The Orchard House

by Heidi Chiavaroli

  I smoothed my dress, straightened my posture. My friend was older, and though I respected her, I had to claim my life as my own. My marriage as my own. If I did not do so now, when would the time present itself?

  Like it or not, this was where I belonged. I would not skulk away in shame when troubles came upon me.

  “I thank you for what I’m sure you believe is sound advice, but this is my marriage. My life. And I’m not entirely certain you can relate all that well to either.”

  My words came out sharper than I intended, and they caused her jaw to fall open, her brows to rise.

  I was a coward. I couldn’t abide her concern, and so I feigned strength. And at the same time, I wanted to fix this myself. To prove to her and anyone else that it was only a bump in the road of a normal marriage—a down of the many ups and downs. This was not failure.

  She dragged in a breath, and I tried to guard my heart from feeling pity for her, for her heart was genuine. I successfully did not budge.

  She stood. “Very well, then. Since you seem to think yourself entirely capable, I will leave you to it. I can’t abide by dishonorable men, but neither can I abide by women who can’t recognize the power of their own worth within them. We just fought a war to free the slaves, do you recall? A war for which your own brother gave his life. If you allow your marriage to shackle you in this manner—if you choose to allow this ruination of body, mind, and soul—then you are in the same position as those Africans who know they are free yet are still yoked to their former masters.”

  She left then, and once I heard the door shut, I screamed out my frustration, fought against the urge to throw a brush at the door where she last stood with her haughty words.

  This was my life. My marriage. And I would not run from it. I would fight for it. And I would save it.

  Nathan came home the next day. Before I saw him, I heard him walk to his study, and then I heard the clinking of glass against glass. He came into the kitchen with an armful of what I saw now was a large collection of glass bottles—liquor—from his cabinet.

  I stood aside as he placed them on the counter, watched as one by one he unstopped each and dumped the contents down the sink. The glugging sound of the liquid was the only thing that could be heard.

  Only after all were drained did he turn to me. “And that is the last time there will ever be liquor in this house again, Johanna. I promise it.”

  He had made a similar promise before, but I hadn’t the heart to voice my doubts with his eyes so alive with determination. He put a finger to my face, and it took every effort within me not to cringe at his touch. The pad of his skin just grazed the edges of what I knew to be a fierce black-and-blue mark. So gentle, so caring. The complete opposite of how I had seen him last.

  I wanted to believe this. To fall into his arms and forgive and move forward. Wasn’t that why I hadn’t run to the Alcotts in the first place?

  And yet the trust I held for him had been torn, like a worn shirt shredded for the rag bin. I wondered if it would ever be whole again.

  I didn’t speak. Didn’t know what to say.

  “Johanna, please forgive me. I know I don’t deserve it—I hate myself just looking at what I’ve done. That wasn’t me. Please, dear, please say you’ll forgive me or I shan’t want to live another day.”

  I nodded and even welcomed his lips when they bent to mine. It felt good in his arms, good to be whole. He had made a grievous mistake and recognized that. We would move forward and start anew after all.

  Lord willing.

  Three days later, Nathan and I had settled back in and seemed to appreciate one another anew. I even planned on bringing up the subject of my poetry once again. While I was making a glorious oyster pie to smooth over any of my husband’s still-ruffled feathers, a message boy came to my door with a large package. I recognized the writing immediately as Louisa’s.

  After the boy left, I sat on the porch and unwound the ribbon from the thick sheets of paper. It looked like an entire book.

  The first sheet held a letter, and when I spotted my name at the top, I found myself grateful that the package was meant for me, that Louisa hadn’t completely cast me off over our disagreement the other day.

  Dear Johanna,

  I understand you are cross with me, yet I hope this is not the end of our friendship. I wrote this last year, but Elliott would not have it, saying it was too long and too sensational. I’ve since worked to shorten Fair Rosamond to make it a bit more palatable for the public. Please share with me your opinion, for I value it greatly still.

  If not, please send it back and we will continue on with no hard feelings.

  Yours,

  Louisa

  I thought it odd that she would not come and speak to me about this, that she would send me a story and ask for help after our frosty parting.

  In truth, it was easier to stay mad at Louisa for suggesting such an abominable thing as leaving my husband. It was easier to stay isolated from her.

  But holding the heavy manuscript in my hands, I simply could not bring myself to ignore her request.

  I started as soon as I finished the pie and read the first half of it in one day. Nathan came home that night and spotted it, asking what it was, and after I told him, he didn’t quite successfully hide the roll of his eyes over one of Louisa’s manuscripts. But he left it alone and I finished reading it over the next two days.

  It was good. Still very sensational, but good. Still, I couldn’t quite ignore why Louisa had asked me to read it in the first place. Yes, I’d given her my opinion before, but something about the manner with which she asked this time felt urgent, personal.

  I knew why after reading the novel.

  It featured a distraught heroine—Rosamond—living alone with a sullen grandfather on an English island. Rosamond longs for escape and freedom, even makes the bold and foolish proclamation that she often feels she would sell her soul to the devil himself if it meant a “year of freedom.” Shortly after, her grandfather is visited by Phillip Tempest, a man who resembles Mephistopheles, a demon borrowed from German folklore.

