Benjamin Franklin's Bastard (29 page)

“ ’Tisn’t so bad an idea, you know.”

“What isn’t?”

“Us marrying.”

Anne laughed.

“ ’Tis no joke! I mean what I say! Marry me, Anne! Why not? I’ll keep you fed and clothed and warm and you’ll keep me from dying alone. Either the work or the yellow fever will kill me soon enough, and I’d rather you kill me. Come here, feel what you’ve done to my heart.” He caught up Anne’s hand, pulled her back to the bed, pressed her palm against his sinewy, hairless chest; his heart beat like a pigeon’s just before its neck was wrung.

“Marry me, Anne.”

Anne shook her head, kissed Hewe’s temple, teased his ear with her tongue, and left, but as she walked back to the shop she thought of that frantically beating heart and the chance that perhaps she’d seen the last of John Hewe alive; the unexpected gloom that followed the thought made her step heavy on the stairs. Or was it simply that Anne was now getting old? She’d always thought her former way of life was there to catch her if she needed it, but as Franklin had once said to her,
You can’t enchant us all forever, you know.
Could that explain this suddenly acquired affection for John Hewe? Could she settle herself into a couple of rooms above a tavern with a man? No, Anne decided; she’d left it too long.

SOME WEEKS LATER ANOTHER
late-night knock sounded on her door.

“Are you alone?” the familiar voice inquired.

Ironically, Anne was sitting reading
Pamela,
the first novel published in America—by Franklin, of course—and finding nothing in the woman’s stupid virtue to remind her of herself; she had, indeed, been feeling herself quite alone. She opened the door. Franklin came in and took up both her hands; he kissed the back of each and then kept hold of them, but only because Anne let him keep hold.

“I come in the heartfelt hope that I find you well.”

“You do.”

Franklin nodded. “As I see.” He reached out and lifted a stray lock of hair from her cheek. “How is it, I wonder, that this silver only adds more spark to your flame?”

Anne pulled back, freeing herself of both his hands. “We all like silver.”

Franklin laughed. “Anne. My dear Anne. Quite the same, I see. May I sit or do you prefer me to be gone?”

“It depends why you’ve come.”

Franklin studied her, seemed to decide some degree of talk must come before the chair, settled his heels a little farther apart and began. “I’m to go to London in a month’s time. I act as assembly agent to the Crown, bearing a petition for a more reasonable arrangement with our colony’s proprietors in regard to taxes. They own vast holdings in this colony and yet they pay no tax toward its maintenance or defense. Would you call that fair?”

“No.”

Franklin nodded, pleased. “Would you call it fair that my wife refuses to come with me?”

“On what ground?”

“She dislikes the idea of traveling over water.”

“And?”

“And nothing as you might like to imagine it. I’ve been naught but true and kind to her since . . .” He let the sentence trail. “She says London should feel too strange to her.”

“Yes, I imagine it would, to her.”

Franklin studied her. “Would it to you?”

“Philadelphia already feels strange to me.”

“So London would be no great shock, then.”

Anne peered at him.

“Will you come to London with me, Anne?”

Anne was so surprised she sat down; Franklin seemed to take it as an invitation and sat too.

“So you’re in need of a bed warmer now your wife won’t come.”

“You may say.”

“And how long do you expect to be gone?”

Franklin looked down at his shoes, leaned over, picked a piece of straw off a toe. He straightened. “Six months. Perhaps a year.”

“Or more?”

He studied Anne. “Mebbe so.”

“And if your wife changes her mind and decides to travel with you?”

“Then my invitation to you would be withdrawn. Understand the nature of my offer, Anne. As I told you once before, I’m a monogamous creature, not a celibate one. If Deborah stays behind, as I’m quite sure she will, I’ll pay your passage to London and keep you in food, clothes, and rent, in exchange for the usual favors. This arrangement isn’t entirely foreign to you.”

Yes and no. But that wasn’t the necessary question. The necessary question was, yes
or
no?

