“Enough time for that when you get back. I’m going to round up a bunch of bigwigs and take them on a tour of all my projects. Until the concept has a firm foundation of support, there won’t be much you can do.”
Despite the thousand or so onlookers, I leapt from my chair. Father and son rose in courtesy and confusion, and I nearly toppled them with hugs. “Thank you, Papa.”
Wash gripped my upper arm, whispered in my ear, “We should talk about this.”
* * *
After the ceremony, Wash and I packed our belongings, eager to escape our bleak little flat. “So you’re excited about Europe?” His voice lacked inflection.
“Of course! Aren’t you?” I tried to stuff the fancy dress I had worn to the bridge dedication into a trunk, but it popped back out. A real home with a maid and cook could not come soon enough.
“Do you understand what this means?” Wash sorted work clothes. Useable ones went into a crate, and those too frayed or soiled went into a heap on the floor. He moved sluggishly, taking too long for each simple decision.
I took a rotted set of trousers from his hands, tossed them aside, and wrapped his arms around me. “We’ll have a whole year away from your father and the infernal schedule he keeps you on. You’ll learn all sorts of new things, and we’ll see places others only dream about.”
Wash pushed away, holding me at arm’s length. “I’ll be signing up for another bridge project. This one is more dangerous and will take much longer to complete.”
“Yes. That’s what you do.” I tried to read his eyes, but he avoided my gaze. “Have I complained too much?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what is it, dear? I want to support you in any possible way.”
“I know you do.” His eyes finally met mine. “But what if I don’t want to do it anymore? What if I want to live on the coast of Maine and paint the seagulls or buy land in Kentucky and raise racehorses?”
“Those are my dreams. You don’t even like horses. Building the bridge has been your dream since forever.”
“It’s what Roeblings do.”
“I knew that when I married you.” I ran my fingers through his hair, still not sure what was bothering him. But the way he relaxed into my arms, it seemed he wanted what I did, to follow his dreams with me by his side. I contemplated sharing some exciting news, but the time was not quite right.
Seven
To Europe
In port, the ship offered a new perspective of the New York skyline. The buildings in midtown crept ever higher, reminding me of children standing chin to nose, proclaiming now I’m the tallest. Trails of horse- and man-drawn carts, laden with merchandise, flowed back and forth from barges to warehouses squatting on the riverfront.
Hordes of people turned out to bid farewell to the steamship on the warm June day. I had been one of them many times, waving to the lucky passengers lining the decks. Now, we were the lucky ones, leaning against the rails of the RMS Scotia, blowing kisses, as the ship blew its farewell horn. Mother alternately waved a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes with it. GK, a head taller than the rest, waved an American flag.
The sight of GK especially tugged at my heart. During our time in Cincinnati, he had faced a terrible challenge. In order to cover their own poor judgment, Generals Grant and Sheridan had accused him of making cowardly decisions during the war. During the Battle of Five Forks, Grant had ordered GK to move his troops to support Sheridan. Grant had promised Sheridan the reinforcements would arrive sooner than was humanly possible. In addition, GK had to disentangle his units from other skirmishes and cross a river after the bridges had been destroyed. But all Sheridan saw was that GK did not show up in time, and he accused him of dithering.
My dear General, I had begun a letter.
In his reply, he wrote, I find I must once again provide guidance for you, dearest Em. The proper salutation is “My dear Major.”
Pangs of guilt tore at me for leaving on a grand adventure, helpless to ease his pain.
After a final wave goodbye, a porter led Wash and me on a tour through the ship, heading toward our stateroom. “She is the second largest and the fastest oceangoing ship in the world,” he boasted above the chug of the engines and rush of water through the paddle wheel.
As we left the harbor, Wash and the porter argued about paddle wheels versus screws while I let the balmy salt air caress my cheeks.
In our stateroom, scale diagrams, models, and maps of New York Harbor crowded the cabin and walls. I waded through steamer trunks and piles of textbooks, shoving them aside to make order from the mayhem.
“Oh look, champagne.” Wash nudged out the cork with a delightful pop, filled two glasses, and handed one to me. He lifted his for a toast. “To Europe.” We clinked glasses, and he kissed me. “Darling, I’ve been terribly preoccupied, but I promise you’ll have my undivided attention the entire voyage.”
I eyed the room full of evidence against him. “No apology necessary. You’ll study bridge building, and I’ll see Europe—a fair trade, is it not?” I sipped, the cool bubbles tickling my nose. But despite his promise made mere seconds ago, his eyes fell upon the wooden models dominating the tiny table.
No, not again. A choice needed to be made: I needed to learn of his world or return to the familiar feeling of abandonment. It wasn’t in me to settle for a life of domesticity—managing a household and having chats with my husband about the wallpaper or the rats in the cellar. In Cincinnati, we had drifted apart. I wanted to know his worries, help him think through difficult problems, be his partner in life. His work was so central to his being—I had to understand it.
I picked up a model labeled Pneumatic Caisson. It resembled a wooden shoebox without a lid, its exposed edges sharpened and several smaller boxes fastened within. “I will accept your undivided attention. Can you explain this contraption?”
