Benjamin Franklin's Bastard (11 page)

On another cold night Benjamin came in late from the tavern and slipped shivering into the sheets, tucking himself around her and warming her in a way that had become one of her favorite things about her life with him. Sometimes he didn’t speak, allowing her to choose whether to be awake or asleep to him, but usually he did speak, and usually afterward he came into her, on tavern nights sometimes even as she lay, too impatient to even wait for her to roll over. So it was on this night, but afterward, thinking of the great number of times she’d collected that hot seed in her without a single sprout, she burst out, “How often, Benjamin? How often did you lie with her?”

Benjamin was not the kind of man who would pretend to need additional explanation to such a question, but he did take some time in forming his answer. Did he see the trick in it? To say
many times
would not soothe any wife Deborah knew; to say
once only
would merely emphasize Deborah’s failure. But Benjamin Franklin was cleverer than most. “Once would have been too many,” he said. “But look what we gain of it. Look at our fine boy.”

And there Benjamin moved to a new subject, a thing he’d begun to do around her of late. “I must hire a girl for the shop,” he said. “Young James and I cannot keep leaving off setting types or spreading ink to sell a bit of stationery.”

Benjamin talked on in that direction; Deborah listened and took herself off on her own, a new idea that made her feel instantly more spirited. She sat up, leaning over Benjamin, straining and failing against the dark to see his face. She splayed her hand flat on his chest instead, to feel his answer.

“Give the job to me,” she whispered. Yes, she felt that quick hiccup of surprise, but she kept on. “You could then hire a girl to help in the house for half what it would cost to hire one for the shop.”

The chest under her hand didn’t appear to breathe at all. Deborah gave it a jiggle. “I’m better at my numbers than my letters, Benjamin. You know it. I helped my father with his accounts. I could make something more of that shop for you. For instance, what of my mother’s recipe for itch ointment? She couldn’t keep it on hand no matter how much she made of it—someone called for it every week. And coffee and tea. They’ll come in for their paper and books, but they’d take the coffee and tea if we had it. Why, we might add any number of things! I could think of many—”

Benjamin cut her short with a laugh. “I already see how you work at sales. Very well, only be kind to your master when he comes home and you may see a rise in it for you.”

Was it a joke? She was so seldom sure. But there he was, rising, pressing against her. She rolled into him, gripped his buttocks, and clamped him to her, hurrying him on, not caring for her own interest, thinking that perhaps it was her heat that killed off the tender seed. He came to a satisfyingly violent end in quick time and rolled away sweating and gasping. Deborah lay still, eyes closed, legs squeezed tight to contain her husband’s fluids. She thought Benjamin already asleep when he rolled over again.

“Have you noticed how our bodies’ warmth increases with the speed of our pulses? I believe this is the proper measure of effective exercise, not time or distance.” This drew him on to some other thoughts about the comparative effects on the pulse from a carriage ride, a horseback ride, or a walk; whatever thoughts he was drawn to next, Deborah never heard them.

THE WOMAN THEY HIRED
was no girl but the gray and creased Min; she took William in hand without fuss, and Deborah, in turn, took up her new position in her husband’s shop. At once her world grew by half. She’d never felt any great interest in what went on at the printer’s shop beneath her home, but once in it, she spent the first part of her first day touring its workings with growing fascination. The cases of types, capital letters in the upper case, small letters in the lower case, were selected by the feel of a small notch in the metal and placed backward into a small tray Benjamin called his compositor’s stick. The letters were then hammered into a larger tray, the page to be printed growing laboriously line by line. Next the tray was carried to the press and a pair of fleece-and-leather-covered objects, much like thick, sheared-off Indian clubs, were used to pat the type with ink; the fine linen paper was then placed over the tray and the heavy lever swung across to engage the press. For every question Deborah asked, she received at least a half-dozen incomprehensible answers, but at the end of it she knew what she wanted to know: It took eight hours to set a single page of type, and the
Gazette
being four pages, printed once a week, she better understood her husband’s long hours.

