The Widow's War (14 page)

“Against all odds, I myself already have garnered quite a reputation for being a merciful saint when it comes to women. There’s more than one room in this house with a door that bolts from the outside. Think it over.”

Putting the palms of her hands on the table, Carrie leans toward him. “I’m not afraid of you. I once chopped the head off of a nine-foot pit viper, and I know a snake when I see one.”

The senator grins, exposing a row of yellow teeth. “My, my, you are a feisty one. I’m tremblin’ in my boots. Now if you don’t have any more Brazilian obscenities to hurl at me, I have work to do, and I reckon you need to get back to your knittin’.”

 

 

 

 

 

C
arrie retreats upstairs to her bedroom, slams the door, and locks it. Splashing cold water on her face, she forces herself to calm down. What a useless conversation! She’s been insulted and threatened and condescended to and all for nothing. She still doesn’t know where Deacon is.

For the better part of an hour, she paces back and forth trying to decide what to do next, but no coherent plan emerges. Around nine, she walks to the window, throws open the shutters, and looks toward Washington. In the distance, she hears the sound of a bottle breaking, the low whistle of the night train, the clatter of running footsteps.

For a long time she stands there trying to put her thoughts in order, and as she does so, a story gradually begins to unfold in her mind. It’s Deacon’s story of his sister’s friend who died of consumption leaving him desolate, but it’s not the same tragic story of grief and loss he told Carrie when he was courting her. Carrie breaks that story apart, lays out the pieces, and puts them back together into another story, one glued together with lies.

Obviously Deacon stole the dead girl’s illness from his stepmother. The sister was a fabrication. Deacon has no sister. There are other bits and pieces stolen from other lives. She can’t recognize all of them, but it’s likely he stole the story of his quarrel with his father from the quarrel William had with his own father. Deacon’s claim that he was nearly cut out of his father’s will because of his support of abolition—that’s William’s story, too.

But back to the girl. She obviously never existed, which means Deacon must have made up everything about her from other sources. What were those sources? Was she a friend of the family? An acquaintance? Someone Deacon had only seen in passing and admired? What had he said about her? That she was “full-figured.” Yes. That was it. Full-figured, with dark hair, and a mole on her upper lip.

Carrie walks over to the mirror and touches her upper lip. She remembers Deacon’s finger drawing back just before it made contact, the heat of it, how at the time she had believed he respected her too much to touch her.
A mole right there. But who is she?

Suddenly, she remembers the train: the clattering of the wheels, Deacon beside her, the smell of his cigar, and then the hiss of steam as they halted for a few moments beside an elegant red-brick house. A girl in a green dress puts the tip of her gloved hand to her lips and blows Deacon a kiss.
Know her?
Deacon protested.
I should say not!
But he did know her. He had even taken something from her.

Carrie turns away from the mirror. She knows now where she’ll find her husband. She even knows the name of his club.

T
he red-brick house near the canal is ablaze with lights. Carrie can hear laughter and the tinkling of a piano.

“I am sorry, ma’am,” the maid says. “I am afraid you have made a mistake. There ain’t no Mr. Deacon Presgrove here.”

Carrie smiles and leans forward. She has anticipated that she will not be admitted to Mrs. Springer’s—no decent woman would be—so she’s taken Nettie’s most flamboyant dress, a yellow silk ball gown, and made it even more flamboyant by ripping out the panel of lace that covers the wearer’s bosom. Burning a bit of cork in a candle, she’s darkened her eyebrows and outlined her eyes. The red that glows on her lips and cheeks comes from the box of paints she uses to make botanical drawings.

Pulling off her gold earrings, she presses them into the maid’s hand. “Please let me in,” she says. “I won’t be a moment.” The maid inspects the earrings, lifts one to her lips, bites down on it, and nods.

“Go ahead then,” she says, stepping aside.

Later, Carrie cannot recall much about the interior of Mrs. Springer’s establishment except that it is tastefully decorated. There are no garish chandeliers or purple velvet drapes, only a well-appointed entryway with a brass umbrella stand, and beyond it a room that is like the parlor of any respectable home except that it features a gaming table covered in green felt. Five people sit around the table engrossed in cards. Carrie recognizes two as pro-slavery senators, two are complete strangers, and the one with his back to the door is her husband.

“Deacon,” she says.

Deacon stiffens at the sound of her voice. Slowly he turns around. “Gentlemen,” he says, rising to his feet. “Allow me to present my wife.”

The men sitting around the table look startled. Throwing down their cards, the two senators beat a hasty retreat, no doubt hoping Carrie has not recognized them. Deacon ignores them. Walking into the front hall, he takes Carrie by the hand and leads her into the gaming room.

“Mr. Ipswitch, Dr. Vemeer, my wife, Mrs. Presgrove.” The two remaining gamblers put their cards facedown on the table, rise to their feet, and give Carrie nervous bows.

“A pleasure, ma’am,” they mutter. Behind the gaming table is a long sofa covered in yellow silk the exact shade of the dress Carrie is wearing. On it, sit three women dressed as elegantly as senator’s wives. Two are blondes. The third is the dark-haired girl with the mole on her upper lip. Carrie notices she has twined artificial violets in her hair.

Deacon follows Carrie’s gaze. “Lily,” he says, “come here. I want you to meet my wife.” He turns back to Carrie. “I suppose you are wondering who she is, yes? Well, since you’ve arrived unannounced, let me save you the trouble of asking: I own her.”

