ship of a house with white pillars that look like masts, odd windows shaped like portholes, and a railed widow’s walk that reminds Carrie of the deck of The Frances Scott. In back is a large garden in the French style, each tree and bush cut into a geometric form, each path a hedge-bordered grid that ends at a bit of marble sculpture or a fountain. If the jungle is nature with its hair let down, this is nature with its hair put up in a tight bun, and as Carrie gazes at the garden through the windows of the back parlor, she feels pity for the flowers, which must grow in straight lines or suffer execution at the hands of the senator’s gardener.

She and Duncan have washed off the soot of the train, changed their clothes, and spent a mercifully short quarter of an hour talking to Bennett before he climbed back into his carriage and disappeared on official business. Now it’s time for something that Carrie has been looking forward to for months. She thought it would occur sooner, thought the woman she longs to meet would be standing beside Deacon’s father on the platform when their train rolled into the station, but the near-mother who won her heart long before she met Deacon is nowhere in sight because, as Deacon explains, she is ill.

“Very.” There is something about the stark simplicity of the word that makes her not want to ask for details. Up they go, round and round, doubling back on themselves, always a little higher, until the parquet floor of the entry hall looks like a chessboard seen at a great distance. Here and there round windows appear, punched into the walls, letting in thick shafts of light.

Carrie looks at Deacon who is making his way up the steps just in front of her and thinks how strange it is that despite everything, William’s mother has become her mother-in-law. For that is who lives on the top floor of this house like an angel gone into flight: Mrs. Bennett Presgrove, formerly Mrs. Patrick Saylor. Too ill to meet the train, too ill to come downstairs and greet Carrie and Deacon when they arrived, so ill that Carrie and Deacon are lifting their feet carefully from step to step as if she can be shattered by sounds.

Fourteen years have passed since Mrs. Presgrove and Carrie last met. Mrs. Presgrove has been widowed, lost her only son, seen her health destroyed, and according to Deacon, become an invalid who never leaves her room. Will she greet Carrie with the warmth and affection Carrie remembers so well, or will she blame Carrie for William’s death?

The staircase turns and Carrie’s mind turns with it, running back into the past. She remembers that years ago, when Matilda Presgrove was still Matilda Saylor, she was always laughing. During the eleven months Carrie spent living in Mitchellville with Grandfather Vinton and Aunt Jo, she visited the Saylor house almost daily, coming and going like a member of the family. Mrs. Saylor was always there, sitting by the fire in the winter or on the front porch in the summer, drinking lemonade, telling jokes, and fanning herself with a Chinese paper fan that looked like a multicolored lollipop. Carrie was fascinated by that fan—she had never seen one like it. She knew if she asked for it, Mrs. Saylor would give it to her, but she never got up the courage, and besides she knew Aunt Jo, who had very strong ideas about what was suitable for young girls, would never let her keep such a gaudy trifle.

Years later she realized Mrs. Saylor had probably pitied her for being motherless and living with a grandfather who was never at home and an aunt who had about as much of the milk of human kindness as a crow, but at the time Carrie never suspected William’s mother was making a special effort to comfort her. Mrs. Saylor teased her, fed her sweets when she was not supposed to be eating them, and sometimes even took Carrie’s side against William when the two squabbled. Carrie can still recall Mrs. Saylor hugging her and putting a bandage on her knee when she skinned it playing catch, and when she ran away from her grandfather’s house, Mrs. Saylor was the only person in Mitchellville besides William who seemed to understand.

One of Carrie’s most vivid memories of Mrs. Saylor is how pretty and exotic she was. She came from New Orleans and claimed to be three-quarters French. Born Mathilde Gabrielle Vallios—a name no one in town could attempt to say without sending her into a fit of giggles—she was under five feet tall, with delicate hands, tiny feet, a narrow waist, and a thin, fine-boned face. Her hair was black and it curled in ringlets, framing her forehead and emphasizing her large, dark eyes.

“Folks say Mama’s quite a looker,” William once volunteered, and even Carrie, who at nine was not much of a judge of the beauty of adult women, had to agree. Yet there was an aspect of Mrs. Saylor’s beauty that would have been a warning sign if Carrie had been old enough to understand it: Her complexion was on the dark side, but her cheeks were always red.

Aunt Josephine and the other women in Mitchellville whispered disapprovingly that she painted, but they were mistaken. The truth was, Mrs. Saylor drank and used patient medicines to control the coughing that would sometimes wrack her body with such violence that she once cracked a rib. Carrie discovered this by sneaking a sip of Mrs. Saylor’s lemonade and finding that it was laced with whiskey and something called Madame Bonville’s Female Restorative.

