Mary was in a room on the second floor, giving a spit bath to a soldier with a broken arm.
"Who is it?"
"He wouldn"t say." Mr. Mack turned on his heel to leave and said, "I know you made a copy of the supply closet key." Embarra.s.sment did not sit well on the steward"s frame. Since fleeing the surgery that first night, Mr. Mack had become even more parsimonious and officious.
At the bed next to Mary, a woman named Fannie Warren was changing the linens. In the last five days, four women-good, strong women-had shown up, papers in hand, sent by Dorothea Dix: Mary Abbot, Fannie Warren, Helen Steveson, Monique Philipateaux-all married, all serious, all over the age of thirty. Miss Dix"s darlings, but they were more help than Mary had had since she"d arrived. Still, she was exhausted. Sleep came in two-hour naps, stolen whenever someone forced her to lie down.
Someone asking. Most likely it was the milkman. Mary had written down a daily order, had explained to the stout farmer that they would always need twenty gallons of milk, but he liked to double-check, fearful of not being paid, a suspicion Mary did not begrudge him, since the only cheques she had written were promissory notes.
Downstairs, in the dim lobby, a bony figure was leaning up against the reception desk, the last trace, along with the bra.s.s room numbers, of the old hotel. Mary thought the figure might be another soldier, sick and weak and in search of a bed. She was suddenly furious with Mr. Mack, for he could have easily found s.p.a.ce for him somewhere without having called her away from her work. The man was as ungenerous as a goat.
"May I help you?" she said.
"Mary."
Why is it that voices break hearts?
"Thomas," she said, as he stepped into the light, his name an exhalation, as if she had been expecting him. Thomas Fall. Thomas, I did not dream of you. I never wanted you. We never danced in a palace. He was too thin, and his face had lost all vestige of youth, but here he was, and relief surged through her. He was alive, safe, well.
Mary slipped into his arms and laid her head on his chest, marking the surprise of tenderness, which had been the first, and most mourned, casualty of war.
She could hear Thomas"s heart, could feel the river of blood surging inside him. Mary knew things now about men that she hadn"t known before: how in illness and infirmity their vulnerability shocked them; how they needed rea.s.surance, even more than did women in labor; how they feared their mortality.
To Thomas, Mary looked shockingly undone, though her famously wild hair was safely tethered in a tight bun. Her cheeks were thin, as if she too had not been eating, just like the entire Union army had not, but she carried herself with that same odd grace that he had always admired. He saw something in her, too, of Jenny, a kind of hidden beauty, revealed in the way she tilted her head, and in the rush of concern as she pulled now from his embrace and said, suddenly fearful, "But why have you come? Is Christian all right?"
"Christian wanted to come, but-"
"He"s not wounded?" Mary said, her hand flying to her throat.
"No. It"s just a little fever." It was possible that Christian was ill with more than just a little fever, but Thomas didn"t want to upset Mary, though he was ashamed to be holding back information. But he was almost certain that Christian would be all right. All Christian had to do was get home to Amelia and everything would be fine. "He is back at the depot, waiting for a train home. The 25th is departing."
"Is Dr. Blevens with him?"
"Blevens disappeared. He never came back. We don"t know if-"
"You don"t know where Blevens is?" Mary asked. "He wasn"t with your regiment?"
"No, he was, but the day of the battle he went off with another troop. They were short of doctors."
"The 25th was in the fight?"
"No. We sat at Fort Albany and watched it all unfold on the road."
"On the road?" She looked at him quizzically, and he waved his hand. There would be time later to tell their ign.o.ble story.
"I"ve come to get you. Amelia asked us to find you. She wants you to come home."
Amelia asked. She searched Thomas"s face for any sign of their former intimacy, when his gaze had communicated more than friendship, even, once, interest. But the starkness of his fatigued expression was absent anything but exhaustion.
"I am not going home," Mary said.
