The Widow's War (13 page)

In these dreams William caresses her, too: moves his hands across her shoulders and down her arms, outlines her hips and thighs with his fingers, draws heat across her face and eyes, and breathes into her mouth. They make long, slow love in her bed in Rio or in a boat that rocks each time they move. They laugh and cry and cover one another’s mouths with their hands so no one will hear them.

She sees William, alive and well: his dark eyes, the tiny scar above his right eyebrow, the mole on his left shoulder, the white spot on the sole of his foot left by a nail he stepped on fifteen years and a whole lifetime ago. As she strokes his hair and measures the length of his body with hers, she feels happier than she’s felt in months.

Dearest Carrie,
he whispers.
Darling.

Don’t ever leave me again,
she begs him.
Don’t ever go away.
And in dream after dream, he promises not to.

In the past when she dreamed of him, she woke feeling guilty. Now she wakes feeling cherished. It’s as if William has come back to comfort her. Each time she opens her eyes to find herself back in Senator Presgrove’s house, she experiences a mixture of joy and longing and grief; but in the end, the joy outweighs the grief, and gradually she comes to understand that these dreams are a gift from Deacon, although not a gift he ever intended to give. By lying to her, Deacon has freed her from feeling guilty about loving William, and although she’s not inclined to thank him, she’s grateful, although what this means for her marriage in the long-term is something she’s not yet ready to contemplate.

By day, she puts the dreams aside and starts to make plans. She needs to find a way to live the rest of her life, if not happily, at least with dignity. She would like to confront Deacon and have it out with him, but what good will that do when she can’t believe anything he tells her? She’s not sure exactly what steps to take, but she decides she’ll begin by insisting he move into another room. Perhaps he’ll object. Perhaps he won’t care. In any case, she can no longer sleep in the same bed with him. After that, she’ll wait and see what develops. It will be better for the child if they can at least appear to get along.

As for her plan to use some of her inheritance to sponsor a group of abolitionist settlers and endow a glasshouse in memory of Willa, there’s no reason to sit around waiting for Deacon to come home so she can ask his permission to spend her own money. The time to act is now. The newspapers are reporting that a group of slave owners have met in Westport, Missouri, to plan a mass migration to Kansas. Armed, bent on driving out anyone who opposes them at gunpoint, and loudly declaring their right to take their “human property” into the territory, they are filing land claims at the rate of fifty a day. If something isn’t done immediately, Kansas may enter the Union as a slave state.

Appropriating a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of the senator’s personal stationery from his study, she writes to Eli Thayer, Vice President of the newly organized Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company, and offers to donate enough money to outfit thirty emigrant families. As she blots the letter, folds it, and seals it, she thinks how furious her father-in-law would be if he knew his letterhead sat above such a message.

Next she unpacks her sketch pad and draws up a plan for the glasshouse. She decides it will have two wings converging on a central domed atrium. There will be palms and other tropical trees, wild figs, lianas, and a small stone-rimmed pool filled with exotic fish. One wing will be filled with orchids. The other will feature brightly colored tropical flowers. Would it be possible to have parrots? They would be able to survive Washington winters, since the glasshouse will be heated by subterranean ovens, but would it be cruel to confine them to such a small place?

Yes, she decides, it would be. Reluctantly, she erases the parrots and replaces them with hummingbirds, then erases the hummingbirds and decides to have no birds at all. There’s too much similarity between her own situation and theirs, and as far as birds are concerned, a cage will be a cage even if it’s warm and filled with orchids.

On the evening of the third day, Senator Presgrove reappears and takes dinner with her. Picking up a silver carving set, he deftly removes a slice of chicken breast and has it sent down to her end of the table on a small china plate.

“Senator,” she asks, “where is my husband?” Senator Presgrove lifts his eyebrows and goes back to carving.

“Sir, please tell me where my husband is. I need to talk to him. I’ve discovered he’s deceived me about his opinions on slavery, and I have a right to know the truth.”

The senator grins at her in a way that makes her acutely uncomfortable. “Honey,” he says, “didn’t your mama tell you that you could catch more flies with honey than vinegar?”

“Does that mean you won’t tell me?”