The spiral staircase gives one final turn and coils out onto the third-floor landing. Deacon turns right, and Carrie follows him. The hall is long and narrow. At the far end, large windows look out over the back garden. As Carrie and Deacon walk down the hall, the sound of their footsteps is muffled by the carpet.

I wonder what made Mrs. Saylor cough like that, Carrie thinks. I should have asked William. She thinks of all the other things she never bothered to ask him, and a small pain, like a sliver of glass, passes through her.

He knocks and enters without waiting for a reply. Carrie crosses the threshold after him. The drapes are drawn, and the room is as dark as the inside of a cave: a junglelike, slightly green-tinged sort of darkness that smells damp and unhealthy, as if the carpet needs to be taken out and aired and the mold washed off the walls with white vinegar. Directly in front of them, occupying most of one wall, is a large, elaborately carved bed piled with blankets and pillows tossed helter-skelter as if someone had begun to strip off the sheets and stopped halfway. Mrs. Presgrove should be in that bed, but it appears empty.

A large, red-faced woman stands by the night table with her arms folded across her bosom. She wears a dark blue dress made of coarsely woven cotton, and her hair is tied up in a white kerchief. Deacon approaches the bed and peers into the blankets as if trying to locate something. Straightening up, he turns to the nurse.

There is a scuffling sound, and a small, withered figure rises up from the mound of blankets and props itself against the headboard. “What do you want?” a slurred, shaking voice inquires.

The woman who speaks looks so different from the woman Carrie remembers that Carrie has the sensation of having come into the wrong room. Matilda’s beauty is a thing of the past. She cannot be more than forty-five, but she looks decades older. Her eyes are red-rimmed as if she has been crying. Her glossy black hair has turned into a dull, gray tangle that hangs around her face in stringy curls, and every inch of her skin is folded and wrinkled as if she has been dried in the sun. On the third finger of her left hand she wears a gaudy gold wedding ring, half an inch thick. Perhaps the ring fit her on the day she married Bennett Presgrove, but now the only thing that’s keeping it from slipping off is a diamond-studded ring guard.

“What do you want?” Matilda repeats in that same strange, slurred voice. This was once a woman who spoke clearly and decisively, a woman who could sing loud enough to rattle church windows. Carrie notices a small clay pipe resting on the night table among the medicine bottles.

Deacon raises his voice. “Mother Presgrove,” he says clipping off the end of each word. “It’s me, Deacon. I have returned from Brazil, and I have brought my wife to meet you. You know her, Mother Presgrove. She is—”

“I don’t want Deacon. I want William.” Matilda clutches at the hem of the sheet. “Where is he? Where is my son? Why isn’t he here? Why hasn’t he come to see me? Deacon, you evil boy, why do you tear up William’s letters and refuse to give them to me?”

“Mother Presgrove,” Carrie says gently, “William can’t come visit you. William is—” Deacon lays a warning hand on Carrie’s arm and shakes his head. Carrie begins again.

“Carrie?” Matilda’s eyes light up for a moment. “Carrie, dear, you must not keep climbing trees. You’ve ripped your pinafore again. Come closer and I will mend it.” She lifts her right hand and again makes a sewing motion.

“She’s been told. Father informed her of his death as soon as he got my letter. He says he’s told her repeatedly, but she never remembers. She believes my stepbrother is still alive. She even imagines that he came back from Brazil and paid her a visit and told her—” Deacon pauses. “I am not sure I should tell you the rest, my dear. It will only cause you pain.”

“My stepmother is under the illusion that William came to her and told her that you were dead. She imagines that he grieved terribly for you and that she comforted him. I’m sorry, Carolyn; this must be very painful for you.”

Deacon approaches the bed, puts his hands on his stepmother’s shoulders, and gently pushes her back down onto the pillows. “Mother Presgrove, you must not agitate yourself.” Curling in a ball with her knees to her chest, Matilda begins to cry.

“Her heart is not good. The doctors warn that these fits may kill her if we can’t control them.” He picks up a bottle from the night table, uncorks it, measures out a spoonful of brown liquid, and mixes it with water.

“Here, Mother Presgrove,” he says. When Matilda refuses, he lifts her upright, opens her mouth, carefully pries her lips apart, and pours the medicine down her throat. Finished, he turns to the nurse. “See that Mrs. Presgrove gets another dose of medicine before supper.”

“More like a world of nightmares,” Carrie says. She removes his hand from her arm, approaches the bed, and looks down at Mrs. Presgrove who has burrowed back under the blankets. She feels heartsick. Matilda had been like a mother to her. If only she could rip those hideous curtains off the windows, let in light and air, throw away the opium pipe and the medicine bottles, take William’s mother in her arms, and tell her . . . Tell her what? That William is dead? Perhaps it’s a mercy she doesn’t know.

