Robin Oliveira Read online

  “Of course you’ve done something,” Mary said, though she was stunned and weary and only half listening now. She didn’t see Thomas bury his face in his hands, didn’t see him look up finally, newly uncertain. She and Stipp had stood together at the foot of the bed. How is the boy? The boy is dead.

  “I cannot leave you here. Amelia will have my head.”

  “It isn’t your fault that I’m staying.”

  But Thomas couldn’t help but feel that it was, somehow. There was a long silence, broken only by the traffic of Bridge Street running at their feet.

  “I admire you, Mary,” Thomas said.

  Admiration was not love, though less than a year ago Mary had been pleased to hear him say just those words to her, believing they represented love.

  “Jenny is waiting for you. Tell my family I am well. Tell my mother everything will be all right.” Mary touched his forearm then, and said again, “You’ve got Jenny waiting.”

  And a baby.

  Everything of any consequence that had ever happened in her life had been because of babies.

  Now she would admit it, as she had been unable to ever admit it to herself before; she had come to Washington because of the baby. She had come because she couldn’t watch Jenny grow large with Thomas’s child. But now Thomas was going to go home and see Jenny, and Jenny would tell him, and then they would have the baby together and Mary would stay here.

  Thomas held Mary’s gaze for a long time. It seemed a betrayal to leave her, as wrong as it had felt to leave Christian at the Capitol grounds. He had failed again. Mary would never come home, and it had been a fool’s errand to think that he could ever dissuade her from doing something she wanted to do. But he had had to try, for Amelia, for Jenny, for Christian. They were all his family now, though he could not help but feel that they all deserved more acclaim than he did, especially Mary. He climbed to his feet and took Mary’s hand and pulled her up and then enfolded her in an embrace, then he released her and turned away without another word, and Mary watched him go, her heart rising in her throat. She forced herself to go back inside before Thomas reached the bridge, and so did not see him stop and look back, a shadow of regret crossing his face.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  In Albany, there was a parade to celebrate the return of the 25th. The Lumber District carters came first, having had to wait because the day boat docked two hours later than predicted and then was delayed another half hour while there was some confusion. The Fifth Street Marching Band followed the carters, playing an Irish jig. Then the juvenile Zouaves, the Fire Department.

  Stationed near the Staats House, Jenny strained to see over the crowd. She was disappointed that they were not able to meet Thomas and Christian at the boat, but all of Albany wanted to welcome the 25th home with a parade. Now, from the base of State Street, a blue flag waved in the summer afternoon, and the regiment finally came into view. Jenny and Amelia strained to catch sight of Thomas and Christian, but all the men looked the same, their clothes worn to rags by the sun and hard work. Amelia pushed through the crowds, leading the way for Jenny. In the past week, Jenny had finally emerged from her long stretch of morning sickness, months and months of violence that had ravaged Amelia. They followed the 25th as it marched up the hill, but neither of them was able to spot the men. The parade ended at the park on Eagle Street, where Thomas and Mary had sat on a bench one evening. Cries of reunion were erupting everywhere. The two women held hands.

  Standing on a bench, Colonel Townsend was scanning the crowd, his wife and daughter fretting behind him, wanting to take him home, where a turkey was roasting and two pies were cooling on the windowsill. But now it seemed that those would have to wait. The crowd was already beginning to disperse when he spotted the two women standing apart from the crowd.

  “Are you Mrs. Sutter?” Townsend asked the older woman, after crossing the distance between them in a moment.

  “I am.”

  “I am Colonel Townsend.”

  “This is my daughter, Mrs. Fall.”

  “Mrs. Sutter and Mrs. Fall.” He seemed dismayed to find them together. “Won’t you follow me?”

  They trailed behind him to the bench. He insisted they sit down. Unknowingly, they occupied the exact postures that Mary and Thomas had a year before.

  Townsend turned first to the younger, Mrs. Fall. A departing soldier took the liberty of patting the colonel on the shoulder as he passed, as if to offer comfort.

