The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott (19 page)

“Wait a minute,” Louisa said. “Where are Paul and Alfie? ”

“Over at the Academy, in the great hall,” Margaret said. “They’ve painted all the pieces of the set, and it didn’t make sense to put them together up here, only to have to take them down again.”

Louisa nodded. “Of course. Good—so there’s some progress, then. Now, let’s see . . .” She starting making arbitrary checkmarks on her notes so as to appear engrossed in her thoughts. In truth she had just realized the scene that needed work included Joseph. There would be no putting off facing him. Best to get it out of the way. “I was thinking perhaps we should run through the final scene, where the Major’s secret identity is revealed to Sir Richard, and John Duck jumps down from the chimney just in time to save the pardon.”

“But we don’t have a Sir Richard today,” Anna said, giving Louisa a curious look. “Hadn’t you noticed that Joseph’s not here?”

Louisa looked up in surprise, relief washing over her, then tried to cover it with irritation. “Nicholas,” she demanded. “Where’s Joseph?”

Nicholas cleared his throat and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Right. Well, it seems he’s not going to be able to be in the play after all. You know, his father hasn’t been well.”

Louisa nodded. “Is he worse off than before?”

Nicholas shrugged his shoulders. “It’s hard to say. But either way, there’s too much work at the store for one man to do, especially one who’s ill every other day. So Joseph is needed there.”

Louisa held his gaze a moment, trying to assess the veracity of this explanation. Nicholas looked down at his shoes.

“He hasn’t time for a few more days until the play is over?” Margaret chimed in. “He’s already learned all his lines.” Louisa wouldn’t have asked a question that seemed so rude, but she was eager to hear Nicholas’s response.

He hesitated. “My sister—she’s asked him not to attend. She feels this is . . .”

“Is what?” Margaret challenged.

“Is . . . frivolous. Considering his father’s illness and their upcoming wedding.”

Margaret rolled her eyes. “She behaves as if she’s the first girl on earth to get married. Nora never did have a whole lot of sense.”

“I’ll ask you to hold your tongue on that account,” Nicholas said, his dark brows lowering into a V. Anna looked nervously between him and Margaret.

Louisa held up her hand. “This will get us nowhere. We have two days left and no Sir Richard.” She rubbed circles into her forehead, struggling to concentrate. “Paul will have to play the role.”

Margaret looked skeptical. “Paul can scarcely speak a sentence to four people, much less an entire crowd.”

“Well,” Louisa said, “he will have to overcome his fear. We’ve no other choice. But let’s not ask him now—let him finish the sets first. May or Harriet, would either of you be willing to stand in, just for today?”

Harriet looked incredulous. “Play a man’s role? Hardly.”

Though Louisa usually found Harriet’s whining amusing, today it needled her. “Not onstage—just for today’s rehearsal.”

“I’ll do it, Lou,” May said.

Louisa sighed. “Thank you, May—it’s nice to see someone is still interested in ensuring the quality of this performance. Now stand up very straight and do your best to act like a mustached nobleman.”

 

 

 

L
ouisa rose before the others and pulled on her boots. This was what she loved: quiet solitude, the restful few hours when the frenetic pace of her mind subsided and she could embrace the blank rhythm of walking. Outside, the morning was golden. The angle of the light portended the coming autumn, though the trees were verdant still and full of songbirds. Louisa watched the intermittent bursts of feathers as the birds moved about, launching themselves to higher branches.

The path snaked away from the house and down a steep hill, where the trees were denser near the ravine and the morning light scarcely penetrated. The earth felt soft under her soles. Though the hoyden within her longed to run, she settled now for swift walking, as if her stride could outpace the thoughts trying to worm their way into her mind. Sometimes life seemed to her one long assault she was never quite prepared to defend herself against. If only she could slow it down, take each strange development one at a time, examine it, find some way to control it. She approached the edge of the ravine. The water slid over the limestone without making a sound.

