“I thought I’d make stew to build back your strength, without Father around to warn that meat brings out our animal nature,” she told Louisa.
“And makes us bloodthirsty. Angry.”
“Where would you be without your temper and stubbornness? You might have listened to those like Mr. Fields who advised you to stop writing.”
“He might have been right. I should be grateful for my magazine and tabloid stories, but I’m afraid I’ll never sell something with hard covers.”
“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write.”
“I won’t waste my time on something no one will see.”
“You’ll see it. That matters. And you should think of the world beyond your desk. Mr. Emerson is lecturing at the town hall next week. If we borrowed a horse and carriage, you could go.”
“People only attend those talks to criticize them.”
“Mrs. Mann wants you to come to a tea party.”
“Ladies only hold such parties for the pleasure of not inviting people. It’s you who needs to get out more. Why don’t you visit Anna? I’ll be fine alone for a while.”
“Are you sure? If I took the early train, I could get back in the late afternoon.”
“Spend the night. I’ll sleep in the parlor, so no one has to worry about me falling down stairs.”
May wrote to her friend, Alice, to see if she could stay with her, and she asked Mrs. Hawthorne to stop by and check on Louisa. On the next half-bright morning, she walked past snowbanks to the depot. After changing trains in Boston, then getting off in Chelsea, she saw crocuses and snowdrops blooming near puddles. May knocked on Anna’s door, stepped in, and called, “Hello!”
Mother hurried in to hug her and said, “Shhh. The baby’s sleeping.”
They tiptoed into the parlor, where Anna and John were huddled around a cradle. Anna’s brown hair fell limply from her pins. The skin beneath her eyes was dark, but pleasure hovered around the corners of her mouth as she lifted the baby and leaned back so that his downy head could rest in the hollow of her shoulder. When her shawl slipped to the floor, John picked it up and smoothed it back over her shoulders. He looked exhausted, too, but seemed unable to stop grinning.
“Look at those long fingers. Maybe he’ll be an artist. Or play the piano, like Beth,” May said.
“I can already see that our little Frederick is strong and will make an excellent soldier. But pray we will be a peaceful, united nation long before he comes of age. If only infants could teach the rest of us their wisdom,” Father said.
May touched the baby’s round head, which was as soft as the blanket he was loosely wrapped in. “He’s darling, Anna. And I’m glad to see you sitting up and looking well.”
“I was weak for a while, but the baby was all right. That was my one prayer.”
May’s face grew hot. She already adored the baby’s bundled fingers, scrunched-up knees, and tucked elbows, but he wasn’t her sister. “You’re important, too!”
“You’re sweet, but a baby starts out with all the chances in the world,” Anna said. “You’ll understand when you have your own.”
“Did it hurt terribly?”
“Having a baby?” Anna glanced at John. “It’s strange, but it already seems so long ago. Cousin Lucy knew what to do.”
“May I hold him?” May asked.
“Of course,” Anna said, but she didn’t open her arms.
“No one could paint a finer picture than that. There’s nothing like a mother with child,” Father said.
With his tiny arms and legs crunched and crisscrossed, the baby reminded May of a plump rosebud, with petals folded over another. She gently pried him from Anna, whose forehead wrinkled as if he were going miles away instead of inches. He felt warm and startlingly light against May’s chest. When he bobbed his head and opened his nut-sized mouth, she passed him back to Anna. “He’s magnificent.”
“I’ll be happy if he’s good, like his father.” Anna looked at Mother. “You don’t think he can be hungry again?”
After the clock chimed, May told everyone she had a train to catch. She didn’t mention that she’d be going only as far as Boston, as she didn’t want Mother to fret about Louisa being alone for the night. Though maybe she wouldn’t worry. Mother didn’t look up from the baby after May said her goodbyes and headed to the door.
May was glad to see Alice, though concerned that her mother didn’t join them for dinner or breakfast at the long table. Alice confided that her mother took her brother’s death hard, though a hesitation in her voice hinted that Mrs. Bartlett kept to her room for troubles even beyond grief. May and Alice went to the Athenæum to look at prints of frescoes from the Sistine Chapel, Rembrandt paintings of Biblical scenes, and a Madonna done by Rubens. May loved the colors but wished for landscapes as well as people. She liked the Chinese scrolls showing pines and mountains. She and Alice entered the chalky-smelling sculpture gallery with its plaster copies of works from Greece and Rome. May admired the arc of a raised arm forever about to throw a disc, and a Venus with arms crossing her chest. She understood why one shouldn’t touch the silk scrolls that were thousands of years old, but these sculptures were meant to last. She whispered to Alice, “Tell me if anyone is looking,” and she ran her fingertips along a smooth stone shoulder.
When May returned home, she painted. She was glad that Louisa now felt hearty enough to walk down the road and write, though she wasn’t yet strong enough for them to consider moving to Boston. That fall, Louisa read a poem called Thoreau’s Flute to Mrs. Hawthorne. She encouraged Louisa to send it to Mr. Fields, and after she demurred, she sent it herself. He wrote back asking for permission to publish it in the Atlantic Monthly, an offer which helped Louisa forgive him for his slight on her writing a few years before. It bolstered her courage enough to send a story about life in a military hospital to another magazine, where it was published.