  “Mrs. Fall, when we left the fort, we accounted for everyone. But then, when we boarded the train in Washington, we walked through all the cars, taking roll. And your husband was not on the train. Please understand, he was never in any danger. He was not in the battle. It is entirely possible that he engaged another way home.”

  “Another way?” Jenny asked.

  He felt terrible that he could not picture Thomas Fall. A thousand men to command; he couldn’t know everyone. “Would your husband have had any reason to stay behind, do you think?”

  “He’s not coming home?”

  “He could have just not made the train. Perhaps he went to get a meal.” (Townsend was thinking of the turkey his wife had promised.) “The taverns were offering, and everyone was hungry. It is possible that he is on the next day boat.”

  Colonel Townsend’s mantra: It is possible. Where had the man gone? He had left the fort with 757 of his thousand; had sent his lieutenants to the hospitals to roust the rest from their beds. Like a proud father, returning children to their mother. But on the train, taking roll, he had realized he was missing two. Townsend hadn’t forgotten about Dr. Blevens, but as far as he knew, the doctor had no waiting family. At least, he thought, I am to be spared that.

  The girl stared at him; her delicate features were drawn by illness. After losing nearly a third of his regiment to sickness, he had become an expert.

  “No doubt you’ll hear from him soon,” he said, even though the man could be in Kentucky by now, for all he knew, but it was hard to see what he would be avoiding. Two beautiful women waiting for him. He had not really feared for Thomas Fall until this moment.

  “Mary,” Amelia said suddenly, seizing Jenny’s hand, smiling at the colonel. “Of course. I wrote the boys about her. My daughter Mary is a nurse. He’s just waylaid. He’s gone with my son. He’s with Christian, of course. They’ve gone to get Mary.” Pleased to have the boys doing what she needed, pleased to have them taking care of her. Soon, everyone would be together.

  Colonel Townsend reached over and touched Mrs. Sutter’s hand. He remembered now who she was. She was the midwife, the woman everyone in Albany admired, Nathaniel Sutter’s widow. And her daughter Mary was the young woman his wife had written him about: Did he know that Mary Sutter, Amelia’s daughter, had left her mother and her practice and gone off to nurse in a hospital in Washington City? Before she left, she had even applied to medical school. Why, Mary Sutter was the talk of Albany. Had he seen her there in Washington? Did he not think her peculiar?

  “Mrs. Sutter, by the time we arrived in Albany, your son—”

  Amelia recognized the change in tone, had used that same tone herself. No slow cognition here, but swift and violent apprehension. Defiance quickened, like the sudden violence of the mother of a stillborn: He’s just asleep, wake him up, wake him with a slap.

  “But he’s fine, isn’t he? Dr. Blevens is with him? You called the doctor to be with him?” Amelia was calculating whether or not there would be enough hacks left in the city to hire one to get Christian home from the wharf. Jenny would have to be strong. She would have to keep her disappointment at Thomas’s late return at bay. Amelia would send Jenny home to get their carriage, yes, that would be best—

  “Mrs. Sutter,” Colonel Townsend said. He was an attorney. He had given bad news before. But he did not want to say too much now. In that rocking train car Christian had not even had the energy to hold himself up. The pink froth bubbling from the boy’s mouth, the sudden pallor and exhaustion had tormented th
e colonel, whose single act of courage in the war had turned out to be staying beside a dying boy. Nearby, a group burst into laughter, but the joy sounded far away, farther even than death. Townsend gestured now to Jake, skulking a few feet away, who came forward, hat in hand, head bowed. “This fellow found him. You understand, without a doctor, it was impossible to help him. We thought a disease of the lungs, perhaps. We had to wait to take him from the boat, that was why the parade was delayed. We arranged for an undertaker—”

  Later, everyone in the square would remark how the sky dimmed the moment Amelia Sutter crumpled into the arms of Colonel Townsend. A permanent shift in the intensity of the light, some said, while others claimed it was only a passing cloud. But everyone in the square watched Colonel Townsend pick up Amelia Sutter and carry her in his arms to his waiting carriage, trailed by her daughter Jenny, who was being helped by Jake Miles. Townsend wheeled his barouche up Washington Avenue toward the Sutter home, where it was said that he carried Amelia Sutter inside and up the stairs to her bed. Jake Miles’s wife, a solicitous girl named Bonnie, received Jenny into her arms, but when she heard the news of Christian Sutter’s death, Colonel Townsend had to call for the maids, though Bonnie’s husband was right there. It was odd, people said later, that Mrs. Miles hadn’t gone down to meet her husband at the park.

