Private Life (39 page)

of order. She thought of Anna Early as soon as she lifted one of the packets of letters,

before she had noticed the writing on the topmost envelope, and then she had a turn. She

untied the string around them. The letters had that look about them, crisp and creamcolored, the very stationery bespeaking the woman. Margaret put the packet to her nose,

and the scent was still there beneath the dust. She felt herself smiling even before she

realized that she had never seen these before. She took them into her room and closed the

door.

The first dated from the fall of 1904, right after Andrew had taken her to the

world's fair in St. Louis and then gone back to Washington, D.C. What was that now?

Almost thirty years. How strange that was. Mrs. Early wrote:Dearest Andrew,I must tell

you that most of the questions you ask in your letter are ones I cannot answer--not

because I choose not to, but because I don't know how. You have gotten beyond me now,

and I am thoroughly saddened and perplexed. I have, in fact, destroyed your letter, since I

believe that your ravings in the letter were written in a passing moment, and I do not want

to encourage you to ponder these things that cannot be addressed or resolved. You must

think of torments like the ones you describe as ghosts or spirits that visit you in the night,

but that leave sooner or later. Nor have I brought these questions up with Dr. Jacobs, or

even Mrs. Hitchens. To address them, I feel, is to give them more life than they

deserve.However, I do think it is fair to tell you something. Not long before you were

born, at the end of the War, your father was visited by demons that seem to me similar.

He was not as old as you--not yet thirty--and, indeed, he was not alone in the mental

disturbances he felt. Perhaps the despair of the War was compounded in Missouri by the

peculiar events there. I can say now, forty years later, what I could not say then--many

who had sympathized with the Cause saw not only that the Cause was lost, but also that it

had not been worth the effort and pain that it had cost. Your father came to this

conclusion without recourse to my feelings, since, as you know, I never quite

sympathized with the Cause to the degree that your father and his brothers did. I

sympathized with
him
, though. And I sympathize with you. A man of character is always

in danger. He throws himself wholeheartedly into those things that inspire him, as your

father did, who appeared on the surface to concede the battle in Missouri to the Northernsympathizers, but in fact spent the War endangering himself by gathering and

communicating information that he thought could help the Cause (and now you know his

secret, son). He would certainly have been shot or hanged if he had been caught. And the

great paradox was that he may have regretted in some way that he was not shot or

hanged. The Confederacy's loss was not what played havoc with his sanity--it was what

that loss revealed about the motives and intentions of the Confederacy itself. Recognizing

that he had endangered himself in every way for such a thing was nearly his undoing. It

seemed that all other men chose either the Union or the Confederacy and clung to their

choices for the rest of their days. But perhaps to their wives they showed different

sentiments. For several months the same sorts of torments as those you describe in your

letter possessed your father, although with different origins. But, dear Andrew, I

encourage you to think of yourself as requiring a bit of caution. Let these thoughts that

you are having dissipate and vanish, leaving behind no trace.

Your

loving

Mother

The next letter was dated a week later, and was much longer. In part, she

wrote:On balance, my son, I do not think that isolation is your friend. You seem to be

caught in a sort of mental vortex or downward spiral, where one thought leads inevitably

to the next, larger, and more melancholy thought. As you go about your round of

activities, thinking these thoughts over and over, they become wedded to every bit of the

world around you, so that you cannot release yourself from them--if yesterday you stared

out the window in despair, today when you look out the window, you are reminded of,

and therefore precipitated into, despair. Your mental life is and has always been of a

peculiar intensity, dear Andrew. Whatever mechanism works in an average mind like

mine works doubly or trebly in a mind such as your own. Maybe you should take a few

weeks in Warm Springs, and in every way break your routine and think of other things

and meet with other people. Otherwise, I simply don't know what to tell you, except that I

am, as always, your loving Mother

Within a week of that letter, Mrs. Early seemed to have visited Andrew in

Washington. When she got home, she wrote the following:Dearest Andrew,I am both

happier and sadder than I expected to be after seeing you. I am sadder because you seem

unable to separate your thoughts from the anxieties and resentments that you feel toward

your colleagues, but I am happy to see that what I had imagined--that you somehow

would have lost track of your surroundings and your own person--has not happened. Is it

only a mother who visits her unhappy child and checks that, though there are stacks of

papers, they are neat stacks. The furniture is dusted, the clothes are not in disarray, and

the shoes in the closet are straight. She breathes a sigh of relief. I fancy that any doctor

might also be reassured.Nevertheless, I am even more convinced that you need a change

of scene. If you came here until Christmas, it might be the interval you need. Or you

could go somewhere more festive and enjoyable than Missouri. Why not Europe? I fancy

the thought of you hiking boldly through the mountainous landscape there, and with each

step walking away from what bothers you. It would also be true that you would meet

some other people who might appeal to you. Our thoughts about certain persons here in

this town may not have come to anything (though the girl and her mother still seem

receptive enough), but there are other girls and other mothers. My very least favorite

thought is that of you solitary and alone, with no companion and no one to care for you.

