The Family Greene (18 page)

Yes, I was growing up. I was strong of spirit. And brave. But that did not mean I could bear having another piece of my heart cut out, did it?

***

W
E WENT AGAIN
to Rhode Island that summer of '87. Mama took us to stay with Pa's relatives, who were always kind to us and fussed over us, to Mama's dismay.

After spending just one night there, Mama pronounced that she was leaving us, going to be a guest at the home of Jeremiah Wadsworth in Hartford, Connecticut, for a few weeks.

Pa's sister, Aunt Peggy, in whose house we were staying, looked at Mama with disapproval in her eyes. "I'll wager his wife just loves having you about," she said. "Especially with you still being so beautiful, Caty, and she being nine years older than him."

Mama had told us we must be nothing less than respectful to Aunt Peggy. She had also told us that Aunt Peggy had always disapproved of her.

I watched while Mama faced her sister-in-law. "Mr. Wadsworth is a congressional candidate," she said. "If he is elected, he will present my claim to the congressional body who will soon meet in New York City. Nathanael left huge debts, and I must appeal to the government to be paid back for the money he put forth to equip his southern army during the war."

Aunt Peggy just smiled, very deliberately. "And have you not heard, then, about the scandal connected with the Wadsworth name?"

"What scandal?" Mama asked.

"The Elizabeth Whitman case," Aunt Peggy said. "She was socially prominent, this Elizabeth Whitman. From Connecticut. And she was found dead in a hotel room, with her dead baby, a pair of forceps, and a probe lying near her bed."

"And what has that to do with Wadsworth?" Mama asked.

"His was one name connected with being her lover," Aunt Peggy answered. "One named as being the father of the dead baby."

Mama gasped, then there was silence for a minute.

"I'm just forewarning you, Caty, is all," Aunt Peggy said. "I think, from the way you run when this man beckons, that he has some sort of control over you."

"No man has control over me," Mama told her.

"I'm glad to hear that," Aunt Peggy said.

"He just wants me to meet him so we can talk about my business affairs."

But Mama's voice was a trifle shaky now. She was not as sure of herself as she was before Aunt Peggy had told her that little story.

"C
ORNELIA, CORNELIA
, please don't let Mama leave me. I don't want to stay here. I want to go home with the rest of you."

We were in Hartford again, visiting with the Wadsworths. It was late fall and, of course, in New England that meant the leaves were gone from the trees. Snow had already fallen.

As if visiting with the Wadsworths was not enough, Phineas Miller had made this trip with us, and the only redeeming thing about it was that he had the decency to stay at a rooming house while we stayed with the Wadsworths in their large, fashionable home.

It was just after breakfast, and Mama and Wadsworth were in one of the parlors. His wife was upstairs, still sleeping.

The Wadsworths' youngest daughter, Harriet, the only one left at home, lingered at the breakfast table. She was all of sixteen. I knew she did not like Mama, that she was embarrassed by her father's infatuation with her. But she was decent enough to the rest of us.

Now Nat came running in from the parlor, where he'd been the subject of the conversation between Mama and Mr. Wadsworth.

"I don't want to stay here!" He flung himself into my lap.

In this moment, my very intelligent little brother had relapsed into a three-year-old.

"Who says you're staying?" I asked.

"Mama. She says I must stay. Go to school here. Under the guidance of Mr. Wadsworth. Away from rivers and iron forges and cutting machines and the like, so I can grow up whole."

I knew that "rivers and iron forges and cutting machines" meant Rhode Island and Aunt Peggy and Uncle Jacob's house.

I did my best to comfort Nat, but he would not be comforted.

"Well," Harriet said to me, "I heard your mama tell my mama that she's going to put you and Martha into a school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, run by the nuns. I'm sure this place is better. I'll look after him."

"I'm not going
there,
" I threatened.

"Nothing wrong with it," Martha put in. "Don't you want a good education?"

