Brookland (22 page)

Here Prue paused in her writing, out of a native unwillingness both to divulge what had hitherto been private and to fluster Recompense, whom Prue had always found reserved. Yet Prue had already brought her most disgraceful secret into the light; and if she continued her account, she would have eventually to confess her own terrible stupidity, both about Pearl and about the bridge. Either she would drive Recompense away in disgust or the revelations would draw them closer. From her current vantage, she could not say which it would be, but she prayed it would be the latter. She inhaled deeply, then, and resolved to continue her account.
Then she laughed to herself, for what did she know of Recompense's last years at home? She had always struck her mother as prim, but Prue had heard the rumors circulating about her daughter and young Nelson Luquer. She wouldn't put it past her to have had some clandestine sport.

From the start of these peregrinations, Prue knew it was only a matter of time before she and Ben got into mischief. She held few opinions about this, except that it was only the Livingston girls who raised their noses high when boys approached them. Everyone else made trouble sooner or later; it was mostly a matter of waiting one's turn. She and Ben seldom touched except to roughhouse or hold hands, and never discussed the possibility of doing otherwise; simply, when he walked her home one spring night, instead of turning in at her fence, they continued down Joralemon's Lane and went through the distillery gate. It was a waxing moon, but overcast, and she did not fear being seen; the slave quarters were at the far northern edge of the property, and the rest of Brooklyn turned its back on the river at night. The slaves' fires were burning cozily, and there was almost no chance her parents or the Schermerhorns would look out their windows to peer down on the manufactory. A chilly breeze blew in off the river. “I don't have any keys,” Prue said.

Ben swung her hand back and forth. “No matter, then.”

This was why her father locked the buildings at night in the first place, though it was mostly drunken boys about whom he worried. She knew Scipio Jones, however, sometimes locked his tools in a chest for the night and neglected to latch his shed. She led Ben northward, listening to the river slip by.

“The cooperage,” she said, as he could not have seen much in the dark. She lit Scipio's stove—still certain the slaves would not look out and notice, and that no one else would peer down upon the works—and cleared his kettle from the top. He kept a clean pile of straw in the corner, on which he rested when work was slow. Ben led her there, and plumped it up before sitting down in it.

Prue spent little time in the company of girls besides her sisters; but she had heard Annie Luquer recount her clumsiness unlacing and unbuttoning a boy's britches, with whose methods of fastening she'd been unfamiliar.
Prue wore britches every day, and had no difficulty with Ben's. What she had not anticipated was the sheer pleasure of lying down with him—the smell and taste of him, made sweeter by proximity, and the soft rasp of his belly against her own. She did not know what she thought of it, and felt embarrassed when, still mostly naked, he kissed her all up and down the side of her throat; but she knew she would take her father's keys the next night, in case some locked building might provide them a better spot.

They neatened up the straw and put out the fire before walking back up the ravine. Her father was at Joe's when she returned to the house, and if Pearl looked at her with irritation, it was the natural expression of someone who'd been left alone with a servant and an ailing mother, and spent the entire evening embroidering a bizarre and gruesome Pietà.. Prue skulked off to bed, and only the next morning felt a tug of doubt about her conduct. Before her father and sisters arose, she dressed and went out, telling Abiah (who was already up, and had built the kitchen fire) she would return shortly. This time she took her father's keys from the hook, went down to the stable, and saddled up an old, yellow-white gelding whose disposition was so foul, Tem had—in a bald attempt to even the score with their parents—named him Jolly. He tolerated Prue and never bucked with her; and he made moderate haste to Mrs. Friedlander's that morning.

Prue found her out weeding her garden in a straw hat, though it was not even an hour past dawn. “Mother faring poorly?” Mrs. Friedlander called when she saw Prue approach.

“Neither better nor worse.”

“Give it time, give it time. The herbs can't work in an instant.”

Prue dismounted and tied Jolly to the fence. He bent down to eat the clover as if it were the worst moldy oats from the cellar. Mrs. Friedlander had tomato vines growing, and their green fruit gave off a peppery scent.

