by Judy Alter
John left on May 1, 1842, taking with him my brother, Randolph.
"The experience will do him good," Father said.
He was, I knew, hiding his fear that Randolph, then a mere fourteen years old, was lazy and self-indulgent.
Randolph viewed the expedition as a great adventure and made no secret of his excitement. "You'll see, Jess. I'll get an Indian or two," he crowed, and I could only fervently hope not.
I was pregnant with our first child, but some instinct kept me from telling John. I think it was because he was so excited about his expedition that I knew a baby could never compete. Better, I thought, to wait until he came home, when the birth would be almost upon us and the expedition behind us.
Chapter 5
Parting was hard, make no mistake about that. I may have been a bride, married only seven stormy months, but I had grown accustomed to having John Charles Frémont in my life every waking moment—and in my bed at night. Now it was entirely possible, even likely, that I would not hear from him until he returned in the fall. Oh, if he happened to meet a trader who was going to a post where he could deliver a letter, but the route was uncertain, and I would have to content myself that no news was good news. I tossed and turned in our bed many a night, reaching out a hand to touch the spot where John should have been and talking aloud to him, as though to comfort myself. Lost in the space of the Great American Desert, he had no way of knowing my loneliness. And I had no way of knowing if he missed me. My only consolation was that he would be home for the November birth of his first son, an event that would, I thought, make our happiness complete.
John Charles Frémont II made his presence known early, quickening at less than four months. By the sixth month he was what my mother delicately called an active baby. I was bruised and sore, unable to rest without the interruption of those busy feet and hands, incapable of finding a comfortable position whether sitting, standing, or lying down.
"He will have his father's spirit," I said to my mother more than once, "and I am grateful for that." In my mind I was envisioning a young man of perhaps twenty, slightly taller than his father but with the same piercing blue eyes and blond good looks. I saw him graduating from West Point—the honor that had eluded his father—and then following in his father's footsteps for a glorious career with the army.
"Girls," my mother said, "are sometimes surprisingly active."
"This is no girl," I assured her. "This is John's son."
* * *
Summer was particularly hot in Washington that year, adding to my discomfort. Without realizing it, I fell into a pattern almost as listless as my mother's way of life. Before John's departure I had been swept up in the preparations for the trip, busy from morning to night taking his dictation, watching as he and an envious Papa Joe mapped out the routes to be taken, making endless lists of supplies to be ordered. But when he was gone, all activity ceased. It was as though I hung in suspended animation, without the will or the inclination to do more than eat—lightly at that—and sleep. The days until November stretched endlessly before me.
Father summoned me to his library one stifling summer day. Even he sat in shirtsleeves, dignity having come second to a meager attempt at comfort.
Wiping his brow with a massive handkerchief, he said with uncharacteristic humility, "I need your help, Jessie."
"My help?" I asked vaguely.
His look was sharp and penetrating. "Your help," he said, that brief flash of humility almost replaced by impatience. "We must learn all we can about Mexico—it's taking up my every waking moment—and, well, the next source I want to explore is Bernal Diaz's work on the conquest of New Spain."
"And my part?" I asked.
"It is in Spanish," he said, handing me a volume titled Conquista de la Nueva Espana. "I want you to translate it."
I looked slowly at my father as I began to understand his motives. He could not possibly need a verbatim translation of this fairly thick volume, but he thought to engage me in his business again, to give me something—besides John's absence—on which to fasten my thoughts.
"I suppose," I said tartly, "you need it yesterday."
He harrumphed and then said, "Not quite that quickly. But as soon as you can do it."
And so, once again, I was Father's companion and assistant, sharing his library in the morning hours. He would bring home bits of gossip about Washington affairs—who was siding with the President on what, who had been seen conversing with a certain senator from Mississippi or a legislator from Alabama—"There's trouble brewing over slavery, Jessie, mark my words"—or even what senatorial wife was said to be out of patience with her husband. Father always looked a little sheepish when he brought me outright gossip, and sometimes he would apologize for himself by saying, "It's not anything I pay attention to, but I thought you might be interested."
