Chapter Fifty-Three
QUINCY
Massachusetts
Peacefield was now like a comfortable old shoe: still of good service but showing the signs of wear—for our large family had
lived, quarreled, and cared for each other nearly a quarter of a century within its walls.
The cheerful yellow paint was so faded that it was now better papered over. Our Turkey carpets, so often beaten of dust, had
certainly seen better days. And my once polished wood panels now boasted dents and finger smudges of so many grandchildren
running about.
But to have a house filled with children’s laughter was always a comfort to me. A recompense for the indignities of old age.
Which is why I was so stricken by John Quincy’s latest letter from Russia.
“He wants us to send his boys to live with Thomas,” I said, numbly.
My husband’s head snapped up from his book. “For what reason?”
“For their education.”
Swiping the spectacles from his nose and throwing them down with a clatter, John said, “We were good enough teachers for him,
so why not our grandsons? Does he think me so addled that I’ve forgot my arithmetic?”
I glanced out the foggy windows at John Quincy’s boys playing with sticks and ball on the gravel path. Weedy George—soon to
turn eleven—had inherited John Quincy’s serious turn of mind, whereas eight-year-old John-John was a rough-and-tumble little
fellow like his uncle Tommy at that age. And if I squinted, I could almost imagine myself a young mother again with my boys
home with me, hearty and hale, their futures yet to be written.
Now I read from our son’s letter. “The boys are coming of an age when they must learn much for which there are no schools. They have in their Uncle Tommy a manly example.”
With Britain still menacing us, John Quincy wanted his boys instructed in the use of firearms. He wanted them both capable
with muskets and pistols. He’d written, “In every thing of this kind I know there is danger; but it is a world of danger in
which we live, and I want my boys to be familiar as soon as possible with its face, that they may be better guarded against
it.”
My husband’s temper cooled a bit hearing this. “Whether here in Quincy or there in Braintree, Tommy can still teach them to
shoot and ride.”
Perhaps if their uncle Tommy could manage to stay upon his horse, was my unbidden thought.
Having lost a little infant daughter to the whooping cough, our youngest son had taken solace in a bottle. He struggled with
what he said were the blue devils of depression. And he had recently taken a terrible drunken fall from his horse, injuring his leg so badly it was feared
he might not walk again.
But none of this did John Quincy know.
And neither did my husband wish to acknowledge it. But the painful subject could no longer be avoided. “They cannot live with
Tommy. They’d be no safer with him than they would’ve been with Charles at the end.”
John’s eyes bulged and filled with denial. “Tommy is a good farmer. A respected judge. He’s having a hard time of it now,
but he’ll recover himself. He’s steady.”
This was how I knew John was terrified. He’d been stern and judgmental with Charles, and we’d lost him. Now my husband seemed
to think that if we indulged and denied the disease, we wouldn’t lose a second son to it, and I desperately hoped the same.
So, I pretended to accept Tommy’s fall was a mere accident. And I didn’t raise the matter of whiskey when, in a hunting incident
not long after, he nearly shot a neighbor.
But neither would I allow Johnny’s boys to go live with their uncle Thomas.
John Quincy simply couldn’t judge the situation from Russia. And despite what he’d written about guns and manly pursuits, they needed actual schooling with books.
Perhaps they were too cosseted here. We did pet and pamper them, lavishing all the affection upon them that we could not lavish
upon their father. So, I chose to interpret John Quincy’s words liberally and send Johnny’s boys to study in New Hampshire
under the watchful gaze of my sister Elizabeth.
My sister had re-married after being widowed, and her new husband, the Reverend Peabody, was an enlightened educator who taught
boys and girls at his academy. Johnny’s boys could learn much there, and if he didn’t like it, he could return from Russia
to fetch them himself.
Our grandsons went off before Sunday dinner, at which their uncle Tommy’s fork lay untouched, sauce congealing next to the
ham on his plate. I noticed he’d passed over most of the food, tasting only a spoonful of oyster stew, making little crumbs
of the crusty bread in his fist. “Johnny wanted them to live with me.”
