Little Woman in Blue

by Jeannine Atkins

  Late in fall, they took a train to Rome. A chilly rain fell over grape vines twisting around cypress trees, fig and olive groves, ancient aqueducts, and the crumbling wall. The train clattered to a halt at a depot under construction. May tramped through mud to find a horse and carriage to take them to the Hotel Washington. Here she was again taken for the lady, but as she signed her sister’s name into the register, the staff turned to fuss over Louisa’s cloak, express concern over her fatigue, and fetch a basket brimming with invitations. May expected her celebrity won them a room with a view of a fountain with Triton circled by dolphins. She admired the god of the sea’s muscular chest but preferred Bernini’s nearby statue of a seashell, with water falling from the mouths of bees.

  The next day, Louisa insisted they go right to the embassy, where mail was supposed to be held, but the day was fine, and May wouldn’t let her stay inside poring over letters from Massachusetts. Streets scented with cut stone, sausages, and roasting chestnuts bustled with people speaking a musical language. Donkey carts filled with oranges and eggs rattled by old palaces divided into new apartments. Bakers carried baskets of fragrant bread on their heads. Women wearing loose, soft blouses and red or green skirts bent over ancient fountains to wash clothes, which they hung on clotheslines strung between open windows and ancient columns.

  During the following days, Louisa often settled by the grate to read Dickens or write tales about scoundrels and women who wore masks, while May and Alice set out with umbrellas past houses painted yellow, orange, pink, and red. Oxen pulled carts loaded with marble to sculpture studios. The scarlet jackets of officers and red robes of Cardinals made bright spots among the dark horses and pale stone. Some men stared boldly at May’s loose, light hair and called to her, “Oh, bellissima, bellissima.” May and Alice looked in the windows of milliners and furriers on the elegant Corso and stopped in a pawnshop on a side street, where May bought a dagger and Alice a pistol to slip under their belts, since people at the hotel warned of banditti.

  They admired marble statues of gods, goddesses, saints, emperors, and warriors that perched on rooftops or amid fountains. They stopped in churches, where they drew back leather curtains to find masterpieces even in humble chapels, and they tried to figure out how Fra Angelico made the dusky rose on Mary’s cheekbones fade to ivory, and whether she was more beautiful than the rounder Madonnas painted by Raphael. They toured St. Peter’s, where May declared all the art was stupendissimo. They climbed the wide winding stairs to look out at bright roofs and distant hills.

  On the way back to her room, May stopped at a farmer’s stall for some cream to bring to the cat Louisa had befriended. She found her curled up with a Dickens novel and what looked like a new stack of mail. May propped her umbrella to dry, poured the cream in a saucer, heard the cat pounce, and added olive wood to the small fireplace. She ate a roll Louisa had thriftily brought back from the dining table and an orange so sweet and tart that it prickled her tongue. She picked up a letter from Mother and read that a mole had invaded Father’s vegetable garden, Dan French was still sculpting, and everywhere Father went, he found people reading Little Women. May couldn’t help wishing for a single mention of Concord Sketches.

  She put down the letter and picked up one from Anna, who wrote about Johnny’s impressive vocabulary and how Freddy had loose teeth, and no one had the nerve to yank them. Anna worried about her husband, who was plagued not only by his legs, but now suffered from neuralgia, too.

  “A stack of letters must have been held up somewhere. Mother says that Mrs. Hawthorne wrote that Julian is spending a great deal of time with a young lady.”

  “He’s always smitten with some pretty fräulein or another. Whom I expect is rich. I suppose you’ve heard from Mr. Niles.”

  “He informs me I was the highest paid author in 1870. He sends you his regards.”

  “It’s kind of him to remember me.”

  “I expect it’s more than courtesy. I thought you found him dashing.”

  “His curled moustache is fashionable, but I can’t abide wax. It would be like kissing a candlestick.”

  Louisa shook her head. “He keeps asking me to write a sequel, so girls can find out what happens to Jo and her sisters now that they’re married off. Nothing, really. I’m done writing about them.”

  “You’re rich enough now to write whatever you want.”

  “Perhaps, if I’m careful and nothing unexpected happens. But something always does.”

  “You’ve spent enough time on mail. Let’s go to the Vatican museum this evening. The stone looks entirely different in torchlight. The statues seem alive.”

  “I’ve seen enough. It’s no wonder there are revolutions here, when the priests are taken care of but there are few schools for those black-haired children you admire, and their poor mothers scrape for food. And Rome is colder and rainier than I expected.”

