Little Woman in Blue

by Jeannine Atkins

  May’s knees buckled. She might have fallen if Julian hadn’t grabbed her waist. She saw a feeble woman clinging to the elbow of a slender, redheaded young lady. It took a moment to recognize Louisa being helped by Julian’s sister, Una. May opened her mouth to cry out their names, but her voice caught. Even in the dim light, she could see that Louisa’s face was pale, with purple sores around her mouth. Her eyes rolled as she looked up. They cast over May but didn’t rest on her.

  Julian wrapped an arm around Louisa, but she wrenched herself away, spread her fingers, and scratched at the air. When her head wobbled, her bonnet slipped so that May could see that her hair was matted and thin.

  “I was coming back from visiting my aunt when I saw your father trying to help her through the Boston station.” Una choked back tears. “I told him I’d sit with her in the ladies’ compartment. I didn’t recognize her.”

  May squeezed her hand. Father and Julian helped Louisa onto the sleigh’s backseat. She screamed when they pulled up the bearskin and shoved it to the floor. As Father sat beside her and tugged it back up, May stepped into the front, turned around, and said, “Lu, you must stay warm.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m May. Abbie. Your sister. We’re going home.” May picked up the reins, then dropped them. She couldn’t see the road, which seemed hidden by more than darkness. She couldn’t remember which way anything was. She just sat, her chest heaving with sobs. She whispered, “Help.”

  Julian placed the reins back in her hands.

  “Grace, Dolly, run.” May lifted the reins with heavy arms, and they headed home.

  DURING THE FOLLOWING NIGHTS AND DAYS, MAY PUT compresses on Louisa’s forehead. She changed her nightgown often and rubbed her arms with cool cloths. Mother consulted a homeopath, who suggested herbs to bring down her dangerously high fever. Father was loyal to Dr. Bartlett, whose son was an army lieutenant and who burned his patients’ old bills every January so that they could start the New Year fresh. He used herbs, too, but also prescribed laudanum, which contained opium to dull the pain.

  May sat by Louisa for hours. Her eyes rolled up, opened wide, and then the lids slipped back down. She babbled about men with rifles, then screamed, “There’s a witch on the rafters.” As May tried to still Louisa’s flailing arms, she cried, “The roof is spinning off! Get out!”

  “I’m staying with you.” May pushed down her arms.

  At last Louisa grew calmer and slept. May twined ivy around her head, for she’d heard its leaves kept hair from falling out. She dozed in a chair, waking when she heard Louisa slide off the bed. Louisa tried to push herself to her knees, collapsed, and cried, “Someone’s calling me.”

  May’s hands turned cold. She bent over, gently shook her shoulders, and whispered, “Lu! Lu,” which blended with a whoo whoo from the darkness outside.

  “It’s an owl.” May helped her up.

  Louisa sobbed. “Why did you leave me alone with all those naked men?”

  “You’re safe in your room. Mother is downstairs.” May got her back into bed. “Anna would be here, but we can’t risk her catching your fever, endangering the baby.”

  “There’s a baby?”

  “There will be soon, the good Lord willing.” May stirred medicine and honey into lukewarm mint tea. She rocked Louisa until she slept. Instead of a lullaby, she murmured a litany of places they’d never seen, but must: Buckingham Palace, Notre Dame, the Louvre, Versailles, St. Peter’s, and the Parthenon.

  “Think of London, where you can see boys like the ones we read about in Dickens.” May knelt beside her, rubbed her back, and felt sharp bones protruding, like the wooden slats of a loom. Louisa’s legs were still muscular, hardly seeming to belong to the thin face that looked alternately flushed, gray, and tinted pale yellow. May brushed her hair, then pulling out loose strands that twisted through the bristles, she took out her sewing shears. She cut what was left of Louisa’s hair to just past her ears. When she slept, May prayed, “Please let her get well,” saying the words over and over like the hollow, stuttering cries of an owl. She wouldn’t ask for more.

  Another night, both May and Mother sat beside Louisa while she slept.

  “Her skin’s cooler. That’s a good sign,” Mother said.

  “She doesn’t know us half the time!” May couldn’t tell the disease from the medicines.

