4

Robert

MAMA TOOK TO HER BED the day after Uncle Valentine’s visit and never got out again.

It wasn’t his fault. He had done what any brother would do, come to visit her. If I had a brother and I were dying, I’d want that.

Mama coughed and coughed so. And got weaker and weaker. Sometimes she lay so still I thought she’d died on me. But then she would start coughing again. Her forehead was hot, her hands clammy, her breath shallow.

I got frightened and ran to the Surratts’ to get a servant to take a note to Dr. Dent. He came around, but there was little he could do. He wrote an order for more medicine. Again I went to the Surratts’, and got a servant to take the order to Thompson’s Drug Store.

Then I waited all afternoon. But Johnny’s friend David Herold never delivered the medicine.

I went to the Surratts’ a third time. A servant ushered me in. Mrs. Mary was in the parlor.

So was John Wilkes Booth. I stopped short, seeing him. He was pacing back and forth. He looked disheveled, angry. Like an alien thing in that dainty parlor. “Damn them, damn them,” he was saying. “Damn all the talk of surrender! Couldn’t Lee have held on?” He directed the question at me.

Was he rehearsing for a play? Was I supposed to answer?

“So many times he had the Federals cornered. Doesn’t he understand the importance of the kill?”

I did not know my lines. I stood, dumbstruck.

Booth looked right at me, his eyes burning. “The fools! All of them! Don’t they know what will happen once Lee surrenders?”

“What is it, Emily?” Mrs. Mary asked.

“I need someone to send a note to my uncle’s house. Mama’s taken a turn for the worse.”

“Of course.” Then she turned to Booth. “This girl’s mother is dying,” she said.

“We’re all dying,” Booth said. “Some sooner than others, that’s all. Some not soon enough!” Again he looked at me. “Do you study Latin in school?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then tell me this, is tyrannis spelled with two n’s or two r’s?”

I liked it. It had passion. Not like so many of the milksop plays here in Washington. But I didn’t think it would get past the Union people.

Mrs. Mary didn’t like it. “Enough, Wilkes,” she said. She called him Wilkes, not John. Annie said it was the name of some famous English ancestor.

Mrs. Mary called a servant and had my note delivered to Uncle Valentine. Then she saw me out. “Let me know how your mama fares,” she said. Then she went back into the parlor, where Booth was still ranting and swearing.

 

Uncle Valentine sent medicine—calomel, rhubarb, and opium.

He also sent Maude. She was a short, heavy woman with hair tied back in a bun, and glasses on the edge of her nose. She looked like somebody’s mother.

Not mine. My mother had never looked or acted like anybody’s mother. My mother acted like a Southern belle. It was all she’d ever wanted to be. A Southern belle. It had nothing to do with politics or being for or against the Union. She just wanted to play the part, be taken care of by everybody, have Negroes waiting on her. Then she married my daddy and found out it wasn’t to be.

I’d been taking care of her since Daddy went off to war. Now I knew what I’d missed.

I recognized it instantly in Maude’s broad face, calm manner, and busybody ways. She let me give Mama the medicine in the doses written on the bottles in Uncle Valentine’s hand. I told Mama the medicine came from Herold. She never would have taken it if she knew her brother had sent it over. I told her Maude was a friend of Mrs. Surratt’s.

Maude never sat down for a second but that she took up her knitting needles. She could knit without looking at what she was doing. All through the war she’d knitted things for the wounded soldiers and taken them to the hospitals.

“Who will you knit for when the war is over?” I asked. Mama was sleeping. We spoke in whispers.

“There are plenty of young men in the hospitals who still need attention. Your uncle still tends them at Douglas Hospital. Of course, let’s hope they’ll all soon be going home.”

“I wonder what we’ll all do when the war is over,” I said. “I wonder what we’ll blame our misfortune on.”

She smiled at me. “That’s an awfully astute thing to say.”

I was thinking of Mama. That would make anybody astute. I shrugged. “People make lots of their own problems. Then they blame them on the war.”

