But it was hard to have weeks go by in which she didn’t see him. Her loneliness deepened when she read a black-bordered note from Alice, though she’d hardly known her mother. There was too much news of death. In April, less than two weeks after she set candles in the windows to mark the end of the war, she cut armbands from the hem of a black dress to mourn President Lincoln. She was glad that no more young men would be heading south, no more church bells would too often toll about twenty, or twenty-one, or twenty-two times. Soon the yard would be fragrant with lilacs, but the most welcome news for the Alcotts was that Anna was carrying another baby.
One afternoon, May sat on a stone sketching the ivy growing under her bedroom window, trying to suggest the flutter of leaves, the way light tugged and shadows slid, and thinking about how Julian would be back from college soon. On the hillside, Father was planting cabbages, squash, and beans. Louisa rolled a ball back and forth to Freddy, who Anna had sent to stay with them, since she’d experienced some bleeding and had been ordered to stay in bed. Catbirds and song sparrows flew among the apple trees. The Hawthorne’s dog bounded out from the larches. May saw Julian heading over. She put down her sketchbook, stood up, and smoothed her dress.
“You don’t have to stop. You look fetching with a sketchpad.” Julian lifted Freddy high, which made his eyes widen and Louisa laugh. He chatted with her about Freddy’s ball-catching skills, then looked at May’s drawing and said, “That’s nice.”
“I spent the morning erasing more lines than I kept. I began a portrait of your house, too, seen from the side.”
“I bought some Windsor and Newton paints and gold ink to copy some medieval manuscripts. Sketching is relaxing after a morning of lectures.”
“Art should be more than relaxing. Perhaps I can teach you a few things this summer.”
“There’s nothing I’d like more, but I’m afraid I won’t be around much. I failed several classes, so I will go to the Berkshires for tutoring in chemistry and Latin.”
“You’ll be gone all summer?” May saw Louisa look over from where she’d joined Freddy, who was trying to get the dog interested in the ball.
“I got a job doing yard work at an inn, too. I told my mother I’d be doing bookkeeping, as she believes the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne should make more gentlemanly use of his hands than digging holes. What’s wrong? You’re not like her, thinking such labor is beneath me?”
“I’m certain I’d like what shovels and shears would do for your arms and shoulders. But aren’t there bushes to trim around here?”
“I have to make up those courses. My mother says it’s to be expected, that I’m grieving for my father, but the truth is, I was never meant for classrooms. I’m more like Mr. Thoreau. I’d rather hoe beans or tramp through the woods.”
“Which he did after graduating from Harvard. And he didn’t have a wife or children to think about.”
“Neither do I. Don’t look so forlorn. I’ll come home for your birthday. Let’s go see the water lilies Mr. Thoreau talked about.”
“I thought you and I were going to see those, May,” Louisa said as she strolled back to join them. “Though I never believed you could get up before dawn.”
“I’m used to waking up for crew,” Julian said. “Una and I had a trick we used with the governess we had in Rome, when we wanted to explore the city in the morning. She tied a long piece of string around her toe and let the other end trail out the window for us to give it a tug.”
LATER, AS MAY AND LOUISA FIXED SUPPER, MAY reminded herself that July wasn’t terribly far.
“Have you and Julian talked of a wedding?” Louisa asked.
“Certainly not.”
“I suppose he isn’t wealthy enough for you.”
“Don’t say that with such disdain. You hate poverty as much as I do. I was eight when we lived in that basement in Boston and went with handbills for Father’s lectures. People thought I was begging. I don’t want my children to be hungry and ashamed.”
“You’re right. I hated that. But if Julian’s off to work with scythe and hoe, is it because the Hawthornes need his salary? Mother told me they let go of the housemaid and cook.”
“Mrs. Hawthorne always complained about how they put the ivory handles of knives in the dishwater and washed silver last instead of first. And she’s got two girls who can make the whortleberry pudding and iron their own dresses.”
