by Sally Cabot
THEY FIXED ON WILLIAM during those long days, keeping him between them as if he were a stiff bolster. Benjamin accompanied the boy to the stable at any hour of the day, to ride or to visit his horse; Deborah made sure William stayed with them at the table till the last plate was cleared and sat with him even after he slept, attempting to form up her questions for the next day’s answers.
“What’s become of that creature?” she asked Benjamin one morning.
“She’s gone from Philadelphia. I’ve seen to it.”
“Gone where?”
“Boston.”
Another day—week—fortnight—another question. “What others besides her have you been at?”
Benjamin’s eyes widened in convincing surprise. “Good God, woman, what kind of hound do you think I am?”
Deborah should have found this at least partially comforting, but somehow she did not; it only made this Anne more special, more chosen. And there Deborah’s thoughts turned to the vile Anne—just how vile a creature was she? Had her supposed friendship with Deborah been all sham? But for that question there was no one she could ask.
In time Deborah’s questions ran down, but her rage did not. Another fortnight or two or four, however, and Benjamin seemed to have run his own calculation that told him his penance had now been paid. He’d left her alone behind her closed door every night since the discovery, but one evening he caught her hand as she walked past on her way to their room. There wasn’t a stern line anywhere in his features and yet his voice bore a note that was new, that drew from Deborah a greater attention.
He said, “I’ve not done right by you, Debby.”
“No.”
“I begin the count at London.”
Deborah considered. “Yes.”
“I continue on to William. I should have better appreciated what I asked of you there. And I end . . . Well, we know where I end. But I wonder. Do you think you’ve done right by me? I speak of the time since Franky’s death. I speak as a man with the usual number of basic flaws and needs. To be denied the chance to give and take any kind of comfort . . . We might have helped each other as husband and wife are meant to help each other, but this you would not allow. I caused the next breach and I admit to it in full, but now we must look beyond. Can we not declare these last mistakes canceled one by the other and put forward our best efforts toward each other, toward William, toward our children to come?”
Our children to come. That had been just the spot Deborah had come to that night when she’d found Benjamin in that vile creature’s room.
Benjamin leaned forward, all intensity now. “Are you my wife yet, Debby? ’Tis time for you to decide. Yes or no.”
And there it was, the old worm that had been eating away at Deborah, gnawing closer and closer to her core, camouflaged by her anger and her questions, ever since she’d discovered the servant lying under Benjamin just as Deborah had so often lain. For she was not in fact Benjamin Franklin’s wife and never had been. Not in law. What claim did she hold over him greater than the claim of any servant who might reasonably expect to be housed and clothed and fed? What prevented her being dismissed along with any servant who failed to please or provide as requested? To make an even more specific point, what separated Deborah from Anne? Were they not, in a sense, both whores? Deborah would insist on one large difference—she hadn’t befriended or accepted confidences from another woman and then betrayed her without a blink, but where else lay the difference? If Anne—or Deborah—wished to keep dry and warm under Benjamin Franklin’s roof, if she wished to eat a decent supper and wear decent clothes, she’d open her door to him when he knocked. Deborah had certainly done so. So had Anne. Were they not both whores? But the question Benjamin had asked was Are you my wife yet? Did she feel so? Or more to the point, did she wish to be so? If she did, there was but one direction in which to go.
Deborah walked to the bedroom and left the door ajar. Benjamin followed her through. He liked to be naked, he liked her to be naked—so foreign a thing, but one Deborah had grown used to—but now he made no attempt to remove her clothes, only taking off his own breeches, socks, and shoes and sliding between the sheets in his shirt, as if they were strangers again. Deborah kept her shift on as well—she could not imagine lying so exposed and raw to him. Awkwardly they worked their way back to the old touchstones—his broad, smooth-muscled back, her heavy, responsive breasts—but the anger didn’t stay where Deborah had stashed it, and it would appear that Benjamin had hoarded some of his own; they clapped together at the end in a shared fury, and neither would let go, because to let go meant they must look each other in the face, a thing neither appeared ready to do.
