Both our defenders and our enemies will say his madness was always lurking in the savage wildness of his Randolph blood. I let them say it because it absolves me. Tom was always a man of temper, that much is true. But he was driven to madness. His callous father, his bad luck, his choice to marry the daughter of a great man. His sense of himself was always fragile, his spirit easily broken—but in the end, I think I’m the one who snapped it to pieces.
I’d argued against allowing our son to assume all our debts, but it seemed never to have occurred to Tom that our boy would take one look at the books and decide there was no hope for it but to sell everything, lock, stock, and barrel.
“So he means to sacrifice me!” My husband had come to confront me in my sitting room where I’d retired to write a letter to his sister Nancy, and where silhouettes of our children adorned the blue-painted wall. Holding a near-empty glass of liquor in his hand, the length of Tom’s body filled the doorway. His voice was low and dangerous. “Jeff says you support this decision.”
I laid my quill aside, tasting bitter indignation on my tongue. Why did it always come to this? To be forbidden from making decisions, asked for my advice only after the fact, and then blamed for it as if I’d made the trouble in the first instance? Sally had blamed me when my father took my advice about her son. Now Tom blamed me for agreeing with Jeff—and yet neither dilemma had been my making.
But my heart filled with agony for my husband, for I understood why he hated Jeff’s decision. I hated it, too, even as I advocated it. “I see no advantage in putting off the evil day to sell everything, Tom, for come it must, and with accumulating interest for every day that it’s delayed.”
Tom’s glass went hurtling across the room, where it shattered against the fireplace and fell into the fire. I cried out, but not before Tom was across the room and upon me, shaking me in his steely grip. “After all these years, in this one critical moment, you desert me. You want to see me unmanned, is that it? To witness the final humiliation of my losing my land?”
“Tom, land isn’t everything. There are many ways a man of your experience—”
“Land is everything! Without it, you’ll see me stripped of not only my honor and pride, but even my citizenship.”
Only men who owned fifty acres could vote or hold political office. Without property, Tom would lose even the fig leaf of status, and I felt his impotent rage burning through his skin into mine. He was still strong, so strong that I couldn’t squirm away. “Tom, we’re irretrievably ruined. But Jeff needn’t be. I’m thinking of our children’s future.”
“Just one child. Jeff. Your favorite. Our son has swindled me and yet, you’re choosing him over me.”
It was Ellen—always Ellen—who was my favorite, if a favorite must be named. But Jeff was no swindler. If anything, my son’s efforts to save something for the family were heroic. The creditors had given him a year to wind up the affairs of the estate and sell for the most profit possible. Our support was the least he deserved. The men in my family had conspired all my life to keep me from thinking in the language of money, but I knew enough to argue now. “Mortgages and deeds of trust embrace the whole of your property, and if the banks foreclose, they’ll sweep it all away and leave our son as burdened as your father left you.”
“That boy’s malice and greed will see him always secure. He’s trying to steal Edgehill from me.”
My lips thinned at such an unjust insult hurled at the son who could’ve easily abandoned us all. “Jeff has submitted so affectionately and cheerfully to the privations which we’ve cost him that he’s due nothing but gratitude. For when not distressed with our problems, he’s been distracted with managing his grandfather’s affairs.”
“Now we come to it,” my husband said, his words fumed with liquor, as he gave a baleful glance at the locked door between my sitting room and my father’s chambers. “Your father is your true worry. No one can ever shine so brightly in your eyes. He’s always your first concern. First and foremost. And you’ve been artfully persuaded that if I’m completely sacrificed, your father can be saved.”
I could make no sense of this. “My father’s plantations aren’t tied to your troubles—”
“I’m entitled to Monticello!” Tom shouted, his fingers digging so hard into my arms I was sure they’d bruise me. “For thirty years, I’ve worked his plantation, sat patiently at his table, indulged him in every way, asking no recompense, merely waiting my turn to one day be the master of my own family. But you’ll never have that, will you? You only serve one man—even if it means my ruin.”
The only way to shield Monticello upon my father’s death was to leave it to trustees—a plan to which I’d given my consent, without realizing my husband would believe himself disinherited. “Tom, so long as the property is vested in me, you’ll always have a home. Papa is only using the law to protect me and the children—”
“My children! They aren’t the center of your life. Your father is.”