“Of course. Though they must have doctor bills left from poor Mr. Hawthorne’s illness. Anyway, if you’re not serious about Julian, you shouldn’t wander about with him. People will talk.”
“I’m not the sort who can court in a parlor, and neither are you.”
“I’m not the sort to court at all. I don’t care to tie myself to anyone who might try to tell me what to do.”
“John and Anna are happy.”
“Anna is different from us. She’s contented with her husband, son, and a baby on the way. She doesn’t want more.”
“Is that a curse?”
“I’m not the one who wants both marriage and art. For me, writing is enough.”
“Don’t you get lonely?”
“I have my family.”
“I meant …”
“Ever since I was sick, my hair is thin, which was my only good feature. Though I wouldn’t want a man who cared only about my hair.”
“People see your hair. They can’t see what’s inside you.”
“They can when I write.” Louisa’s face turned faintly red as she said, “I can write about a long, fatal love chase, but I never really understood such an impulse.”
“It might be different if you let yourself stop criticizing. If you’d stand a little closer.”
“That’s just it. I see you step toward men as if you can’t help yourself, but I’ve never felt that. And around babies, too, your arms open.”
“Don’t you yearn for children?”
Louisa shook her head. “It’s like with you and painting. I can never truly see what the fuss is all about.”
May struggled to make her voice even. “I know you can’t walk far, the way you used to, but you could come along with Julian and me to see the lilies.”
“Don’t pity me. Anyway, I expect I’ll be gone by midsummer. I might take a job as companion to a wealthy young lady touring Europe.”
“You’re going to Europe! No one tells me anything!”
“It’s not quite been decided. Miss Weld suffers from melancholia or neurasthenia. Her father heard I’d been a nurse during the war.”
“We were going to see England and France together!”
“It’s not a pleasure jaunt. I’d watch over her medicines and moods.”
“I could help.”
“You, a nurse?”
May blinked, stunned, though she supposed she shouldn’t be, that her sister remembered so little about the weeks when she’d been so sick. May knew such care wasn’t like working in a hospital, but it would certainly make her capable of escorting a frail woman to museums and historical sites. “You won’t even go to tea parties with me, and you’re crossing the ocean!”
“I told you, it’s work.”
“As an educated but poor companion. I expect this young lady just needs someone to make sure she gets on the proper trains, sees the necessary sights, and keeps out of drafts and away from the wrong sort of men. Carrying shawls, plumping pillows. You’ll be bored to death.”
“Perhaps I will. And Europe isn’t likely to be all we hoped, back when we set plays in castles and dungeons. You’ll have to wait for your chance to show everyone you’re a lady of culture.”
“I don’t want to go just to tell people I’ve been overseas! I need differently shaped trees, differently colored flowers, homes made of stone or stucco, not just shingles. Sights talk to me, Lu. You wouldn’t want to see the same people over and over. You thrive on varied conversations.”
“Mother needs you.”
“Father can watch over her for a while.”
&
nbsp; “I think she’s a little glad when he goes away. I’m sorry, May. But Mother says that making sacrifices makes you stronger.”
“So does doing what you love.”
NOT LONG AFTER ANNA GAVE BIRTH TO ANOTHER boy, who they named after his father, she brought her sons to Concord. Instead of pouring over newspapers, Mother left them folded to hold the blanket-swaddled baby, watching his soft lips wobble as he breathed. His large eyelids had the same curves as his round head. Mother marveled at both cousin Lucy’s skill as a doctor and her modest claim that all a safe delivery needed was sharp, sympathetic eyes and clean hands. Father carried Johnny around the yard, whispering the names of flowers, telling anyone who would listen, “Infants are natural philosophers, physicians, and priests.”
May helped Louisa sew two new traveling dresses. She went with her to get a passport and ordered one of her own. Maybe she couldn’t use it soon, but she’d be ready. In July, she escorted Louisa to the harbor.