  “Of course she knows us. The doctor is coming tomorrow.”

  “What if she doesn’t live that long?”

  “She’ll be all right.”

  “How do you know? That’s what you said about Beth.”

  “I never said it about Beth. At least not when …”

  “I wasn’t there.” May broke in. “I should have brushed her hair. Instead you sent me to live with Aunt Bond.”

  “I didn’t want you to see Beth like that.”

  “I wasn’t a little girl to be sheltered. I was eighteen!”

  “We couldn’t take a chance with your health.”

  “You and Louisa took a chance. I should have insisted on staying. I was too old to let myself be convinced by letters saying that Beth seemed to be getting better.”

  “I don’t suppose it would have made a difference.”

  “It would have made a difference to me. I lost my last chance to know her more. Louisa said a mist rose from her body when she died. I wish I’d seen that.”

  “It was her soul.” Mother kept her eyes on the wall. “It was more than the fever with Beth. She wouldn’t eat. I tried tea cakes and puddings, all the things she used to like.”

  “Could someone fall sick from not wanting enough?” When Mother didn’t reply, May asked, “Was it a sort of melancholia?”

  “Dear me, Beth was never sad. She was the most peaceful soul I’ve ever known.”

  “She gave up too much. She should have fought instead of smiling and sewing pen wipers and needle cases for us.”

  May wept for the sister whose brow she’d never tried to cool. She’d been away, embroidering daisies onto the corners of handkerchiefs, conjugating French verbs, and making watercolors instead of singing her to sleep, tightening the ropes beneath her mattress, emptying chamber pots, doing all the things she now did for Louisa.

  One evening, May arranged pine boughs on the mantel to distract from the smells of sickness. She read aloud from one of Mr. Emerson’s essays. The simple words about moods like a string of beads slipped over her tongue like smooth pebbles, and seemed to calm Louisa. May went to the window and peered into the branches of the old elm, but she couldn’t spot the owl. If she were quiet enough, would the bird tell her something? Such a soft whoo whoo must matter. This was the sort of faith she sometimes felt when drawing. That a sound or sight was important just because it was there. And if she kept looking, listening, and drawing, she would know something she hadn’t when she began. She picked up a pencil and sketched one side of Louisa’s gaunt face. Looking was a form of love, a way to hold on.

  Then May must have slept. She heard chickadees before she felt light’s warmth on her eyelids, and she looked out to see the first traces of sun. She wound a shawl over her head, shoulders, and chest. Seeing her breath in the cold air, she added sticks to the fire. She went to the kitchen and brought up a tray she’d arranged with porridge, rose geranium leaves tucked under the warm teapot, toast, and jam.

  She forced open a window, its panes crackled with frost, and sprinkled sunflower seeds on the snow-covered sills. She loved the round bodies of chickadees, the swift hammering motion of their striped heads. She sat in the rocking chair, straightened Louisa’s lace cap, and slipped broken pieces of toast between her chapped lips. Voices rose from downstairs, from Mrs. Hawthorne, who brought her sewing over every morning to stitch while listening to Mother’s worries. May heard a log fall, the hiss of ashes. A shadow fell from the windowsill across the pine plank floor. It might be as beautiful as anything in Paris.

  No, she didn’t think so. She wrapped her arm around Louisa’s head and s
aid, “You must get well, my owl. Please. We haven’t been to Europe yet. We haven’t seen the water lilies open at dawn.”

  5

  SİSTERS

  May didn’t know if it was prayers, Dr. Bartlett’s homeopathic remedies and opium, or the chants of Mrs. Bliss, a mesmerist recommended by Mrs. Emerson, but late in February, Louisa’s hallucinations became less frequent. She recognized everyone through entire afternoons. Her shoulders didn’t buckle when she coughed. She stumbled and had difficulty with balance, but she sat up for longer spells. Her eyes grew strong enough for her to stitch “L. C. P.” on a bib for the baby Anna felt certain would be a girl and planned to name Louisa Caroline Pratt.