  By the time Colonel Townsend sat down to dinner that evening, the turkey his wife had roasted had dried to leather, which he thought only fitting for a returning soldier. Too rich an amount of food and he too might become ill. He was glad to be home. His wife and daughter had not left his side; there was bourbon in his glass, and upstairs clean sheets on his bed.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Dear Mother,

  Thomas has written me a letter, trusting the mails better here, I think, to say that he has reenlisted and for me to write to you and Jenny to tell you of his decision. As reason, he claims a measure of shame that the 25th did so little. I do not understand why he has done this, nor why he should feel dishonor over his service. He visited me here at the Union Hotel and tried to get me to come home with him, at your behest, Mother. I wish I could make you understand how I am needed here. Thomas was to have delivered this news to you on his return home, but today I received his letter and so am writing you now. I wish that we were not separated, but the grave need here prevents my coming home. Please do not fear, you will do fine by Jenny when her time comes. I know that her safety is your purpose in asking me to come home, but I trust you, as you should trust yourself. Please do write and tell me how Christian is. Thomas said he had a fever. I do hope that he is better now.

  Please do not worry about me. The hospital is very clean and I am well rested and happy in the work.

  Your loving Mary

  “He doesn’t love me,” Jenny said, through lips that barely moved. A hopeful, spectral apparition in black, she had spent the last two weeks on the quay, meeting every day boat. Now she lay coiled on the counterpane on Amelia’s bed.

  “He does love you,” Amelia said, her hands entangled in her daughter’s.

  “But even if the post failed, even if he didn’t get my letters, Mary would have told him about the baby. Wouldn’t she have?”

  Amelia paled, having already asked herself this question. A man could forget a woman, but not a woman and a baby. Surely Mary wouldn’t have hidden that news from Thomas? Midwives did not let husbands abandon their wives. It was not in their makeup.

  “He has his reasons, Jenny,” Amelia said.

  Their dresses and petticoats, made from the same bolt of stiff black crepe and sewn in haste just a day before they had buried Christian, rustled together as Amelia spooned Jenny into her arms. They were celebrities of a sort; the first in Albany to grieve from the war. But the community pity, rather than comforting them, only made them feel isolated and alone. Their hallway bowl was full of calling cards that Amelia could not bear to answer. Dear Amelia, we are sorry for your loss. She could not bear to hear or read those words ever again. Better to stay inside, where no one could say them to her. Jenny had been the brave one, bringing the disappointing news day after day from the quay that neither Mary nor Thomas had returned. Christian’s funeral had been impossible, the coffin disappearing into the ground, the dull eternity of the soil hitting the casket. Awaiting Mary’s return had been Amelia’s salvation, and now she had to write and tell Mary the news of Christian’s death.

  “My baby,” Amelia whispered into Jenny’s ear. But of whom she spoke—Christian, Mary, or Jenny—even Amelia didn’t know.

  At that moment, across the Hudson River in East Albany, Jake Miles had drunk a good portion of the morning away. The liquor served the important purpose of blurring his ferocious desire into something a little dizzy, something manageable. He was standing at the window that overlooked his back field, which in the middle of August should have been studded with ripening squash. But he’d not planted before he left; across the nation, no farmer had planted before he left. Soldiers were all returning to fallow fields. Beyond the small scrub of the Mileses’ land stood a line of poplar trees by the stream. And under them, Bonnie knelt among the marigolds she’d transplanted from a bunch she’d found growing wild by the road. Their baby’s grave was how Bonnie had begun to refer to that patch of land since they’d returned from the Sutters’. That the baby was buried in the Albany Rural Cemetery, in a grave paid for by Amelia Sutter, did not sway Bonnie in the least from her curious fixation.

