The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott (11 page)

Joseph brightened. “Ah, that’s wonderful news! You know that whole swimming party was an elaborate ruse designed to give him an afternoon with her. I don’t mind admitting I was a co-conspirator. All for a good cause, I can now say.”

Louisa grinned. She loved a good conspiracy. “Samuel’s parents must be happy about the match?”

Joseph hesitated. “Yes, I believe they are. Mr. Parker is, anyway. Mrs. Parker—well, she can be a tough one to please, especially when it comes to convincing her a young lady is good enough for her son. But I won’t say a thing against her—she has been like a mother to me since my own died.”

Louisa pressed her lips together. “Well, that is wonderful to hear, though I’m sorry to know about your mother.” Her curiosity prompted her to ask more, but she refrained.

Joseph shrugged. “Thank you—it was a long time ago. But my father and sister and I were blessed to have Mrs. Parker. When Mother died, we moved to the apartment above the store so Father could keep an eye on us while he was working. We were quite small then. And Samuel’s mother brought us our dinner each afternoon. I don’t know how she did it, but my father was grateful. And Mother too, I’m sure.” He trailed off. “But happy news should be our focus. And Samuel is the happiest of all today, I think.”

“I’m sure he will make a devoted husband. Our friend deserves only the best.” Something gave a quarter turn in Louisa’s belly as she thought of Anna and their talk on the walk home from the store. “But it’s all so soon, don’t you think? It seems only last summer we were all romping around together and having larks,” she thought, but found she had said out loud.

“I don’t know. I don’t think age has anything to do with it. Of course, it is a serious endeavor, and one must treat it as such. But more years don’t necessarily better prepare one, I imagine.”

“I suppose we never know what life is going to send our way.”

Joseph considered her remark. “Some people just seem to know what they want and go after it full steam ahead.”

She nodded, thinking that not every woman was so free to pursue what she wanted, if her object went against convention. An awkward moment passed.

Joseph reached for his pocket and pulled out the thin volume. “Since we talked about these poems the other day at the party, I cannot stop rereading them. They really are remarkable.”

Louisa cheered a bit. Here was something she could speak freely about; here was a subject that had nothing to do with her.

“I wonder, what do you think of his punctuation?” Joseph flipped forward a few pages with his index finger and pointed to several ellipses that dotted the page like a strange kind of Morse code. “I’ve never seen poetry set on the page this way.”

“Neither have I. It is odd—as if the poem is one long sentence. You can scarcely stop for breath as you read it. Perhaps he wanted the appearance of the page to match the content of its message. His philosophy is unorthodox, so why shouldn’t his grammar be as well?”

Joseph nodded. “He certainly has a way of shocking his reader, does he not?” Louisa looked at her knees. The poetry was full of talk of the body. The first time she read some of the passages, she had blushed to the ends of her hair. “In fact, I wasn’t sure I should bring it with me today. I don’t wish to make you uncomfortable.”

Louisa felt her temper rear like a colt. “Because I am a woman, you mean?” She snatched his copy of the book from his hand, flipped to the page she’d reread ten times to imprint it on her brain, and recited: “
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, / And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man.
What do you say to that? Is he wrong?”

Joseph tried to hide his amused smile and gazed admiringly at her. “No, Miss Louisa, I do not think he is wrong,” he replied softly. “If anything, I think he may be underestimating
you
.”

Her eyes darted around his face, trying to discern whether he spoke sincerely or was teasing her. She sighed, exhausted by her own defensiveness. She knew her temper made her silly and childish. But it was as easily triggered as ever.

The coy demeanor dropped from his face. “Miss Louisa—”

“Just Louisa, please,” she interrupted.

“—I don’t believe I ever have encountered a woman quite like you.”

Louisa’s eyes darted back to that safe place on her knees. It was a wonder she had not stared a hole straight through them.

“I feel I could talk to you about anything and you would understand. Do you feel the same?”

She did not nod or shake her head or move her lips. She felt she heard the top and bottom rows of her eyelashes crashing together, so silent was the air in the room as he spoke.

“And a writer yourself, with success at so young an age. Think what a long career you have to look forward to, all the stories you will bring to the world.”

Louisa grimaced. “Nothing is guaranteed. Some interests are more easily carried over into adulthood than others. Women have many responsibilities that fill their time—they cannot depend on the luxury of hours on end to write.”

“But what a
shame
it would be to let your talents languish.”

Louisa gave a short, sad-sounding laugh. “You haven’t read a word I’ve written and yet you fret over the loss of my talent. Take care not to heap on too much praise until you are familiar with its object.”

“I’ll soon change that. I wrote to my cousin Edward asking him to send me a copy of your
Flower Fables
.”

“Oh, dear,” Louisa said, her face full of dread. “Please remember—I wrote most of those tales when I was just a girl. I like to think, to hope, that my writing has improved
somewhat
since then.”

“I know I will enjoy your work. I can hear it in our conversations. You have a gift.”

“I fear some people believe it should be a youthful amusement and nothing more. Perhaps you have heard that the singular preoccupation of a young woman’s life is to find a husband.” Louisa gave him a wry smile.

A strain passed across Joseph’s pale eyebrows a moment, as if her comment called forth an unpleasant thought, but as soon as the troubled look appeared it vanished. His freckles dotted the apples of his cheeks like spilled wheat. “Yes, I believe I am acquainted with the idea,” he said, grinning.

