Mary noticed his cuffs during a more routine surgery. There was a decent chance the boy would survive, if infection didn't take him, and the surgical field was clear. Jed was always more irritable and his movements sharper when the boys came riddled with shrapnel. Dust motes were visible in the afternoon light and caught Mary's eye. Her attention wandered, first to the grey glitter of the dust, then to the tidal sounds of men talking across the hall, before she settled upon Jed's cuffs. They were worn, fraying and turning the no-color of white linen too often washed.
After that, she began to pay more careful attention to Jed's uniform—both his real Union uniform and his unofficial one, the linen shirt, vest and drab trousers he favored. Over the months at Mansion House, the once well cared-for clothes had become shabby, threads trailing, buttons askew, collars floppy without enough starch. There was nothing crisp, nothing truly clean. Mary recognized what it meant. She knew that since Eliza Foster's departure, no one was taking any especial care of Jed and certainly not his laundry.
She found Matron Brannan in the upper hallway, pausing between one of her interminable tasks. They had developed some accord since Mary's arrival, Matron Brannan approving of the accessory kitchen necessary during Bullen's reign as both an asset for the men's health and a way to spare her weary legs a longer walk when she needed a nip of tea, or twist of sugar. Mary also suspected that Matron Brannan enjoyed her sparring with Nurse Hastings, though the matron was careful not to give the appearance of a favorite. Mary had glimpsed a quirked mouth a few times, heard a muttered, "Oh no, Madame Nightingale" on one remarkable occasion, and was fairly sure she'd not imagined a guffaw the day Nurse Hastings had her tumble in the hallway.
"Matron Brannan, may I trouble you?" she asked.
"Well, you've already begun, so you'd best finish," Matron Brannan replied, gathering herself as if she meant to go.
"I wondered how the officers', how the doctors' laundering and mending is done, that is, do the freewomen take care of it?" Mary thought of Aurelia and her companions, toiling over their vats, the steam rising on summer days already over-ripe with sun.
"Well, the laundering they do, nothing fine, just a soak and stir and wrung out. There's no one set to do any mending save the doctors themselves. Sure, I think it would come easy to them, all the fine stitching they do every day." Matron tilted her head slightly, amusing herself with the juxtaposition she'd suggested. "Maybe we should set them to a quilting bee so we're prepared come winter."
Mary thought carefully how to proceed. What she wished to do was not frankly improper, especially given her widowed state, but it was unusual and she'd learned the world often considered the two states to be equal. It was clear Jed was both used to the care of a wife and would have to learn to do without it. He'd likely not notice for some time, but she had and could so easily remedy this one problem at least. As he hadn't been troubled by the state of his clothes, he could hardly be expected to appreciate their repair, so the only barrier was her access. For that, she would need Matron's help. And to obtain Matron's help as well as her discretion, well, that was the real conundrum.
Mary observed Matron losing interest. She was getting ready to stride to her next task, each footstep planted as firmly as she was able, suggesting she remained implacable, even in motion. Mary decided to be true to her upbringing and be as straightforward and Yankee as she could, seeing Matron Brannan as another interloper in the languorous South with its elaborate rules and etiquette.
"I want to get Dr. Foster's clothes and do the mending," she stated unequivocally, mouth firm.
"All of them? I think the poor man will get a bit chilly, even in this Virginia heat," Matron quipped, clearly enjoying herself.
"I think you take my meaning, Matron Brannan. Dr. Foster is overworked and his wife, well, she has left him here to his own devices. It is little enough for me to do, hardly anything, and with these late sunsets, will let me fill my evenings with something more productive than wool-gathering or poetry." Here she knew she'd scored a point, having heard Matron expound at length upon the evils of idleness and the wastefulness of anything between the covers of a book, lest it be the Bible.
"Fine, then. I'll let you in now to collect what you think needs mending. You'll have to come and find me the next time you want to do this as I'm certainly not going into his room to have him fuss at me about moving his papers or some-such nonsense. He's a bit easier with you since you had to nurse him through, what was it? The influenza—or the pox? I can't rightly recall." Mary let Matron ramble, avoiding the bating about Jed's illness. The time for revelations on that had past, so Mary knew Matron was saying it to upset her equanimity. She relaxed her face into the insipid smile of a china doll or one of the local Virginia belles. They made their way to Jed's room and Mary slipped in.
She quickly found a shirt missing buttons and another with frayed cuffs. She spied a few other pieces, a vest and cravat, a pair of dark trousers, but knew she could only take a few items or risk Jed's notice and the consequential uproar. She neatly bundled the shirts and walked past Matron, dropping the clothes on a small rush basket Samuel had gotten for her to keep needful things in. Mary made her way back to the ward, aware of the boys waiting her care.