30
GRISSOM’S UPHOLSTERY SHOP HAD changed. Peter had mastered enough of the trade to be put over the girls, now assigning them their tasks more often than Grissom, Grissom spending fewer hours in the shop. After meeting Grissom’s wife, Anne decided this wife was the cause of Grissom’s absence; on those rare occasions when they toured the workings together she hooked herself to Grissom’s elbow and didn’t let go, lifting her face in total attention every time he spoke, but Anne couldn’t hold such intense effort against her—Grissom would take some work to know.
That first day they came directly to Anne’s table, but whether it was Grissom’s or the wife’s idea, Anne couldn’t tell because they were entwined so. Anne made to set down her work and rise, but the woman held out a hand to stop her. “Oh, dear me no, keep on as you were, you’re Anne and I’m Mrs. Grissom and that’s all my husband wished to say, and all I wished to say is good luck in your new employment. You appear to have a knack for the handling of horsehair, I must say.” So there was the marriage’s first lie—as far as the new Mrs. Grissom was concerned, Anne had never worked in the shop before, known Grissom before. All right, thought Anne, fair play.
“May I wish you good fortune in your new marriage,” she answered.
“The fortune is all mine,” Grissom said, and Mrs. Grissom looked up at him in all solemnity, as she should have; from a Franklin such a remark might be taken as a pleasantry, from a Grissom it must be taken as an oath. And there Anne discovered the thing that had changed Grissom, lightened him and weighted him together. Anne couldn’t say that in her recent dealing she’d seen a good deal of it, but now that she saw it she knew it for what it was—a man in love with his wife. He would come to her yet, of course, but perhaps not so soon as she’d first believed, perhaps not this very week. The couple looked at each other in silent unison and in silent unison turned for the stairs.
Perhaps not this month, then.
ANNE HAD BEEN BACK at the upholstery shop a week only when Franklin walked in. He strode toward the table where Anne was working—in fairness to Rose, Anne had been put back to the bed ticks again—but before he’d managed to quite reach her Grissom intercepted him and clapped him on the shoulder, steering him to the back of the shop, through the door where Anne and Peter and Rose shared their noonday meal.
The voices rose and fell, rose and fell, rose some more, until Peter, who was nearest, rounded his eyes at her. He got up and came to her table. “They’re at odds over you! Come help with my chair and hear all!”
Anne rose and joined Peter at his station, pulling and holding a bit of damask as he tapped the nails home, softly, sparingly, the better for listening.
“I’ve no doubt your wife should dislike finding her in town, Franklin, but that’s not my concern. My concern is that she’s a fine worker and I’ve no wish to see her moved along.”
“No doubt you have other reasons to keep her.”
“No doubt you have yet to hear of my happy marriage, sir.”
“As I should like mine to remain.”
“And good luck to you, sir.”
Anne choked down a burst of laughter that broke off the conversation in the next room, but by the time Franklin reappeared Anne was already back at her table, wrestling her curls of horsehair into their form. For a second Franklin only stared at her and frowned, b
ut he couldn’t let her be. He crossed the room. He leaned down and spoke low.
“I could have you arrested yet, you know.”
“You must do as you like, sir. But if I were arrested, I should be forced to explain my reasons for stealing the boy away. The reasons I felt he was not safe in your home.” She waited, but as Franklin made no response, she asked—she couldn’t help but ask—“Is he well?”
Anne watched a new battle twist and turn inside Franklin, one that seldom concluded as this did, with a silent admission of defeat, a moving on. “He’s well,” he said at last. “I pledge to you I will keep him so; will you make me a pledge in return?”
“I don’t know.”
Anne’s old friend, the dimple, flashed. “Wise girl. Don’t promise a thing till you know what the thing is. I should only like you to take some extra care in avoiding Mrs. Franklin about town. For the boy’s sake.”
“And yours.”
Franklin dipped his head, but soon after, the old, familiar speculation crept into his eyes. “I wonder, this marriage of Grissom’s, what chance do you give it?”