“Yes, ma’am. My own dear mama didn’t raise fools, and it’s a foolish man who steps between husband and wife.”

Carrie is furious, but she masters her temper. She needs to know how extensively Deacon has deceived her. If the senator won’t tell her where Deacon is, perhaps he’ll tell her other things. “Senator, it appears none of the servants in this house are slaves? Is that true?”

“That’s correct. Would you care for a drumstick?”

“How many slaves do you own?”

“Honey, I own sixty-three slaves, which is pitiful by the standards of South Carolina or Georgia, but those sixty-three make me the fourth largest slave owner in the great Commonwealth of Kentucky, and I’m damn proud of it. You don’t much like that do you?”

“No. I think it’s abhorrent.”

“Well then, in the interest of family harmony I think you and I should avoid speakin’ of such topics at the dinner table. You know, Deacon told me you were a wide-eyed abolitionist. If you were a man, I suppose I’d have to call you out and shoot you, but political opinions don’t count in a woman. You can’t vote, honey. You can’t even testify in a court of law now that you’re married to my son.” He finishes cutting off a drumstick and puts it on his own plate. Picking a bit of salt on the tip of his knife, he sprinkles it over his food in a way that is somehow menacing.

“What you can do is keep your mouth shut. I say that with the utmost respect. Take it as a friendly warning. Deacon needs a wife who will go to parties, bat her eyelashes, talk sweet, and charm the gentlemen.”

He points the knife at her. “Now you got a long way to go before you’re gonna be a Southern belle. In fact, it’s my considered opinion that my son made a mistake when he married you, even if you are as rich as the Rani of Jhansi and were raised about as far south as a person can go without strikin’ an iceberg.” He repositions the knife, picks up the carving fork again, and inspects the platter. “Light meat or dark?”

That does it. The next morning, Carrie gets up, puts on one of Nettie’s day dresses, eats a quick breakfast, and calls for the carriage. While she’s waiting for it to roll up in front of the house, she opens her trunk and takes out a package wrapped in brown paper. For a few seconds she bends over it with her eyes closed, inhaling the clean, earthy scent of the jungle. She remembers a flock of toucans fighting over ripe brazil nuts and Papa far above her, perched on the limb of a Cecropia tree reaching out to gather a stem of white orchids.

Cutting the string, she opens the package, selects three orchid roots, and rewraps them in a clean linen hand towel. Half an hour later, she is standing in a somewhat dilapidated greenhouse speaking to Arthur Kroll, assistant to the director of the United States Botanic Garden. Placing the bundle of orchid roots on a potting table, she gets straight to the point.

“Mr. Kroll, I’m Mrs. Deacon Presgrove, and I wish to donate these plants to the garden as a memorial to my daughter, Willa Saylor, who died at sea.”

Kroll examines the bundle from a distance and tugs at his cravat as if it were strangling him. “Mrs. Presgrove, that’s most generous, but I am sorry to say we cannot accept donations from individuals. We’re a scientific organization. We need to know when and where each plant was collected.”

“Each plant I am donating bears a tag that contains all that information as well as the Latin name of the genus and species. If you open this package, you’ll discover that I’m giving you a gift of rare orchids collected by my father, Canan Vinton.”

Her father’s name has an electrifying effect. Turning to the bundle, Mr. Kroll opens it, lifts out the orchid roots, and reads the tags. The roots look more like hanks of muddy rope than plants, but he immediately knows what he has.

“These are priceless! Collected by Canan Vinton himself—good heavens, Mrs. Presgrove, why didn’t you say so at once! I would never have dreamed of refusing such a generous gift. I apologize if I sounded ungrateful, but we have so many ladies dropping by with daffodil bulbs and cuttings from their tea roses. These orchids are a treasure indeed! If we tried to buy them, they would cost the garden hundreds—perhaps thousands—of dollars each; but, as you know, no one can buy such orchids. The only other specimens I am aware of are presently being cultivated at Kew. They were also collected by your late father. The head gardener at Kew told us Mr. Vinton saved them from being destroyed when their portion of the jungle was logged for tropical hardwoods and . . .”

He suddenly realizes that while he has been rhapsodizing over the orchids, she has been standing. “May I offer you a chair, Mrs. Presgrove? Some coffee?”

