Somerset (37 page)

A
soft tap on her door roused Jessica from her journal. Amy, bringing her midmorning tea, she thought. The child was seventeen and had become indispensable to the household. Jessica had offered to send her to Oberlin College in Ohio, the first institution of higher learning to admit women and blacks, but Amy had refused. Her place was here, she said. She enjoyed her life and living “among books and flowers and those I love and need to see after,” but Jessica suspected a love interest involved. Amy was “stepping out” with the DuMonts' groundskeeper, and a wedding looked certain in the future. A waste, Jessica had thought, feeling guilty that she had helped create the bond Amy refused to break. She especially felt bad that Amy believed her one of those who needed seeing after.

Amy's and her mother's devotion to Jessica were among the numerous festering points with which her daughter-in-law had had to contend with the passing of the years, and Jessica's position in the household had subtly altered. More and more, she had begun staying in her room until later in the morning.

The date heading the new page in her diary stared back at her. November 7, 1873. Where had all the years gone? Her son was thirty-six, Vernon eight, and David, her newest grandson, five. Regina was…six, Jessica recalled. She set down her pen.

“Come in, Amy.”

No response. Puzzled, Jessica got up from her desk. Perhaps Amy needed help with the tea tray. The little pale, freckled face that greeted her when Jessica opened the door was Regina's, a precedent. Her granddaughter had never come to her room before.

“Good morning, Granmama,” she said, staring up at Jessica out of eyes large with uncertainty of her welcome.

The look pierced Jessica's heart. What was there about her, what did she do or say for the little girl to doubt her grandmother's pleasure in her company? “Good morning, Regina. What brings you to my door this morning?”

“I…came to bring you a present.”

“A present?” Jessica said in a tone to convey happy surprise. “Well, come in and let's see what you have brought.” She smiled and offered her hand, and the little girl slipped hers into it. It was a delicate, finely modeled hand. No one in the family quite had the hands of Regina. “You're just in time for tea. Amy will be bringing it shortly. We'll put a lot of milk and sugar in it so your mother won't object to the caffeine.”

“That would be very good,” Regina said.

Amused—the child had begun parroting her phrases—Jessica suggested, “Shall we sit at the tea table to get the light from the window?”

“That would be very good,” Regina said, placing the handkerchief-wrapped gift on the table. She took her seat, carefully arranging the elaborately ruffled skirt of her silken dress, her back held straight. Her mother already had the child in stays and dressed her in the latest selection of children's wear from the recently renamed DuMont Department Store. “Would you like to open your present?” Regina asked.

“I would.” Jessica unfolded the lacy square of cloth to find a pack of Adams No. 1 chewing gum. The concoction had just last year come on the market and had, of all people, the notorious General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to thank for its discovery. Newspaper articles described the popular new treat as having come about when the former dictator, living in exile in New Jersey, sold a supply of chicle he'd brought from Mexico to Thomas Adams, an inventor, as a substitute for rubber. The inventor noticed that Santa Anna liked to chew chicle, a natural latex gum substance found in evergreen trees in Central America. Having failed in his efforts to harden the material for use in items requiring rubber, Thomas Adams one day chewed a wad of his stock, found he liked it, and boiled a batch to create the marketable phenomenon Jessica held in her hand.

“Oh my, what a treat!” she said, feigning pleasure at sight of the black, flavorless “stretch and snap” preparation that had become all the rage.

“I bought it for you from Monsieur DuMont's store with my pocket money,” Regina said proudly.

“How thoughtful of you to think of me,” Jessica said, hoping the child did not expect her to chew the beastly stuff in her presence. She heard the rattle of china in the corridor—Amy at last with the tea. Jessica would invite her to stay. Unlike Petunia, Amy doted on the little girl, and the tea would give her and her granddaughter something to talk about, to do.

Regina's eyes strayed curiously toward Jessica's desk. “Are you writing a book?” she asked shyly.

“Sort of. It's a diary.”

