The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott (13 page)

“But you are so quiet.”

“My body and voice are silent. But the noise inside my head is like a carnival. A cacophony.”

Louisa had nodded, solemn. “What is
cacophony
?”

“Tomorrow, my dear. I will tell you all about it tomorrow.” He had taken her on his knee and she watched him fade back into his faraway place. She stared at the fire then and yearned for some grand ideas of her own, but all she could think of was a hand mirror she’d seen that day at school. Rebecca Carson, a clerk’s daughter, held it in her palm as the other girls crowded around her to look, the silver flowers etched along its handle glinting in the sun. Louisa had wanted to touch it but stayed behind the other girls, her hands pressed to her sides. Knowing the pretty little mirror existed filled her with a kind of grief she had never known before. Something so exquisite was in the world, and she would never, ever be able to have it. Sitting on Bronson’s knee, she held fast to her whimper until it died in her throat.

And now here she was so many years later, and she understood little more about the workings of her father’s mind. She turned her needlework on her lap and smoothed the stitches of the nosegay she was embroidering on a handkerchief. A lady in Boston who knew Mrs. Emerson bought them by the dozen. Anna and Abba sat beside her knitting caps for the newborn babies in town. Lizzie sat near the fire at Abba’s insistence to avoid a chill, though the balmy August night held little chance of that.

Suddenly May galloped into the room, her voice bursting through the peaceful parlor.

“Catherine Singer is having her birthday! She is turning fifteen, and guess where her father gave her permission to go?”

“May,” Abba scolded. “Please don’t shout.”

“It’s the circus, Marmee. She is going to the circus in Keene, and she has invited me and Anna and Louisa—I mean, Anna and Louisa and me—along. And Lizzie too, if she is well enough. May we go? Please, Marmee?”

Lizzie snapped her book closed and pressed it to her chest. “The circus?” She exhaled a plaintive sigh that tugged at Louisa’s heart. “I have always wanted to see the circus.”

Abba looked at Lizzie in surprise and then turned to May. “My dear, you know how I feel about those dreadful displays. The people and animals are filthy, they travel from place to place doing so many . . . unnatural things.”

“But . . . everyone from town will be there.”

“Everyone? Is that so.”

“Well, everyone who is anyone, of course. I simply
must
go.”

An amused smile flashed across Abba’s face. “I see. Well, only if your sisters go with you.”

“Does that mean,” Lizzie ventured tentatively, “that
I
may go along?” She reached into a basket on the hearth and removed a pair of tattered slippers, edging on her knees to the foot of Bronson’s chair, and placed them gently on his feet. His gaze never wavered from the fire.

Abba grimaced. “Oh, my darling, I didn’t mean . . . Well, I was thinking of Anna and Louisa. I fear you aren’t well enough for a long journey in an open carriage.”

Lizzie’s face fell, her eyes filling as she looked away. “Of course. I suppose I would ruin everyone’s fun if I were to have a spell.”

Louisa watched her carefully, then looked at Anna. She could see from her older sister’s expression that they shared a common thought.

“That’s nonsense, Lizzie,” Louisa said. “I think you’re well enough for an afternoon—and whose health can’t be improved by fresh air and a day out with friends? Please, Marmee—reconsider. Lizzie can accompany May.”

Abba clutched her hands together in her lap. “I don’t know. . . . Let me think about it.”

Lizzie gave Abba a pleading look and Louisa felt a surge of compassion. It was true that as a girl Lizzie hadn’t loved to run and play like her sisters, but when had she ever been given the chance? Abba held on to her so tightly, protecting her, limiting her exposure to the world. It was important to Abba to be needed.

“Marmee, you are too protective. Lizzie is not a child!”

“Louisa, that’s enough. I said I will consider it.”

“What is there to consider? As an adult she should not
need
your permission.”

“
Louisa
.” Anna’s mouth was agape. “Do not be insolent. You’ve made your view clear. Now, leave off. Marmee, forgive her. You know how her mouth can run away from her.” Louisa glared at Anna.

Abba looked silently between her two older daughters and then over at Lizzie, whose eyes were trained on her lap. “I hope I never see the day when my protection and care are unwelcome.”

