The Emancipator's Wife (78 page)

But it was a start.

Feeling as if he'd found a dollar in the streets of wartime Washington to carry back to Camp Barker, he set off down Michigan Avenue for home.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTY-EIGHT

“I
TRUST EVERYTHING IS TO YOUR SATISFACTION,
M
RS.
L
INCOLN?
”

Dr. Patterson's voice was stiff, as he stood in the doorway of her little room, an indistinct shape against the gaslights of the hall. For the past month—since he had learned from Robert the identity of the Mr. Wilkie whom Myra had brought to see her—Patterson had been hard put to be polite to Mary, lecturing her several times a day on her untruthfulness, as if it were a mark of insanity to mistrust one's jailers. Every time she turned around, she'd encountered Gretchen or Zeus or Mrs. Patterson, scribbling notes of her behavior.

Searching, she knew, for evidence that she was insane, and that Dr. Patterson and Robert were right.

Lately—since Mr. Wilkie's article had appeared—this had ceased. But she still felt anxious, as if everything she did would be used against her.

Patterson went on, “Your son will be here in the morning, to escort you to your sister's house. I have made arrangements for your trunks to be shipped at the end of the week. I hope you know what you're doing, in insisting on leaving Bellevue, Mrs. Lincoln....”

It was a rhetorical opening to a lecture on the virtues of lotos-eating, but she responded sweetly, “That is the entire case at issue, Doctor, is it not?”

He pokered up exactly like young Mr. Presby used to, when Mary had pinked a hole in the tutor's Yankee self-righteousness. He said, “Good-night, Mrs. Lincoln,” and stalked off down the hall.

She closed the door. She could hear Amanda moving around in the adjoining room. Packing, she supposed. Amanda had agreed to accompany her as a nurse to Springfield, for despite—or perhaps because of—or in addition to—her reduction in her medicines, Mary still felt far from well.

Her back, neck, and shoulder still hurt; her privates itched and she still had to use the toilet a dozen times a night (and wouldn't
that
be a pleasure with Elizabeth's room next to hers!). She still quarreled unreasonably with whoever crossed her path some days, still had those strange moments of feeling detached from her body, of feeling she was on the verge of losing herself.

And that was, she supposed, what her life would become. Amanda was one of the few who had agreed with John Wilamet's judgment that no more than two watered spoonfuls of medicine were to be taken on any one day, no matter what she said or felt. Mary knew this was best, but no day went by that she didn't think, at least once:
Just one more spoonful, because my back is extra bad today. . . .
She thought about the long years ahead and shivered.

It had been easier to put such thoughts away when she'd had John to talk to. Myra had told her that Patterson had dismissed the young black man assisting them, and that he'd later gotten into trouble—wrongfully—with the police: that she was getting one of Jamie's law cronies to help him. Once she got to Elizabeth's, she reflected, she'd ask Myra where to write to him, perhaps even see him. On the days when the cravings were so bad, it did her good to talk.

On the nights like tonight, the thought of seeing Myra, or John, or one of her other friends was the only thing she could hold on to, like lights glimpsed in a wilderness of dark.

If she went back to taking more medicine than she should, Robert would be able to lock her up again. This time forever.

The little warm stir of anger—of fight—helped.
I'll show him.

In nine months, Myra had told her, they'd be able to go to court and have the judgment of insanity lifted from her.

In nine months she'd be truly free.

And then, I will return to Europe, where Robert will not be able to touch me. Where he'll never be “embarrassed” by me again.

She closed her eyes, recalling the warming sunlight of Italy, the tumbled bronze-purple hills of Scotland, London's rain-gray streets. The wooded hills above Frankfurt, its cobbled lanes and the bright-hued dresses of the ladies strolling along the Zeil in the chill sunshine.

Nine months of living with Elizabeth, whom she had not seen in ten years. Of living under the same roof as Ninian, as she had when she was twenty-one.

Nine months of coming downstairs every day to the double-parlor where Dr. Henry had sat by the fire:
He is a man whose heart is stronger than his body. . . .
Nine months of crossing the porch where Ninian had stood in the snow and told Lincoln to relinquish his sister-in-law's hand.

We cannot always be children under our fathers' roofs. . . .

Nine months of eating dinner in the dining-room where Lincoln had slipped on her finger the now-too-tight gold band that said,
A.L. to M.T. Nov. 4 1842 Love Is Eternal.
Of seeing his gray eyes looking out of every shadow at her.

