Benjamin Franklin's Bastard (8 page)

“Go to this address. ’Tis an upholstery shop. Ask for this man. He’s got work and a room for you. Do well and you can make something of it.”

Anne wiped her hands on her apron and took the paper:
SOLOMON GRISSOM, UPHOLSTERER.
FRONT STREET.

“He’s expecting you.”

Anne lifted her head. “And William?”

Franklin took in a breath that visibly expanded, then deflated, his chest. “I’ll be taking William.”

Anne backed away from Franklin, crimping the paper in her hand, shaking her head.

“Anne. See sense. Think what I might give him. Proper food and clothes, a good house, a decent education, a father’s guidance and affection.”

“And what of a mother’s affection?”

“He’ll have a mother’s affection. I’ve discussed this with my wife and she’s eager to take him. ’Tis best for him. Surely you see that.” As if to make his point he looked around the kitchen, at the first batch of clouts hanging on a string before the fire to dry, at the next batch looped sloppily over the side of the washtub and dripping on the floor, at the sparsely filled cupboard, at the chair with the broken rungs, and, last, at the pulled stockings and split shoes on Anne’s feet. “ ’Tis best for you,” he said softly.

Anne went to the tub and gathered up the dripping cloth, tipping it back into the dirty water. She took off her apron and wiped up the spilled water with it. She went to the fire and jabbed at the expiring coals till they sparked, then began ripping the dried clouts off the line.

Franklin came up behind her and took her laundry from her. “I should like to see the boy.”

How cold a thing panic was! How hot. Anne backed away from the fire, away from Franklin, away from the stairs where William lay, as if she were a hen drawing the fox away from her nest of eggs. But of course Franklin wouldn’t snatch the child and walk out the door. But of course he could. A child was the property of the father just as the wife was the property of the husband; in the end, if Franklin chose to claim his child and give it his name, there was little Anne could do to prevent it. She looked hard at Franklin’s face, trying to find the hidden cruelty that must have lurked in it all this time, but saw only pain—hers—reflected. He understood what he asked, then. Or he understood the half of it. He could understand nothing of what it meant in the light of the sentence the doctor had pronounced on her:
She’ll not have another.
But Anne had always been glad of that, of being able to make an extra coin here and there without fear of forcing another child into the world of Eades Alley.

Eades Alley. It was as if Anne’s own thoughts were making Franklin’s case for him. But hadn’t that been Anne’s case too? Wasn’t she now being offered all she’d dreamed of for William? What kind of fool could refuse that? Anne. Anne could refuse it. She would make no argument, for she had none; she would simply walk away from the man, go to her son, open up her clam’s heart, and suck William safe inside it.

Anne went to the stairs and started up them.

“Annie.”

She stopped.

“I know well enough how bright you are. I know you’ll think over what’s best for him and for you. I’ll come back Friday next.”

He left.

ANNE FOUND WILLIAM AS
she’d left him, asleep in the cradle jammed in at the foot of the bed that Anne shared with Mary. Next to her bed she could just make out the other two beds, pushed in tight with barely a foot between them, piled double and triple with her remaining five siblings. She sat down. Mary said, “Is he gone? Did he bring more money?”

“He brought no money.” She paused. Could she say the words? Could she make them doubly real by letting them into this room too? “He wants William.”

Mary flew upright. “What for?”

“To raise up.”

“To raise up!”

Unable to speak, Anne nodded, not knowing if Mary could see her or not, but she seemed to. “To raise up,” she repeated. “Oh, Annie, what luck!”

Oh, traitor Mary!

Anne went to the cradle and picked up the boy; he was either too full of sleep to cry or already understood inside his tiny self that one person crying in so small a space was sufficient. After a time Anne felt Mary’s thin arm creep around her shoulder, her sleep-knotted hair come down against her cheek. “Lucky William,” she said. “Poor Annie.”

Cruel, cruel Mary. She could have picked any words but those that might have left Anne with her conviction.

