ON MULBERRY ROW a white sheet draped over a thornbush, flapping ghostly in a light summer breeze to signal to neighboring farms that my father was dead. In the carpentry shop, Madison and Eston helped their uncle sand the rough edges of Papa’s wooden coffin. On the western side of the mountain, slaves dug the grave.
And I . . . I did nothing.
Numb with grief, overwhelmed by loss, I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. “Take some fresh air,” one of my children said; I don’t know which one. I was blind and deaf to everything. I couldn’t feel my limbs. All I felt was the slow calcification inside me, spreading so that I couldn’t move. Someone grasped me at the elbows to prompt me outside onto the terrace; someone else called for the doctor to tend me. And it was there, on the terrace, in the most acute distress, that I heard the pounding of horse hooves.
Papa, I thought. Was he riding hard upon Caractacus, as he loved to do in his youth? Then the vision swam before my eyes, not of my father, but of my husband. Tom in his youth. A young and handsome horseman, riding up the road toward our house.
I blinked and the vision came clear. It was Tom. No longer young or beautiful, but still riding like a demon. Where he’d gotten the horse, I didn’t know. Nevertheless my husband swung down from the saddle of a frothing, pawing animal. “Is he dead?”
At my elbow, the doctor nodded. “Mr. Jefferson expired a quarter after noon.”
To hear it said again, I nearly stumbled. Behind me, the children must’ve gathered, because I heard little George blubber while Septimia choked out tiny, delicate sobs. “Grandpapa is gone.”
“You poor children,” Tom said, a light in his eyes strangely fueled by the sight of our misery. “Look how grieved you are to lose him . . . but not your mother. Her eyes are dry as always. Can’t you shed a tear, Martha? Not even for your father?”
The physician stiffened at my side. “Colonel Randolph!”
Colonel Randolph? He was entitled to be called that, of course, but I could only think of his father. That’s who Tom had become. A miserable old rotter like the one who begat him.
Tom advanced upon me in a scatter of flies. “Don’t you think it’s unnatural for such a devoted daughter to lose her father without even a tear? And Thomas Jefferson, no less. A great man that the whole of the country will mourn, but not his own daughter.”
The doctor barked again, “Colonel Randolph!”
All that escaped me was a tiny keening sound. And my hus band’s face twisted in feigned concern. “Don’t you see, doctor? She can’t cry. My wife must be suffering from a morbid condition. Won’t you prescribe some medicine to cure her?”
The outraged physician said, “The medicine she needs is quiet, sir.”
The admonishment did nothing to dissuade Tom. In fact, a maniacal grin broke over his face. “Quiet? Oh, yes, by all means, give her quiet. All the country will be firing cannons, tolling bells, and wailing in grief, but Martha will quietly go on. She’ll quietly persevere. She has ice water for blood—”
“Enough, Tom,” I finally said, all the emptiness my father had left filling up with a terrible rage. That my husband had descended into madness was without question. But I was sure to follow him there if I let this go on today, of all days.
“You don’t tell me what’s enough.” Then he began working the muscles of his face, spasming and contracting them, as if to manufacture the sudden tears that swept down his cheeks. “I know you won’t mourn me when I’m dead, but I thought you might be able to muster a tear for the only man you really loved.” Tom sobbed, howling as if to mock me. “And I loved him. He was my father, too, and I loved him.”
“You hated him,” Jeff snarled, having come out of the house with a bang of the door to encounter this scene. “You hated my grandfather in life and you neglected him in death. You’re only here to harangue my mother like some scavenging beast over the corpse. You’re more ferocious than a wolf and more fell than a hyena!”
Jeff put himself between his father and me. The other boys drove my husband off, but I knew he’d be back again for the funeral. It was open to the public, so we couldn’t keep him away. I knew there’d be talk, whether because my lunatic husband was absent or because he was there. There was nothing for it. And I was scarcely sensible enough to care. My world was shattered. The loss I felt unfathomable. And it wasn’t just my own loss, for my father belonged to the people, perhaps now more than ever.