by Joann Simon
"My love, stop. . . please! No one is to blame. You did all you could to prevent this and are doing all you can now."
"And to so little good! I can't stand it. I can't stand to see her suffer, and be able to do nothing to help her!"
"Oh, Jessica . . . dearest love." Gently he rubbed his hands over the weary muscles of her back. "I know how you feel . . . I know. Come, lie here for a moment on the bed. Rest. I will watch over Mary. It will do you no good to waste all your strength now and be ill yourself when Mary is better." He stayed with her until her eyes closed and she fell off into a troubled sleep that she had too long denied her body.
Later that might Jessica took her turn, watching the baby while Christopher rested. Gently she lifted the two-month-old child from the cradle, and listened in agony to her wheezing, rasping breaths. Tenderly she hugged her child close against her breast as she rocked her and crooned to her. For a short time it didn't register in Jessica's mind that Mary's labored breaths were coming no longer; that there was a terrible stillness to the infant in her arms. When it did, she stared at the tiny pale cheeks, the closed eyes, the minuscule mouth, terrified of comprehending the truth, refusing to believe what she feared the most. The tiny child in her arms was so still, the face so serene, the fragile chest unmoving, wearily having given up the battle for life-giving air.
"No!" Her cry echoed across the room, reverberating against the walls. "No, Mary, you cannot die! I won't let you!
Breathe. Breathe!" In desperation she placed her mouth over the child's in an effort at artificial respiration . . . not thinking, only instinctively trying to force the needed breath into her child.
Her cry pulled Christopher from his sleep. He came bounding out of the bed to his wife's side. He saw his child's still form, his wife's attempts at revival; saw from the expression on Jessica's face that she was going into shock. He quickly knelt at her side, his fingers pressing to feel for a pulse in the baby's neck. There was none.
"Jessica, please . . . my love, that will not help."
"I can't let her die! My baby . . . my tiny baby . . ."
"Jessica, I know, but it is more than just her breath that has stopped. My love, she was weak, tired. Her heart has given up."
"Don't tell me that! I won't listen to you." She clutched her baby closer.
"Do you think I do not feel the pain?" Tears were running down his cheeks unheeded as he himself felt the finality of Mary's death. ' We did all we could . . . but the disease was stronger than we were. It is too late."
"I won't let it happen!" She dropped her head again to the baby's mouth. She was too torn with grief, too bent on her mission to save her child, to realize that her efforts were gaining no response. The color was all but drained from the baby's lifeless form. Even the bluish tinge was fading, being replaced by an awful white.
It was more than Christopher's heart could bear. Roughly he shook his wife's shoulders. "Jessica, stop!" he sobbed. "Stop! She is gone!"
Despite all her efforts, deep within herself Jessica knew the truth. Now a racking cry shook her body. All her anguish, her grief, her hatred at the unfairness of it all came out in one cry. Christopher held her and the now peaceful infant close to his chest.
"Oh, Jessica. . ." There was no peace in his own voice as he tried to comfort his wife. How could there be peace? This daughter he had helped bring into the world was dead. Was that justice? Was much of anything that life had done to him and Jessica in the last three years justice? They were together again, yes, and Kit was alive and healthy; but what of those years of separation, and now the death of their second child, the still-uncertain future looming before them?
"Christopher!" Jessica sobbed.
"I am here."
"I couldn't bear to have you leave, too."
"I will not." He didn't even try to brush the wetness from her cheeks or from ins own.
"I loved her so much."
"I, too. . . Jessica, let me take her from you . . . put her in the cradle."
Again Jessica sobbed. "How can I let her go? . . . I don't need to cover Mary anymore to try to keep her warm, do I?" She spoke from dazed shock.
"Do not talk like that. . . please. We need to think that she is at peace now . . . and she is."
"She was suffering so."
