“Good.”
“And I want to spend the afternoon alone.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, Ferenc, I want to walk. Alone. I need to do that.”
I feel his head nodding silently, and he pulls me closer.
“And I want to dine with you in the evening, and to sing Christmas carols, and to hold you like this.”
We have no more need for words this Christmas Eve. This is a good beginning.
*****
DECEMBER 25, 1864
(FORTY-ONE YEARS EARLIER, THE CHRISTMAS AFTER THE BATTLE)
Franklin, Tennessee
In spite of all that has happened, Christmas really has come. For the past month while my voice has been silent, the inside of me has been loud like the battle, with thoughts and feelings fighting each other. Today my inside has been still, like the land itself is still under the snow. Papa says that the kind, white snow is covering the wounded land until it begins to heal.
After the church service this morning, people gathered around us to fill Mama’s and Papa’s arms with bundles, saying that we and the Carters have suffered the worst of all. When we got home and opened their packages, we could hardly believe our eyes—milk, butter, bread, blackberry pies, a bottle of wine, and a big piece of ham that we all said was the most delicious we had ever eaten. Mama said that hunger is the best sauce and we have brought plenty of that to our feast today.
Since we have our new coal-burning fireplace, we have been able to eat dinner at our dining table, now moved to the parlor. Mama and Amelia have covered it with a lace cloth and set it with our finest dishes. We are dressed in our finest, as well—Mama in a dark-red wool gown with her cameo brooch at the throat, Amelia in green muslin, and I in my best blue dress with the skirt that bells out when I twirl in a circle. I wonder whether Tod Carter can see me from wherever he is if he is somewhere still.
Though we have no piano, we sing carols after our feast. “O Tannenbaum” is Paul’s favorite—“O Christmas Tree” in English, which is funny because we have no Christmas tree, nor do we have any trees at all, but only a vase of holly. The holly is pretty with its red berries, though, and Paul and I hung paper snowflakes from its branches. My favorite carol is “Stille Nacht.” They sang it in English at church today, “Silent night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright.”
All is truly calm and bright tonight. I do not know how it can be, but it is.
Our family is gathered in front of the new fireplace. It is wonderful to be warm and full, resting here together. Even Joseph has come to stay with us for the feast, and will stay a while longer to help us continue to rebuild. In the quiet before bedtime, I am drawing again for the first time since the battle. I am completing my drawing of Mattie, so that I can remember her always. It surprises me how clearly I see her in memory, how natural it is to recreate her deep-brown eyes and the lines and curves of her young body, the laughing tilt of her head.
Mama looks up from the socks she is knitting and smiles at me. She is still my strong, stern Mama, but she has been very sweet to me in these past weeks, speaking to me often and gently, stroking my hair, reassuring me that I will be able to talk again when I am ready, when my heart and body have had time to heal. Many years later, while I am painting in Mama’s native Bavaria, I will taste the delicious eiswein, a special wine made from grapes left long on the vine until the frost draws into them the sweet sap that is deep inside the wood. No other wine is as rich or as sweet as the one pressed from frostbitten, weather-beaten grapes. Perhaps this desperate winter, Mama’s sweetness has been perfected like the eiswein.
*****
JANUARY 1865
(THE NEXT MONTH)
Franklin, Tennessee
I look at Papa in confusion. I have not been able to speak since the battle, though I have tried as hard as I ever could. I have thought of words and I have opened my mouth, but no words have come. Papa knows this, yet still he is waiting for me to speak—to speak this very moment. He does not break his gaze, but keeps looking at me and nodding. He puts his hand on my shoulder and waits.
I did not suspect anything when Papa built a shed in the yard this week with some wood left over from fixing the house. It was strange to see him working out in the icy cold, but when I asked what he was doing, he told me that I would soon see. Then this morning he went off to work in town, and he when he returned he told me to put on my coat and boots, and led me to the backyard.