  May still kept her company, but she no longer had to watch her as carefully as she had. She spent a few afternoons drawing an owl over Louisa’s hearth. After Father sawed planks of wood with curved edges, May held them in place between two windows in Louisa’s room. The half-moon shaped desk was set at the level of the windowsills to give Louisa the fullest view of the yard and road. May coated the left side of the beam above the desk with black, then painted over it with red and white blossoms.

  “Won’t you paint the other side of the beam, so anyone who comes in can see your work?” Mother asked.

  “These are just for Louisa,” May said. She added a moth in flight, a pale creature that was almost entirely wings.

  Louisa wasn’t well enough for May to return to teaching, but almost every day at noon now, she went next door for lunches of potatoes, carrots, and whortleberry pudding. May was glad for a respite from penning thank-you notes for broth and jellies neighbors brought, or listening to Mother, who, waiting for news from Anna, brooded about her past miscarriages and her only son, who’d died at less than a day old. Mrs. Hawthorne welcomed May’s company, as her husband, whose hair had turned almost entirely white, was often distracted. Their youngest daughter, Rose, seemed sullen, too, and Una often stayed in her room with headaches, which her mother said were worsened by the clatter of forks and spoons.

  When May returned home one afternoon, she curled up in an armchair by Louisa’s bed and hummed “Oh, Shenandoah” while taking in the waistband of one of Louisa’s dresses, so it wouldn’t sag and call attention to the weight she’d lost. The shadows around Louisa’s eyes had grown fainter. She said her mouth remained sore, but her tongue no longer looked swollen. As she tilted her head, May admired the line between her chin and throat. She said, “I want to draw your portrait, but wish I knew more about bones and muscles.”

  “You talked about anatomy classes before I went away. Didn’t I say I’d help you pay for them?” Louisa said.

  “You have other responsibilities now. After the Union triumphs, we can go back to Boston, and I’ll earn money teaching.” May put down her needle. “Lu, what was it like in Washington? You haven’t said much. I know Mother says you should put it all behind you, but talking might bring you some relief.”

  Louisa shut her eyes, then said, “I saw mules drawing Army wagons filled with flag-covered coffins over muddy streets. Pigs ate from the gutters.”

  “No dashing officers?”

  “There were some, wearing capes with scarlet lining and swords at their sides. But I was mostly in the wards, which smelled terrible, with the windows nailed shut to keep out the cold. We nurses had to shout to be heard over the sounds of coughing. When I offered to help one man sit up for some soup, he said, ‘Thank you, ma’am. But I don’t think I’ll ever eat again, for I was shot in the stomach.’ He asked for only a sip of water before he died.”

  “I don’t know whether to call you a hero or a saint.”

  “Neither. I wanted to help, but I made a muddle of everything. Now I’m sick and a burden to everyone. Did I really talk to people no one else could see?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I want to know.”

  “Nothing was worse than anything I saw when Mother took me to that sanitarium in Maine.”

  “Was it awful there? You didn’t complain.”

  “I was seven, old enough to know Mother was counting on what she could earn there.”

  “Everything comes down to money, doesn’t it? I earned just ten dollars for my weeks as a nurse. Before I went to Washington, I was getting a start on paying off some of what Father owes.”

  “You mustn’t fret about debts that have been around forever. All that matters is that you’re getting well.”

  Louisa looked down, the way Mother sometimes frowned at her knitting, trying to figure out where a stitch had been dropped. “Beth got me through the hardest moments. I thought about how she was so cheerful, when she had less than any of us. It was a consolation to pray that I’d been good enough to see her in Heaven.”

  “You’ll see her again. But not soon.”

  “She once told me that she was grateful she was sick. She said that of us four sisters, she was the one who would be least missed.”

  “I hope she didn’t really believe that.”

  “She wanted to comfort us. Mother sent you to Aunt Bond’s so you could be spared.”

  “But I wasn’t! None of us were spared. I wish I’d known her more. Was she always so shy? What was she afraid of?”

  “What makes you think she was scared? She just liked home.”

  “We all like home, but we leave it, too.”

  “Everyone isn’t like you, needing to gallivant. I admired her more than anyone. It’s not easy to be good.” Louisa sighed. “I’ll never be like her. Her soul was as pure as could be, but when she was dying, she told me she had one regret. That only our family would remember her. May, it’s selfish, but I can’t help it. I’d still like to make a mark. And pay for my own keep.”

