Benjamin Franklin's Bastard (2 page)

So Deborah went, marking the days in her head—the four to six weeks that he would be aboard ship wouldn’t hold promise of a letter unless they crossed with a homebound ship and hauled up to exchange mail sacks. Four weeks came and at the end of it Deborah reminded herself of how foolish she’d been to hope of such an exchange at sea; at the six-week mark she reminded herself that a six-week voyage was a good voyage—there were many bad voyages that went on into months. At the two-month mark Deborah reminded herself that even once in London, Benjamin would still have to wait for a return ship to deliver the letter he would of course sit down at once to write.

At the four-month mark Deborah’s mother began to say things that Deborah took as ominous. “Young and vigorous men do not always possess vigorous memories,” she said, or, “That potter, John Rogers, seems to be making a good living out of his shop.”

After six months a letter came. It made no mention of a prolonged voyage, or an illness, or any other inconvenience that would have explained the delay. He wrote of the governor’s letters of credit proving worthless, of finding employment at a quality printer’s, of the vastly greater opportunities London offered over Philadelphia; between those lines lay the only explanation Deborah was to receive of the last one: “I am unlikely to return to Philadelphia anytime soon.”

Deborah answered the letter, taking great pains over it, but in reading it back she saw clearly enough that it didn’t even measure up to Benjamin’s disappointing offering—she sensed that the words didn’t look right, but they gave no hint as to how they could be bettered. She almost didn’t put the letter out for the post, but she knew how she’d felt in all those months of waiting. In the end she decided that a poor letter was better than none and mailed it anyway. After six long months with no answer she mailed another. She didn’t write again, but she couldn’t say that she didn’t continue to wait. It wasn’t that she believed Benjamin would come back or that he would even write again, it was more that she wasn’t able to erase him as easily as he’d erased himself. She’d long envisioned what her future life would be like, and it varied little from her mother’s: a modest but well-kept tradesman’s house, a full pantry, a warm hearth, and every other year an infant in a cradle beside it. Since he’d first slipped himself under Deborah’s coverlet, the man she’d pictured on the other side of that hearth had been Benjamin Franklin, and she couldn’t seem to move him out of that seat.

DEBORAH’S MOTHER HAD NO
such trouble moving Benjamin; she kept up her talk of John Rogers’s agreeable nature, his mastery of his trade, his interest in Deborah. “What more are you after?” she asked.

Musical glasses, Deborah thought. Astounding secrets. Lectures about healthful and nonhealthful airs—although in truth Deborah didn’t miss the lectures so much. But as Deborah’s mother said, John Rogers was there, and Benjamin Franklin was not.

John Rogers was invited to dine; Deborah’s mother set out to make him feel welcome and did so; John Rogers set out to make himself welcome, and he did that. He used the visit to good purpose, making a fair account of himself to Deborah’s mother—not long arrived from London, he was already making forty pounds a year out of his shop. He made no pressing demands for speech from Deborah but included her in his talk with the mother with the kind of look that expressed well enough his intent. In fact, he seemed unwilling to take his eyes away from her face and form, and Deborah could not help but feel the compliment in it.

As the night wore down, Deborah’s mother made an excuse to retreat to the kitchen, and Rogers proved himself the gentleman by asking Deborah’s leave to call upon her again; once it was granted he stood up and bid her good night.

John Rogers called five times before declaring his desire to make Deborah his wife. She’d by then learned he was proper and pleasant and attractive enough in his person, although he had a habit of licking his hair behind his ears that she didn’t like, but it seemed a small enough fault. Still, Deborah answered Rogers, “I’m not of a mind to marry yet.”

When Deborah’s mother heard of her answer, she said, “Very well, there’s an advertisement in the newspaper for someone to scrape skins at the hatter’s shop.”

When Deborah’s eye widened she said, “I can’t afford to keep you. ’Tis one thing or the other—you go to wife or you go to work.”

That night Deborah lay in bed with her eyes tightly closed and tried to reimagine her old hearth, the cradle at one side, the chair at the other, but with Rogers sitting in it instead of Franklin. The room seemed dim and cold, the fire weak, with Rogers little more than a dull gray shape; but when she tried a second trick, putting her mother into that chair, the room grew too close and overhot. And what of an empty chair? The minute she tried to picture it the scene went black.

