Currents (20 page)

T
he next day, Mary Margaret and Louisa Bennett sat on the Bennetts' parlor-room carpet with a large crate of doll clothes, carefully picking through the box and examining each piece. Boots, the Bennetts' cat, stretched out next to them, occasionally flicking her long black tail or licking the white paws she was named for.

“My dolls don't wear this anymore,” Louisa announced, holding up a little black wool cape. She put it in the stack she was making to give to Mary Margaret. Mary Margaret's doll had just one cotton dress that her mother, Rose, had made from an old tea cloth.
Now
, she thought,
my doll will have a wardrobe fit for a queen!

“This one has a little tear in it.” Louisa scowled at a blue flowered dress.

“Oh, I don't mind at all. My ma taught me how to sew long ago. I can stitch that up like new,” Mary Margaret said, quickly adding it to her growing pile.

As the girls were sorting, Louisa's parents sat with their coffee, watching their only child play. “George, I've been thinking, and if the President of the United States can have a Christmas tree in the White House this year, then so can we have one here,” Mrs. Bennett said to her husband, leaning in closer to him. “The papers say Mrs. Pierce is going to set one up in the East Room and decorate it with holly and pinecones and sprigs of green, and she and the president have invited groups of children to visit and sing ‘Hark, the Herald Angels Sing' around the tree.”

Mr. Bennett looked over at her, squinting through his wire-rimmed spectacles, and said, “Franklin Pierce won't be president much longer, my dear Aurelia. All his talk against freeing the slaves in the South has cost him the election.”

“It would be so festive in our parlor's bow window,” Mrs. Bennett mused.

“My dear,” Mr. Bennett sputtered. “I want our daughter to know that Christmas is about a great deal more than sitting around a dead tree and eating candy out of an old sock.”

She leaned over and rested her hand on his. “Oh, please, George? What harm would it do, dear?”

“Oh, Papa,” Louisa piped in. “We could have little candles and even candies on it. I think it would be so very grand!”

Mrs. Bennett stood up and went over to the window, scooping up Boots and absentmindedly scratching behind the cat's ears. “Of course, I know many people are still dead set against it. They want it to remain a simple, solemn day. Frances Lowe next door feels very strongly about it.”

“Frances Lowe hasn't an ounce of good cheer left in her for anything,” Mr. Bennett grumbled. “She is against everything fun. Cranky old woman, if you ask me. I tell you, I feel sorry for her students at that girls' school.”

“George, be kind.” Mrs. Bennett frowned and glanced over at the girls. “Frances is an excellent teacher. Poor dear, since her husband died all she has left are her pupils and her son, Lucas. You know he was only sixteen when he sailed off two years ago to California looking for gold. My word, he was just a boy! Frances is hopeful he'll be back any day, perhaps before Christmas.”

“You know what they say, my dear.” Mr. Bennett looked up at his beautiful wife. “God doesn't give anyone more than they can handle.”

“On the contrary, George,” she said with a sigh. “I see people all the time who have been given more than they can handle.”

Mary Margaret's head popped up from sorting doll clothes, and she asked, “Excuse me, but did you say that Lucas Lowe will be home for Christmas?”

Louisa also looked up and said, “Will he, Mama? He's been gone forever.”

Mary Margaret and Louisa had tagged after Lucas every chance they'd gotten when he'd lived next door, and had both been crestfallen when he left to go out West.

“I'm not certain, girls. I notice his mother keeps a candle in a lantern in her front window all night now,” Mrs. Bennett said, peering at Mrs. Lowe's brick house next door. The drapes were closed tightly except in the bow window, where the lantern shone brightly.

“But I met her coming back from the Custom House the other day,” Mrs. Bennett continued, twisting a piece of her dark hair behind her ear. “She was checking to see if there was any news about when ships from San Francisco are due in. Remember when Lucas was a little boy, George? Frances used to take him sledding on the Common, and she would go down the hill on the sled with him. She was the only mother who did that! And she would laugh as loudly as any of the children. I think she just set to worrying when Lucas went out West. She'll feel sunnier when he returns.”

