Benjamin Franklin's Bastard (15 page)

“ ’Twas never my plan. I knew only that I needed to see the boy. To make sure he was unharmed; nothing you could have told me would have soothed my mind. I needed to see him with my own eyes. But then I saw him—and such a boy! So handsome and strong and delicate all at once! And such begging in those eyes, begging me to look at him, to admire him. No doubt he’s been much ignored since his brother died. So I looked at him and admired and saw . . . oh, I saw everything there was in him, that secretive, unsure thing in him, but also the open and loving part of him; I thought how easily such a boy could be crushed, how an angry blow or an extra scold could crumple him.”

She stopped. Grissom said nothing. She leaned forward, touched his hand. “Solomon. I couldn’t leave him.”

But she could leave Solomon Grissom. And why should she not? She was nothing but Benjamin Franklin’s favor. Grissom had taken her into the shop because of what he owed Franklin; Anne had given what she’d given because she’d owed Grissom. The tally was even—no less no more. Grissom had begun to think himself entitled to far too much of her; it was time she moved on.

20

THEY WEREN’T THE FIRST
words William Franklin ever heard—after all, he was five or six when they were said—but they were the ones that stuck first, shrieked at him out of his mother’s splotched face, her extended arms rigid and twitching, nothing about them hinting at the comfort he’d found there in the past. His father was in the room, but he was a changed father, the smile wrung out of him and his eyes not once cast on William; besides, even if William had liked the idea of seeking comfort in this strange father’s arms, it was too late—he’d already filled them with William’s mother and carried her out of the room.

William didn’t understand. He couldn’t think why the words had been flung at him, or why his mother looked so, or his father, or why his mother had been carried from the room, but he knew it had something to do with his younger brother, Franky. Franky was dead. William hadn’t entirely understood the word
dead
either, not even when Min had taken him by the hand and led him into the room where the gray, spotted thing lay on the bed. William could tell the thing wasn’t his brother anymore, but he couldn’t tell just why, nor could he say that he liked him any better for it. Franky had always been a small, bright light in the house that William could never outshine no matter how he tried; “Franky did it” only seemed to get a sharp word from his mother and that sad look from his father that William hated more than he hated Franky. That was the other thing William couldn’t understand—he hated Franky, and yet the night Franky died William cried and cried and begged God to make his brother not dead. It did no good, of course—the next morning William crept into the room where Franky lay and found him still dead—but here was the oddest thing of all: The dead Franky was still the brightest thing in the house.

It had been clear from the first. William could not have been much above two when the infant appeared as if by magic—red, noisy, smelly. William’s father bent down to where William was playing with his cups and showed him this unpleasant object as if it were one of the stableman’s new kittens, or the baby pig that had shown up all of a sudden in the alley, or even a sugar paper his mother sometimes gave him to suck.

“Your brother has arrived at last,” his father said, which William took to mean that his brother would eventually leave, like everyone else did who “arrived” at their house. That this thing was
never
to leave was the first shock. That William wasn’t allowed to kick the cradle to silence the wailing blob was the second. His foot had only just set the rockers flying when his mother’s hand came flying even faster and laid him out flat on his back.

And then Franky was dead, but instead of feeling glad, William had only felt as alone as he’d ever felt, and scared, scared, scared; nothing was normal, nothing was right. Next, William’s mother and Min disappeared; they simply went into his mother’s bedroom and didn’t come out. William didn’t mind about Min so much—she was ugly and old and she pinched him when she was cross and she was cross too much—but he grew more and more worried when his mother didn’t even appear at the table to eat.

“Where’s Mama?” William asked.

“Resting,” his father told him the first time he asked it, but later he’d changed it to “Sick.”

“Will she die?” William asked, wanting to get to the bottom of this new event in his life, but his father snapped at him, a thing his father never did. “Of course not. Go and do your numbers.”

So William had been left to drift around the house, feeling like one of those leaves that fell into the river and got turned this way and that, no one caring if it ever got to the opposite bank or not.