“Most girls your age are so tainted with their own concerns, they scarce notice a thing.” The knitting needles clicked. “We had a young man staying at our house for a while who was one of the wounded from Fredericksburg. Your uncle tended him in Douglas Hospital, found out his father was a country doctor and the young man wanted to be a doctor, and brought him home to recover. He’s attending the university now, and all your uncle’s classes. His name is Robert deGraaf. He’s a lovely young man but very much alone in the city. You should come to our house sometime and meet him.”

“I have no time for socializing,” I said.

“Not now, of course. But you will in the future.”

I had no future; didn’t she know that? But the way she said it, with a presumed knowledge about me, set my teeth on edge. Still, I was grateful to her. She settled right in. She cooked, she tended Mama, she received the reverend when he came. She sent me on meaningless errands to get me out of the house. To market for food. To post a letter.

On Sunday the ninth, General Lee surrendered to General Grant and the long war that had worn us all down, turned us against each other, and taken away every bit of graciousness from our lives, ended. Outside our windows Washington City went wild.

Inside, Mama was dying. She seemed to dip in and out of consciousness. Yet she held on. It was eerie, as if she were holding on for a reason, waiting for something to happen before she would die.

“What’s all the shouting in the streets?” she asked early on Sunday morning.

“People are saying Lee is likely to surrender today,” I told her.

“Oh, good,” she said. “I’ll just wait a bit and find out. Then I can tell your father.”

The woman who always wanted to be a Southern belle was waiting to hear that the rebels were whipped, that her husband hadn’t died for nothing, before she went to join him.

Around dusk the shouting got louder. Firecrackers started going off. They lit up the distant sky. People were coming out of their houses and gathering in the street, hugging each other, jumping up and down, screaming.

“Why don’t you go out and see?” Maude suggested. “Maybe buy a paper.”

“The papers won’t have it yet.”

“We have telegraphs.”

I went. I didn’t want to, because I knew that once Mama found out Lee surrendered, she would up and die. But I couldn’t tell Maude that. She would think I was nervous or hysterical. Nervous and hysterical were the worst things a young girl could be. You had to be careful. Once they accused you of such, they watched you like hawks. . . . Maude would have told Uncle Valentine. She was devoted to him. And even though she was married, I thought she lived for him alone. Then Uncle Valentine would have had a claim on me, and I’d never have gotten to live with the Surratts. He did have a certain amount of power, after all. He was my blood uncle. I had no doubt that he could make me come and live with him if he had sufficient reason.

It was strange to be out on the street and not worried about attending Mama. It was dusk and mild. The air smelled of spring. Palm Sunday.

People were screaming, yelling, dancing in the streets now, setting off firecrackers on every corner. They were stringing bunting and colored lights from lamppost to lamppost. Young children ran unattended, rattling sticks on iron fences, throwing stones. One group of boys had a herd of goats they were pushing along. Goats, pigs, even cows were not unusual on Washington’s streets, but these goats had red, white, and blue streamers around their necks. I remembered Mama telling me once that President Lincoln’s little boys had had goats as pets in the White House. Before Willie died.

Groups of college boys were jostling each other and blowing paper horns. Some militiamen were shooting off muskets a block away. A man was hawking American flags. In the distance I heard cannon boom. Then church bells started. The college boys had put down their paper horns and were pulling up the plank sidewalks and starting bonfires. A horse-drawn carriage came along; the horse shied at the sight of the fire, then bolted, dragging the carriage. A policeman came along and started shouting.

At the corner of H Street I found a newsboy. “Read all about the meetings with Grant and Lee!” he was yelling.

I purchased a paper. “Is it over?” I asked him.

“Yes, miss. Word came to the White House coupla hours ago. Lee surrendered earlier today. The Intelligencer will have it all tomorrow.”

I saw a crowd of revelers coming from around a corner and ran home.

Upstairs I gave the paper to Maude and told her the news. Mama was sleeping. But with the rattling of the newspaper, her eyes flew open.

“Tell me,” she said.

“The surrender happened earlier today,” I said. “At Appomattox.”

“Good,” Mama said.

Then she closed her eyes and slept.

In a little while, she died.

She just stopped breathing in her sleep. It was very peaceful. And I was taken with the fact that she didn’t have to do anything to die. It took no effort. That was the shock of it for me. Seeing someone die for the first time, it came to me: You don’t have to do anything to die. You just have to stop doing all the things you’ve been doing all along. In Mama’s case, this was not coughing anymore. Not breathing.