Blinded by tears, Carrie lets him take her by the hand and lead her out of the room. She remembers that moment for the rest of her life: the bedroom door swinging open, light from the hall flooding in, a clean white wall laced with the shadows of blowing leaves, a gold-framed painting, the cool, rough sensation of Deacon’s hand in hers. Although she does not yet know it, this is the last time she will completely believe anything he tells her.

In the months that follow, she will think of herself as a blind woman, a woman unwittingly crossing a chasm on a thin sheet of ice, a woman trapped in a net, a woman hooked like a fish. She will search in vain for the perfect metaphor to describe how quickly things fall apart after that sickroom encounter: an explosion, a wildfire, a single glass jerked from the bottom of a pyramid of glasses, but no comparison she can come up with begins to describe the terrible rapidity of events.

“But surely . . .” Carrie stops herself from asking the question that is on her lips: But surely your father would not have married a woman so sick unless . . . She pauses, warns herself not to make hasty assumptions, and then decides the question is worth asking. If she is going to live in the same house with Senator Presgrove, she needs to know why he has chosen to marry an invalid who smokes opium and does not recognize her own stepson, or perhaps for that matter, the senator himself.

“Is your stepmother wealthy? William and I didn’t talk much about his mother. We were too busy taking care of the sick and trying not to fall sick ourselves, but before he became ill, he told me that, like you, he and his father had quarreled over slavery, and that his father had cut him out of his will. I assume that means that when William’s father died, your stepmother inherited all of his estate—”

Carrie stops speaking. Deacon’s face has darkened. For a few more seconds she believes his expression conveys nothing more than the jealousy a newly married man might feel on hearing his wife mention her lover’s name. Then he speaks.

He gives her another look that she does not like in the least. “If you must know, it was a love match. Mrs. Saylor was not bedridden when they met. My father was besotted with her and she with him. In fact, I have never seen a couple so devoted to each other.”

The second indication that she is being deceived comes the following Tuesday in the form of cannon fire. The concussions are so loud, they rattle the chandeliers, make the windows tremble, and knock a small porcelain shepherdess off the parlor mantelpiece. As Carrie hurries toward the front door to see what is going on, gunshots ring out from the back of the house. Reversing direction, she runs toward the garden. There she finds Deacon and Bennett standing beside a fountain, shooting their pistols in the air, and whooping at the top of their lungs.

In the distance, over the cannonades, Carrie can hear church bells simultaneously ringing and tolling in a wild cacophony of joy and grief. A series of smaller explosions fills the air, smoke trails from fireworks, and Roman candles crisscross the sky.

The salute being over, the cannons fall silent. Laughing and cheering, father and son embrace and slap each other on the back, and as they do so, Carrie realizes two things: first, President Pierce must have signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act; and, second, Deacon and his father are both happy about it.

That night at dinner Deacon makes no attempt to hide his joy at the prospect of Kansas entering the Union as a slave state. As Carrie sits at the far end of the table, feeling invisible, he and his father drink, smoke, and talk politics, and what she hears them say makes her feel as if a blindfold is being ripped off her eyes.

All day the telegraph wires have been speeding the news to other parts of the country and bringing back descriptions of how Americans are reacting to President Pierce’s approval of the plebiscite. The evening papers are reporting that in Massachusetts people are wearing black armbands. In Indiana they are flying the American flag at half-mast. In Chicago banners have been strung over the streets, proclaiming: NO MORE SLAVE TERRITORY! NO MORE SLAVE STATES! NO MORE SLAVERY!!

Yet as effigies of President Pierce burn all over the North, the South is celebrating. In Charleston people have taken to the streets to express their approval. In Atlanta wealthy slave owners are rejoicing, balls are being planned, and women have sewn victory banners onto their parasols.

We. The word sticks in Carrie’s throat. She gags on it, puts down her knife and fork and glares at Deacon, but he doesn’t notice. Father and son go on congratulating themselves. By the time dinner is over, Carrie is convinced Deacon is not an abolitionist and never has been. In other words, he’s been lying to her for months. He must have lied when he proposed, lied when he comforted her after Willa’s death. This is a very disturbing thought, but when she confronts him, he denies everything.

“Yes. You told me you and he disagreed bitterly over slavery, but I only see you rejoicing with him. Pierce has done evil work this day. The Kansas-Nebraska Act is an infamy. How can you even pretend to celebrate it!”