I made a face at her. And when Mama came into the kitchen, I pleaded Nat's case, but she would have none of it. And so it came to pass that we left Nat in Hartford, Connecticut, and our family was severed even more. And Mama then took me and Martha—and little Louisa—in the stage to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

But before we left, Mama and Mr. Wadsworth had a fierce argument that twisted my innards, nothing less.

Was I the only one to witness it? I know Martha didn't, or she would have flaunted it before me. As for Harriet, well, she was just too proud to have admitted hearing it, is all. She said nothing.

It was an unseasonably warm fall, and Mama and Mr. Wadsworth were out in the barn. I don't know where Martha was—upstairs in her assigned bedroom, I calculate. Louisa was out walking with Nat and the Wadsworths' dog, Buster. I was on the swing on the walnut tree just outside the barn.

"You are too attached to him," I heard Wadsworth saying loudly. "I don't like it."

"What right have you to like or dislike it?" Mama flung back at him. "And how do you know I am too attached?"

"For God's sake, Caty, he lives in your house! How does that look? And he had to accompany you on this trip!"

"He cares for me and the children."

"Does he have to live in the house to do it?"

There was no return from Mama. Just silence.

Then Wadsworth spoke again. "I have a letter, you know," he said sadly. "I am in possession of a letter from your late husband. In it he writes of his concern over your attachment to this man,
while he was still alive!
"

"You lie," Mama said.

"Do I, Caty? I can show you the letter. In Nathanael's own writing. Do you want to see it?"

"No," Mama said. "I do not wish to see it."

At this, I stopped swinging. My heart was thumping inside me. My lips were dry.
So Pa had suspected Mama and Phineas Miller of carrying on right under his nose.

And now Mama is carrying on with Mr. Wadsworth!

Does this mean that yes, back at Valley Forge, she had also carried on with General Wayne?

I felt nauseous. The swinging had done it, I decided. Yes, the swinging.

I jumped down and ran into the house.

***

A
T THE ACADEMY
for Girls in Bethlehem, Mama and Martha and Phineas Miller were thrilled with the place.

I was not. First off, I saw the wrought-iron bars on the windows. Then the single, sparse beds in single, sparse rooms that boasted crosses on the walls and one small braided rug to kneel on to say prayers.

Where did one put books? Or favorite childhood dolls one might bring along for company? Where was the room for one's trunks? Where did one hang dresses, line up one's shoes?

My questions were answered by a nun with a face so plain that in itself it held the answers.

No books were allowed except those dispensed in the classrooms. You could not read what you wanted. No dolls. They were graven images. One's trunk went home with one's family. No need for extra dresses or shoes. One wore uniforms and the shoes required. As for food, there was no sugar in the diet, no salt, meat only twice a week, no butter, and definitely no tea.

Tea,
I thought. It rang some bell inside my head.

When the nun left us, I told Mama this: "I'm not going here. If you make me go here, I'll do terrible things. I'll disgrace you, and you'll have to come and take me home, anyway."

Mama knew I meant it. So we left Martha, and she took me and Louisa on home.

Mama's worst fear was to be disgraced by us children.

To say she was unhappy with me did not cover the situation. No words could do the situation justice. But she took me home just the same.

I would rather suffer her anger and dissatisfaction, which I usually suffered anyway, than live in a place that took away my independence.

After all, Pa had fought for my independence, hadn't he?

***

W
E WOULD
have been home for Christmas, which I had always loved at Mulberry Grove, but no, Mama had to make a stop at Charleston, where we stayed with the Rutledges. All but Phineas Miller. He went on home.

This time it was all business, for Mr. Rutledge was coexecutor of Mama's estate, too, and though there were parties given in her name to which many of the ladies from the "noble families" came and I was forced to attend, Mama and Mr. Rutledge spent many hours in his office, conferring.

Mr. Rutledge, not yet forty, had signed the Declaration of Independence. His name was right below that now famous "J" of John Hancock.

He was a dear man, white-haired, and with no pretense about him at all.

He had been a prisoner of the British, in east Florida, at the fall of Charleston, and as a result of it, he limped and used a cane. But he would not talk about his imprisonment or his injury. He just smiled and went on being pleasant the whole time of our visit. He made it plain that he had always reverenced Pa.