Her father would say that the chaos of life, its unpredictability, existed to challenge one’s commitment to improvement, that one must extract himself piece by piece out of the wildness and assemble a spirit that transcends the sum of mere body parts. Mr. Whitman seemed to say, rather, that the wildness
itself
was the thing to cultivate. For him, the spirit and the flesh were one, the physical experience of the world
was
divinity. Louisa supposed they both were right. Of one thing she felt certain: men would go on arguing about these matters as long as there were people on the earth. The women, meanwhile, would continue to peel the vegetables and soak the linens in boiling tubs and mend the torn seams and bring new lives into the world. Louisa wondered if anyone would ever write poetry about that.

The sun was getting higher now and Louisa turned back toward home. There was nothing that angered Anna more than sisters who disappeared when it was time to divide up the work for the day. In addition to the regular chores, they had the preparations for the play—there was no time to spare.

As Louisa came up the back path, Anna gave a little half-wave, her elbow clutching the broom to her side. “Isn’t it lovely out this morning?”

“Yes,” Louisa said. “You should hear the sound of all those birds as the sun is coming up. What a racket!”

“I’m sure Lizzie loved hearing them. It was thoughtful of you to take her walking with you.”

“Lizzie?”

“Yes—has she not gone back into the house already?”

Louisa frowned at her sister. “Nan, I walked by myself this morning. I have not seen Lizzie since we sat in the parlor last night after supper.”

Anna’s eyes widened. “That’s very strange, because she isn’t here.”

Just then Abba appeared in the doorway. “Louisa—I’m so happy you girls are back. I know you meant well, but you must tell me when you hatch these schemes. Last night was so damp, and I’ve been so worried.”

Anna looked at Louisa and then back at her mother. “Marmee, Lizzie isn’t with Louisa.”

“Isn’t with her? What do you mean?”

“I mean I walked alone this morning. I hadn’t any idea anyone was worried about Lizzie until I walked up just now and Anna told me she isn’t here.”

Abba put her hand to her mouth. “You mean . . . you don’t know where she is?”

“No, Marmee.”

“God in heaven.” Abba closed her eyes. “What could have . . . has my child been kidnapped?”

Anna shook her head. “Marmee, let’s not jump to extremes. I know she is not as strong as the rest of us and that she is more timid than most, but Lizzie
is
twenty years old. She isn’t a child.”

Abba’s eyes darkened. “I know the age of my own daughter—I was there the day she came into this world. But Lizzie is not like other girls her age. You know she is too gentle, too easily frightened to be out on her own. . . .”

“We talked last night of cakes for the party after tomorrow’s performance. Perhaps she walked down to the orchard for more apples.” Anna leaned the broom against the side of the house. “Louisa and I will go look for her.”

Abba nodded. “Please do. I’m going to get your father out of his study.” Abba turned and disappeared back into the house. Louisa and Anna set off diagonally across the open field that stretched southeast of town. The orchard began at its outer edge, about a mile from Yellow Wood. The sisters slogged through the mud in silence, swatting at the insects stirred up by the late-morning heat.

“I have a bad feeling, Nan. Marmee’s right—this
is
very strange.”

Anna gave her a sympathetic glance. “You only feel that way because you were so hard on Marmee the night May asked us to go to the circus. You’re afraid she was right about what Lizzie should and shouldn’t do.”

“If anything should happen to her . . .” Louisa looked miserable.

“Don’t say, ‘It will be all my fault,’ because that isn’t true.” The sisters were almost the same height, with the same long legs and sturdy hips. They walked with one synchronized stride.

“But I told her she needed to have a little adventure. What if something
has
happened?” Louisa continued to fret. “Do you think Marmee was right?”

“No, I don’t. I think Lizzie is a grown woman, even if none of us treat her as one. She is sure to be nearby, either in the orchard or down by the river, and if we let her alone I’m sure she’d be home before dinner.”

“Well, for Marmee’s sake we shall look now,” Louisa said.

Anna put her arm around her sister’s waist and replied with a gentle tease. “And for the sake of your guilty conscience.”

