The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott (22 page)

Louisa glanced at the clock in the back of the hall to see that it was nearly time to begin. The stagehands entered and began to arrange the set pieces to form the interior of the Crooked Billet, the public house of the inn and the setting for the opening scene. Toward the back of the stage they leaned a large plank against a wedge to form the illusion of a cellar door left ajar. Anna and Margaret, as Patty and Lady Somerford, entered talking of Major Murray, secret lover of the Lady and currently imprisoned as a traitor to the king.

At last, from the “cellar,” Louisa bellowed her first line: “I’ve told thee so a hundred times, fool; art thee deaf!” She tromped into the stage lights in an exaggerated stagger and the audience burst with laughter. Though the house lamps were dark, she imagined Fanny Kemble in the front row, laughing along with the rest. She felt truly buoyed for the first time in weeks. She had always loved the stage; she had always loved to make people laugh. One certainly could not have everything she wanted in life, but she could find the things she was good at and practice them with passion, with deep commitment, and try with all her heart to become the person the Almighty Friend intended her to be. It was a modern day. Marriage and motherhood were far from the only things a woman could seek to excel in. Just look at Fanny Kemble.

And then, as quickly as it began, the play ended. As they drew the curtain closed, it wobbled on the crude pulley system they had constructed—a comical reminder that indeed they were not acting in a Boston theater—and the cast gathered in a line across the stage to take its bows. Louisa held Anna’s hand and walked forward, smiling broadly at the cheering audience members, now on their feet. As the stage lights dimmed, Louisa caught sight of Fanny’s graceful clap—the movement of her slender arms, the rhythm of the fingertips on her left hand as they struck the palm of her right. The entire night had been a balm on Louisa’s tender, battered heart. The world seemed to open to her then, unfolding in ways she hadn’t seen before. Suddenly, a vision of herself a few years hence flashed through her mind. She walked down Beacon Street in Boston, three books in the crook of her arm, each with her name pressed into the spine. In her pocket, a fifty-dollar advance rustled against the fabric of her dress and she was headed back to her rented room, where she would put the kettle on the stove and draw a fresh sheet of paper from the drawer.

 

 

Back in the “dressing room”
after their final curtain calls, the female cast members embraced joyously and chattered about the performance’s best moments. They removed the pins from their hair, unfastened one another’s costumes, and changed back into the dresses they had on when they arrived. The costumes lay in a heap on the floor.

Harriet, acting once again like the loudmouthed toad Louisa thought she resembled, shouted above the feminine rancor to gather their attention. “Everyone is invited to Birch Glen for a celebration. My mother and I have been baking cakes all week!”

The girls cheered and began in a flurry to fasten capes and bonnets, preparing to leave. Harriet looked at the pile of costumes on the dusty floor of the classroom. “Wait—Margaret worked so hard on these costumes—we can’t just leave them to get damp and wrinkled. They’ll have to be folded,” she said in a tone that made it clear
she
would not be doing the folding.

The others nodded but Louisa held up her hand. “Why don’t you let me do it, and I’ll be just a few minutes behind you to the party?” She was desperate for a moment alone. She wasn’t ready for the evening to end, wasn’t ready to return to reality and all its confusions.

“And I’ll help,” Anna chimed in. “It will only take a moment.”

“No, Anna,” Harriet said. “You must come now. I have it on good authority that Mr. Nicholas Sutton will be an early guest. I think I know whom he will be anxious to see!”

The group broke into laughter and giddy chatter. Anna looked at Louisa, her cheeks pink with embarrassment, but her eyes full of yearning. Louisa clutched Anna’s hand. “Go ahead,” she whispered.

“I’m right behind you. Will you tell Marmee and Father to go ahead without me? I’ll be there soon.” Anna nodded and kissed her sister’s cheek, and the throng of girls poured into the school’s hallway.