Almost without Jessica's understanding what he was doing, he took the baby from her arms, placed her gently in the cradle, and covered her. He brought the blanket up nearly to cover her face, but couldn't; that sight would be more than either of them could bear. Though grief was tearing him apart, he tried to hold himself together. He went to Jessica again, drew her away from the immediate sight of the baby. There was a gentle rapping on the door.
"Sir. Ma'am." A soft voice, hesitant. "Not to disturb you, but I heard the cries. Is there anything I can do?""Mrs. Bloom?" Christopher answered.
"Yes."
"Kit is asleep?"
"He is."
"Then come in."
The gray-haired woman entered cautiously; saw Christopher and Jessica standing in the middle of the room, the child in the cradle by the fire.
"The babe?" the woman asked, her face registering her deepest fear.
"Yes," Christopher whispered. "She . . . died . . . a few moments ago."
Mrs. Bloom shook her head, stifled her own cry. "My dear Lord," she sighed. "A sad night . . . a sad night indeed." For Mrs. Bloom, who also loved the infant, there was a painful tightness in her throat to think that the child was gone. She had lived through a lot of sadness in her fifty odd years of life, and that experience came to her aid now. She looked toward Jessica, whose face was pressed against her husband's shoulder; saw Christopher's glassy, disbelieving eyes, and called up her reserve of strength. "What can I do for you?"
"We will need the doctor . . . to certify. Send Jim. And my wife needs something to restore her . . . a brandy? I do not know . . . "
"I will see to both. But, sir, wouldn't it be best if you both left the room?"
"The baby . . ."
"Forgive my saying it, but there's not much good you can do for her now, and your wife's not in a good way."
"We will wait for the doctor."
"Then I will go take care of the rest. Master Kit will be all right. He didn't hear a thing, and I won't say a word to the child."
"Thank you."
It seemed an interminable time before the doctor arrived, although less than thirty minutes had passed.
The brandy had brought some color back to Jessica's cheeks and Christopher's, but they were also gaining a sharper clarity of their loss.
The doctor's examination was brief before he signed the death certificate. He was an older man who'd seen much, yet he sighed as he handed the document to Christopher, and took him aside.
"My deepest condolences. With pneumonia there can be no sureties."
"I realize."
"Your wife has taken it very hard." He glanced toward Jessica, now seated on the bed with Mrs. Bloom's arm about her.
Christopher nodded.
"I would prescribe a laudanum sedative tonight." He peered up at Christopher. "And for yourself as well, sir. I will leave a small dose." He paused. "Best to get her with child again as soon as possible. A new baby will help to ease the loss of the last."
Christopher heard his words, but didn't respond. It was too soon to be thinking of that. He bid the doctor good-bye and returned to his wife. As Christopher administered the laudanum, distracting Jessica's attention, Mrs. Bloom quietly carried the baby from the room to one of the empty guest rooms.
Two days later, on a rainy April morning, Mary Jessica Dunlap was buried in the newly consecrated family plot on the grounds of their home. Christopher, who in the previous days had gone about the sad tasks of making all the necessary arrangements and notifying their closest friends of their loss, stood at the graveside beside his veil-shrouded wife. As the first shovel of dirt was cast over the minute casket, Christopher could barely keep his pain in check; yet his wife
remained silent and white-faced beside him, watching the shovel being lifted, listening to the clergyman's words. Her silence disturbed him. After the night of Mary's death, when she'd broken down and cried, she'd walked about a somber-faced introvert, seemingly contending with her loss; but Christopher knew that she wasn't bearing up at all—only pushing the deepest pain aside. He wished she could give into her grief. Open grief was healing; it would not make their loss any less, but it would not leave all the pain inside, to fester there.
But Jessica did not break down again. He watched her go through the ordeal of meeting sympathizers at the house after the service, accepting their condolences, her facial expression immobile, devoid of emotion.