  As Jake often did these days when he spied on Bonnie, he unbuttoned his fly and encircled himself and stroked, resting one hand up on the wall to support himself for when his knees buckled. But the curve of the log was no substitute for the soft curve of Bonnie’s hip, and he had to think hard to remember what it had been like to touch her, taking away from his present gratification and causing a small headache to blossom above his left ear. It used to be that just the memory of Bonnie’s slender waist sent him over the edge in under a minute. But of late he’d had to concentrate harder, which took away from the pleasure. In truth, he was sick because if he’d just let her stay at the Sutters’, she wouldn’t have blamed him, and then the baby’s death would belong to both of them, not just her. Recently, Bonnie had caught him in the throes of self-pleasure several times, an act she viewed with disdain. But bodily deprivation had whittled Jake down into a state of pure longing. She did not understand what it was to look at her and want her and not be able to be inside her. Night after night after they’d returned from the Sutters’, he had begged her, but she always said, You leave me alone. It had taken all his charm and a good dose of talk to persuade her to leave the Sutter women in the first place, but he’d done it. Since then, however, she’d been more sorrowful than he thought she ought to be, and sometimes she acted as if she wished he had died and not Christian Sutter. He’d told them all the story, sitting in their fancy parlor the night he’d arrived home with the 25th. How Thomas had asked him to help, how he had dosed Christian with whiskey to ease his discomfort. No, he’d said, he didn’t know where the doctor was, not since he’d gone off with that other outfit. And he had no idea where that Thomas had gone off to. He’d done the best he could by her boy, Jake said. Gave him as much whiskey as he could take. Amelia took in what he said, a peculiar expression on her face, as if he had hurt Christian instead of helping him. Yes, ma’am. We slept near one another every night. No, ma’am. Right as rain until the end there. Yes, ma’am. We became friends. Which wasn’t exactly the truth, but a version of it.

  Though Jake no longer cared whether or not Bonnie found him pleasuring himself, when the door handle rattled he fastened his fly and wiped his hand against his pants leg. He tried to will himself into the picture of abstemiousness as Bonnie entered with a posy of the cut orange and yellow flowers.

  “You been at it again, Jake Miles?”

  “There are places I can go, you know,” he said. “Places with women that aren’t shy of a man.”

  Bonnie laid the flowers on the table and
turned and walked purposefully across the room. At the stove, she dropped to one knee and snaked her hand between it and the wall until she located the chink where he kept his secret cache of coins. She carried the jar over to the bed and upended it onto the quilt. Sitting beside the pyramid of silver and copper, she began to count out the coins into two separate piles.

  “Two dollars and thirty-three cents for me, and the same for you. You go right on over to the quay and get yourself taken care of, Jake.”

  He stood openmouthed, feeling the loose talk of the liquor drain away from him, and with it any recollection of why he had ever mentioned the hurly-burly girls in the first place.

  “Go on,” she said. “You need it so much. Go get it.”

  All the way across the Hudson on the Lady of Perth, Jake planned how he would stay in the city for the night to scare Bonnie, and then afterwards sweet-talk his way back into her heart. But climbing up the Albany pier thirty minutes later, he decided he was not too happy with her, not one bit, and so he sidetracked into a tavern on Quay Street, where after a half dozen ales he led one of the hurly-burly girls upstairs. Fifteen minutes later and a dollar poorer, he was halfway up State Street, heading toward the Sutter house on foot to ask Amelia Sutter how you kept babies from dying, when a recruiter lurking on the sidewalk noticed his inebriated state and invited him into his storefront bedecked with a red, white, and blue banner. Of all the ways to shanghai a man, the recruiters had recently discovered that drunkenness was best, for even in the short run the disastrous casualties at Bull Run had already begun to stymie their efforts. The recruiter convinced Jake that an aggrieved man in his misunderstood circumstance was best served by joining the Union army. The illogic of this was not apparent to Jake until he sobered up in a train car somewhere south of Poughkeepsie, clutching a set of papers that assigned him to a regiment in the newly renamed Army of the Potomac.