Louisa’s righteousness subsided and remorse took its place. “Oh, Marmee, I’m sorry. It is only my passion getting in the way of my mind again. You know we would be lost without you.”

Abba gave her a steely expression and sighed. She turned to May.

“As to the general outing, I could not consent unless your older sisters accompanied you.”

“Oh,” Anna broke in. “Please don’t ask it. I have so little freedom as it is, and Saturdays are my only day . . .” May turned to her, her hands clasped beatifically.

“When is the party, May?” Louisa bristled. May often asked for, and got, all the things she wanted.

“Next Saturday.”

Anna relaxed. “Then I cannot go. I’ve promised Margaret I will help her shop for fabric.”

“Louy, then,” May said, turning to her. “My dear, dear, lovely older sister.”

Louisa rolled her eyes. “May, I do not wish to spend my Saturday with a bunch of children and smelly elephants.”

“
Marmee
,” May squealed in desperation. She made her final desperate appeal. “Last year, Rose Wilson had the tiniest of fevers and her mother made her stay home from the school picnic. She missed out on everything, and all the other girls stopped talking to her. She told me later she would rather have gone to the picnic and died the next day than suffer the ostrich-iza . . . ostrich-era . . .”

A grin burst through Louisa’s worried expression. “May, do you mean to say
ostracism
?”

She looked puzzled. “You mean it has nothing at all to do with the bird?”

Anna giggled beside her and placed her arm across May’s shoulders. “No, nothing at all.”

“Well, anyway, they did give her an os-tra-cism, and—”

Louisa broke in. “Oh, for
heaven’s
sake!” She looked at Abba, whose dour demeanor had been washed away by May’s charm. Perhaps because she was younger, perhaps because she was the prettiest, the one who demanded that the world take notice of her, May seemed to represent for Abba the possibility that the family might one day transcend its humble circumstances. Louisa knew her mother had come from a family of Sewalls and Quincys—good New England stock with a history and station. Abba’s own marriage had been an imprudent match in the eyes of her family, and she liked to boast of this fact, as proof, Louisa supposed, that the things of the world meant nothing to her. Yet it was plain to see that she had ambitions for her youngest daughter.

Louisa ventured tentatively back to the subject she’d left off, as if it were a scab she couldn’t help but pick. “Abba, if I agree, then Lizzie may come along as well?” Lizzie sat forward, clutching at the book in her lap, the ends of her fingers gone white with the pressure.

“That I cannot promise. We must wait until next Saturday morning to see that she is feeling strong and the weather is fair.”

Lizzie turned to Louisa. “I am feeling quite strong now—I’m
sure
I will be well.”

Abba rubbed her arm. “We will see, my darling.”

Louisa gave her youngest sister a weary look. “Very well, May. You have won your prize. I’ll go with you to Keene.”

May squealed and clapped her hands, then danced around the room to kiss her mother and each of her sisters on the cheek.

“May, how will you girls travel to Keene?” Abba asked.

“Ah, I can’t believe I forgot to tell you the
best
part,” she said, placing her palm on her chest for dramatic effect. “We will travel in Catherine’s father’s new carriage. Her brother will drive us.”

“Joseph?” Anna said with eyebrows raised. She looked coyly at Louisa.

Louisa dropped her eyes to the fabric pinched between her fingers.

Abba’s eyes darted from Anna to Louisa, instantly sensing what passed between them. “Has this information helped ease your reluctance to spend an afternoon with—what was it you said? ‘Children and smelly elephants’? ”

Anna nodded. “Yes, I believe that
is
what she said.”

Louisa tipped her nose toward the ceiling. “Not in the slightest. If anything, I have something else to dread.”

Lizzie looked worriedly at Louisa.

“Oh, don’t worry, Lizzie. Joseph Singer may be the most presumptuous, disagreeable—”

Anna cut her off, laughing. “Take care not to say anything you’ll regret, Louisa.”

“—insufferable young man,” she continued, “but I wouldn’t let
that
stand in the way of making sure you get to see the circus.”

Lizzie beamed.

“Provided you are well,” Abba cautioned, as she placed her hand on Lizzie’s. “Provided the day is warm and dry.”

