May 9
My words were so poorly framed, and I am sure now I have done wrong. It would have been better to have deceived. I should have written to Allen of tulips and blossoms in the apple trees, the comforts of this small house, what good company I find in Charlotte and the women of the barracks. Or perhaps it would have best to have not written at all.
Yet it cannot be undone, as the letter is already sent to the USS Corwin as it patrols Alaska’s coast. It seems impossible to imagine, but there is some chance it will find its way into Allen’s hands, and I am sorry for it.
“You’d do best to keep your letter uplifting,” Mrs Connor said when she came to tell me of the revenue cutter’s return to Alaska.
I had all intentions of following her advice, until I set pen to paper.
My dearest Allen?.?.?.?with those words, it was as if a brittle dam gave way within me. How could I not tell you of my broken heart? These weeks I have held myself together, I have not wept in front of Mrs Connor or Evelyn or even Charlotte. But oh Allen. I see now that you are more than husband or lover, for you are my dearest friend. I have a freeness of emotion with you that I have never before experienced. It frightens me to think that the very thing that would ease my pain?—?your love?—?might be endangered just when I am most in need of it. What if your affection falters, knowing that I cannot have children and that the life we imagined is no longer to be? Worst yet, what if you blame me? Maybe there was something I could have done to save our little one. I was too eager to be out of bed, too insistent on going for walks. Petty little walks. Is it possible that our child would still be alive within me if I been more patient? Perhaps you will wonder the same.
And then, in a last great torrent of emotion, I wrote of my worst fear?—?that you will not return home from this expedition.
Mrs Connor had brought me the recent edition of the Portland newspaper. Did she do so in full knowledge that I would see the article? The bodies of Commander Goodwin and his polar crew have been found on a remote island off the coast of Siberia. They were starved and frozen to death, their ship long lost to the ice, but through all their suffering, the commander kept his log books and papers safe. “His private diaries were found at his side and will be delivered to his wife.”
I cannot help but think of this poor woman, who for three years did not know the fate of her husband. Now she will read of his last days in his own handwriting. I wonder?—?did he leave her some final farewell, and would it offer comfort or only be a new kind of torture?
It is a possibility that I have endeavored to put out of my mind, that one might exist in a state of unknowing for years, only to be delivered the worst news in the end.
Yet, for your sake my Allen, I should have remained resolute.
My thoughts are soaked in guilt; the wretched letter I have sent, the death of our unborn child, the afternoon I stole the book and the moment I read of my deformed womb, the day I wrote to Mother wishing she would not come and the days I did not write to her at all, and all the way back to when I saw Father standing with his lantern, raging at the night, and I pretended not to hear his cries.
Ah, Mr Pruitt, you are not alone with your blame and loathing. I wonder that any life has ever been confined to golden dances and fine stitches and silk, for it seems to me that suffering knows no class or rank, gender or age, and we each of us brave our own darkness.
May 10
Sweet Charlotte. All this time I have tried to shield her from my bleak mood, but today she caught me at my worst. My hands and feet are swollen, my body so waterlogged and wretched from my failed maternity so that I can barely stand and tend to the simplest of chores, but I was determined to do one useful thing. She found me cursing and weeping as I tried to thread a needle to mend a tear in my nightgown. I did not know she was behind me until I felt her small hand on my shoulder.
“It’s all right, ma’am. I can sew that all right.”
I did not have the strength to conceal my emotions, so I kept my eyes down on the needle and said I would manage, and promised I would compose myself in time. Yet then I did quite the opposite, and began to sob openly. Charlotte’s arms were around me and she patted me gently all the time I cried.
“I swear babies aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, ma’am,” she said. “They’re always hollering and wetting themselves and spitting up, and they won’t give you any blessed peace. Sometimes my mam says she’d like to run off and be a nun but she doesn’t think the church’ll have her.”