The Emancipator's Wife (57 page)

No, thought John. Not in the riven world of Washington politics, with every newspaper in the country watching and waiting for him to fail.

“The President didn't have clerks and aides and a staff the way he does now. Just his secretaries. They lived as part of the household, and all of them working together in that same big room like a shoemaker and his apprentices in the same shop. Every decision about the War had to come to him—nobody else could make it. Four years, I don't think the man had a full night's sleep. He could see there was something happening to her, but he didn't know what he could do and he couldn't spare a minute of his attention from taking care of the country and running the War. He was like a sentry on duty, that no one remembered to relieve.”

She sewed in silence for a time, and in the little garden behind the house, two children ran back and forth among the laundry, screaming with laughter.

“So she was alone,” went on Mrs. Keckley. “And when you're alone like that, in as much grief as she was, it's terribly easy for the unscrupulous to take advantage of you. You'll believe anything they tell you. She was never one who could endure the deaths of those she loved. She was a faithful church-goer, but her faith wasn't strong. And when the blows fell on her, there was nothing to ward them off.”

She hesitated, looking up from her work, as if there were something else to be said that she was uncertain about trusting him with. Her eyes went to a corner of the room, where a framed daguerreotype hung, a young man who looked almost like he could have been white, but for a suggestion of fullness in the lips. He wore the uniform of the First
Missouri Volunteers—not a colored regiment—but John was long used to the subtle signs identifying those who “passed.”

A small vase stood on the table before the picture, with a fresh-picked rose.

“And in this world,” finished the seamstress in her soft voice, “if you seek the solace that the dead offer to the living who reach out to them anyone will call you insane.”

M
ARY HAD NO RECOLLECTION OF SUNLIGHT AT ALL, IN THE SPRING OF
1862.

For a month after Willie's death she kept to her room, with the curtains tightly drawn. Sleep and waking blurred together in a long, confusing haze. She had memories of waking in darkness, head throbbing, eyes hurting—remembering, and weeping afresh.

Willie was gone.

Sometimes Elizabeth was there, or Lizzie or her nieces Young Bess and Julie Baker—blessed, blessed comfort of having women she knew around her, women she trusted, before whom she did not have to even think about keeping up the façade of politeness or restraint. For many nights Lizzie slept in bed beside her, so that when Mary woke from her suffocating nightmares she had someone to cling to, someone to hold.

Sometimes Lincoln was there, exhausted and haggard. She had a confused impression of shoving him away, of screaming at him things that her mind refused to bring back when she thought of it later . . . maybe the whole incident was a dream. Surely she would never, ever say to him,
He would not have died if we'd stayed at home. . . . You killed him, bringing him here so you could be President. . . .

Surely
that
was a dream. And in any case it was
her
fault,
her
whose pride and vainglory God was punishing. If it wasn't a dream, would he have, in other fragments of recollection, cradled her in his arms as he did, rocked her on his knees like a child?

It was only later that Elizabeth told her how sick Tad was, during those days of mourning. Between the crushing demands of Cabinet meetings, conferences with Generals, and diplomatic consultations, Lincoln spent hours with his youngest son, who had emerged from his own fever to be told that the brother he cherished was dead.

Mary knew she should have gone to Tad, should have come out of her room to comfort her husband. But the thought of emerging even into the hallway filled her with dread. The thought of speaking to anyone was both frightening and confusing, as if for a time no one was real anymore.

She could not imagine living without Willie.

When, in moments of self-pity, she had in the past pictured her own deathbed, she had always imagined that it would be Willie beside her, clasping her hand as he'd held it against the terror of prairie thunder. It was Willie with whom she would spend her old age, after Mr. Lincoln—who was after all a decade older than herself—passed on.

Now Willie was gone.

The newspapers resounded with Union victories at Fort Donelson, Tennessee, and in Missouri:
15,000 Prisoners Taken. Missouri Cleared of Rebels in Arms. The People Disgusted with Secession.
But though Mary was as aware as Lincoln was of how critical those victories were, they felt unreal to her. She knew she should care, but couldn't.

Willie was gone.