But because of this visit, which went on longer than Mama anticipated, Mama and I and little Louisa found ourselves on a coastal schooner on Christmas Day of 1788. Of course there were festivities on the schooner, but outside, it was snowing and the water was rough. And all I could wonder was
What happened to our family?

Where was George this Christmas Day? And what was little Nat doing? Was he crying? And, even though I had no great love for Martha, were the nuns at the academy allowing her to have sugar and tea this day?

And, oh, I missed Pa so! At home, at Mulberry Grove, when he was with us, we'd have such a wonderful celebration. George and Martha and I would have the house decorated, and we'd help Alexis bake cookies. There would be special aromas coming out of the kitchen. The table in the dining room would be groaning with all the food. There would be a tree in the parlor. And in recent years, General Wayne had been a guest at our table.

Gone, all gone. Outside the schooner, the snow fell, thicker and thicker. Mama allowed me to have coffee with cream in it. She allowed me to have a second piece of cake for dessert. And she let little Louisa suck her thumb, without scolding.

I thought of Nat again up in Hartford, there to "grow up away from rivers and iron forges and cutting machines and the like, so he could grow up whole."

And I thought,
Mama, he isn't whole. None of us is. And it isn't rivers and iron forges and cutting machines that have done it to us. You have done much of it, Mama. You. But you still have a chance to keep us from being cut into little pieces. Oh, Mama, please. If only you could know it.

But she did not. And I was afraid that she would never, no matter what.

M
AMA'S REPUTATION
took a turn for the worse.

In the spring of '89, right after General Washington was sworn in as our first president, in New York City, a man by the name of Jack Webb was going about the streets of Savannah saying spurious things about Mama, telling everyone he knew about her "unsavory activities."

None other than Phineas Miller accosted him. He caned him unmercifully on the street. It was in the
Savannah Republican,
the whole story, including how Miller had challenged Webb to a duel. Webb refused.

General Wayne came to the house, furious at Miller for creating such a fuss, for bringing the matter to public attention.

"It makes you look like a hero, yes," General Wayne told Miller. "I knew Webb in the army. He's an idiot and everybody knows it. Nobody would have paid mind to him. The whole business would have gone away on its own. But now the whole of Savannah—no, the
East
—is talking about Caty. Have you no sense, man?"

I sat on a nearby window seat, listening. Mama was in a chair, crying quietly.

"I never thought about it that way," Miller said.

"You don't think about a lot of things," Wayne chided.

Miller left the house. General Wayne stayed for supper. It was, for him, a temporary victory.

***

Y
OU WOULD THINK
Mama would be grateful to General Wayne for showing up as he did to comfort her, for bawling out Miller, for always being there when he was needed.

But for some reason she was growing more and more distant from him.

Perhaps it was because more and more bills were coming in.

Oh, bills were always coming in. She was accustomed to them by now. But bills from this particular creditor hurt her to the quick. And every time she received one from him, she took to her room for the day and cried.

Wadsworth.

He was sending her bills for debts Pa owed to him. Her old friend. Her lover.

"I distrust men more and more," she said to me one day when she received another bill from him. "I confess, he knows how these missives hurt me. He does not need the money. He does this just to injure my feelings."

But somehow she came up with the money to pay Wadsworth.

She sold the carriage, Pa's "extravaganza," the vehicle I had hidden in that day to go to the docks of Savannah to catch Eulinda before she boarded her ship. And with the proceeds, she paid Wadsworth.

"I will be beholden to no man," she told me.

Did that mean General Wayne? Is that why she drew away from him?

***

B
UT GENERAL WAYNE
still had the misfortune to love her in the spring of 1790.

I was a young woman now. A dancing master came once a week to the house to instruct me. He was a Frenchman of aristocratic background, of the planter class, by the name of the Marquis de Montalet. He lived on a nearby Savannah River plantation.

His wife had died, and after only two visits, he was in love with Mama. But he was content to only gaze at her from a distance.