  “And you will.” May, too, missed earning a small salary for teaching. She’d inquired about work sewing, but prices were rising and banks closing because of the war, so many ladies had not only stopped buying new gowns, but did alterations themselves. “Will you return to your tale about the girl who stood up to dishonest and worse employers?”

  “I sent Work to editors before I went to Washington. Every one turned it down.”

  “You should send it to Mr. Niles.”

  “The gentleman you told me about who publishes books without words?”

  “Diaries and souvenir albums, but other books besides.”

  “Anyway, now I’m going to write something new, set in a hospital. Maybe I can do a bit of good by telling some of what I saw our brave soldiers endure. Nobody will like it.”

  “Mother will. And you’ll feel more like your old self if you write.”

  The next morning, May helped Louisa to the desk, where she’d set out a steel pen, a bottle of ink, and paper. As the days passed, the room smelled less of medicine and more of a cidery scent from apple cores that had rolled under her desk. She got a letter asking for some stories for children. May exclaimed, but Louisa said, “I’d rather write about schemers, swindlers, and damsels in distress. I’m hoping to hear back from Frank Leslie: You’ve seen his name on all the tabloids. Don’t tell anyone, but before the war, I wrote Pauline’s Passion and Punishment.”

  “That story about a lady who’s abandoned by a count, so she shoves him off a cliff?” May laughed.

  “Such sensational tales let people forget their troubles for a few minutes. I used a pen name and risked it because no one in Concord buys such nonsense.”

  “Or they hide their tabloids under Spenser poems and translations of Greek plays.”

  After Louisa settled back at her desk, May brought the mail to the steps. She opened a letter from Alice, telling her that her brother had died, not on the battlefield, but of a fever that might strike anyone. May’s shoulders sank as she cried not only for the boy she’d met just once, but for Louisa, who’d been too close to dying, and for herself, too. May hadn’t helped nurse her sister for thanks or praise. She’d done what was necessary, as she never had a chance to do for Beth. But she wished Louisa would acknowledge that she’d tho
ught beyond herself and see that she was no longer a girl tagging after her older sister, wanting to be that confident, free, and wise.

  ONE SPRING AFTERNOON, MAY WAS STARTLED BY A shout from Mother. “Anna had a boy! We just got word!”

  Louisa rolled up the bib she’d embroidered with initials for Louisa Caroline Pratt, and said, “Lucky Anna. Boys are easier to understand than girls.”

  May packed some things so Mother could take the next morning’s train, leaving her to make sure Louisa and Father got proper rest and meals. For the following few days, they spoke of little besides the baby. Was he healthy, they wondered, and was Anna? They repeated, “A boy, imagine. What do you suppose he looks like?”

  Finally a letter came from Mother. May helped Louisa into the parlor, where Father was reading, and she scanned and summarized the letter. “They named the baby Frederick. Anna’s bleeding and has a temperature, but cousin Lucy says it’s not the baby fever that’s so dangerous in the lying-in wards, but seen less in the new hospital for women and children. They’ve found simply asking doctors to wash their hands makes a difference, but some gentlemen are insulted by such requests. Leave it to Mother to fit in a lecture, but she sounds worried. I should go.”

  “I’ll go,” Father said.

  May nodded. She was eager to see Anna and the baby, but Father wouldn’t be much help to Louisa.

  The morning after he left, May walked into town, where people asked after Anna and Louisa, glad to hear that one’s baby was thriving and the other was feeling well enough to write. May bought some beef and meant to swiftly leave the store, but on a whim, she selected some wallpaper to hang in the parlor as a surprise for Mother when she returned. She looked forward to the task. Since painting the owl, flowers, and moth in Louisa’s room, May hadn’t opened her paint box. Maybe she was being faithful, casting aside her old ambitions in trade for Louisa’s good health. Or maybe she’d simply lost the kind of concentration she’d taken for granted at fifteen. Tasks such as baking or keeping a vigilant eye on medicine were easier than facing doubts about her worthiness, the way she had to when she put colors on paper. The line between good art and bad never seemed as clear as the one between a pie and an empty oven.