Deborah soon discovered she had a shopkeeper’s instinct for a likely sale, and added other items to the slates and pencils and quills and inks and sealing wax and various papers. Benjamin left the decisions to her, along with their success or failure. As it happened, she succeeded, making her sales and keeping her accounts, not only to her satisfaction but to her husband’s. When in February she knew herself to be with child, she believed there was nothing left the world could offer her.

In October a son was born, named Francis after one of Benjamin’s Nantucket forebears, and the last of Deborah’s fears flew away. A daughter might have come second even to the bastard son, but a legitimate son could not. A son of theirs. It was true that a rollicking boy nearing two must be more entertaining to a father than a newborn infant who could only sleep and cry and suck, but Benjamin fussed over the cradle sufficiently to ease Deborah’s mind as to his true affection. Better still, in this tiny new face Deborah could at last see something of hers, and sensing that William was now the one left out, she allowed the great, violent rush of love she felt for her own son to sweep up William too.

15
Philadelphia, 1732

ANNE HEARD THE NEWS,
delivered in one of a dozen conversations that came up throughout the day between Grissom and his customers. Most of this talk Anne heard only as she heard the cartwheels rumble by in the road—the background noise associated with the day’s work getting done—but the talk between Grissom and the clock maker brought Anne’s head up and her needle still.

“Franklin’s got his boy at last,” the clock maker said. “Two years married, and now it comes. Franky, they call him. A fine, healthy infant.”

Grissom cast a look at Anne—dark, changeable, unreadable. “Excellent news,” he said to the clock maker. “Franklin must be a happy man. Two fine sons.”

“Well, let’s see what happens to that other with a legal heir on hand. Now do you have it right? Four chair casings, a bolster, two pillows—”

“I have it right,” Grissom said, and he looked again at Anne.

ANNE TURNED AWAY THE
pockmarked man that night, pleading illness; she was too distraught to play her games.
Franklin’s got his boy at last.
What
does
happen to the other one now there’s a legal heir on hand? She slept little, and next day in the shop fumbled her thread into knots four times. At the end of the day, even though the October dark had already fallen, she walked the three blocks up Market Street to Franklin’s house and stood outside, staring at the single yellow square of light above the print shop. No doubt the infant Franky slept as he should, his stomach full, his hands and feet warm. No doubt he would have stolen the attentions of father and mother both for now, but surely, after almost two years, that other boy must have secured his own place in their hearts?

For a fortnight Anne walked past the Franklin house in the dark; at the end of it she claimed an off stomach, gave up her midday meal, and walked by the house in daylight, but she could see nothing to either ease or disturb her mind in the blank panes of glass. Her claim of an off stomach became true; she ate so poorly at the noon meal that Peter began to pucker his brow as he looked at her; anyone who passed up food was clearly dying or near to it.

At the end of the next workday, Anne held back in the shop long enough to approach Grissom. They’d grown no more conversant over the many months they’d been working side by side in the shop, and Grissom looked up in some surprise as she drew near.

“I wonder, sir, if you hear anything of the Franklin household, of the new infant. If you hear that all are well?” She’d intended no particular emphasis on the word
all
but heard it just the same; Grissom didn’t appear to.

“I hear no news to the contrary,” Grissom said, his words crisp and bare as a week-old crust. A poor offering, but Anne carried it with care up to her room.

ANNE HAD BARELY USHERED
Isaac Wilkes into the room and closed the door behind him when a second knock sounded; she opened it on Grissom. He looked at Wilkes and made several adjustments to his features in rapid succession, as if deciding something and then deciding again anew. He said, “Leave us, please. I’ve some business with the lady.”

Wilkes squared himself. “Have you, now? Well, I’ve some of my own. You just hold on to yourself and wait your turn.”

Grissom didn’t raise his voice or change his posture; he simply measured out his words again. “Come back another time, Mr. Wilkes.”

Wilkes looked at Grissom, at Anne, at Grissom again; he walked to the washstand, slapped his hand down on the coins he’d left there, and drew them back into his palm. He walked out, jostling Grissom as he went past, but Grissom might not have felt it for all he seemed to care. He shut the door tightly behind Wilkes, turned back to Anne, and with little adjustment to his speech said, “I came to tell you I’ve been to call on the Franklins. I found them well. All four.”

