The Family Greene Read online

  "Yes, Pa," I said.

  The breeze was mild. The whitecaps on the water becalmed. Inside my heart, they were angry, tossing, spitting, wrecking everything in sight. And nobody knew it but me.

  We continued down the path and waited for the boat.

  I heard my name, a whisper carried on the misty evening air. "Caty."

  It was Sarah. Oh, how glad I was that she'd come!

  "Pa, I must say goodbye to Sarah," I told him. He nodded his permission and I ran over to the form waiting in the distance. I hugged her. "Oh, I wanted you to come for supper."

  "Ma was only middling well. I wanted to stay with her. Here, I have a present for you." And she handed me a small book-size package wrapped in brown burlap. "It's a diary. So you can keep the days. And so you won't forget to tell me everything."

  "Remember, you promised to come and see me."

  "I will, I will. Mayhap I'll come with Ma someday."

  "Good. You do that. Is there something you wanted to tell me, Sarah?"

  There was. I could tell by her hesitant manner.

  She dug into the stones at her feet with her shoe. "Yes. Your aunt Catharine. Did you know she had a romance?"

  "She's married. To Uncle Greene."

  Sarah nodded. "A woman can have a romance when she is married."

  I just stared at her. There was something meaningful in her eyes. And it connected with me. So that was the mystery I suspected about Aunt Catharine!

  "Who with?" I asked. "And is it still going on?" My breath was caught and taken by the wind.

  "Benjamin Franklin." The same wind took the name from her lips and carried it away.

  I drew in my breath. The wind would not take the name from me. I would hold on to it. Forever. Benjamin Franklin. "How do you know?"

  "My mother knows a lot of people. She told me. It's what they say. Your aunt Catharine and Benjamin Franklin have been close for years."

  I believed Sarah. She didn't mouth off just to hear her own voice. "Ohhh," I said.

  "It ought to be interesting, for you to be mindful of," Sarah said. "I just thought I'd tell you. In case he comes to visit. Mayhap he'll bring some of that electricity of his with him."

  He's already brought it, I thought.

  We both giggled for a moment. Then Aunt Catharine called and I gave Sarah a final hug and ran back to the dock, hugged Pa, and got into the double ender to leave.

  From the double ender I waved until I couldn't see them anymore. "I'll be back," I yelled. "I'll be back soon." But somehow I knew I wouldn't be.

  CHAPTER THREE

  AUNT CATHARINE and Uncle Greene's house was all white and three stories high, with a porch around the front. It lifted my spirits seeing it sitting there on the top of a ridge.

  It reminded me of a wedding cake trying not to melt in the sun.

  On an opposite slope, beyond a hill to the east, lay the quaint village of East Greenwich.

  The first thing Uncle Greene did, after lifting me off the ground and pronouncing I was prettier than ever, was show me the Boston Post Road that passed by a short distance away.

  "You and your aunt can go on a shopping trip to Boston," he said. "Or a jaunt to Providence. You will like it here, Caty Littlefield. I promise."

  When Uncle Greene made a promise, he meant it. After all, he was a Rhode Island political leader.

  He set me back down. "Do you like our house?"

  "Yes, sir. It looks like a wedding cake."

  He laughed. "Well, mayhap we can marry you from it someday."

  "Take her upstairs to her room, please, Effie," Aunt Catharine requested.

  Effie was a free black housekeeper. Uncle Greene did not believe in slavery. The same as my father.

  But oh, my room!

  It was all green and white! Green, my favorite color. How had Aunt Catharine known?

  The walls were papered with a green and white design. The drapes bore the same pattern, and thin, pale green curtains hung straight across the windows. The furniture was of as solid a maple as you could find. The bedspreads carried the same green and white signature of the wallpaper and drapes. I remembered Pa reading me a story about a king in England who had his special colors carried by every knight and cavalier and on every horse and person who represented him.

  I felt as if I were in a palace. I ran to look out the front window. And there was a honey locust tree spreading its crown, and birches and maples arching over the yard.

