My Name Is Mary Sutter Read online

  On the steps outside, James turned to apologize, but Mary had already shut the door.

  “Come on, now, Bonnie. Get up. The ferry’s leaving soon.”

  Upstairs, Bonnie pushed herself up in bed. She had almost forgotten that Jake would come for her. Her previous life had seemed to disappear, erased by meals in bed and gentle inquiries regarding her well-being. Before Jake had awakened her, she’d been dreaming of feathers, a consequence of five days’ rest in a comfortable bed. “But Jake, I haven’t even been out of bed yet. I don’t know if I can walk.”

  “Sure you can. Just get up. I only left you because I had to take care of the animals. You’d ’ave delivered at home if things hadn’t come on so fast. You can’t stay here. We got to get on.” The clock struck seven. They had an hour before the ferry to East Albany was to leave. “Get yourself dressed.”

  “But you haven’t even looked at the baby,” Bonnie said.

  Jake Miles edged toward the bed and peered at the squashed-up face and pimply cheeks of the boy. “What’s the matter with him?”

  “Nothing. He’s just new is all. You’re not used to him.” Neither was she. She held the infant shakily in her arms. She was afraid to go home. She didn’t know enough. Not yet. It was terrifying having a baby. They sucked hard at your breasts and cried for no reason she could understand.

  Jake edged closer.

  “Don’t you like him?” Bonnie asked.

  “Sure. Sure I like him.” Jake sidled up to the bed and sat down. “What’s his name?”

  “I didn’t name him yet. I was waiting for you,”

  Jake broke into a sheepish grin. “You were?”

  “Wouldn’t name him without you. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How about Jake?”

  “You think?”

  “He looks like you.”

  “He does, doesn’t he?”

  By the time Mary had shut the door on James Blevens, Jake had nudged Bonnie into getting dressed, which Mary reluctantly helped her finish doing when she arrived upstairs. Jake held the boy in his arms, a stunned, marveling expression on his face. His hushed awe had the effect of making Mary a little less worried about the two of them leaving, but all the same, she said, “If you’re going to take him home tonight, you’d better learn a thing or two.” And she made him diaper the child and swaddle him tightly against the night cold. Then she packaged six doses of ergot powder into an empty jar and pressed it into Bonnie’s hands. “This will keep you from bleeding. You must take a teaspoon—twenty drachms—each night until it is all gone. Do you understand?” Bonnie nodded and lifted the smooth round stop from the bottle. A token of loveliness to take home with her. She took a last look at the vacated bed, the flowered wallpaper, the panoply of hot-water bottles, the feather pillows.

  The young couple went off in their wagon with the baby, the wheels clattering over the cobbles, the farm horse skittish, unused to the paved city streets.

  Bonnie might have been any young mother, required too soon to fend for herself, Mary thought. It should not have upset her as it did, because it rarely ended disastrously, but you could not say that it frequently ended well.

  She sighed and shut the front door and walked past the parlor, not even glancing inside.

  On the brocade couch in the near corner of the parlor, half hidden from the door, Jenny and Thomas were locked in an embrace.

  Jenny said, “I cannot bear to think of you going, Thomas.” He was kissing her cheeks, her lips, grazing her shoulders and neck with his hands. Not yet coupled, Amelia’s vigilance having imposed strict virginity, they were eager, as imminent lovers are, when time threatens. Thomas heard Mary’s footsteps echo in the foyer, and withdrew from Jenny’s arms with difficulty. Respect was such a taskmaster. The parlor as bedroom; he would consume Jenny here and now were it not for his regard for Amelia and Mary.

  Jenny’s love had saved him. From shared grief, more than devotion. She cupped his face in her hands, and the intimacy of palm to cheek promised imminent surrender.

  “You’ll come back?” she asked, but Thomas heard when you come back.

  Oh, he would die if he had to wait another three months.

  “I don’t even want to leave,” he said. Such lies men tell, but it was true that he did not want to leave her arms. He would take her into battle with him, if he could. What was a handkerchief, or the memory of a kiss, compared to the sweetness of Jenny, yielding?

  “Then don’t leave.”

  He kissed her cheek, and Jenny read the lie.