"Oh, I am," I assured him.
"I saw Mrs. Crittendon today," he said once. "She looks well."
"Yes," I said carefully, "I believe she is. Did you speak?"
"I nodded," he said, as though I should understand that was all that could be expected of him.
Gradually the gulf between us lessened, and we went back to our old relationship, with Father relying on my judgment. I welcomed the challenge gladly. Occasionally I thought to worry that things would change again—for the worse?—when John returned, and that perhaps, even probably, Father would not have welcomed me back as his assistant if John had not been away.
Father's relationship to John, I saw, was very complicated. He desperately needed my husband's skills as an explorer for that grand vision of westward expansion, and he knew that no one could serve that cause as well, but he almost as desperately resented John's marriage to his daughter. As long as John was gone, Father could feel almost victorious over the expedition he led and could, at the same time, convince himself that John didn't exist—at least as far as I was concerned.
Meanwhile I watched the post like a hawk, but no news from John arrived. My longing for him did not diminish as the days passed, though I had expected I should gradually build up a protective shell against loneliness. Instead my wanting of him—physically and emotionally—was sometimes so sharp a pain that it woke me at night, and I would lie and wonder what he was doing and if he felt the same sharp pain. In a quite selfish way, I hoped so. And then John Charles Frémont II would make his presence known—a flutter in my belly—and I would be reminded that I need not worry. John and I were bound together for all time to come by our love for each other and by the child that grew inside me.
"Jessie, you best go to your mother," Father said early one morning in July. "She's in great pain, another of her headaches, but worse than usual."
"Of course, Father." I ran to Mother's bedroom, only to find her moaning in her bed, almost twisting from pain.
"Mother?" I asked softly.
"My head," she whispered. "It feels like it will explode... and I wish it would."
Quickly I got a wet cloth and put it on her forehead, thinking to ease the pain some, but she moaned again and let me know, almost by sign language, that the cloth only intensified the pain. I tried to give her a spoonful of the medicine the doctor had left on his last visit—vile-smelling stuff that was, I suspected, not much more than a tonic. Propped up by my arm, she raised her head enough to touch her tongue to the spoon, then fell back against the pillow, unable to take the medicine.
Truly alarmed by now, I called Liza to watch over her and went immediately to Father. "She is worse than I have ever seen her," I said. "How long has she been this way?"
"Since the middle of the night," he said, shaking his head in despair. "She would not let me waken you. She thinks it will get better."
"I think it is getting worse," I said.
"You're right," Father agreed wearily. "I've sent for Dr. Scott."
Even while I uttered "Good," I was thinking to myself that Dr. Scott was getting old and feeble enough that I had little confidence in his abilities. He wa
s, after all, the one who had prescribed the apparently useless tonic that Mother had been taking for some time now—without good result. But Mother's medical care was a matter about which I could not question Father's judgment—and Father generally relied on Mother's trust in her physician.
Dr. Scott arrived about an hour later, carrying his black bag, and making "tsk, tsk" noises as Mother's symptoms were described to him. He was a man of sixty or more, with venerable gray hair and beard and a voice that had begun to quake a little, which did not further inspire confidence in me. "She must be bled," he announced.
"Shouldn't you see her first?" I asked, aghast. Bleeding was standard medical treatment, and yet the very thought appalled me. None of us in the Benton household had—praise the Lord!—ever had the need to subject ourselves to this treatment, and some corner of my mind was whispering—no, shouting—that it was wrong for Mother.
"I shall see her when I perform the operation," he said, his voice delivering a reprimand to me for being so impertinent as to question him. "I have the necessary lancets in my bag. Please be prepared with clean sheets and a bucket."
Mother, weak as she was, greeted the doctor gratefully and agreed immediately to his pronouncement that she must be bled.