I saw it at the same time as Maude. “Mama!” I yelled.

But Maude took hold of my wrist. “It’s all right, she’s gone.”

“All right? All right? How can it be all right? I never wanted to go and get that stupid newspaper. I knew the minute she found the war was over, she would die on me. But you had to have it, didn’t you? You had to let her know!”

Maude went over to the bed and closed Mama’s eyes. Then she came back and put her arms around me. I pushed her off. I flailed at her with my arms. I had to hit somebody, didn’t I? Still, she held me. “Go ahead,” she said, “hit me if you want to. It’s all right.”

I told her I didn’t want to hit her. I wanted her to send for the reverend. She made me a cup of tea. I drank it, and then I collapsed.

I slept for fourteen hours. I think Maude had dosed the tea with laudanum. I opened my eyes at eight the next morning and couldn’t figure where I was. I thought I was back in my bedroom in our house in Surrattsville. I smelled coffee. Mama was making breakfast. Today I would go to the store, because Johnny was coming home.

And then I remembered. I was in Washington. Mama had died. Johnny was gone and would likely never come home again.

I got up and sat on the edge of the bed.

If I were home in Surratsville now, I wouldn’t have to move from the edge of this bed, I thought. Our one remaining servant would come to my room and help me dress, take me out onto the front porch, where I would receive neighbors. They would bring food and let me sit there so I could mull my fate properly, the way it is supposed to be mulled.

Here I had no such luxury. I had to do for myself.

I heard voices downstairs. One was Uncle Valentine’s. I stumbled about my room. Uncle Valentine must not see me sloppy. He must not think I was an orphan, needing him. I put on a fresh cotton frock. I didn’t have a black one. It was dark blue, with some white on the collar and cuffs.

I went downstairs. When I got to the bottom, some men came in the front door with a lead coffin, the one Mama had so insisted upon. Why lead? I wondered. What was Mama afraid of? It looked like one of the ironclads the North had on the Potomac River.

The reverend had come, was directing the men into the parlor, where Mama had been taken. “Everything is going according to plan,” he said. He seemed immensely pleased with himself.

What plan? I wondered. Mama and I hadn’t had a plan since we came here to Washington. Did we have one now?

“The undertakers are here,” he explained. “Everything will be all right now.”

I supposed that in the mind of reverends, everything got to be all right when the undertakers came. Well, that was their business.

“Doctors Brown and Alexander. They are the same ones who worked such miracles on Mr. Lincoln’s little boy, Willie, when he died three years ago. They’ll take your mama away for just a while and bring her back this afternoon. Don’t worry. All her wishes are being honored.”

I nodded my thanks. “What about clothing for Mama?”

“Maude selected it. I hope you don’t mind. The brown silk with the lace collar.”

Dimly, in back of my aching head, I wondered what the men would do about the hoops. They wouldn’t fit in a coffin. But I was sure Doctors Brown and Alexander, who had worked such miracles on Willie Lincoln, would know what to do about a little thing like hoops.

“Fine.” Tears dimmed my eyes. From outside on the street I heard noise, shouts, gunshots, cheering. “Are they still taking on about the surrender?” I asked.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” He smiled as if he had arranged that, too. “General Grant never asked Lee to hand over his sword.”

What could you expect? I thought. General Grant was like my daddy. He wouldn’t have asked for it, either. I would have, all right. It was the least Lee could have done, hand over his sword, considering all the trouble he’d caused.

“We’ll have to have a brief service in the parlor. The churches are all crowded with people giving thanks. As they should be. Then your mother will be interred at the parish cemetery of Christ Church tomorrow at one. Go have some breakfast.”

I moved woodenly toward the kitchen. There I found Uncle Valentine, Maude, and a strange young man who reminded me of Johnny. My heart lurched. He wasn’t Johnny, of course, but I didn’t need anybody reminding me of him now. So I resented the young man on the spot.

“A million Northern men can now come home,” he was saying to Maude. “That’s what it means, this surrender.”

