“You’ll see,” Mary had retorted, tossing her head and looking to Elizabeth for reassurance. Elizabeth, smiling, had acknowledged that anything was possible.
Even now, years later, knowing how it had all turned out, Ann wondered how a young girl could have acquired such a strange, preternaturally ambitious obsession.
In the years that had followed, whenever the sisters or Mary’s friends mused aloud about the sort of man they hoped to marry one day, Mary would state with all confidence that she intended to wed the president of the United States. “You wouldn’t settle for a governor?” Frances had replied archly on one such occasion.
“Or a mere senator?” Ann had chimed in, shaking with laughter.
“Perhaps he’ll start as one of those, but he’ll rise,” Mary had said, her tone nonchalant but her expression hurt. At that, Frances had ceased teasing her, but Ann had found it far too amusing to let go. Whenever a new suitor called on Mary—and there were many as she grew to be one of the prettiest and most admired belles in Lexington—after his departure Ann would inquire, with feigned solemnity, whether Mary considered him worthy of the presidential chair. Mary would give her a withering look and flounce off, often noting airily over her shoulder that at least she had suitors.
A childhood fancy was one matter, but as the Todd sisters—who all eventually enjoyed the attention of an abundance of beaux—put away girlish ideals and regarded prospective husbands more pragmatically, Mary clung to her astonishing ambition to marry a president. Even knowing her as they did, the sisters were surprised, and Elizabeth was quite dismayed, when Mary declined several marriage proposals because the gentleman in question had no potential for or interest in becoming president. She even discouraged Stephen Douglas, a wealthy, well-educated rising star in the Democratic Party whom she liked very much, only because she did not think the American people would elect him to the highest office in the land.
“He is more likely than any of your beaux to become president one day,” Elizabeth had protested when Mary confessed her feelings to her sisters. “No gentleman of your acquaintance since Mr. Clay has been so likely to rise so high.”
“But Mr. Douglas will not rise high enough,” Mary had replied, smiling to soften her words. None of them liked to disappoint Elizabeth, who had become a second mother to them all after Mama’s death. “He will make someone else a wonderful husband someday, but he is not for me.”
Not long thereafter, Ann and Frances had marveled that after so much calculation and with so strong a conviction, Mary had chosen a poor, self-educated, backwoods bumpkin of a lawyer who for all his reputed brilliance had no idea how to conduct himself in good society and surely would count himself very fortunate indeed if he managed to climb his way into the US House of Representatives. But fortune had favored Abraham Lincoln in those days, and off to Congress he went. Then, soon after losing a bid for the Senate, he had been elected president.
“Mary evidently saw something in him we did not,” Frances had told Ann a few days after the election. “She has had the last laugh after all.”
Ann had been too irritated to do more than press her lips together, force a smile, and nod. She liked Abe, and she and Clark had liked him even more after he became president, but she hated that Mary’s astonishing childhood ambitions had proven not so ludicrous after all. Only a few short years later, however, Mary’s glorious rise had ended in a devastating fall, and her old ambitions proved to be nothing more than hubris. All her life she had longed to be the wife of the president, but if her husband had not gone to the White House, he very likely would still be alive.
Perhaps that was enough to drive a woman mad, and yet Ann could not quite believe it of Mary. Surely this recent sound and fury was nothing more than another scheme gone terribly wrong, another ambitious plan that had collapsed all around her. And even if Mary had been knocked off her feet, she had certainly found a fine place to land. Ann had read up on Bellevue Place after the news had broken, and by all accounts it was a well-regarded private asylum on twenty secluded, picturesque acres on the banks of the Fox River thirty-five miles west of Chicago. The patients, no more than thirty-five at any one time, were ladies of quality, “nervous invalids” who were “not insane” or who occupied “a border-land between undoubted insanity and doubtful sanity.” They were provided with the modern, moral treatment of “rest, diet, baths, fresh air, occupation, diversion, change of scene, no more medicine than absolutely necessary, and the least restraint possible.” The three-story, ivy-covered, limestone main building was bright and spacious inside, with wide hallways, high ceilings, and large, well-lit rooms, each of which was decorated with elegant furnishings, vases of fresh flowers, and potted plants, all thoughtfully arranged to create a sense of restfulness, freedom, and seclusion. Surrounding the patients’ residences were acres of gardens boasting manicured lawns, stands of mature evergreens and elms, ornamental shrubs, rosebushes, and flower beds, with smooth walkways winding throughout and hammocks and chaises lounges set in restful spots. In inclement weather, patients could wander through the vast greenhouses, forty thousand square feet of them, or make use of the carriages and sleighs provided, upon request, for daily outings.
Reading the brochures and descriptions in the papers, Ann could not recall having ever spent a holiday in such a lovely place as poor, dear, fragile Mary was forced to endure now.
She knew it would be unwise to express such cynical observations to her sisters when they met, for they were naturally inclined to sympathy, even though Mary had wronged them too. If they suspected Ann of schadenfreude, they would dismiss every word she spoke and make their plans without her. And if there was anything Ann dreaded, it was being excluded from her sisters’ plans.
“Perhaps I should accompany you,” Clark mused the next morning as they went down to breakfast, he attired in one of his better suits for a day at his flagship store, she in a brass-colored walking suit with a snug jacket and long, bustled skirt of wool muslin and ecru silk. “Someone needs to be there to represent the best interests of our family.”
Ann regarded him from beneath raised brows as they entered the dining room. “I will be there for that.”
He pulled out her chair and helped her seat herself at the table as the maid bustled in with the coffee tray. “Indeed, but it may be difficult for you to be entirely objective, since you and Mary are so much alike.”
“What on earth do you mean?” protested Ann. “Perhaps we look more like each other than any of our sisters, taking into account the difference in our ages and the hardships Mary has suffered, but there the resemblance ends.”
“I meant no offense,” he said mildly, taking his place at the head of the table as the maid filled their cups and hastened back to the kitchen. “I rather thought that was why you two did not get along, because you’re so similar.”
“Nonsense. If Mary and I are not particularly close, it’s because she’s always resented me for usurping her place as the baby in the family.” Just as Ann’s own place had been promptly usurped by her brother George and the many half-siblings who had come after. “Mary was a moody girl, in temperament like our father but more capricious, a bundle of nervous activity. She was much like an April day, sunny all over with laughter one moment, then rainy the next as she cried as though her heart would break.”