  Rosamond falls in love quickly, and though she realizes Phillip has his own moral struggles, she believes that her love is powerful enough to save him. A year later, her husband admits that Rosamond has stolen his heart, but their happiness is not to last, for Rosamond begins to suspect that Tempest’s evil streak runs fouler than she could have guessed. Her suspicions are confirmed when she finds that Phillip already has a wife and a son—and that he has fooled her into becoming his mistress. Rosamond escapes right away, but Tempest chases after her, finding her again and again, in some ways enjoying the perverse chase and the many disguises Rosamond attempts.

  With the help of a handsome Father Ignatius, a priest she has met while hiding within a convent, Rosamond finally—years later—returns to her grandfather’s island where a tragic end awaits them all.

  As I read, I found myself cheering Rosamond on, wanting her to find freedom from the man she thought she had married. While the ending echoed Moods just a bit, I didn’t find that the disastrous conclusion bothered me so much this time.

  Yet something else did.

  There was a message here, and I knew Louisa meant it for me. Though I doubted she had tailored the story specifically for me, I did know how passionate she was toward women in situations like Rosamond’s. Women who were oppressed.

  And I hated that she viewed me that way.

  Yet even through this, I could see she only wanted my best. She wanted me to recognize myself in her Rosamond, to understand her plight, admire her, and perhaps take up one of my own.

  But I had not married a man who already had a family. Nathan was my husband. And he had not oppressed me. He asked for my forgiveness. He loved me.

  I was not Rosamond. Or Sylvia. Or any fictional character of hers. Truthfully, I tried not to let it irk me that she felt I needed to learn through her stories. Could she not simply be my friend?

  I di
d not wait in returning the manuscript. Despite my still-healing face, I walked down to Orchard House and knocked on the kitchen door.

  The hired girl answered. “Hello,” I greeted. “Might Miss Alcott be in?”

  “Yes, she told me to fetch her if you called.” The girl bustled up the stairs and I made my way into the parlor, wondered on Mrs. Alcott and how she fared, if she was abed this day.

  Louisa came down the stairs, gave me a bright smile.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt your writing.”

  She shook her head. “I’m glad you’ve come.” Her gaze fell to the manuscript in my hands. “You do not wish to read it?”

  “On the contrary, I have read it.”

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  She didn’t ask for my thoughts, though I knew she wanted them.

  “Please, sit.” She gestured to a chair and I couldn’t help but think how formal we suddenly were, how the tension of our last encounter had followed us. “You’re healing well.” She gestured to her own face.

  “Don’t,” I ground out. I couldn’t ignore it altogether, but I didn’t want to go down this road right now.

  She straightened. “Very well, then.”

  Oh, I hated how this thing was between us! Couldn’t friends disagree and remain amicable?

  “Your story is amazing. I could hardly put it down,” I began.

  She inched to the edge of her seat. “That’s wonderful to hear. I am curious what you thought of the end.”

  “It reminded me of Moods, but this time I found it . . . appropriate.”

  “And what did you think of Rosamond?”

  “I thought her foolish at the beginning, though I ended up pitying her and wishing for her escape from Tempest.”

  Louisa swallowed, seeming to choose her words carefully. “I have always had a heart for a woman’s freedom—you know that. It’s why I wrote the story.”

  I looked down at the front page. “And yet you will not submit it under your own name?” For it read A. M. Barnard, not Louisa May Alcott.

  She leaned back in her chair again, looked out the window. “I have worked hard to gain the readership I have. This is one of the tales I wrote for me. I am not certain my current readership will find it to their liking. If a publisher even wants it, that is. But I did not just write it for me or for readers. I was thinking of you as I reworked it, Johanna. I thought of John and how I wish I could have done more for him in his last days. Perhaps I am trying to make up for that.”

  “For all your talk about liberating women, you seem to claim a stake in my own freedom.”

  She looked at me, hurt in her eyes. She shook her head. “I only wish to help.”

  “Please, Louisa, let it lie. Can we continue our friendship as it once was, without this thing between us?”

  She didn’t answer right away, and I wondered if she might refuse me. “Yes, dear,” she whispered. “I will always be your friend.”

  With tentative steps I approached my husband where he sat near the fireplace, reading the newspaper. I held my poems in my hands, clutched them tight enough that the slight dampness from my palms moistened the paper.

  I stood before him and he placed the paper aside, attentive as he had been for days on end since he emptied his liquor bottles. “Hello, my dear.”

  I relaxed at his words. “I was hoping to speak with you.”

  He shifted in his seat, patted his lap. Part of me wished to sit on his knee, to be close in that way, another part of me thought I should stand, for I wished to talk business.

  In the end I chose his lap, knowing his mood would sour should I spurn his invitation. But I could not look into his eyes once there, so very close as we were. I near crinkled the papers in my hands. “I was wondering . . . if you might be willing to use some of my poems in any of your publications? Miss Alcott thinks them quite good and I . . . I long to be a part of your work in some way.”