A few weeks later, Louisa’s face turned pink as she opened her mail, while the family sat around the table eating pears. She stood and waved the letter. “It’s from Mr. Redpath. He wants to gather my hospital stories into a book!”
May leapt up to hug her. Louisa swiftly kissed her and said, “He’ll print five hundred copies. I’ll get ten percent of sales. The advance is about what Mr. Niles suggested. Maybe a little less.”
“You had an offer from Mr. Niles?” May asked. “No one tells me anything. Why, I met him in Boston some time ago. He was quite dashing.”
“I don’t choose my publishers by how well they dress. Mr. Redpath promises that some of the profits will go to the Union hospitals. He does a lot for the war effort.”
“And so have you. Now you deserve some pleasures,” May said.
“Mrs. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped start the war. Perhaps your book will end it,” Mother said.
“It hasn’t even been published,” Louisa said. “And I don’t expect …”
“Why not expect wonders for once?” May interrupted. “People will line up for blocks to hear you read, just like Charles Dickens. You’ll be rich and famous. We need champagne!”
“Don’t be silly,” Louisa said, but she laughed. “It’s wrong to want such things. I should be glad for what I have. To be alive.”
“You are grateful, and so are we. It doesn’t mean we can’t want more. We’ll celebrate in style when the book is in covers. And tonight, I’ll bake you a plum cake and break open the currant wine.” May carried some dishes into the kitchen.
Louisa followed and said, “After it’s published, I might earn enough to pay for those lessons you’ve wanted.”
“I’d hate to take from you, though classes would be a good investment. I might be able to make a living doing portraits for those who want more than a tintype or daguerreotype of those they lost in the war.”
“I used to think you’d be married by now, not thinking of earning a living.”
“I’m not who you thought I was. Though I can’t entirely shake the notion that men shou
ld provide, even though Mother brought in most of our family’s income.”
“That’s because she was secretive about it. Pretending boarders were guests and that she sewed only out of kindness, not for pay. One day, she won’t have to accept gifts of cast-off clothing. I’ll see to that.” Louisa’s voice softened. “Of course, you take care of so much now, May. Mother says it’s the people who aren’t seen who do most of the world’s good work.”
“She may be right. You know I admire her more than anyone. But I don’t want to be as angry as she is.”
“Angry? Our dear Marmee never raises her voice!”
“She counts under her breath. And tells us good lessons. But I don’t think those are what have ground down her teeth.”
“She’s a good woman!”
“Can’t good women get angry? I love Mother with all my heart, but do you think she was ever truly happy?”
“She was happy with her children.”
“And now we’re grown. She gave us everything, and I’m grateful. But she gave up too much,” May said.
“She had her diaries. I’d rather have written one of the good, true sentences than all of my foolish tales.”
“Who will ever read those diaries?”
“We will, one day. Mother is leaving them to us.”
“I expect she’d rather have written epics and romances. Don’t you want to write more than diaries?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” May was glad that Louisa was finally well. Now both of them could move into a wider world. She said, “You’ll make us proud. But I plan to be famous first.”
6
VİOLETS
After a long winter, robins flew over yards where snow lingered only in shadows. May held Freddy’s hand as her nephew, now just over a year old, practiced a wobbly walk. Leaning to the side, she tried to steer him around puddles as he crouched to pick up stones. He laughed at a toad. As they made their slow way up the road, he waved at the flags hung in windows to honor that spring’s victorious battles.
After they came into the kitchen, she tried to dry his hair, but he scooted under the table. Anna, who’d caught a bad cold and had moved into what the family called Orchard House until she recovered, called from the parlor for him to quiet down. Instead, he shrieked until May spread jam on bread for his lunch. She let him help her mix up some lip balm she scooped into a small pot for Rose Hawthorne’s thirteenth birthday. Then they joined the rest of the family in the parlor.
“I hope the downpour doesn’t keep Mr. Hawthorne from getting back from his trip.” May hoped Julian would come for his sister’s birthday, too.
“The excursion was meant to lift his spirits, but did it have to be with Mr. Pierce?” Mother said. “If he’d done a better job as president, we might not be suffering through a war now. He did nothing to help free the slaves.”
“They were college friends. Naturally, they’re loyal to each other.” May heard a knock and headed to the door, stopping to tousle Freddy’s hair. She greeted Mr. Emerson and reached for his black umbrella, but he walked past as if he didn’t see her. He stopped before the hearth, his eyes on a picture May had hung of a Madonna with her feet just over the moon. He put his large, wrinkled hand on top of May’s head, as if she were still a girl. “Abbie, Mr. Hawthorne has passed over. I got a telegram from Mr. Pierce, who asked me to break the news to his wife.”
Two days later, May and Louisa picked violets from the ridge behind their houses, then joined Anna in the kitchen. They baked custard pies for the company who’d arrived next door. May was rolling more dough when Julian came in with a box of cups to hold the wildflowers they’d told his mother they’d bring to the church. May embraced him while her sisters murmured condolences.