"You don"t look well, Mary, and this place . . ." His voice trailed off and Mary saw her surroundings as if for the first time. The ugliness of the building had fallen away for her long ago, but now she felt slightly ashamed of the rotting floors, the dingy light, the smells emanating from every doorway. She thought Thomas must think how odd she had grown to prefer this h.e.l.lish place to home.
"I"m fine," she said. "I"m perfectly fine."
"If Amelia were to see-"
"Don"t tell her what it"s like."
Always the surprise of Mary, the quick turn, the sharp word. He"d forgotten how easily she could be angered. All the Sutter women had melded together in his mind, though somehow in the last few months he"d forgotten even what Jenny looked like. He remembered beauty, certainly, and affection, and most vividly the intoxicating caresses of their wedding night, but not the whole of her.
"Jenny wants you home, too," he said, invoking his marriage of a single night, making it up as he went. He had to get Mary to come home with him. It seemed more essential now than anything he had ever done.
"Tell Amelia not to worry. She"ll be fine when it comes to Jenny."
"When it comes to Jenny? What do you mean?"
The knowledge came to her in a second. He didn"t know. Thomas stood there, gaunt, fatigued, having come all this way to find her, and he didn"t even know. What to do? Where did her obligation lie? To tell, or not to tell? She saw Jenny, disappointed, her smile falling away. Mary already told me. No. It wasn"t right. It was not her news. She felt a slight release then, a shift toward happiness.
"It"s nothing," she said. "You"ll be home soon."
"I"m not leaving without you."
"Well, I"m not leaving. I want to be a surgeon." It wasn"t exactly the Albany Medical College, but she"d a.s.sisted in amputations, hadn"t she? She pushed away the memories of the two failed surgeries, though she still dreamt nightly of the sawing noise, always relieved when she woke up that she didn"t have to hear it anymore.
"Let me show you," she said. She led Thomas upstairs, eager to tell him about her months here, leaving out the worst parts, painting a picture for him that was better than the one he saw. She pictured him telling Jenny and Amelia, She can"t leave. She is learning so much. She didn"t tell Thomas that she was still more maid than anything else. Instead, she told him about the operation, about how in the last few days the amputee"s stump had been discharging a large amount of pus that Dr. Stipp deemed healthy. To support him through the process, Stipp had dosed the boy with quinine, beet essence, and milk punch. It was her responsibility to come by to see him in the mornings and in the evenings, no matter how busy she was. She was watching to see how he healed, she explained to Thomas, how the diet and suppuration were working to make him well. Lately, with the increased suppuration, the boy"s pulse had risen from 80 to 96 to 124, his lips had paled, and the stump had swelled and reddened. Dr. Stipp was applying water dressings. To draw the pus out, Mary said. Mary reported all this to Thomas as they navigated the dim hallway"s abrupt turns and low ceilings. She was thinking, You see how well I have survived without you, how I have no need of you? They turned a final corner to the small room where Dr. Stipp had sequestered the boy.
But the boy was not lying in the bed, but on the carpeted floor; it looked as if he had fallen trying to get out of bed by himself. His bloodied dressings had unraveled or been pulled away, and his stump lay exposed. His skin was hot to the touch, and he was staring at the ceiling, his parted mouth roped with white bands of saliva.
Mary gripped Thomas"s forearm. "Don"t let him move."
"What do I do?" Thomas asked, but Mary had already gone. Thomas knelt down, trying not to look at the limb or grow faint from its vinegary smell. He wondered if the boy was dying.
Mary rushed through the halls, hurrying from door to door. "Dr. Stipp?" She didn"t know if she was yelling or whispering. She wasn"t even certain she was breathing.
"Mary?" Fannie Warren asked, slipping into the hallway as Mary flew by, but Mary had already rounded a corner.
"It"s the boy," she said, breathless, when she found Dr. Stipp downstairs in the ballroom. They"d developed a shorthand: How is the boy? The boy is well. It had bolstered them: their first success.