May pirouetted around the parlor. Passing the table next to Bronson’s chair, her knee upset his saucer, and the lukewarm tea splashed across his lap. He jumped to his feet and, for the first time since they’d settled in the parlor two hours before, acknowledged the existence of his family.

“What the
devil
is going on? ” he barked.

“May has prevailed upon Louisa to perform the chore of chaperoning her to the circus with her friends,” Abba said, accustomed to Bronson’s tendency to arrive late to conversations taking place right in front of him. She looked knowingly at Anna, all the while maintaining the rhythm of her knitting needles. “But we do not believe Louisa will suffer
over
much.”

 

 

The acre on which Nicholas Sutton’s
partially constructed house stood had a rocky western edge and sloped away from the river, cresting in a broad hill. The site was a quarter mile up River Road from the much larger property where Nicholas had grown up, the home where his parents and sister still lived, shaded by a stand of beech trees edging the meadow where their horses nosed the grass in fair weather.

June had been a productive month, as Nicholas had explained to Anna at the swimming party. With his father’s help, as well as Joseph and Samuel’s, Nicholas had drawn up plans for the house, a two-story Italianate like the ones springing up all over Boston. By the first day of summer they’d raised the frame and amassed all the materials needed to complete the job—shingles for the roof, glass for the windows, and wood for the trim. If the weather cooperated, Nicholas said he thought he’d be finished by summer’s end.

Anna and Louisa decided to walk the long way to the Elmwood Inn for rehearsal on Friday morning, heading west toward the river instead of northwest toward Washington Square, so they might walk by and see the project for themselves.

They heard hammering and the wheezing rasp of a saw before the house came into view. Then they passed a stand of trees and it appeared. The sun shining between the ribs of the frame made a shadow like a railroad track across the ground. Samuel noticed the girls first. He stood at the base of a tall ladder leaned against the side of the house, holding it steady for Nicholas, who was perched on the top rung hammering a board into place.

“Good morning,” Samuel said with a friendly nod meant to substitute for a wave. He didn’t take his hands from the ladder.

“Isn’t it?” Anna said. “I try to imprint this sunshine in my mind and save it for January. It never does seem to work, though.” Samuel smiled.

“Ho, there!” Nicholas called from above, waving his hammer. “Where are the pretty ladies off to today?”

Louisa cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “To the same place you should be going. Rehearsal.”

“Rehearsal! Of course!” Nicholas called down. “We were just about to finish up here and head over.”

Louisa laughed, shielding her eyes from the sun. “Yes, I’ve no doubt of that. All the same, perhaps it
is
fortunate we happened to pass by.”

Nicholas affected the mien of the wrongly accused. “I hope you don’t mean to imply we
forgot
about rehearsal.”

“Oh, never.” Louisa and Anna giggled.

Nicholas held his hammer to his breast. “And disobey our commanding officer? We wouldn’t think of it.”

“I should hope not,” Anna said. “Louisa does not look kindly on dissent in the ranks.”

They heard a rhythmic thudding above as Joseph made his way across the open slats in the roof to their side of the house. He scuttled on all fours like a crab, his boots on one slat and his palms on another, moving two boards at a time. Louisa felt her body tense up when he came into view. It was thrilling to see him in the yellow morning light, his shirt cuffs rolled up to the elbows, his skin brown. But just behind the excitement was her dread of what it all could mean.

He peered down at them. “What’s all this racket over here?”

“Joe, I was just explaining to the young ladies that we fully intended to repair to rehearsal at the designated time.”

“Oh, yes,” said Joseph, catching on. “We planned to arrive just when we were told.”

“And what time was that?” Louisa asked, willing confidence into her voice.

“Why,” Joseph replied, “the very time you instructed and not a second later. You are the director after all, Miss Louisa. Your word is law.”

Louisa relished the praise a moment, then rolled her eyes. “Yes, but
what
time was it?”

Joseph looked at his friend. “Well, that would be Nick’s department. I believe we put
you
in charge of the schedule.”

“No, sir. It was Mr. Parker,” Nicholas replied, then shouted down, solemnly shaking his head. “Samuel is in charge of all appointments.”