“What is a diary, may I ask?”

“You may. It's a record of happenings in a person's life.”

“Happenings?”

“Events that occur in one's daily existence and in those of family and friends and in the household and town and one's personal feelings about them. It's a written record of memories.”

“Do you write about Mama and Daddy?”

“Yes.”

“And Vernon and David?”

Jessica hesitated. She knew where this conversation was leading. “Yes,” she said.

Tentatively, her look shy, the little girl asked, “Do you ever write about me?”

“Yes,” Jessica answered truthfully. “Often.”

The child's face lit up. “Really? What do you write?”

“That you are a very sweet and tender child with perfect manners and deportment that you've certainly not inherited from the Tolivers.”

Regina laughed gleefully, showing fine small teeth and a little pink tongue. “But Daddy says I am you, straight and true,” she said, sobering slightly. “And I want to be like you.”

Jessica was stumped for a response. Gratefully, she greeted Amy, bearing the tea tray. “I have a visitor for tea,” Jessica said and was about to ask Amy to join them when the look on Regina's face—a plea—stopped her. Don't ask her to stay, it begged, as if the child had read her intent. “Would you please bring us one more cup?” Jessica said. “And add some cookies, too. Regina and I are going to have a tea party.”

“I'll be right up,” Amy said, with a wink at Regina. “Mind your manners now, little one.”

“As if you have to remind her,” Jessica chided.

“Who is the boy in the picture, Granmama?” Regina asked, wriggling off the chair under the weight of her skirt and petticoats to inspect a daguerreotype photograph displayed on the shelf above Jessica's desk.

Jessica's breath caught. It had been years since anyone had noticed the picture, and often lately, she'd found herself remembering Joshua. “That is Joshua. Your father's brother.”

Regina cast her a questioning look. “Your other son?”

“Yes, my…other son.”

“Where is he?”

“He died, many years ago, when he was only twelve. He was thrown from a horse and broke his neck in the fall.”

“Oh!” Regina said, pressing delicate hands to her cheeks in imitation of her mother in moments of dismay. “I'm so sorry, Granmama. You must have been very sad.”

“I was. I miss him to this day.”

“Was he like Daddy?”

“No. They were very different.”

“In what way?”

“Your father has always loved the land. His brother loved the people
on
the land.”

“And that made them different?”

“Yes, that made them different.”

“Did that make a difference in the way you loved them?”

“I suppose,” Jessica said. What kind of question was that for a six-year-old? “But not in the degree,” she added.

“Degree?”

“Amount. It did not make a difference in the
amount
I loved them. I loved them equally the same.” Jessica felt her face grow warm. The child knew. As much as Jessica tried never to show favoritism, somehow Regina had become aware that her grandmother's feelings for her siblings were not the same as those for her, and that recognition had prompted her questions. Amy arrived with the extra cup and plate of cookies. Regina wriggled onto her seat again. Jessica sat across from her, batting the moisture from her eyes. “Shall I prepare your tea the way I think you would like it?” she asked.

“That would be very good.”

Carefully, Jessica went about the ministrations of the tea. The dear child has barricaded herself behind a wall of manners so as not to provoke my disapproval, she thought. How could she ever think I would pierce that tender heart?

“When we have finished our tea, would you like to read one of your storybooks to me?” Jessica invited. “We can sit before the fire and listen to the wind whistle secrets outside the house. We can try to figure out what they're saying.”

The little girl's face brightened. “Just me? I don't have to share you with my brothers?”

“Just you and me,” Jessica said.

“And we can wrap ourselves in afghans?”

“And we can wrap ourselves in afghans.”

“That would be very good indeed,” Regina said.

P
riscilla paused at the door of Jessica's suite. No matter that every member of the family was gone from the house for the rest of the afternoon and she'd made sure the servants were well engaged downstairs, she glanced up and down the wide gallery before opening the door. She felt the familiar roil in her stomach. Even after five or six of these secret sorties into Jessica's room, she still trembled from the possibility that her mother-in-law may have forgotten something and returned, or—God forbid!—
​Petunia
, Jessica's watchdog. The housekeeper might pop in with fresh linens or roses from the garden or for some other reason and catch her at Jessica's desk.

