Brookland (70 page)

After a few minutes, Tem said, “Pearl? It won't be so bad, you know. It isn't so bad.” But when she tried to move closer to comfort her, Pearl's hand shot out in warning, and Tem backed away.

Her howling soon subsided into sobs, and Prue longed to gather her into her lap. She knew Pearl would still fit; she knew comfort still resided in such an embrace. But she could not approach her. As the minutes passed, Pearl gradually gained control of herself, and drew her handkerchief from her pocket to blow her nose. Her face was red as blood, her eyes accusing. She took up her pad to write again, and for an agonizing moment everyone in the room was still. Then she returned the pencil to its hasp, stood slowly, and shook her fingers at Tem to ask her to move from the doorway. Without a word, Tem stepped aside.

“Please don't go, Pearl,” Prue said, following her into the kitchen. She felt desperate—felt she would grab her and throw her down if she had to; but in the moment, she did not.

Pearl took the tinderbox their father had given her from the mantel and placed it inside her bundle. Then she pulled on her boots, took Tem's coat from its peg, wrapped it over her shoulders, and walked out, leaving the door open behind her.

Abiah came out from her bedroom, and they all stood in the doorway, watching her cross the dead grass in the moonlight. Prue expected her at least to turn back to look at them, but she did not; she walked with a firm stride out into the Ferry Road, and was soon lost to sight.

Ben said, “Should I run after her?”

But Tem answered him, “I don't see what good it would do if she wants to go.”

“She won't stay away,” Ben said. He shepherded them all back in and shut the door against the November air. As they were all looking at him quizzically, he said, “This is her home.”

“I think she'll go to him, Ben,” Prue said. “I reckon she'll stay.”

“She'll at least return to let us marry her from this house,” he said. Prue hoped he was correct.

“Why did she take my coat?” Tem asked. “Her own hangs there beside it.”

Prue looked at Pearl's gray coat. She had thought it serviceable, but perhaps, on reflection, it was wearing thin at the seams. “She might have thought yours would be warmer,” she said, “or was a better coat,” and Tem shook her head.

They sat down to wait, as if there were any real possibility she would turn back. In the worried silence, Tem began pouring out gin; and when they had finished it all, she set out for the storehouse to bring up more. She had been gone only a few minutes, however, before she returned. “What's wrong?” Prue asked. Her heart was in her throat, and though she tried to tell herself there was nothing over which to panic, she couldn't calm herself.

“My keys were in my coat pocket,” Tem said. “I can't get into the storehouse.”

Prue could not express her gratitude there was no worse news, though she could not imagine what it might have been. “Mine are on the peg,” she said, and Tem took them and went back down.

When she returned, they continued drinking; but Prue thought they could never distill a gin strong enough, nor could she drink sufficiently of it, to bring her the oblivion she sought. She wanted to obliterate everything: her queer reaction to Will Severn and his proposition; the way she had slapped Pearl; the curse she'd laid on her in the first place, and the horrible disposition that had led her to do so. She wished she could tear her own personality out by the roots. No liquor could make that possible.

Thurs
^d
13 June 1822

Dear R,—

How I wish I could give you the satisfaction you desire as regards my treatment of your Aunt Pearl; & how I wish even more I could demand you believe me an altogether good woman, whose desire was never to harm anyone, least of all my sister.

I fully comprehended the injustice of the way I'd treated her. That night she left, I felt as if my chest & throat had been scraped raw from within, so profound was my remorse for my misdeeds. Your father, Aunt Tem, & Abiah after a time retired to their beds, but hours passed before I could quit pacing the kitchen & Pearl's small closet. One says, in relating such circumstances, one was
thinking them over
, but I was not thinking; only moving restlessly, in an agony of remorse & self incrimination. I do not know how long I walked the floorboards,—Abiah had forgotten to wind the clock, and it wound down soon after the house went quiet,—but at last the kitchen fire burned out & I realized I was too tired to wish to stoke it. I went upstairs & put down my head, and before I could fall to sleep, the memory of the dream of the
spirit canoo
once more presented it self to my inward eye. Once more I could see Pearl awash in slick, dark gore & hear the sad splash of my paddle in the night-time river; and of a sudden, I believed I understood what the dream had meant to reveal to me all along,—which is very like the thing you your self tell me in your letter. This revelation was not
The Bridge
, nor
a dramatization of the ill I had so long ago done Pearl, but a simple sign for the manner in which I had made her suffer daily. In that moment, it was as if the curse I'd laid on my sister were an onion, & though I had sought to peel it all my days, I had only just then gotten past the paper to the luminescent flesh within; & I saw that the curse lay not in the words I had uttered, which had scudded across to Mannahata never to be recalled; but in the manner in which I'd allowed them to colour my behaviour toward her, ever since. For 23 years I had showered my guilt upon her, thought of protecting her, bought her gifts, worry'd on her behalf; but I had never once simply looked to see in whose interest I had done all this. Had I done so, I might have seen the depth of that streak running through her, or how she felt confined or unhappy. But you see, I did not. You see, my Recompense, you have hit your mark.

More soon,—I cannot bear to write it now,—

Mother

But there it was, clear as day in her memory.

She went downstairs at dawn the next morning when she heard Abiah go into the kitchen to light the fire. “Has Pearl come home?” Prue asked.

Abiah regarded her a moment as if she, too, had slept badly. Then she proceeded to sweep out the grate.

Prue resolved to bring her sister home. She could imagine what she looked like after the night she'd spent, but without stopping to splash her face or smooth her hair, she stood up and put on her coat.

“It won't do you any good,” Abiah said.

