An Unlikely Friendship (7 page)

But I'm not finished with my schooling. And after Elizabeth left, Pa finally came out and told me, yes, I was to board at Mentelle's during the week.

"Liz, too?" I asked.

We were in his study. "No. She is to come home each day." He did not look at me.

"Then I'm being put out of my own home."

"No, Mary. You will always belong here. I just feel it's better this way."

"You mean Betsy does."

"Mary, you'll be a mile and a half from home. Many girls your age go to boarding school. It is really Liz who is the loser. Betsy doesn't think she is mature enough for the experience. You should be flattered that she thinks you are. The experience alone will add to your personality, your list of achievements, and your social graces. Right now some fine young man whom you will someday marry is away at boarding school getting the best preparation for life. Does my daughter deserve any less?"

My father's charm would be the death of me yet, I decided. He could persuade a savage Indian to take tea in the parlor.

I missed Elizabeth when she left. Sometimes, as an older sister, she plagued me. She was so perfect, so pretty, so correct about everything. But since Mama had died, when she was eleven, she had always looked after us younger ones, and almost replaced Mama in many ways. The house, for all its people, was empty without her.

There was one less at the table. Which brought Pa to his next problem. So again he called me into his study.

"Mary, you've got to help me do something about George."

Why now?
I thought.
This last year you haven't cared about George.

My brother, George Rogers Clark, ate all his meals in the kitchen, alone at the table this past year.

It was an embarrassment to the family and a decision of his own choosing. George, of his own accord, removed himself from most family gatherings and activities to the extent that Pa would let him get away with it.

Eating at the table with the family was one activity he'd refused to take part in.

It was all really very simple. George blamed himself for Ma's death, for tearing the family apart. And if he was made to sit at the table with us, he wouldn't eat.

So Pa let him get away with his self-imposed punishment. Guests soon became accustomed to it, considered George a little "odd" at best.

Now Pa decided he wanted George back at the family table. And he was going to ask me to approach my seven-year-old rebellious brother, like he'd asked me to approach Grandmother Parker about the wedding.

"Pa, there's nothing to be done about George. Except one thing."

"What's that?"

"If Betsy would ask him to come to the table, I think he'd come."

He scowled. "You can't expect me to ask Betsy to beg a seven-year-old to eat with us, if he doesn't want to."

Why not?
I thought.
She's supposed to be the mother around here.

"George is becoming more and more odd as time goes by," he said. "He just about talks only to his tutor. The only boy he'll play with is his brother Levi. I can't let him grow up like this, Mary. So I'm asking you to talk to him. I've already had all the doctors who attended your mother that day talk to him and tell him it wasn't his fault. Tell him now that I'll get Harriet Leuba, the watchmaker's wife, to come and talk to him, too."

Harriet Leuba was the most famous of the midwives in Fayette County, and she'd been attending Ma in the birth before the doctors were called in.

"All right, Pa," I said. "I'll try."

"Good girl."

That night at the supper table Pa signaled to me with a gesture of his head. I had noticed a place setting where Elizabeth used to sit, so I got up, excused myself, and went into the kitchen. There Mammy Sally was icing a cake for dessert. And George sat quietly sipping some soup.

He was big for seven, all hands and feet, with reddish blond, curly hair, freckles, and alert blue eyes.
How proud Mama would have been of him,
I thought. I sat down opposite him.

"George, how is the soup?" I asked.

"Mammy Sally never made better."

She chuckled from a table in the corner.

I got right at it. "Pa wants you to come and eat with us at the table, George," I said.

He continued sipping his soup. "Pa knows I can't do that."

"Why?"

"I already told him."

"Tell me, then."

He put down his spoon and looked at me. "I can't belong to this family anymore. I tore it apart. You think I don't see how torn apart it is? How you and the others hate Betsy?"

"It isn't your fault, George. Three doctors already told you that."

"I'd like to know whose fault it is then, if not mine. I killed her. I killed Ma. Nobody else."

