Sally Hemings’s anger has turned to something much more like fear. She doesn’t believe a single word Jimmy has said — especially about being rehired. Thomas Jefferson is due back any day now, and then Jimmy’s lie will be exposed and he will be utterly humiliated. And what will that do to him? Is he still drinking so hard? He looks like a man who drinks and does nothing else. But maybe it’s good that he is back with his family. Maybe that’s the real reason he came home.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like some food?” she says. “I’ve got some fresh corn bread inside. Or some water? Would you like some water? You must be thirsty.”
“No, no,” he says, holding up both flat palms as if to keep her at bay. “I’m fine. Maybe I’ll have something to eat when I go see Mammy.”
And with that he backs off the porch and sets off down the road, without saying another word.
~ ~ ~
“I heard that he had lost his job at a restaurant in Philadelphia,” Thomas Jefferson explains. “So I thought—”
“Why was he dismissed?” says Sally Hemings.
“I don’t know.” Thomas Jefferson tilts his head and gives a weary shrug. “But I suppose we can both imagine….”
“Yes.” She looks down into her glass.
He puts his hand on her shoulder and gives her a reassuring stroke, then pats her lightly twice and pulls his hand away. They are sitting on the porch just outside his chambers, drinking cold cider. The sun set on the far side of the house a few minutes ago, but there are small, rose-colored clouds straight overhead in an indigo sky and faint smears of green along the southern horizon.
“In any event, since I will only be making short visits home as long as I am in Washington and since Peter sometimes has to begin preparing for larger gatherings weeks in advance, it made little sense for him to come with me, so I thought that if Jimmy needed the work, it would be good to enjoy his cooking when I am home. I wrote to him a couple of times and got no response, so I decided he wasn’t interested. But then six months went by and he finally wrote to me.”
“Six months?” says Sally Hemings. “What was he doing in all that time?”
“He didn’t say.”
She sighs heavily. Thomas Jefferson holds out his hand in the accumulating dimness, and when she puts her hand in his, he gives her a squeeze and doesn’t let go.
“How does he seem?” says Thomas Jefferson.
“I don’t know.” She heaves another deep sigh. “He seems… I don’t know how he seems.”
He gives her hand another squeeze. “I think it is good that he is home.”
“I hope so.”
~ ~ ~
For the first few days, Jimmy manages so well in the kitchen that Thomas Jefferson declares he doesn’t know how he survived two years without Jimmy’s cooking. But then one night he helps himself so liberally from the wine cellar that he forgets to take a pot of succotash off the fire and burns it to the point that it can only be used for pig feed. The next day he will not leave his pallet in John Hemings’s cabin, claiming that he is beset with the same “ailment of the head” as Thomas Jefferson. But Pricilla, John’s wife, says that it is only corn liquor that keeps Jimmy in bed, half the time unconscious, the other half drinking. The next day he manages to produce a passable pork dinner, but the following day he burns the trout so badly that its skin is ash and its flesh like wood splinters. The day after that, his “sauce” for the peas is only melted lard — the smell alone so sickening that Maria, who is only weeks from giving birth to her first child, must rush from the table, out into the open air, to keep from vomiting.
The next day Jimmy is once again afflicted by an “ailment of the head,” but Thomas Jefferson sends Sally Hemings for him. When brother and sister arrive in his office, Thomas Jefferson folds his hands at the center of his desk and tells Jimmy, in a voice so soft it is hard to hear, “While I had very much been looking forward to both your cuisine and your company, Jimmy, I am afraid that your susceptibility to spirits is making it impossible for you to do your job.”
Jimmy’s face is slick with sweat, his eyes are red and he is visibly unsteady on his feet. “I’m fine,” he says.
Thomas Jefferson continues to speak quietly. “I am only thinking of your own good. And for that reason, I think it best that until you have regained your self-control, Edy Fossett will be the mistress of the kitchen, and you will be her sous-chef.”
“Edy!” Jimmy practically spits the name. “That ignorant bitch!”
“Jimmy!” says Sally Hemings.
“I’m just speaking the truth,” he says, his voice loud and flat. “She doesn’t know anything about cooking! She’s never even heard of vichyssoise! She couldn’t make a wine sauce if she practiced for a month!”
“Jimmy, please!” Sally Hemings tries to calm her brother by putting both hands on the shoulder nearest her, but he only shrugs her off.
“I think you should taste one of her meals before you insult her like that,” says Thomas Jefferson.
Now Jimmy is shouting. “How dare you insult me like that! I am a master chef! I’ve cooked for royalty! How dare you tell me that I should be the sous-chef to that ignorant black bitch!”
“Jimmy, please.” Thomas Jefferson’s hands, no longer folded, grip the front edge of his desk as if he is about to stand. “I am only trying to find a way that you can continue to receive your salary while you—”
“I don’t want your money!” Jimmy puts both fists on Thomas Jefferson’s desk, leans forward and shouts. “Do you think I have no dignity! Do you think I was only put on this earth to serve your pleasure! I am a free man, Mr. Jefferson. I worked hard for my freedom, and no one is going to tell me what to do.”
“Jimmy—” Thomas Jefferson’s voice is trembling with anger.
“I don’t want to talk to you!”
Jimmy turns toward the door. Sally Hemings grabs the lapel of his coat, but he shoves her aside and strides out of the room.
“Jimmy!” she calls after him, her half-closed hands hanging in the air in front of her, as if she were still clinging to his lapel. She turns to Thomas Jefferson, her gaze distraught and afraid.
“Let him go,” says Thomas Jefferson.
“I have to talk to him!” She is out the door in two steps. Her running feet resound down the corridor and across the great hall.
~ ~ ~