  The knee opposite the one I sat upon started jiggling, beating out nervous energy. I hated what it seemed to portend.

  “This is important to you, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Yes, Nathan. Very much. I want to be alongside you in this way, to share this with you. I always thought we would, but life got busy. Now . . .”

  He placed a gentle finger on my lips. “Hush, dear. You needn’t explain. Of course I will read them.”

  He took them from me and laid them atop his paper. Then he lowered his mouth to my neck, began kissing just below my jaw, causing shivers of pleasure to chase along my spine, though I couldn’t be certain if the source of pleasure stemmed from his warm lips or the prospect of sharing such an important, intimate part of myself as I had poured out into my poetry.

  When I tidied up the parlor the next morning, both newspaper and poems were gone.

  Two days passed without Nathan broaching the subject. When we sat down to dinner on the third day, I waited until he finished chewing his first bite of dumpling before opening my mouth.

  “Did you have a chance to look at any of my poems, dear?”

  He took his time swallowing his water. “I did. They are . . . well done, my love. I shared them with Uncle, but he is not certain he can find a place for them just now.”

  My shoulders slumped. “Oh.”

  “Don’t despair, Johanna. Publishing is a consistently changing phenomenon. We’ll see what comes of it.”

  I nodded, licked my lips, preparing myself to ask whether he thought my poems worthy of publication.

  But I couldn’t push the words forth, so fearful of more rejection. If he thought them good, he would have said so. He would have highlighted a certain line or stanza that he thought particularly beautiful, he would have praised my use of imagery or asked the source of my ideas.

  Yet he did none of these things. And I was left clinging to the hazy hope that my poems would be remembered sometime in the future for one of his uncle’s publications. I thought of them in Boston on some desk, open and exposed, visible for any wandering eyes to see.

  And I wished I had never asked Nathan to read them in the first place.

  A year passed and we got on well enough. I did not see Louisa much, though I tried to explain that away due to Louisa’s living in Boston for most of the winter, as the new editor for Merry’s Museum, a magazine for both boys and girls—just one of the many things Nathan seemed much afflicted with.

  Our marriage and home were peaceable by anyone’s standards, though I secretly longed for more. For an intimacy that went beyond the mere physical, for a deeper connection to my husband. And yet he didn’t hesitate to pour out his heart—only it often came in the form of grumblings and complaints about circumstances I wished he had the courage to change.

  Though the liquor was not in the home, the shadows that plagued Nathan never quite left him. Even when I announced that I carried his child, the momentary happiness did not linger long.

  He stayed in Boston often, and I secretly wondered if he drank his liquor there. Though I never once voiced my misgivings. Instead, I turned to my writing, finding solace in the storm of words that stirred my heart, in pouring my troubled soul out to the waiting arms of a blank page.

  The blank page never turned away from me or spurned my advances. Always it welcomed.

  One day, Louisa came to my door. I embraced her, as I hadn’t realized she’d returned home. She looked at the small bump of my belly, plain to see under the summer dress I wore, and beamed. “Why didn’t you write?”

  I blushed. “One hardly writes of such things. Though I am certain you wouldn’t hesitate.”

  We laughed. It felt real and so very good.

  “It is wonderful to see you,” I said. “I look in on your mother once in a while and know she ails often. How did you find her?”

  “She grows feeble but at least has her comforts, now. And my time in Boston has allowed me to keep the hounds of care and debt from worrying her. For that I am grateful.”

  I gestured to the chairs on the porch, and we
sat, both preferring to be outside on such a beautiful day.

  “And your work in Boston? Does it suit you?”

  “Very well. I get much work done while I’m away and can find a bit of rest as well. I much prefer the city. You should come with me sometime. We could see a play and they always have stimulating talk at the new women’s club.”

  “That sounds wonderful.” Nathan had taken me once, when we courted. But never since.

  “Let’s plan it, then. For the fall perhaps? I plan to go back at that time. After I write this confounded girls’ book that Father has told Mr. Niles I will write.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad, Louisa. Have you begun it?”

  “Only just. We will see if it makes a go, I suppose.”

  We visited awhile longer, and when she stood to leave, she eyed me carefully. “You look well. Are things . . . ?”

  I wished she hadn’t raised the subject, but this time I could alleviate her fears over my well-being in good conscience. “Yes, things are near perfect.”

  Though I saw something of doubt in her eyes, I chose to ignore it. “And you, though I know you will be in a writing whirlwind for the next few months, please do tell me if you need anything.”

  “Just strength enough to write it.”

  “Then I will pray God give you it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  When tired, sad, or tempted, I find my best comfort in the woods, the sky, the healing solitude that lets my poor, weary soul find the rest, the fresh hope, or the patience which only God can give.

  ~ LMA

  Taylor

  I DIDN’T GO HOME. Back to the Bennetts’, rather. Instead, I drove past Victoria on the road and headed to Walden Pond, feeling that some time alone might soothe my spirit.

  When I glimpsed the calm body of water, I felt something within me relax and subside like a wave retreating upon the shore. I walked to a grove of trees just above the sandy beach area, out of the way of the scattering of people, and sat down. The scent of pine tugged some sort of calm within me.