Prue worked her buttons shut. “No, I imagine it won't, but I shall go anyway”

It had grown colder since the evening before, and as most of her neighbors had been out late drinking on the landing, the Ferry Road was unusually quiet. Prue heard her chickens fussing in their coop and saw wisps of smoke beginning to curl from the Livingston and Cortelyou chimneys, but no one but her was about. Her footfalls seemed to echo against the road. There was no smoke rising from Will Severn's chimney, and Prue hesitated before knocking on the door. As she did, she heard a baby crying from the house that had once been Ben's, and looked over toward that door as if she could will her husband to be standing behind
it, offering her courage. She knocked once, and when she heard no stirring within, knocked again, more loudly.

A moment later, Will Severn arrived at the door in his dressing gown. Prue had never seen him unshaven, but he looked as if he, too, had passed a difficult night.

“I'm sorry to disturb you so early,” she said.

“No,” he said, then cleared his throat, which still sounded thick from sleep. “It's no bother. I trust nothing is amiss.”

Prue could not read his expression; perhaps he was merely tired. “Is my sister Pearl here?”

He nodded, but neither said more nor opened the door to her.

“May I see her?” Prue asked, though she felt it demeaning to have to.

“I'll ask,” he said, and closed the door gently in her face.

He needn't have done more. Prue knew she should turn and walk up Buckbee's Alley right then, but it was almost as though her pride wished to be wounded by Pearl's response. Some minutes elapsed before he returned wearing the same benevolent expression he offered troubled parishioners.

“Forgive me, Prue,” he said, and reached out for her hand. “I cannot make her change her mind.”

Prue's face smarted. “It's not your fault,” she said. If Pearl had told him everything, she was surprised Will Severn was treating her so civilly. “Please convey my apologies to my sister, and tell her that as happy as we would all be to have her back home, we would be content to be able to speak with her.”

He squeezed her hand before letting it go. “I will tell her. She wept all evening.”

“As did I,” Prue said, and turned back toward the port.

It was with a heavy heart she went back to pressing herbs in the rectifying room that day. Had she not known how to do the work by second nature, she would have spoiled the batch. She could only think how large the distillery was—how great the buildings, how prodigious its noise, bustle, and output of smoke. From the outside, she sometimes imagined it looked as if it might produce something necessary to the sustenance of a nation, not mere liquor. Yet at its center stood nothing more than herself and her sister Tem, both brokenhearted that day, to differing degrees. The manufactory was as fragile as they were.

Isaiah came to find her when the bell rang to return the workers to their posts after the midday break. “Did you eat, Prue?” he asked, coaxing her away from the press.

“I'm not hungry.”

“She'll come home,” he said.

“No, she won't.” Her arms ached from working the press all morning and into the afternoon. “I imagine the news is all over town by now”

He gave her a curt nod, his lips pursed as he glanced toward the window “I took lunch at Joe Loosely's. One cannot say how gossip travels so quickly, but it was the talk of the barroom. That, and that Joe had a visit this morning from another purveyor of gin.”

This was the last thing Prue had expected to hear. “How so?”

“A new operation, called Putnam's, on the Schuylkill.”

Had she not been so exhausted and fraught with care, she felt her heart would have jumped out of her body. “Not really?” she said, and to clarify, “John Putnam? The foreman of my father's brewhouse?”

Isaiah shrugged his shoulders defeatedly.

There were herbs lying in the press, but she felt she must go speak to Joe right away, though she knew she would either be subject to questioning about her sister or, worse, catch her neighbors glancing sidelong in her direction. She closed her eyes for a moment.

Isaiah said to her, “If you go talk to him, please eat while you're there.”

“Yes,” Prue said, and left to walk upferry by the Shore Road. Ezra Fischer was out on his landing with two workmen and seemed not to have heard her news, for he removed his hat and bowed pleasantly to her as she passed. His gallantry only irritated her, and she picked up her pace.

Most of the men of Brooklyn had finished their midday meal and returned to work by the time Prue arrived, but she still felt the barroom hush as she entered. The Hicks brothers turned away, as if they didn't want to see her, and a few others coughed or made extraneous noise with their knives and forks. It had been a while since she'd gone into the Liberty Tavern. She and Joe had both done their best to smooth out the wrinkles between them, but it still made Prue feel awkward that he had not supported the bridge.

“Prue Winship,” Joe said from behind the bar. He was depositing dirty cups in a basin of water to soak.

“Is it true what I've heard from Isaiah?” she asked straightaway. “About John Putnam?”

Joe shook his head at her and smiled. “We can't be certain it's him, of course.”

“Who else learned the business of distilling from my father? And he had family near Philadelphia. It must be he.”

Joe continued to shake his head. “I told Isaiah all I knew of it, which was the representatives of Putnam Gin came by boat to exhibit their wares this morning. Said they'd been doing good business in and around Philadelphia and were looking to expand north and south. Sit down, Prue. We've veal cutlets; would you like one?”

Prue was so upset about her sister and John Putnam, she could not imagine how she'd eat, but she said, “Yes, thank you.”

Joe called into the kitchen to convey the order to his wife. “Never fear,” he said when he returned. “His product's not so fine as yours.”

“You tasted it?” Prue asked.

“You'd rather I hadn't? You wouldn't know a thing about it, then.” Prue sat down in front of him at the bar. He drew her a pint and she sipped at it without tasting it. “Nowhere near so fragrant. But he's selling it a good deal cheaper than you, and they claim to be getting a good business, down south.” He dried his hands, drew a pint for himself, and came around to sit beside her. “Bad day for business all around, I suppose. Did you see what Fischer was doing?”