"You didn't. She died of the fever. And Pa says he'll get Harriet Leuba, the midwife, to come in and tell you if you want."

"I don't want. Pa wants it. Look, Mary, you have your own troubles. Leave me alone."

"We miss you, George. We miss you at the table and at other things. Where did you go to at the wedding? We missed you then."

"I had things to do." He didn't look at me. Then he cast an eye at Mammy, who was still icing and humming softly. Then he whispered to me, "Anyways, you-all ought to be watching Levi instead of me."

"Why?" I asked.

He shrugged and looked at Mammy again. Then more whispering. "You know those times when he says he's fishing at the creek?"

"Yes."

"Well, he may be fishing, but he's drinking, too."

A stab of fear went through me. Levi was almost fifteen, a year older than I was. My mouth fell open.

"Don't go telling anybody now," George said.

"No," I promised. "I won't." And I stood up, rather shaky in my legs. What else was going on in this house that Pa and Betsy didn't know about. Levi drinking! Where was he getting the liquor? Well, that was easy enough. Out of Pa's study. Oh, what had happened to my family since Ma died? George knew. George saw, though only seven. And he blamed it all on himself and was punishing himself for it.

"You won't come and join us then?" I asked.

He only gave a short laugh and waved me away.

George was a grown man, I decided as I left the kitchen. If only Pa knew the all of it.

L
ATE THAT NIGHT
when everybody was in bed, I heard Mammy moving about in the kitchen, so I got up and went downstairs.

She was churning butter. A fresh loaf of bread lay on the table in front of her.

She smiled at me as I approached. "You heard?" I asked.

"Yes, child, I heard. Old Mammy got ears like the debil, though they ain't been painted green."

"I don't know whether to worry about George or Levi first," I told her.

"Worry 'bout yourself. You gots enough to worry 'bout. You goin' away to school in the fall and then there's movin'."

"Moving? Who's moving?"

"They ain't told you?"

"No."

"Your daddy been biddin' for Palmentier's Inn. It for sale."

How Mammy Sally knew everything that went on in the family before I did was a matter of mystery to me. Maybe because she did have ears like the debil. At any rate I had no trouble attributing special powers to her. Black people did have special powers, I'd long since decided. They must have, to put up with what they had to bear. Besides, those like Mammy had to continually move between two worlds.

But moving! Moving out of the house where I'd been brought up, where Mama had lived? And died? I suspected George and Levi wouldn't think much of the house on Main Street even if it was grander than this.

And then another thought came to me.

"What about the runaways?" I asked Mammy.

She shook her head. "I just hafta pass the word on that they shud come to the new house. It got a barn an' a fence around it. You wanna paint some flowers on that fence when the time comes?"

I took a deep breath. "Yes."

"Good."

"Mammy, what would I do without you?"

"You'd be jus' fine. You're quality, Mary. You'd be jus' fine."

"I don't ever want to leave you." I stifled a sob.

"You gots to leave sometime. You find yourself another mammy somewhere along the way."

"Is there anything you can do for George and Levi?"

"I kin' talk to 'em. Not sayin' they'll listen."

I hugged her. She gave me a piece of fresh bread and butter before I went to bed.

L
EVI WAS TO GO
to Transylvania in the fall. At first he refused, angering Pa, and they had high words, but then Mammy Sally got ahold of him and they "talked." I think she threatened to tell Pa about his drinking down by the creek. And so he agreed to go and to behave himself. Already, as summer came upon us, he was registered and had his books. He was to attend day classes and come home each night.

Ann was to go to Ward's and, of course, come home at night. I found myself envying her. I wanted to go back to my first year at Ward's when I had such innocence. I was afraid of Mentelle's, afraid of what was expected of me. Pa expected a lot.

Pa had ideas about the education of girls. Somehow Elizabeth and Frances had escaped the full range of those ideas, being brought up mainly by Ma. But now, since my mother's death or maybe because of it, Pa was determined that the rest of his girls have the best education possible. And not leave school at thirteen, as Frances and Elizabeth had done, to become accomplished at nothing but dancing and social graces.