The first shirts were mended and washed again by her with little trouble. A second sortie was equally successful. Mary was surprised by how contented she found herself doing the mending. She sat in the spindle rocking chair she pulled by the window, letting the light change from gold to amber and then the rush of spangled night. She had never really liked mending before she came to Mansion House, had found it tedious compared to designing a dress, and not as meditative as knitting. Now, it was a positive pleasure to sew clean linen shirts or to feel the slide of Jed's silk embroidered vests between her fingers; such a contrast to trying to sew broken boys back together, knowing at the end, it might be her silk stitches that were the only thing intact. Some nights, when she was tired, she admitted to herself it was comforting to do this wifely thing for Jed, something she had rarely needed to do for Gustav. She told herself she was not pretending and that it was her Christian duty but she knew she was lying.
Afterwards, she reflected that it was always the third time in fairy tales that things went awry. The day had been overly warm but rainy, the patients ill but also squabbling like boys denied their rambles. Two boys, most likely to young to serve, had died, one on the table. Jed had kept sewing but she'd seen the change, the life bled away with the last slow thumps of a young heart. She'd eaten little and hurried away to finish the third shirt. When she finished that one, most of the mending would be done and she would have to find another way to occupy her nights, but she knew she'd be satisfied at the sight of him, trim and neat. She'd settled into the chair, window opened to the dank evening when Jed knocked and pushed in, "Nurse Mary?"
She startled. He had never come to her room before, though once or twice, he had positively howled for her to come help him with a soldier in extremis. There was nothing to do but see what he wanted.
"Yes, Dr. Foster?" she answered. At his quick grimace, she amended herself, "Jedediah. What is it?"
"I had come to tell you of a plan I have for Private Cooper, but now—what are you doing? That is my—why are you mending my shirt?" Mary took a quick breath. He sounded puzzled only, but she glanced and saw his expression start to change.
"It needed it." She'd try to make little of it, since it was little enough, and he would surely make too much.
"Mary, that is… you are too kind. That is not for you to do, though." She could see his consternation was growing and something else, something she had hoped not to see.
"Whyever not? The shirt is torn and needs to be mended. It is easy enough for me to do and then it is done, without any trouble to you."
"Mary, you know why!"
"Who does it trouble, Jedediah? It is only Matron Brannan who knows and there is nothing in it for her to mention. Another chore, done by another busy woman." She closed her eyes briefly, the fatigue catching her for a moment. When she opened her eyes, he'd come a step closer, was leaning towards her.
"It is a wife's chore," he said flatly, the pain pressed down, still tangible to both of them.
"Well, I have been a wife and now I am a friend. You have need of a wife, perhaps, but maybe you can make do with what I can offer." He'd stepped closer, one hand now on the rocking chair.
"It is not about making do, Mary. It is about what is fair and what is appropriate. My wife is gone. I must do my own mending or go without."
"Why, why can you not accept it?" Mary heard her voice growing louder, less controlled.
"I do not deserve it. You have done so much, too much for me already." His expression was tight and she wished somehow to get them both out of this conversation and discussing nearly anything else, arguing about the Private Cooper or the men's diet, when and whether he would start Samuel as apprentice.
"Well, this is done. You may take it and know I will not interfere with you again." She felt the tears pricking her eyes, surprised a little that it was this that had driven her so close to crying. She ducked her head away and Jed dropped to his knees to look up at her. He settled one hand, very carefully, on the arm of the rocker and the other balanced, even more lightly, on her calico covered knee.
"Mary. Mary, I'm sorry. I should have thanked you first and second and tenth for this, for this care. You surprised me and I was ungrateful. It is just, it is just so hard—to want for a wife and then to find you treating me in a way I am now unaccustomed to, to know there is someone who would care for me that way… but as a friend. Christ, Mary, to want you and to have this and not the rest!"
He stopped. She held her breath. He'd said things she might have imagined but would never have been bold enough, reckless enough to say aloud. Now said, the words would always be between them in a way the emotions behind them would not, could have remained obscured. She had to find a way through this, putting aside the moment of exultation and despair his words had created.
"Jedediah. In this place, during this war, it must be enough to have a friend. A true friend of the heart. Anything else has no place for us now. Anything else," she paused at the sight of his dark eyes holding her, not fiery, but with a sustaining warmth that she understood even as she forbid herself from naming it. "A friend can be enough now." She placed her hand atop his, pressing it onto her knee, letting him feel her for just a moment, then she withdrew and handed him the shirt.
"See, it is done. Now I will take my nights back and begin knitting an enormously long scarf I will send to my brother against the winter." She tried a smile, a companion's smile, but he looked back at her with those eyes.
He stood up, tall with the door framing him like a Flemish portrait. She looked away from his steady gaze but saw instead his soft mouth, dark beard curling around it.
"Thank you, Mary. I will bid you good-night then. My friend." And he walked out the door and shut it softly behind him. Mary knew she would have to leave the rocking chair or the spindles would stripe her back but she did not wish to, did not wish to find the slate blue yarn she had for George's scarf. She wished only for another lapful of Jed's linen shirts and the look upon his face she knew and understood.