I Am Abraham by Charyn Jerome

Author:Charyn, Jerome [Charyn, Jerome]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Lincoln, Historical Fiction
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2014-02-03T06:00:00+00:00

28.

Flub Dubs

SHE’D BEEN FINAGLING with that White House gardener, John Watt. They moved around funds they didn’t really have. I should have shaken her like a petulant child. Things were complicated in the middle of an insurrection. Members of the White House staff had to have some kind of military appointment or they couldn’t be paid. Mary conspired with my Secretary of War to have her gardener appointed to the cavalry and stationed at the Mansion. I was powerless. I wouldn’t block one of the Lady President’s own commissions. I was glad she hadn’t assigned the Chevalier as Captain of the White House Watch—he was near the Crimson Room often enough to command some kind of post.

She was more interested in the gardener now—John Watt. She had his wife appointed as White House steward. Most of Madame Watt’s salary went to pay Mary’s creditors, I imagine. I’d catch her huddling with a Washington upholsterer, or a minor prince from a dry goods palace, who was always accompanied by mysterious men with hats over their eyes. A dozen footstools appeared one day, and were gone the next. Draperies arrived, and were never installed. The East Room was like one of Little Mac’s encampments, where a whole battery of furniture kept shifting around—nothing was safe, not even the spittoons. I couldn’t rest my eye on a single marker; Mary suffered from some terrible affliction, like a madwoman bartering in her sleep. In less than nine months Mother had swallowed up that twenty-thousand-dollar fund Congress had given her to refurbish the White House with carpets and all the other flub dubs that were dear to my wife. And she still owed another six or seven thousand dollars.

I wasn’t blind to her predicament. Mother had to drive the rats out of that maze of rooms in the cellar before the whole Mansion was infested. She had to buy new china and Parisian wallpaper. She couldn’t have a Crimson Room without crimson carpets. I’d catch her in the middle of the night with a hammer in her hand. She had to nail down some carpet, or fix the leg of a favorite chair. She’d gone to Manhattan with that gardener of hers and spent six thousand dollars on curtains, sofas, and hassocks. I hadn’t been President more than a couple of seasons, and still Mother worried about my prospects. The little sultans who let her borrow to the hilt would demand payment in full once I had to vacate the White House. I learned all this from Nicolay & Hay, who were like my own detective bureau.

While they spied on the Hell-Cat, as they called her, she angled to get them fired. And she almost did. In the end, with no more means to hide her misconduct, Mary came to me. I was glad she didn’t bring my boys into the fracas and have Willie or Tad sing about the high cost of chalk in their classroom. She wore a simple black gown with long

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