The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott (14 page)

Samuel chuckled, looking first at Louisa and Anna and then tipping his head up toward his accuser. “It seems unwise to sell a man down the river when he is holding your ladder, friend.”

Nicholas pressed his lips into a line. “That’s a good point, lad. Ladies, it was Joseph. He has a corrupting influence on us all, and I hope you’ll forgive our weak wills.”

Joseph shifted his weight onto his heels to free his hands, one of which held a hammer. He smiled, a half-dozen nails glinting between his teeth. “Look—no hands.”

Louisa gasped. “Are you soft in the head, Joseph Singer?”

He thought for a moment. “Yes, that is quite likely. But what does that have to do with the matter at hand?”

“You are two stories up, teetering like an inebriate. One gust of wind and you’d be finished. Will you please be careful?”

“For you, Miss Louisa? Anything. We’ll even come down right now and walk with you the rest of the way to the inn.”

“Splendid,” Anna said, and they waited as the boys made their way down the creaking ladder.

 

 

 

L
ouisa woke in the early morning to a pale sky and the whisper of raindrops. In the half-light, her mind cluttered with the images of a retreating dream, she felt a pang of disappointment. Surely Abba would now insist on Lizzie staying home. She sat up and swung her feet to the floor, pulling the drape aside to assess the weather. The rain was steady, gaining strength. Perhaps none of them would go to the circus. Anna slept soundly in the bed next to her, her hair fanned across her face and the cotton blanket. Louisa rose and descended to the kitchen to put on the water for tea.

As it boiled, the others rose. Bronson went into his study. Anna scoured the floor, then dressed and left to meet Margaret in town. Abba entered the kitchen and put on a pot to cook down plums for jam.

Louisa dreaded asking the question she felt she already knew the answer to. “Marmee, where is Lizzie?”

Abba clucked sympathetically as she sliced the plums and pried out the stones. “Still in bed, I fear. She was restless in the night—perhaps she was overwrought with the possibility of coming with you girls—and did not sleep well. We shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up. By the looks of that rain, none of you may be going.”

Poor Lizzie,
Louisa thought.

By noon the rain had subsided but Lizzie remained in bed in the room she shared with May. Louisa knocked softly on the door and stuck her head inside. Lizzie wore a nightgown cinched around her collarbone with a blue ribbon and sat in bed reading a book, a stack of pillows propping her up.

“How is my little patient?” Louisa asked, crossing the room to sit on the edge of the bed.

Lizzie sighed and closed the book over her finger to hold her place. “Sleepy. And more than a little disappointed. I’m sorry to have caused all this trouble.”

Louisa put her hand on Lizzie’s. “I only wish you could come. Are you sure Marmee isn’t being a little too cautious?”

Lizzie shrugged. “I feel fine, but I know she is right that I tire easily. Keene
is
a long carriage ride away. I think it is best that I stay home.” Lizzie reached toward the floor and pulled her orange kitten into her lap. “Say you will wave hello to the tigers for Ginger and me. I promised her I’d tell her all about her wild ancestors.” Since Louisa had first seen Ginger poking her head out of Lizzie’s apron, the kitten had grown lanky, her fine puff of fur now sleek.

“I promise, my dear, if you’re sure you won’t try to come? Wouldn’t you like to have just a
little
adventure?”

Lizzie looked at Louisa a moment, as if mulling this over. Finally, she shook her head, though her eyes were a little sad. “There is nothing I love better than home, wherever home happens to be.”

Louisa nodded. “Then I will leave you to it. Good-bye, Ginger.” Louisa rubbed the kitten’s ears. “I’ll bring you both a souvenir.”

Louisa and May sat down
to eat a light luncheon before walking into town to join Joseph and Catherine. May flitted about the room, scarcely ingesting a bite.

Exasperated, Abba took her by the waist and guided her into a chair. “Abigail May, you
must
eat something, or you will pass out from hunger somewhere along the road.”

Afterward, they set out for the Singers’ store. The sky remained gloomy but the rain held off, and Louisa couldn’t help feeling cheerful on her sister’s behalf, though at the same time her heart pounded in her ears. What would she and Joseph say to each other?

They were a few minutes early coming up the road. Catherine sat on a bench in front of the store in a new dress, her hair pulled tightly away from her face. Her brow was just like Joseph’s—fair and freckled—but her hair was darker, arranged for this special occasion in intricate coils just behind her ears. May sighed reflexively when she saw the ribbon edging on Catherine’s dress. It was a blinding white, the way only new clothes can be. The girls began a vigorous conversation about the other young people from town they expected to see at the circus. Louisa decided to go inside the store to find Joseph. She expected to hear the jangle of the bell when she entered, but the door slipped open silently. She looked up to see the bell bent off its bracket, as if it had been broken when someone slammed the door. No one was behind the counter. She walked toward the curtained doorway that led to the back room but stopped short when she heard Joseph’s voice take on a sharp tone.

“Isn’t there any other way?”

“I don’t see one. There just isn’t time.”

“So that is how it will be? ‘The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children’? ”

“You’ve let your anger bring you so low you’d use the Bible—”

“I was thinking of Shakespeare, Father.
The Merchant of Venice
.”

It was silent for a moment then. Louisa heard a rustling, the scrape of a stool across the worn planks of the floor.

“Sit down, Father. Rest a moment. I’m sorry for what I said.”