Uncle Valentine hugged me, long and hard. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” I blushed under his concern. But it was good to be hugged.

“I don’t like those circles under your eyes. Maude says you’ve slept. What is it, headache? You need to eat. And have some coffee. Then I’ll give you something for the head.” He pulled out a chair for me, and I sat down. The young man had gotten to his feet.

“Robert,” Uncle Valentine said, “this is my niece, Emily Bransby Pigbush.”

I saw that the mouth was fuller than Johnny’s, the nose longer. But there was something of Johnny in the high cheekbones, the determined thrust of jaw.

“Please accept my condolences for your loss,” he said. His eyes were very brown. And they had a look about them. Confused, and yet knowing. Like he’d just gotten up from the battlefield after being hit by a mortar shell.

“My name is Emily Pigbush,” I told him. Might as well get that cleared up right off. “Uncle Valentine likes to add Bransby to fancy it up. Because Pigbush is so silly sounding.” I was rambling, and I didn’t know how to stop. “Everyone’s teased me about my name ever since I can remember. Back in Surrattsville, in school, I finally got used to it. It doesn’t plague me anymore. There was a girl in school there who had a worse name than mine. It was Fealegood. It’s spelled F-e-a-l-e, but you can imagine the jokes the boys made.”

“I can, yes,” he said.

“I’d rather be a Pigbush than a Fealegood.” I didn’t tell him that my father used to call me Miss Muffet. That was my secret, not to be shared.

I stopped. They were all staring at me. I wanted to run and hide, but my head was pounding and I needed some coffee.

Robert poured some for me. Then he got up and went about the table heaping a plate of food. I noticed, right off, how he half dragged, half limped with his right leg. “When I was in school in Pennsylvania I had a friend named Goatarm,” he said. He handed the plate to me.

I took it and started eating ravenously. Only then did I pay mind to the white tablecloth, Mama’s good dishes, the display of food. Fresh-baked biscuits, ham, fish, and eggs, fresh fruit, fruit preserves, coffee. I was dazed. I wondered how these people had come to be sitting at our breakfast table, talking so amiably, when my mama had just died and the undertakers who had worked miracles on little Willie Lincoln were taking her away to do unspeakable things to her.

“Where did all this food come from?” I asked.

“There’s more in the larder,” Maude said. “From your neighbors, the women your mama worked with, and your uncle. Eat.”

“My head hurts.”

Uncle Valentine made a movement toward a bag on the floor, took something out, and set it down by my plate. A powder. Robert gave me a glass of water.

I took it and swallowed the powder.

They started talking again. “A group of wounded soldiers were surrounded by crowds on E Street this morning,” Robert said, “and made to recount their war experiences. Then the people hugged them and stuffed their pockets full of greenbacks. And I saw three effigies of Jeff Davis hanging from lampposts on my way here this morning.”

“Fireworks popped all night,” Maude said. “The whole city needs headache powders.”

They compared notes about the revelry. I had the feeling they were talking just to fill in the spaces, talking around what needed to be said.

They were. “Come and live with me, Emily,” Uncle Valentine said finally.

Maude and Robert looked uncomfortable. So they know, I thought. “I’ve already promised the Surratts.”

“Valentine isn’t a bad person to live with,” Robert said. “He coughs a lot, mornings, and comes in all hours of the night. He goes to the theater and bets on baseball games. But he isn’t a bad person to live with.”

“You should be with family,” Uncle Valentine continued. “Isn’t that right, Robert?”

“Absolutely. Everyone should be with family,” Robert agreed.

“I don’t think you should do this to me now, Uncle Valentine,” I told him. “It isn’t fair.”

“You’re right. The decision must be yours.” He stood up. “I have appointments. But first I’ll stop by Alexander and Brown, however, and make sure they are doing justice to your mother.”

“No!” I said it sharply. My cup clattered in my saucer. “No, please, don’t go there. Leave it be. The reverend is handling everything. Just leave her be. Don’t touch her.”

He was taken aback. So was everyone else. “She is my sister, Emily.”

His voice. He could do things with it, enunciate the words so carefully, make them carry so much weight, aim them so accurately. I felt ashamed.

