Chapter Fifty-Four
QUINCY
Massachusetts
These days I used a magnifying glass to sort the mail for neither John nor I could see well anymore. I squinted over each
missive. Still, I’d know Thomas Jefferson’s penmanship anywhere . . .
When I realized that John wasn’t surprised to receive a letter from our old nemesis, I flapped the note accusingly. “You’re
writing to Jefferson?”
John shrugged like a child caught with his finger in the plum pudding. “Now that we’re both retired from the arena, what harm
can a correspondence do?”
With both hands on my hips, I stood aghast. “How can you forget the ways in which that man schemed against you and your presidency
and your place in posterity?”
“Yet, you wrote a passel of letters to him behind my back, as I recall . . .”
I pressed my lips together, guilty as charged. In the end, all I could say was “I don’t see why you’d repeat my folly.”
With a sly side-glance, my husband asked, “Aren’t you corresponding with Mrs. Warren again? Surely you recall how much pain
she caused me and my place in posterity. With less cause, I might add.”
I was, in fact, guilty of that, too.
Mercy had sent a kind note asking after Nabby’s surgery, and I hadn’t been able to snub her.
I was overjoyed that the surgery had been a success, and beyond grateful that my daughter was well enough to return to her husband on his farm in New York.
But I was lonelier without Nabby. And then, of course, there was the loneliness of growing old.
A narrowing of one’s social circle as ancient friends and loved ones passed away.
In recent years, I’d lost my beloved sister Mary. Her husband, Mr. Cranch, had passed, too. Phoebe was sick and dying. Uncle
Tufts was not long for this world. And perhaps that’s why I was willing to exchange pleasantries with Mercy Otis Warren. “But
Jefferson!”
“I know who he is. Warts and all.”
“Oh, no one on earth knows Jefferson truly. He’s always been a riddle worthy of the sphinx.”
“Enough.” John waved me off. “We’re too advanced in life now to leave grudges between us and the grave. Or to deny ourselves
any remaining pleasure in life. Despite all, I love Jefferson and I’ve always loved Jefferson. I cannot explain it, but it
is true.”
I certainly couldn’t explain it. But there was no denying that the Sage of Monticello had a talent for hurting those who loved
him, while making his victims love him still.
Perhaps that’s why he’d done so well in politics.
I was determined to hold my grudge to the grave, but the important thing, I supposed, was that John was writing again. Tremors
still marred his pen, but he threw himself into a renewed correspondence with Jefferson. It solaced him and sharpened his
mind to correspond with one of only three men living who knew what it was to be the president of the United States.
I could not begrudge him that.
While John took to his desk making peace with an old foe, it seemed that some fights would never end.
Not for two consecutive years in the past forty had the British refrained from committing some violent outrage upon us. Whether
shooting at us, seizing our ships, kidnapping our soldiers, refusing to honor our treaties, or destroying our commerce, they
never ceased in their attacks. Four presidents had tried everything—from neutrality to trade agreements to boycotts and embargoes.
Now Congress had finally declared war. A Second War of Independence, they called it, and I fretted to think my grandsons might take up arms. For now, a new generation would have to fight for our freedoms, and if such fights could never be won, then each generation must fight anew.
As American men began joining militias and mustering to fend off British invasion again, Phoebe was fighting a different kind
of war. The war we all fought against time.
Her memory had stuttered. She needed help dressing herself; she no longer remembered to eat. Some days she stood by the window,
having fallen mute, deaf, and dumb to all around her.
I came every morning with porridge, milk puddings, and other soft foods Phoebe could still chew. And every morning, she’d
say, “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you, Miss Abby. Where are you coming back from now, Honey?”
“Just over the hill,” I said.
Phoebe shook her head. “I told my husband just yesterday that you’ve been to Paris, London, Philadelphia, and every place
in the world.”
She didn’t remember that she had been widowed. And I knew better than to remind her and put her in grief anew. Instead, I
squeezed her hand, and she squeezed mine in return.
“I’ve still got the lace handkerchief you sent me,” Phoebe said, pulling a dirtied old cloth from between her bosoms. “The
one from Paris.”
I was touched to know her disordered mind still treasured it.
“When will I see you again?” Phoebe asked.
“Tomorrow morning,” I promised.
I was sixty-eight years old—too old and infirm myself to stay with her overnight. Neither could I bear to leave her alone.
Thankfully, my granddaughters, nieces, and daughter-in-law took shifts with her at night.
It took two of them at a time to manage her because she needed help getting up from bed at night.
“Your granddaughters are kind girls,” Phoebe said. “Tender-hearted, like their father. But too pious, if there could be such
a thing.”
Charlie’s daughters were never to be found without their prayer books. They thought the Bible itself would fend off the dissipation that had carried off their father, and I was not keen to disabuse them of that notion. But I had learned that prayer alone seldom fended off evil.
Phoebe gripped my hand harder. “I wanted to see freedom before I passed. Freedom for all.”
“I wanted that, too,” I said, knowing that slavery was, in the South, more entrenched than ever and expanding into new states.
And as for women, it sometimes felt as if we were back to where we started without having accomplished anything at all.
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen you, Miss Abby. Where are you coming back from now?”
“Just over the hill,” I said, tears brimming.
“When will I see you again?”
“Tomorrow morning, my dear Phoebe.”
That I loved her, I always knew. That I respected her was something I only came to know later. That I venerated her as a mother
I did not know until this long and painful parting.
I was with Phoebe when she passed, my pale fingers twined with her dark ones. By then, she no longer knew how to dress, how
to eat, or even how to swallow. She had forgotten me, forgotten her husband, forgotten herself, forgotten all but the Lord,
whose name she whispered with her last breath.
Phoebe had every reason to resent my sisters and me for the sins of our father holding her in bondage. For the way we benefited
from her labors and felt entitled to her affections. We were grown women when she finally achieved her freedom, and she might
have abandoned all ties to us without a backward glance. Especially when, as much as we loved her, we never did treat her
with the true equality she deserved. And that was a shame that would weigh upon me the rest of my life. Alas, there was yet
more pain in store.