  “You will go away and forget me,” she said, dissolving into doubt, for his protestations of love were always given in the thrall of touch, and only honor bound a man and woman when distance intervened. And what effect would the enticement of war have? In becoming more of a man, he might mistrust his boyish choices.

  The beginnings of love, when the phsysical and the spiritual, seemingly aligned, disallow hesitation. Thomas put his hands in her hair, undid a single pin, and loosened a lock of her curls. Like Mary’s thick mane, but Jenny’s were more easily tamed.

  She suffered his caress, but wanted permanence instead, believing it to be more real. “Thomas? You do love me, don’t you?”

  Thomas whispered into her ear, breaching doubt with a proposition. A question to answer a question. Such is the enigma of love.

  Chapter Five

  “It’s too much, Mother,” Christian Sutter said. On his back, he carried a haversack stuffed with food, a blanket, two pairs of socks, a change of pants and shirt, an oilskin, a knife, plate, fork, spoon, and a new canteen, all purchased at an outfitters’ store that had sprung up on the quay overnight. There was also stationery, a bottle of ink, a pen, and money for posting letters.

  Amelia drew Christian’s shoulders down to hers in an embrace. He had been up since before dawn, rattling about in his room. She had brought him coffee at seven, and they drank it together in his bedroom while he finished packing, though Amelia thought he was secreting far too little in the haversack’s ties and pockets to sustain himself for three months. He could not contain his eagerness, though he tried to for her sake, and in her unhappiness she had been unable to think of anything to say to him. The hours sped by until ten, when he and Thomas joined the regiment at the armory for the farewell parade down State Street. Amelia and her daughters searched the marching columns as they passed, but they had not been able to find either one of them. The act of joining an army had somehow transformed them into strangers. Now the 25th was massed at the base of Maiden Lane, and she and the girls had pushed through the crowd until they had found them.

  The Lady of Perth ferry had just left the dock with another hundred men, but it would return soon, for it would take ten trips to ferry the entire regiment across the swollen Hudson River toward the railroad depot on the far side. On the quay, there was a band, in uniform, and a flag, brilliant blue. The day had the crisp promise of spring; the freshet had receded, leaving the cobbles muddy and slippery. Saying farewell was a noisy business this April morning. There was so much vibrant feeling, a willful ignorance of what was to come. It had been almost a hundred years since Albany had been taken up with a war, and in between there had been years in which to forget the consequences.

  Amelia released Christian and took his hand. She would not let go until the last second. Mary and Jenny and Thomas stood now in a tight circle in the milling crowd of soldiers who hailed from all over New York, from high and low, farms and offices. Later in the war, only the poor would go—the Irish off the boats, the Italians, paid by wealthy young men like Christian to take their place. But now it was an honor to be going. Not an obligation, but a lark. Even among strangers, kisses were laughingly demanded and freely given; there was a new sense of freedom in the air. All over the North, men had begged women to marry them, and all over the North, women had said yes.

  Jenny had said yes.

  Yesterday, at City Hall, at four o’clock in the afternoon, Jen
ny and Thomas had gotten married. Mary, Amelia, and Christian had stood with them in the justice’s chambers as witnesses. Before the ceremony, the justice of the peace had questioned Thomas.

  “You are my third couple today. Is it merely the war nipping at your heels like all the others?”

  “No,” Thomas protested.

  Though he seemed unconvinced, the justice nevertheless assumed an air of sudden industriousness and proceeded briskly with the ceremony. Even during the portion when he said, Do you promise to take this man, this woman, he did not linger on the words.

  During the brief rite, Mary disciplined her expression and posture with the same control she reserved for managing a difficult labor. The week before, when Thomas and Jenny had announced the engagement with glasses of sherry raised and Jenny more deeply happy than Mary had ever seen her, Mary had kissed Thomas’s cheek in chaste welcome and then suffered the long dinner and her mother’s concerned glances and Christian’s jubilant oblivion before escaping to her room early with the excuse of a headache, which a spate of silent weeping soon obligingly produced.

  Amelia, her arm protective around Mary’s waist, fought to hold her doubt in check, though withholding consent had been impossible, for the world was caught up in love. Love and war, it seemed, worked by the same rules. One had to hurry, before the fires flared out.

