Private Life (16 page)

do, Early! Question you must, and if the old men fume and fuss, you must not pay a bit of

mind.' I consider our meeting to have been a great success, but though I have written

three letters to him since, I have not received a reply." He made at least four trips about

Europe, meeting or attempting to meet astronomers he admired.

Margaret had thought Darwin's first name was Charles; undoubtedly there was

another one. She dared not ask, though.

There was one letter that he sent his mother not long after her famous trip to

Baden, where he joined her for a month. In this letter he remarked that "Miss Maria

Meyerhoff and Miss Meyerhoff seem to have gone away without a word of farewell," but

there was nothing to indicate the extent of his relationship to either of the girls, and,

indeed, whether they were German, English, or American. The Meyerhoff sisters were

not mentioned again, nor was any other girl. She winced a little at how these encounters

might have gone, with Andrew so big and intent and frank-spoken, but it was no business

of hers, was it? None of this was any business of hers, no matter what Mrs. Lear said, but

she read on.

The schooling in Berlin only put off the most pressing question, and by the time

he was finished, Andrew was ready to find a place for himself in Europe--even in Russia.

A return to the U.S. he seemed to view as a last resort. He wrote, "I have sent off the

letter to Struve in Dorpat. Mauritz read the letter for me and complimented me on my

felicitous German. I know I could learn Russian with perfect ease, if given the chance."

An inquiry had been made at Yale, which resulted in the following remark: "Should I go

to Yale (though I know this is a fond wish of yours, dear Mother), I would find myself

teaching not only mathematics (and the highest level would be simple calculus), but also

chemistry and geology (!), not to mention elementary biology. No astronomy, as there is

no observatory! (Even Crete, Nebraska, now has a new observatory!) The great thing

now, anyway, Mother, is to go south--to South America or South Africa. There is an

observatory in Lima (PERU, not OHIO--I know Ohio would be preferable to you,

Mother!) run by Harvard University. But we would be far away from my brothers, and so

I hesitate. I will not hide from you that I am in a great quandary. For your sake, I've

thought of BORDEAUX and BESANCON, but the likelihood of the French accepting an

American, especially one educated in Berlin, is altogether remote."

These letters were dated with Andrew's customary precision: "Operncafe, Unter

den Linden, Berlin, April 2, 1894, 7:02 PM-7:22 PM." The dates and addresses did give

her a strange feeling. Margaret imagined him sitting "under the linden trees," sipping an

elegant cup of coffee and eating an apple tart of some kind in an impossibly fragrant

world, surrounded not only by lindens, but by pots of geraniums and roses and daisies

and other blooms of all kinds and colors, with mysterious notes of music floating among

the various perfumes, and a horde of silent, graceful bicycles streaming by.

After she read this packet (and carefully replaced the letters where she had found

them), she made up her mind that Andrew was not so different from other young men,

after all. He had not left (many) implacable enemies behind him. He had gone to a

different country and fit himself into it with some success. She said nothing in particular

about her investigations to Mrs. Lear, but one day, after Captain Lear had been home for

a month, and they were eating beef and mutton and potatoes every night and the boys

were sitting up straight, speaking only when spoken to, and ending every sentence with

"sir!," Mrs. Lear remarked to Margaret it was a wife's first duty not to be taken by

surprise.

And it was true that now, when he said things like "People themselves are the

problem," she thought she understood what he was getting at. "The lens looks at

something. The mirror refracts it. These instruments are not perfect, but they are more

perfect than the eye, and the eye is more perfect than the mind."

She asked him whether he planned to send his paper on the bullet holes in to a

journal. He said, "Here is the paradox. It only takes one man to find out what is true, but

he cannot live long enough or see widely enough to do it. Ten men see ten truths, and

then they spend ten years arguing amongst themselves. A hundred men are ten times

worse, and a thousand ten times worse than that. I've come to despair at how the truth is

dissipated and distorted with every mind that turns upon it." He shook his head. They

were walking to get the San Francisco papers and some vegetables and bread. He

squeezed her hand.

She said, "I looked at the paper, Andrew. It makes perfect sense to me."

"My exile is the best thing that could have happened to me, after all. Here I am,

out at the edge of the world." He stared down at her. "Even though the physical world has

no edge, my dear, the scientific world does! And at this edge, I am relieved of the

constant necessity of human intercourse, and so my mind becomes freer by the day." She

nodded, and put her hand through his arm. He smiled and patted it in an affectionate

manner. But the paper remained where it was.

* * *

MRS. L EAR guessed her condition before Margaret did, one day when she drank

tea and then felt her stomach turn at the sight of some smoked eel. It was about time, said

Mrs. Lear, and then she insisted ("for the sake of the child") on reviewing Margaret's

recent history with an eye to ascertaining "the breeding date," and, "my dear, the
foaling

date." She said, "These things do not happen by themselves, as much as you might be led

to believe that they do. My own mother told me that she did not understand how she

came to have nine children until at least number seven, when some ladies in her sewing

circle took pity on her and told her. But it's best to be well informed and not turn your

modest gaze away from the whole subject, as so many are tempted to do." She estimated

that Margaret was about six weeks along, which would make for an early-fall "foaling

date"--"Not at all bad, though when the time comes to take the infant out for air, you'll

have a bit of rain, but we shall consider that when we must."

Each day, she intended to tell Andrew what she suspected, but failed to do so.