He came up behind me, surprising me with an embrace. “Caissons can wait,” he murmured in my ear. He pulled the ribbons that held up my hair and let it tumble. We kissed, and he led me toward the cabin bed with its crisp white sheets.
I stopped him with a palm to his chest, even though this was what I longed for on many lonely nights. “Just a short lesson. I’d like some understanding of what takes you away from me every waking hour.”
He sighed. “As you wish, dear, a short lesson, under protest.” He led me back to the table, and I picked up the model. “To begin, we build wooden caissons in the shape and size of the footprint of each bridge tower.” Behind me, he pressed against my back, wrapping his arms around me.
“A huge, empty box?”
He nodded, clasped his hands over mine to turn over the model, open side down. “An open-bottom box about 100 by 170 feet—about a third the size of a city block.”
“Hard to even imagine.”
“Quite so. We caulk the seams with oakum and wrap it in iron to make it waterproof and airtight, then float it into place in the river, upside down, just like this. These caissons will be the foundations for the towers.”
“Float? Seems it would be awfully heavy, wrapped in iron.”
“About three thousand tons, but that won’t matter. Compressed oxygen will be pumped in to keep it afloat as it moves into position. After that, we continue pumping in oxygen to keep the men working in the caisson alive.” He kissed the back of my neck as one hand stealthily left the model and unfastened the buttons on the back of my dress.
“As we build a tower of stone on top, we dig out the unstable silt beneath and send it up a chute.” He traced a path up my back, then ran it down my spine. His lips grazed my ear, making me shudder. “The bottom edges, or shoe, cut the path, and the caisson sinks far below the riverbed to bedrock.” He pushed the model and my hands down.
I scooted the model back onto the table.
“Compressed air…keeps…while workers dig… No, I can
’t do this.” He took a step back. “I have single-mission brain and body parts. I can speak of bridges or make love, not both.”
I twisted around and poked his belly. “Ah, it would appear we have finally found your limitations.”
“Indeed. Which shall it be? A lesson…or love?” He wrapped his arms around me, a decision made.
From the moment he dropped to one knee in a garden, Wash had been telling me to always choose love. When I pointed out that he often chose work, he would say, “My work is how I show my love. Would you rather I spent my time in pursuits that failed to support you?” But did he understand the heartbreak and fragility of love? Perhaps his emotional constitution was sturdier than I had presumed. It had to be, to go through war, to work under great pressure, with his own father, to love a woman who defied and rebelled, even when she wasn’t sure what she was rebelling against.
* * *
As he dozed, the roll of the ship and queasiness in my stomach advised me the ship was in open seas. I could only hope the seasickness did not last the entire voyage—if it was seasickness. It wasn’t right to delay any longer. I had to tell him.
“Sweetheart.” I caressed his face with the back of my hand. “We have more to celebrate.”
“Hmm?”
“I have the most exciting news.” I rested my head on his chest, his strong heartbeat a comfort. “I’m with child.”
He yawned and blinked. “What child?”
“Yours and mine.”
He cocked his head.
“We’re going to have a baby.”
“You’re not serious!” His eyes widened, his voice incredulous and not in a happy way.
I nodded, smiling with my good news. Wash pushed away and stumbled across the crowded cabin while donning his drawers.
“But we’re on our way to Europe, for God’s sake! You’ll need doctors!” He grabbed bunches of his hair.
“Perhaps it’s not the best of timing, but they have doctors in Europe, some of the best. And we have family there.”
He paced, then threw my belongings back into their trunks. “You must get off the ship. We’ll get the captain to turn around. What were you thinking?”
“My darling, the baby won’t come for months! We’ll be well settled by then.” I took a pair of my shoes from his hands. My voice sounded shaky, so I took a few breaths. I did not want to cry. “I want us to be together.”
He eyed the small but evident bulge of my belly. “Why did you keep this from me? Have you lost your mind?”
My hands went instinctively to the small mound that seemed to have appeared overnight. “A doctor is onboard. I inquired into the manifest.” But in fact, I had not. Now I had done another awful thing. I had lied to him. Where did I start to go wrong? Is it so terrible to want to be with your husband so much that you keep important things from him? Indeed, the reality of a baby had not yet fully taken hold.
Wash slammed the steamer trunk closed. “You tricked me! You knew this…how long ago? And yet didn’t tell me. Why, in God’s name?”
“I thought the news would make you happy. We’ve talked of having children.”
“You’re getting off this ship at once, having the baby on American soil. Our child will not be an immigrant!”
“What happened to always choose love?”
He blinked, shook his head. Of course, that was my own interpretation of his thoughts.
“We are married. For better or worse. I fought your father to be with you. I picked up and moved my life to a rat-infested hole to be with you. This is our life. This is who we are.”
“Understood.” His tone softened, and he spoke evenly and directly as he did when counseling a worker who had made a misstep. “But now everything has changed. Your safety and that of our child must be our foremost concern. You must stay.”
* * *
I didn’t disembark and spent so much time huddled in bed and vomiting during the eight-day voyage that Wash didn’t dare say anything to upset me. The ship landed in England, then on to Prussia, where we planned to reside in the village of Mühlhausen, Papa’s birthplace and where many Roeblings still lived.
