Ahab's Wife (73 page)

L
EAVE THIS
surf-song for town! Yes, tomorrow I must. Since the
Delight
came in, almost a year ago, I have been into Nantucket but once for each season. Mrs. Maynard's preparations! Her caution! Why should I marry the judge? He is an excellent friend as he is. Let friends increase! I have had enough of husbands. Justice and I are complete, and Frannie will make us but more complete.

How this dress hangs on me! I have grown thin walking by the sea, looking at the stars. And my hair curls as wild as a gypsy's. Well, I have been a gypsy of the sea. And worse.

Ah needle, ah thimble, dear friends. Here I sit and sew in the window room, my bedroom now—Justice and Frannie will be upstairs, each with a window. But I! Oh, I am greedy for light and windows. And I have them. My library is my sewing room and my bedroom. With quilts for curtains, the room is warm even on a cold winter's night, and I burn wood—dear though it is—as I please, during the day, curtains wide open. The judge says I shall burn up my fortune heating this room, but I don't care.

What a tool is a needle, so bright and quick, so obedient and willing.

Town tomorrow. This scene of water and sky, the coziness of my room, the colors of my quilts and rugs, the books, that lamp with the egg-shaped alabaster bowl, will have disappeared; and this contentment as well? Where we choose to be, where we choose to be—we have that power to determine our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being.
The idea abides with me like faith. I will be happy to return to this
place
where domesticity marries the cosmos.

And how will I find Frannie to be? May I make her as welcome in my home as she made me in hers. Oh, little dancing dot on the Island, oh, glad child of four, it was your joy that sparked me to life.

W
HEN
I
GREETED
Frannie at the wharf, my eye recoiled from her corrugated cheeks, for I had not remembered Frannie as disfigured from the smallpox, though I knew its mark was pitted into her face. But I had remembered only her beautiful spirit, not the disfigurement. She registered my recoil, I know she did, and accepted it as a response I could not help.

When she drew back from my embrace, her face shining, she said again, “Una, Una, Una. I am so glad to be here.” The simple words conveyed all, and I could not speak in return for the stoppage in my throat.

I dropped to my knees and embraced David, just as I had when we parted at the steamboat, but this time without reserve, and with his short arms, he returned my embrace without embarrassment. He and Justice were friends at once, with Justice asking to see the wolf skin.

Frannie was slight, as though in her frame as well as on her face she carried the blight of a terrible illness survived. I had not thought her especially small when I was sixteen, but I saw on the wharf that she would be forever slight, as surely as David would be forever short. They were perfectly comfortable with one another, and, indeed, Frannie had a sense of sureness about her that her letters to me had not conveyed in the least. I remembered that, after all, she was Agatha's daughter, and never has there been a woman more self-reliant than my aunt.

But David contradicted that hypothesis with this speech: “See what I've made of your cousin? She was a mouse till she traveled with me
for a guide. Now she's a proper girl, ain't she? and not her mother's mouse.”

Frannie laughed and said she was just the same as always, and in many ways she seemed so to me. “But it was a wonderful journey,” she added, her eyes shining at David. I remembered my own healing journey through the Kentucky forest with the diminutive guide.

Frannie was quieter than her mother, but there was nothing shy about her. Assurance—yes, Frannie spoke with assurance, but quietly. I did not need to worry about making Frannie feel welcome. She came to me with the conviction that she would be in the right place.

 

J
UST AS THE JUDGE
and Mrs. Maynard had planned, we had our grand dinner, Mitchells and all. Around Judge Lord's table, beautifully elongated with leaves and bedecked with silver and china as for a wedding, the talk turned to the slavery question and the rights of women. I was surprised to see the extent to which David's sympathies had enlarged. It seemed an issue on which he and Frannie saw eye to eye.

“I understand Lucretia Mott is from Nantucket,” Frannie said.

“We are famous for our independent women as well as for our intrepid whalers,” Maria answered. She had already invited Frannie, almost as soon as she met her, as she had done with me, to visit the rooftop observatory one night. I instantly fantasized a scene in which by accident Frannie, not Maria, discovered a comet telescopically.

“And we are famous for our schools,” William Mitchell put in.

“And for our wealth,” Mary Starbuck said, with dancing eyes.

Somehow she seemed so unworldly, her comment made us all laugh, even the gaoler.