"I knew it," she whispered. "Please proceed."
Fighting nausea every second, I forced myself to hold Mother's other hand and comfort her as the doctor slashed across a vein in her right arm and held it above the bucket Mathilde had brought. The blood dripped slowly—where had I ever read about people being stabbed and blood flowing from them? I wished in this case it would flow, but it did not—it dripped, and Dr. Scott, seeming to know the quantity he wanted, watched patiently. I said soothing words to Mother, but she was like stone, cold and without response.
The doctor left soon after bandaging the wound he had created, and he instructed us to give her no food nor drink. He would, he said, return the next day.
Mother was no better the next day. Perhaps the headache had lessened a slight bit, or maybe she was just too weak to let us know.
"She must be bled again," Dr. Scott pronounced.
"No," Father said, more loudly than he meant. "She is too weak. She cannot stand another treatment."
Mother surprised all of us by saying, "Please, Thomas, let the doctor do his business. He knows best." Her voice was softer than a whisper, husky in the manner of a person who cannot breathe clearly.
The doctor gave Father a triumphant look and began his procedure. Once again I comforted Mother, but I found it no easier the second time and thought, briefly, that she, being weak nearly to the point of losing consciousness, had much the easier part of this business.
"She is getting worse," Father stormed at me that night, "and the doctor insists on bleeding her. I... I am just not sure...."
"Neither am I," I said. "Certainly it is not helping her. She cannot raise her head from the pillow now, and she feels like stone to me, cold no matter how hot the day."
"She believes in the bleeding," he said miserably, "and she wants the treatments to continue...."
The treatments—and our agony—continued for eight long days. Then, one afternoon after the doctor had left, while I was sitting by Mother's bedside, she suddenly stiffened as though in a convulsion, then fell limp in the bed.
"Mother!" I cried frantically, and against all my better judgment began to shake her, my act born out of a desperation to get some response. I got none. "Mother!" I must have screamed over and over, because Father came running into the room.
"Jessie?"
"She... she... I don't know, but she won't... can't answer me." I was nearly sobbing by then. "Is she... is she dead, Father?"
He bent his head to her chest, then straightened and put a gentle hand on her neck. "No, but she is unconscious. I'll send someone for the doctor."
"He'll no doubt bleed her again," I said bitterly, but Father was already on the way to the kitchen to send a boy for Dr. Scott.
The message was sent back that Dr. Scott was not well and could not come.
"How can he do that?" I raved. "How can he just ignore a patient, especially one as ill as Mother?"
"Shhh, Jessie," Father said, his voice calming me. "There is a new doctor tending to some of the Senate. I'll send for him."
While we waited, I sat at Mother's bedside and held that fragile, lifeless hand in mine, talking to her all the while about how important she was to me, how she must get well, she must not die. I had had my differences with Mother, not only over matters involving me—Miss English's academy and my marriage sprang to mind—but over her treatment of Father. I'd never criticized her, but a corner of me thought Mother lacking in spirit for hiding in her bedroom when she should have been in Father's library. She should have been the one to transcribe his speeches and translate his Spanish texts. For my own part I was grateful that she did not take this opportunity from me, but I still thought she was not enthusiastic enough about Father's work, and I had long ago vowed that my role as a wife would be in contrast to the model with which I had been raised.
But still, for all my doubts about her, she was my mother, and the thought that I might lose her made me frantic. Thus it was that I found myself crooning to an unconscious woman and wishing desperately for the new doctor's arrival.
"She may die," the new doctor said. His name was Thurston, and he was perhaps thirty years old, if you gave him the benefit of a year or two. "She is in extremely critical condition... so weakened by all that bleeding."
"The doctor said it was necessary," I replied haltingly.
"It is never necessary," he said firmly, "and in some cases proves fatal. We must give her nourishment....Have a rich chicken broth prepared."
"But she cannot drink it," I said.
