What Is Visible: A Novel (25 page)

Chev had made a point of avoiding Laura since the raid, but as he carried his bags down the stairs, there she was, waiting in the main hall.

She grabbed at his hand. “Where?”

“Don’t need to know.”

“Told you. Madman.”

Who was she to lecture him? He put down his bags. He channeled all of the nervous exhaustion and anxiety to strike at her palm. “He was a saint. Should pray for him.” He knew he was hurting her, but he couldn’t stop.

She managed to twist one hand out of his. “Pray for people he killed.”

“Slavery is evil, Laura.”

“Murder is evil, Doctor.”

“I regret nothing,” he said, though at this point, it wasn’t entirely true.

Then of all things, she patted him on the back as if he were a child. It had been gut-punch enough that his wife had said, “Just go,” and only halfheartedly hugged him good-bye, her belly big with child against him.

“I need to find teachers in Montreal,” he’d told Julia, and she’d laughed. She’d actually laughed in his face. Yes, of course, she was worried for him, but she’d stopped just short of calling him a coward. Higginson, however, had not held back and made a point of informing his longtime friend that he considered his present actions ignoble. And the greatest slight had come from Sumner, who had not even replied to his messages.

On December 2, Brown mounted the gallows and the North fell into mourning. By then, Chev was already in Montreal. The time there was torturous, but three weeks after the hanging, he got word that the danger of extradition to Virginia was past and arrived home just in time to see his son born on Christmas night. Samuel Gridley Howe Jr. As he held the child safe in his arms, he dared wonder if perhaps the fiery spirit of John Brown, just departed, might have found its way into this new soul. He didn’t mention his strange hope to anyone, least of all Julia. It was a secret wish he would keep to himself.

In January, a congressional summons was issued, and the Secret Six appeared before a Senate committee investigating the raid. But the last thing the committee wanted to do was blight the lives of these fine New Englanders, and so they all returned to their homes, their explanations and denials having quickly satisfied their peers. Chev could breathe again, though his wife would barely look him in the eye, much less let him in her bed, for months. Once again, she used the nursing as an excuse. How much he loved his children, and yet the irony was that the making of them prevented making more of them, at least for now, and for that he was in a constant state of distress. If Julia were a man, she would understand. Then again, Sumner didn’t understand. But if Sumner were a woman—no, he would not play out the thought. Even Laura had not touched him since his return; she refused to so much as acknowledge him when they passed in the hall. In what strange, new world was it possible for Laura Bridgman, of all people, to act morally superior to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe? A strange, new world in which brothers turned against brothers, and the country split into bloody halves, flies buzzing over the tender flesh despoiled. A real war was on its way, he was sure of it.

B
efore Sammy’s birth, Julia would have sworn she had no favorites among her children, but he quickly changed that. From the moment he was born, when she first saw the downy red of his hair, she was smitten. Her only redheaded child! It was as if the spirit of her beloved Mr. Wallace had descended through the ether and passed into the child, and so as the baby lay swaddled in her arms, she breathed into that tiny rosebud mouth the sweet breath that had entered her only once. She nursed Sammy for thirteen months and let him sleep in her bed well after that. Though she had previously valued her time in her attic nook above all, now she studied and wrote in the nursery while her son played. He was rarely out of her sight; she bundled him up and took him with her on walks and carriage rides into the city. Though her other children were well and truly beloved, Florence and Julia Romana never seemed to have forgiven their mother for leaving them for her hiatus in Rome, and now sided with their father in all domestic disputes. Julia realized that she had long thought of her children as background to her intellectual pursuits and personal preoccupations, but now for the first time motherhood was the foreground of her life. Funny thing, though they already had a son, Harry, this one proved even Chev’s greatest little fellow, and so the parents spent much more time together, bound by their love for the child. They tried not to compete for the boy’s attention, but it was a constant struggle, and therefore, he was the most spoiled of their children.

But life outside the home bore the beginnings of a national hell. Fort Sumter was attacked, and the war became a foregone conclusion. Both Julia and Chev applied their efforts to the cause of the Union. Julia was one of the founders of the Women’s Central Association of Relief for the Sick and Wounded of the Army, a title she felt was far too long, but a great venture nonetheless. Chev campaigned to head the Sanitary Commission, a supply and relief organization supporting the Army. In late 1861, the couple headed off to Washington to further their efforts, and to the surprise of the older children, they took Sammy, who was almost two, along with them.