Of knowing that Merce Conkling and Julia Trumbull and her perfidious sister Ann and all the other false friends of former days were whispering about her over their afternoon tea.

She did not know how she was going to endure it.

Nor could she even contemplate how she was going to live through the years to come.

T
HAT NIGHT SHE DREAMED ABOUT
L
INCOLN.

She was in the carriage with him again, under the dappled shade of the Washington dogwoods. She thought,
No! Not this again . . . !
unable to bear the thought of what was coming. To sit beside him in the theater, to hear the crack of Booth's pistol and feel her husband's arm jerk in her grip, then the weight of him slump down on her shoulder. “We must both try to be more cheerful,” he was saying, and looking up, she saw again how worn his face was, how lined with four years of sleepless nights, four years of sorrow. “With our dear Willie's death, we have both been very miserable.”

“I have been very miserable,” said Mary firmly, and took his hand. “And not just because of Willie's death.”

He looked surprised, because this had not actually happened, nor had she ever dreamed of stepping out of the actual past before. This memory of their last afternoon together had always been too precious to alter, even to evade the grief that followed. He put his arm around her then, and sighed. “I know,” he said. “I am sorry, Molly.”

She could feel the warmth of his fingers through the gloves they both wore.

“You did the best you could,” she told him quietly, and rested her head on his shoulder, thankful that this dream didn't include the cavalry escort. “And you did a hero's work. But you abandoned me. You left me
behind—left me out of your life. After all our years together. And then you left me alone.”

It was the thing she had always longed to say to him, in all those darkened parlors, in all those ghostly rooms where the music of far-off violins had whispered across the Veil between the worlds. She never had, for it would not do, to let anyone know the truth about him: that like other men he was a man, capable of temper and thoughtlessness, and of ignoring or disappointing his wife.

It would never do to let anyone know the truth about her: that her wholehearted love had been mingled, all along, with anger, frustration, and the selfish, devouring need to have more of his love than he would give. More than he
could
give.

Maybe more than anyone could ever give.

She had never known how to break past this: first because he would be great, then because he was President, and finally because of the death that had raised him to martyrdom and herself to the thankless role of a
martyr's wife.

And he had never appeared to her, as Tad and Willie and Eddie had, in those hazy, glowing spells that she now recognized as opium-dreams.

He asked gently, “Do you think I really wanted to leave you, Molly? In the end?”

In life she would have wept, but in her dream she seemed to have control of both her temper and her tears. “No. And I know I'm not an easy woman to live with. I could have done better. . . . But so could you. I know you didn't mean to hurt me, but you did. I wish I could say that I never meant to hurt you. . . . I am sorry that I
did
mean it, sometimes.”

He smiled at her, as he had when she'd work herself into a fret about a fancied slight or some day-to-day crisis in their Springfield days, and squeezed her shoulder gently with one long arm. “It happens. I recovered.”

The sun was sinking, and looking past him, she saw that they weren't in Washington at all, but driving along the Richmond road on the outskirts of Lexington. She saw Henry Clay's house, Ashland, among its beautiful gardens, and the low brick shape of Rose Hill on the other side of the road. But the countryside that lay beyond them was the Illinois prairie, as it had been when first she and her father had taken the stage up from St. Louis, empty, baked, and golden in the fading evening light.

She took a deep breath, and said, “I'm sorry I lied to you. About Robert, I mean.”

“Bob's a good boy,” said Lincoln. “And a fine man. He has his own path to walk. You did for him what you could.”

“I just didn't want to be alone.” And hearing her own words, she smiled her rueful sidelong smile. “And now after all that, here I am, alone anyway.”

“We're all alone sometimes, Molly,” said Lincoln gently. “Sometimes that's the way we need to be. We all do what we have to do about it. Like the old farmer said, some days you get the bear and some days the bear gets you. I am purely sorry that I made you unhappy—and glad that I could make you happy, when I did. Promise me you'll do what you need to do, to be as happy as you can.”

She sighed, and answered, “I'll do what I can.”

“That's my Molly.”

They were coming into Springfield, passing the Globe Tavern, where she glimpsed an empty carriage standing waiting for her, and a gaggle of loungers listening to a storyteller in the darkness of the porch. In the flare of torchlight as they went by the tavern's doors she saw that it was John Wilamet driving the carriage in which they rode—Myra, she thought, must have gotten him that job after he'd been dismissed from Bellevue. His eyes met hers and he smiled.

Then Lincoln drew her to him, and kissed her in the sunset's amber glow, the strength of his arm so familiar, the taste of his mouth what it had always been. They held each other like adolescents in the first wild springtime of love.