"We will drip it ever so carefully down her throat," the doctor said, taking off his coat and rolling up his sleeves. "Go now, have it prepared."
In any other situation I would have resented his abrupt orders—and might have told him so—but concern for Mother had subdued that characteristic independence of mine, and I fled to the kitchen.
We did just as he said—dripped chicken broth into Mother's mouth, kept her as comfortable as possible, fanning the flies away constantly, wrapping her in sheets to retain her body warmth no matter how hot the day. We did this for three long days, making it well over a week that Mother's illness had brought everything else in the household to a halt. Dr. Thurston almost took up residence in the house on C Street; he seemed to be there morning, noon, and evening, leaving only to see other patients who could not spare him.
On the third day, in the evening, Mother awoke. I was the first to see that she had opened her eyes, and the sight filled me with such happiness that I wanted to shout with glee. Instead, I managed to ask softly, "Mother? Can you hear me?"
She struggled to speak, her mouth seeming to have difficulty forming words. When a sound finally came out, it was a deep, hollow, almost unintelligible noise. Only because I listened so hard could I tell that she had said, "Jessie?"
"Yes, Mother, I am here."
"Good," she whispered, only it sounded like a voice from the bottom of a well. Then she was asleep again.
When Dr. Thurston heard my report, he said without hesitation, "She has had a stroke. We are lucky she is alive."
From that moment on Mother required constant care. Mathilde shared the responsibility with me, and we spent our days coaxing Mother to take a little broth, or a bit of thin gruel. I once suggested that she might eat more if we gave her more appetizing fare, like the succulent fresh strawberries the rest of us were enjoying, but the doctor squashed that idea, and she was stuck with broth.
Mathilde and I bathed her body—so frail and lifeless it seemed!—and fanned her constantly, to keep the summer pests away. I brushed her hair and often fixed it with a pretty ribbon, knowing how she valued her appearance, but she seemed to pay no mind. Or perhaps, I thought grimly, she had no mind to pay. When she was awake, her eyes ha
d a wide, blank look about them and, sometimes, the look of one who is struck with terror. What was going through her mind in those periods, I never knew.
Father, absolutely crushed by her deterioration, could barely stand to be in the bedroom with her, though he maintained a cheerful facade, making falsely hearty statements about how well she looked. Why, I wanted to ask, don't you just tell her you love her? But that seemed beyond him. He visited once a day like clockwork, a duty he had imposed upon himself. After five minutes of talking to Mother in his booming voice, he would flee the room... and I would see her visibly relax.
"I cannot bear to see her like this," he told me in a rare moment of confidence. "She was the prettiest girl I ever saw... and I... I have done this to her."
No, Father, I wanted to say, you haven't. In a way, she has done this to herself. But Father and I, close as we were, did not share such intimacies.
In early September, with poorly hidden relief, Father announced that he had been called to St. Louis and would be gone a month.
"You'll leave Mother?" I asked.
He shook his head sadly and lied to me with his first statement. "I don't want to... but it's crucial that I go west right now. There are fences to be mended locally in St. Louis, if I am to keep my constituents happy." He paused a moment and put a huge arm around my shoulders. "I know I'm leaving her in good hands, Jessie."
So my isolation and my desperation grew worse, for now I was alone. Oh, Liza was there, but she was little help to me in general and none at all in caring for Mother, whose appearance frightened her. "I don't see, Jessie," she said to me almost daily, "how you can be so good at taking care of Mother. It frightens me so to see her."
"You would do it if I weren't here," I told her, but I wasn't sure I believed it. I did believe, as Father had taught me that we do what we have to in this world. But I suspected that there were some, like Liza, who might never learn that lesson. Liza was then being courted by a young lawyer named William Carey Jones. I thought him bright and personable and wouldn't have resented him at all if Liza hadn't been so wrapped up in her romance that she was unable to see anything else, including the crisis in her family.