Anne’s hands began to fly up; she pushed them down and buried them in her skirt.

“The infant was shown off in the usual style, but soon afterward Franklin brought the older boy into the room with as much pride as any father could claim. I played a handkerchief game with the child; he’s as sturdy and healthy as you’d like. I gave out my praise at his cleverness, and both father and mother looked to be equally pleased.”

Anne opened her mouth to speak but the movement loosed tears. She closed her mouth and dashed a hand at her eyes.

Grissom said, softer now, “ ’Tis a happy home. I thought you should like to know.” He opened the door and stepped through it. Gone.

ANNE LOST SOME TIME
in a spate of renegade tears, old and new crowding each other out and down her face, disregarding all her orders to cease. When she’d finally regained command of herself, it was as if the detritus had been washed away and she could see clearly the thing that was left to do. She went down one set of stairs, through the dark shop, up the other. She tapped once and no one answered; she tapped again. He came to the door in his stockings, the fire behind him casting his face in darkness but lighting his knuckles and the red-gold hairs on his wrist where his hand gripped the door. By now Anne had learned a thing or two about men; he could strike as indifferent a pose as he pleased, but she could hear his breathing and knew all she needed to know. She stepped into the room, laid her hands along the finely turned angles of his jaw, and ran a thumb over his mouth. At first his lips stayed hard, but she knew how to soften a man. She knew how to harden one too.

LIKE. DISLIKE. LIKE THE
person but dislike what she’s done, dislike the person but like what she’s doing to him now. In Grissom’s big, dense bed, the tick stuffed with the finest goose down, Anne felt the likes and dislikes rolling and tumbling under and over and around her so fast she had trouble keeping track of the up and down. She’d begun in charge of it, had begun standing in the kitchen with her hand in his breeches, but somewhere her feet had come up off the ground and she’d found herself sinking into something that felt like clouds. Grissom’s mouth came looking for hers, but that was not part of the act at all, this long, deep kissing that stopped her breath; she pushed against his chest and he kicked back onto his haunches.

“Was this not the idea?”

It was, but only while it was hers. She rose up on her knees, pushing him down at the same time, drawing her hands over his chest, letting him feel the weight of her pressing him down; he must learn the rules.
She
said when and what and where, and no kissing the mouth ever; she must be allowed to breathe. She worked at him until she could hear his own breath raw as a storm in a chimney before she fitted herself over him, rising and sinking, faster and slower and faster again until all that breath came out of him in one long groan.

Anne clambered off the bed, reassembled her clothes with care, began to assemble her words with equal care. “Do you plan to visit the Franklins again soon?”

Grissom said nothing.

“I only ask because—”

“I know why you ask.”

“Well then.”

“I’m to see him Wednesday next, to look at some books arriving for the library.”

Anne bent down and pulled on one shoe, then the other. Carefully. Carefully. “Perhaps I’ll see you Thursday next.”

Grissom didn’t answer for so long that Anne was wondering if he could possibly have fallen asleep, but at length his voice rose up from the dark. “Thursday’s your free night, then?”

“I’ll keep it so.”

Grissom sat up, rolled off the bed, pulled on his breeches, and began to fumble about with a jacket or waistcoat, or so it looked in the dark. He came to her, caught up her hand, and slid one, two, three cool shillings into her palm. How did he know?

“Thursday may be free,” he said, “but you’re not, are you?”

16

IT WAS FIXED BETWEEN
the two men—every Wednesday Grissom was to call on Franklin to discuss the workings of the new library—and so it was fixed between Grissom and Anne; Thursday nights she climbed the stairs and was led silently up the second set of stairs to the big, soft bed. At first Anne did as she liked with him, but after a time he began to make requests of his own:
leave the stockings . . . stand there . . . turn so.
The game then became to discover what he would request before he could request it, but Anne’s request of him was always the same:
Did you see the boy?