John Rogers returned. Deborah never did know if her mother had summoned him or if he’d come of his own accord, confident enough that he’d not be turned away twice. Deborah’s mother left them alone in the parlor, and John Rogers stood before her and spoke in his most earnest voice. “My disappointment at our last meeting was great. But here I am again, in hopes that perhaps you’ve had a second thought.”

“Perhaps if we talked of it again in a year—,” Deborah began, but John Rogers shook his head.

“I’m not so young as to have a year to waste.”

“But my daughter is.” Deborah’s mother had come through the door. “She’s young and unused to the idea as yet. Surely another month or two could be allowed her.”

“I could not object to a month.”

The talk went back and forth, Deborah saying little, until belatedly she realized just what it was they talked of—not a renewed suit in a month but a marriage in a month. Deborah leaped up from her chair to correct the plan while she could, but her mother turned on her such a bright smile of satisfaction that Deborah could see in it the clearest reflection of the reverse—the face she would be staring at across her mother’s hearth if she chose to remain at it single yet. She also saw the hatter’s shop. She turned from her mother’s smile to Rogers and saw that he waited on her word, understanding that nothing could be settled until she said it herself; Deborah’s mother talked on, and still John Rogers watched her and waited. Perhaps after all it was not such a poor prospect, life with a man who would grant her her own mind? Indeed, if she kept Benjamin Franklin out of it, this man would measure up well against the rest, and, as her mother repeated again and again, Benjamin Franklin was indeed out of it.

“A month,” she said.

DEBORAH’S MOTHER AGREED TO
a dowry she could ill afford, culled out of the sale of the remaining inventory at her husband’s carpentry shop. Deborah’s mother offered no money for wedding attire, but Deborah didn’t object—she’d already discovered the sum of her assets lay in a full figure and a fresh face that would show up just as well in her unadorned lavender bombazine and navy cloak. The justice of the peace said the necessary words over them in the parlor, and Deborah’s mother made a roast of the last of the freshly slaughtered pork. After he’d cleaned two plates, John Rogers stood up, swiped his hair behind his ears, said his thank you to Deborah’s mother, and pointed Deborah to his cart. He hoisted her trunk in after her and geed his horse into the street; Deborah turned to say a last word to her mother, but the night was cold and her mother had already gone back inside the house. Looking at the door of the place where Deborah had lived the whole of her life, she began to think that perhaps she’d given up a known thing for an unknown thing without sufficient thought, but it was, as her mother would certainly have told her if she’d voiced the idea out loud, too late.

Rogers’s house was on Warren Street, at the far end of Market, the houses growing smaller and darker as they progressed. Rogers spoke little on the short ride and made no grand announcement of any kind as they entered. Deborah didn’t particularly mind, as she’d occupied herself with her own thoughts, or perhaps better said, with one particular thought: Would Rogers be able to tell that another had already explored parts of her he might well expect to explore first? A memory of her last time between the sheets with Benjamin caused her to flush with double shame—at the act itself, and at thinking of Benjamin Franklin hours after she’d wed someone else.

Rogers handed her down at the door, raked the trunk across the threshold, grinned at Deborah, and pulled her up the stairs. Two closed doors greeted her at the landing and Rogers opened one of them, unleashing a cold, damp draft. Deborah would have liked a few more words with her new husband, or better yet, a cup of tea, but neither was offered, and Deborah, feeling herself already in the wrong, made no fuss.

It turned out not to matter. There was, Deborah discovered, a not-polite way to bed a woman, and if Rogers noticed any lack in her it didn’t slow him. He fell asleep, woke and kneed her legs apart again, drained himself, slept again. Deborah now saw the great advantage of remaining chaste till marriage—the night would have been a good deal less disappointing if she’d had no comparison to make.

The second disappointment was her new husband’s empty pantry. Deborah managed their breakfast out of toast from an old crust of bread and the dregs of beer from the beer barrel; she offered them up to Rogers with what from her mother would have sounded like apology but from her came out as accusation: “Your pantry needs stocking.”

“Gray’s has my account,” Rogers said, the only words he’d spoken to her since she’d arrived at his house. He swiped his hair behind his ears again and left for his shop.

