Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Gray (40 page)

“I should have written to you that I was coming, but I made up my mind at the last minute. I'm grateful for your letters. They have been a comfort to me, especially since the general's passing.”

Selina looked out across the river. “It has been a long time you've been gone from here, but I still have hope you will get Arlington back one day.”

“Me too. Though so much has changed that it would never be the same. I shudder to think how much more would have been lost if you hadn't stayed on.”

“I won't lie, Miss Mary. I underwent a great deal to stay here as long as I did. Your things were taken away by everybody, to the Northern officers in their tents and all over the grounds.” Selina shook her head as if she still could not quite fathom their lawlessness. “When they moved away they gave them to the persons that waited on them. The quartermasters and officers took what they wanted.”

“Yes, so you said. It pained me terribly to read that letter.”

“It pained me terribly to write it.”

“I still wonder what happened to my father's bookcase. I promised it to Custis.”

“I cannot tell you anything about it. I don't remember seeing it since you left, but I suppose it was carried off like everything
else.” Selina looked away. “Then the Yankees buried those men in Missus's flower garden just for spite. It was a blessing your mother didn't live to see it. It would have broken her heart.”

The day was growing warmer. I held the cool water glass to my cheek. “I don't want to think about it anymore. Tell me about your children. Are they well?”

“For the most part. The youngest had a bad fever last spring, but she's all right now.” She paused. “Thornton and I paid off the loan on our land. It's free and clear.”

“I'm very pleased for your family.”

“It's poor right now, but we made a decent enough crop last year, and we have plans to build it up. Our oldest boy is twenty-one now. He's tall as Thornton, and a big help to his father. Emma is getting ten dollars a month working as a chambermaid in Washington. Sarah too. Annice has been doing nursing the past three years.”

“I'm not surprised. Annice always was a tenderhearted child. I remember the way she doctored injured animals when she was small.”

Selina chuckled. “Rabbits, coons, birds with broken wings. It seems strange to me that she is on her own now. Time passes so fast it nearly takes my breath away. But I still have four of my children at home with me. Florence is the baby. Seven years old.” She shifted on the seat and gazed out the window again. “You probably heard my brother spent some time in the army. On the Northern side. I don't suppose that comes as a surprise to you, though.”

Wesley Norris had paid a heavy price for his actions. And so had Robert. But there was nothing to be gained by reopening old wounds. Instead, I said, “Your last born is growing up. I wish I could see her.”

“I wish you could too. Florence is a handsome child. Takes after her father.”

“You always were crazy about Thornton Gray.”

“Ever since the first day I laid eyes on him.” A smile stole across her face, making her seem almost young again. “Of course I didn't let on to him how I was feeling. Not at first, anyway.”

“You knew exactly how to flirt with him.”

“Huh. Everything I know about flirting I learned from you.”

We laughed, and it was like old times.

It was growing warm inside the carriage, and Selina blotted her face again. “I saw your youngest boy once, a few years back, and he reminded me so much of the general it gave me a turn.” She regarded me solemnly. “I imagine you miss Mr. Robert terribly.”

“Some days his absence is more than I can take. Agnes and Mildred look after me. And so does Custis. But you cannot imagine how dreary my days are without him.”

“But you still have his children to remember him by. And there's hardly a soul in the whole South who doesn't love General Lee. That's got to make you proud.”

“Yes, but it was only after his passing that I realized I was not as appreciative of his fine character as I should have been. I wish I could see him once more, to tell him so.”

“I remember the day he asked you to marry him.” The old light came back into Selina's eyes.

“You cannot possibly remember that. You were barely out of the cradle.”

“I was almost nine, and I remember everything. Mauma had been up to the house to get lye soap for the washing and heard you telling Missus all about it. The news was all over the slave quarters before Mr. Robert rode away that day.”

A burst of laughter erupted outside the carriage. Rob and my young cousins were returning.

“Reckon I ought to be going,” Selina said. “Thornton will be wondering where I got to.”

I handed her the empty water glass, and she got out of the carriage.

“I almost forgot. I stopped by your folks' graves this morning.” She reached into her pocket. “Found this piece of green and this rosebud blooming there. It's the same that you planted at your mother's grave.”

In my mind's eye I saw the garden as it was then, the masses of rosebuds, the grass steeped in dew, and the bees murmuring in the hedges. And my mother kneeling in the dirt in her faded poke bonnet, forever so gentle and patient with me despite my untamed ways.

Selina reached through the open window and clasped my hand. The years fell away and she was once again my pupil, my housekeeper, and my confidante. My old affection for her came rushing back. “Oh, Selina, I only wish that—”

“I got to go now, Miss Mary. You take care of yourself and don't you be staying out in the cold and damp like you used to. It's bad for your bones.”

She briefly squeezed my hand and stood back while Rob and my cousins piled in beside me. The last rose I would ever take from Arlington lay in my lap, a slash of bright pink against the dark silk of my dress. As the carriage rolled down the drive, I looked back to see Selina hurrying down the path, and I thought of one of General Washington's observations, the first I had memorized as a girl.
True friendship is a plant of slow growth and
must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

We had known joy, but we had weathered much adversity. We knew too well the sting of betrayal, the bitter taste of grief.

Many times when overcome by illness and death, crushing defeat and unremitting physical pain, I wondered whether there is any purpose in human suffering. Whether there is any reward for having borne the unbearable. The poet says the wound is the place where the light enters you. Perhaps it's true, and it's only in the broken places that we find healing and grace. I don't expect to learn the answer this side of heaven. Perhaps the hope of perfect knowledge is enough.

The carriage slowed, and I looked back. Selina was growing small and indistinct as we neared the bridge. We topped the hill. She lifted her hand in farewell.

