Benjamin Franklin's Bastard (4 page)

Anne gave her name, picked up her brimming tankards, returned to her work. She hadn’t made it back to the table by the fire when she was hailed again from a third table: “Pigeon pie and a quart of the master’s best!” From there it began to run together in her head: a quart, a pint, a bottle of Madeira, a cider, a flip, eggs and bacon, scallops, bread and cheese, a pasty, and her own film of sweat. At the end of the night, Mrs. Hewe counted out fourpence and handed it to Anne with no remark beyond “Tomorrow morning, six. Be sharp.”

IT TURNED OUT THE
scraps were better than the pay—a cheese rind, a strip of fat off a roast of beef, the end of a rye loaf—but there were other benefits over home. The fire was brighter, the tables cleaner, the talk merrier, and a smile drew a smile at the Penny Pot; at home Anne couldn’t dig out a smile with a stick. At first Anne smiled at her customers purely for that smile back and because she was no longer so hungry and because she was out of the miserable alley, but after a time she discovered that a smile had another use. When one of the customers put a hand on her waist and she kept smiling, he gave her buttock a good squeeze and slid a halfpenny in her pocket. The other serving girl, a scowler named Patsy, never did figure out the worth of a smile, but Anne soon had the full sum in her head: A dozen halfpence and she could buy a meat pie with real meat in it. A fair enough price.

THE FIRST TIME FRANKLIN
came into the Penny Pot, Anne noticed him straightaway; the Penny Pot sat near the river, right next to the shipyard, and its patrons were for the most part the men of the river—shipwrights, dockhands, corders, sailors—not men like Franklin. His looks stood him out, of course, but also the way he worked himself into the room with a crack on the back here, a pleasant word there, a smart quip almost everywhere else. Even after he dropped into a chair by the fire it kept up, one after another making their way to him to drop a word in his ear and catch a better one back—Anne could tell they got better than they gave by the looks on the faces of the ones who got. Even though he couldn’t have been too many years past twenty he was
someone
, she could just tell it; she listened and soon enough learned he was Benjamin Franklin, printer, owner, and editor of the
Pennsylvania Gazette.
And soon enough again Anne noticed him noticing her, noticed him whispering a question to one of the halfpence men, the shipwright Isaac Wilkes. Wilkes whispered back with the kind of smile men used only amongst themselves; Franklin looked over at Anne and there they were—those eyes full of delight.

He waved her over and asked for a cider. She brought him one. He had a cleft in his chin that made something like a wink when he smiled, and it drew her own smile wider. That first time, as she left him, she thought she saw him tip some cider on the floor on purpose, but it was too odd a thing to believe and she decided she’d been mistaken. She’d worked her way around the room a few times before he waved at her again, and she circled back with the cider jug, but he didn’t want more cider. He wanted her to look at the ants.

“Look, there,” he said. “Do you see those ants on the floor, sipping at my cider? Now I want you to keep watch.”

Anne watched. After a time another ant joined the first group, and another and another, which was no great mystery to her, but Franklin said, “Do you not wonder how they do it?”

“Do what, sir?”

“Communicate. Somehow the first ant has told the others to come here and feast.”

Anne had never before thought about ants communicating, but she thought of it then, and discovered herself equally amazed by it. Franklin must have seen her amazement, for he laughed and gave her arm a pat. “Could it be I’ve found a fellow scientist?”

THE ANTS BEGAN IT,
but every night after, at least those nights when Franklin was at the Pot, he’d call her over to share some other new or peculiar fact. One night over his dinner he called Anne to the table and asked for an extra glass. He had the one half full of wine already at his place, but Anne didn’t question; she got the second glass, but when she went to walk away, Franklin caught her elbow and held her there. He filled the new glass a quarter full. He caught up Anne’s hand, dipped her forefinger in the wine and, still holding on to it, guided it around the rim of the glass until the glass began to quiver and a sound to emerge. It was a lovely sound, a pure, mournful note, and when Franklin released her finger she kept it moving herself. He took up his own glass, rimming it as she’d rimmed hers, sipping away the wine until he’d made his own note fit hers in a perfect duet.