It was Lizabet Keckley who first told her that those who had passed the veil of death could speak through it to the living who were willing to hear. Mary had sobbed, “He's gone . . . he's gone . . .” as she had sobbed for days—weeks, maybe—in the dim, stuffy room, while Lizabet held her, her scented cheek pressed to Mary's hair. “He's gone and I'll never see him again.”

“But he's so happy where he is,” Lizabet said gently. “Happy in the Summer Land. He wants you to be happy, here on earth.”

She spoke with calm confidence, the first person, of all those who'd come to her in her bereavement, who seemed to have anything to say besides
I'm so sorry
and
You must be brave. . . .

“They all want us to be happy, for the few seasons that we're on opposite sides of the Veil that divides this world from the next.”

And Mary raised her head and looked at her, remembering things
Lizabet had said, when in the course of fittings, or while the seamstress dressed her hair for parties, they'd spoken of griefs passed, and of the sons each of them had lost. Mary whispered, “Is it true? You told me once you'd . . . you'd spoken with George.” George was the son who had died in battle in Missouri, at the age of twenty-one, having enlisted as a white man since men of color were permitted in the ranks only as ditchdiggers and teamsters.

Lizabet nodded mutely. Mary had listened with interest at the time that she had first spoken of the “Circles” that met in darkened parlors by candlelight, to hear the words of the dead through the lips of mediums, but it had been like hearing about the ceremonial customs in the court of the
Tycoon of Japan. She recalled the giggling séance in the parlor at Rose Hill, the summer Lincoln was in Congress, and how she and the Wickliffe girls had all jumped a foot every time the old house creaked.

Remembered, too, Granny Parker's acrid opinions about the famous Fox sisters of New York that summer, and their spirit-rapping ghosts.

Indeed, it had been Meg Wickliffe Preston who had, on a recent visit to Washington, introduced Mary to a “trance-medium” named Cranston Laurie: “His control has revealed the most astonishing things about the future,” Meg had assured her.

Like the clear metallic click of a key in a lock, Mary thought,
I can talk to Willie again. Hear his voice.

I can ask him to forgive me. . . .

It was as if a paving-stone of granite laid over her heart cracked, revealing beneath the first green shoots of spring.

L
IZABET
K
ECKLEY WENT WITH HER TO
C
RANSTON
L
AURIE
'
S HOUSE
IN
Georgetown for that first séance. Mary told Lincoln she was going to spend the evening with old Jesse Newton, of the Department of the Interior, and his wife. Lincoln expressed only deep gratitude that she was feeling well enough to go out. Elizabeth, Lizzie, and the girls had returned to Illinois by that time, though Lincoln, Mary knew, had begged at least Lizzie to stay. Though chilly, the air was beginning to smell of warmth renewed.

Mary was obsessed with the thought of meeting someone who could possibly communicate with Willie, with the thought of speaking again to her son.

Of asking his forgiveness, for her vainglory and her pride.

She had dreamed of him, over and over, in the month of darkness in her room. Dreamed of being back in the house in Springfield, of hearing his footsteps running up the stairs ahead of her, of hearing his laughter, only to open the door of his room and find no one there. From these dreams she would wake weeping, her head throbbing and all her limbs seized with painful restlessness. She knew she was taking more of Dole's Cordial or Indian Bitters than Dr. Wallace would probably approve, but she knew too that they were the only solace she had. She would, she vowed, reduce her consumption of them when her sadness had passed and she was feeling better. Lizabet bought them for her, and brought them to her in her sewing basket . . . and Mrs. Cuthbert and Ruth Pomeroy, each ignorant of the other two, did the same.

But the thought of speaking to Willie swept away any need for oblivion, and she stepped down from the carriage in front of the small Georgetown house with her heart pounding in anticipation.

Cranston Laurie was a man of quiet, silver-haired dignity. He and his wife welcomed Mary with gentle goodwill, and the others gathered in the candlelit parlor—how sweet candle-light seemed, after the cold modern White House gaslight!—greeted her but kept their distance, respecting the grief that was as clear on her face as it was in the sable crape of her dress. The Lauries' daughter, Mrs. Belle Miller, spoke of her own experiences with the spirits: “My spirit control loves music, and will sometimes take me over when I'm playing. Everyone tells me that at such times my playing is completely different, strong and unearthly.” She laughed a little and waved at the shiny black grand piano that filled a quarter of the parlor. “I wish I had been acquainted with the spirits when I was a girl and forced to have lessons!”