“It means, I want you to be able to live here in peace and quiet until I can find us a suitable home of our own. As I told you when I asked you to become my wife, my father is not simply pro-slaver; he believes in slavery the way a circuit-riding Methodist preacher believes in God. It’s his religion. He knows I believe the institution should be abolished, but if I were to mention this openly, he would charge me like a bull elephant. He’s a formidable orator when riled. When he was practicing law, he used to chaw up his opponents on a daily basis.

“You should go to the Capitol someday and sit in the Senate visitors’ gallery and hear him, and then you’ll see what I’m up against. He’s half-bloodhound, half-cougar, and half-grizzly bear, and if you tell me that’s one half too many, I’ll tell you that’s because Bennett Presgrove’s got more meanness in him than Caligula and more stubbornness than a mule pulling a load of bricks uphill in a wagon with no wheels.”

Deacon smiles. “Yes, ma’am, I surely am. And you would be, too, if you knew him better. So let me humor him as long as we’re living under his roof. What does it matter if I pretend to agree with him? You know what’s in my heart.”

“I adore you,” he says. “If you want to leave my father’s house, I’ll take you out of here tonight, but I have to warn you that Washington hotels aren’t very comfortable.”

He could not have said anything more calculated to make her feel guilty. She cannot reply that she adores him, too, and she certainly cannot say she loves him, although she is still trying to, so instead she says: “Humor your father if you feel you must, but don’t act so enthusiastic about it.”

For a fleeting second just before he drops her hands, she sees a look of triumph cross his face. In the months that follow, she often asks herself what that look meant. Did he believe he had won the game? Did he think she would never again question him about his political beliefs? Did he really believe he could go on deceiving her?

Perhaps the truth was less complicated. Perhaps he simply did not care if she found out what a fool she’d been. After all, he had her in his power. She had married him of her own free will and come to a country with him where she had no friends and only one relation, who she couldn’t stand and who couldn’t stand her. Looked at from Deacon’s perspective, those lies were a kind of courtesy. He need not have lied to her at all, but no doubt he thought a gentleman who had deceived a lady owed her a bit of fiction.

Dropping her hands, Deacon gives her another smile warmer than the first, more winning, more handsome, a smile designed to melt marble and carve roads through the wilderness. “Get dressed, honey,” he says. “We’re going to a party.”

“It’s a reception at the French Embassy. The French completely abolished slavery six years ago. Liberté, égalité, fraternité, and all that.” He smiles again, warmly, convincingly with so much truth in his eyes that she suddenly feels ashamed of herself for doubting him.

Reassured, she goes up to her room to change. She would rather retire with a good book and a glass of milk, but before they married, Deacon explained life in Washington was an endless string of social events and warned she would rarely have a night free.

My wifely duty, she thinks as she examines her dresses. As she sorts through them, fingering the skirts and examining the lace, she silently thanks Nettie Wiggins. On the voyage from Brazil, Nettie decided Carrie could not possibly arrive in Washington wearing what she called “those sweet, but impossibly unfashionable little frocks,” so she willed Carrie most of her wardrobe, all of which Nettie intended to replace as soon as she landed.

Carrie and Nettie might be different in spirit, intellect, and complexion, but by a miracle of couture they are the same size. As a result, Carrie has morning dresses, tea dresses, ruffled ball gowns, flower-bedecked bonnets, a light summer evening cloak, dozens of shawls, and even a gilded lightning bolt designed to hold up her hair, which Nettie warned must be arranged casually à la Grecque.

“Please, sugar,” Nettie insisted, “no braids or you will look like a servant. You must let your curls emerge.” Nettie also told Carrie she should get Deacon to set up accounts for her with dressmakers, but Carrie figures she can set up her own accounts, and besides, she has no intention of wasting money on clothing—at least not at the rate Nettie says it is wasted in Washington.

Nettie’s frocks are not to Carrie’s taste. She prefers simplicity, a concept Nettie probably abandoned on the day her mother took her out of pinafores, but after considering all the possibilities, she selects a low-necked blue silk dress with short sleeves and a Bertha collar of sheer lace. The dress is so draped with artificial flowers that she feels as if she should water it before she puts it on, but she has to admit it’s pretty, and she’s always liked pretty things.

The ladies’ maid, who like Mrs. Presgrove’s nurse is Irish, helps Carrie slip the dress over her head and then arranges her hair. All of the servants in Senator Presgrove’s house seem to have come with the place, and none of them appear to be slaves. As Carrie slips on her evening gloves—also a gift from Nettie—she thinks how fortunate this is. She might be able endure the senator’s political views by gritting her teeth and holding her tongue, but if he had brought his slaves to Washington, she would have been sorely tempted to put something nasty in his coffee. The garden is filled with possibilities: foxglove, Devil’s trumpet, lily-of-the-valley . . .