“The best.”
“Meaning you plan to leave him be?”
“I plan to leave all of you be. I work only at upholstering now.”
Franklin surprised her by breaking out into a full-blown laugh. “But do we plan to leave you be? Ah, Annie my girl, despite what trouble you’ve caused me, I believe I mourn the loss of you even harder this second time. You gave me life after death, and I shan’t forget it. I shan’t forget the rest either, or forgive it, but I find myself wishing you well just the same. Now for God’s sake, keep shy of my wife.” He bowed, hat swept wide in the kind of exaggeration that might have been mocking or not, and departed the store.
After Franklin had gone Anne stared at the empty space that he’d left for some time. She was already deep in mourning for William, but was shocked to discover that she was able to find in herself a pale shadow of that feeling for the father too. Of all her men he’d been the easiest to please, his pleasure seeming so much greater than that of any other man she’d come to know. Well, and why not? His talent lay in making her feel, even when she could not believe, that he loved her alone, and he no doubt made every other woman who’d ever pleased him feel so too. Before the act, after the act, just her presence seemed to please him, her presence and her talk, no matter what she talked of. Or was that his act? If so, it was an act that had succeeded in forcing this peculiar regret on her now.
Anne returned to her mattress with a half laugh, half sigh. Grissom approached, but she was so cloaked in her own thoughts she didn’t see or hear him until he dropped a finger on her hand to still its darting about amongst the curls of hair. She looked up, startled. He dropped his voice low.
“Does our friend give you trouble?”
“No, none whatever.”
Grissom studied her. “Very well. I trust you’ll alert me if he does.”
“To what end?”
Grissom pointed to her hands, already busy again. “Such nimble fingers don’t come my way often. ’Twould be worth a fight to keep them.”
“And how would you go about fighting Franklin, especially as he has the law behind him?”
“I’d leave it to you to show the way. You seem to be mastering it thus far.”
31
BY THE FALL OF 1737 Deborah had cohabited with Benjamin Franklin for seven years and could now be declared his legal wife. Benjamin said nothing of it, and neither did Deborah, at first, but some weeks after the milestone had been reached, Deborah walked into her husband’s study at night, a thing she seldom did. Benjamin lifted his head from his book in surprise; if his forehead wrinkled briefly with annoyance he soon smoothed it.
“Did you know we’ve been under this roof together seven years?” she asked.
Benjamin’s eyebrows rose. “Indeed! Now there’s a thing!”
“This means I may now be declared your legal wife.”
“And this means William will have been with us seven years and may be declared my legal heir.”
It was not the response Deborah might have wished for.
. . . .
THE NEXT NEW THING in Deborah’s life was the next new thing in Benjamin’s—his appointment as postmaster general of Pennsylvania. He began to keep the post office in his shop, which meant Deborah often kept the post office while Benjamin traveled to map out postal routes and post offices throughout the colony. The post office suited Deborah well; she could consult Benjamin’s new chart and offer up the proper charge for the collection of the letters, depending on how far it had come; she could take the money and mark it down and direct other letters along their route. The shop brought certain people Deborah’s way, but the post office brought them all, including the ones who hadn’t spoken to Deborah before. But it was different from before—now Deborah was Benjamin’s legal wife, and she could claim her official place.
One night after some months at the postal work, Deborah interrupted Benjamin at his evening study, a thing she’d begun to do with greater comfort. “I should like to invite some of your friends to dine.”
“My friends eat too much already,” Benjamin answered. “Better they’re encouraged to skip dining from time to time.” He returned to his book.
“I shouldn’t think, looking at the shape of Mr. Grissom, that he needed to skip dining. And he’s brought in a new wife, from Virginia, I’m told. I should like to meet her.”
Benjamin’s head shot up. “Haven’t I told you my rule? Never torture newlyweds by making them leave the comfort of each other’s company only to inflict them with ours.”
“But I should like to meet her.”