While Chev politicked, Julia did some rambling, always in a carriage and always accompanied by either Massachusetts Governor Andrew or James Freeman Clarke and his wife. She was surprised that the city of Washington seemed more like an unruly village than a true city, much less the capital of the nation. The wide avenues were still unpaved, and ambulances, soldiers on horses, and orderlies on foot trailed up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. Most of the federal buildings stood only half-finished, and the Capitol itself had yet to be crowned with its dome, another project put on hold for the war effort. The grand Army of the Potomac surrounded Washington, their brown tents pitched like molehills all along the outskirts to protect the city from the Johnny Rebs, who had set up camp just over the river in Virginia. With her friends, Julia visited camps and hospitals, and even the Massachusetts Heavy Artillery led by her second cousin. But wherever she went, someone always asked after Laura, be it an injured lieutenant or a bugle boy. Apparently, even during wartime, Laura’s star had not completely dimmed in the public firmament.

In November, as Julia was watching a review of the troops at Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia, Confederate troops suddenly descended and a skirmish began. As she headed back into Washington, she could still hear the sounds of battle. On the way they passed some soldiers singing the popular “John Brown’s Body,” and Mr. Clarke teased her that she should write new lyrics for the tune.

That night, Julia awoke well before dawn, and in the dim light began to write out verses, almost as if from memory, with little of her usual effort. As Sammy and her husband slept, she finished her poem, with its echoes of the violence of the Old Testament, in particular a favorite passage of hers from Isaiah. Two months later, James T. Fields published the revised “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in the
Atlantic
, for which the author received the princely sum of five dollars. And though the average fellow did not read this esteemed publication, because she had set the words to the tune of “John Brown’s Body,” the song was soon on everyone’s lips.

Chev, of course, suffered great agitation at his wife’s sudden fame. He had not been granted the command of the Sanitary Commission, though no clear reason was given, and so they soon returned to Boston. His headaches grew worse, and he even took Julia away from Sammy to nurse him, all to no good end. President Lincoln himself first heard Julia’s song after the Battle of Gettysburg and reportedly shouted, “Sing it again!” to wild applause. Yet when she was invited to attend Lincoln’s second inauguration, Chev forbade her to go to Washington because he had a sick head, though she knew it was because he chafed under the idea of being her guest for the event when he himself had not been invited. He went as far as bringing up divorce again, but for Sammy’s sake, Julia quelled his hurtful demands.

Julia would have thought she would be ecstatic to be known as the new poetess of the nation, and yet she began to feel more drawn toward the essay form and the idea of reading out and engaging with the public off the page; however, she knew Chev would fight her tooth and nail on the idea of a speaking tour and that she probably wouldn’t be allowed to take Sammy with her. That would have broken her heart, as he was at the age when he asked about everything, talked about everything, her perfect and intellectually curious redheaded child. She liked to pretend he was Mr. Wallace’s son and that he would grow up to be a great philosopher or writer, or ideally both, like his parents.

One chilly May morning, Julia set out for a drive with Sammy, and realized after they’d gone a mile that she’d forgotten his scarf and gaiters, but he proved his usual bright self. That night, however, he came down with fever and chills. Chev was away, so Julia called in their doctor from town, who pronounced the boy ill with diphtheria. Her own words thrummed blackly in her head:
He hath loosed his fateful lightning and his terrible swift sword.
Julia telegraphed Chev and he made it home by the next night. They both stayed up with their son, who seemed to be feeling better. At 5:00 a.m., Sammy died in his mother’s arms. He had just turned three.

Chev did not blame her; instead he said nothing, withdrawing to his study and then to his bed. He refused to go to the funeral, even after the other children begged him. Julia stayed a mother to her children throughout her pain, her numbness, the unwillingness of her spirit to go on. Surprisingly, only Laura offered her any real comfort, sitting with her for hours as she wrote poems about Sammy, some of which she signed into Laura’s palm. What a strange and unexpected twosome, she thought, as they wept together, her patting dry the tears that leaked from beneath Laura’s shade.