  That night, another celebration. A good last meal, though no one said it, deferring of speaking of the war until the next morning.

  As the cake was served, Amelia touched Mary’s wrist. “You aren’t hungry, dear?”

  Mary stretched her face into a smile and said, “The meal didn’t agree. Just an upset stomach,” but she was thinking, It is done. They are married. This is what a newborn must feel. Cut from its mother, the twin pulse that has kept it alive, ceasing forever.

  A maid appeared and whispered in Mary’s ear.

  “Don’t wait for me,” Mary said as she got up from the table, relieved to have an excuse not to have to smile or to pretend happiness any longer. “Don’t let me spoil the celebration. I’ll be just a moment.”

  In the foyer, Bonnie was clutching her bundled infant in her arms, obviously exhausted, dark circles shadowing her eyes, tendrils of hair escaping from underneath her cloth bonnet. A week, Mary thought. That was all the girl had lasted.

  “There is something wrong,” Bonnie said, rushing toward Mary as soon as she saw her. “The baby fussed and cried all night and all today, but he stopped crying on the way here. Is he all right?”

  “Bonnie, how did you get here? Where is Jake?” Mary asked, drawing Bonnie close to her. She unwrapped Bonnie’s shawl, untied her bonnet. The girl was trembling.

  “Jake drove me to the ferry, and then I walked from the landing. There’s something wrong, I know there is.”

  It was perhaps a mile uphill from the quay to the Sutter house. For the mother of a newborn child, it would have been an exhausting walk. Mary took the baby from Bonnie and guided her to the stairs, where she sank onto a step. Mary sent for Christian, who bounded out of the dining room, ready as always to do anything she asked of him. It was all Mary could do not to weep; tomorrow, he would leave for the war.

  “Could you please carry Bonnie up the stairs for me?” she asked. “Take her to the lying-in room,” she added, as Christian swept Bonnie up in his arms.

  Lagging behind, Mary unwrapped the heavy blankets, certain of what she would find. The baby’s budlike mouth and tiny, curled hands seemed slightly unformed. Unfinished. Even in death, the skin was translucent, revealing a glimmer of the veins and bones within. It is the stillness, Mary thought, that stuns. The complete absence of life. It was always a shock, even to her.

  “Bonnie,” Mary said, when she reached the lying-in room.

  She had tried to keep her voice even, but Bonnie moaned and sank onto the bed. Mary handed Christian the baby to hold while she gave Bonnie laudanum, and then after washing the dead child and wrapping him in a new blanket and laying him in the cradle beside the bed, she said to Christian, who had lingered to keep her company, that he ought to go downstairs.

  “No. I’ll stay with her,” he said. “You go down to the party.”

  “No. It’s your last night at home,” Mary said. “You should be downstairs.”

  But Christian insisted. “Jenny is your twin. I’ll change places with you in an hour or so.”

  Christian placed a cane chair outside the door. He was glad for a quiet moment. For all his eagerness, he was frightened suddenly, and he didn’t want his sisters or his mother to know how afraid he was. He and Thomas had been to the armory in Troy earlier in the day, and there had not been enough muskets to go around. He, however, had gotten a hold of one, and it was the feel of the gun in his hands that had suddenly made the war seem more real than it had been in his imagination. He was frightened of being afraid, frightened of dying. He hadn’t told Mary, but he thought the dead baby was a sign. He hoped she didn’t tell Jenny. A wedding shouldn’t be spoiled with news of a dead child. He rarely entered the lying-in room; having lived since his father’s death in a world of women, he had developed boundaries for his own survival. But he had spied Bonnie’s husband a week ago, when he had come to take her away, and had taken an instant and unreasonable dislike to him. And where was her husband now? His dislike seemed entirely justified. In his arms, Bonnie had given the feather-light impression of a bird, marooned. She was like Jenny. Small-boned, hair streaked with gold, fragile. He was contemplating this when the sound of crying came from behind the door.

  He tapped on the door, and immediately the tears ceased, as if someone had shut off a gas jet: the last flare and then nothing.

  “Are you all right?” he called, opening the door.