This utterance silenced the table, and with my stomach in knots, I hastened to make excuse. “But you’re so often absent. The
raising of those boys would fall on your poor wife, and she has children enough to tend.”
Tommy tossed his napkin onto the table and slid back in his chair. “I’m thirty-nine years old. The state of Massachusetts
has seen fit to make me chief justice of the Circuit Court of Common Pleas for the Southern Circuit. But my mother—”
“Your mother,” my husband interrupted, attempting to avert the imminent clash. Pointing his fork in Tommy’s direction, he continued, “Your
mother has watched over you and your siblings with benevolence all your life. That is what your mother has done.”
This answer didn’t appease our youngest son, whose voice quavered in asking, “Did it occur to either of you that I, too, was
sent off to board with Aunt Elizabeth when my parents were absent? Might you have asked me what I thought of the experience?”
At that, our son’s wife, Ann, reached for his clenched fist, covering it with her own gentle hand. Glancing at the children,
Ann let her voice fall to a whisper. “Perhaps we can discuss this after dinner.”
There were, after all, gathered around us various family members, including my wide-eyed grandchildren. So, Tommy held his peace, his fists clenched, his brow furrowed, and his eyes burning with unspoken emotions.
After the plum pudding was served, the children went to play, and the servants cleared their plates. Then Tommy raised the
subject again, his voice firmer than before. “You’ve little idea what it was like to be a child with scarcely a memory of
one’s parents to sustain you. To be shown pictures and told to love and worship these absent figures as if they were deities.”
“Thomas, be careful where you tread,” John warned, knife suspended in air as if ready to fence.
But our son didn’t cower before his father’s displeasure; he squared his shoulders and put both hands on the table. “You have
little idea what it’s like not knowing whether your absent parents would care, or even believe you, if you sent word of what
it was like to live under the roof of Reverend Shaw. To live in fear of his strap—and of the fist he drove into Aunt Elizabeth’s
ribs and belly when he thought we weren’t watching.”
I startled to hear this. Truly, I startled, halfway out of my chair, my lips parted in dismay. Of course I’d known my sister
feared her first husband’s temper. But she’d never detailed the violence Tommy described. And jaw still agape, I sputtered,
“Why did you never tell us this before?”
Tommy folded his strong arms. “Why did you never ask?”
My husband and I both fell utterly silent with mortification. Into that silence Tommy continued, “Shall I tell you who did
ask? Johnny. My brother knows what we suffered, even under the eye of a loving aunt. Which is why he preferred to have the
boys with me.”
All but stammering, my husband finally said, “But—but—but Reverend Shaw is long dead now, and Reverend Peabody is a different
sort of man.”
Tommy stood and shoved his chair into place. “Pray you are right. Because I will not be held to account for this decision.”
Reverend Shaw, I thought bitterly. I’d never liked that man. I’d tried to dissuade my sister from marrying him. And I’d been right! Yet, I’d delivered my boys into that man’s hands for their education. What had they suffered there?
Given Tommy’s explosive emotions, I feared to ask. Not only for what it might say of his depressions but also for the questions
it raised about Charles. I’d asked myself a thousand times if—given a different childhood—our middle son would’ve lived.
I did not like the answer now suggested to me.
I followed Tommy into the hall, heart hammering as I reached to clutch his arm. “Did Reverend Shaw hurt you?”
My son’s back stiffened. “I’ve said all I’m going to say about it.”
Oh, my children, and their infuriating silences!
Words felt too insignificant for the weight of sentiment I wished to convey, but still I must speak them. “Tommy, I wish I’d
known.”
My son’s pained sigh crossed the distance between us. And when he leaned to kiss my cheek in farewell, with lips gone cold
and dry, he smelled of whiskey and sorrow.
That night, I sat down to pen a letter to John Quincy, advising him to come home. “A father and a mother may be too long absent
from their children.”
And if he would not come home, I now thought it best to send his boys to him in Russia.