Carrie smiles. It’s been a long time since she has seen an orchid lover in ecstasy. “No, thank you, Mr. Kroll. I must leave in a few moments, but I’d like to return at a later date to meet with Mr. Howard, the director of the garden. I have something else to donate in memory of my late daughter.”

“More orchids?”

“No. I wish to endow a glasshouse. I was thinking of something along the lines of the new Palm House at Kew.”

Kroll looks stunned, which is not surprising. Carrie doubts many ladies drop by to donate a building.

“Mrs. Presgrove, that would be wonderful! Unfortunately, Mr. Howard is not here at present, but I know he will embrace the idea with enthusiasm. It is generous beyond—Well, ma’am, words fail me. The Presgrove House will be the first great glasshouse of the United States Botanic Garden.”

“The Willa Saylor House,” Carrie reminds him. She points out the window. “I would like to build it over there, Mr. Kroll, where it will catch the morning light. It will shine like a soap bubble. We’ll have a domed atrium with marble benches where members of Congress can sit and discuss the affairs of the nation, and a small courtyard where ladies can take tea. I’ll heat it with ovens in winter and fill it with tropical plants so that even in January the people of Washington will have a warm, green place to take shelter from the cold.”

“Perhaps you would like to name the rare orchids in the glasshouse ‘The Canan Vinton Collection’ in memory of your father.”

Agreeing that this is an excellent idea, Carrie thanks Mr. Kroll, shakes his hand, and promises to return later to discuss the details with the director and show him her sketches for the Willa Saylor House, but she’s never able to fulfill that promise, because that afternoon when she goes to her trunk to get her stock certificates, she discovers they’re missing.

“I imagine Deacon sold them about an hour after you two cleared U.S. Customs,” Senator Presgrove tells her at dinner. “And I imagine he’s got the proceeds tucked away somewhere you can’t get your hands on them.”

“He couldn’t have done that! Those stocks were mine, not his! I inherited them from my father!”

“Maybe in Brazil they were yours, but if you’ll look around, you’ll see you’re now living in the United States of America. I understand that where Portuguese law is the law of the land, a woman continues to own her own property after marriage, but under U.S. law, what’s yours became Deacon’s the second you said ‘I do.’”

Carrie rises to her feet, grabs her water glass, and hurls it to the floor. “
Puxa saco!
” she cries. “First Deacon lies to me about being against slavery! Then he steals my money! Your son is a thief and a fortune hunter and so are you! What other lies have the two of you told me! Tell me, or I swear, I’ll raise such a scandal, you’ll be run out of Congress.”

Senator Presgrove studies her thoughtfully. “You know,” he says softly, “until now I didn’t think you had it in you to cause real trouble, but I am in the process of changin’ my mind. I’m gonna have to tell my son to quit tomcattin’ around and keep a better eye on you.”

He leans forward. “You want the whole truth, do you? Well then I suggest you ask Deacon the name of that ‘club’ of his. But you know . . .” His voice becomes a low, threatening purr. “You know, I wouldn’t do that. No, ma’am, I wouldn’t. Because you sure as hell aren’t gonna like the answer. Now sit down and finish your dinner and try to impersonate a lady, or I’ll order the servants to drag you upstairs and lock you in your room until that son of mine comes home. In other words, it’s manners or incarceration. How does that sit?”

“You’ve already taken your wife’s money, drugged her, and imprisoned her upstairs, but you’ll find me harder to bully.”

“Is that so?” The senator rises to his feet. “Listen and listen well: Deacon has your money and you can’t do a damn thing about it. You want a penny from him? You’ll have to beg for it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll retreat to my study and smoke a cigar. In the future, I think I’ll follow my son’s example and dine out. Eating at the same table with you is a surefire recipe for dyspepsia.

“By the way, if you try to cause trouble, you’re the one who’s gonna get run out of town on a rail. Around here gentlemen can do whatever they like provided they don’t do it in the middle of the street, but ladies who curse in foreign tongues and throw tumblers end up with no calling cards on their front hall tables. If you repeat the things you’ve said tonight, every lady in town is going to pity Deacon for having burdened himself with an insane wife.