There beside the porch was a beautiful cow, not black and white like Ute and Mattie, but a delicious brown, like chocolate. I laughed out loud for the first time since the battle. I laughed and cried and laughed again. Maybe this is what made Papa hope that I would speak now.
“She is a brown Swiss heifer, Tillie,” Papa said.
I ran to her and threw my arms around her silky, warm neck.
But then Papa said, “You shall name her.”
And now here I stand, my words frozen, his hand on my shoulder.
“Go ahead, my Tillie. Tell me, what is her name?”
Her coat is like the lovely brown hair of a girl named Bertha who sings in the church choir, but Mama doesn’t want us to name an animal exactly after a person. Maybe we could call her Bertie, though, like Mattie instead of Matilda. I put my lips together, and push out the air as hard as hard as I can.
“Be…”
Papa stands steady, not saying a word or showing any emotion, simply waiting and believing.
“Bert…” I whisper.
Papa nods.
“Bert!” I say with all my might.
Papa lifts me into the air. “Hallelujah! Bert she shall be, my Matilda!”
The whole family calls our new calf Bert, but after I am more practiced at speaking again, I call her Bertie.
*****
APRIL 16, 1865
(THREE MONTHS LATER)
Franklin, Tennessee
It is Easter day, and the sun is bright in the still, chilly air. As we walk home from church, Mama says the snow will be melted from the graves of the soldiers, and we should visit them. I do not want to visit the graves of soldiers. I do not ever want to see a soldier or think about a soldier again, but Mama would be sad if I said so.
No wildflowers grow on those new mounds of earth, but grass has begun to sprout on some—young and brightly gold-green.
“Mama, where is the boy?” I ask, suddenly remembering.
“Which boy, Tillie?”
“The boy who was little like me. In a blue uniform. He had a drum.”
Mama stoops down from her height to take my face in her gloved hands. Her cheeks are pink with the cold air; her eyes, meeting mine, are wet.
“Matilda, dear, did you see that little drummer boy lying near our house when we returned after the battle?”
I nod, dissolving into tears. “I am so sorry, Mama. I was trying to look up, but we were almost home and I wanted to see our house, but then there was a drum in the road and he was just lying there…”
Mama kneels down right there, on the wet and muddy grass, in her best black silk dress. She takes me into her great, safe embrace. We do not speak. She has tried to protect me from this suffering, and I have tried to obey her, but we have both failed. We are sorry for each other’s pain and for our own, and for the little boy with the drum. After a long time, when I stop sobbing, she leans back to look at me.
“I do not know where they have laid him, Tillie. He was with the Northern army, and their soldiers came to take him away from our yard. They buried many of their soldiers right here in Franklin, but there are almost no markers, so there is no telling one grave from the other. Likely his body lies nearby. But he is not in his body anymore, Tillie. I have no doubt that he is with the Lord who loves him.”
“But he was with the blue uniforms that killed Tod.”
“He was with the Northern army, but it is a person’s heart that matters, not his circumstances. We did not know him, but it appears that what he did was to play the drum for people he
knew and trusted. He did not kill anybody. Do you understand?”
I shake my head. “No. I do not understand. Where is he, Mama? Where is Tod Carter? Where is Mattie?”
Mama smiles—not a happy smile, but a serene one. “It’s all right, Tillie. There is time for you to understand this. For now, let us commend the little boy to his Lord, and say good-bye to him.”
We bow our heads as Mama prays that God will keep the little drummer boy with Him in His joy. The faint, early spring sun warms the backs of our necks and our raised hands. When we finish, Mama takes my hand and holds it all the way home.
After that day, though I remember him often, I do not dream again of the drummer boy.
*****
NOVEMBER 16, 1898
(THIRTY-THREE YEARS LATER)
Paris
My heart freezes at the knock. I summon my will, forcing my feet to carry me to the door. It is as I have feared—the telegram from Papa. I must grip the door frame to steady myself, and somehow, I cannot remember how, I manage to pay the deliveryman and close the door behind him.