“She’s the perfect match for Grissom—that is, she’s on the retiring side. She doesn’t care to go out in company any more than he does.”
“He used to come often to see you.”
“To poke about amongst my books, not to dine.”
“He was most kind to William.”
Benjamin said nothing.
“Besides, I heard the Grissoms were at Peale’s just last week.”
“Fulsoms. The Fulsoms were at Peale’s.” Benjamin stood up. “I believe I’m done with this day. Time for us to find our bed.”
“Just the same, I should like to call around to Grissom’s and meet the wife and ask them to dine.”
Benjamin peered at Deborah as if she were someone new, as indeed, perhaps, she was. “As it happens, I have business with Grissom in the morn,” he said. “I’ll carry your invitation along.”
“Thank you.”
There Benjamin, apparently forgetting it was time for bed, sat down, opened his book again, and began to flap about amongst the pages.
THE NEXT MORNING DEBORAH had just finished stocking her shelves with some new offerings—palm oil, mustard, and cheese—when Benjamin returned. “I regret to say the Grissoms have declined our invitation. As I suspected, his wife is not disposed to go into company. Grissom sorely regrets missing the evening, and plans to come to talk books again soon.”
To talk books. Which Deborah could not do. And so where was her entertainment in it? “The Fulsoms, then,” she said. “We know they go out to dine.”
Benjamin looked to prefer the idea of books with Grissom, but Deborah had made up her mind. Was it not, by now, her house too, at least in part, at least to use as she liked now and then? She pushed on. “I shall invite the Fulsoms.”
MIN WAS SENT AROUND to the Fulsoms with a note, and a note was returned; the Fulsoms were unable to dine on account of an ill child. Deborah sent an answering note with a pot of chicken soup and a repeated invitation for any date as soon as the child was well, but heard nothing from the Fulsoms regarding the soup or the invitation. Deborah sent another note to the Greens, who couldn’t dine and didn’t trouble to give a reason. She tried the Larchwoods, who had entertained Benjamin a number of times in the political vein, but was again refused, although that answer was most polite: A painful attack of
gout was anticipated to keep Mr. Larchwood indisposed for some time. The next morning Deborah saw Mr. Larchwood out riding. In hindsight, Deborah wondered at her foolishness in expecting Philadelphia’s society to abruptly take Deborah Read-Rogers-Read-Franklin into its bosom just because she’d crossed that magic seven-year line. She sent no more notes around.
IN TIME, HOWEVER, DEBORAH began to think again of Solomon Grissom. She’d always felt an affinity for the man, as he seemed to possess as few ready words as she did; he appeared completely at ease with her own lapses into silence, and she very much liked the idea that his wife might be the same. If the woman was shy, all the more reason to attempt to bring her out, to make of her a friend of Deborah’s own. Besides, Grissom was a successful shop owner and certainly pleasant enough to look at, and Deborah had never been able to imagine why he’d remained so long a bachelor; she wanted to meet the woman who’d brought him to this end. If Mrs. Grissom wouldn’t come to see her, she would just have to go there and see her for herself.
The next morning Deborah told Benjamin that he and his apprentice must take care of the business of the shop and the press and the post office between them; she had an errand to run. She made up a basket of gingerbread, biscuits, and jam and stepped into the street. She looked west and saw a woman who’d been caught picking pockets now tied to the courthouse rail for her shaming. She looked east and saw the sky pierced with mast after mast, from London, Genoa, Lisbon, Cadiz, Ireland, Newfoundland, and the West Indian islands, or so her husband’s Gazette had recently reported. The new trade had brought new sights and sounds and smells to Philadelphia—the stink of the overworked slaughter houses, tan yards, and lime pits that lined the Dock Creek; the competing shouts of the corders and fishmongers on the wharves; the blur of different-colored costumes and faces all around her; she could even feel the change in the overtrodden mud slipping about under her shoes. She would speak to Benjamin about that mud—he ran the Gazette and Poor Dick and had started a library and a fire company and was now clerk of the assembly—surely he could do something about too much mud on the shoes!