What plausible excuse could she give to explain stealing into her mother-in-law's room and reading her private journals she'd taken from a locked compartment when she knew Jessica was away? There simply wasn't one, and from the onset Priscilla knew her goose would be cooked with Thomas and Jessica if she were caught, but she'd thought the risk worth the minimal chance of discovery. So far Jessica hadn't had even a whiff that anyone had been at her journals. Priscilla noted their arrangement in the stacks each time she unlocked the top cupboard of the secretary and replaced them in their exact position and the key precisely where she'd found it.

Almost from the moment Regina was born, Jessica had treated her daughter with a wariness not displayed with Vernon. For a while, Priscilla had thought it due to the firstborn grandchild taking center stage in a grandmother's affections.

“Second grandchildren do not cause as much of a stir as the first, do they?” she'd asked her mother.

“Why, of course they do,” she'd replied. “Why do you ask?”

“Regina does not seem to hold the same fascination for Jessica that Vernon does.”

“That's because she's partial to boys. She's raised only sons, thank goodness. Her nature is not warm enough for daughters, as you can testify.”

Priscilla had agreed. She and Jessica had never bonded, much to Priscilla's disappointment, but her mother's explanation did not account for Jessica's fondness for Amy, and her delight in all children, regardless of gender, race, or class.

“You're imagining things,” Thomas told her when she'd mentioned the disparity to him. “My mother shows no partiality to Vernon over Regina.”

And indeed, when David was born, on the surface of things, Thomas was right. Jessica appeared painstakingly careful in distributing her affection equally among her three grandchildren, but with Regina there was always a little reserve involved. It took a mother to see it.

Jessica's guardedness with Regina had caused a ripple in the calm waters that Priscilla, up until then, had tried to establish in coexisting with her mother-in-law. The small jealousies she'd taken pains to control blossomed into resentments. They were the green-eyed monsters common to any daughter-in-law sharing the domain of her husband's mother. Thomas's implied staunch support of his mother over his wife (though Jessica never provoked a situation that called for it) began to grate. Annoyance at the children's respect for their grandmother when they sassed their mother, and Petunia's and the servants' deference to Jessica when she, Priscilla, was mistress of the house rose to the surface like skin pimples—all caused by her mother-in-law's strange disengagement from Regina.

Why, then, Priscilla asked herself, had she not seen the obvious until last December, in 1874, when her daughter was seven years old? It had struck like a thunderbolt—the key to the mystery that had been staring her in the face since Regina was born. Jessica suspected that her granddaughter was the fruit of adultery, that Major Andrew Duncan, and not Thomas, was the father of her grandchild.

That sudden realization had all but caused her to faint when the families had gathered on Christmas Eve for their annual eggnog party. They were at the DuMonts', and the children were around the tree, opening their presents. Regina was wearing a green velvet dress with a white lace collar and a green ribbon in her hair sprigged with red berries and holly, the only girl among the boys—a princess among her lieges, Vernon and David, Abel, Jeremy III, and their younger brothers.

Bess remarked, “I declare, Jessica, your granddaughter grows to look more like you every year.”

Jessica had set her eggnog cup on its saucer with just the slightest deliberation. “I don't see how that could be possible. Regina is so pretty.”

It was a perfectly innocuous remark, but Priscilla had fixed her mother-in-law with a stunned gaze she sensed Jessica felt but had purposefully avoided by keeping her attention on the group.

