“What?” she says as she lifts the sheet, their only cover this hot afternoon.
Thomas Jefferson doesn’t answer.
She slides into the bed, and, supporting herself on one straight arm, she rests her other hand on the center of his chest. Her head is tilted sympathetically. “What’s the matter?” she says.
Thomas Jefferson blinks, as if rousing himself from a dream. He gives her a wan smile. “Nothing.”
She grunts dubiously and lowers her head to the pillow but keeps her hand on his chest. “Really?” she says.
“Nothing.” He lifts his eyebrows toward the window. “It’s a beautiful day.”
“Then why do you look so miserable?”
He smiles, but also seems to wince. “I don’t know. I’m just feeling a little sad.”
She rolls onto her back and lets her hand slide off his chest and onto her belly. But then, with her other hand, she takes hold of his under the sheet. “Are you missing Mrs. Bolling?”
He sighs heavily. “I suppose.”
“I missed my sisters terribly when I first arrived in France. Critta especially. I was so lonely those first few months.”
He squeezes her hand but doesn’t say anything.
“Although I did have Jimmy, of course.”
Thomas Jefferson gives her hand a second, more urgent squeeze. “What did you think of Mary — Mrs. Bolling?”
Sally Hemings sighs. “I could tell that she loves you.”
“Yes. But what else?”
Sally Hemings sighs again, heavily. She lets go of Thomas Jefferson’s hand. “I didn’t like her husband.”
“Why not?”
“I think he’s stupid, and he doesn’t love her.”
“Well…” Thomas Jefferson smirks thoughtfully. “You’re probably right. On both accounts.”
“I also think he only married her because of you.”
“That, alas, may be equally true.” The branches outside the window sway in a gentle breeze. Dollops of sunlight rise and fall on the leaves. A hermit thrush makes its lonely, crystalline cry. “But I don’t think it is bad that she is married.”
Sally Hemings rolls onto her side and faces him, her head pressed into the pillow. “The main thing is that it is hard for me to believe that she’s your sister.”
“She has more of my mother in her, I suppose.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Sally Hemings squashes more of the pillow under her cheek, so that her head is higher. “It’s the same with your brother. Neither of them seem anything like you. It’s hard to believe you come from the same family. But Mrs. Bolling especially.”
“Well…” Thomas Jefferson’s mouth hangs open for a long moment, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Did something happen to her?”
Thomas Jefferson grunts.
“What?” says Sally Hemings.
“Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. She seems to carry around this heavy weight.”
“You mean she’s slow?”
“Well… Yes. But more than that. I just feel this deep sadness in her. And that terrible scar—”
Thomas Jefferson rests his fingertips on her thigh and stops her talking. “You’re right.” He makes a noise in his throat as if he is having trouble swallowing. “Mary wasn’t always the way she is now. When she was a girl, she was so full of life — so courageous and strong…. Now—”
He doesn’t finish his sentence. He rolls toward Sally Hemings and gives her a hug and a kiss on the forehead. Their faces are so close together that there is a crisp echo when she speaks. “What happened?”
“Oh — you know: My mad mother.” He gives Sally Hemings one more kiss on the forehead, then rolls away. She puts her hand back at the center of his chest and stirs her fingers amid the sparse hair there. “My aunt once told me,” he says, “that my mother was pretty and charming when she married my father, but I have no memory of her like that. Around the time she began to have children, a number of manias took hold of her. She became obsessed with the idea that someone was trying to poison her, and she would go for weeks without eating anything except pickles and preserves that she had made herself and kept in a locked box under her bed. The problem was that my father never recognized her madness for what it was. He would try to reason with her. And placate her. Which he could never do for long, because her manias kept changing. For a while she believed that whoever wanted to poison her had begun poisoning the animals, and she told my father that the only way to get the poison out of a hog was to strangle it with a rope before slaughter, and he went so far as to erect a sort of gallows in the barn for that purpose. And whenever she got it into her head that one or another of our servants was her poisoner, she would insist that my father give the servant a lashing… and…”
Thomas Jefferson sits up in the bed and lowers his head into his hands. His back is to Sally Hemings. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
Sally Hemings gives his back a reassuring pat, then gets up onto her knees and crawls around in front of him and puts one hand on his shoulder and the other on his knee. She waits for him to look up at her, but he doesn’t.
He covers her hand with his own and grips her fingers. “It was terrible,” he says. “My father did terrible things. In truth, I think that’s what killed him. And after that my mother’s madness only became worse. And there was no one to protect—”
Thomas Jefferson’s voice thickened just before he cut himself off, and now Sally Hemings can feel a cold sweat coming onto his shoulder. She doesn’t know what she will do if he should start to weep.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice sounding perfectly normal, although he is still looking down.
“It’s all right,” she says. “Really.”
“I’m just so ashamed.” Now he lifts his head, his features loosened by sorrow, but his voice matter-of-fact. “We all protected ourselves from our mother in our own ways, and mine was to lose myself in books. I learned to read with such concentration that when I had a book open in front of me, I could forget the whole rest of the world. Also, I could sit for hours in the window of my chamber when I read, not making a sound, hoping my mother would forget I was even there. But I was the only one who chose reading for protection. My brothers took up boxing and carousing with their friends and so were rarely at home. My sisters became obsequious church mice. All except for Mary. Mary was the only one in the family who would stand up to my mother and tell her that what she was doing was evil. Or mad… And so… of course—”
Again he stops talking, and after a moment he turns to Sally Hemings, wraps his arms around her and lowers his head again, placing the top of his forehead against her shoulder, just beside her neck, as if he means to keep her at a distance. He speaks into the enclosure created by their two bodies. “One time, when Mary… when she… I don’t know what she said or did…. But one time my mother became so enraged that she beat Mary… savagely… with a rake…. That scar… that’s why… the rake… And I heard what was happening… but—”
And now Thomas Jefferson does seem to be doing something like crying. Sally Hemings hears him swallowing again and again, and breathing heavily. And she feels the heat building up in the space between them, and his shoulder going slick with sweat.
“That’s all right,” she says. She shushes him gently. “Everything’s all right. You don’t have to worry.”
“No.” The word comes out as a gasp. “I heard what was happening, but I didn’t do anything…. I went out to the barn… and she was still beating Mary…. Her eye was filled with blood… and I thought she was dead… but I just stood there. I didn’t do anything.”