He had no way of knowing that his wife's silence masked a deep depression. She had been through so much pain and fear in the last three and a half years—losing Christopher; having to learn to cope with a strange, unfamiliar world, always fearing for her son's and her own well-being; never knowing if she'd find Christopher again—suddenly she could take no more. Mary's death had brought home to Jessica just how great were the hardships of this nineteenth century world. Until then, having Christopher back again, her family together, had been enough; she had made it enough. After Christopher's admonitions months before, she had forced herself to overlook the inconveniences of everyday life, avoid thinking about the misgivings in the back of her mind. Most of the time, she'd been able to put aside her feeling of isolation, of being cut off from the mental stimulation that had been her mainstay in the world she'd once known. Now she could no longer pretend that she didn't miss her own world. Mary would not have died in the twentieth century! There would have been medication to save her. Instead of lying beneath a gravestone in the cold ground, she would have been a laughing, healthy baby!
As the weeks passed, Jessica looked at the world as though through gray-tinted glasses. Everything was obscured by a haze, and nothing around her could break through it. She would stand at the windows of the house and gaze out toward the Sound, knowing the beauty that nature was displaying for her there, yet unable to appreciate it. Nor could she respond to her husband's efforts at cheering her.
Christopher's arm would come around her in the night. She'd feel him pulling her close to his warmth as his hands softly caressed her, telling her of his love. Once they'd been moments she'd cherished; but now, much though she wanted, deep inside, to respond with the same uninhibited ardor as he demonstrated to her, she was like a puppet, mechanically going through the motions of lovemaking.
Afterward, one night, as they lay in each other's arms, his fingers tangled in the thick length of her hair, he gave a deep sigh of pain. Her pretense at participating in the act had not fooled him—not the man who knew her so very well.
"Oh, my love," he whispered. The desperate tone of his voice, the touch of his hands were telling her so clearly of his efforts to reach out to her. Still she could not respond; could only lie inert in his arms. Soon the gentle caress of his hands ceased, and she could sense the tension in his body as he fought for sleep that wouldn't come.
She didn't want to do this to him. She hated herself for it, but was unable to free herself from the mental turmoil that gripped her. What was the matter with her? She wanted to laugh again, to feel a soft peace and contentment, to appreciate the good things she did have. If only the dark clouds in her mind would go away!
Still, in the weeks that followed, there was little change in her state. She couldn't stop the self-destructive onslaught of her depression. In a modern world a psychiatrist
could have helped her, but here there was no one who could ease her onto a brighter path.
In her listlessness she let the overseeing of the household slide. Clara came to her late one Saturday morning with a tentative dinner menu from the cook that needed Jessica's approval. Jessica was seated at the desk in the morning parlor, sorting through some correspondence; trying, and failing, to summon enthusiasm to frame her responses. She took the menu from Clara's hand and glanced over it without really seeing what was written.
"I'm sure it is all right, Clara. Tell cook to prepare whatever she likes. Her judgment is never lacking. I need not be consulted." Jessica handed back the handwritten menu 'and turned toward the window; she missed the sad shaking of the maid's head.
"Is there anything else, ma'am?"
"No. Go ahead, Clara. Cook will know what to do."
"Very well, ma'am."
As the maid left, Jessica continued to stare out the window, lost in her own dreary thoughts. She didn't hear footsteps approaching until she felt a hand come to rest lightly on her shoulder. Gasping, she swung her head around.
"I did not mean to startle you, Jessica." Christopher's eyes were full of concern as he gazed down at her. Then he stepped over to pull a side chair from along the wall, and sat down in it so that he was facing her.
"I overheard your conversation with Clara just now."
"Yes?" Her voice was flat, lacking any intimation of curiosity about what he was going to say.
"It is your responsibility to approve that menu. You cannot leave everything in the cook's hands." Despite the words, his voice was gentle.
"What does it matter?" She shrugged weakly. "You know she will always put a good meal before you."
"It mattered to you once. Once you wanted to know every detail of what was going on in the house."