“Excuse me, but I need to get home now. My ma will need me to help with supper,” Mary Margaret said, carefully packing up her new doll clothes. “Wait till I show all these to Bridget.”

“How is your sister, dear?” Mrs. Bennett asked.

“Even more under the weather this past week, I'm afraid,” Mary Margaret answered. “But Ma says she thinks she sees the color coming back to her cheeks.” She left through the back door, being sure to close it tightly the way her ma had instructed her, and then hurried down the steps to the Caseys' apartment.

The Bennetts had finished the cellar rooms in their Mt. Vernon Street house quite nicely. On the side of the house, an outside staircase led down three steps to a basement apartment where the Caseys lived. At the bottom of the stairs, a door opened directly into their tidy little kitchen with worn floors, a table and chairs, and cast-iron stove set into a hearth. The small clock the Caseys had brought with them from Ireland ticked softly on a mantel above the hearth. Two small bedrooms were off the kitchen, one for Tomas and Rose and one for their daughters, Mary Margaret and her younger sister, Bridget.

Mr. Bennett had a peaked roof built over the cellar's entrance, so the rain wouldn't dash in or the snow fill up the stairwell in winter. Mrs. Bennett had planted a flowering vine that twisted up and over the roof, providing a little shade in the summer and a lovely fragrance when it bloomed every spring.

The Caseys fed the kitchen stove all winter with sea coal from the backyard shed to heat the three rooms, and Ma kept every inch of their tiny home spotless. On the wall behind the table where they took their meals, she hung a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Like every Irish child, Mary Margaret knew the history of the Great Hunger. She and her family had fled Ireland, along with thousands of their starving countrymen, when the Potato Famine struck. Irishmen in Boston still repeated the sorrowful stories over and over. In 1845, the leaves on potato plants suddenly turned black, curled, and eventually rotted. It was unlike any other crop failure they'd seen before. The working people of Ireland ate meals of boiled potatoes three times a day, but it wasn't long before they went from being hungry to starving.

Mary Margaret was convinced that what little joy Ma had in her died the day two crewmen tossed Mary Margaret's brothers' lifeless bodies overboard in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Tad and John weren't the only ones. Ireland's potato famine sent tens of thousands of starving souls on ships bound for the United States. Fleeing on overcrowded, rickety ships, hundreds of exhausted, starving passengers died just like the Casey boys of typhoid and other diseases before they reached America's shores. Mary Margaret knew Ma also blamed herself and the meager diet she had subsisted on while pregnant with Bridget for her sister's frequent illnesses. Lately, there were days when Bridget had been so sick she couldn't leave the bed.

Mary Margaret was proud that when Mr. Bennett needed skilled workers for his growing shipbuilding business, out of thousands of men, Da was chosen. Cheap Irish labor was pouring into Boston, and a friend of Mr. Bennett's who worked at the immigration station kept an eye out for possible workers. It was he who recommended the Casey family. Mr. and Mrs. Bennett met them and felt confident that the couple would be a good fit—Rose as household help and Tomas as a skilled craftsman.

The Bennetts were told the family had lost two sons on the trip over, though Mary Margaret's da never mentioned it to Mr. Bennett. One day when Ma and Mary Margaret were cleaning the Bennetts' first floor parlor, Ma had paused over some of the Bennett family photographs, and her eyes had filled up. Mrs. Bennett had touched Ma's hand and said gently, “I'm so sorry about the loss of your little boys.”

Ma's face had softened. “Thank you, ma'am,” she said. Mary Margaret had known her ma was grateful for the kindness. “I'm still their mother in my dreams,” Ma said.

