The Family Greene Read Free Page B

I was a good storyteller but that my spelling was dolorous. He spelled
dolorous
for me. And made me write it. And then he explained the true meaning of it to me.
    "Sorrowful, sad, and in pain," he said.
    And in the first few weeks of my stay with Aunt Catharine those words began to run through my head every time I looked at Uncle Greene when he did not know I was laying eyes upon him.
    Sorrowful, sad, and in pain.
    He would be sitting there in the sun in the parlor, before the great windows, pretending to be reading a book but gazing instead at some middle distance and looking sorrowful, sad, and in pain.
    Or he would be at his desk in his study, bent over his ledgers, his pen poised in midair. Sorrowful, sad, and in pain.
    Or betimes at the supper table, his fork poised with a piece of meat on it, watching Aunt Catharine chatter, looking sorrowful, sad, and in pain.
    And I would think,
He believes she is in love with Benjamin Franklin. He thinks she has been carrying on with him. And he has not yet written the letter to Mr. Franklin that he knows he must write. He cannot bring himself to do it.
    I had come to love Uncle Greene in the near month I had resided in his house. He had a quiet, gentle firmness about him. He was a dear man, with a real love of country. A learned, respected, and modest man. And his love for Aunt Catharine was deep and abiding.
    Myself, I did not care if she had a romance with Mr. Franklin. Part of me quickened to the thought, was intrigued by it. The other part needed to prove it was untrue, for the sake of Uncle Greene. And I would, somehow, the first chance I got.
    My chance came about a month after I arrived at their house, when I sneakily went about searching Aunt Catharine's room. She and Uncle Greene were out for the afternoon, paying calls. The house was empty, quiet, and I'd found Aunt Catharine's old trunk under her bed with letters in it—letters from my mother, from their sister, Judith, in Boston, and finally from Benjamin Franklin himself.
    I should have read the ones from my mother. Another time I would have. But I picked up instead a yellowed parchment from Benjamin Franklin, detailing how he and she had tarried several days in Newport before she was married, though he was married and a father. And how they had been so in love.
    But there was nothing to indicate that they had been lovers.
    When they separated after that trip was over, he still wrote to her. In one letter he complained of her "virgin innocence" on the Newport trip.
    I rushed through the letters breathlessly, hoping to find something that would either incriminate Aunt Catharine or free her of the charge. But all I found were references by Franklin of two visits he'd made to this house after Uncle Greene had married her.
    Oh, there were constant references to how he loved her, would never forget her, but no words that would link them together as lovers.
    I had set the final letter down in my lap and was gazing at a bee that had just flown in the open window and settled on the fold of the drape, not knowing whether to be relieved or disappointed, when I was jolted out of my romantic reverie by Aunt Catharine's voice from the doorway of her room.
    "So! Here you are, you little minx! Well, you have some explaining to do! What are you about, going through my personal things?"
    I wanted, at that moment, to be that bee, to be able to fly out the window into the blue afternoon. My head whirled. My head hurt of a sudden with the effort of turning to look at her.
    "You're not supposed to be home yet," I said stupidly.
    "Well, you miscalculated, didn't you? Dishonest people usually do."
    Dishonest? She considered me dishonest, then!
    She came into the room and across the highly polished hardwood floor and brightly braided rug, throwing aside her shawl and bonnet at the same time as she scooped up the letters that were on my lap and all over the floor.
    "Get up," she ordered.
    I got up.
    "Is this how I can trust you? The minute I