"I suppose."
"My love, you are the mistress here. People look to you for supervision."
"They are running things very efficiently."
"And if you continue to take no interest in things, soon they will be running the house according to their tastes, not yours." He reached out and took her hands. They laid limp within his. "Please, Jessica. What can I do to snap you out of this? You must begin to take an interest in things again. We will take a ride in the country. It is a lovely day.
Just the two of us? Or bring Kit along? If you would prefer, I will plan a few days' trip and take you into New York for some shopping."
"No. I don't really want to go anywhere, Christopher. It's too soon . . ."
"I know you mourn Mary. So do I—deeply. But life goes on."
"Yes, I know." She turned her face from his, back toward the window. "Give me time, Christopher. I need time . . ."
"I will. But will you promise me to try to take a stronger hand with the servants?"
"Yes."
"Look at me, Jessica," he pleaded.
She looked, her green eyes caught by the intensity in his blue ones. As she did so, she knew she loved him; knew he was trying to help her. Why did she feel so dead inside? It was a question she couldn't answer.
As though sensing that he could press the issue no further, Christopher squeezed her hands and rose. "You are sure you do not want to go for a drive?"
"Yes."
"Then I will be in my study for a while, going through some papers. Come get me if you change your mind?"
She nodded.
And Jessica tried to be more active in the next few weeks. Remembering Christopher's words, she took a firmer hand with the servants, but even as she checked on the details of the household, she knew her effort was forced, not spontaneous. She was going through the motions of living, but the zest and sparkle were not there, and no amount of pretending on her part could deceive those around her. She realized that because of her inability to go to Christopher and talk with him about what was troubling her, a chasm was widening in their day-to-day relationship, just as it was in their bed at night.
There was something else troubling Jessica, too, that June. For several weeks she'd suspected; now she was certain.
She was pregnant again, and the knowledge filled her with more fear and confusion than ever. What if Mary's fate should befall this child, too; this bit of human who was barely more than a seed within her womb? She wouldn't be able to stand another loss; she would completely lose her sanity.
She held off telling Christopher, pushing through each day, forcing
herself to find some activity to occupy all the idle hours and assuage the worries of those around her, who were always watching and wondering when she would become herself again.
She'd settled herself to the task of cleaning the drawers and closets in the master bedroom—the personal compart-ments she had never let the maids touch. She was going through a drawer in her dressing table—a bottom drawer, rarely used—when her hand pulled forth a tiny lace bonnet, and an envelope on the front of which was written in her hand, "Lock Mary's Hair Two Weeks." As she held the articles, staring at them, her hands began to shake. She could remember, now, putting them there, a temporary storage place until she could get together a scrapbook for Mary as she had done for Kit. Mary had been lying in the, cradle, gurgling; an early spring sun shone in through the windows.
Jessica had just clipped the half-inch lock of her daughter's hair as a remembrance of that fine, baby softness, then looked at the mantel clock and realized she only had a half hour to get herself and her daughter ready for a visit from Amelia Beard and Mary Weldon. She'd quickly dropped the lock of hair into an envelope, sealed it and dropped it into the bottom drawer of her dressing table, where her daughter's first, tiny cap already rested.
She'd forgotten about both until that moment, but now the sight of the precious mementos filled her with such grief and pain, the tears flowed unheeded down her cheeks.
No, Jessica's mind cried. No! The sobs came uncontrollably. She heard the door open; heard Christopher's voice.
"Jessica, whatever is wrong!"
She couldn't answer, even as his arms enfolded her and pulled her up from her kneeling position on the floor.
"Tell me. Tell me." He tried to pull her hands from her face; succeeded in doing so only to have her bury her face against his chest as the sobs continued to come. He held her tightly, waiting for her crying to subside. Then he saw the envelope on the floor and the words written on it. His heart froze. Was this something she'd just accidentally discovered . . . or something she'd been cherishing unhealthily for months?