“I’m sorry, Uncle Valentine,” I said. “Those are Mama’s wishes. I must honor them.”

“I understand,” he said. But I could see he was hurt. He gripped the back of the chair, his knuckles very white. “I shall not touch her, Emily,” he said. Then he looked at Robert. “Are you coming with me?”

“I’ll be along later. I’ll walk back,” Robert told him.

Uncle Valentine’s eyes went to Robert’s leg. “With that limp you’ll be telling stories about Fredericksburg all morning and come home with pockets stuffed with greenbacks.”

“I’ll fend them off,” Robert said.

There was something between these two; I saw it then. Uncle Valentine had a fondness for Robert. I felt jealous. He hadn’t used that indulgent tone with me. Likely Robert adored him. All Uncle Valentine’s students did. They would march into hell itself for him, Mama had once told me.

And then she’d said something odd. “Some have,” she’d said. I never asked what she’d meant. But there was something about Robert, something in the eyes that made you know he had been in hell. And if it was Fredericksburg or some other hell he’d marched into for Uncle Valentine, I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. He’d been there.

Uncle Valentine was leaving. There was something I should say to him, and I didn’t know what it was. The powder was just taking effect and I felt woozy. Maude got up to clear the table, saying something about putting up more coffee, that people would be stopping in.

Robert was staring at me. “You’ve hurt him,” he said. “He’s a good man. He doesn’t deserve to be hurt. He saved my life and my leg, do you know that?”

“I heard tell.”

“They wanted to cut my leg off, were just about to, when he came along and said no, he could save it. The doctor who wanted to cut my leg off had been on his feet for thirty-six hours and didn’t care. He just wanted to get me over and done with. He was waving his saw and screaming at Uncle Valentine. They near came to blows.”

“I’m glad you have your leg,” I said, “but I’ve made my plans.”

“You’re making a mistake. A big one.” He got up and stood looking down at me. “He is a decent, dedicated man. Do you know how many times he’s gone to the Sixth Street wharves when the boats docked bringing in the wounded after a battle?”

“No, but I suspect you’re about to tell me.”

“That’s where I first saw him. Standing there with the hospital workers and other doctors, when they brought me in after Fredericksburg. It was nighttime. The members of the Sanitary Commission were holding torches. The horse-drawn ambulances were waiting. It was like a scene from a nightmare. But to us wounded, on deck, they were like angels, standing there in all the confusion, with boat whistles blowing and men groaning all around.”

I let him talk. He had to.

“He tagged me immediately for Douglas Hospital. Then he took me into his house to recover. When I did, I accompanied him many times to the Sixth Street wharves to receive wounded. And he’s saved more legs than mine, I can tell you.”

“I’m glad,” I said.

“I know what families can do to each other. I joined the army because my mother and father were always fighting. He was a country doctor. She accused him of carrying on with his woman patients if he came home late. It got so bad he stopped coming home at all. He’d sleep in his carriage in the woods. Her mind was poisoned against him. Like your mother’s was against her brother. Wars end, Emily. But families keep on fighting all the time.”

Well, he had that much right, anyway.

He smiled at me. God, I thought, he reminds me so much of Johnny, I want to cry. And then he stopped reminding me of Johnny and reminded me of somebody different. And exciting.

Himself. Only, how could he be exciting? A medical student with a gimpy leg?

“I’m very glad to have met you.” He stepped away from the table, ran a hand through his thick dark hair, and gave a little bow. Then he kissed my hand.

Dear God, I thought, he should have fought with the Confederacy. All that chivalry.

“I hope to meet you again, Miss Pigbush,” he said.

“Did you really go to school with a fellow named Goatarm?” I asked.

“Yes. He was a childhood friend of mine.”

“What happened to him? Did he ever live down the name?”

“No. He died. Killed at Gettysburg.”

He went down the hall. I stood watching by the kitchen door. He made a little dragging sound with his leg. I thought, His school friend was killed at Gettysburg. He almost lost his leg at Fredericksburg. And here I am sassing him. While crowds out on the street are crowding around wounded soldiers, making them retell their battle stories.

“Don’t take too many greenbacks,” I called after him.

He turned and smiled, and it was better than Johnny’s. Then he went out the door.