AND THEN SOMEONE NAMED
Anne came to take care of him, and William discovered that he could like this Anne. He liked the way she put a hand in his hair whenever he came near, or took his hand if they even walked from one room to the next, and when she put him to bed, she sat a long time beside him with her hand resting on his leg or his arm, whichever was nearest.

One night, as Anne sat on William’s bed with her hand on his ankle, William asked if Franky was ever coming back.

“No, William. No, I’m afraid he isn’t. ’Tis a sad, sad thing, and that’s what’s made your mother sick, but after a while she’ll get better. We must give her time, though; we must give her time to make herself well again. Do you understand that?”

William said, “Time is an herb that cures all diseases.”

“Where did you hear that, William?”

“I read it. In
Poor Dick.
”

Anne laughed, and William especially liked that—a laugh in a house where all laughing had dried up as soon as Franky died. Then Anne said, “You’re as clever as your father, William.”

And those were the second words that stuck. William knew he wasn’t as clever as his father, but after Anne said that he was, he began to think a little differently on the subject; he began to think he might get that clever yet.

21
Philadelphia, 1737

SPRING CAME MILD AND
gray, summer came hotter and grayer; only with the August damp did the colors begin to return to Deborah Franklin’s world: Min’s skirt was blue, Benjamin’s jacket brown, her coverlet red. Deborah left her room, clutching her husband’s arm if he wasn’t at the shop or Min’s arm if he was, or even the new girl’s arm if she wasn’t occupied with William. Anne, she was. Anne with her own dead son. Every time Deborah looked at her, she saw another dead boy reflected in those cloud-colored eyes—one look and you got trapped. Deborah said something about the clouds to Benjamin, but he took it wrong and said, “If you don’t trust her, we’ll get rid of her, then.” Deborah said no, she didn’t want to get rid of her. In truth, she’d rather get stuck in that girl’s gray eyes, shadowed by an unknown dead boy, than stuck in her own black thoughts of Franky.

That was Deborah’s trick for the daytime—Anne—but at night the thoughts of Franky would come back to her and she’d wake crying out and flailing at the sheets until Min came and gave her another anodyne—laudanum or perhaps opium; Benjamin tried holding her tight against his solid body, but if he did she only flailed at
him
and called him things she knew—oh yes, she knew—she’d never dare call him in daylight. She was unsurprised and unsorry and not unhappy when Benjamin took to sleeping in his study, leaving his place in their bed to Min. Min and her anodyne.

Deborah did manage to go out of her room from time to time, but she was still not able to touch William or to address him as she should. She tried—oh, she tried—but every time she reached out to him, her fingers seemed to hold their own memory of that softer, younger flesh, and they’d curl up and draw themselves back into her chest. William would blink at her, as if always on the verge of tears, and she couldn’t bear the sight of it; she’d turn away and let the new girl continue whatever it was she was doing with him—study or games or just silly talk. They’d begun to quote to each other from
Poor Dick,
as if testing to see who would run out of quotes first—it was the kind of game Deborah had expected Benjamin to like, but he didn’t; whenever he entered a room where it was being played he walked out of it.

As Deborah’s colors returned she began to notice something about Benjamin; since Franky’s death he’d changed into a more solemn version of himself, darker, uncertain even, prone to odd fits and starts; now that he had Min to look after Deborah and Anne to look after William, he spent even longer hours at the print shop. That didn’t surprise Deborah—she’d grown used to his hours—but it did surprise her that her husband’s even longer absences came to her as something like relief. She understood that she must right herself, that the house could not function properly until she did so, but her husband’s staring at her nose didn’t help. He said all the words that she could want to hear: that a boy never had a better mother; that no woman on earth could lose such a son and stay sane through it; that he had the greatest faith in her strength taking her forward. When she bemoaned that they had no image of Franky, he went out and commissioned a portrait from a friend who was able to capture the child from memory; he packed away Franky’s clothes himself so she wouldn’t have the pain of it. He could say and do it all, but a father’s grief was not a mother’s, and the greatest comfort came to Deborah only from Anne’s eyes, full of grief, yes, but with life in them still, promising that life for Deborah.