When Prue told her of her worry, Mrs. Friedlander broke into a toothy grin, scanned her up and down, and peered into her eyes. Prue shuddered to think what she was looking for, but stood firm. “I don't think you've much to worry about, but come,” Mrs. Friedlander said. She released her sun hat down her back and took off her gardening gloves. “Into the house with you.” She herded Prue into her tidy kitchen, put water
on for tea, and went to rummage in her storeroom. Prue sat listening to the skittering tick of her mantel clock and to Jolly, complaining to himself in a low voice outdoors. Mrs. Friedlander returned with two paper packets, marked
Tang
and
Pennyroyal
neatly in pencil. “A dry spoonful of each, morning and night,” she counseled, “or steep them in tea, and plenty of fresh air and exercise. Can you ride that horse of yours at a gallop?”

“Only if it's dire; he's old and crotchety.”

Mrs. Friedlander laughed and began to pack her teapot with mint leaves. “As fast as you can, then. And I'm sure you do plenty of climbing and jumping in that distillery of yours.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“This is the surest way to keep a young creature like you from losing her menses. When you're my age—well, you'll have had your children by then, and if your menses get lost, you won't run looking for 'em. Have you had your breakfast? I've just smoked my first bacon of the season, and it's very good, if I may say so.”

Prue was relieved to find her so matter-of-fact, and stayed for a gluttonous breakfast.

When she returned home, she saw that Pearl had made great progress on her Pietà the night before. The dead Christ now had the full regalia of his wounds, upon which, through careful stitching, real blood appeared to have dried. Prue had never seen any such depiction in Protestant Brooklyn or New York; her sister must have seen an engraving in one of Mr. Severn's art books, then brought her imagination to bear on it. Prue wanted to ask why she had fixated on so grisly a subject, but Pearl was making an unusual clamor with the breakfast dishes and Prue held her tongue.

Their mother continued in her state of ill health until winter. Neither Mrs. Friedlander's tisane nor the exhortations of her husband and daughters had improved her spirits, but neither had her health grown worse. As soon as the days began to shorten, however, her condition declined. She still appeared at table, and if she ate with little interest, she continued to eat everything that was placed before her. Even so, she began to waste away. The sharpness of her cheekbones and the thick knuckles on her long fingers grew more pronounced. Her auburn hair was still only
streaked with gray, but overnight it lost its luster. After All Hallow's, when the neighborhood children went tearing through the streets shrieking, she took to her bed.

At first, no one worried much; Roxana had done this before, and was sure to come downstairs sooner or later. But after a few days, when Prue went up to visit her, she thought she had never seen her mother look so wan, and was disturbed by the aimless way she stroked the coverlet. “Are you unwell?” Prue asked her. “Should I get Dr. de Bouton?”

Roxana licked her lips and patted the bed beside her for Prue to sit down. “There's nothing he can do. But thank you.”

“What ails you?”

She shook her head no. “Nothing that hasn't always. I'll be fine, you'll see.”

“Shall I bring you something to read?”

Roxana shook her head again. “Prue?” she said. Prue looked at the skeletal face and reminded herself this was her mother. “You know I have always known?”

Prue said, “Excuse me?”

Roxana reached for her hand; Prue couldn't tell whose was clammy. “You know Johanna told me what you did to Pearl when you were small.”

A soft ringing began in Prue's ears, and she reminded herself to keep focused on her mother, that the sound not overwhelm her. “I didn't know” This was not at all how Prue had imagined being revealed; though of course if Johanna had told anyone, it would have been Prue's mother.

Roxana squeezed Prue's hand gently. “Don't look so frightened. I think nothing of it.”

Prue prayed her sister wouldn't walk into the room right then. “You must, or you wouldn't have—”

“Shh,” Roxana told her. “There's no such thing as a curse; or if there were, I don't think a little mouse such as you could have found out the secret.” She licked her lips again. “It only came to mind because I'm thinking of Pearl.”

“Thinking what?”