  “It’s almost winter, and the roses are still in bloom. What does it matter that they’re wet?”

  “I’ve met a few interesting people here in the hotel. Did I tell you George Healy insists on painting my portrait, at no charge for the honor?”

  “That is a privilege. His reputation is great. But you must venture out. Let’s go to the Forum tomorrow.”

  “We’d catch our death of cold out there. Or Roman fever.”

  “If it rains, we’ll hire a cab and go to St. Peter’s. Alice is moving in with her relatives in a few days. They’re just a few streets away, where Americans stay without having to learn a word of Italian or develop a taste for garlic, but she’d like an excursion with you.”

  AFTER A BREAKFAST OF CAFFE LATTE, APPLES, AND figs, May, Louisa, and Alice rode a carriage over a bridge adorned with stone angels, so exquisitely carved that May thought they might soar over the river. Stepping out in the vast courtyard, they passed beggars holding out thin hands, monks in brown robes chanting, and vendors selling sweet drinks, small papal flags, and inkwells shaped like the cathedral. The women climbed the wide steps, passed through the massive bronze doors, and looked up at the high, domed ceiling. Bronze lamps burned in alcoves crowded with sculpted saints, elaborate gold crosses, and silver chalices. Men perched on campstools painted copies of frescoes. Their hands were red from the cold, while their feet rested on clay pots filled with glowing coals.

  “All the pictures stacked over each other makes me miss our plain New England churches,” Louisa said.

  “Come see the Pietà.” May drew her and Alice past paintings darkened by centuries of smoke from candles and incense. They stopped before the sculpture of a mother holding her dying son. Its gleaming marble curved like real flesh and cloth.

  “Michelangelo was just twenty-four when he sculpted it.” Alice waved her red guidebook. “Later, the pope asked him to paint the apostles, but instead of twelve men, he painted three hundred and fourteen people on his ceiling. We should go to the Sistine Chapel next.”

  “Haven’t you already been?” Louisa asked.

  “No one sees anything of worth on the first look. Maybe I finally understand Father’s talk of transcendence. Michelangelo shows there’s something beyond stone,” May said.

  “We can know that without being in a church filled with enough gold to feed all the beggars on the streets for eternity,” Louisa said.

  As they left the basilica, May thought she would never choose a plain ceiling when she could have a painted one. And why shouldn’t the floors and walls be covered with decorations, too? But while she was irritated about all the time Louisa spent in their room and the way Alice was always quoting from her guidebook, she felt more like a tourist than an artist, seeing everything as if from the outside. She hadn’t drawn since they’d been in Rome. Was Louisa’s old prophecy coming true: did all the magnificent art make clear the weaknesses in her own?

  Surely her own attempts must have been worthwhile. Maybe she needed to be around more living artists. She thought she’d visit Anne Whitney, who was living here with her companion, ma
king a good reputation for works in both marble and bronze. But first May had to help Alice move from the hotel into her relatives’ suites. Then Louisa said that she found the sounds of the water constantly splashing around Triton annoying, and they’d save money in a smaller room in the back of the hotel. Their new view was of a shadowed courtyard and an ancient chapel. At street-level, the smell of horses was strong. But May reminded herself that what was important was for her to draw. On the next sunny day, she asked Louisa to go with her to the Forum, where she would sketch the broken temples.

  They stopped to collect the mail, then continued through a neighborhood where grindstones in marble shops spun chunks into tiny spheres. Women sat on doorsteps beside clay pots of geraniums and rosemary, keeping an eye on children playing tag. Models milled around a statue of a half-sunken boat at the bottom of the Spanish Steps. Boys dressed in goatskins stood near a white-bearded man who May supposed might be shown as Moses, Jupiter, or God. Several young women called, “Buongiorno, signorina,” and held up their bambini, in hope of being asked to pose as Virgin Mary. May was pleased that they seemed to recognize that she was an artist, perhaps because she wasn’t strolling with a man.

  Arriving at the Forum, she studied the way cypress trees cast shadows on temple ruins. Birds nested in the broken, moss-covered stone. Cats scouted for mice. May and Louisa sat on a stone, where Louisa unwound a string that held together a thin and tattered envelope that May knew must be from Mother, who was conscientious that the cost of postage was based on weight. May sketched the narrow trees and pale pillars, though her gaze sometimes shifted to couples strolling under parasols and boys in ragged jackets drawing circles in the dirt and shooting marbles. A mother helped a little girl balance on a stone altar, which might have once held silver chalices and pomegranates offered to goddesses.