Both Frannie and Mary made efforts to draw Isaac, the gaoler, into the conversation as much as possible. Judge Lord had seated Isaac between the two women, so that on his left was a woman whose face was all light and beauty (though I knew her history had not left her unmarked) and on his right was a young woman whose face was pitted and furrowed by her past illness. (Though lonely, Frannie had had a much more sheltered and fortuitous life than Mary.) I admired how Isaac spoke to each with the same courtesy and interest. In truth, anyone surely would look past Frannie's skin to her spirit after five minutes of conversation.

I was surprised to hear Frannie ask Isaac a question that had often troubled me, when I first knew him. “Does it not prey upon you,” she asked, “to turn the key upon another soul?”

The judge (I was seated to his right) interposed: “What would we do without gaol? We would all be the victims of criminals. People in gaol are not innocents.”

“Which I believe,” Isaac said. “But nonetheless, it does trouble me at times.”

Mary said, “They will want a lighthouse keeper at Sankaty in a few months. You could go there, if your present work troubles you.”

I chimed in then, urging him to consider a move. In terms of the liberality of his nature, Isaac reminded me of Uncle Torch, who had found the lighthouse work so congenial. Of course, Isaac would be a pleasant addition to our little community at the east end of Nantucket Island.

Frannie told Isaac how I and also she, for a longer period, had lived at lighthouses. “It's a more authentic experiment in self-reliance,” she said, “than Mr. Thoreau's at Walden. If you are in charge of the place.”

Maria Mitchell spoke of the interesting fossil beds at Sankaty, and the judge offered to put in a recommendation for Isaac with the government. We sounded like a colloquy of blackbirds, each putting in his note. But I did not know how Isaac Starbuck could manage his four little children alone at the Lighthouse, unless one of his younger sisters came back to help.

After the roast beef, the question of how we should occupy ourselves arose, and the judge said that the next evening the abolitionists were having testimonials from former slaves.

David showed a great interest in this, seconded by Frannie, and I, too, felt drawn to attend.

 

W
HEN WE WENT
to that meeting, I was disappointed to see that all the speakers were men, and I said as much to Frannie, who ardently agreed. But David was bouncing with excitement. “It's him,” he said, pointing to a young black man with chiseled features. “The one I let go. It's Frederick Douglass.”

“Is it?” said the judge. “He's in very distinguished company. That's William Lloyd Garrison, the famous orator.”

I wondered if the black man knew anything of Susan and determined
to ask him at the end of the meeting. He started off his speech at the podium rather haltingly, but then, as a backwoods preacher would say, the spirit came to him, and he became one with the audience. Drawing upon his experiences, Douglass made us laugh and cry at the spectacle of man's inhumanity to man. He thrilled us with how he physically defended himself when he was sent to a “slave breaker.” Even as he spoke in Nantucket, he could have been snatched up by a bounty hunter and returned to his master. David sat up on his knees, the better to hear and see. He was very excited that someone he had singled out as extraordinary was a featured speaker in a lecture hall.

Frederick Douglass was exceptionally fine-looking, with a splendid timbre to his voice and very natural and expressive gestures. All of that combined with his narration to mesmerize us and to fill us with a smoldering indignation that such a speaker could be owned, as property, by any other human. It was on this idea that Garrison focused as soon as Douglass sat down.

“Is this a man or a thing?” Garrison thundered.

And the audience responded, “A man!”

“Is this a man or chattel?” Garrison quizzed. (Even the
question,
that Garrison would frame it so, pointing at the handsome black man, embarrassed me.)

And the reply roared, “A man!”

And all the other dignified speakers rose in turn to thank and compliment Frederick Douglass. The image of my mother ripping the bounty posters from the side of the steamboat came to me many times that evening, and with the image came a surge of pride in her action. While I felt myself stirred as never before to do something practical—money, if nothing else—about the outrages of my time, when I looked at Frannie, I saw that she was aflame with it.

Frannie turned to me and said, “I have been in Nantucket for two days, and I have found my life's work.”

When I tried to approach Douglass, such a press milled about him that I despaired. At that moment, I was approached by a somewhat familiar face.

“I am your neighbor,” he said.

“My neighbor?” I felt confused. The judge was my neighbor.