One day, while William was at his tutor’s and Min was doing the wash, Deborah came upon Anne cleaning out William’s cupboard, removing his clothes and piling them on the bed, her hands sure and strong, her back straight. Deborah lifted her own spine. She must, she
must
be like Anne. She must gather herself. But how long had it taken Anne to do so?

“How long since you lost your son?” Deborah asked.

The girl jumped, seemingly unaware that Deborah had come to stand in the doorway. She then took so long to answer that Deborah began to feel she’d been wrong to ask it. “I’m sorry,” Deborah said. “ ’Tis not my intention to revive old pain. I wondered only if it was recent.”

“Recent,” Anne echoed. And then, as if she’d been reminded afresh, “Yes. Recent.” But as if to prove her superior strength of mind she turned briskly to the bed where she’d formed her neat pile of clothes and began to sift through it. “I thought, being free this morning, I’d mend William’s clothes.” She picked up a shirt and held it out. “This is ripped at the neck.” She picked up a red wool scarf. “The moths have been here. It needs a darn.” She looked up at Deborah. “Unless he has another? I couldn’t find one.”

Deborah looked at the scarf Anne held in her hand and flushed with shame. This was her duty, and for days—perhaps weeks now—she’d shirked it. She plucked the scarf from Anne’s fingers. “ ’Tis my task. I’ll mend it.”

To Deborah’s surprise Anne reached out and reclaimed the scarf. “William’s my charge. As soon as you’re enough recovered, your husband expects you at the shop.”

“The apprentice is minding the shop.”

“And causing your husband to put in longer hours at the press.”

Deborah hadn’t thought of that. Why hadn’t she thought of that? If Benjamin had to make up for his apprentice’s absence, of course his hours would lengthen. It
was
her task to mind the shop. The idea weighed first heavy and then light. The shop, not William. The shop, not this dead house empty of its most cherished life.

Deborah left William’s room and entered her own; for the first time in weeks she went to the glass and looked herself over. Her hair looked greasy and dull; her skin yellow; her flesh so diminished her fine, full bosom no longer crested above her shift. She was not ready for the shop. She was not ready for the bright remarks from her customers, none of them understanding what she’d suffered. Deborah crossed to the bed and lay down on it.

Min came into the room with her arms full of fresh linen and dropped her load next to Deborah without the least hint of surprise at finding her lying there fully dressed in the middle of the morning. She said, “ ’Tis time for your dose.” Yes, it was time for a dose, but suddenly Deborah saw herself stripped of the sympathy that had entombed her for so many days, exposed through Anne’s eyes as the indulged creature that she was, collapsing into uselessness while another worked through that same grief each day without excuse.

Deborah sat up. She raised a hand to ward Min and the bottle off. She took up her comb, undid her hair, and gave it a good airing before fixing it back into its knot. She tightened the laces on her bodice, went to the kitchen, and cut a thick slice of bread. She chewed the bread into a paste that even an infant could swallow and washed it down with a cup of beer. She loosened her bodice to ease the nausea and forced a second piece in. She felt no better but trusted that she would soon enough, and that was going to have to suffice. She could do this thing. She would. She must.

WHEN DEBORAH ENTERED THE
shop she discovered it was Benjamin, not James, who tended it, and she faltered. A man had just entered, a few flakes of snow unmelted yet on his shoulders—Samuel Harris. He would say he’d come for paper and ink but he’d take the almanac if she presented it, and some coffee, and twice now she’d forced him to admire the Franklin soap and believed he was near to taking a cake. Benjamin spied her over Harris’s shoulder and his face opened.

“My dear! How divinely timed your appearance! I was just now worrying how to wrap up Mr. Harris’s package as neatly as you do it.”

Harris turned, saw Deborah, stepped across the space between them, and caught up her hands. “My dear, dear Mrs. Franklin. How my heart aches for you in the face of your terrible loss.”

“You forget yourself, sir,” Benjamin said. “To speak love to a woman whose husband is not two feet from you is not only rash but risky. I shall, however, overlook it this once.”

Harris tipped back his head and laughed. Deborah, whose step had faltered again under the sympathetic onslaught, regained her nerve and continued. “You give away our secret, sir; I believed you to be more discreet. In payment you must take some of our famous soap.”