Edwin’s face and hands are cold. The log in the fireplace falls with a whisper into ash. He moves closer to the fire and farther from his mother. One cheek warms; the other does not. He remembers how Mother once asked the flames to reveal Johnny’s fate and he makes a silent prayer to know his own. No response from the reddened coals. Across the dark room, the lace curtains flutter suddenly as if a breeze or a ghost has entered.

“It has to be you,” Mother says to him. She reminds him that June used to travel with Father sometimes, but now he has his own family and career. She’d thought Father was doing fine alone, but now they all know that Richard was with him and clearly, Richard can’t be asked to travel with Father again. Father’s truly on his own this time and only catastrophe can follow.

The family depends entirely on Father’s wages. If he continues to miss half his curtains or to spend his money the very night he earns it, they’ll soon find themselves on the street or in the factories. Edwin must go along and keep him out of trouble. This is a job no one can do, and there is no one but Edwin to do it.

Mother has made it clear that Edwin has no choice in the matter and yet he can feel how much she wants him to agree. He considers denying her this, and it’s not her tragic face and voice that finally make him speak up. Face and voice are the actor’s tools and anguish can be easily feigned. It’s her hands, the counterfeit wedding band, the worn nails just at his eye level, resting on Johnny’s black hair. Something about his mother’s hands, red in the firelight, moves Edwin to a terrible kindness. “I’ll go,” he says.

For many years now, Rosalie’s job has been to save her mother. From this day forward, Edwin’s job will be the saving of the whole family. This is a job no one can do, and there is no one but Edwin to do it.

“No fair,” Johnny says.

Lincoln and the Whigs at Sprigg’s

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

—Abraham Lincoln, 1848

Lincoln has married the woman he said it would kill him to marry. They have two young sons and he’s come to Washington, DC, to represent the good people of Illinois in Congress. The city is unfinished, yet already decaying. The Potomac is choked green with algae and the smell of dead fish permeates. Dead cats rot on the streets. Still! Washington!