A WEEK PASSED AS
a blink, even less when viewed through the never-ending tears. Anne raged at the tears, at Franklin, at poor Mary, at her mother, at any small child who crossed her path. The only one spared was William, but William did not spare her—he woke through the night as he hadn’t done for some time; he cried even after he was fed, he pushed and struggled in her arms. But five days passed with Anne still fixed in her resolve to keep her child with her; she went to bed on the fifth night, a hot one, so stifling that when William woke flushed and fussing she was convinced he’d fallen ill. She sat cradling him in her arms and thought no one single thought that she could name, but one minute she was convinced of one thing and the next minute all was over. She’d decided. She knew. Or perhaps she’d only understood what she’d known five days before. William must go with Franklin.

Odd how it was that once the matter was settled in Anne’s mind, William settled too. She carried him below stairs and sat in the dark and told him all she could dream of his new life to come; her voice seemed to soothe him and she knew it soothed her; his dead-sleeping weight grew heavy in her arms.

They sat so till dawn.

ANNE DIDN’T WAIT FOR
Franklin to come back. At the end of the week she sent a note to the print shop with her eight-year-old brother, George.
Take him now.
Now while her will stayed strong. She was above stairs, folding and refolding William’s fresh-laundered clouts and shifts, when the knock came. She picked William out of his cradle and changed him from wet to dry, put him in the best of the linen, took up her father’s China-blue flannel scarf and laid it over her shoulder for William to rest against. Mary picked up William’s clothes and they descended the stairs, but Mary only continued as far as the table, where she set down William’s clothes and turned around.

Franklin was sitting alone in the kitchen in one of the better chairs, doing something to the rung of another. As Anne came into the room he set down the chair and stood up; looking from the frail babe to the man, she was aware more than ever of the strength and power in him, but she looked longest at his face, taking a final cast of it. She reminded herself that she’d never seen anything hard or cruel in it; in fact, Franklin had been fairer than most. The money, yes, but who else would have found a place for her child at his hearth or a situation for her in an upholstery shop? Not the corder, certainly. Not the shipwright. Anne thought these things as she carried William to Franklin and held him out; Franklin opened his mouth as if to speak, but she shook her head violently; she needed to get her own words out while she still had her voice. “He’s full weaned. He takes a pap of bread and water but it should be milk, now we’re to the season for it. He likes the air but wants good blanketing.” She went to the table and picked up the freshly laundered clothes, but Franklin said, “We’ll not be needing them.”

Anne looked down at the stains that would never come clean in the wash, the frayed corners from so many washings. Of course; the Franklins would have better ready. But Anne had something better ready too. She took the scarf from her shoulder and handed it across. “Keep it by him. ’Twas his grandfather’s.”

Franklin took the scarf and tucked it into his pocket with care; he took the infant and cradled him against his waistcoat. Again, he opened his mouth to speak, but again Anne shook her head. “Go,” she said.

He did so. And she hated him—oh, how she hated him—for it.

11

DEBORAH FRANKLIN HAD SAID
yes
. She reminded herself of this over and over again through the next few days. It was done. She’d said yes. At the time she’d imagined that the first conversation with Benjamin, the agonized decision that resulted from it, must be the hardest part of it; indeed, it had been easy enough to hem clouts and shifts, to send Benjamin out for a sturdier cradle than the one he’d first purchased, but she hadn’t anticipated the great upheaval that would then take place inside her head. Most often the questions came when they lay together in the dark, after they’d pleased each other and just before Benjamin had drifted off to sleep; Deborah hadn’t slept in a fortnight.

“Who knows of this infant?” she asked.

“No one but Grissom.”

“Grissom!”

“It was necessary to enlist him. I didn’t like to get any more acquainted than I was.”

Deborah could find little to argue with on that point, but she couldn’t hold the main question back. “Who is she, Benjamin?”

“No one, Debby. You may guess the sort. No one who knows us could know her or know a thing about this birth, I promise you that.”

“And what are those who know us going to think when a child suddenly appears in our house?”

“They may think as they like.”

