Chris Adrian - Gob's Grief

“Do you believe in love, Miss Trufant?” he asked her. “Do you believe it is more than a gratifying delusion?”

“Free Love?” she asked.

“Any kind,” he said.

“Well,” she said, getting up from where they were sitting and walking away rapidly on her wet feet, suddenly remembering that she had to find Mrs. Woodhull. “In fact I do not,” she said softly. Dr. Woodhull had hurried after her and was walking with his face very close to her own. “I do not believe in it at all.” Mrs. Woodhull dropped down out of the sky to land in front of them without a sound. Maci reached out and touched her face, and woke to her voice.

Mrs. Woodhull and Mr. Tilton were on the roof. They had a bower there, to which they retreated nightly. Mrs. Woodhull was berating Mr. Tilton for going on about how his wife and Mr. Beecher had wounded him. They began a spirited argument, but just as they seemed ready to start screaming like Claflins, their voices cut off, and presently Maci heard Mrs. Woodhull crying out in a high voice, and Tilton shouting, “Praise, praise!”

Maci had gotten into the habit of listening, rather than closing her window, just as she listened sometimes at Tennie’s door when she was entertaining her large friend Dr. Fie, or some other friend, large or small. Tennie seemed to take them in all sizes. Maci pretended that she was exploring a mystery with her shameful listening. She’d write down the words she heard, the cries that sounded plaintive, frustrated, angry, relieved, and then arrange them together in sentences of strident lust. And, sometimes, when she had been lying in her damp sheets for an hour listening to the lovers on the roof, she’d consider finally taking a ride on the pony, which Tennie had solicitously moved into her room, insisting that Maci had greater need of it than she did. Maci had sat on it once, the little bump put just in the place it was meant to go, and taken a few exploratory rocks. She’d dismounted immediately, covering the thing up again with its slip of silk, and then with two wool blankets on top of that, to hide it completely. She never got on it again, but on the hottest nights, when she could hear the lovers so very loud on the roof, she thought of riding the pony to a strange, new place, with her book open in her hand, reading aloud as she went.

Is it because Adam sinned to keep company with Eve? Is it because intelligence can only become perfect through suffering, as the earth can only reach a perfect state through storms as well as sunshine, and the soul can only reach a perfect state through storms of sorrow and despair? No, I think it is for no reason, or, at the least, for no good reason. I do not believe that we are hallowed by sadness. I do not believe it is sufficient answer, to say we are justly punished by death, or to say that we die because we die.

Maci kept busy, all through the summer of 1871, organizing Victoria Leagues. They were Maci’s own idea, associations, formed all over the country, whose purpose would be to promote Mrs. Woodhull’s bid for the Presidency. Maci recruited members from out of Mrs. Woodhull’s parlor parties, from subscribers to the paper, and from brokerage clients. And, sitting at a table in the third-floor study, she wrote an anonymous open letter to Mrs. Woodhull, care of the Weekly.

Madam, a number of your fellow citizens, both men and women, have formed themselves into a working committee, borrowing its title from your name, and calling itself The Victoria League. Our object is to form a new national political organization, composed of the progressive elements in the existing Democratic and Republican parties, together with the Women of the Republic, who have hitherto been disenfranchised, but to whom the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution, properly interpreted, guarantee, equally with men, the right of suffrage. This new Political organization will be called The Equal Rights Party, and its platform will consist solely and only of a declaration of the equal civil and political rights of all American citizens, without distinction of sex. We shall urge all women who possess the political qualifications of other citizens, in the respective States in which they reside, to assume and exercise the right of suffrage without hesitation or delay. And we ask you, Madam, to become the standard bearer of this idea before the people, and for this purpose nominate you as our candidate for President of the United States, to be voted for in 1872, by the combined suffrage of both sexes.

Across the table from her, Mrs. Woodhull wrote back a long, elegant, and somewhat demure letter of acceptance.

Maci had by this time understood completely that nothing would come of Mr. Tilton’s association with her employer except the fatuous biography he had written, a fawning, spineless thing that damned Mrs. Woodhull with abundant praise. It was widely mocked because it detailed all Mrs. Woodhull’s spiritual transactions, telling how Demosthenes was her mentor, how Josephine was her spirit sister, how all Mrs. Woodhull’s utterances were dictated under otherworldly influence.

Not concerned anymore about Mr. Tilton, Maci exercised her organ of worry on Mrs. Woodhull’s Communist enthusiasm. Mrs. Woodhull had thrown herself into the leadership of Section Twelve of the International Workingmen’s Association, not caring if she was lumped together with the Paris revolutionaries, who were widely regarded as repulsive monsters. Maci reminded Mrs. Woodhull repeatedly that no one but a Communist likes a Communist. It was to no avail.

In August, just when she was afloat on a tide of hot, Communist distress, Maci received an invitation from Dr. Woodhull. We must discuss my mother’s situation , he wrote to her. We are not alike, she and I, but I have always known that she will achieve great things, if she is not brought down by her wilder sympathies. Come and meet with me at my house, No. One E. 53rd St.

Mrs. Woodhull’s house was very noisy, so Maci was glad to leave it for a while. Because Tennie was campaigning for a spot in the New York State assembly, the house was full of prospective German constituents, who in the weeks previous had serenaded Tennie outside her window. Now they played their brass instruments inside the house, and there was nowhere a person could escape the splattering music, which was silly as Tennie was silly, and as her light-hearted, completely unserious campaign was silly. Maci went out into the dreadful heat without even telling anybody goodbye.

The younger Dr. Woodhull lived way up towards the park, where enormous houses were popping up with ever greater frequency. Maci’s hair was hanging wet and stinging in her eyes when she rang the bell, but when the door opened she shivered in the rush of cool air that poured out onto the marble steps. Dr. Woodhull stood in front of her with a pair of ice skates in his hands.

“You’ve come!” he said. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

“It was serious business in your letter.”

“The letter!” he said. “Come in and we’ll speak of it. Mind your way.” Maci slipped when she stepped into his unnaturally cool house, but he caught her arm and held her up. “That meeting has been canceled, after all,” he said. “It has been postponed in favor of a skating party.”

Maci might have reminded him it was August, except she could already see how the floor was covered with ice.

“I thought it might please you,” he said, “because it is so hot, and because you are from Boston. Don’t they all love to ice-skate in Boston? Come and skate with me, Miss Trufant. The ball is up. It’s a private pond. Nobody will disturb us.”

“You have deceived me,” Maci whispered. It occurred to her that she should be angry at him for drawing her into his house with false pretenses, but she was wonderstruck at the ice, and it was all she could think about. “How did you do it?” she asked.