That night Priscilla had lain wide awake frozen with terror beside Thomas. What if Jessica in some unguarded, aggravated moment divulged her suspicions to Thomas? It was then that the idea of reading Jessica's diaries had slowly crept into her numb mind. Jessica wrote in them religiously in preparation of the book she intended to write of the founding families of Howbutker. She must pour out her soul in them. What better place to learn if her fears were founded than in Jessica's written thoughts? The journals were under lock and key, but a year ago, after Regina had been invited to tea in her grandmother's room, she'd watched Jessica store away her current journal, lock the cabinet door, and place the key beneath an ink well. Priscilla had located the key within seconds of entering Jessica's room.

She'd gone directly to the notebook marked 1866, the year the Union occupation of Howbutker began, and found justification for her terror. It was as she'd guessed: Jessica suspected her of having had sexual relations with Major Duncan. The entry that had caused her to stifle a cry was dated August 19, 1866.

And later on, another quickly written paragraph dated April 10, 1867:
Regina Elizabeth Toliver was born today. She is exquisite, perfectly formed. She is fair-skinned and red haired—like me, everyone says. Well
…
we'll see.

And further into the year shortly after Jessica's fiftieth birthday, she'd written:
Tippy tells me someday I'll know whether the child is a Toliver. How will the knowledge come to us, I wonder. How will it reveal itself?

Priscilla had had to dig for these personal comments among recordings of local and national happenings, news of friends, inventions, fashions, books, music—
This year of 1867, Johann Straus, the Younger, has given to our frightening world one of the most beautiful and soothing waltzes ever written, “The Blue Danube,”
Jessica had written on one page. Priscilla had paused, remembering the night she'd waltzed to a Brahms composition in the arms of Major Duncan at the party he'd hosted for the townspeople. Her face grew hot with horror at herself. How could she have been so stupid not to have realized that anyone looking could see the chemistry between them?

Thomas had not looked. Priscilla had peered over Andrew's shoulder at her husband huddled in a corner with other planters and known she was safe. He would not have noticed, in any case. She had grown so tired of handing her cup to her husband to be filled, so weary of loving a man who would never have for her the feelings she wanted and needed. He'd married her to produce an heir. Thomas was the preferred desire of her heart, but—as Jessica had observed and noted—she was starved for the kind of attention Andrew gave her and her husband did not. Was it possible the whole town, looking at Regina, wondered at what Thomas had never seen?

Priscilla had placed the journals back in their chronological order before her luck ran out. Panicked from the information she'd learned, she'd left Jessica's room to consider its implications. Jessica had not acted on her suspicions except to withhold, consciously or not, a definite warmth from Regina that the boys enjoyed, but Priscilla had noticed a thaw toward her daughter in the last year. Perhaps Jessica had become aware of the extent to which Regina adored her, blood of her blood or no, and Jessica would never slam the door of her affections in the face of a child.

Jessica would also never tell Thomas what she suspected. Why would she? Her son and daughter-in-law were contented with each other now. Their family was thriving; their household peaceful. If their marriage was not all they'd like it to be, it was good enough. They'd each gotten what they'd bargained for. Thomas had his two boys as heirs and Priscilla the title of Mrs. Thomas Toliver, recipient of all the name entailed. She had earned and now occupied a special place in her husband's heart. Why and for what purpose would a loving mother and grandmother wish to destroy all that?

Time would erase Major Duncan from the town's memory. He had been gone seven years. The other day someone had trouble recalling his name. Priscilla could imagine no other threat to her peace of mind. Life did have a way of revealing the dust swept under the rug, as Jessica would say, but for the time being, Priscilla saw no reason to expect exposure.

She would never have returned to the notebooks and continued her secret missions into Jessica's room but for a curious reference that had caught her eye and further spiked her interest in Toliver history. Priscilla could not resist investigating, and so she'd gone back to the beginning of the journals to search for its origin and meaning. She'd found numerous mentions, and in the meantime she'd gained amazing insights into the person of her mother-in-law and garnered shocking information that she would file away against the day it might serve as protection for her daughter. She had three more years to go to complete her perusal of the private life of Jessica Wyndham Toliver, and Priscilla would have learned all her mother-in-law had written of the Toliver curse.