Free My Name Is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira Page A

another. Of Mary, Jenny was unconcerned. Why, Mary and Thomas had only spoken with one another two or three times—hardly an understanding. And if Thomas preferred her to Mary, then what was she to do about it?
    In December, Jenny persuaded Thomas to abandon the trails west of the city for the warmth and bustle of the quay and lower State Street. She drew Thomas with her along the granite pavers, dodging block-and-tackle loaders in the din of the thuds and whistles from the Lumber District. One afternoon, Thomas steered Jenny into the Delevan Hotel, where they settled into a pair of high-backed chairs next to the fireplace in the dining room. It was nearly four o’clock; Amelia and Mary had left that morning for East Albany to tend a birth, and Jenny and Thomas had spent the afternoon on the banks of the Hudson, watching sleds dash up and down the frozen river. Jenny pulled off her gloves, unwrapped her cream coat, and leaned back into her chair. The angles of her face were delicate, her skin so white she was nearly colorless. Even the blush the wind had brought out could not enliven her appearance of pale, cosseted beauty.
    “Don’t you want to be a midwife, too?” Thomas asked, as a waiter brought tea.
    Here, Jenny thought, is the question. Also, the end. He will tell me that he finds me high-spirited and pretty, but shallow. “Do you perceive a fault in my not wanting to?” (A question of her own, in defense.)
    “No. Not at all. But it seems the family occupation.”
    “I am not like Mary. I am not nearly as clever as she is.” She preferred the definite, rather than the indefinite; in this again she was different from her twin, whose intelligence could easily tolerate the undefined.
    “You are different from your sister, but it does not follow that you are less desirable.”
    Jenny flung him a look, trying to discern. She had not yet permitted courting; she wanted Thomas’s affection to blossom from joy, not sorrow. Passion won in the hours of grief was cheating. But was it still the hour of grief? It was two months now since his father had died, three since hers. Once he had asked her, Do you dream about your father? She had told him that once in a dream she had discovered her father reading by a fireplace in the house across the street. You’ve been here all this time? she’d asked.
    (She believed her father had loved her best, not knowing it was the clever parent’s trick to convince every child they were the most beloved.)
    Thomas had dreamed the same dream, and believed not in the universality of the dream but in its singularity.
    He leaned across the table and said, “Have I told you that you are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen?”
    (Observed by other patrons in the high-ceilinged tearoom, Jenny’s grace and reticence forced admiration; Thomas’s youthfulness and ardor, an abundance of goodwill. The onlookers forgave them their lack of decorum because their preoccupation and beauty cheered them; they secretly feared they might never survive a future bereavement of their own.)
    “You prefer beauty to cleverness?” Jenny pressed the point, because it seemed to her that sisterly betrayal demanded a firm foundation. And if Thomas wanted her, she had to know the terms. Beauty and grief, over time, would fade. A memory of shared anguish would be no match for the persistent glory of Mary’s intelligence.
    Thomas Fall saw Jenny’s insecurity. He closed his hand around hers and said, “I prefer not beauty, but you.”

Chapter Three

    After returning his horse and carriage to the livery on Pearl Street, James Blevens unlocked the door to his rented rooms in the Staats House and viewed his surroundings with eyes fresh from the ordered comfort of the Sutter home. His weekly maid despaired of his clutter. She flicked at his piles of books with her feather duster and suggested in her thick Irish accent that he might not want to ruin his eyes with so much reading. The memory of the old country was