Once again, Franklin appeared to read the words as she thought them. “Before you answer yes or no, allow me to add one more argument—William comes along to take up a place at the Inns of Court.” He leaned forward, took up Anne’s hands again, and began to guide her onto his lap in the Franklin way of old, even as he did so appearing to allow her to decide where to sit on her own, but Anne had copied the trick too many times to be fooled now. Still, she allowed herself to be settled on Franklin’s knees, allowed him to kiss her mouth and lift her breast, might even have allowed him to warm his hand between her thighs if he hadn’t stopped of his own accord, set her back on her feet.

“In Philadelphia I’m married yet,” he said. “You see how I stick to my rule. I sail from Philadelphia to the London ship at New York; best you travel to New York ahead of me, by land. I’ll provide the transport; I’ll arrange for the inn along the road.”

“And who is William to think I am?”

“Just who you are. An old servant, met by coincidence on shipboard. Whatever else goes on between us won’t trouble him. His mother and he—” Franklin stopped. “He’s a fine boy, Anne. He’ll go far, surpassing me in the end. You may trust that we’ve done right by him. All of us. In London you’ll have a chance to see for yourself what he has and will become. But hold—you’ve not said yes or no!”

And so Anne allowed Franklin his new little game, pretending she hadn’t answered the minute he’d said William’s name.

39

ANNE WROTE OUT THE
short, bare sentence with care:
In a month’s time I leave for London with a friend.
She read the note over and found its bareness its greatest fault but could find no way to make it more. She tore the paper across and wrote on the small piece that remained:
I should like to speak with you alone.
She waited three days to find him in a quiet corner in the shop where she could slip the note into his hand.

He came that night, and she recognized even in his knock what a different man he was from Franklin; two strong raps, no more, as spare with his raps as he was with his words, but each with its own conviction. As he came in she remarked the change in him, more noticeable here in the privacy of her room than amongst the commotion of the shop: the drawn face, the coat looser on the lank frame, the eyes on her face but the attention elsewhere. She began, as she hadn’t intended, at the end.

“In a month’s time I leave for London.”

The eyes snapped back to the room, to Anne. “Alone?”

“With a friend.”

Grissom said nothing.

“A mutual friend.”

“You’re sure?”

What did he mean? Was she sure she would go or was she sure of the friend? But what matter his meaning? In either case, the answer was the same. “I’m sure.”

“Very well.” Grissom turned to leave, but Anne reached out and touched his arm to hold him. She felt the need of more words, the need to add that Grissom had more than enough girls in the shop for the work that was coming in, that he didn’t need her, that it was best she go, but none of it would form up just as she wished it. She said, “May I ask how your wife fares?”

“She begs to die, that’s how she fares.”

“What does the doctor say of it?”

“He says her heart is strong. Over and over he says it, and she grows upset when he does, thrashing about, weeping. This last visit she refused to see him. She said to me, ‘Tell him to go away and let me die.’ ”

Anne stood struggling for words that might be of any comfort, but finding none, decided to take her lesson from Grissom—to leave words alone. She returned her hand to his arm—a brief touch only—but it seemed to loosen him. He went on.

“She doesn’t even want me near. She pushes me away. She begs to die and I beg her to live.”

“But if she lives only to suffer—”

“I wish her to live as she was before! Alive and happy in my arms!”

A child’s wish, thought Anne, which must have been what moved her to speak to Grissom as if he were a child. “You must gather yourself. You must get back to your shop. Elisha isn’t yet ready to manage it alone. If you busy yourself—”

“Busy myself! Busy myself! Do you not think I try to work? I stretch and tack the cloth and think only what change I might find above stairs when I return. I climb the stairs and find a little less of her each time, as if I take something of her away whenever I leave her side. Elisha is not ready, you say! Busy myself, you say! As if it was so simple a thing. But you who don’t allow of love, how are you to know?”

Grissom stopped. A visible effort to tamp down one line of talk and heave up another overtook him, and after a time he seemed to succeed. “I beg your pardon. You do allow of one love, and I of all men may attest to the power of it. William does well?”

“He goes to London with his father to study law.”

“I see.” Another pause. “And does he know of the relation—?”

“He does not.”

“Perhaps, then, in London he will learn of it.”