The next night Franklin called to her to conduct another experiment: He pulled her near to the fire to see how close she had to get before her cheeks pinked. Later, as the fire died, he called to her again and had her stand in the same spot; she stayed pale till he touched her cheek. “I wonder,” he said. “Do all palms cause the same effect? But with this I’m not so willing to experiment!”

He was strange, she must admit it. But just the same she found herself watching for his coming, and when he didn’t come, no matter if she worked more or less hours, it was a longer night. Whether he came or not, she kept up smiling and collecting her coins, and when he did come he watched her do it; she saw him watching and waited for him to take his own chance, but he didn’t, until one night at the lag end of it he called her over and opened his palm; a British sterling half crown lay winking in it. She looked at him and he looked back and she knew well enough what that half crown was for, but she also knew how many meat pies it would get.

5

THE PAIN SURPRISED ANNE.
It surprised him. He pulled back. He said, “Dear girl!” She’d never seen him discomfited, but he was discomfited then, although it didn’t last long. He stroked her hair and kissed her brow and cheek; he said her name gently, and kept on. After he’d gotten where he wished, he fell away, silent, and he stayed silent so long she began to think he’d fallen asleep until she looked sideways and saw his wide-open, somber eyes.

Anne got up off the bed and picked up her skirt, pulled it on over her shift, slipped on her bodice and laced it closed. She turned back to the bed; he hadn’t moved. “May I have my coin now?”

He shot upright in his shirt as if she’d doused him with cold water. He plucked his waistcoat off the floor and pulled out the half crown.

She said, “Thank you.”

He said, “Dear girl,” again and no more.

ANNE SLEPT WITH THE
coin in her hand all night, and in the morning stepped out into the alley on her way to Wednesday market. The nearest neighbor but one was also on her way there and no doubt in hope of a trade, for she carried a bolt of homespun linsey-woolsey under her arm. She was worn down at all her edges and appeared to be ailing by the way she dragged her steps, but Anne didn’t slow for her—what could it accomplish besides making two of them miss out on the freshest goods? She pushed ahead toward Front Street, filling herself with the still-snappish March air off the river as she walked, thinking how it would soon be something more substantial than air that filled her. When she reached the stalls, she stopped first at the cages of live pigeons but moved on with regret; the half crown would get more of a dead thing than a live one. She passed up the dried venison and salt fish and ended instead at the smoked bacon. She added potatoes, beans, and Indian meal and walked home pleasantly weighted.

When Anne spread her stores out on the table, her mother looked her question at her, but Anne called up her own look, one she’d worked out at the Penny Pot for the occasional overly aggressive customer, which said, “There you
don’t
go.” On her mother it had the like effect. She turned away and began to measure the Indian meal into the fine, heavy crockery bowl she’d promised to include in Anne’s dowry at the time of her marriage. Anne had often looked at the bowl, touched the bowl, even once put her cheek against its cooling glaze, thinking ahead to a life that she’d determined would be something different from her mother’s. Looking at the bowl now, a new thought struck Anne, even happier than the old: Now her mother’s life would be different too.

HE DIDN’T COME FOR
a week. The next week he showed up late in the evening and searched for her the minute he’d cleared the door, but Anne couldn’t say if he was pleased or otherwise at the sight of her. He said little to her through the remains of the evening, but near to closing he touched her wrist as she passed and looked his question. She nodded her answer. This time she noticed the coin he slipped Mrs. Hewe for the room, noticed the corder following them up the stairs with his eyes. This time there was no pain but she got none of Franklin’s pleasure either, beyond the thought of a stewed pigeon filling her belly.

THEY WENT ALONG SO,
Franklin staying away as much as a week before he again came looking. At the end of one night, he arrived late to find her pushing off the corder, and she could see it surprised and pleased and worried him in equal measure. It took longer that night, in part because he insisted she remove all her clothes, a thing she’d never done before in her life, and he lay for a long time just fondling the different pieces of her flesh. When he finally rose up and gave Anne her coin he said, “You could get more of these, you know.”

“How?”

“With that corder, for one.”

Anne scrabbled free of the bedding and stood. “No.”

“Well then, the shipwright. Surely you see how he looks at you.”

“No.”

“Why
no
?”

