One Glorious Ambition (12 page)

She worried about Marianna and Grace. The child often missed class, and the last time she had seen Grace, the woman had a racking cough. She could help if only Grace would agree.

“Marianna needs to live with me.” Grace’s lips shook and her fisted knuckles at the side of her gray linen dress were white as bone.

“But you could rest more,” Dorothea said. “I can tell you’re ailing. Your cough grows worse. Marianna knows it. She worries about you.” It was the end of the school year and the children had left the library, allowing Dorothea to have time with Grace.

“You are welcome to visit her during this break,” Grace said. “I have appreciated all you’ve done to advance her lessons. She adores you, but no. I need her to be with me.”

“But what does Marianna need?”

“She needs a loving mother, which I am.” Grace’s voice seethed.

“I know. I know. That’s right. I’m so sorry.” Dorothea’s mouth felt dry. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” She reached for Grace who pulled back like a magnet against an opposite force. “Of course. She needs to be with a mother who meets her needs.” Her heart pounded in her head. How foolish! She must never try to separate a child from a parent. She hoped Grace would not keep Marianna from the school in the summer term. “I only proposed it to give you some relief. I … if I can do that ever, even for a day, I’d be happy to have Marianna with me.”

Grace’s shoulders drooped, and she sank onto a high-back chair. “I can’t seem to fight off the fatigue. Nor the cough for any length of time.”

“What do the doctors say?”

“They don’t know.” She cleared her throat. “But yes, perhaps
a few days this summer Marianna could be with you. I’ll send a note of invitation. I know you only want the best for her.”

“I do. Absolutely. And for you. You’re family.” She’d have to be careful. Families could so easily be separated.

A boarder who had recently been in Philadelphia talked of the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason. Like an academic, he raised the issue of whether treatment for such people was possible. Could suffering be relieved or was such misery the result of the new industrial efforts, long hours worked in dark factories, farm girls brought in from the country with too much freedom and lack of discipline causing them to lose their ability to think? Boarders had opinions, and Dorothea listened. “All people are worthy of opportunity to change their ways,” she finally offered.

One of the boarders wiped at his mouth with a linen napkin. “The asylum is more for the relief of the rest of us.” There were chuckles around the table, but Dorothea did not join in.

“Isn’t the asylum a scriptural response to such people in need?” These were divinity students much more deeply immersed in Scripture. Dorothea was probably stepping into deep waters with these well-trained scholars; she didn’t know how to swim. “They can’t all be there because of excessive drinking.”

“There might be a few innocents among them. Children, perhaps,” said the student who had begun the discussion.

“Doesn’t Luke 13:4–5 tell us that misfortunes are not necessarily the result of sin?”

“She has you there,” said a scholar with a bulbous nose and glasses too small for his face. “The asylum is privately funded, so what are we to say about it anyway?”

“I don’t believe it is privately funded,” a physician-student commented, wiping his pencil-thin mustache with his napkin. “What alienist would put his money into such a venture? Surely a private medical hospital would be a better investment than a private asylum.”

The conversation wandered into other kinds of investments, and Dorothea found herself lagging behind, her thoughts on her mother, the walnut-haired woman who had once joined them on Sundays, held up by her and her father whenever they entered the Methodist meeting hall. Her mother’s head would loll from side to side. Although her clear skin and thick hair made her seem ageless, her eyes were often melted holes in snow-white skin. Was her mother a patient for an asylum? Would placing her in such a place keep her from offending her family and neighbors?

Dorothea often wondered how her mother was faring in New Hampshire.
Maybe I should visit
. No, visiting would do no good, but only agitate her mother at seeing her daughter after all these years. Maybe by now she had forgotten she had a daughter. Still, maybe her mother could be treated as though her state of mind was a disease. Maybe new apothecary salts and potions could induce
a cure. Few considered the mentally ill curable. Aunt Sarah had suggested that Mary Bigelow Dix had never been right, never able to carry out her motherly duties.
Unavailable
.

The supper discussion ended. If Dorothea could help prevent mind deterioration by giving children reasoning tools, she could perhaps keep them from sinking into a world of too much freedom, a cause of mental disease that many agreed on. That was her task then as a teacher. Prevention. Her mother must have had no one teaching her when she was a child.

She had been sending sections of a book she was writing to Anne, and the two often discussed her progress on Saturday afternoons as they wandered through the Heath gardens or strolled beside the harbor. Dorothea wasn’t sure if it was the conversations she enjoyed most or if just being with Anne lightened her days. This woman supported her and genuinely cared for her; the knowledge inspired Dorothea and gave her energy for teaching.

“You really think the book is interesting?” She’d thought her words a bit stiff, but if Anne approved …

Anne was as tall as Dorothea, and people nodded and stepped aside as the pair walked arm in arm through the streets of Boston, parasols sheltering them from the summer sun.