Stipp rushed to the boy"s room. "d.a.m.n it," he said. He glanced at Thomas, who had risen from the boy"s side. "Who the h.e.l.l are you?"
"A friend of Mary"s," Thomas said, forgetting to claim himself as brother-in-law.
"Everyone is a friend of Mary"s," Stipp said.
Mary straightened, and in her posture Thomas read satisfaction at Stipp"s compliment, recalling that night when James Blevens had come to dinner and she had been railing against him. She likes the needy best, I think, Thomas had said. She did, he thought now.
"Help me," Stipp said, and he and Thomas wrestled the large boy back into bed, his weight leaden, even his good limbs falling slack and awkward at his sides. After positioning him on the bed, Stipp immediately put his fingers to the boy"s wrist as, unnoticed, Thomas backed out the doorway into the hall. He peered into the rooms at the men who had fought at Bull Run. Heat pulsed from their rooms, as if they, and not the men inside them, were bandaged and battered. All of them appeared to be slowly dying, though Thomas couldn"t say for sure.
Later, Mary found Thomas sitting on the front stoop. The summer heat had leached any color from the sky, and he had long ago emptied his canteen of water. Mary sat down beside him.
"How is he?" Thomas asked.
"He died," Mary said.
Her voice was flat, but Thomas knew she would not weep. This was why everybody loved her. She balanced pain with anger and so was able to survive. Everyone is a friend of Mary"s. She had slipped away from them. He noted the pride and the sadness, how they worked together to make her beautiful. She held her hand to her chest, and her long, exquisite neck rose above the ruin of her dress. In her dishevelment, in her intelligence, Mary was something to admire. He looked away, down the cobbled street toward the bridge and the creek, where trees arced over a deep culvert. If there had been no Jenny, maybe. But he would not betray. A choice was a choice. He let out a long sigh, as if he were very tired, and he was tired, though mostly he was ashamed.
He said, "Compared to you, I"ve done nothing. All I did was build a fort. I haven"t done anything else. I haven"t even seen a Rebel; I haven"t seen anything, except when the ambulances went by, and then I couldn"t even look at them. You have done more in this war than I have."
"Of course you"ve done something," Mary said, though she was stunned and weary and only half listening now. She didn"t see Thomas bury his face in his hands, didn"t see him look up finally, newly uncertain. She and Stipp had stood together at the foot of the bed. How is the boy? The boy is dead.
"I cannot leave you here. Amelia will have my head."
"It isn"t your fault that I"m staying."
But Thomas couldn"t help but feel that it was, somehow. There was a long silence, broken only by the traffic of Bridge Street running at their feet.
"I admire you, Mary," Thomas said.
Admiration was not love, though less than a year ago Mary had been pleased to hear him say just those words to her, believing they represented love.
"Jenny is waiting for you. Tell my family I am well. Tell my mother everything will be all right." Mary touched his forearm then, and said again, "You"ve got Jenny waiting."
And a baby.
Everything of any consequence that had ever happened in her life had been because of babies.
Now she would admit it, as she had been unable to ever admit it to herself before; she had come to Washington because of the baby. She had come because she couldn"t watch Jenny grow large with Thomas"s child. But now Thomas was going to go home and see Jenny, and Jenny would tell him, and then they would have the baby together and Mary would stay here.
Thomas held Mary"s gaze for a long time. It seemed a betrayal to leave her, as wrong as it had felt to leave Christian at the Capitol grounds. He had failed again. Mary would never come home, and it had been a fool"s errand to think that he could ever dissuade her from doing something she wanted to do. But he had had to try, for Amelia, for Jenny, for Christian. They were all his family now, though he could not help but feel that they all deserved more acclaim than he did, especially Mary. He climbed to his feet and took Mary"s hand and pulled her up and then enfolded her in an embrace, then he released her and turned away without another word, and Mary watched him go, her heart rising in her throat. She forced herself to go back inside before Thomas reached the bridge, and so did not see him stop and look back, a shadow of regret crossing his face.
