“I hope that he will.”
“Yet I fear he will never write anything of consequence after this.”
“Why would you say that?”
Jane blinked at him, her eyelids thick and slow.
“He told you, didn’t he? The night he stayed?” she said. “He had a disagreeable encounter.”
She must have been listening outside the door of the state dining room at breakfast. That, or she enlisted the steward to eavesdrop. How else could she know?
“You seem to know all about it,” he said. “Perhaps you can tell me.”
“It’s not for me to tell. I only heard him from my room.”
“Yes?”
“Thumping up and about. Then he rushed back into his room, locking the door. I believe he had a fright.”
She was enjoying this. He didn’t want to consider too long as to why.
“How does this lead to your conclusion about his writing?”
“It doesn’t. That’s only a guess,” she said. “A whisper in my ear.”
18
Over the days that followed the Fox sisters’ visit, Jane spent most of her waking hours in Bennie’s room. She liked to read there, sitting in the hard chair. Listening to the baby breathe in its crib.
Sometimes she would close her eyes and hum one of her melodies, the one she composed herself on the piano in the Amherst house and later sang to each of her children. The music was mischievous, sportive, a prelude to a fairy tale. But as with all fairy tales, it revealed something else beneath its surface as it went along. Even in Jane’s own ears it eventually curdled, and she would stop, always with the sense of being watched by a presence behind her, outside of view.
When she sang she kept her voice quiet, especially when she felt the footfall of one of the staff pass by in the hallway, though she knew they heard her nonetheless. She was certain they would never enter. They had been ordered not to, for one thing. For another, they were too frightened to attempt it, given the way they slid along the wall opposite to Bennie’s door on the occasions they had to venture to the west end of the second floor. Only Hany lingered there sometimes. Pacing back and forth along the middle of the hall. Waiting for Jane, wishing for her to come out of the forbidden room, but not daring to come within arm’s length of the door.
Jane checked on the infant only when she first came in, confirming it was asleep. The head smooth and warm. The little fingers clenching and unclenching. The mouth pursed as if withholding improper laughter. She picked it up the first day, but not again after that. There was a stillness to the way it lay in her arms that was distinct from sleep. As if it didn’t know how to receive affection. As if it was tolerating her.
She would sit in the feeding chair in a state between waking and sleep. Look to the crib, return to the thoughts she’d already lost.
Once she looked and found the child staring at her. Its face pushed against the bars of its crib as if attempting to slip through. She looked away, then back again. The baby was on its back once more, unmoving. She would have doubted she’d seen it in any other position had it not forgotten to close its eyes.
It never needed to be fed after the night of its arrival. It never soiled its diaper. It never cried.
On the sixth day the baby was gone.
Jane entered the room midmorning as she usually did. Franklin was safely out at Congress, the residence busy downstairs where Thomas Walter’s workmen continued renovations in the public rooms, but relatively still upstairs where the improvements were complete. She closed the door behind her. This was what she’d done every other time she considered announcing herself in some way, or saying her son’s name, but decided against it. She didn’t want to hear herself declare the one thing she wanted most—Bennie—and for the quavering in her voice to allow admission of any doubt.
Her feet took her to the crib. A mother’s obligation. It had to be that, as every other part of her wanted to leave. Jane’s mind was able to convince itself that a baby appearing out of nowhere that resembled her own was acceptable, fortunate. But her body knew better.
The blankets were curved upward into a tent as they had been since she’d swaddled the child in them days ago. Yet now the child inside them was gone. The blankets hollowed out as if a tortoise had abandoned its shell.
Someone had stolen the baby. She thought this for only a second or two before dismissing the possibility. This was the White House. Who would have gained access to do such a thing? And then, more uncomfortably: Who would want it once they picked it up and felt how it didn’t respond, didn’t open its eyes, kept sleeping with a vacancy that was less than sleep?
She pulled back the blankets. Got to her knees to look under the crib. Nothing but pearls of dust. She lay flat to scan the entire floor. Under the bed, the chair, the dresser. That’s where she saw the feet.
The dresser had been pulled out from the wall, leaving a gap between. Too small for an adult to hide. But sufficient space for a child.
One of the feet rose, drifted to the right, stepped down. The left did the same. It had been hiding. Now that it was detected, the game was over, and it was time to show itself.
Jane started for the door on hands and knees. Kept her eyes straight ahead, scuffing in orderly locomotion before tumbling forward, a desperate series of leaps and clawings.
She heard the sounds she was making on the floor. She also heard the child shuffle out from behind the dresser.
“Momma.”
Her forehead was touching the door. She had only to raise a hand to the knob and she could scramble out, kick it closed once she was in the hall. But her son’s voice held her to the spot.
Jane turned her head to the side. She did it slowly so that her neck wouldn’t click, as if any sound from either of them would violate a rule.
Bennie stood there. A boy of the age of six or so, perhaps ten feet away. He had clothed himself from what he’d found in the dresser: pin-striped short pants and a white linen shirt with a lace collar. What Bennie wore to church on hot midsummer days.
“Are you cold?” she said.
Even to Jane this struck her as an odd first query to ask, but the truth was she wanted to know. Was he hungry? Was he hurt? All of these preceded what she knew ought to be of greater relevance. Was he Bennie? Was he returned? Was he dead?
Nothing in the boy’s stance or expression altered. Yet she knew he’d heard her question. He just had no interest in it.
“Don’t go, Mother,” he said.
She grabbed the knob. Turned it.
The boy started for her as she pulled the door open. It was harder, at the low angle she was at, for Jane to swing it wide enough for her to fit through than if she’d been standing. She could only tug at it and wait for the door to come back at her before jumping forward.
“Let me… out !”
The boy slammed into the other side of the door the same instant she closed it, so that the two sounds came together in an echoing boom that traveled the hallway’s length.
She waited for Bennie to plead with her, or cry, or screech, but the boy made no sound. He could easily open the door himself, and Jane flipped onto her back, watching the handle, waiting for it to turn. It didn’t move.
Her breaths, taken in clicking gulps, was too loud to hear if another was breathing inside the bedroom, so she held the air in her lungs and slid close, her ear an inch from the wood. Listened. A silence sustained longer than she could deny herself from inhaling.