The Family Greene (2 page)

Silence. My pa wasn't quick to respond. Silence so long this time that I felt I should respond. I said, "Sir."

But that's all I said. For Pa's hand was on my shoulder like a fox's paw on a rabbit. So I shut my mouth and waited.

"Mr. Tosh, after a most delicious bowl of soup made by Cassandra," Pa announced, "Caty and I are going to take a walk outside, just the two of us, before she leaves this evening."

Mr. Tosh seemed to understand.

Sammy said he was going to saddle up and go for a ride. So after our soup and crackers, I wrapped my shawl around myself and Pa changed into his walking clothes and we took the familiar paths on the island that I knew so well.

"W
ELL, DAUGHTER,
" Pa said as we reached the top of the craggy hill and looked down on the meadows, the houses, and the crisscrossing stone fences that lay like a quilt below us. I was glad Pa had chosen this spot. It was the top of the world on Block Island. Come up here and it wasn't hard to think you were in charge of everything.

"Well, daughter, and so you're going away now to school."

"To Aunt Catharine's house," I corrected him.

"It's all the same to me. I feel like a father sending his daughter away to an expensive school. And I think you'll find out that's what Aunt Catharine's place really is. Oh, don't protest. She's doing what is right for you, and I don't know what we'd do without her. But I have to tell you something, nevertheless."

"Yes, Pa."

"The one reason it worries me, sending you away right now, is because in these next few months I intend to take me a new wife."

I blinked up at him. "The Widow Ainslie?" I asked.

He'd been courting her of late. I'd have to be blind as an owl in daylight not to see he was besotted with her.

"Yes, and I don't want you to feel that I'm sending you off to be rid of you because of my intentions to take her to wife."

I went to hug him. My father was, as Aunt Catharine always said, "part of the landed gentry" on the island. I knew that John Littlefield was a man of eminence, a man to be reckoned with, and a man who would never live with a woman without marriage. So it was the natural course of events right now. And if I had to go and live with Aunt Catharine to make life easier for him, I would go.

It would be no easy task leaving him, but he deserved this happiness.

"You wed again anytime you want to, Pa," I told him as we started back down the path. "I don't want you to be lonely."

"Thank you for your blessing, daughter."

The bell on the meetinghouse rang then, six times.

It was time to go. Aunt Catharine had paid the boatman a special price to be at the beach to fetch us at six o'clock if the water becalmed itself.

Cassandra and Aunt Catharine had packed my bags.

Father kissed and hugged me as if I were making the trip across the water only for a visit. Then we went down the path, with Aunt Catharine and Sammy, to the dock, where we would get the double ender.

Pa halted. "Wait. There is one more thing." He took a deep breath and looked around at the lovely landscape as if it were going to disappear. "You're going to East Greenwich, a real town, with gossip and dancing masters and tutors and politicians. You'll hear things you don't hear on Block Island. Like rumors of a coming unrest between the British, who are extracting revenue from us colonists, and us colonists, who are thwarting them."

I scowled and nodded as if I understood.

"Just keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut," he said. "And listen to your uncle Greene. He knows what's going on. He's a Rhode Island political leader."

"Yes, Pa," I said.

The breeze was mild. The whitecaps on the water becalmed. Inside my heart, they were angry, tossing, spitting, wrecking everything in sight. And nobody knew it but me.

We continued down the path and waited for the boat.

I heard my name, a whisper carried on the misty evening air. "Caty."

It was Sarah. Oh, how glad I was that she'd come!

"Pa, I must say goodbye to Sarah," I told him. He nodded his permission and I ran over to the form waiting in the distance. I hugged her. "Oh, I wanted you to come for supper."

"Ma was only middling well. I wanted to stay with her. Here, I have a present for you." And she handed me a small book-size package wrapped in brown burlap. "It's a diary. So you can keep the days. And so you won't forget to tell me everything."

"Remember, you promised to come and see me."

"I will, I will. Mayhap I'll come with Ma someday."

"Good. You do that. Is there something you wanted to tell me, Sarah?"

There was. I could tell by her hesitant manner.