I registered for school with Liz. We walked together up to Rose Hill, the name of the building the school was housed in. It was a sprawling, rambling gabled place with different wings jutting out unexpectedly and white organdy curtains at all the windows.

"I heard there are about twenty motherless girls here," Liz told me as we trudged up the hill.

"I guess I'm number twenty-one then."

"Mary, don't hold it against me that I'm going home every night and you're not."

"I'm not holding it against you."

"Yes you are. You've been acting different lately. Not friendly anymore."

"I've got a lot to think about."

"What?"

I couldn't tell her my concerns about George and Levi. My sadness at moving. She wouldn't understand. "It isn't you, Liz, I promise," I said.

"I feel as if I've taken your place."

"I have no place. So don't worry about it. There're eight of us home now. David is only three months old and Betsy needs more room for her babies. So she gets a new house and me out of it most of the time."

"Your pa loves you, Mary. I know he does."

"He can afford to love me only so much. Then he has to do what she wants. And she wants me out."

"She's my very own aunt, but I'm ashamed of the way she treats you sometimes," Liz said.

"There's only one thing I want," I told her. "I want my ma's ladies' desk. Pa said once that I could have it. And I aim to take it when they move. I know a lot of things will be sold because she wants all new things. Fancy red damask drapes and Belgian carpets and imported French mahogany furniture. But I want that desk for my own."

"You'll have it," Liz promised.

But I worried. It wasn't her place to say so.

"W
ELCOME TO
Mentelle's School for Young Ladies," Charlotte Mentelle greeted us.

She was a small, lively woman, with bright blue eyes and a little knot of hair atop her head, tied with a black velvet ribbon. "Sit down, girls, sit. Did you know we are across the way from Senator Henry Clay's Ashland?"

We said yes.

"And did you know one of my daughters is married to Henry Clay's son, Thomas?"

She puffed with pride. Yes, we said, we knew that, too.

"Well, and so you are going to be part of my school. This is a proud school and we uphold standards. You will be learning French, morals, temper, and health, among other things. I give no holidays but one week at Christmas, one day for Easter, and one day for Whitsuntide. You will act in French plays and dance while I play the fiddle. Mary Todd, do you realize what a wonderful father you have?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said meekly. One did not oppose this woman. I could see that immediately.

She wore a white dress this summer's day. We were to discover that she wore white all summer long and blue all winter, that, like her husband, she was an expert fiddle player, that she loved to terrorize the girls with stories of her childhood when they misbehaved, and that she had six children of her own, three still at home.

She made a big fuss over Liz, sending her into the parlor to have tea while she took me to see my room. She liked Liz's blond curls and Bo-Peep look. Everybody did.

As for me, I liked the look of her house. It looked comfortable and lived-in, with plumped pillows on all the couches, books in every room, heart pine floors, and woven rugs. An English springer spaniel accompanied us through the house, licking my hand as we went.

"The dog helps girls to feel at home," she told me. "Ah, here, this will be your room. You will share with a lovely girl named Mercy Levering."

Sunlight streamed in the windows. The beds had quilts covering them. There were flowers in a vase on a dresser. And then I had a thought.

"Is there room for a small desk?" I asked Mrs. Mentelle.

"I usually don't allow the girls to bring furniture."

"It was my mother's," I explained. "And with my family planning on moving, I'm afraid it will get lost."

"Well then, we'll make room," she agreed, "if it was your mother's. Everybody knows how important things are when they come from your mother."

I think I loved her on the spot.

J
UST ABOUT EVERY
summer my family traveled fifty miles south to Crab Orchard Springs where we could take the waters, play, and socialize with other prominent families in the area.

That summer we didn't go. That summer was different and the worst I ever remember.

That summer cholera came to Lexington.

First came the rain, a pouring rain, for days, that made the privies overflow and the streams contaminated. There was a dreadful smell in the air everywhere, even after the rains stopped. The newspapers warned people not to drink water from the streams. Pa forbade Levi and George to go near Elkhorn Creek behind our house.