Louisa leaned against the teacher’s desk and stood very still with her arms at her side, listening. She heard the lilting feminine voices take on a baritone accompaniment as the girls met up with the boys in the hallway. The audience waited to receive them, and she heard Harriet announce once again the invitation to the post-performance celebration. A few moments later a great silence descended on the entire building and Louisa gave a relieved sigh. Alone at last, she could finally relish the evening’s successes.

She crouched down and swept the costumes up in her arms, carrying them over to the teacher’s desk, where she could stand folding and letting her mind drift away. Margaret had done a beautiful job with the sewing. And she’d made them so quickly, too. She would be an excellent mistress of her new home with Samuel once they were married. Louisa felt happy for them but no longer felt the sting of envy. People were meant for different things in life, she reflected, and keeping a house, running a kitchen, sewing linens, and tending the chickens—these were not things Louisa could imagine herself doing, no matter how great the love that bound her as a wife to her husband. In that moment of unguarded reverie, an image of Joseph came into her mind and ran its course before she had time to cut it short.

It was the premonition of her future self she’d had onstage, ferrying copies of her books back to a room that was all her own, but this time she reached the parlor of the rooming house to find Joseph waiting on a settee, his hat resting on his lap. Waiting for her. He would see the books in her hands and break into a congratulatory smile, running his fingers over the covers and spines. He would flip them open to see the quality of the typesetting, but there would be no need to read them. He’d have read them all before. She would dash up to her room to place them on the shelf next to her desk and hurry back downstairs; they would set off for an afternoon walk, as they did most afternoons, and converse about the great moral issues on the minds of all thinking people: the question of slavery, the question of women’s rights.

But reality broke into her reverie. If only it could be that simple! If only society were not so narrow in its notions of love and companionship! Louisa placed the last folded dress upon the pile, shaking her head in confusion. Surely it pleased God to see love grow thick and verdant in the light of equality and friendship. And yet it could not be.

She heard a floorboard creak behind her and spun around with a startled gasp. He stood in the doorway. Not the Joseph of her reverie, but Joseph flesh and bone and gentle voice.

“You’re still here.”

His pale eyes caressed Louisa’s face like two hands. Her heart was at once exultant and rent anew.

 

 

 

I
t took merely a few seconds for Joseph to cross from the doorway to where Louisa stood at the front of the room, but it could have been years. Anticipation bent her like an archer’s bow.

And then he was at her side. “You were wonderful,” he nearly whispered. He looked tired and a little grave, two qualities she never would have imagined seeing in his face.

She felt her cheeks warming. “Wonderful as a loudmouthed old lady. I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment.” She gave him a wry smile.

He shook his head, undeterred. “I couldn’t take my eyes off you.” He stood very near her now and she could feel the heat of his breath. She was afraid to touch even his hand for fear of what might happen.

“Louisa . . .” he began. She focused her eyes on his shoulder, the safest place she could find, though it too had its trappings—a wide masculine slope, the promise of slick skin beneath the cloth of his shirt. He tipped her chin up with his finger so that she could look nowhere else but his eyes. “Maybe now you will give me a moment to explain—”

“I know. Margaret told me about Nora, your father . . . all of it.”

“So you understand, then?”

Louisa nodded, placing her hand on his forearm. “This is what you must do, for your family’s sake. It is a great burden, but you must bear it.”

“Then you
don’t
understand. Listen to me—I thought I had reconciled myself to marrying Nora, but when I saw you tonight, I nearly splintered in two. I have made a grave mistake.”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “Oh, why did you come? Nothing has changed since you first agreed to this arrangement. There’s nothing to be done about it.”

His eyes grew slightly damp and his voice broke. “I cannot bear it. I won’t. Do you not feel the same?”

Before she could temper her reply, she spoke. “I do.” Perhaps the evening’s triumphs had made her bold. The words began tumbling out—it felt futile to try to stop them. “I’ve thought of little else but you these last weeks.”

He exhaled with relief and placed his palm on the back on her hair, drawing her face toward his. They pressed their foreheads together and she felt the sensation of contact resonate throughout her body. He brushed his thumb across her lips.