Julia turned to the Book of Common Prayer, a favorite since childhood, and again devoted herself to her studies. It was only the second time in her adult life that she had been gripped with such anguish, and in her heart the deaths were connected. For a year afterward, she wrote poems only about Sammy and reams of letters to him, which she never showed a soul. She also wrote poems in honor of Mr. Wallace’s memory and composed a series of philosophical lectures, concentrating on his beloved Comte and on Hegel, but she couldn’t read his novels. She’d tried, but their violence reminded her of the vicious circumstances of his death. She planned to give readings on particular topics of ethics while also advancing the cause of practical Christianity, which in her recent grief had been a great comfort.
Our God is marching on.

She thought Chev would battle her about the readings, but he gave in without any argument, insisting only that she not charge for the events, which she had hoped to do. Her parlor readings were a huge success, and she decided she’d try a series in Washington. She was publicly embarrassed when Sumner, whom she’d thought would support, if not attend, the readings in his newly adopted city, railed against her ambitions, telling anyone who’d listen that she was in no way qualified to speak on any of those topics. It was one thing not to be for her, but why was Charlie so adamantly against her? After all, Julia had never intervened in his relationship with her husband, though since Sumner was in Washington, he didn’t get to spend much time with his favorite friend anyway. As a matter of fact, she and Chev spent little time together anymore, as if the grief had severed their last ties of true affection.

Yet still she was bewildered that her husband stayed away from her bed for so long. How they could have comforted each other, if he had only allowed it. On the night she returned from Washington, where her tour had been a modest success, she greeted him with a genuine smile when he entered her bedroom. He came to stand behind her dressing table, but he didn’t lay a finger on her, only watched her in the mirror.

“Has something happened?” she asked, suddenly afraid.

“There will be no more children,” he said and left her before she could speak. But she couldn’t have spoken anyway. There would be no argument. But then why didn’t he push to divorce her now, now that Sammy was gone? Perhaps he had found some way, something, someone to keep him happy enough to bear his present situation, though Julia refused to torture herself over the possibilities. She accepted that that part of her life―that part of her heart, which she now realized had been much larger than she’d imagined—was forever closed. She was forty-two.

For her next reading tour, she bought a white lace cap. She would never again appear in public without the cap covering the waves of her still-bright red hair, which had always been her greatest vanity, a true
rosso
being the highest effort of nature.

T
he house still vibrates with sorrow. I wrote a poem about Sammy, how he liked to juggle oranges and how plump his fingers were, and when I gave it to Julia, she hugged me hard against her, and I felt the rush of tears on my neck. Strange to be holding Julia, patting her gently, stroking her soft hair. At Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, where I expect I will be buried also someday in the Howes’ plot, I felt the crowding of souls around me, behind and before, and I didn’t know if it was the living or the dead. It was not my first death, but it was my first funeral, and though it was horribly sad, I found myself in some way oddly pleased by it, in belonging with this group of people all weeping at the edge of the grave. And yet although there was a minister and a service, the ceremony made me feel estranged from my Lord. How could he justify taking a child? These wartime days are full of death, but that I understand as the pitted road of history. Of course, none of my family or close acquaintances, save Cook’s son, are doing the fighting, though Doctor and Julia work with wartime committees in Washington. Would it have been better if Sammy had been maimed by fever and lived on as I do? I dare not ask his parents this question for fear of their answers.

Sammy is not gone a year when I am felled by news from home: Mary has died of the same fever. Mary with her tangled hair, tickling me until I gasped; Mary who covered my face in kisses and would not let me die that winter in Hanover. Nine years old then, chubby-cheeked and snaggle-toothed, brilliant as a flame, she danced around the bed, trying anything to lift my spirits. Mary, who lay with me and petted me as much as I petted her. Mary, now twenty-three and about to be married. I was going to be in the wedding party in the spring—my first wedding—wearing my gayest dress and a straw bonnet pinned with nosegays to match the bride’s bouquet. But now the dress turns black, the flowers wilt into a veil. I go down on my knees to Doctor asking can I go for the funeral, but he says it is impossible; I could not make it in time.

Doctor has not been the same this whole year, and I have spoken with him only a few times—Jeannette says he will not even talk to Julia—but today he clasps me boldly to his chest, and for a second, I forget about Mary, feeling only his warmth, and then I feel terribly guilty.

“Want to be with your family in mourning?” he asks.