I raised my hand to the window. Good-bye, old friend. Good-bye.

F
or weeks after the general died you could read of nothing else in the papers. Emma came to Green Valley to visit one Sunday afternoon a few days after he passed, bringing the
Daily Times
, which contained accounts of mourning all over the South. Sitting in my parlor that looked out over our vegetable patches, I read the dispatches from Richmond and Selma and New Orleans. Everywhere businesses and shipping concerns closed. People draped their doors in crepe and evergreen. Flags flew at half-mast.

People couldn't seem to say enough good things about the general. The governor of Virginia said he filled up the full measure of our conception of a man. Some important judge in New Orleans said he was heroic and honorable and had won the admiration and affection of every heart in the land. Even the New York newspapers that Thornton brought home that autumn called General Lee a noble American. Already there were plans for statues to be put up in his honor.

It was impossible for me to think of him as somebody about to be remembered in cold hard stone, for in life he was full of warmth and light. It is true he caused a great deal of grief and hardship in my family, and that is something I never could forget. Every time I thought of what had happened to Wesley and
Mary, I got that same bees-in-the-stomach feeling I'd had as a child. I couldn't blame Miss Mary for what the general had done, but Wesley did. Wesley always said the general had freed him twice, that his rage against all the Lees had liberated him long before that snowy December evening when the emancipation letter arrived.

Still, General Lee had promised my freedom and kept his word. He was a man who made a hard choice in joining the Confederate side, and he saw it through and lost everything. Even if he was going to be remembered forever with statues everywhere, those statues couldn't make up for what that hard choice had cost him. He and Miss Mary had endured more hardship than comes to most mortals in a lifetime, and their story was still tragic, the same as the Greek heroes you read about in books.

I wrote to her when I first heard the news. It was some time before she replied. I still have the letter saved in the bottom drawer of my bureau.

The kindness of everyone is unceasing but life seems so aimless now, so blank. His memory will be cherished in many hearts besides my own. I may soon follow him, but his children
—
what a loss to them.

What news is there of Arlington? I long for it still and there is so little hope of my ever seeing it again.

When she finally did come home to Arlington, we sat in her carriage talking over the old times. That sunny June morning when I saw her carriage coming along the road, I remembered all the years when I had stepped from the door of my cabin to cross the yard and enter the back door at Arlington. Taking those
fifteen steps separating slavery and freedom—and back again as the shadows of the evening fell across the yard. And all the time the hope of liberation glittering like a brook when the sun shines on it. On that homecoming day we spoke as equals—Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Gray—and not as mistress and slave.

Her appearance that morning shocked me. She looked so old and frail I feared she might not survive the trip back to her kinfolks' house. I thought of a story Althea had told me once when I was a child. There were slaves who lived on an island, and these slaves could predict when someone was about to die because in the dark, sparks of fire would gather around their heads, spirits from the other side coming to guide them. I hadn't seen any sparks surrounding Miss Mary, but it felt like something was gathering around her that day. When I watched her carriage head back across the river, I knew I would never see her again.

“Mother?” Annice stood in the doorway of my home, a bag in her hands. “Brought you some apples from the Green Valley market. Daddy says to tell you he will be home in a little while.”

“Thank you, child.”

“Are you all right?”

“Fine. I was woolgathering. For some reason Miss Mary has been on my mind lately.”

“Oh?” Annice started for the kitchen. “I barely remember her. The papers sure made a big to-do about her visiting here back in June.”

“She remembered you, though. She recollected the way you looked after animals when you were little.”

China rattled as Annice made coffee. She came back to the parlor with two cups and Miss Mary's blue-and-white pitcher on a tray. I had kept it all those years as my own personal treasure.

Annice lit the fireplace and sat down beside me. “Did I tell you I got a new patient last week? A Mister Morrison. He is a relative of General Jackson's wife, or so they say.”

An hour passed while she chattered on. The gray sky outside my window deepened to a silver twilight that settled over the valley. The fireplace popped and hissed. My younger children ran in and out, letting in the raw November air.

Thornton arrived from the market. He set down his empty boxes and came over to kiss me and his daughter. He had grown stooped in the years since we were young and courting by the light of fireflies, and his hair was threaded with gray. But inside, he was the same determined boy with the teasing eyes who had captured my heart with gifts of lace and newspapers when I was just a girl.

“How was the market today, Daddy?” Annice rose to fetch a cup for him.

“Fair to middling. Weather's turning, and that always sends folks home early.” Thornton warmed his hands before the fire. He reached inside his jacket and took out a letter. “This came for you, Selina. From Lexington.”

I tore it open, anxious for news of my oldest friend. A silver locket spilled out, the same as she wore on her summer visit to Arlington.

November 10, 1873

Lexington, VA

Dear Selina,

I know you will be sorry to learn that Death has visited my family twice in the last three weeks, and we who are left behind are in
such disbelieving sorrow that cannot be described. Sweet Agnes left this earth on October fifteenth after an illness of some weeks, succumbing to complications of the digestive system the doctor said. You know Mother loved us all, but Agnes was her favorite and the blow of her death was one from which Mother could not recover. Five days ago she expired quietly and has been laid to rest next to my sainted father in the chapel here, along with Agnes.

You may know that the trustees at Washington College appointed Custis as the new president after my father died. My sister Mary is off somewhere, leaving Custis and me to rattle around in the house alone. Rooney and Rob are settled elsewhere and I do not yet know what my future plans will be.

Before her mind began to wander in her final hours, Mother extracted my solemn promise that I would write you with this news. She spoke often of your long friendship, and she remained until her last breath in your debt for your care of Arlington and the treasures that meant so much to our family and our country.