Abby had never heard of the Fox sisters. But the next morning, she found a newspaper story about them being the sensation of New York, holding spiritual readings in which rappings were heard, tables levitated, and canes, Bibles, and hats were flung across the room by unseen forces.
She intended to bring it up with Franklin after breakfast before departing for Washington, but when she arrived at his suite she was surprised to see the rooms filled with wooden crates.
“I was hoping you would give me your opinion,” he said, his usually guarded smile stretched wide.
He pulled off the lid of the nearest crate. She had to come close to see what was inside.
“It’s stunning,” she said.
“You think so?”
“How could one not?”
He picked a dinner plate out from the top and smoothed his finger around its edge.
“Hand-painted. Made in France. And do you see the little stars? I thought it patriotic.”
“It’s lovely, Franklin.”
“There’s two hundred and eighty-seven pieces, I’m told. Which makes me wonder, if each place setting is composed of an even number, what’s the two hundred and eighty-seventh? I suppose we’ll just have to dig through it all to find out.”
“The White House is lucky to have a president possessed of such good taste.”
“In point of fact,” he said, “I purchased it not for the White House, but for you.”
“Well.”
“Seeing as you’re the only one eating off the old plates as much as me. I consider it service—friendship, whatever it is—deserving of recognition. And my gratitude.”
It was an innocent speech in its wording. But one that bore additional meanings and invitations in his speaking of it.
“Jane will love it,” Abby said.
Franklin heard it clearly enough. He’d come to a boundary.
“Yes, of course,” he mumbled, lifting the top back onto the crate. “They’re her colors, after all.”
7
When the carriage rode past the gate Franklin’s first thought was that black vines had burst from the ground to grow over the mansion.
“What is this?” he asked walking up the steps where Webster was waiting for him.
“Bunting, sir.”
“I have eyes. Why is it here for all of Washington to see?”
“Come inside,” Webster said. “See what Washington can’t see.”
Black ribbons. Yards and yards of it tied and looped around every pillar and post all the way along the central hall. Mourning bunting.
“Jane did this?” Franklin asked.
“She’s been out and about since your departure and only returned to her quarters today.”
“To avoid me.”
Webster puckered his chin, which was his way of indicating mutual suffering. “In my experience, a wife can sometimes leave bread crumbs to be followed instead of saying a thing plainly,” he said.
“Oh? And where does the trail lead?”
“A locked door, as often as not.”
Franklin touched his hand to the nearest ribbon and, before he knew he was intending to, tore it off the wall.
“Have this taken down,” he said. “Every inch. And if there are bread crumbs sweep them up before the goddamned mice find them.”
* * *
Upstairs, Jane was not alone.
Abby had rushed to greet her before Franklin could because she wanted to calm whatever impulse had prompted her cousin to decorate the place like a mausoleum. If she were to be honest, Abby also wanted to alleviate the lingering guilt she felt about Franklin’s “gift” in New York. Her plan was to be the first to tell Jane her husband had bought her the most thoughtful surprise. To keep things breezy, she would mention the show she went to and the song about the Fox sisters.
But once Jane heard this last part she asked about nothing else. Abby replied as best she could based on her reading of the article in the Daily News.
“Bring them here,” Jane said.
“What do you mean?”
“Invite the sisters. I’ll write the letter, but I ask you to deliver it. I’d tend to it myself, but I would prefer the staff—the wretched newspapers too—not to know.”
“Will you—”
“No, I won’t tell Franklin. And neither will you.”
“I don’t understand,” Abby said.
“It’s not for you to understand.”
“But if Franklin were to—”
“You are my friend, not his.”
Was this true? In any other place, she was certain that a dalliance with another woman’s husband—let alone Jane’s—would be so far from possible it would hardly enter her mind. But here it was different. In this house, there was space that suggested one could be released from what they normally were.
“When will the letter be ready?” Abby asked.
Jane came close, and Abby expected to receive a hug of gratitude, but instead her cousin leaned her face to the side of hers without touching.
“Stay a moment,” Jane said. “I’ll write it now.”
8
Abby was hardly gone when Franklin called on the First Lady. She asked him about the exhibition, and he reported on some of the amazing things he’d seen—a steam-powered elevator, seamstresses who used machines instead of their hands. He also climbed up the Latting Observatory, a wooden tower that was the tallest building in New York, from which one could see all the way across the Hudson. It was the sort of news Jane usually liked hearing about, yet he had the impression that her interest was feigned.
“I’m glad to see you’ve been up and about,” he said. “You’ve made the White House into a proper tomb.”
“I thought it was fitting.”
“When will you attempt returning to the world?”
“You mean returning to you.”
“You’re right. When will you be my wife again?”
He’d lashed out in anger only ten seconds earlier but landed, with his final question, in a place of genuine misery. In return she offered him the look of a kindly nurse visiting a double amputee.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He almost accepted it. If he hadn’t noticed the stack of letters on her desk he would have made a step closer. Instead, he picked them up, one by one.
“These are all addressed to Bennie,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Bennie’s gone.”
“I believe he hears me just the same.”
Franklin opened the envelope at the top of the pile. Began to read parts of it aloud.
“ ‘My dearest love, I can feel you close to me. It is only a pane of glass that separates us. Come to me, my sweet boy. If you reach for me I will do the same and we will break the glass.’ ” He looked up from the page. “Where do you send these?”
“They aren’t intended for the mail. My thinking them delivers them.”
“This matter of the broken glass,” he said with a baffled laugh. “It sounds like you’re asking him to come back to you.”
“When you grieve him, do you not sense that he is near?”