  There was the swift rustle of the coverlet as Bonnie sat up, a thin form in the dimness. Her hands, like wings, were folded over her breasts, where two damp circles on her dress bodice smelled of curdled cream.

  Perhaps, he thought, he should call Mary, but there was something about Bonnie’s sadness that drew him into the room. For a moment he stood in the doorway, uncertain about what to do, but then he opened a cabinet, rummaged around for a length of toweling, and offered it to her. She took it from him and pressed the cloth to her chest to absorb the milk. In the darkness, the liquid appeared clear, like tears. The thought came to him that she might never recover if her breasts mourned like this. She would not look at him, but he did not want to leave her, so he sat in the rocking chair, where, had her baby not died, she would be nursing him now from those swollen breasts.

  He did not know what to say, but instinct kept him there. Between them there was perfect stillness. He did not move, only breathed in silent rhythm with Bonnie’s muffled sobs. Time flickered and then flared, with its peculiar ability to alter perception. In its throes, we enter another life, one of possibility: I will overcome.

  When Bonnie stopped crying, Christian took the sodden toweling from her. He was clumsy, new to physical expressions of comfort, though as a boy he had flung himself into Amelia’s arms in full view of anyone. Though his chest still had yet to harden completely, he felt Bonnie’s wet cheek cushioned against it. In his shirt pocket was his gift for Jenny, a rose sachet with a lock of his hair tucked into a tiny pocket stitched in its side. He rocked Bonnie until she fell asleep, and then, as careful as a mother with a child, cradled and shifted her so that her head rested upon the pillow.

  Then he left her to give Jenny the sachet, damp now with Bonnie’s tears.

  On the quay at the base of Maiden Lane, the Sutters were all crushed together; it was agony waiting to say good-bye, watching the ferry wallow across the river to deliver a load of enthusiastic soldiers. Mary’s elbow was linked in Christian’s. That morning, he had shyly asked her whether or not he had done the right thing by Bonnie, though she already had known of his kindness, having slipped upstairs to bind Bonnie’s breasts after Christian returned to the dining room for the rest of the celebration. “I never knew any man so ob
liging,” Bonnie had said, as Mary tucked cabbage leaves against Bonnie’s breasts and then bound them with a tight length of toweling.

  Christian was not a man yet, Mary thought now, but soon the war would make him one. Neither she nor her mother could bear to let him go. Amelia was blinking back tears; Mary was stroking his arm, trying to forget what had happened later that morning when she and Jenny had met unexpectedly in the kitchen. Jenny had been unable to hide her blush. The newlyweds had spent the night at Thomas’s, but were breakfasting with them, for Thomas had let all his servants go.

  “They’ll be off soon,” Mary said, busying herself with assembling cold compresses for Bonnie. “Thomas will need things. Have you helped him pack?”

  Jenny set down her coffee cup. “Mary, you have everything. Do you see? I’m a shadow. I haunt our house, I watch you go off wherever it is you go. You understand things. Women respect you. They come and ask for you.” She straightened. “Thomas married me. Not you.” Then she walked out of the kitchen, the door swinging in her wake.

  Now, looking away to avoid having to talk to Jenny and Thomas, who stood as near one another as decorum allowed, Mary studied the crowd, thinking that she should remember it was Bonnie who truly held the capital on grief today, tucked in bed back at the Sutter house. Mary wondered, how had her brother learned such an essential thing? To be with grief, and to say nothing? Now Christian had one arm slung around Amelia’s shoulders, and Amelia looked as stricken as Bonnie had that morning. Each of them losing a child, though Mary refused to believe that she wouldn’t see both Christian and Thomas again.

  Through the maze of people, James Blevens, his tall frame soaring a head above the others, was working his way toward her.

  When he arrived, he said, “They took me as regimental surgeon,” as if Mary had been anxiously waiting to hear of his appointment. They hadn’t seen one another since he had brought Jake Miles to the door. Blevens had kept his promise to her, but Marsh had said, No, absolutely not. Blevens would not tell Mary about this now; he did not want to taint his good-bye with bitterness and disappointment. He was going to war, and, unreasonably, there existed the vague hope of kindness.