Roxana shrugged her bony shoulders up and down. “Wondering what will become of her. Wondering what misdeed I must have committed, that she should be so punished.”

Prue knew only too well whose had been the misdeed, and she thought she knew what would become of Pearl—an old spinster with extraordinary talents in needlework. She knew whose fault this would be. But she did not say so.

“You and Tem will look after her, won't you, when your father and I are gone?”

“Of course,” Prue said. “But that's far in the future.”

Roxana nodded and said, “I'm going to rest. I'll see if I can gather my strength for supper.”

“Very well,” Prue said, and kissed her cheek before going down. Her mother's hair had an unpleasant, earthy smell, as if it hadn't been washed in months.

Roxana did not venture downstairs again. She began asking for her meals to be brought up on a tray, and would return them nearly untouched. She refused to go to the outhouse, and instead used the pot all day. The whole upstairs began to smell of urine and feces, and Abiah grumbled when she took the pots out to be emptied. “I didn't realize I'd be caring for a baby,” she said to no one in particular one morning, but the whole family heard. One day in January, Roxana turned her face toward the far wall, and would not turn back over, though Pearl later said she'd spent much of the afternoon trying to coax her to do so. Toward teatime, Pearl appeared in the mill yard. Prue came down from the stillhouse to find her out in the yard, writing a note to Owen, the caretaker.

“Pearlie?” she called. Her voice sounded quiet in the stiff wind.

Pearl's small, wind-chapped face flooded with relief. She curtsied to Owen and ran to her sister with her notebook clasped tight in her hand. After reading what she'd written about their mother, Prue hustled her into the office, left her there for the moment with some paper and charcoal, and ran off to find their father.

All three daughters followed him home as he stormed up the hill. “Can we come in with you?” Tem asked, her eyes sparkling.

“No,” he said, and took the stairs two at a time as his boots scattered malted barley to the ground.

His daughters waited at the foot of the kitchen stairs. Abiah was out.

“Dammit, Roxy, this will not do,” they heard their father say the next moment. “What in Heaven's name are you thinking?”

“Should we leave?” Tem asked, straining her ears upward all the while. Pearl hushed her.

“I will not have this!” Matty shouted. They both had their tempers, and their daughters were used to squabbles and altercations, which flared up and burned down at regular intervals; but this time Roxana did not respond. After a long while, he said more quietly, “Roxy, this is absurd,” and a few minutes later came back down. The girls tried to disperse around the kitchen, but it was obvious they'd been listening. He neatened his hair back toward its tail with both hands. “All right, we must do something. You,” he said, pointing to Tem, “go upferry and round up de Bouton and Philpot, either or both. Prue, bring Mrs. Friedlander. I'm sure Israel's fine, but I need to get back to the works. There was trouble with the morning's mashing, and I want to be certain it's fixed.”

“What of Pearlie?” Tem asked.

“Pearl shall sit home with her mother, of course.”

After their father had returned to the brewhouse, Prue saddled up Jolly and sat Pearl on the pommel before her. Pearl kept shifting in discomfort, but Prue gathered she was less anxious than if she'd been left home to wait.

None of the remedies produced a change, and only Dr. Philpot's nostrum did Roxana take with any relish. She gulped it down as if it were a form of sustenance, and began to refuse all food but milk and toast, as if she were indeed an infant.

In February, for all his drinking, Matty Winship realized his wife and family needed some spiritual guidance, as no physical ministrations were helping. He sent first for the young domine, telling Prue he thought it might be easier to confess his troubles to a stranger. When the domine could do nothing either for Matty's sleepless worry or for Roxana, Matty sent for Mr. Severn, who stood in the kitchen with his tattered brown hat in his hands.

“Mr. Winship,” he said. His voice was low and comforting. “I have been among the Brooklanders almost three years now. I have made known to you my admiration for your father and his work, and have, I hope, contributed to the moral upbringing of two of your daughters, of whom I am truly fond. I have exhorted you, as neighbor and friend, to come into the church for succor and celebration, but have seen little of you but your money.”

“A fair bit of my money,” Matty said, without malice.