The carriage turned down Second Street, and Mary saw Elizabeth waiting for her in the dim glow of the porch lamps, Ninian standing tall behind her. Myra was beside her, and Robert, looking like he'd been sucking a lemon. In the soft blue twilight with its thick scent of honeysuckle, she glimpsed other forms on the porch: Lizabet Keckley, she thought, and handsome young Elmer Ellsworth in his Zouave uniform, and Stephen Douglas like a dandified little bantam rooster, and Dr. Henry and Cash Clay.

The carriage drew to a halt, and Lincoln opened the door and swung lightly down, holding out his hand to her to steady her on the high step.

“You can't come in with me?” Mary asked, though she knew that wasn't allowed. “Even for a little?” He shook his head.

“I'll meet you a ways down the road.”

Mary smiled at him, gathered up her petticoats, and stepped down. She was wearing, she noted, the pink faille that she'd had on that first evening in Springfield, when her father had gone looking for Ninian and drunken old Professor Kittridge had come over to lecture her on the evils of slavery.

She looked up at Lincoln and smiled. “I'll look forward to it.”

“As will I.”

He took off his hat and leaned down to kiss her, then sprang up into the carriage again. “You have a good time, Molly.”

Not at all sure that she would, Mary walked up the path to her sister's house through the dream's blue twilight, trying not to look back.

E
PILOGUE

O
N
J
UNE 15, 1876, THE
C
HICAGO COURT REVERSED ITS DECISION AND
declared Mary Todd Lincoln sane. She left Springfield in September, traveling to New York with her great-nephew Lewis Baker and thence to Europe, where she settled in Pau, a pleasant town at the foot of the French Pyrenees. For four years she lived there alone, alternating between profound self-pity and the comfortable solitude of an expatriate widow. Though always a recreational spender, she never again ran into serious debt and always kept meticulous track of her money through a financial manager. She traveled to Italy and through southern France, and even stayed out of politics (mostly).

When former President Grant and his wife stopped in Pau in December of 1879 on their round-the-world post-Administration trip, Julia Grant claimed that she had “not learned” of Mrs. Lincoln's presence in Pau until the night before they were leaving town, and it was “too late to make her a visit” or invite her to any of the receptions, parades, or banquets given the war hero by the city fathers.

In 1880, her health and eyesight failing, Mary returned to Springfield. There she lived as a semi-invalid in four rooms of Elizabeth's house: bedroom, sitting-room, and two rooms in which to store the sixty-four trunks whose weight nearly caved in the floor-boards. Her relatives describe her as living alone in the darkened rooms (kept dim because of corneas literally abraded from half a lifetime of tears), compulsively sorting through the contents of her trunks. But when President James Garfield was assassinated in 1881 and his widow was given a pension of $5,000, Mary assembled helpers and rushed to Washington to demand parity. She got it, plus back payments, plus interest.

She collapsed on the eleventh anniversary of Tad's death—July 15, 1882—and died of a stroke the following day, which was the thirty-third anniversary of her father's. Robert came to the funeral, and inherited close to $58,000.

Mary was buried with Willie, Eddie, Tad, and Mr. Lincoln in Springfield.

Robert Todd Lincoln lived to be eighty-three, serving as President of the Pullman Company and dying a millionaire. He was Secretary of War, to James Garfield and Chester A. Arthur, and his objections and obstructions about sending support to the Greeley Polar Expedition of 1884 have been blamed for the disaster that overtook the explorers. From 1889 to 1893 he was the U.S. Minister to Great Britain.

In 1881, Robert Lincoln was among President Garfield's party at the train-station when Garfield was shot by a disappointed office-seeker, and was present at the President's deathbed. In 1901 he happened, purely by chance, to be in the crowd at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo when Leon Czolgosz shot President William McKinley, and thereafter refused all invitations to the White House or to any occasion on which he would be in the same room as the President of the United States.

He selectively pruned his father's papers, burning some and putting others under seal not to be opened until twenty-one years after his own death.

He died in July of 1926, and in keeping with his desire to be perceived as a man in his own right and not as Abraham Lincoln's son, lies buried in Arlington National Cemetery, on the hillside just below Robert E. Lee's house.

His estate threatened Myra Bradwell's granddaughter with a lawsuit until she sold them not only all of Mary Todd Lincoln's correspondence with Myra, but all of Myra's correspondence with Mary, and the article that she was writing about the events of July–September 1875. All of these were destroyed.