I don’t know. My mother’s letter did not ask for me to come; doubtless she and Papa think I would be more a hindrance than a help at such a time, so I do not go. My relationship with God has taken another onerous blow, and I don’t know if we will survive it. He is obviously not who I thought He was. He has burdened me with great tribulations by the very circumstances of my life, and I have endured, but why did He take one so dear, so innocent? I realize that this is the way most people feel after such a heavy loss, and yet I take it personally nonetheless. I think I have probably been a great deal more intimate with Him than most others manage, because He has imposed upon me this isolation which posits Him as my only true companion. Now I talk, I rail, I shout, I make all my noises, even in the dining room, but I hear nothing from the heavens. Jeannette keeps pushing me down in my chair and finally puts her hand across my mouth. I bite the soft back sides of her fingers. God has turned me again into an animal.

Though we rarely have Exhibition Days, no matter what Doctor promised, we still have Visiting Days. So I sit myself down in the drawing room, in the black crepe dress I have worn since winter, and await the curious. First up, I have a young girl who sorely tries my patience. She has come alone, not in a group like most of the schoolchildren. I give her my hand and she digs into my palm with block letters, the only way those not versed in finger spelling can attempt to communicate with me, and slowly spells out “Laura.” I pat her hand in acknowledgment but then she writes my name over and over. We still get a fair load on Visiting Days, so I know a line is forming behind her, but I can’t get her off me. She holds on almost desperately, scrawling my name across my knuckles when I finally close my fist. I have no choice but to wave for Jeannette to come and help me, but when Jeannette tries to pull her away, she grabs my skirts, circling my knees, and I can feel the sobs shaking her thin shoulders. Where on earth is her mother? I feel great pity for her, and yes, a certain pride that she seems so devoted to me, or at least to the idea of me, but there is nothing to be done about it. I pat her head as Jeannette lifts her off and am rewarded with a fine mess of curls. That at least is something.

It is savage enough that He comes in the night to steal our children, and yet the nation has now given the dark emperor permission to mount the carnage at Bull Run and Shiloh, the battlefields littered with the corpses of our finest specimens, North and South. Is the emancipation of the Negro really worth all that dying when we’ve faced the horrors of Antietam, the bloodiest day of the war, over two thousand Union soldiers dead? And not even a clear winner, though General Lee did finally withdraw to Virginia. I don’t care what the Constitution and the abolitionists say; we are not, by any stretch of the imagination,
all
created equal—in God’s eyes or in man’s—and so we must strive to be happy within the respective cells in which our Maker has confined us. I believe I could teach the slaves a thing or two about making do, though it’s true that I am not beaten. The tragedy is that I might enjoy it. I remember Julia’s shock that I had no interest in crusading for the rights of oppressed women and slaves. I feel a simultaneous affinity and disgust for both, which I do not nurture, but which is nevertheless inscribed in my nature. They all assume on my part a huge and general compassion by virtue of my condition, but I refuse to be anything but myself, whatever
that
is.

At last Doctor’s carriage takes me out to Wayland, where Sarah, just back from the islands, is settling with Mr. Bond. I begged to meet her at the pier, but Jeannette convinced me that she would be very tired after a journey of three months with three children. She is right, so I bide my time one week—that is all I can wait!―and now I’ve traveled the fifteen winding miles to see her, my darling Wightie, after a dozen long years.

She opens the carriage door, and I restrain myself from falling into her arms. She has been weak, she wrote, since the birth of the last child, so I must be as careful with her as she has always been with me. Finest china, my porcelain Wightie. The children paw at my skirts, and so I stop to pet and peck them all, none very tall for their age. The boy’s face rings of Sarah’s—the straight, thin nose, the slight dimple in the chin—and all their hair is fine and slightly wavy like hers. Like Mr. Bond’s. She says they are all blonde.

I finally loose the children and kiss my darling over and over, but her face seems to have shrunken. I trace the pouches of flesh beneath her eyes and the sunken wells beneath her cheekbones. How much older she feels than forty. Perhaps she is thinking the same of my thirty-three, though I doubt it because I know my skin is still wonderfully soft and smooth. She leads me to a chair by the hearth and pulls up close beside me.

“A present,” she says and puts something round my neck. It seems to be a necklace of flowers, but they are long dried. “Lei,” she writes. “Island custom.” I try to imagine her running along the surf, the circlet blooming between her slight breasts. It is a shock to me how much I have missed her, the touch of her, just knowing she is close by. She fills my hand with notes on the voyage; the girl was sick the whole way. The children miss the island, as does her husband, but she is delirious to be home. Mr. Bond has taken a position as the head of the new Hawaiian Islands Commission in Cambridge and is happy with it. Still, I am glad he is not here.