“What need I of shipwright or corder if I have you?”

He studied her. “My single coins are sufficient?”

“Thus far.”

Franklin tipped back his head and laughed. “You’re no little fool, are you? Here. But don’t count on the same every time you make me laugh.” He fished an extra shilling out of his pocket and bounced it across the sheet.

ANNE BOUGHT A PIGEON,
but no more. She was
not
a fool, and knew better than to count on the half crown, let alone the shilling, but she also knew better than to trust the corder or the shipwright or any of the other custom at the Penny Pot to treat her like a Franklin. There was an honest look to Franklin that promised to take only what was offered and in return make good on what
he’d
offered. There was also a look of through-and-through kindness in him, not like the teeth-outward-only gleam she caught in the others. The curious thing about Franklin, however, was how he came and went, and whenever he came back not looking entirely happy about it. Once he seemed to know in advance he wouldn’t be coming again soon; he left her a whole crown and stayed away a fortnight. The first night of his return he didn’t signal to her to climb the stairs, and she believed that the last coin had been his farewell to her, but the next night on his way out the door he reversed his course, caught her at the elbow less gently than usual, slapped his coin on the table in front of Mrs. Hewe, and tugged her to the stairs.

Once above stairs, however, Franklin’s hands were as gentle as always; when he’d sufficiently pleased himself he touched her face and said, “Do you not wonder sometimes how great a sin this can be when it gives so much joy?”

“There are those who can’t afford to go wondering about sin,” Anne said.

Franklin looked at her for a long time. He ran his hand over each part of her and kissed her breast, throat, mouth. “I must be gone,” he said.

“For how long?”

“For good. Forever. I must take my life in hand. But you’re a clever girl, Anne. You’ll make do.” He unfolded her hand where it lay protectively cupping her belly as he spoke, and pressed some cool, heavy coins into it. Anne’s fingers closed in instinct and didn’t open again until Franklin had dressed himself and left. She looked down: two pounds British sterling.

ANNE KNEW HER PREDICAMENT
soon enough. It was easy to hide for a time, but then a month arrived where she seemed to spread wider each time she breathed, and the eyes that followed her around the Penny Pot held in them a new kind of look. Some of those eyes veered away but some hung on; one or two pairs urged her toward the stairs, and she hung back at first, but after thinking on it a few nights she realized she’d best get what she could while she could. The shipwright Isaac Wilkes was the first to persuade her up the stairs, after uncrumpling a fistful of the new paper money at her; Anne plucked a three-shilling note out of the lot, just high of what Franklin’s half crown was worth, to make up for the discount of the paper, and discovered she could earn Wilkes’s three shillings with a lot less work. He didn’t wait for either of them to remove any clothes but simply pushed her onto the bed, pulled up her skirt, undid his buttons, and got it away so fast she was able to fit in the corder that same night. The corder wanted a second turn on the same three shillings and that took some sorting, but afterward he held no grudge; he and the shipwright became her steadiest customers, and she’d just begun to make up for Franklin when Mrs. Hewe came up to her at the end of a night’s work and poked her swelling belly.

“I can’t have it,” she said. “I can’t have you walking around like a signpost for the kind of place a decent gentleman won’t frequent. If I’d known the goings on—” She knew better than to attempt to finish the sentence and didn’t dare look at Anne as she said even that half of it—she’d taken her threepence for many a half-used bed and been glad enough for it. But perhaps it was Mr. Hewe who did the accounts; he came into the street after her and caught up her elbow. “For your trouble,” he said, with some of her father’s gentleness, “past and to come,” and laid a twenty-shilling note in her palm.

ANNE’S MOTHER SAID NOTHING
at the sight of Anne’s growing belly but sent it such black looks that Anne began to imagine the fetus curdling inside her. When Anne announced she was through with work at the Penny Pot, her mother stopped speaking to her altogether, then began to rant at her nonsensically about things that had nothing to do with Anne, like the new crack in the plaster, or the turned fish, or the split in her shoe. One night after more than the usual number of hot blasts and cold drafts, her sister Mary spoke into the dark from her side of the bed. “Don’t take it all to yourself, Annie. Mama never liked it when her own babies came on either.”