CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

MAMA'S REPUTATION took a turn for the worse.

In the spring of '89, right after General Washington was sworn in as our first president, in New York City, a man by the name of Jack Webb was going about the streets of Savannah saying spurious things about Mama, telling everyone he knew about her "unsavory activities."

None other than Phineas Miller accosted him. He caned him unmercifully on the street. It was in the Savannah Republican, the whole story, including how Miller had challenged Webb to a duel. Webb refused.

General Wayne came to the house, furious at Miller for creating such a fuss, for bringing the matter to public attention.

"It makes you look like a hero, yes," General Wayne told Miller. "I knew Webb in the army. He's an idiot and everybody knows it. Nobody would have paid mind to him. The whole business would have gone away on its own. But now the whole of Savannah—no, the East—is talking about Caty. Have you no sense, man?"

I sat on a nearby window seat, listening. Mama was in a chair, crying quietly.

"I never thought about it that way," Miller said.

"You don't think about a lot of things," Wayne chided.

Miller left the house. General Wayne stayed for supper. It was, for him, a temporary victory.

***

YOU WOULD THINK Mama would be grateful to General Wayne for showing up as he did to comfort her, for bawling out Miller, for always being there when he was needed.

But for some reason she was growing more and more distant from him.

Perhaps it was because more and more bills were coming in.

Oh, bills were always coming in. She was accustomed to them by now. But bills from this particular creditor hurt her to the quick. And every time she received one from him, she took to her room for the day and cried.

Wadsworth.

He was sending her bills for debts Pa owed to him. Her old friend. Her lover.

"I distrust men more and more," she said to me one day when she received another bill from him. "I confess, he knows how these missives hurt me. He does not need the money. He does this just to injure my feelings."

But somehow she came up with the money to pay Wadsworth.

She sold the carriage, Pa's "extravaganza," the vehicle I had hidden in that day to go to the docks of Savannah to catch Eulinda before she boarded her ship. And with the proceeds, she paid Wadsworth.

"I will be beholden to no man," she told me.

Did that mean General Wayne? Is that why she drew away from him?

***

BUT GENERAL WAYNE still had the misfortune to love her in the spring of 1790.

I was a young woman now. A dancing master came once a week to the house to instruct me. He was a Frenchman of aristocratic background, of the planter class, by the name of the Marquis de Montalet. He lived on a nearby Savannah River plantation.

His wife had died, and after only two visits, he was in love with Mama. But he was content to only gaze at her from a distance.

He polished up my French, along with teaching me dancing.

As a young woman I could observe, more distinctly, that General Wayne was still in love with Mama. And that he still wanted to do things for her, to win her love over all the others.

When he visited, he often took walks with me. He confided in me like a grownup now.

His plantation was failing, he told me. He was going to run for national Congress as a representative from the Forty-first District from Georgia.

"If I make it, I can help your mother with her appeal," he told me.

My heart broke for him.

I had come upon a letter he had written to her, which she had left upon her ladies' desk in the front parlor. Mama had let me see it.

I pledge the honor of a soldier, it said, that I will repay you with compound interest upon your personal demand, in any Quarter ofthe Globe.

He was not talking about money. Mama had gone to New England at the time. And his grief was not to be borne at their parting.

He had known her for so many years—did he still not understand the depth of her cruelty? What did Mama have to do to prove it to him?

***

SHE DID IT in the spring of 1790 when she took another trip north with me and Louisa. As we were readying for the trip, I realized that we had not seen General Wayne for at least a week, that he did not know we were going.

"He'll likely be around," I reminded her. "Aren't you going to leave word for him? Say goodbye?"

"I owe him nothing," she told me. There was bitterness in the words.

I stopped what I was doing, which was helping her pack. We were in her room. I looked at her. "Mama?" I asked.

"And I owe you no explanation," she snapped.

"I wasn't asking for one," I flung back at her. But I had been and she knew it.

She threw to the floor some gloves she had in her hand. She sat on the bed she'd once shared with Pa.

"Oh, Cornelia, I know you like him. And he favors you. But all these years I have been patient and sympathized with him because he was estranged from his wife. I understood his need to seek out all his sweethearts. He is a man. I understood his needs, Lord knows. Even his on-again-off-again romance with Mary Maxwell and other girls in Savannah. None of it was serious. I knew that."

She paused, bowed her head. "And heaven knows, he put up with my transgressions. But now, for some reason, Cornelia, I can no longer put up with his."

I said nothing. I wanted to ask her if she loved him, but I did not dare.

I wanted, more than I wanted to breathe at the moment, to ask her if he was my father. Because the thought, the question, never left my mind. Never, over the past few years, did I ever stop thinking of it. Never did I stop wondering or hoping to find out.

But I understood what General Wayne wanted me to know.

That if I knew the truth, that if he was and I knew it, I would never again think good of my mama. And he did not want that.

So there he was, protecting her again.

And if he was not my father, then nobody lost anything. But he would not tell me that he was not, either. He would not give me that. I had to earn that myself, he'd told me. I had to learn to love and trust the people concerned enough to believe it was not so.

But after what Mama had shown me over the past few years, I could not summon the love and trust for her. I just could not do it.

So there was General Wayne. And there was always the possibility that he could be my father. And I must live with it.

"I still think," I told Mama, "that you should have told him goodbye."

Because, I added to myself, all you are doing is hurting him. Going out of your way to hurt him. And we only do that to people we love.

After all, I was a young woman now. And as a young woman you know such things.