Chapter Twenty-two.
In Albany, there was a parade to celebrate the return of the 25th. The Lumber District carters came first, having had to wait because the day boat docked two hours later than predicted and then was delayed another half hour while there was some confusion. The Fifth Street Marching Band followed the carters, playing an Irish jig. Then the juvenile Zouaves, the Fire Department.
Stationed near the Staats House, Jenny strained to see over the crowd. She was disappointed that they were not able to meet Thomas and Christian at the boat, but all of Albany wanted to welcome the 25th home with a parade. Now, from the base of State Street, a blue flag waved in the summer afternoon, and the regiment finally came into view. Jenny and Amelia strained to catch sight of Thomas and Christian, but all the men looked the same, their clothes worn to rags by the sun and hard work. Amelia pushed through the crowds, leading the way for Jenny. In the past week, Jenny had finally emerged from her long stretch of morning sickness, months and months of violence that had ravaged Amelia. They followed the 25th as it marched up the hill, but neither of them was able to spot the men. The parade ended at the park on Eagle Street, where Thomas and Mary had sat on a bench one evening. Cries of reunion were erupting everywhere. The two women held hands.
Standing on a bench, Colonel Townsend was scanning the crowd, his wife and daughter fretting behind him, wanting to take him home, where a turkey was roasting and two pies were cooling on the windowsill. But now it seemed that those would have to wait. The crowd was already beginning to disperse when he spotted the two women standing apart from the crowd.
"Are you Mrs. Sutter?" Townsend asked the older woman, after crossing the distance between them in a moment.
"I am."
"I am Colonel Townsend."
"This is my daughter, Mrs. Fall."
"Mrs. Sutter and Mrs. Fall." He seemed dismayed to find them together. "Won"t you follow me?"
They trailed behind him to the bench. He insisted they sit down. Unknowingly, they occupied the exact postures that Mary and Thomas had a year before.
Townsend turned first to the younger, Mrs. Fall. A departing soldier took the liberty of patting the colonel on the shoulder as he pa.s.sed, as if to offer comfort.
"Mrs. Fall, when we left the fort, we accounted for everyone. But then, when we boarded the train in Washington, we walked through all the cars, taking roll. And your husband was not on the train. Please understand, he was never in any danger. He was not in the battle. It is entirely possible that he engaged another way home."
"Another way?" Jenny asked.
He felt terrible that he could not picture Thomas Fall. A thousand men to command; he couldn"t know everyone. "Would your husband have had any reason to stay behind, do you think?"
"He"s not coming home?"
"He could have just not made the train. Perhaps he went to get a meal." (Townsend was thinking of the turkey his wife had promised.) "The taverns were offering, and everyone was hungry. It is possible that he is on the next day boat."
Colonel Townsend"s mantra: It is possible. Where had the man gone? He had left the fort with 757 of his thousand; had sent his lieutenants to the hospitals to roust the rest from their beds. Like a proud father, returning children to their mother. But on the train, taking roll, he had realized he was missing two. Townsend hadn"t forgotten about Dr. Blevens, but as far as he knew, the doctor had no waiting family. At least, he thought, I am to be spared that.
The girl stared at him; her delicate features were drawn by illness. After losing nearly a third of his regiment to sickness, he had become an expert.
"No doubt you"ll hear from him soon," he said, even though the man could be in Kentucky by now, for all he knew, but it was hard to see what he would be avoiding. Two beautiful women waiting for him. He had not really feared for Thomas Fall until this moment.
"Mary," Amelia said suddenly, seizing Jenny"s hand, smiling at the colonel. "Of course. I wrote the boys about her. My daughter Mary is a nurse. He"s just waylaid. He"s gone with my son. He"s with Christian, of course. They"ve gone to get Mary." Pleased to have the boys doing what she needed, pleased to have them taking care of her. Soon, everyone would be together.