The envelope is pink and tissue-like. It does not seem substantial enough to carry the weight of this news. My hands tremble so that I have difficulty opening it and finally rip it in two. Inside is more flimsy pink paper.
1898 NOV 16 PM 3 57
Johann Albert Lotz.
San Francisco California USA
My Tillie, your dear mama is gone peacefully,
little pain. Will write very soon. Your papa.
I sit for a long while looking out the window at the cold rain, the bare trees swaying. I am swaying in the wind of this loss.
Papa’s last letter arriving two weeks ago detailed Mama’s decline. I know that he wrote immediately when she began to fail, to give me time to prepare. But can one actually prepare? There is a piercing emptiness in my chest as if an organ has been pulled from it, a lung perhaps, since it is difficult to breathe.
I tell myself that it was inevitable, that she has had seventy-eight years rich in love and creativity, that we have been blessed to have her so long. All this is true. But what of dear, ethereal Papa? How will he cope without her steady strength?
If only our last visit had been better. We had been separated for so long, and I was not the girl who had left home for Paris six years before. She thought she knew me, but she did not, and I could not stay long enough for a new understanding to grow. Words can go only so far. Maybe now she knows what she has always meant to me.
*****
OCTOBER 1887
(ELEVEN YEARS EARLIER)
San Jose, California
“I cannot understand why New York will be better for you than San Francisco,” Mama says yet again.
We are saying our good-byes at my parents’ home before my imminent move. Nervously, I trace with my forefinger the imprint of a cluster of cherries that Papa has carved into the arm of the chair. I used to love to close my eyes and run my fingers over all the carvings of the furniture he made for us—the chairs and tables, and especially the piano decorated with roses and apples. Now I feel restless and confined in this parlor—there is too much furniture, or else the furniture, for all its beauty, is too big for the room. The air is close and I am having difficulty breathing.
“San Francisco is a newer city, Mama,” I explain again, trying to sound calm. “Certainly it has people who value art, but evidently it does not have enough for me to make a living.”
“What about Mr. Dan Cook, who was so generous when you were at the School of Design? Have you approached him?”
“That was twelve years ago, Mama. I do not even know where he is.”
“You still have the Hearsts, though, and the Stanfords. They believe in you.”
“They have always been wonderful, Mama, but you know that they cannot support me, nor would I ask them to. I need to work, and they need only so many paintings.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Paul chimes in, grinning. “Their houses are pretty big. They might keep you busy for a few years at least, covering all those walls.”
Dear Paul, always able to make me laugh, to lighten a difficult situation. It has been wonderful sharing a house with him this past year, and especially sharing a studio, where we have worked side by side as we did when we were children. I normally cannot bear to have anyone near me when I am painting, but Paul is an exception. It is through his thoughtful glances over my shoulder and his respectful critique that I have learned to draw and paint in the first place. Now he is a very successful photographer, in partnership with T. H. Jones at the Elite Photography Studio on Market Street. We are both working at our art as we always dreamed of doing. Paul has said he is as sad as any of us that I must leave now, but leave I must, and he accepts it.
“How do you know that you will be able to make a living in New York?” Mama continues.
“I don’t. But as long as I am back in the United States, I may as well try, and at least study and exhibit for a while, even if I do not receive commissions or sell any paintings.”
“But you could live here with us, Tillie, couldn’t she, Albert?”
“Tillie always has a home with us, Margaretha, but she is a woman now, a professional painter, with a life of her own.”
I smile gratefully at my dear papa who has always understood me. He looks tired these days, fading gradually and sweetly like the light at the end of the day.
“Amelia did not mind living here as a grown woman. She was thirty-five when she married, six years older than you are now, Matilda. You are such a lovely girl, and so intelligent. Surely many eligible young men would be interested in you. What about the gentleman who called shortly after you returned last November?”
