Chapter 18 #2
I watch Jo closely. Writing is something she enjoys, and she certainly has thoughts on this subject, but I do not know how she will respond.
She looks over to me as though I might have the answer for her.
I give a slight nod. What does she have to lose?
I want to remind her that she is in a lucky and privileged position to use her voice.
There is no man in our home to silence her.
“I’ll do it,” Jo agrees. “I would be happy to. When shall we get started?”
We research together, as we did with most things in those days.
Our work often complements one another’s.
Jo has big ideas linking the many things she has read in newspapers, essays, and even novels, but she has a hard time organizing all of them in a single cohesive argument.
I have always been good at listening and absorbing in order to make sense of the world.
There have been many recent pamphlets about how women need to stop working.
How having a job and performing labor for pay is unbecoming of the female sex.
One essay we found argued that if a woman had to work it was a sin for her to also hire a housekeeper when she should be taking care of both her house and her children all on her own.
And the worst part was that it was a woman who wrote it.
“How is this for a response to that ridiculous idea?” Jo reads what she wrote out loud to me.
“ ‘It is a wise, sensible woman who would prefer to spend her time with her children rather than always washing up the cups, mending, and doing the laundry in the few spare hours she has in a day after she has been working to support those children or to support her entire family. A person can only do one thing at a time, and sadly I know a lot of women who put their house before their children.’ ”
“I agree. But also add something about how a male widower is quick to hire an entire staff if he can afford it, to help him with his home and children so he can continue working.”
“Excellent point. I will write that in. This is such an important truth to speak about. I could not spend the quality time that I spend with Vincent if I did not have help from you. I could not be the kind of mother I wish to be and I do not think any woman should be criticized for asking for help in any part of her life.” Jo pounds the table with her tiny fists.
“Or for paying a fair wage for that help.”
“Absolutely,” I say.
“I think we are almost finished here. I hope you’ll sign your name along with mine, Claire,” Jo says with a smile. “You have done so much of the work.”
“Are you certain?”
Her offer makes me prideful and happy. We have written something together that feels truly worthwhile and for the first time I feel like an equal.
“Absolutely certain.”
We do a final polishing of the piece, sitting knee to knee in joyful silence, celebrating our work by treating ourselves to the shrimp and cherries a boarder left us when he departed.
Vincent comes running in and leaps onto Jo’s lap, smothering her face with kisses.
The boy adores his mother. But more than that, even at his young age, I believe that he respects her.
He sees how hard she works to support him and all of us and he is never bratty or greedy like other children.
He never asks for more than he is given.
He is truly a delight in both of our lives.
When I see him in Jo’s lap like this, I long for my own daughter.
I have written to Madam asking for more information about the family she is with, and I have received no response.
Writing our essay about motherhood only stoked my longing.
Jo folds up the final draft of our essay and stuffs it into an envelope.
“Claire, can you get this into the post and then we can take Vincent to feed the geese?”
No matter how terrible the weather, Jo has been spending as much time as possible outdoors with Vincent after reading that a sluggish mother raises sluggish children.
Though we both know there is no end to criticism of how mothers care for their children, despite what we have just written against these kinds of dictums, she still internalizes all of it.
I happen upon the letter carrier a few streets over from the boardinghouse. He hands me a bundle of correspondence with a smile.
“Will we ever see the sun again, Miss Donadieu?” He chuckles.
“I think not, sadly.” I sort through the envelopes as we stand there chattering idly about the weather.
I offer a polite goodbye when I see Isaac’s bold scrawl on a small brown envelope.
Ire swells in my chest, along with fear.
The wrong words from him will send her to her bed again for a week.
She’ll lose all her interest, her energy, and her resilience.
And more than that, Isaac is a distraction.
An affair is a stain on Jo’s reputation.
I’m overtaken with the compulsion to do something bold and wrong.
I turn the envelope over. Its seal is loose enough that I can slip my littlest finger beneath it and open it without a tear.
This is an invasion of Jo’s privacy, but she will read it to me eventually; she often does.
I tell myself I only want to prepare what to say to her in advance.
My heart thrums against my ribs as I pull out the piece of paper, almost as if it were my own letter from a lover.
I scan the page quickly. “I’m adrift at sea buffeted by several hurricanes,” he writes.
“As I’ve told you many times before I cannot even think about something more permanent, not in the way that you mean it.
But I’ll never meet another person like you…
Can’t we exist together in the in-between space?
Come to me, darling. I cannot eat, sleep, or create until your warm gaze is upon my pillows. ”
This is the last thing she needs. Our house is falling apart because she is falling apart. I crumple the paper in my hands until it is a tiny ball and chase after the postman to ask him for a favor.
I have made a decision that will change absolutely everything for both of us.