  ***

  THERE WAS COMPANY for dinner that night. As it turned out, they were Master Herbert and Master Mauriette, my two tutors. Master Mauriette was to teach me French, and Master Herbert my sums and spelling and English.

  "But I speak English already," I said most rudely.

  "You must learn," Master Herbert admonished, "your grammar and your spelling. We start school next week. In the meantime, why don't you write a nice essay for me about something, so I can see how far you've come."

  "About what?" I asked dumbly.

  "Anything. Make it a little story."

  I looked at Uncle Greene. "Must I?" I asked.

  He shrugged. "He's your tutor, so yes, I suppose you must."

  I gave a deep sigh. "Yes, sir," I said.

  Now that that little matter was settled, the men started talking politics, a subject that I discovered would many times be brought up at Uncle Greene's table, often with a vehemence that grew more and more intense as I grew older.

  This evening it was something called the Stamp Act that caused the meat on their plates to go cold and the forks in their hands to wave in consternation. I could not get a purchase on what the Stamp Act was that night, but I did learn that Uncle Greene was the leader of the Rhode Island Whigs and, as such, was leading resistance to the Stamp Act in the area.

  And that he was supposed to write to Benjamin Franklin, in London, concerning it. But had, for some reason, put off the writing.

  None other than Benjamin Franklin! Is he putting off writing to him because he knows of his wife's romance with the man? Will they, then, never communicate about this important matter because Uncle Greene is so hurt about Aunt Catharine's "carrying on" with him? Suppose it is not true that they had an affair? I must find out, I decided. Somehow, I must find out.

  "Be careful, darling," Aunt Catharine was saying. "They're still watching the house."

  Someone is watching the house? Oh, how exciting! Who? Why, it is like a romance novel, the likes of which Pa allowed me to read only if I did all my chores.

  ***

  LATER, WHEN AUNT Catharine came to see me to bed and I asked her who was watching the house, she said, "Nothing for you to worry about."

  "Father always told me things. He said I had the most native intelligence he ever saw in a girl my age."

  "Well, then, I suppose I shouldn't do any less than John Littlefield did with you. All right. The Tories are watching the house, because we often have men who are staunch Whigs come here to see Uncle Greene to discuss Whig things," she said.

  "You mean like the Stamp Act?"

  "Yes. People who disagree with the pronouncements of the Crown."

  "What do the Tories look like? What do they wear? Any special colors? Do they wear the colors of King George?"

  "They dress just like ordinary people, Caty. And they won't harm a girl like you. But I would advise you that if any stranger outside on the street comes up to you and questions you about anything, you should not speak to him. Just come inside the house and tell us. All right?"

  "Yes, Aunt Catharine."

  I dreamed, that night, about King George III pacing up and down outside our house with dozens of pieces of paper, all stamped and paid for by Colonial money, while inside Uncle Greene sat at his desk and started to write a letter to Benjamin Franklin, then ripped it up and threw it into the fireplace, even though he disagreed with the pronouncements of the Crown.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I WROTE THE essay for my tutor. Only it was more of a story, a tale my fathe
r had told me one long, cold winter night when I was a child, as I sat in his lap before bedtime.

  My father had two uncles, both named Ephraim. The older was a sailor in the British navy and had been lost at sea, so when the second was born, he was named Ephraim in honor of his dead brother. When the second Ephraim grew up, he settled in New England. And one day he met an old man of the same name and who looked a lot like him. As it turned out, it was his brother Ephraim, who was never lost at sea, and so now the family had two brothers named Ephraim.

  Master Herbert pronounced that I was a good storyteller but that my spelling was dolorous. He spelled dolorous for me. And made me write it. And then he explained the true meaning of it to me.

  "Sorrowful, sad, and in pain," he said.

  And in the first few weeks of my stay with Aunt Catharine those words began to run through my head every time I looked at Uncle Greene when he did not know I was laying eyes upon him.

  Sorrowful, sad, and in pain.