She dug into the stones at her feet with her shoe. "Yes. Your aunt Catharine. Did you know she had a romance?"

"She's married. To Uncle Greene."

Sarah nodded. "A woman can have a romance when she is married."

I just stared at her. There was something meaningful in her eyes. And it connected with me. So
that
was the mystery I suspected about Aunt Catharine!

"Who with?" I asked. "And is it still going on?" My breath was caught and taken by the wind.

"Benjamin Franklin." The same wind took the name from her lips and carried it away.

I drew in my breath. The wind would not take the name from me. I would hold on to it. Forever.
Benjamin Franklin.
"How do you know?"

"My mother knows a lot of people. She told me. It's what they say. Your aunt Catharine and Benjamin Franklin have been close for years."

I believed Sarah. She didn't mouth off just to hear her own voice. "Ohhh," I said.

"It ought to be interesting, for you to be mindful of," Sarah said. "I just thought I'd tell you. In case he comes to visit. Mayhap he'll bring some of that electricity of his with him."

He's already brought it,
I thought.

We both giggled for a moment. Then Aunt Catharine called and I gave Sarah a final hug and ran back to the dock, hugged Pa, and got into the double ender to leave.

From the double ender I waved until I couldn't see them anymore. "I'll be back," I yelled. "I'll be back soon." But somehow I knew I wouldn't be.

A
UNT CATHARINE
and Uncle Greene's house was all white and three stories high, with a porch around the front. It lifted my spirits seeing it sitting there on the top of a ridge.

It reminded me of a wedding cake trying not to melt in the sun.

On an opposite slope, beyond a hill to the east, lay the quaint village of East Greenwich.

The first thing Uncle Greene did, after lifting me off the ground and pronouncing I was prettier than ever, was show me the Boston Post Road that passed by a short distance away.

"You and your aunt can go on a shopping trip to Boston," he said. "Or a jaunt to Providence. You will like it here, Caty Littlefield. I promise."

When Uncle Greene made a promise, he meant it. After all, he was a Rhode Island political leader.

He set me back down. "Do you like our house?"

"Yes, sir. It looks like a wedding cake."

He laughed. "Well, mayhap we can marry you from it someday."

"Take her upstairs to her room, please, Effie," Aunt Catharine requested.

Effie was a free black housekeeper. Uncle Greene did not believe in slavery. The same as my father.

But oh, my room!

It was all green and white! Green, my favorite color. How had Aunt Catharine known?

The walls were papered with a green and white design. The drapes bore the same pattern, and thin, pale green curtains hung straight across the windows. The furniture was of as solid a maple as you could find. The bedspreads carried the same green and white signature of the wallpaper and drapes. I remembered Pa reading me a story about a king in England who had his special colors carried by every knight and cavalier and on every horse and person who represented him.

I felt as if I were in a palace. I ran to look out the front window. And there was a honey locust tree spreading its crown, and birches and maples arching over the yard.

***

T
HERE WAS COMPANY
for dinner that night. As it turned out, they were Master Herbert and Master Mauriette, my two tutors. Master Mauriette was to teach me French, and Master Herbert my sums and spelling and English.

"But I speak English already," I said most rudely.

"You must learn," Master Herbert admonished, "your grammar and your spelling. We start school next week. In the meantime, why don't you write a nice essay for me about something, so I can see how far you've come."

"About what?" I asked dumbly.

"Anything. Make it a little story."

I looked at Uncle Greene. "Must I?" I asked.

He shrugged. "He's your tutor, so yes, I suppose you must."

I gave a deep sigh. "Yes, sir," I said.

Now that that little matter was settled, the men started talking politics, a subject that I discovered would many times be brought up at Uncle Greene's table, often with a vehemence that grew more and more intense as I grew older.

This evening it was something called the Stamp Act that caused the meat on their plates to go cold and the forks in their hands to wave in consternation. I could not get a purchase on what the Stamp Act was that night, but I did learn that Uncle Greene was the leader of the Rhode Island Whigs and, as such, was leading resistance to the Stamp Act in the area.

And that he was supposed to write to Benjamin Franklin, in London, concerning it. But had, for some reason, put off the writing.