I look at Paul and roll my eyes. I will not lose my patience. Paul’s presence will help me.
“Do you mean the gentleman who once attended the School of Design with me, Mama? The one who came to tea?
“Yes. What was his name? Mr. Schmitt, Mr. Schutz?”
“Mr. Herbert Schneider. What of him, Mama?”
“It seemed he wished to keep company with you.”
“Yes.”
“Do you not like him?”
I take a deep breath and release it slowly before I speak. As Mama sees it, we should all remain together, and she is marshalling all her strength to keep me from leaving. What is art compared with the family? It is useless to try to explain. I smile at her and remember how much I love her, how much I respect her, in spite of the battle she is waging today.
“I like him, Mama. He is a talented and interesting associate, and I believe he will do well locally with family portraiture. But if you are asking whether I am interested in keeping company with him, the answer is no, I am not interested in keeping company with him or with any man. I want to paint professionally and well, and to be free to go wherever I can do that.”
Mama is looking at me steadily, and it seems there are tears in her eyes, though it may be the way the light is falling on her face, the strong, determined face of one who has suffered for me, fought for me, shown me how to be strong. It is difficult for her, now that I am strong. I rise from the chair and go to her, leaning my head on hers and circling her shoulder with my arm. It will be easier to say what I must say if I do not need to look into her eyes, if we are not facing each other poised for argument.
“Mama, I am so grateful for everything you and Papa have done for me, and for who you are. Just the thought of you both has strengthened me the whole time I was struggling to establish myself in Paris, and I know it will always be that way.
“If I could become a great painter in San Francisco, I would like so much to visit you every week and to share life with you as we used to do. That is why I came here, with the seed of that hope. It has not come to fruition, Mama. I have had scarcely any work here in more than a year. I have to go now. I am taking you with me in my heart.”
Mama is indeed weeping now, and so am I. She stands to embrace me, and I kiss her firm, soft cheek a
s I loved to do as a child. Then Papa brings around the carriage to drive Paul and me back to San Francisco. I will leave for New York in the morning. We do not speak again in person, not ever again in this life.
*****
MAY 1865
(TWENTY-TWO YEARS EARLIER)
Franklin, Tennessee
The snow and ice have finally melted in the gentle sunshine, and the grass is growing quickly, turning our yard green and covering the sad tree stumps that reminded us of so much we have lost.
Bertie grazes in the pasture and Paul teaches me how to draw her big, gentle head bowed to graze on the tender new shoots. Paul is skilled and patient as he puts his hand over mine to guide the pencil strokes.
“The shading is darker here, and there is a more curved line here, like this… Isn’t that the way you see her?”
He sees very much as I see, and because he has been practicing for several years longer, he is better at making what we see visible on the paper. But he listens closely to my comments if I disagree with him. These early drawings are not mine, not his, but ours. Paul has helped me to finish my drawing of Mattie, too, from the vivid images we still have in our minds’ eye. Soon I will learn to paint her, and my painting will help keep her in our memories.
But we are looking now at today’s beauty more than yesterday’s, as Amelia often says this spring. On a warm morning when the wildflowers have begun to bloom, Amelia packs a picnic and takes Paul, Gus, and me to climb the hills to see them. It is wonderful to walk, and especially to climb, after so many months of confinement in the snow and cold. The air is cool and the ground is muddy with melting snow, so we still wear our winter coats and boots, but the sun is warm on our faces and shoulders. The wet air smells of mud and grass as we pause to catch our breath.
When we reach the first meadow, we find white evening primrose, nearly as tall as I am, with long stems lifting the four heart-shaped petals to my eyes. Then stooping to the ground, we find the sweet, nectar-fragranced red clover, bees buzzing around its pink pips with golden-brown tips. Sometimes this clover used to spring up in our pasture, but it didn’t last long with hungry Ute and Mattie and the hungry sheep. Here it covers most of the meadow, untouched.
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