Anne could not deny that the plan had crossed her mind. Away from Philadelphia, away from Deborah, Anne would have her chance at last—or so she’d thought before—but now, hearing the idea come out of Grissom’s mouth she heard its flaw: To reveal herself to her son in London, she must reveal herself in the guise of what he’d no doubt believed her to be all along—his father’s whore.

A fierce urge to ask Grissom’s advice over this conundrum overwhelmed Anne—surely this man of all men would understand how she longed to claim her son in some small way without disgracing him—but as she looked at Grissom again she saw that a man so tortured could be of no help to her; he could understand nothing right now but his own suffering. For perhaps the first time it was Grissom who needed Anne’s help, and thinking this, understanding this, she discovered in herself a desperate wish to help Grissom in return. But what could she possibly do for such a man in such a way? She lifted a hand as if it might even be possible to wipe out some of the pain that was carving up his features, but Grissom caught her hand and pushed it away, pulled it back, pulled her back, into him, crushing her inside his arms.

“Sophie. Oh, God, my Sophie—”

Again Anne could find nothing to say, but Grissom wasn’t after any of her words; she held him as he held her, murmured as he murmured, answered his mouth with her mouth, his hands with her hands, allowing herself to be Sophie for Grissom as she’d doubtless been other women for other men so many, many times before. What was different here? Nothing, she told herself; perhaps it was a different kind of want, but the answer to it was the same.

But it was the wrong answer. Anne saw it as soon as Grissom reared up over her on the bed, even as he released into her, a new traitor’s anguish now painting his features in place of the old. He pushed himself away from her, recovered his breeches, folded himself into them still wet from her, and shuffled out the door, unable to even turn and look at her.

It was good that she would soon be gone, Anne realized, away from these uneasable burdens that weren’t her own.

FRANKLIN SENT A NOTE
via messenger.

Enclosed herewith please find stage and room fare for the road. I’ve further secured the driver’s interest in your welfare—should trouble arise you need only look to Mr. Finn. At New York it will be necessary to engage a carriage at the livery next the stage stop; go direct to the White Horse Inn where a room has been arranged. I’ll send word to you there when we’re to sail. Godspeed.

Anne packed her trunk and prepared to make her good-byes. Mary should have been her first visit, but Anne hadn’t spoken to her sister since her betrayal, despite the fact—or perhaps because of the fact—that over the years Anne had come to think Mary right all along. Mary would like these new plans no better than the old—there could be nothing for either of them in laying down worse blood on top of bad—she’d write to Mary from abroad. She next climbed the stairs with heavy feet to bid farewell to Sophie Grissom, undoubtedly for the last time.

The woman lay in Grissom’s big, soft bed, nearly buried in its folds, the terrible knowledge of her fate plainly visible in her eyes. How
did
Grissom bear looking into them day after day? Sophie peered at Anne a long time, as if unable to identify her. At length she said, “You go away,” and closed her eyes, but whether she meant it as a statement of fact or an order of dismissal Anne couldn’t decide; as she wished to go away anyway, she went.

The last call she made—surprising herself—was to John Hewe. He saw her coming through the door as if she were the only person in the crowded room and came after her, herding her into the quiet of the hall. “Tell me you’ve come—,” he started, but Anne wouldn’t let him finish a vain hope.

“I come to say good-bye. I travel to London soon.”

Anne was surprised when his eyes filled with tears, so surprised she found herself saying a thing she’d not intended to say the minute before. “I’ve time to go above and say a more thorough good-bye.” When Hewe seemed not to hear, she said, “A gift is what I mean.”

Hewe surprised Anne even more by giving his head a violent shake. “Be off if you’re to be off.”

Anne left with Franklin’s old words chasing after her again:
You can’t enchant us all forever, you know.

THE STAGE WAS CLOSE,
dirty, smelly, and already filled with an overweight couple and a violently coughing young man. The driver who Franklin had assured her was her friend took no notice of her at all, staring ahead at the road as if it was his sole concern.

She stepped to the front of the coach and looked up at him. “Mr. Finn? I believe you’ve had a word—”

The man looked down at her from the seat’s height, a position that might cause a look of disdain in any man, or so Anne told herself. “Finn’s come into money, took himself off. Shandy’s the name. Get on if you’re going; we’re an hour behind.”