  He would be sitting there in the sun in the parlor, before the great windows, pretending to be reading a book but gazing instead at some middle distance and looking sorrowful, sad, and in pain.

  Or he would be at his desk in his study, bent over his ledgers, his pen poised in midair. Sorrowful, sad, and in pain.

  Or betimes at the supper table, his fork poised with a piece of meat on it, watching Aunt Catharine chatter, looking sorrowful, sad, and in pain.

  And I would think, He believes she is in love with Benjamin Franklin. He thinks she has been carrying on with him. And he has not yet written the letter to Mr. Franklin that he knows he must write. He cannot bring himself to do it.

  I had come to love Uncle Greene in the near month I had resided in his house. He had a quiet, gentle firmness about him. He was a dear man, with a real love of country. A learned, respected, and modest man. And his love for Aunt Catharine was deep and abiding.

  Myself, I did not care if she had a romance with Mr. Franklin. Part of me quickened to the thought, was intrigued by it. The other part needed to prove it was untrue, for the sake of Uncle Greene. And I would, somehow, the first chance I got.

  My chance came about a month after I arrived at their house, when I sneakily went about searching Aunt Catharine's room. She and Uncle Greene were out for the afternoon, paying calls. The house was empty, quiet, and I'd found Aunt Catharine's old trunk under her bed with letters in it—letters from my mother, from their sister, Judith, in Boston, and finally from Benjamin Franklin himself.

  I should have read the ones from my mother. Another time I would have. But I picked up instead a yellowed parchment from Benjamin Franklin, detailing how he and she had tarried several days in Newport before she was married, though he was married and a father. And how they had been so in love.

  But there was nothing to indicate that they had been lovers.

  When they separated after that trip was over, he still wrote to her. In one letter he complained of her "virgin innocence" on the Newport trip.

  I rushed through the letters breathlessly, hoping to find something that would either incriminate Aunt Catharine or free her of the charge. But all I found were references by Franklin of two visits he'd made to this house after Uncle Greene had married her.

  Oh, there were constant references to how he loved her, would never forget her, but no words that would link them together as lovers.

  I had set the final letter down in my lap and was gazing at a bee that had just flown in the open window and settled on the fold of the drape, not knowing whether to be relieved or disappointed, when I was jolted out of my romantic reverie by Aunt Catharine's voice from the doorway of her room.

  "So! Here you are, you little minx! Well, you have some explaining to do! What are you about, going through my personal things?"

  I wanted, at that moment, to be that bee, to be able to fly out the window into the blue afternoon. My head whirled. My head hurt of a sudden with the effort of turning to look at her.

  "You're not supposed to be home yet," I said stupidly.

  "Well, you miscalculated, didn't you? Dishonest people usually do."

  Dishonest? She considered me dishonest, then!

  She came into the room and across the highly polished hardwood floor and brightly braided rug, throwing aside her shawl and bonnet at the same time as she scooped up the letters that were on my lap and all over the floor.

  "Get up," she ordered.

  I got up.

  "Is this how I can trust you? The minute I leave you alone you search about in my personal things?"

  I felt as if she had slapped me. "Aunt Catharine, I'm not dishonest. I'm trying to straighten something out, to bring out the truth about you."

  She stood before me, straight and justified. "There is no truth to bring out. Or is it that old saw about me and Mr. Franklin again?" She glanced at the letters in her hands. "These are all from him. Is that it? Who's been feeding you gossip?"

  I did not answer for a moment. Then I said, "I cannot betray a confidence."

  That seemed to mollify her. "Very well, if you won't tell me who fed you the gossip concerning me and Mr. Franklin, then tell me this. Do you believe it?"

  I lifted my chin and looked her full in the face. "No," I answered. "I mean, I think he loves you, Aunt Catharine. But I don't think you did anything wrong. Did you?"

