Chapter Seventy-Two
A soft tap on her door roused Jessica from her journal. Amy, bringing her midmorning tea, she thought. The child was seventeen and had become indispensable to the household. Jessica had offered to send her to Oberlin College in Ohio, the first institution of higher learning to admit women and blacks, but Amy had refused. Her place was here, she said. She enjoyed her life and living “among books and flowers and those I love and need to see after,” but Jessica suspected a love interest involved. Amy was “stepping out” with the DuMonts’ groundskeeper, and a wedding looked certain in the future. A waste, Jessica had thought, feeling guilty that she had helped create the bond Amy refused to break. She especially felt bad that Amy believed her one of those who needed seeing after.
Amy’s and her mother’s devotion to Jessica were among the numerous festering points with which her daughter-in-law had had to contend with the passing of the years, and Jessica’s position in the household had subtly altered. More and more, she had begun staying in her room until later in the morning.
The date heading the new page in her diary stared back at her. November 7, 1873. Where had all the years gone? Her son was thirty-six, Vernon eight, and David, her newest grandson, five. Regina was…six, Jessica recalled. She set down her pen.
“Come in, Amy.”
No response. Puzzled, Jessica got up from her desk. Perhaps Amy needed help with the tea tray. The little pale, freckled face that greeted her when Jessica opened the door was Regina’s, a precedent. Her granddaughter had never come to her room before.
“Good morning, Granmama,” she said, staring up at Jessica out of eyes large with uncertainty of her welcome.
The look pierced Jessica’s heart. What was there about her, what did she do or say for the little girl to doubt her grandmother’s pleasure in her company? “Good morning, Regina. What brings you to my door this morning?”
“I…came to bring you a present.”
“A present?” Jessica said in a tone to convey happy surprise. “Well, come in and let’s see what you have brought.” She smiled and offered her hand, and the little girl slipped hers into it. It was a delicate, finely modeled hand. No one in the family quite had the hands of Regina. “You’re just in time for tea. Amy will be bringing it shortly. We’ll put a lot of milk and sugar in it so your mother won’t object to the caffeine.”
“That would be very good,” Regina said.
Amused—the child had begun parroting her phrases—Jessica suggested, “Shall we sit at the tea table to get the light from the window?”
“That would be very good,” Regina said, placing the handkerchief-wrapped gift on the table. She took her seat, carefully arranging the elaborately ruffled skirt of her silken dress, her back held straight. Her mother already had the child in stays and dressed her in the latest selection of children’s wear from the recently renamed DuMont Department Store. “Would you like to open your present?” Regina asked.
“I would.” Jessica unfolded the lacy square of cloth to find a pack of Adams No. 1 chewing gum. The concoction had just last year come on the market and had, of all people, the notorious General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to thank for its discovery. Newspaper articles described the popular new treat as having come about when the former dictator, living in exile in New Jersey, sold a supply of chicle he’d brought from Mexico to Thomas Adams, an inventor, as a substitute for rubber. The inventor noticed that Santa Anna liked to chew chicle, a natural latex gum substance found in evergreen trees in Central America. Having failed in his efforts to harden the material for use in items requiring rubber, Thomas Adams one day chewed a wad of his stock, found he liked it, and boiled a batch to create the marketable phenomenon Jessica held in her hand.
“Oh my, what a treat!” she said, feigning pleasure at sight of the black, flavorless “stretch and snap” preparation that had become all the rage.
“I bought it for you from Monsieur DuMont’s store with my pocket money,” Regina said proudly.
“How thoughtful of you to think of me,” Jessica said, hoping the child did not expect her to chew the beastly stuff in her presence. She heard the rattle of china in the corridor—Amy at last with the tea. Jessica would invite her to stay. Unlike Petunia, Amy doted on the little girl, and the tea would give her and her granddaughter something to talk about, to do.
Regina’s eyes strayed curiously toward Jessica’s desk. “Are you writing a book?” she asked shyly.
“Sort of. It’s a diary.”
“What is a diary, may I ask?”
“You may. It’s a record of happenings in a person’s life.”
“Happenings?”
“Events that occur in one’s daily existence and in those of family and friends and in the household and town and one’s personal feelings about them. It’s a written record of memories.”
“Do you write about Mama and Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“And Vernon and David?”
Jessica hesitated. She knew where this conversation was leading. “Yes,” she said.
Tentatively, her look shy, the little girl asked, “Do you ever write about me?”
“Yes,” Jessica answered truthfully. “Often.”
The child’s face lit up. “Really? What do you write?”
“That you are a very sweet and tender child with perfect manners and deportment that you’ve certainly not inherited from the Tolivers.”
Regina laughed gleefully, showing fine small teeth and a little pink tongue. “But Daddy says I am you, straight and true,” she said, sobering slightly. “And I want to be like you.”
Jessica was stumped for a response. Gratefully, she greeted Amy, bearing the tea tray. “I have a visitor for tea,” Jessica said and was about to ask Amy to join them when the look on Regina’s face—a plea—stopped her. Don’t ask her to stay, it begged, as if the child had read her intent. “Would you please bring us one more cup?” Jessica said. “And add some cookies, too. Regina and I are going to have a tea party.”
“I’ll be right up,” Amy said, with a wink at Regina. “Mind your manners now, little one.”
“As if you have to remind her,” Jessica chided.
“Who is the boy in the picture, Granmama?” Regina asked, wriggling off the chair under the weight of her skirt and petticoats to inspect a daguerreotype photograph displayed on the shelf above Jessica’s desk.
Jessica’s breath caught. It had been years since anyone had noticed the picture, and often lately, she’d found herself remembering Joshua. “That is Joshua. Your father’s brother.”
Regina cast her a questioning look. “Your other son?”
“Yes, my…other son.”
“Where is he?”
“He died, many years ago, when he was only twelve. He was thrown from a horse and broke his neck in the fall.”
“Oh!” Regina said, pressing delicate hands to her cheeks in imitation of her mother in moments of dismay. “I’m so sorry, Granmama. You must have been very sad.”
“I was. I miss him to this day.”
“Was he like Daddy?”
“No. They were very different.”
“In what way?”
“Your father has always loved the land. His brother loved the people on the land.”
“And that made them different?”
“Yes, that made them different.”
“Did that make a difference in the way you loved them?”
“I suppose,” Jessica said. What kind of question was that for a six-year-old? “But not in the degree,” she added.
“Degree?”
“Amount. It did not make a difference in the amount I loved them. I loved them equally the same.” Jessica felt her face grow warm. The child knew. As much as Jessica tried never to show favoritism, somehow Regina had become aware that her grandmother’s feelings for her siblings were not the same as those for her, and that recognition had prompted her questions. Amy arrived with the extra cup and plate of cookies. Regina wriggled onto her seat again. Jessica sat across from her, batting the moisture from her eyes. “Shall I prepare your tea the way I think you would like it?” she asked.
“That would be very good.”
Carefully, Jessica went about the ministrations of the tea. The dear child has barricaded herself behind a wall of manners so as not to provoke my disapproval, she thought. How could she ever think I would pierce that tender heart?
“When we have finished our tea, would you like to read one of your storybooks to me?” Jessica invited. “We can sit before the fire and listen to the wind whistle secrets outside the house. We can try to figure out what they’re saying.”
The little girl’s face brightened. “Just me? I don’t have to share you with my brothers?”
“Just you and me,” Jessica said.
“And we can wrap ourselves in afghans?”
“And we can wrap ourselves in afghans.”
“That would be very good indeed,” Regina said.