Louisa sighed. “And when he is found, the work has only begun. Take Margaret, for example. Soon she will be a wife, keeping a home for her husband, nursing his relatives and her own, preparing for children, God willing. She won’t have time for anything else.”

Joseph scoffed. “Hardly! Margaret lives for parties and gossip—two things she’ll be able to pursue just as well, if not better, in marriage.”

“I beg your pardon—I don’t like your tone.” Louisa’s voice surprised her by sounding sharp. She softened it. “Please don’t speak about her that way. Margaret is my friend.”

“And mine. I only meant that she is very different from you, is interested in different things.”

“We may be unlike each other, but the duties of a wife are the same for each.”

“I disagree. Husbands vary just as wives do. The possibility of a happy marriage hinges on the choosing, though most girls are so eager to make the pact, they do not take the time for careful consideration.”

His smug tone needled her. “Is that so? You seem to have thought an awful lot about this matter.”

“Not at all—it’s just that the facts of it are very clear. You, for example. It will be very important that you marry the right sort of man—”

“And I suppose
you
think you know what sort of man that is.” Louisa felt her cheeks get hot.

He nodded and broke into that infuriating grin, his playfulness returning. “I do. Primarily, he will have to be the sort of man who does not mind being interrupted. You know—the sort who would rather
listen
than talk. With you, one is apt to do a lot of listening.”

Louisa felt her temper swing inside her head like the tongue of a bell. “When someone has graciously accepted your visit—an unannounced visit, I might add—do you always put such
effort
into insulting her?”

Her anger only compounded his amusement. “On the contrary—finding things to say that you will interpret as insults takes very little effort at all.”

Before she could stop herself, Louisa was on her feet. “Aren’t you clever? Well, here is something that will surprise you: ‘Conventionality is not morality.’ Miss Charlotte Brontë wrote that, and it is as true for me as it was for her. To do things just because others do is cowardly. Not that it is any business of yours, but I have
no
intention of marrying.”

He watched her, his lips pressed into a line. “You are wrong.
That
doesn’t surprise me at all.”

Louisa ignored his quip. “I could never love anyone better than I love my independence.”

“And you shouldn’t. Your independence suits you.” Joseph’s face grew serious. “You know, Louisa, there are some men out there who are
charmed
by an independent woman, who feel that marriage can be an equal partnership of head and heart. Who would love you just as you are—fiery, overwrought, as passionate as any man.”

Louisa felt something snatch her breath down deep into her lungs. She’d never met a person who spoke so bluntly, even to people he barely knew. She couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“And to those men,” Joseph said as he clapped his hands together and broke into a grin, “I say, God be with you, friends!”

The blood drained from Louisa’s face and was replaced by hot mortification. Louisa took a slow breath.

“All this,” she said, recovering as she gestured from his head to his feet, “
and
a sense of humor. How fortunate for the young ladies of this town.”

Joseph grimaced at her bitter tone. “Miss Louisa, I have taken up too much of your lovely afternoon. I should leave you to your books.”

She stood up and walked with him to the door, afraid to speak for fear of betraying how much he’d rankled her.

“Well, then . . .” He tucked
Leaves of Grass
into the crook of his elbow. “Thank you for the . . .
lively
discussion.”

She nodded. He stepped across the threshold into the blinding sun.

“And I . . .” he continued as he placed his hat on his head and wiggled it into place by the brim. “Well, I’m . . . perhaps we could meet to talk again sometime.”

“Perhaps,” she said in a tone assuring him they would
not,
and closed the door. She started toward the stairs, eager to take advantage of the last quiet moments the afternoon promised, but she turned first down the narrow hall leading away from the parlor. The door to Bronson’s study stood open an inch, and as Louisa pushed, its hinges creaked. Lizzie had been in to tidy the room earlier that morning. Books Louisa had seen stacked in piles of various sizes across the floor like buildings in a cityscape had been returned to their place on the shelf between the room’s two windows. The surface of the desk was clean, save for two piles of paper.

Louisa shook her head as she touched the cream-colored stock. One stack was blank and the other contained Bronson’s writing, a scant four or five sentences scrawled across the center of each page, leaving inches of unused space. Her father insisted on the most expensive paper and was determined to use it as wastefully as he could, she thought bitterly. Up in the attic room her own journals were bursting at the seams, each page full to the corners, front and back, until the ink bled through and rendered the text unreadable. The green-shaded lamp sat in the center of the desk next to a vase of pale purple verbena, the tart perfume of the flowers filling the space. Another of Lizzie’s silent gestures.

Her father hadn’t discovered that the book was missing, and Louisa wanted to keep it that way. The top shelf held books he rarely read but liked to keep at hand, and there was a space at the end of the row for one more slim volume. If he did notice it, perhaps he would conclude that Lizzie had moved it there. She pressed the book into place with her index finger. With its spine facing out it looked just like any other of the black, gray, and green books in the shadowed rectangle of the shelf. How strange, she thought, as she scanned the titles of his library. That paper and board and ink could work such alchemy.

She shut the door to the study and turned toward the stairs, passing the front door on her way. Something on the floor caught her eye. The white corner of a folded piece of paper was wedged under the door. Louisa crouched down and pulled gently to avoid tearing it. She unfolded the paper as she stood.