LIVING WITH ROGERS PROVED
to be little different from living alone, and alone, Deborah turned to her thoughts. That her thoughts were too often of Benjamin Franklin she knew to be wrong, but she didn’t care. Her thoughts, at least, were hers, and she’d do with them as she liked. The first sign of deeper trouble came a month into her marriage when Deborah put a sack of Indian meal on the counter at Gray’s and was told that John Rogers no longer had an account. Deborah told Rogers that night.

“I’ll square it,” he said, and went out.

That night Deborah learned another new thing—that there was something besides Benjamin Franklin’s good nature that could be brought home from a tavern—but when she went to Gray’s the next day there was no trouble over the account; it was another month before she discovered from Gray’s store that all her purchases were now being charged against her mother’s account. Deborah returned home, went straight to her husband’s desk, and prized it open without compunction, hunting out his ledger book. Deborah was not good with words, but she was good with numbers, having helped her father from time to time in his shop, and she could soon track the spending of the entire dowry she’d brought with her to her marriage, as well as the long list of remaining debts. She closed up the desk and sat long in thought. As affairs now stood, the only advantage to her marriage to John Rogers went all to John Rogers, with her mother forced to keep the pair of them at her own expense. Deborah thought longer, and could see only one way to improve her state as well as her mother’s: She climbed the stairs, packed her trunk, and wrestled it back down the stairs with greater ease than she’d wrestled it up. She found a cart boy at the corner and gave him a coin to take it and her to her mother’s house.

Her mother heard the racket and came out into the hall. “What in heaven is this?”

“We’re done with Rogers,” Deborah said, “and you’d do well to inform Gray before he takes all you own to pay off the man’s debts.”

“What!”

Deborah explained. And explained again. Her mother was the sort who had her own idea of a thing and didn’t like to give it up; in the end she went out to Gray’s and came back the color of sour milk, apparently drained of ideas altogether.

“What are we to do? You still bear his name.”

“He may keep his name,” Deborah said. She climbed the stairs to her old room, opened the window, and breathed in the cold, healthful air.

SOON AFTER DEBORAH’S FLIGHT
John Rogers disappeared, and in time the rumors began to fly around Market Street from every point on the compass. John Rogers had a wife in London. John Rogers had fled to the West Indian Islands to escape his creditors and had taken a third wife. John Rogers was dead, beaten to a pile of bones by one of his creditors. Or the third wife. At first Deborah didn’t care where he was or whom he was with or, indeed, whether he was alive or dead—her earlier rage had washed away under a crashing wave of relief—but after a time Deborah realized that what had happened to her husband had to matter to her. If she had no proof of his death, if she had no proof of that London marriage, Deborah was herself as near dead as any living woman could get. She had no husband, but neither was she free to marry another unless she could afford to legally investigate either the first wife in London or the possible death in the West Indies. The dowry for Rogers had taken all that the Reads owned in the way of assets. Any legal fees were as beyond Deborah’s grasp as the tops of the masts that lined the Delaware River.

DEBORAH’S MOTHER BEGAN TO
have difficulty on the stairs, and with the washing, and with balancing over the fire to lift the skillet; she began to tremble as she worked her needle. Deborah took on the main of the chores, settling her mother in her chair with some wool to wind or some dough to knead; at night she helped her to bed and returned below stairs to sit alone with her sewing. The relief that had washed away her anger over John Rogers was in turn washed away by a hopelessness that had heretofore been entirely alien to her nature. She got out of her bed and did her chores and her nursing but didn’t go out beyond what was needed; she could see the looks on the faces she passed, as if she were lame or disfigured. Nothing moved her until one day on her way back from her errands her eye happened to fix on the masts dissecting the sky.

Deborah walked toward the water. From a distance the river looked still, but as she drew closer she saw how fiercely it ripped into its bank, that she was the thing that was still. She wondered what happened when a still thing hit a moving thing, where the still thing might end up. Benjamin would have known; Benjamin was a strong swimmer, had even experimented with paddles on his hands and feet to make him an even stronger one. He’d once hitched himself to a kite and let it drag him across the pond, testing the power of the wind against a few sticks and pieces of paper.