Colonel Townsend reached over and touched Mrs. Sutter"s hand. He remembered now who she was. She was the midwife, the woman everyone in Albany admired, Nathaniel Sutter"s widow. And her daughter Mary was the young woman his wife had written him about: Did he know that Mary Sutter, Amelia"s daughter, had left her mother and her practice and gone off to nurse in a hospital in Washington City? Before she left, she had even applied to medical school. Why, Mary Sutter was the talk of Albany. Had he seen her there in Washington? Did he not think her peculiar?
"Mrs. Sutter, by the time we arrived in Albany, your son-"
Amelia recognized the change in tone, had used that same tone herself. No slow cognition here, but swift and violent apprehension. Defiance quickened, like the sudden violence of the mother of a stillborn: He"s just asleep, wake him up, wake him with a slap.
"But he"s fine, isn"t he? Dr. Blevens is with him? You called the doctor to be with him?" Amelia was calculating whether or not there would be enough hacks left in the city to hire one to get Christian home from the wharf. Jenny would have to be strong. She would have to keep her disappointment at Thomas"s late return at bay. Amelia would send Jenny home to get their carriage, yes, that would be best- "Mrs. Sutter," Colonel Townsend said. He was an attorney. He had given bad news before. But he did not want to say too much now. In that rocking train car Christian had not even had the energy to hold himself up. The pink froth bubbling from the boy"s mouth, the sudden pallor and exhaustion had tormented the colonel, whose single act of courage in the war had turned out to be staying beside a dying boy. Nearby, a group burst into laughter, but the joy sounded far away, farther even than death. Townsend gestured now to Jake, skulking a few feet away, who came forward, hat in hand, head bowed. "This fellow found him. You understand, without a doctor, it was impossible to help him. We thought a disease of the lungs, perhaps. We had to wait to take him from the boat, that was why the parade was delayed. We arranged for an undertaker-"
Later, everyone in the square would remark how the sky dimmed the moment Amelia Sutter crumpled into the arms of Colonel Townsend. A permanent shift in the intensity of the light, some said, while others claimed it was only a pa.s.sing cloud. But everyone in the square watched Colonel Townsend pick up Amelia Sutter and carry her in his arms to his waiting carriage, trailed by her daughter Jenny, who was being helped by Jake Miles. Townsend wheeled his barouche up Washington Avenue toward the Sutter home, where it was said that he carried Amelia Sutter inside and up the stairs to her bed. Jake Miles"s wife, a solicitous girl named Bonnie, received Jenny into her arms, but when she heard the news of Christian Sutter"s death, Colonel Townsend had to call for the maids, though Bonnie"s husband was right there. It was odd, people said later, that Mrs. Miles hadn"t gone down to meet her husband at the park.
By the time Colonel Townsend sat down to dinner that evening, the turkey his wife had roasted had dried to leather, which he thought only fitting for a returning soldier. Too rich an amount of food and he too might become ill. He was glad to be home. His wife and daughter had not left his side; there was bourbon in his gla.s.s, and upstairs clean sheets on his bed.
Chapter Twenty-three.
Dear Mother, Thomas has written me a letter, trusting the mails better here, I think, to say that he has reenlisted and for me to write to you and Jenny to tell you of his decision. As reason, he claims a measure of shame that the 25th did so little. I do not understand why he has done this, nor why he should feel dishonor over his service. He visited me here at the Union Hotel and tried to get me to come home with him, at your behest, Mother. I wish I could make you understand how I am needed here. Thomas was to have delivered this news to you on his return home, but today I received his letter and so am writing you now. I wish that we were not separated, but the grave need here prevents my coming home. Please do not fear, you will do fine by Jenny when her time comes. I know that her safety is your purpose in asking me to come home, but I trust you, as you should trust yourself. Please do write and tell me how Christian is. Thomas said he had a fever. I do hope that he is better now.