  "No," she said. "But if the gossips want to believe it, let them. Go on. There is more. Tell me what is eating at you. I don't think you're the kind of person who would hold it against me if I did carry on with Mr. Franklin. There is too much of me in you, Caty Littlefield. But you came up here to find out for another reason. Now, what is it?"

  I sighed and told her then. "Uncle Greene has a sorrow about him. I believe he thinks you did. And I think you should tell him you didn't and take his sorrow away."

  She was silent, pensive, for a moment. Then she spoke. "He should trust me. I have been a good wife to him. We have a good marriage. And trust is part of it," she said. "I shouldn't have to tell him something like that."

  Then she gathered the letters and put the chest back under the bed. "But you should know this, Caty Littlefield," she said, and she stood, looking at me. "We women always have the right to flirt. If it is kept a harmless pastime. Men expect it from us. Done properly, it gives us power, and Lord knows we have little of that. It is even our responsibility as a hostess. But it must be learned to be done properly. Do you understand?"

  I said yes, I did.

  She expected Uncle Greene to trust her. Was that right? No, I concluded. Uncle Greene reminded me too much of Pa for me to allow him to suffer. And if he needed her reassurance in face of the gossip, she should give it to him.

  And if she wouldn't, somehow I would.

  ***

  I AVAILED MYSELF of the opportunity one day a week later. Some important men were coming for supper, and Uncle Greene did what he never did. He went into the kitchen to make sure the table would be set with food in great plenty. He personally set his best wines on the sideboard.

  I watched him carefully.

  "They will be grim-faced with me tonight, child," he said. "I have not yet written my letter to Mr. Franklin."

  We were alone in the dining room. I was allowed to light the candles. As I lighted the last one on the table, I looked across the white cloth at him and summoned all my courage.

  "Uncle Greene, may I have a word with you? I have something important to tell you."

  It may have been the look on my face. Or the tone of my voice. But he knew something was in the air, something as palpable as the fragrance of the candles I had just lighted. He looked about for a moment, then gestured that I should come with him into the darkened parlor. I followed.

  And there, in the midst of shadows and the halfhearted light from the candles in the dining room, which gave flickering hope, I told him about my transgression, my searching of Aunt Catharine's trunk of letters and how she found me and told me she and Mr. Franklin committed no transgr
ession.

  I saw his eyes go soft. But he said nothing.

  "She said if people want to believe it of her, they can go ahead and gossip," I told him. "I'm telling you, Uncle Greene, in case any of your friends says anything against her. You mustn't let them say it."

  "I would never let them say it, child."

  "She said she never told you this. I told her she must."

  "There is no need, child." He smiled his lie. "Our marriage is based on trust."

  Now I smiled my lie. "Of course." Then I hugged him. "How silly of me to think otherwise. Come, we must go back and finish lighting the table."

  His friends were grim-faced that night, just as he suspected, and though they ate and drank with gusto and tried to keep the conversation general, Aunt Catharine ordered the coffee in the parlor for them because the noises they made about the Crown were getting louder and louder. Soon the smoke in the parlor got thicker and the conversation got louder, and I heard Uncle Greene say, "Tomorrow I post my letter to Benjamin Franklin," and the doors of the parlor closed.

  I went to sleep that night knowing that I had done the right thing.

  ***

  OUTSIDE ON THE STREET a week later, there was a Tory walking up and down and scolding the Patriots. We were used to him. He came all the time to "watch" Uncle Greene's house.

  "Traitors! Whigs!" the Tory was chanting. "There's still time to take the king's shilling and declare your patriotism!"

  He had been chanting it for a full five minutes before we inside could make out the sense of it. Aunt Catharine slammed her fist down on the desk. "Isn't there any peace and quiet around here?" Then she got up and swished her skirts away from the desk and went out a side door, slamming it behind her.

  A page of a letter flew onto the floor. I rushed to pick it up. And that's when I saw the salutation: "Dear Benjamin."

  She was writing to Benjamin Franklin!

  I read on. And I read very fast. She was writing to him in London and asking when he would be home. When he came home, he must come to her house for dinner!