Her parents laughed as well.

“Just as well you weren't, Puss,” smiled Laurie. “You'd have sent your music-teacher running. When Belle is seized by her spirit control—a French nobleman named Ramilles, who studied with Mozart and was later guillotined in the Revolution—the strength of the spirit music will sometimes lift the piano bodily from the floor!”

“What is it like?” asked Mary timidly. “When the spirits come?” She thought of Mammy Sally's ghost-tales, and of the stories Meg had heard from her mammy and whispered in their room at Rose Hill, of haunts that followed people back from cemeteries in the darkness, to pluck at the covers of their beds.

Young Mrs. Miller frowned. “I can't really say. Once Ramilles enters into my body, I remember nothing. Only a deep sense of well-being and peace.” She smiled, her face lit with the memory of ecstasy. “Of course you understand that in forming a Circle, we pray and sing hymns, and surround ourselves with a shell of pure thoughts, so that no evil or angry spirit can enter. Please do not think that there is any danger in what we do!”

Mrs. Laurie exclaimed in denial of the very thought, but Mr. Laurie said gravely, “Please, Mrs. Lincoln—we would like to share with you the comfort that we partake of during our Circles, but if you have the smallest doubt or mental reservation, by all means withdraw. We would not for the world wish you to do anything you were not comfortable with.”

“No,” said Mary slowly, “no, what you say is . . . is familiar to me, in a way. As if I half-knew it already. I would like very much to see a medium in action.”

Mr. Laurie beckoned. From the shadows near the fireplace a young lady rose, diminutive and childlike in her white schoolgirl dress and hair-ribbons. “Nettie, dearest,” said Mrs. Laurie, “this is Mrs. Lincoln. Mrs. Lincoln, Miss Nettie Colburn. She's come to Washington to be closer to her father and her three brothers. All of them have enlisted in the Army. Nettie has been receiving visits from the spirits since she was quite a tiny girl.”

Nettie curtseyed gravely, and regarded Mary with childishly wide-set blue eyes. “It's a gift God has given me,” she said. “They want so badly to come, to comfort those who weep for them—and to bring messages from the Other World.”

The half-dozen other people in the parlor assembled around the table in its center, Belle Miller going to the piano. There she played “Shall We Gather at the River,” and Mary felt both self-conscious and uneasy as she sang, wondering what Dr. Smith back in Springfield would say—or her sister Elizabeth, for that matter. Yet the atmosphere was soothing, and the prayer Mr. Laurie invoked to “The Highest Lord of the Universe” unexceptionable. Glancing sideways, she saw Lizabet Keckley's face relaxed and serene, eyes closed, waiting in confident joy.

Nettie Colburn sat with bowed head for a few moments, then looked up suddenly and gasped, “She's coming . . . !” and her head dropped over sideways, exactly as if she had fallen asleep. In the candlelight her face seemed suddenly older. At her side, Mr. Laurie breathed to Mary, “It is her spirit control, an Indian spirit named Pinkie.”

“Many spirit here tonight,” said Nettie—Pinkie—opening her eyes, and her voice was different, a deep contralto instead of the girlish soprano in which she'd spoken before. “Many spirit cry out to be heard; cry out to welcome wife of Big Chief.”

It's true,
thought Mary, shocked, staring across the table at the girl's transformed face.
The spirits do come. . . .

“Is my son one of them?” she demanded breathlessly, and Nettie—Pinkie—regarded her with an infinity of compassion.

“Big Chief lady lose two son,” she said softly. “Both here—both so happy. Little boy, bigger boy . . . big boy say he came to take the little one's place. Two men, one short, one tall . . .”

“Father . . .”

“Two women,” said Pinkie. “One old, old—she wears a shawl. And one young, so pretty. So sad. She hold out hand, she say
‘My little girl. My little Mary Ann.'
” Then the medium shuddered, her head jerking, and her face altered again. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, looked straight across the table at Mary and said, in what seemed to Mary to be exactly Willie's voice and expression, “Mama?”