None other than Benjamin Franklin!
Is he putting off writing to him because he knows of his wife's romance with the man? Will they, then, never communicate about this important matter because Uncle Greene is so hurt about Aunt Catharine's "carrying on" with him? Suppose it is not true
that they had an affair? I must find out,
I decided.
Somehow, I must find out.

"Be careful, darling," Aunt Catharine was saying. "They're still watching the house."

Someone is watching the house?
Oh, how exciting!
Who?
Why, it is like a romance novel, the likes of which Pa allowed me to read only if I did all my chores.

***

L
ATER, WHEN AUNT
Catharine came to see me to bed and I asked her who was watching the house, she said, "Nothing for you to worry about."

"Father always told me things. He said I had the most native intelligence he ever saw in a girl my age."

"Well, then, I suppose I shouldn't do any less than John Littlefield did with you. All right. The Tories are watching the house, because we often have men who are staunch Whigs come here to see Uncle Greene to discuss Whig things," she said.

"You mean like the Stamp Act?"

"Yes. People who disagree with the pronouncements of the Crown."

"What do the Tories look like? What do they wear? Any special colors? Do they wear the colors of King George?"

"They dress just like ordinary people, Caty. And they won't harm a girl like you. But I would advise you that if any stranger outside on the street comes up to you and questions you about anything, you should not speak to him. Just come inside the house and tell us. All right?"

"Yes, Aunt Catharine."

I dreamed, that night, about King George III pacing up and down outside our house with dozens of pieces of paper, all stamped and paid for by Colonial money, while inside Uncle Greene sat at his desk and started to write a letter to Benjamin Franklin, then ripped it up and threw it into the fireplace, even though he disagreed with the pronouncements of the Crown.

I
WROTE THE
essay for my tutor. Only it was more of a story, a tale my father had told me one long, cold winter night when I was a child, as I sat in his lap before bedtime.

My father had two uncles, both named Ephraim. The older was a sailor in the British navy and had been lost at sea, so when the second was born, he was named Ephraim in honor of his dead brother. When the second Ephraim grew up, he settled in New England. And one day he met an old man of the same name and who looked a lot like him. As it turned out, it was his brother Ephraim, who was never lost at sea, and so now the family had two brothers named Ephraim.

Master Herbert pronounced that I was a good storyteller but that my spelling was dolorous. He spelled
dolorous
for me. And made me write it. And then he explained the true meaning of it to me.

"Sorrowful, sad, and in pain," he said.

And in the first few weeks of my stay with Aunt Catharine those words began to run through my head every time I looked at Uncle Greene when he did not know I was laying eyes upon him.

Sorrowful, sad, and in pain.

He would be sitting there in the sun in the parlor, before the great windows, pretending to be reading a book but gazing instead at some middle distance and looking sorrowful, sad, and in pain.

Or he would be at his desk in his study, bent over his ledgers, his pen poised in midair. Sorrowful, sad, and in pain.

Or betimes at the supper table, his fork poised with a piece of meat on it, watching Aunt Catharine chatter, looking sorrowful, sad, and in pain.

And I would think,
He believes she is in love with Benjamin Franklin. He thinks she has been carrying on with him. And he has not yet written the letter to Mr. Franklin that he knows he must write. He cannot bring himself to do it.

I had come to love Uncle Greene in the near month I had resided in his house. He had a quiet, gentle firmness about him. He was a dear man, with a real love of country. A learned, respected, and modest man. And his love for Aunt Catharine was deep and abiding.

Myself, I did not care if she had a romance with Mr. Franklin. Part of me quickened to the thought, was intrigued by it. The other part needed to prove it was untrue, for the sake of Uncle Greene. And I would, somehow, the first chance I got.

My chance came about a month after I arrived at their house, when I sneakily went about searching Aunt Catharine's room. She and Uncle Greene were out for the afternoon, paying calls. The house was empty, quiet, and I'd found Aunt Catharine's old trunk under her bed with letters in it—letters from my mother, from their sister, Judith, in Boston, and finally from Benjamin Franklin himself.