“Own her? You mean she’s your slave?” Carrie feels a sense of vertigo. She puts her hand on the gaming table to steady herself. “You’re despicable.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. How can you own another human being?”

“Slavery is legal in Washington, Carolyn. By law Lily is only three-fifths human, so perhaps I’m only three-fifths despicable.” He shrugs. “In any event, the question is not how could I own her, but how I could have refused her. She was given to me by my father when I was—” He turns to the girl. “How old was I when the senator gave you to me, Lily?”

“Around twenty-eight,” the girl says softly.

“That’s right, I was twenty-eight and Lily was twelve when I became her master. Don’t let her looks fool you. She’s a mustee. You don’t know what that is, do you? Well then, we must educate you. A mustee is one-eighth black. That’s all it takes. One drop of black blood and a female can legally be bought and sold like a horse; only a fine, fifteen-year-old mustee like Lily brings in considerably more income than a racehorse. I rent her out, you see. Or at least I did until I married you. Now I have enough money to keep her to myself. Lily, thank Mrs. Presgrove.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Presgrove,” the girl says.

Carrie looks at Lily and feels such a mix of anger and despair she cannot speak. The girl, who is little more than a child, is obviously a Presgrove. The family features are evident in her face, her hands, the way she holds her head. Even her eyes are the same clear green as Deacon’s.

She turns away and stares at the grease-smeared cards on the table, the poker chips stacked in toppling piles, the half-emptied glasses of whiskey, the cigar butts stubbed out in brass ashtrays. She came here this evening to let Deacon know she was carrying his child and give him an opportunity to tell her the truth so perhaps, for the sake of that child, they could go on being married. She expected him to lie, grow angry, even tell her to leave; but she never expected him to introduce her to his sister.

“For God’s sake,” she says, “set her free.”

“Set her free? She’s worth over two thousand dollars, and on a good night she brings in thirty more. Someday I may lose her at cards like a gentleman, but I’ll be damned if I’ll give her away just to make my wife feel virtuous. Go home, Carolyn, and stop meddling in things you don’t understand.”

Turning back to his remaining gambling companions, he picks up a deck of cards. “Gentlemen,” he says, “I believe it’s my turn to deal.”

C
arrie takes a cab back to Georgetown, lets herself in the back door of the house, walks upstairs to her bedroom, takes off the yellow silk dress, and scrubs the red paint and burned cork off her face. She still has no idea what to do, but one thing is certain: She cannot let her child grow up with Deacon Presgrove as a father.

She spends the rest of the night weighing her options. By the time the smell of coffee drifts up from the kitchen, she has come up with a plan for her life that does not include Deacon. To make it work, she will have to start by getting some ready cash. That part at least is easy. Deacon has a gold cigar case that he has left out on the dresser in plain sight. Perhaps he bought it or won it at poker. In any event, it’s quite valuable. As soon as the shops open, she’ll drive into Washington and pawn it. Then she’ll buy a train ticket to Boston where she’ll sell the rest of the orchids to Mordecai de Gelder. De Gelder was one of her father’s best customers. He made a fortune supplying boots to the military during the Mexican War, and his enthusiasm for orchids knows no bounds. He even has a glasshouse attached to his mansion. If she offers him half a dozen rare orchids in one lot, he’ll pay her perhaps as much as five thousand dollars.

Once she’s settled in Boston, she’ll look for some way to support herself and her child. Perhaps she’ll be able to teach botany in a female seminary or work in the herbarium at Harvard. Herbariums don’t usually hire women, but she is Canan Vinton’s daughter, and perhaps that will be enough to convince them to bend the rules. In order to explain the fact that she’s with child, she’ll do what she should have done when she was carrying Willa: pose as a widow. She’ll even wear black. And if Deacon comes after her and tries to take the child from her? Well, she’ll deal with that if and when it happens.

Dashing cold water on her face, she puts on Nettie’s soberest day dress, and goes down to breakfast hoping Senator Presgrove will keep his promise not to dine with her. He doesn’t put in an appearance, and she eats in peace, fortifying herself with coffee, pancakes, and bacon, and then running upstairs to be sick. By the time she has finished and is rinsing out her mouth, any lingering doubts she has about being with child have disappeared.

Slipping the gold cigar case into her reticule, she goes back downstairs and calls for the carriage. It’s just rolling up when a man appears with a message from the director of the Botanic Garden requesting she drop by his office at her earliest convenience.

“Please tell Mr. Howard that I cannot pay him a visit this morning. In fact—”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” the messenger says, “but there’s more, and since I get paid to deliver the whole message, I reckon I should give you the whole lot.” He clears his throat.

“Mr. Howard also said to let you know this concerns a Mr. William . . . Bless me if I can remember his last name. A ‘Mr. William’ and a last name that has something to do with the ocean.” He frowns. “Please don’t tell Mr. Howard about me forgetting the man’s last name. Say, are you all right? Because, ma’am, forgive me for remar kin’ on it, but you’re lookin’ kinda pale.”

oward’s office is tucked into a corner of a large brick building in a room so crammed with wooden specimen cabinets that Carrie has to press down her crinolines to make her way to his desk.

“Good morning, Mrs. Presgrove,” he says, rising to his feet. Sun-tanned and lanky with a head of wiry brown hair, he gives off such an aura of good health and outdoor living that only when he reaches for a cane and takes a few steps toward her does she realize he’s lame. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Do sit down.”