"Breedings," as she now thought of them, were neither frequent nor easy. Some days, she

made the case to herself that the very rarity of these events was reason enough to tell him

that an effort had been crowned with success. Was Andrew any more knowledgeable

about "breeding" and "foaling" than Mrs. Lear reported her mother to have been?

Possibly not. This was her excuse. What she didn't tell Mrs. Lear was that there seemed

to be no way actually to produce the child she imagined, whose face came into her mind

unbidden, simply a face, appealing but remote, with no maleness or femaleness attached

to it.

"Goodness me!" exclaimed Mrs. Lear. "You look so shocked, my girl. Shocked

every day. But of course you do! I cried my eyes out the first time. Captain Lear had me

in Lima, Peru, and for a while it looked like China, if you can imagine that. But you do

get used to it. It may take years and one child after another, but you do get used to it. I am

not saying, into your ears only, that I don't sometimes find it a relief that Captain Lear is

off to sea again next month, because I do, though of course he is a wonderful man, all

things taken together."

Margaret walked about the island, and then about the town, staring at the children,

boys and girls, young and old, being carried and walking by themselves, running,

skipping, rolling hoops and playing marbles, fishing in the bay, and working, too, since

the general population of Vallejo was enormously varied, and plenty of children were

selling fruits and vegetables and eggs and newspapers and tobacco, or shining shoes or

driving carts or riding horses or carrying things home wrapped in paper. She began to feel

quite sanguine about the foaling, which would be followed by another breeding, and then

another foaling, and then another breeding, and so on. Whatever Andrew's propensities

with regard to marital relations, he clearly understood that marriages produced children,

and, according to the evidence of his jovial pleasure in the Lear boys, he was bound to

greet her news with pleasure, but still she didn't tell him.

It was almost March, her first in California. The rain poured down and the fog

closed in. When the sound of the rain was not blocking out every other (except, of course,

the constant clanging and roaring from the ship factories, but she had gotten used to that),

the fog brought in a litany--ships calling to one another as they crossed the bay, ferry

whistles and shouts of men, officers calling orders to sailors over in the quarters,

bantering and laughing from the street. Once in a while, she heard someone singing. Even

the calls of birds emerged from all the racket, especially at those fugitive moments when

human sounds had suddenly fallen silent, and a crow would squawk or a heron would

cluck or a goldfinch would carry on a conversation right outside her window.

She began to feel what Mrs. Lear referred to as "morning sickness," though these

bouts did not take place in the morning. On the third or fourth evening of this, she was

reading by the electric light, and she felt the strongest surge of nausea yet. Her first

thought was that she should not have eaten, or, indeed, even cooked, the liver she'd made

for supper. She had forced herself to eat a few bites--she decided while she cooked the

liver (which Andrew had brought home) that she would tell him the next day, and then,

perhaps, they would adopt a blander and more agreeable diet.

She went into the kitchen to fetch a piece of bread, and suddenly vomited into the

slop bucket beside the table. Then she felt so tired, much more tired than she had ever felt

in her life, that she staggered back into the front room and fell into a sleep, or into a

stupor, right there in her chair, with the electric light on. In the morning, Andrew told her

that he had come in very late and attempted to awaken her, but with no success--so little

success that he was alarmed and took her pulse, but her pulse was strong and not

quickened, so he turned out the electric light and went to bed.

When she awoke in the chair, stiff from her night's rest, the sun was shining and

she felt much better after a few stretches--rested and not at all sick. She tested herself by

eating some bites of bread and drinking some tea--both went down well. Andrew came

out of the bedroom, and a few minutes later, he and she were laughing at his

consternation at finding her "practically comatose," and afterward, when they ate lunch-sardines--she still felt perfectly fine. As soon as he went out, though, as soon as she sat

down again to read, she found that she could not keep her eyes open, and she slept away

the afternoon. Before she managed to awaken, Andrew had returned and found her, then

gone next door to Mrs. Lear and elicited the whole story from her, including the probable

"foaling date" and her bouts with morning sickness. When she awoke to make supper, she

found that supper was made--a boiled chicken with slivers of carrot and parsnip and some

baked beans, which were pleasantly sweet and easy to partake of. All of this Andrew had

persuaded Mrs. Lear to provide--but, indeed, she was a kindly woman and needed no

persuasion. They had a lovely evening, with Andrew staying at home and reading aloud

the first chapter of
Belinda
in a sonorous, faintly Irish accent, and smiling, but pointedly

refusing to allude to anything outside of the room--nothing in the past, nothing in the

future, nothing in the world or the solar system or the universe. For that one night, it

seemed, Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early allowed himself the luxury of a few hours of

superstitious silence, where plans were not overconfidently expressed and hopes were left

to mellow unsaid.

But such momentary measures did not work. By supper the next evening, it was

clear that the little face she could not help conjuring was not the face of this child.

Andrew, too, was disappointed, and stayed with her for the next two nights, but, truly, it

was a small thing, Mrs. Lear told them, common as dirt, though sad enough, of course.

Her own mother had miscarried at least three times, in addition to the nine children, and it

was possible that Mrs. Lear herself had miscarried between Dorsett and Hubert, when she

was down with something for three days late one spring. And as for her sisters, well, she

had despaired of her sister Edith's ever having a child. She said, "I'm sure it's better not to

know, but now you do." And she did. By the end of that week, that episode was finished-she looked at the children all around her in yet a different way, as a population of beings

that she was cut off from, as if by a thin screen. And then that, too, passed.

* * *

AS nosy as she had been, looking for Andrew's letters, checking the labels of his

suits and shoes, peering into his books for clues to his life and his character, the next