“Two more loaves of gingerbread are coming out of the oven, if you can wait,” Anna told him. “Would you hold the baby while I find a basket so you can bring home the pies?”
Julian bounced Freddy on his knees. His face looked strained even as he picked up a newspaper and folded a section into a sailboat. Julian made the little boy laugh by waving it over his head, but his eyes remained wide, like someone coming in from the dark.
The next day, chapters from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s unfinished novel were set on top of his casket at the front of the church. Julian wore a black jacket that looked a bit too small: May guessed it had been his father’s. He held one arm around his mother and the other around Una and Rose.
After the service and procession to the cemetery, May carried platters between the Hawthorne’s kitchen and sitting room. She heard their dog whimper behind a closed door, where he must have been put to keep from tripping the mourners. She slipped in to give him a broken cookie, then passed around cake and kept Father away from Mr. Pierce. She noticed the grateful way peoples’ eyes fell on Anna, who smiled when asked about her baby and said, “He’s growing up so fast. Walking and talking. John’s watching him now.” But when someone said, “I suppose the little chap will want a brother or sister soon,” Anna’s mouth stiffened.
May spoke with Una and Rose, their aunts, and Mr. Fields and his wife, who took her hand and said, “You must come visit us.”
“Louisa told me you have paintings I should see in your lovely home.”
“And I heard you are talented with a paintbrush.”
“Louisa said that?”
“I know your friend, Alice, who told me.”
May turned to watch Julian pace as if the crowded parlor were a cage. When Mr. Pierce steered him to a corner, his shoulders rose enough to pull the fabric of his jacket. A few minutes later, she took his hand and led him outside. After days of rain, the grasses were bright green. They climbed past the blossoming apple trees toward the ferns, blackberry bushes, and pine grove.
The following weekend, when Julian came back again from college, they returned to the woods. He seemed more distraught than he’d been the week before, walking briskly after they reached the hilltop. He said, “I knew he was sick, but he was my father. You never think of them dying. I suppose that sounds childish. When I was little, he used to let me sit with him and pretend to write.” Julian strode through some violets, whose leaves waved in a breeze. “His desk had slices in the sides where he scratched it with his penknife while lost in thought. Mother gave me his knife. I don’t want it! He used to carve whistles, or cut off bits of licorice for us.”
She took his hand and rubbed his knuckles. “Shortly before Mr. Thoreau died, his aunt asked if he’d made his peace with God. He said that he didn’t know they’d ever quarreled.”
“I expect my father did nothing but quarrel. It wasn’t always that way. I remember clamboring onto his lap when I was small, lifting the cover of his inkstand, carved with the baby Hercules strangling a goose. He climbed hickory trees and shook nuts from the branches for us to pick.”
She glanced at the treetops and imagined Mr. Hawthorne in one of his immaculate jackets balancing on a limb. She said, “He was a good father. He cared for his family. He took jobs he didn’t like to make sure you had what you needed.”
“Mr. Pierce says I’m the man of the family now. Without the faintest idea of what I’ll do after college.”
“Your father just died. Of course you don’t know what you’ll do next.”
“May, the last time I saw him, I asked for money. Now all I can think about is how thin he looked. Ashen-faced and worried, probably about me. I whistled as I walked out the door, stashing dollars in my pocket. When I should have done something for him.”
“What could you do?”
“Anything. He didn’t eat. He barely slept. We should have made him see a doctor.”
“He listened to no one.”
“He kept asking what I planned to do, and I had no answer.”
“You’ll do something to make him proud.”
“He’s dead! He can’t be proud. Please don’t talk to me about Heaven.”
“I meant … if he could see you.”
“And what i
s there to be proud of? Not everyone is like you, finding your best talent at ten years old. All I know is that I don’t want to write. Now I can’t even join the army, and leave my mother to worry herself sick.”
She knew how it felt to disappoint your parents, to be uncertain of the future, but she didn’t have words. All she could think to do was brush her fingertips beside his blue-brown eyes and down the side of his face, feeling the slight stubble over the muscle of his jaw. She covered most of his mouth with hers. His lips opened. Their tongues slid together. She pressed his upper lip between hers, then gently bit a corner of his mouth. She could smell moss. His hands slid from her arms to her hips as they lay under the pines on the patch of small purple flowers.
WHEN JULIAN CAME HOME FROM COLLEGE, THEY OFTEN walked on the hillside where Father had cut down junipers and pines. Sunlight fell over saplings and stumps to his garden and small orchard. May admired a view of meadows, woods, and Walden Pond, which looked like a patch of blue caught in treetops. Julian’s lips softened under hers, opening slightly in kisses she didn’t want to end. That fall and winter, May began wondering what his back looked like under his coat and what it might be like to be addressed as Mrs. Hawthorne. Sometimes she imagined holding an infant of her own, brushing the red hair of a little girl or chasing a little boy with Mr. Hawthorne’s expressive eyebrows and Julian’s fine eyes and nose. And with a daydream’s shunning of chronology and logic, she lit on a proposal by a château in France, though of course they couldn’t travel together until they were married.
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