It took Margaret a moment to comprehend that it was she herself who was being

referred to, and then she found it so startling and yet so absolutely expected that she had

to put down the letter for a few minutes. But of course they had discussed her and

Lavinia. She and Lavinia had discussed them, too. Weren't all marriage negotiations,

including unspoken ones, just that, negotiations? But the cool tone startled her and added

a piece of knowledge to her memory of Mrs. Early that she was not quite ready to

assimilate. In the years since her death, Margaret had gotten accustomed to thinking of

Andrew's mother as a paragon, not only someone she seemed to have known better than

she actually did, but also someone who had cared for her, Margaret, the woman who, as

one of her last acts, had taken Margaret into her embrace, the rarest of rare things.

She picked up the letter and read on, knowing that she should not.No, the girl is

not educated nor evidently intelligent,
quiet
without being
mysterious
(though I think

there is more to her than meets the eye), but what do you want in a wife at your age?

Madame Curie? I do not, frankly, think that you could abide a rival or even a young

woman who considered herself your equal and spoke her own ideas back to you with any

sort of self-confidence. Possibly the other alternative, in your mind, is a beautiful young

lady from a prominent family, but I shudder to think of you attempting that. This girl is a

well-made young woman with proper instincts and reasonable connections. Her mother

has trained her to take care of household matters. Most important--without even thinking

of it, she understands the Missouri way of looking at things and doing things, that very

pride that has gotten you into trouble so often (I do think Missourians are a separate

species of human being, as you know). At your age, I think it is paramount that you avoid

the sorts of divergences, and even, you might say, conflicts that your father and I suffered

in our youth together. "Ohio!" as your grandmother often said. "Where is that?" "North of

Kentucky." And then she would exclaim, "North! Hah!" and scowl into her tea. I tell you

these things in hopes, my beloved son, of not only influencing your actions, but also of

lightening your mood.

Margaret folded up the three letters she had read, and then held the packet in her

lap for a few minutes. Sometime later, she heard Andrew and Len outside, coming noisily

up the walk. In a moment they were inside. Through the open door, she saw that it was

later than she thought. She got up to make supper. She gathered from Andrew and Len's

conversation, overheard from the kitchen, that the speech had not been a success, but as

she cooked, she heard them talk themselves out of any sense of mortification or

disappointment. By supper, which Len was invited to partake of, they were planning

future glories once again. Margaret watched them. Len goaded Andrew simply by

agreeing with him and then adding a bit of his own. He never allowed Andrew to

denigrate himself or his ideas the least bit. As she watched them, Margaret wondered

what Len Scanlan could possibly be seeking--what profit could there be in this for him?

He never asked for money, even for a loan, and Andrew wouldn't have given him one.

Did he fancy himself Andrew's future heir? It was impossible to understand.

Before bed, she read the next letter.Dear Andrew,I was very sorry to receive the

telegram from your Commander telling me of your removal to the hospital. He seemed to

think that your misadventure with the gaslight in your room was exactly that, while, of

course, I have different suspicions, with which I will not burden you. Whatever the

circumstances of your being overcome, I pray you have been galvanized by the

experience into some form of caution in the future. There are mental dangers as well as

physical dangers that people of passionate temperaments must take care to avoid. It is in

the interests of such avoidance that I have been urging you to connect yourself to a wife.

The wages of solitude are that every mood is intensified. Yes, solitary happiness can be

almost a form of delirium, but is that good? And, of course, the converse is true also-unhappiness can be almost a form of madness. You say that the tedium of marriage

would irritate you beyond enduring, but that is precisely why I think that a certain

someone is right for you. At the very least, she is an avid reader, and therefore would

spend a good deal of time to herself. But I have pressed her virtues before this, and it is

up to you to make your choice. I await some word from you or your doctor. Please do not

run out of the hospital too quickly.

Margaret gathered from two subsequent letters that Andrew did stay in the

hospital for about five weeks, at which point he came to their town. It was in the spring

that he made his offer to her, and so, in the end, Mrs. Early carried her point--she had

chosen the local old maid, harmless but useful, to marry and care for her darling son.

Margaret sat there thinking of this, certain that Lavinia was in on the plot, and that things

had been communicated back and forth between the two women that Lavinia did not

communicate to her. Had they seen that she was not immune from that Missouri pride

that Mrs. Early recognized in Andrew? Had their only choice been to lure her and trap

her? She thought maybe it had been. Lavinia's view of marriage was never other than

practical. Romance, she'd said, was always the first act of a tragedy. Lavinia had sent her

around town with dishes and shawls for the solitary and dependent old women to show

her what the life of an old maid was--in your earlier days, you were called upon to serve

anyone and everyone, and in your later days, you waited patiently until someone thought

of serving you.

But Andrew! Not only had he entertained doubts about her, he had tried her out,

seen that he could have her, and then doubted and hesitated and suffered before taking

her as the least of evils. And whatever anyone, including Andrew, might have said about

the gas incident as alluded to in the letter, Margaret was convinced that an intention had

been there, but it might not have been intention for actual death, only intention for relief.

There was a distinction to be made, wasn't there? A doctor, her father, who is familiar

with guns, knows what he is doing when he turns a gun upon himself, but not everyone

who steps in front of a train imagines the enormity of death. Andrew's imagination might

only have gotten as far as the yearned-for relief, not as far as his own nonbeing.

She tied up the letters and put them under her bed, behind some books.

* * *

THE much-anticipated day came about a week later. Margaret packed a hamper

with fruit, bread, some sausages she had made, and some beers for Mr. Kimura. The

Kimuras had provisions, too, in beautiful lacquered boxes, and Pete was with them. He

got out of the car and walked on ahead with her. She told him that Andrew and Len had