“You think I don’t know God will judge me for my sins? Why don’t you leave it to Him and let it be? Think of your sister, Joseph. If she had inherited her mother’s measured temperament, I would not worry. But I’m afraid she is just like her father—frivolous, impulsive. Easily led astray. We have the chance to protect her. We must take it.”

“We? You mean
I
must take it—”

“I cannot stop death from coming for me, boy. I can do many things, but I cannot do that.”

Louisa backed quietly toward the door, opened it, and shook it on its hinges so the bell, mangled as it was, produced a small sound. The voices in the back room stopped. She heard a shuffling of feet and Joseph emerged.

“Well, then. Are we all set to go?” Joseph’s jaw moved slightly under his skin as he worked deliberately to relax his expression.

Louisa smiled at him with bare kindness for the first time. There was no pride in it, no defensive edge like before, when she’d felt overwhelmed by the competing desires to be near him and not to let him know that she thought of him at all. Hearing his conversation with his father broke through all that. He looked calm enough now, but instinctively she knew he was writhing inside, like a butterfly on a pin before the life goes out of it.

“Yes, before our sisters start walking to Keene on their own.” She watched him gathering his things—two blankets for their feet in case of a chill, umbrellas, a bag of lemon candies from one of the glass jars behind the counter. She wondered if he thought of her as his friend. She wanted very much to be his friend just then.

Out behind the store, Mr. Singer’s new phaeton rocked back and forth on its wheels as its two harnessed horses shifted in place, anxious to move. Joseph stretched open the extension-top and secured it in place. It was covered in fine leather dyed the blue of a church hymnal.

He felt along the harness, making sure it was secure, then smoothed his hand over the blond mane of one of the horses. “This here’s Juliet, and that one’s Romeo. But we call the back half of Romeo ‘President Pierce.’ ”

Louisa laughed and the girls rolled their eyes. To them, nothing was duller than politics, and they were bored to death by the recent griping about how the first president to hail from New Hampshire seemed to be protecting the interests of slave owners over the good people of New England.

Joseph swung the half-moon-shaped door open and gestured for the Alcott sisters to climb into the more comfortable and well- covered seats in the rear. May grinned and nearly bounced inside. Louisa realized May probably had not ever been in a carriage this nice, then admitted to herself she hadn’t either. Louisa moved to climb in after May but paused when Catherine conspicuously cleared her throat.

“I believe since it is
my
birthday, I should sit in the rear. This
is
a new dress, after all, and if it rains again, there will be mud.” She gestured toward Louisa’s dress, which she and Anna had worked on into the early morning hours, sewing on a new flounce cut from some leftover cloth, scrubbing stains along the hem out with a worn wire brush. “You dress is so old, you won’t mind, will you?”

Before she could stop herself, she turned to look at Joseph, her eyebrows arched. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Forgive my sister. Catherine, these are our
guests
.”

May sat in the shadow of the carriage with her hands clasped, silently pleading with Louisa not to make a scene.

“Of course I don’t mind,” Louisa replied, plastering a smile on her face and moving out of the way. Her nerves were returning and she was uncertain again. Catherine climbed in next to May and settled her skirts around her knees. Joseph offered Louisa his hand to help her climb over the wheel into the front seat. She felt a fluttering in her chest as their hands touched, and tried to avoid his eyes. He seemed unfazed, reminding her to tuck her hem behind her boots so that it did not get caught in the spokes of the wheel. Louisa watched him climb in after her and take up the reins. Her eye followed the line of his coat, where it was faded and frayed along the collar.

They started off, lurching and chugging down Main Street. This was the long way around to the road that led out of town, but Catherine and May begged Joseph to take it so that any of their friends who happened to pass by would see the manner in which they were traveling.

“This is a lovely carriage,” May said, her breath in her voice. She ran her hand along the buff-colored seat, touched the gold ties that held the drapes up.

“It is, isn’t it?” Joseph said. And then he half muttered, “It’s a shame we’ll have to give it back soon.”

Catherine whipped her head in his direction. “Give it
back
? What do you mean?”

“Carriages aren’t free, my sister. One must pay for them.”

“But can’t Father pay—”

“I shouldn’t have said a thing. Let’s not talk of family matters now. Besides, it’s your birthday! This is a celebration!”

Louisa sat turned sideways. She could see Catherine’s face in profile and recognized the familiar pouted lips made by one who still had the emotions of a girl, despite looking very much the part of a young lady. May had made the very same expression days before when begging to come on this trip.

“Must we walk everywhere from now on?” Catherine whined.

Joseph slowed the horses to a stop so that he could turn and look her square in the eyes. Louisa and May shifted uncomfortably. “I asked you not to talk of family matters now. I will ask you once more, and then I will turn us around and take our friends home. You are too old now to behave in this way. Do you understand me?”

Catherine looked down at her lap and nodded.

“Right then. Let’s go.” Joseph started off again and they rode along in silence. Louisa could tell by the look of the sky that the weather would taunt them all day. A placid blue seemed now to be breaking through the clouds, but a slate-colored cloud loomed on the horizon like a steamship chugging slowly across the ocean. It was lovely to ride along in silence, though this moment of silence felt charged with anticipation. She realized she spent much of her life searching for quiet, trying to determine when she would next have the chance to sink into its intoxicating comfort. Even when she was with other people—especially when she was with other people.

May, on the other hand, could not abide silence. It was true she loved to talk, but she was also sensitive to tension. She needed constant reassurance that the people in her vicinity were enjoying themselves so that she felt she had permission to enjoy herself too.

“How many elephants do you think they’ll have?” May asked.