An Acquaintance with Darkness (5 page)

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.

A
NNIE
S
URRATT
was counting candles. She had dozens of them on the table in front of her.

I'd gone over as soon as Robert left. I needed to see Annie. She was the only one who could ever understand what I was feeling. And explain it to me.

I felt no real grief that Mama was dead. Only relief that it was over. For weeks I had been caring for her, missing school, confining myself to the house, watching her suffer, listening to her ravings about Daddy and unable to defend him.

Annie jumped up when she saw me. She hugged me. No words. She didn't have to say any. Her hug was enough.

"I've come to say I'll accept your mama's invitation to stay here."

"Oh, I'm so happy!" She hugged me tighter. "Come on, sit down. Do you want some tea?"

"No, I've been drinking enough coffee to sink an ironclad."

We sat together on the tufted sofa in the front parlor. In the corner was her mother's piano. Mrs. Mary played all the time. Their parlor was a gathering place for guests and boarders. There was lively conversation, friendly discourse, and good food all the time in this house. How could Uncle Valentine say the Surratts were trouble? How could Mrs. Keckley say a serpent had taken up residence here?

"I was thinking I could do chores around the house and earn my keep. Your mother always needs help with the boarders." I didn't want to tell anybody about Johnny's gold pieces. Not even Annie.

"You don't worry about that," she said.

I looked around the room, to the hand-carved paneling on the doors, the astral lamps, the rich draperies. I felt close to Johnny here. "Where is your mother?"

"Gone to mass. To pray for yours. I'm furious that she didn't get over to see your mama before she died. I kept after her. 'What good are prayers now?' I asked her this morning. But you know how Mama is with her religion. If I ever get that way, will you do something for me, Emily?"

"What?"

"Shoot me."

Annie's mother had sent her to convent school, and she had hated it. Not like Johnny, who'd wanted to be a priest. For most of the time I had known her family in Maryland, she was away at school. When she came home, she went wild, riding Johnny's horses astride, climbing trees, reading French novels, and disappearing for hours at a time. In Maryland I had not been close to her. She was all blond curls, all dimples and girlish curves. She was disdainful of the pretty dresses her mother made her wear, dresses I would have killed for.

She was disdainful of everything. I would have killed to be able to be like that, too. I envied her because she seemed fearless of things all young girls were taught to fear. Things I feared.

When the family came to Washington last fall, she became my friend. She was sixteen to my fourteen. (She turned seventeen in January.) She was out of the hated convent school. Our paths crossed and we decided we were both fatherless, our mothers were impossible, and we both adored Johnny and hated being in Washington. It was enough for us to become fast friends.

We went everywhere together, to Gautier's for confections, to the triangle below Pennsylvania Avenue where General Hooker had concentrated the fancy women in their own colony. We gaped at them in their outlandish gowns. We went to the Smithsonian to see the stuffed orangutan in a glass case, and to hops at Willard's.

I was the first one she'd confided in about Alex, a young captain in the Northern army. The Surratts were Secesh. But Annie didn't care about politics. She cared about Alex Bailey. She and her mother fought constantly about Alex. There was something strange about the family. For instance, Annie's real name was Elizabeth Susanna. One day she just changed it to Annie. This was the kind of thing I loved about her. I knew that if her last name was Pigbush she'd change that, too.

"Shoot you?" We looked at each other and laughed. And then I leaned against her and cried. I couldn't help it.

She held me. "It's all right."

"No, it isn't," I said. "I'm not crying for Mama. I'm crying for myself. Annie, only you can understand this. I feel no grief for Mama. All I feel is glad it's over."

"Don't plague yourself with guilt. I can't stand guilt. It's what the nuns tried to put on me for years.
You've lost both parents and now you have to figure out how you're going to live. And you're angry, too, aren't you? At both of them for leaving you."

"You're wonderful, Annie. You understand so much."

"I'm not wonderful. I'm truthful, something most people aren't. Most people are hypocrites. I can't stand hypocrites. Look at my mother. She goes to mass, hides in the church. But do you know what she's about these days? She's in love with Booth."

My eyes went wide. "She isn't."

"It's true. She's smitten with him. He's near twenty years younger than she is, and my brother's friend. And she chides me because I love Alex and he's fighting for the Union."

I did not know what to say.

"Booth's here all the time. Mama pets him, fawns over him, makes him special things to eat. It's disgusting." She went back to the table and picked up some of the candles. "It's why I'm going to put all these candles in the windows. Tonight. It's illumination night. All over Washington, every home will be ablaze with candles. Booth will be by. He'll hate it. So will Mama. 'How can you celebrate the defeat of the South?' they'll say. Well, I can and I will. I don't care about this old war anymore. All I care about is that Alex will soon be home."

She sat back down on the sofa next to me. "I know you can't take part in the illumination, what with your mama just dying. But would you like one candle to put in the window tonight? Your daddy died fighting."

"Yes," I said. "I'll take two candles. One for each front window in the parlor. Now I have to go home and pack, Annie. And work on finishing Mrs. Lincoln's dress."

She gave me two candles and walked me to the door. "I'll be by in a while and sit with you when people come. We'll have a grand time when you come here, Emily."

"Yes, grand," I said.

This house had its share of sadness, too. I was foolish to think there was any place that didn't....What with Mrs. Mary worrying about Johnny, the undercurrents between Annie and her mother, and now this thing with Booth, I was beginning to worry.

Was I doing the wrong thing coming here? Was Uncle Valentine right?