“ ‘There goes Benjamin Franklin’s bastard and that fool woman who agreed to take it up!’ Or perhaps they’ll think another thing and say, ‘Well then, that explains
that
so-called marriage!’ ”

“Not within my hearing, or they’ll be sorry for it. Do you forget that I’m now the editor of the
Gazette
? You must get your chin up, Debby, for
his
sake. You do, and I promise you, in another six months, any questions regarding this boy’s sudden arrival will be long forgot.” There Benjamin pulled her close and began to comb her hair with his fingers, a thing Deborah particularly liked—the firm but gentle working of his fingers against her scalp, the soft tug at the roots—and she found herself disinclined to raise any more questions, voice any more doubts. That didn’t mean that she believed all that Benjamin said—she rather believed that questions surrounding the editor of the
Gazette
might live on longer than they might if the man were, say, a chimney sweep—but only time could prove either case.

Later, however, after Benjamin had left off playing with her hair and gone to sleep, Deborah discovered that she felt even more unsettled about the idea of this boy than she had before she’d brought the subject up. She followed the thread of unease backward through all the soothing words and then forward again till she landed on the sore spot—Benjamin had said that she was to get her chin up for
the boy’s sake
. Was all to be for the boy’s sake now? Was Deborah’s interest never to figure in it? Deborah pushed the thought away. Benjamin believed her heart large enough to hold him
and
this boy-not-her-son in it; she must believe his heart at least as large as that, large enough for a son and a not-his-wife.

LATER YET, ANOTHER QUESTION
occurred to Deborah. “When this boy grows, what do you plan to tell him of his mother?”

“That here she is and always was and always will be. I promise you, Debby. Nothing more need be said.”

DEBORAH PACED THE HOUSE,
straightening where it needed and where it didn’t, comforting herself with the touch of her things, simple as they were: this table, those chairs, that cupboard. Benjamin was a frugal man and hadn’t liked her to splurge on anything beyond what necessity demanded, but it was a comfortable house, or so Deborah used to think it—the air that came in damp off the river through windows that Benjamin insisted on pushing wide might do for grown lungs but not for a sickly infant.

Deborah pulled the windows shut; she went to the cradle she’d padded with two folded sheets but it felt too full—she pulled out the topmost sheet and it felt too thin. She put the second one back. She’d already made up some pap for the child but now decided to add some sugar to it and spilled as much as she deposited. In cleaning up the sugar she stepped on her hem and pulled her skirt out at the waist; she took out her needle and thread and made as ugly a mend as she’d made since she was eight. She was wrung out and wild eyed when she finally heard Benjamin’s steps climbing the stairs from the street.

Deborah leaped to her feet but didn’t approach the door; Benjamin would have his arms full and could no doubt use her help, but she couldn’t take a step. When he came in she was fixed in the exact middle of the room. She looked at him and took in the smile as wide as a ship’s deck; she looked at the infant and saw Benjamin, there could be no doubt of it. There was the broad forehead and the dimpled chin; there, already, were the round, intelligent eyes that looked at every new thing with such great interest. But what of those things that hadn’t come from Benjamin? By now Deborah knew every inch of her husband’s square, solid flesh, and it couldn’t account for the pointed little chin, the delicate nose, the long, slender fingers.

Benjamin made as if to hold the child out to Deborah but she took a step back, concealing her cowardice by saying, “Let me get his pap.” She retreated to the kitchen and Benjamin followed; she set the bowl and spoon on the table and waved Benjamin to the chair before it, but he shook his head.

“His first meal must be from his new mother,” he said, pushing gently at Deborah’s shoulder till she’d backed up into the chair, placing the child in her arms. “Meet William,” he said. “William, meet your mother.” The small face puckered. Deborah dipped the spoon and thrust it at the infant—he took it at once in a great gulp that made him sputter; he took another and settled his surprising weight against her, his eyes—Benjamin’s eyes—fixed on Deborah’s. She felt as she looked at him that he knew more than she did already, that he knew better than to trust her. Yes, already his eyes had drifted away and fixed on Benjamin as he ate, as if they were long acquainted.

When it seemed to Deborah the boy had eaten as much as one of his size should eat, she set down the spoon, but Benjamin immediately reached over and picked it up, returning it to her hand.