Located in the middle of Prussia, the small city had well-preserved medieval architecture, with spires of Gothic churches dominating the view on every street. From the surrounding hills, one could enjoy a lovely view of the farmland, the city center tucked inside a wall like a precious jewel. It was a peaceful place, even idyllic. Every sidewalk and street was scrubbed, every window spotless. Even the fields were precisely planted, not a stray weed to be found.
The German women were as industrious as they were kind. Each day, a neighbor would arrive at my door with a carefully wrapped wurst and a Brötchen—a crusty roll that looked like a tiny loaf of bread. As my pregnancy progressed, they fussed over me even more, making me feel lazy in comparison.
My immense belly got in the way of the simplest of things. Getting up from the divan required awkwardly rolling to the side, then down to the floor on all fours, then pulling and pushing myself to stand. Thankfully, we had a cook. All the Brötchen, schnitzel, and spaetzle was making me as big as a Haus. Wash’s extended family helped by picking up and delivering our laundry. They spoke little English, and we got by with my few words of German and lots of pantomiming. It amused me that the German community worked much harder and took more interest in communicating with me than had the Americans in Cincinnati.
Our two-story boarding house was as overstuffed as I was. It bulged with our trunks and too much furniture. The baby was due in late October but nearly a month later had yet to appear. Wash asked me how I felt every two minutes and paced at all hours, making the wait even more unbearable. His pacing always set off alarm bells in my mind, and I got up to check on him. Upon seeing me, he startled, seeming not to know who I was for a moment. He didn’t act as strangely as he had directly after the war, but still his behavior renewed my pangs of worry. I tried to conceal my own physical discomfort, hoping not to make him worse.
About the time I thought the child would never arrive, I received not the delivery I yearned for but more laundry. I was faced with a basket of clean clothes and a steep stairway to our bedroom. I considered leaving it for Wash to carry, but stubbornness reared its head. I climbed, holding the heavy basket at an awkward angle against my side. At the top, I stopped to catch my breath.
A sudden pain in my back caused me to drop the basket. I reached for the handrail to steady myself. I missed it, lost my balance, and tumbled down the entire flight, landing on the hard slate floor of the entry.
Pain sliced from my elbow to my hand, and my back ached like it had been kicked by a horse, but all I could think about was the baby. I held my belly, watching it rise and fall with my breathing. Minutes seemed like hours until I felt a kick. Then a few more kicks, the baby reassuring its terrified mama. Too shaken and achy to move, I waited on the cold stone until Wash came home.
With unearthly calm, he checked me and placed a pillow under my head. “I’m running next door to have them fetch the doctor. I’ll be back in a moment.”
He returned, and the doctor came quickly. He placed an ear horn on my belly while Wash stood close by, staring at his shoes. The doctor spoke to him in German, then nodded and smiled at me.
“He says the baby is fine and you have only a few bad bumps and bruises. Em, you shouldn’t be—”
My answer was a groan as a sudden pain gripped my lower abdomen and my stomach tightened. Our baby was finally on the way.
Giving birth was by far the hardest thing I had ever done. How in God’s creation had my mother endured it twelve times? The doctor said I was losing a prodigious amount of blood due to my fall and gave me an injection to ease the pain. But the sensation of a knife twisting in my gut pierced readily through the fog.
When it was over, the doctor handed me our son, wrapped in a cotton blanket. E
xhaustion made my arms so heavy that I couldn’t reach for him. The sharp tang of alcohol and the musk of blood filled the air and unsettled my stomach. The four bedposts formed horses on a carousel as the world spun around me. Unreal, as if I were dreaming. Or drowning.
For the past months, I had imagined the moment we would lay eyes on our tiny baby and revel in the wonder of creating a new human being. Instead, I was stunned by his enormity. He hung precariously from the small triangle of fabric attached to a hook on a scale. “Twelve pounds,” the doctor announced. The baby had chubby legs and arms and puffy pink cheeks. And big lungs. We named him John, after his grandfather.
The next day, Wash paced helplessly as the baby wailed for my milk. I was too worn out to lift my head let alone Johnny to my breast.
“I can’t—” I moaned, wanting nothing but sleep.
Wash arranged some pillows to prop the baby, and at last Johnny latched on and quieted.
“I have to leave for a few days, some important appointments, but the nurse is here to take care of you.” He kissed my forehead through an encroaching darkness.
That was the last I remember until the sound of the nurse shrieking “Der liebe Gott!” pierced my slumber. I awoke on my side, the baby sleeping in a cradle next to me.
“What?” I tried to form the word with unresponsive lips. The nurse lifted crimson bedsheets from my wet legs as I drifted back into the deep, dark river.
* * *
My hand was lifted to a damp, scratchy cheek. I felt his presence more than seeing him.
“Wash.”
“I’m here, my love.”
I unglued my eyes a slit, and Wash’s tortured face swam before me. A terrible dread entered my mind, and my heart raced. “The baby!”
“He’s fine, dear.” Wash placed a warm hand over mine and took in a deep, jagged breath. “But the doctor says you need an operation. We’ve got to let him do it.”
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