“The work is fabulous. You must get it published.”

Dorothea wrote the book as a conversation between a mother and a daughter. The child would ask: Why, Mother, did you spend
so much time in the factory the other day? I saw the spindles whirl till I was tired; do tell me why you looked so long at that great pile called machinery.

The mother would respond: I will tell you, my dear; I wished to understand the principle upon which the spools and spindle were set in motion; the action of the looms; and closely to observe every part of what you thought so uninteresting.

“It’s a lovely way to share information, and it models respectful communication between mothers and daughters. Papa might have a publisher friend he could put you in touch with.”

“That would be … that would be wonderful. Thank you. I’m nearly finished.”

“You do so much more with your time than I,” Anne said. They stopped at a clock shop and looked in the window. “I don’t even need a clock. I don’t really have to be anywhere on time. Except church, of course. But my sisters keep me apprised of my appointments.”

“I’m not sure what I would do with my time if I didn’t have these projects.”

“I suppose that’s why we’re supposed to marry and have children. So we’re always occupied and never wondering what else we’re supposed to be doing. Yet marriage eludes us, it seems.” Anne’s hat brim brushed Dorothea’s.

“Anne, has anyone ever proposed to you?” It was a daring question to ask. So private.

Anne began walking again, this time with both hands on her
parasol. “I did have a proposal long ago.” She hesitated. “I even accepted.”

“Did you? What happened? If I’m not prying.”

“He … felt pressured, I suspect. To make an arrangement before he went to Europe to school. And then he never returned. Papa received condolences from his family, apologizing for their son’s behavior, but I never heard from him. He married an Italian countess or something.”

“I didn’t mean to lance an old wound,” Dorothea said. She wanted to reach out and comfort Anne, place a hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t.

“Oh, it’s a wound well scarred over. After that, I wanted only friends, not the ache of caring deeply for someone only to have him spurn my love. Not even care enough to tell me directly. I suppose that’s the greatest humiliation. His parents told my parents. I felt like damaged goods being returned when I was as I had always been.”

“Perfect,” Dorothea said. “You are perfect. His is a terrible loss that he will never know.”

Anne smiled. “Thank you.” They paused next in front of a silver shop with Paul Revere pieces for sale. People dressed in finery walked behind them. Yellow and pink parasols reflected in the window. “And you?”

“Me? No. No marriage proposals. Not even an interest, really. A frightened kiss by a divinity student, however.” Anne raised her eyebrows. “Nothing, really. I adored my French tutor and my
riding instructor, but of course one must keep one’s feelings controlled when it comes to the employed classes.” Dorothea laughed. “Now I am in the employed class with parents hiring me to teach their students.”

“You’re a businesswoman. Very different,” Anne told her.

“Still. I’ve found no one to give my heart to except my brothers. And you, my friend. You are my best friend.” Her palms felt clammy inside her gloves. Her chest hurt from exposing her care so openly.

“There’s Marianna,” Anne said.

“Yes,” Dorothea whispered. “She is family and I adore her.” She hesitated. “But it’s you who mean so much. I should die if ever I did or said something that turned you from me.”

Anne pulled her arm through Dorothea’s and patted her hand. The brims of their hats touched once again. Dorothea smelled Anne’s minty breath. “You should never worry over such impossibilities as that. Besides, families work through such things.”

Dorothea looked away, felt tears burn at her nose.

That night Dorothea apologized in a letter to Anne. She had not meant to put such a weight on her friend by asking about proposals or burdening her with fears that Anne might one day find another dear friend. “I have never had a friend such as you, never. If I pass the boundaries of those lines of which I know nothing, please forgive me. You are the stake beside me that keeps me sturdy in a buffeting wind.” She read and reread the lines, then sealed the letter with wax before she added more.

Boston publisher Munroe and Francis agreed to print and sell Dorothea’s first book. They titled it
Conversations on Common Things, or Guide to Knowledge, with Questions
. A subtitle
For the Use of Schools
was added. “You ought to add ‘for use in families’ as well,” Edmund Monroe noted.

“Oh, I’m hardly one to speak of how a family ought to be. Too presumptuous.”

Munroe shrugged. “And your name will go below that.”

“My name?” Her heart began to pound and her breath threatened to catch in her throat. “Oh. No. That would be unseemly for a proper woman. No, just say ‘By a Teacher.’ ”

Munroe wiggled his pursed lips, then shrugged.

Madam Dix would be appalled if Dorothea’s name were to be associated with something as mundane as book publishing. It was not the proper pursuit of a Boston woman. For some reason, what the woman thought of Dorothea still mattered.

“Oh, that’s silly,” Anne told her later when Dorothea visited to thank Mr. Heath for referring her to Munroe and Francis and to share with her best friend this wonderful news. “Why not have a little public recognition for your work?”