She did not get my letter about Mary, so I break the tale to her, and she lets me weep against her bony chest, the way she always did. Sammy she knows about. The difference is that she met my Mary, those long weeks she stayed to watch over me in Hanover before she left, when I had turned my heart against her.

“God finished,” I tell her, and she is quick to ask my meaning. “No talk, no listen.” He is farther away than the moon, less bright than the stars, more dangerous than the sun, and now I know that was always His nature. For myself, I forgave His cruelties, but now that He has loosed His fateful lightning on my family, I cannot forgive. It is a two-way street with God; not only must He forgive me, but I must also forgive Him.

Sarah is shocked, the most shocked she’s ever been with me. “God loves,” she says. “Rest is life.”

“Then why pray?”

“For your soul,” she says, “and the souls of others.”

“Senseless. Wouldn’t have to pray for Mary’s soul if He hadn’t killed her. Don’t you think I’ve gone easy on God?” I ask her, and she is angry.

“Not only your life hard,” she writes, almost scratching my palm. Her nails are ragged. The old Sarah kept her nails neatly filed and was possessed of boundless sympathy; I suppose that becoming a wife and a mother has left her less for me. “Everybody’s hard.”

Not everybody! Piffle. Until Sammy died, Julia’s life was a perfect dream. And all the belles who visit me—they have no idea of suffering.

“Jesus suffered,” she says. “For you.”

“Then who do I suffer for?” Of course, she can’t answer that one.

“How is Julia?”

“Still crying.”

“Doctor?”

“Worse than time of John Brown.”

“I have a Secret Six,” she tells me: three babies lived, three babies died. “Under the volcano.” She recites the names of her dead children, Katherine, Augustine, and Clinton, and I write back the names of her living ones: Abigail, Thomas, and Laura. At least my namesake didn’t die. People love to name their children after me. I find that flattering but strange, given my condition. I remember the death of one of her children, but I never knew about the others. One of fever at six months, she says; the next boy lived an hour; the last girl the fever at two, a full little person lost.

“If she lived, maybe like you.” She asks me: Could she have lived through that or was it better that she died? “The live ones escape me like eels.”

What does she mean? They are here, clambering around my chair, annoying the vinegar out of me. She says that her dead children are buried pineapples, and then she tries to tell me about an island priestess walking into a volcano.

I am astonished, not only that she is telling me so much, so oddly, but that she seems more than willing, even eager, to offend me. And then she writes more, signing so erratically that I cannot follow her. This is not the Sarah I know; the years and the islands have changed her. I hold her and pat her, and for the first time since I have known her, we have switched places, and I am the comforter. It feels good, but suddenly, she grows rigid in my arms, as if she just realized where she was, and pulls completely away.

“All right?” I ask.

“Of course,” she tells me, and then apologizes. “Headache,” she says. “A spell.”

I remember her spells; obviously they have gotten far worse over the years. I force myself to let go the topic of religion, and then we are chatting like old times. She puts in my hands the engraved maps Mr. Bond has bought the children to mark the battle territories. A Prussian, Mr. Prang, made the first one after the assault on Fort Sumter, and furnishes the maps with colored pencils―blue for the Confederacy, red for the Union―so that the advances and retreats can be tracked as soon as reported by telegraph in the newspaper. He has sold over forty thousand, though I personally have no interest in tracking the war. Her girl brings a plate of afternoon biscuits, but I can’t force more than a nibble or two. I have long given up on trying to taste—what was God playing at?―and there are certainly no occasions to tempt or encourage me. Perhaps it was all a waking dream, a willed delusion, part of the brief, glorious rapture that marked my only union with another human being.

Sarah and I have so much to catch up on that we go on for over two hours, until both our fingers are sore. When it is time to leave, she says she’ll pray for me, and I tell her that I’d pray for her too if I were still able. We say our good-byes lightly, and I promise to come again soon. She sends her love to my family and to Doctor and Julia.

All the long ride back in the carriage, I bounce between two terrible thoughts: my Sarah has changed and my God has changed. Where will I be without their constancy? And no one seems to care that Julia Pastrana, “the World’s Ugliest Woman,” has also passed from the world that titled her so, and I wonder if the Lord will, in the end, find beautiful that which He hath wrought.