Thunderstorms kept the ship from leaving on schedule, so they stayed overnight at Mr. and Mrs. Fields’s townhouse. Mr. Fields was stout, with small eyes and a wiry white-and-brown beard. May knew he was distinguished, and some women, even those as pretty as his wife, chose older men for practical reasons, but May couldn’t help thinking Mrs. Fields might have found happiness beyond signaling the maid for more cake and sherry among shelves of leather-bound books, a grand piano, and marble busts of Dante, Socrates, and Mr. Longfellow.
As she and Louisa talked, May picked up a book and examined hand-colored engravings of birds, then another with pictures of historic homes in Boston. She said, “I wonder that there isn’t such a book like this about Concord. Showing the homes of luminaries, not just their faces.”
“Yes, dear Mr. Hawthorne should be memorialized in such a way. And Mr. Thoreau, your father, and Mr. Emerson,” Mrs. Fields said.
“I’ve done some sketches of the Hawthorne’s house and Walden Pond. Maybe I could compile a book like that.” May spoke before she had a chance to lose her courage. “Is there any chance Mr. Fields would consider publishing such a collection?”
“It sounds charming. Next time you visit, you must bring your portfolio.”
May grinned. Books were what was needed to be taken seriously in her family. A book could fall into anyone’s hands, perhaps those of someone who’d buy original art. Not that there was a guarantee one such as this would be published. Mr. Fields might tell her to stick to teaching. But the hope helped May feel strong the next day as she stood on a wharf with Louisa.
“I’ll be gone almost a year,” she said. “Anna’s baby may be walking and talking when I get back. Freddy may know the alphabet. I’ll miss so much. And what if, oh, I couldn’t bear it if …”
“Mother and Father are healthy as horses,” May interrupted.
“I already lost a sister. I can’t risk losing my mother. You should have seen the care she lavished over Beth. And I don’t remember much of when I was ill, but I know she barely ever left my side.”
“She’ll be fine. And maybe I’ll be engaged.”
“Weren’t you waiting for someone with more prospects than Julian?”
“I’m only saying that anything can happen.”
“Of course. And if something should happen to me …”
“Ships sail all the time without calamity. They’re waiting.” May hugged her good-bye, then stepped back among women waving handkerchiefs and men lifting caps. She watched the ship glide past frigates and schooners. Sails slivered the sky. Men in blue-and-white-checked shirts hauled up anchors or crawled over spars. May felt like the sister left behind, the way she’d been when she was young and Anna and Louisa had curled their hair and ironed gowns, getting ready for parties.
But she was not that girl. Her hands opened with an ache to draw as she watched gulls swoop for fish. Fog bells rang. Waves splashed on wharves. May felt full of possibilities, as if she were about to sail herself. She vowed she would one day.
7
WATER LİLİES
As May sat with Mrs. Hawthorne, she wondered why she’d been asked to her parlor. She thought of how Julian hadn’t written since he’d left to work in the Berkshires. Her gaze moved from the music box to what looked like worn diaries as Mrs. Hawthorne asked, “What have you heard from Louisa?”
“We got a letter a few days ago. She and her companion were taking a river tour into Germany,” May said.
“Germany! My one regret was that we never got there. The literature can be ponderous, but there’s Bach.”
“You saw so much else. You must be proud that your husband took all of you to Europe.”
“It was his friend Franklin Pierce who saw that he got work as a consul. Everyone in town found fault with the poor man as president, as if they didn’t criticize Mr. Lincoln, too. Until he passed over, and now no one breathes a word of reproach.” Mrs. Hawthorne wore a maroon velvet dress, faded to mauve at the elbows, which must have been in fashion when she got married. She tucked back a strand of hair that had fallen from a slim band of pearls. “But I didn’t invite you here to speak of politics. My husband’s editor told me his books won’t sell as they once did, now that readers know no more will come out. He says people crave the new, and an author’s name must be kept before the public’s eye. He wants to publish a biography and suggested Oliver Wendell Holmes as author. Mercy! I won’t say the man isn’t a good doctor, but I still shudder over the piece he wrote for the Atlantic Monthly baring details of my husband’s final illness. As if the world needs to know about his stomach distention.”
“Perhaps you should write about him.”