She heard a rustle of paper on the other side of the room and instinctively pulled away with a gasp. Joseph turned toward the doorway and Louisa glanced all around, but no one was there. The rustle came again and Louisa looked to see the head of a tiny mouse peeking up from beneath a pile of papers. She smiled, relieved. “We are not alone,” she said, pointing. Joseph closed his eyes and shook his head, laughing at their guilty reaction to the thought of being seen together. The mouse had broken the tension between them, at least for the moment.

“Let’s go outside,” Louisa suggested. She didn’t dare ask whether he was coming to the party at Birch Glen, and whether he would be bringing his intended wife with him. The theme of the night had been the escape from reality. Why rush back to it now? she reasoned. She placed the folded costumes in the trunk and, before she swung the lid closed, pulled a shawl from the pile. The autumn evenings had been getting cooler. She extinguished the lamp and they stood in the dark for a long moment, lacing their fingertips together. Determined to breathe, Louisa pushed past Joseph and led the way down the dark hallway toward the door.

The night air felt like a cool bath and brought her back to her senses. The thing was to keep moving, and they began to walk quickly, not along the walkway toward the street and Washington Square, as she had intended, but instead up the path that led into the woods behind the Academy and out through the dense stand of maple and elm, behind which open land stretched, patched with farms. There was no hesitation in either of their strides. A line of Whitman’s lingered in her mind as she climbed the path, and she marveled at the miraculous truth of his words:
Hands I have taken, face I have kissed, mortal I have ever touched, it shall be you.

They made their way uphill along the narrow path. Louisa walked in front, pushing low-hanging branches away, sensing the sinewy tickle of spiderwebs. They reached the last of the trail, where hunters came to take deer and pheasant. But now it was empty, save for the buttery moon hanging low in the sky.

Joseph struck out ahead, taking Louisa’s hand and pulling her along. He sat down in a feathery patch of weeds so high they almost reached his shoulders, and she sat down beside him. She felt afraid to look at him the way one does not look directly at the sun. Her left hand rested on his right palm and she felt his fingertips run along the inside of her fingers, up her wrist toward her elbow. He whispered her name and she turned toward him, her breath an imperceptible pant, to see the yellow light of the moon washing over his features.

He took her face in his hands, his thumbs pressed against her jaw, and pulled her mouth toward his. The kiss was hungry, aching, long. Louisa felt she’d like to leap into his mouth, be swallowed whole between his lips. His hands coursed her shoulders and down her back, roving frantically, taking her in. Her heart began to pound and she felt she would cry out with fear. Never had she felt her mind in such opposition to her body.

In Joseph’s eyes she saw only gentle affection. He had felt her stiffen and pull away and he slowed the fumbling of his fingers at her stays, taking her fully into his arms, pressing her face to his neck, stroking her hair.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I only wanted to be here with you, nothing more. I only wanted to sit here beneath the moon with you, share the warmth of your kiss. Only that.”

She pulled away to face him and reached to the back of her head where his hand had been, slid out a few pins and released her raven curtain of hair, which fell in waves down her back. As she began to recline onto the soft ground he stopped her, slipped out of his jacket, and spread it on the weeds beneath her head. She slid his suspender off his shoulder and he lowered himself down upon her, taking her mouth to his once again.

 

 

 

L
ouisa’s mind felt completely empty. She rolled on her side and felt the cool silk lining of Joseph’s jacket against her cheek. A black ant ascended the sleeve of her dress, which lay rumpled on the grass beside her. He was unmoved by what he had surely witnessed from his perch on a blade of grass a few minutes before. Louisa supposed it was hard to scandalize an ant.

Joseph lay still beside her, his shirt open, and she placed her palm on his sternum to feel once again the galloping stampede of his heartbeat. He was so quiet she thought he might be asleep, but when she looked she saw that his eyes were open, scanning the sky. They lay in the tall weeds, concealed from the eyes of anyone who might pass along the path, though no one would. They seemed to be the only people in New Hampshire, in the world, for the moment.