“Your neighbor at 'Sconset. Perhaps you have moved away? I'm just off the ferry today.”

The woodcarver! Yes. Tall, thin, a lined face, graying, tight curls. “I have forgotten your name,” I confessed.

“Avalon. Robben Avalon. I carve figureheads for ships.”

“I remember that well enough,” I answered. “You showered me with warm water.”

“And I remember that. Have you moved back to town, then?”

“Nay. I own the house at 'Sconset. I have had a barn built, and I shall never leave.”

He looked at me curiously. “You were trying to speak to Douglass?”

“I wanted to ask him about a woman, a former slave, Susan Spenser. She went back to the Deep South to get her mother.”

“I will squeeze in for you, and bring you word.”

“I'm very eager to hear.”

“What age is Susan?”

“A little younger than I.”

“But I can't guess your age,” he smiled.

He disappeared in the crowd. I watched him carefully. His body, thin as a whittled stick, was well suited to slipping between people, scarcely disturbing them. His dress seemed odd to me, though he wore ordinary trousers and a shirt. Then I realized they were exactly the same shade of charcoal gray, almost black. They flowed together, bottom and top, in a way that accentuated his leanness.

When Robben Avalon reached Douglass, I could see Douglass shaking his head in the negative, and I knew the request was fruitless. Douglass glanced around as though to locate me. When his gaze swept over me, I felt an electric sizzling of my nerves. I felt that I had been looked at by a great man.

Soon Mr. Avalon returned to confirm that Frederick Douglass had not crossed paths with Susan, and David Poland came up to us. He and Mr. Avalon shook hands in a rather serious manner, David reaching up and tall Mr. Avalon leaning down. “David and I are old friends,” I explained. “He has guided my cousin here all the way from Wisconsin.”

“I'm back from a trip myself,” Mr. Avalon answered.

“Where you been?” David asked. Was there a trace of sneer in his voice?

“Italy.”

“Amidst the revolution?” I asked. “I've received a letter from a friend there.”

“I stayed only briefly. Then I went to Greece.”

“Foreign places,” David said. “On the other side of the Atlantic.”

“Both Italy and Greece are on the Mediterranean, actually.”

“Slave trader?” David seemed ready to bristle.

“Not at all. A slave trader would be an unlikely member of this audience, wouldn't he? I went to see the marble statues.” He nodded toward Frederick Douglass. “None were so striking as that former slave, a living man. I'm a woodcarver. I wanted to see the art that survived all the politics and philosophy of Greece and Rome.”

“Art!” David exclaimed incredulously.

“Excuse me, please,” Avalon replied and moved off toward Douglass again.

“That's a strange fellow,” David opined.

I looked down at him and smiled. He seemed to forget that to some he might appear to be a “strange fellow.” I liked the woodcarver.

One of the great, good things about the electrifying effect that such a speaker as Frederick Douglass can have on a group is that it causes the people to speak to one another. Even the judge, jolted from his judicial reserve, had joined the knot of men: I saw him turn to introduce himself to Mr. Avalon. Soon the judge was much more animated than I usually saw him—perhaps Mr. Avalon had chanced, after mentioning marble statuary, to speak of porcelain.

 

L
ATER THAT NIGHT
, when the lights of the town were low, Frannie and I accompanied Maria to her observatory atop the Union Pacific Bank. When Frannie peered through the powerful telescope at the moon, she mused quietly, “Her face is pockmarked, like mine.”

“And yet she shines,” Maria said.

The moonshine lay on our shoulders like epaulets, on the curve of our skirts arcing from our waists, on three women standing on a railed platform built over a roof.

T
HE VERY NEXT AFTERNOON
, Frannie went off to an abolition meeting, and every day thereafter. I became afraid that she would not want to return to the quiet and isolation of 'Sconset with me when there was so much reformist fervor in town, and I said as much to Austin Lord. “Let her stay here, then,” he said. “She is quick and tidy in her habits. She can be my second housekeeper. A judge needs an assistant housekeeper.”

When I asked Frannie, at the end of the week, how she was disposed, she replied, “I long to be with you, but the meetings are here. Let me visit 'Sconset and see how my ardor for the work fares there. If it lasts.”

By the work, Frannie meant abolition, not housekeeping.

Her answer seemed a sensible one to me.