“There’s nothing he would have liked less. You know what he thought of women writers. Why, when Rose was ten and penned a story, he put a quick stop to that. But Mr. Fields proposed publishing selections from his letters and diaries. I removed some pages and crossed out lines and paragraphs where the veil should not be lifted. I hoped you might help by copying them. Una’s hand is lovely, but her headaches have come back, and she mustn’t strain her eyes.”
“How could I refuse, after all you did keeping my mother serene when Louisa was so ill.”
“I don’t ask just as a favor. Mr. Fields offers a small salary.”
May hoped this work would leave her time for drawing houses and might pay enough so she could afford art anatomy lessons. “I can start whenever you like.”
“I think some of his diaries are in the room where we stored things after taking down the old garret to make way for the tower room. Would you come look with me?”
As they passed the cupboard under the stairs where Mrs. Hawthorne stored pies, May remembered calling that the Slough of Despond when she and her sisters had played Pilgrim’s Progress here long ago, strapping on bundles of paper and cloth they called burdens. At the top of the stairs, she and Mrs. Hawthorne turned and entered a room crowded with chests, an old butter churn, a spinning wheel, and a green rocking horse. May opened a trunk that held a torn petticoat Anna had swirled in as if it were a ball gown, a flag made from a red flannel petticoat, and a pair of cracked leather boots Louisa had worn as a prince or pirate, back when they’d been girls who thought they could be anyone.
“Here are Una’s baby socks! And my sketchbooks from Italy.” Mrs. Hawthorne opened an old tin of paints with dried-up colors and faded labels. Cremisi was an orange-red and azzurro the color May imagined Italian skies.
They brought diaries, letters, and sketchbooks down to the parlor. After a few days of copying there, with Una playing passages from Bach, Rose complaining about the verses her mother had asked her to memorize, and Mrs. Hawthorne critiquing the novel she was reading, May suggested she might work more efficiently in the tower room. On her way up, she peeked past the open door to Julian’s bedroom. She caught her breath at the sight of his blue jacket hanging from a hook, remembering its scent of wool, tobacco, pine, and boy. She continued to the room where Mr. Hawthorne had once paced. She copied the thin, slanting script he’d wri
tten on pale blue paper when he and Sophia had been engaged or separated during the early years of their marriage. May skipped over words and passages that Mrs. Hawthorne had drawn a line through, reading how her husband not only longed to see her, but to see her quite specifically in bed. “Desire,” “yearning,” “kisses,” and the names of parts of the body were at the center of many stricken phrases.
May spent many early summer afternoons growing more familiar with the Hawthorne’s first year of marriage, when Sophia had painted in the Old Manse and Nathaniel wrote stories. Mr. Hawthorne bathed in the river and picked his wife bouquets of cardinal flowers that grew along the banks. In winter, they skated on the frozen river, then warmed up by the fire, dancing to strains from the Swiss music box. Closing her eyes to rest them, May allowed herself to daydream. Why shouldn’t she and Julian live simply but happily by the river, as his parents had? She’d like to have a ring to show Louisa when she returned from Europe and boasted about all the palaces she’d seen. May went on to wish for four children, though she wouldn’t want them to be spread as far apart in age as she and her sisters had been. The youngest should never be lonely.
When she came downstairs one afternoon, she said, “I finished copying the diary you and your husband shared in the Old Manse.”
“Where he wrote some of his best tales. Poor Elizabeth Ripley lives there now. When I feel sorry for myself, I think of her, a widow in her early twenties. That dreadful war.”
“How is Julian?” May wondered if it had been a mistake to try to keep their romance from their parents.
“I expect him back from Lenox for a visit soon. It’s good for him there, where he remembers happy times with his father when he was a boy.”
“Sophia … oh, pardon me. It’s reading those diaries …”
“Please, call me that. My husband is in a better place, but it’s the small things I miss, like hearing my name.”
“Reading the letters he wrote when you were engaged made me curious about the ones you must have written back.”
Little Woman in Blue Page 8