 

 

But though they looked
up and down each of the neat rows of trees, their boughs heavy with apples flecked russet and mellow green, they couldn’t find Lizzie. The orchard belonged to Mr. Parsons, who was an admirer of Bronson’s writing on the education of young children and had followed his career. He had promised Abba the Alcotts could have as many apples as they liked if Bronson would promise to visit and answer his questions on Plato. Anna and Louisa trekked up the hill to his barn, where the wide door stood open to let in the light. Mr. Parsons wore a heavy apron and tinkered with a tool at the gears of his cider press.

Anna knocked on the open door, and Mr. Parsons looked up and grinned when he saw he had visitors. “Good morning, girls!”

“Good morning,” Anna said.

“I understand we will have the pleasure of seeing both of you perform tomorrow night. Planché, is it?”

Louisa nodded. “Yes, sir.
The Jacobite.
”

“I’ve read it,” he said, placing the tool back in its box and taking up the oil can. “But, you know, we usually have to go to Boston to see a play performed. I am looking forward to it.”

Anna smiled, waiting a polite moment before changing the subject. “Mr. Parsons, have you seen our sister Lizzie around the orchard this morning?”

He thought a moment. “Lizzie—is she the one with the wavy blond hair?”

Anna shook her head. “No, that would be May—she is the youngest. You may never have met Lizzie. She does not usually go out.”

“We call her our little housewife because she so likes to bake and sew and care for our father. There’s nowhere in the world she likes to be except at home.” Louisa felt the dread welling up in her voice.

“Well, then,” Mr. Parsons said, observing Louisa with concern. “I shouldn’t know her if I did see her. But I haven’t seen anyone in the orchard this morning.”

“Thank you, sir. We hope you enjoy the show tomorrow night,” Anna said.

“I’m sure you will find her, girls. Please let me know if I can help in any way.”

Anna and Louisa walked back across the field and down to the riverbank where they had gone swimming with their friends the month before. They saw no footprints in the mud, no stump that had been brushed off for sitting on.

“Could she be in town, do you think?” Anna asked. Her confidence seemed to be wavering.

“I can’t imagine that she would. Last summer, when you were away in Syracuse and I had that awful cold, I was supposed to go to the grocery one day before Marmee got home, but I felt so sick. I asked Lizzie to go and she nearly cried at the thought of doing it alone. In the end we went together.” Louisa shook her head. “But we’d better check nonetheless. She may be there. How can we face Marmee if we haven’t looked everywhere?”

Anna nodded. They set off walking in silence down the hill toward Main Street, afraid to give voice to their private thoughts.

Their fears only deepened as they scanned Washington Square and entered each shop to inquire whether anyone had seen Lizzie. She wasn’t in either the Whig or the Democratic village store, nor the tavern, nor Slade’s Meat Market. The barbershop was teeming with children crowding around to spend their pocket money on root beer and peanuts, but Lizzie was nowhere to be found. When they’d made their way all around the square, they stood in front of Singer’s Dry Goods. Anna strode toward the entrance but Louisa hesitated.

Anna turned back. “Come on, let’s . . .” She looked up at the sign over the door. “Oh.” Louisa’s eyes filled with tears as she silently admonished herself. Something terrible could have happened to Lizzie and still she could only think about her own discomfort at having to see Joseph Singer. She was a selfish sister—if guilt was her fate, she deserved it, she thought.

“Lou, why don’t you wait here, and I’ll go inside to check?”

Louisa shook her head, determined. “No. I am coming with you.”

They entered and the familiar bell sounded above their heads. Louisa hadn’t been in since the morning of the circus, and the smell of cinnamon and spices was a bittersweet reminder of that day. Her heart pounded against her ribs and she didn’t dare look toward the counter where a woman stood waiting to pay for her purchase.

“Hello,
Mr.
Singer,” Anna called out, more for Louisa’s benefit than to get his attention. She pulled Louisa by the sleeve toward where Joseph’s father stood hunched over the cash drawer, his trembling hand spilling the coins as he tried to place them in their proper compartments. A stern woman held a cake of soap wrapped in paper and sighed impatiently. “If you drop my coins and they roll under the counter, I’m not going to give you any more.”