T
he temperature had dropped, and it had snowed still more. By morning the city was covered with a pearly white blanket and the narrow streets were slick with ice. Pedestrians tried their best to steer clear of horse-pulled carriages, since occasionally one of the big beasts would skid, causing its cab to swerve back and forth.

Mary Margaret loved the days when her father would take her downtown with him on errands for the Bennetts. Their breath spilled out in clouds as they made their way down Beacon Hill past the gold-domed State House and the fine houses on Pemberton Square.

Scollay Square was filled with the smells and sounds of horses, street vendors, and sailors fresh off ships. Well-to-do merchants and tradesmen strutted about in black top hats as they came and went from the shops, law offices, and small businesses that catered to the wealthy residents of Pemberton Square.

Mary Margaret and Da's first stop was the Old Corner Bookshop, where they presented the clerk with a list of books that Mrs. Bennett planned to give as presents.

“I'd like to work here someday,” Mary Margaret said, marveling at the rows and rows of leather books that lined every wall.

“Growing tired of ironing shoelaces for Mr. Eaton, are you?” Da asked.

“Not really,” Mary Margaret answered thoughtfully. “We talk a lot. And he talks to me like a friend, not as though I'm an annoying child. Of course, that might be because he has no one else in the world to talk to except for me and his customers.”

“Perhaps you'll even have one of your own books on these shelves someday.” Da patted her arm. “You keep writing in your journal. The parts you've shared with me I've much enjoyed. Sure I have.”

She looked down at her feet for a moment before she spoke. “I write about all our lives, Da. Some of it is very sad. What little I can remember of our crossing when we lost Tad and Johnny, even. And I write about how Ma still cries for them when she thinks we don't hear her. The one about the boys is called ‘The Coffin Ship.' Ma says that's what they called the boats that brought us over because so many people died. But I also write about joy. There is a fair amount of that to be had if you want to find it.”

“Choose joy, Mary Margaret,” her father agreed. “It is a choice. Always choose joy.”

“One of my best stories is about the day Lucas Lowe took Louisa and me sledding.”

“Ah, yes.” Da brightened. “The one you call ‘The Red Sled.' Sure that's your ma's and my favorite of all the stories you've shared with us.”

“Lucas Lowe is coming home, you know,” she said.

“I heard!” Da replied. “That will be a fine day. He's a good boy—a man now, I imagine.”

The bookshop clerk, presenting Da with a bundle neatly tied up in brown paper and string, interrupted them. “Tell Mrs. Bennett that I think she'll enjoy her selections. And wish the Bennetts a Happy Thanksgiving and a Merry Christmas for me.”

A small bell above the door tinkled as they left the warm shop and trudged back out into the cold, snowy street. Da lifted his daughter over one particularly slushy puddle.

“Now down to the docks to pick up a fresh fish for the Bennetts' stew tonight,” Mary Margaret said.

Long Wharf jutted out farther than any of the others, allowing large ships to tie up and unload directly into the warehouses and shops. The salty air took on a nasty bite as they walked to the end of the dock. Bell buoys clanged in the harbor, and people bustled about doing their errands. Everyone's head was tucked down against the bitter winds. Mary Margaret pulled her coat tight around her and wished she had a warmer scarf.

They purchased two pounds of cod from a fishmonger, and despite the bitter cold, Mary Margaret asked if they could walk along the wharf a bit to look in the windows. A teashop, barbershop, and other shops selling bright-colored threads and toys had begun to decorate their doors with festive greens and berries.

“I don't suppose it will do any harm,” Da agreed.

“Louisa told me that the pirate William Fly was executed here,” Mary Margaret piped up. “And his body was hung above the wharf for everyone to see!”

“Ah,” Da said. “Louisa is a fountain of information.”

“She's the one who will be a writer,” Mary Margaret said with confidence. “She practices all the time. She's read all the new books. She let me borrow
The Lamplighter
, and I could hardly put it down, Da! Louisa said all her girlfriends want to be just like Gertie. She's the girl in
The Lamplighter
.”