I thought of Father’s diary, of the “failing” he confessed to, which was so important to Mother that she had kept the record of it until she died. “Mother was not easy to please,” I said.
My aunt sipped her coffee. She didn’t like to hear me speak against Mother. “She was very gay when she was young,” she said. “ ‘High-spirited’ our father used to say, until she made up her mind to marry your father, and then Father called her ‘mule-headed.’ She was madly in love with him, enough to make the best of it when she had to go live in a shabby little house with no neighbors but Irish and American upstarts. When you were born, she was overjoyed; you were so like him, so blond and healthy. You were a beautiful child. Even my father came round and invited you all to stay at Christmas. After the two baby boys came, one right after the other, and your father was actually turning a profit on the farm and adding to the house, your mother felt vindicated in her choice. She had two or three happy years. Then the boys both died within days of each other. You probably don’t remember that; it was a terrible epidemic. You were barely six.”
“I remember the funeral,” I said. “At least, I remember that it rained and Father wept.”
“He was devastated, of course,” my aunt said. “What father would not be? But he allowed his grief to affect his reason.”
This puzzled me, as I remembered my father as the most rational of men. “In what way?” I asked.
My aunt took another morsel of cake and chewed it thoughtfully. When she had swallowed, she dabbed her lips with the napkin, her eyes fixed upon me solicitously. “He became obsessed with the negroes. Your mother said it was because he’d not grown up with any. He wrote treatise after treatise on the management of the negro, and he tried to have them published. The Planter did take one, but it was by way of a joke, to elicit letters, which your uncle said was quite successful; they got a bundle. He was always talking about what was wrong with the big plantations and how if his system were applied it would be heaven on earth. And of course he was always being disappointed when his own people ran away, or got drunk and sassed him, or pretended to be sick, or fought among themselves. Then he’d make some adjustment to his system, which was basically the same one we all use, the carrot and the stick, but he thought . . . well, it’s hard to say what he thought. He seemed to think somehow he was going to make the negroes believe he was God and his farm was Eden, and they’d all be happy and grateful, which, you know, they never are. I remember one night he was going on about the negroes and your uncle became so impatient with him he said, ‘Percy, they didn’t have negroes in Paradise. That’s why it was Paradise. They didn’t need them.’ ” My aunt laughed at this recollection, which I didn’t find particularly amusing.
“All the planters are obsessed with the negroes,” I said. “Unless they’re like Joel and don’t think about them at all.”
“That may be,” my aunt agreed. “But your mother came to feel your father cared more about the negroes than he did about his family.”
I shrugged. “Father was always attentive to her,” I said.
My aunt studied me a moment, perplexed by my indifference. “There was something more,” she said hesitantly, though I knew she had every intention of telling me.
“Yes?” I said.
“I think it may be best if you know,” she said. “It will help you to understand your mother.”
“Then tell me,” I said.
“Your father decided to have no more children,” she said.
I considered this statement. It struck me as rather more sensible than not. As I made no response, my aunt offered a revision to assist my understanding.
“It might be better to say that he lost all desire for more children.”
“He couldn’t bear to lose them,” I offered in his defense.
“Yes, that was his reasoning, or so he said. But your mother was still a young woman. She wanted children, as what woman does not, but more than that, she wanted her husband. He was loving, kind, dutiful, affectionate to her in every way, but no matter how she pleaded—” my aunt paused here, searching for a delicate way to describe an ugly scene and allowing me a moment to imagine my mother’s entreaties—“in their marriage bed, he turned away.”
I sipped my coffee, thinking over this revelation. If this was Father’s “failing,” for which he could not be forgiven, it didn’t seem so momentous to me, especially in comparison to my own marriage. I felt perfectly dry-eyed at the thought of Mother weeping to her sister because her husband turned away from her in bed.