Throwing one of Nettie’s shawls around her shoulders, she descends the spiral staircase, is admired by both Deacon and his father, and is loaded into the carriage like an over-sized bouquet. Twenty minutes later they arrive at the French Embassy, and half an hour after that, she gets up in the middle of a conversation and walks out. The French ambassador may represent a country that has freed its slaves, but as far as she can tell there’s not a single American at this gathering who believes in abolition, and they are doing just what Deacon promised her they would not do: celebrating the signing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

“Washington is so terribly divided these days,” a senator’s wife says shortly before Carrie rises to her feet. Mrs. Greenleaf is a pretty, kind, well-meaning woman with a soft Southern accent, and Carrie takes an instant liking to her, but she does not like what Mrs. Greenleaf says.

“Oh, people still pay formal calls, and sometimes, when compelled, they attend the same public assemblies, but no one invites the wives of Northern and Southern senators to the same parties anymore. What a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Presgrove. Your husband and father-in-law are such strong supporters of States’ Rights. You must be terribly proud of them.”

The senator’s wife looks at her in confusion. “But how can you not be? Your husband and his father are among the staunchest allies of the South in Washington. I hear President Pierce himself consulted Senator Presgrove before he signed the act and that your husband was present at their meeting.”

“Excuse me,” Carrie says. “I feel unwell and must leave at once.” Rising to her feet, she throws Nettie’s shawl around her shoulders and walks out of the French Embassy, passing within a few feet of Deacon who is so involved in conversation he does not notice her exit.

The doorman hails her a cab, and she tells the driver to take her back to Georgetown. When she arrives, she finds the Presgrove house dark except for the lamp that hangs over the front door. Seizing the knocker, she rouses the servants and is conducted to her room where she sheds Nettie’s fancy frock. For hours, she paces back and forth waiting for Deacon to return so she can confront him with his deception, but he does not put in an appearance. Finally, she gives up and goes to bed.

The gunshots and fireworks go on all night. She sleeps fitfully, turning her sheets into a damp, tangled pile. It is viciously hot and more than once she is awakened by the high-pitched whine of a mosquito. Around two in the morning, the Presgrove carriage returns bearing only the senator who, by the sound of it, is drunk.

That night she dreams of Brazil and the Amazon, of ships with tall masts going down in seas the color of buttermilk, of William making love to her on a warm beach, and a small girl floating away on the waves with a purple orchid clutched to her breast. Just before sunrise she wakes up alone in bed, wracked by nausea. Staggering to the chamber pot, she vomits. When she touches her breasts through the thin cotton of her nightgown, she finds they are heavy and sore. For the past few days, she’s been aware of this, but she’s been pushing it to the back of her mind and telling herself it doesn’t matter.

Walking over to the dressing table, she unties the strings of her nightgown, pulls it off her shoulders, and inspects herself in the mirror. No! she thinks. Not now! But her menses are two weeks late, and once again all the other signs are present.

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, she tries to absorb the implications of being with child by Deacon. Only a few hours ago, she was seriously considering leaving him and returning to Brazil, but she can’t possibly make the voyage if she is carrying a child. This baby has come at the wrong time. It ties her to a man who lied to her, a man who most likely never loved her, a man who must have married her for her money just the way his father married Matilda for hers. She has fallen into a nest of fortune hunters, and a baby will anchor her here. If she leaves Deacon after she gives birth, the law will give the child to him. And if she stays: What then?

She needs to know as soon as possible if what she fears is true. Is there any way to tell for sure if she is with child? Has her waist thickened? She doesn’t think so. Her corset laces are no shorter. She rests the palm of her hand on her belly and remembers how Willa moved inside her, that sensation of butterfly wings and rising bubbles that will not happen for weeks yet—

Suddenly she feels a rush of happiness so intense it makes her gasp. This baby exists; it lives inside her. She doesn’t know how she knows this, but she’s sure of it. For a moment she allows joy to wash over her. This child will never replace Willa, but it is a gift, and no matter what sacrifices she has to make, she’ll love it with all her heart and do what’s best for it.

Grabbing one of Nettie’s shawls, she throws it over her nightgown and walks downstairs and out into the garden. Overhead, the stars are intense and unfamiliar. She is used to seeing the Southern Cross and Carina, but what does it matter? The sky of the northern hemisphere is as beautiful as the sky of the south; the flowers in this garden smell as sweet as the flowers in Rio. She will teach her baby the names of new plants and new constellations. Maybe she can make a life with Deacon for the sake of their child. She’s young. She has a whole life in front of her filled with possibilities. Somehow things will work out.