Mack put his arms around them both and held them while Lizzie cried her heart out.
32
AFTER HER BABY GIRL WAS BORN DEAD, LIZZIE LIVED in a world of gray colors, silent people, rain and mist. She let the household staff do as they pleased, realizing vaguely after a while that Mack had taken charge of them. She no longer patrolled the plantation every day: she left the tobacco fields to Lennox. Sometimes she visited Mrs. Thumson or Suzy Delahaye, for they were willing to talk about the baby as long as she liked; but she did not go to parties or balls. Every Sunday she attended church in Fredericksburg, and after the service she spent an hour or two in the graveyard, standing and looking at the tiny tombstone, thinking about what might have been.
She was quite sure it was all her fault. She had continued to ride horses until she was four or five months pregnant; she had not rested as much as people said she should; and she had ridden ten miles in the buggy, urging Mack to go faster and faster, on the night the baby was stillborn.
She was angry with Jay for being away from home that night; with Dr. Finch for refusing to come out for a slave girl; and with Mack for doing her bidding and driving fast. But most of all she was angry with herself. She loathed and despised herself for being an inadequate mother-to-be, for her impulsiveness and impatience and inability to listen to advice. If I were not like this, she thought, if I were a normal person, sensible and reasonable and cautious, I would have a little baby girl now.
She could not talk to Jay about it. At first he had been angry. He had railed at Lizzie, vowed to shoot Dr. Finch and threatened to have Mack flogged; but his rage had evaporated when he learned the baby had been a girl, and now he acted as if Lizzie had never been pregnant.
For a while she talked to Mack. The birth had brought them very close. He had wrapped her in his cloak and held her knees and tenderly handled the poor baby. At first he was a great comfort to her, but after a few weeks she sensed him becoming impatient. It was not his baby, she thought, and he could not truly share her grief. Nobody could. So she withdrew into herself.
One day three months after the birth she went to the nursery wing, still gleaming with fresh paint, and sat alone. She imagined a little girl there in a cradle, gurgling happily or crying to be fed, dressed in pretty white frocks and tiny knitted boots, suckling at her nipple or being bathed in a bowl. The vision was so intense that tears filled her eyes and rolled down her face, although she made no sound.
Mack came in while she was like that. Some debris had fallen down the chimney during a storm and he knelt at the fireplace and began to clear it up. He did not comment on her tears.
“I’m so unhappy,” she said.
He did not pause in his work. “This will not do you any good,” he replied in a hard voice.
“I expected more sympathy from you,” she said miserably.
“You can’t spend your life sitting in the nursery crying. Everyone dies sooner or later. The rest have to live on.”
“I don’t really want to. What have I got to live for?”
“Don’t be so damned pathetic, Lizzie—it’s not your nature.”
She was shocked. No one had spoken unkindly to her since the stillbirth. What right did Mack have to make her even more unhappy? “You ought not to talk to me like that,” she said.
He surprised her by rounding on her. Dropping his brush, he grabbed her by both her arms and pulled her up out of her chair. “Don’t tell me about my rights,” he said.
He was so angry she was afraid he would do violence to her. “Leave me alone!”
“Too many people are leaving you alone,” he said, but he put her down.
“What am I supposed to do?” she said.
“Anything you like. Get a ship back home and go and live with your mother in Aberdeen. Have a love affair with Colonel Thumson. Run away to the frontier with some ne’er-do-well.” He paused and looked hard at her. “Or—make up your mind to be a wife to Jay, and have another baby.”
That surprised her. “I thought …”
“What did you think?”
“Nothing.” She had known for some time that he was at least half in love with her. After the failed party for the field hands he had touched her tenderly and stroked her in a way that could only be loving. He had kissed the hot tears on her face. There was more than mere pity in his embrace.
And there was more in her response than the need for sympathy. She had clung to his hard body and savored the touch of his lips on her skin, and that was not just because she felt sorry for herself.
But all those feelings had faded since the baby. Her heart was empty. She had no passions, just regrets.
She felt ashamed and embarrassed to have had such desires. The lascivious wife who tried to seduce the bonny young footman was a stock character in comic novels.
Mack was not just a bonny footman, of course. She had gradually come to realize that he was the most remarkable man she had ever met. He was arrogant and opinionated too, she knew. His idea of his own importance was ludicrously inflated, and it led him into mischief. But she could not help admiring the way he stood up to tyrannical authority, from the Scottish coal field to the plantations of Virginia. And when he got into trouble it was often because he stuck up for someone else.
But Jay was her husband. He was weak and foolish, and he had lied to her, but she had married him and she had to be faithful to him.
Mack was still staring at her. She wondered what was going through his mind. She thought he was referring to himself when he said “run away to the frontier with some ne’er-do-well.”
Mack reached out tentatively and stroked her cheek. Lizzie closed her eyes. If her mother could see this she would know exactly what to say. You married Jay and you promised to be loyal to him. Are you a woman or a child? A woman keeps her word when it’s difficult, not just when it’s easy. That’s what promising is all about.
And here she was letting another man stroke her cheek. She opened her eyes and looked at Mack for a long moment. There was yearning in his green eyes. She hardened her heart. A sudden impulse seized her and she slapped his face as hard as she could.
It was like slapping a rock. He did not move. But his expression changed. She had not hurt his face but she had wounded his heart. He looked so shocked and dismayed that she felt an overpowering urge to apologize and embrace him. She resisted it with all her might. In a shaky voice she said: “Don’t you dare touch me!”
He said nothing, but stared at her, horrified and wounded. She could not look at his hurt expression any longer, so she stood up and walked out of the room.
* * *
He had said, “Make up your mind to be a wife to Jay, and have another baby.” She thought hard about that for a day. The idea of having Jay in her bed had become unpleasant to her, but it was her duty as a wife. If she refused that duty she did not deserve a husband.
That afternoon she took a bath. This was a complicated business involving a tin tub in the bedroom and five or six strong girls running upstairs from the kitchen with pitchers of hot water. When that was done she put on fresh clothing before going downstairs for supper.
It was a cold winter’s evening and the fire roared in the hearth. Lizzie drank some wine and tried to chatter gaily to Jay the way she used to before they were married. He did not respond. However, that was to be expected, she thought, when she had been poor company for so long.
After the meal was over she said: “It’s been three months since the baby. I’m all right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“My body is back to normal.” She was not going to give him the details. Her breasts had stopped leaking milk a few days after the stillbirth. She had bled a little every day for much longer, but that too had ended. “I mean, my tummy will never be quite as flat again, but … in other ways I’ve healed.”