  Louisa refolded the thin paper. “Mother says Mrs. Hawthorne wrote her that Julian got married.”

  “It’s not possible!” May put down her pencil.

  “Didn’t you refuse his offer to marry?”

  “I’m just surprised. He’s so young.”

  “He must be in his mid-twenties. Lots of people get married then. She says her grandparents own a glassworks in Maryland. I expect she’s rich.”

  “And young and pretty.”

  “You can’t expect him to pine for you forever.”

  “I just never thought he’d marry before I did.” May’s chest ached, not just from the words but also from the sympathy she saw in Louisa’s eyes. May supposed this woman didn’t paint and didn’t yearn for anything but Julian. She asked, “Louisa, what if I can only recognize love when it disappears?”

  “We’re all like that.”

  “We Alcotts?”

  “Artists and writers. We only see the meaning or shape of things when they’re over.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “It’s a choice.”

  May remembered feeling outraged when Julian’s mother spoke about stopping painting because her husband’s genius mattered more. She’d always known Julian didn’t have such genius, but now she’d stopped painting for no reason at all.

  ONLY A FEW DAYS LATER, MAY RETURNED TO THEIR room to find it smoky. Crumpled balls of paper, some half-blackened, smoldered by the grate. Louisa, who’d been bent over, straightened her back and handed May a black-bordered letter.

  “Who is it now? Please. Not Mother.” May shut her eyes.

  “Those poor children,” Louisa murmured.

  “Not Anna’s boys?” When Louisa didn’t answer, May opened her eyes and read: Our dear John passed over. May heaven rejoice, though we grieve. May’s hands felt as bony as those she’d seen of saints and prophets. “He’s too young. People don’t die from pain in their legs.”

  “It wasn’t that, but they think pneumonia. He died within a week.”

  “They should have sent a telegram. The funeral must already be over.”

  “We couldn’t have arrived back in time. Those poor boys.”

  “Thank goodness Anna has them. What a comfort they’ll be.”

  “She’ll have to be both mother and father.”

  May cried, thinking of John lifting her valise at the wharf while trying to balance on his cane. Anna must have put away all except her black dresses. She would have combed her boys’ hair and reminded them to be polite to neighbors who stopped by to offer halting words and trays of fresh rolls. May wished she’d been there to open her arms, which might have given Anna a moment’s relief from looking brave for her boys.

  “He was dying, and what did I do? I should have been there instead of here, writing worthless stories about criminals and ladies of the night.” Louisa stood, grabbed the poker, and shoved papers under the flames. The cat’s shoulders hunched high.

  “Don’t! It’s your work.” May grabbed the poker, but the pages were already curling, turning to ash.

  “I must work now, anyway,” Louisa said. “I’m going to write that sequel Mr. Niles has been asking for. He promised me it will make at least as much money, maybe even more. I can give it to Anna for her boys.”

  “Lu, you know John. He surely guessed, more than we did, that he might not live to see his sons grow up. I’m sure he left his family provided for.”

  “Anna’s children deserve the best schools. And college.”

  “Freddy still likes nursery rhymes. Johnny has barely learned the alphabet.”

  “People should look ahead.”

  “And what about Anna? She grieves now, but she’s as strong as Mother, who raised us while earning a living. Father used to say Anna was the finest writer of us all. Death brings some kind of gift. Perhaps hers is a chance to earn a living with her pen.”

  “I must be the boys’ father now. I’ll write to Mr. Niles, ask for an advance to send her, and give him the sequel he wants.” Louisa picked up a sheet of paper.

  May felt furious at the sight of that perfectly white paper, the way Louisa had everything figured out. “You’re going to write about those sisters?”

  “Of course they’ve grown now. I recently had an idea. Jo and her husband can run a school for boys, who will get in a lot of scrapes.”

  “That Jo will set right?”

  “Yes. Maybe the oldest sister’s dear husband will pass over, and the children will attend her school.”

  “Where they’ll get better care with their aunt than with their mother? I thought you weren’t going to write about that family again.”

  “You, I mean Amy, will hardly appear. And I’ll make it all right. Her baby will grow up a to be a pretty little girl. Maybe her mother will pick up paints again.”

  “You’re not directing a theater. I don’t need your script.”

  “I thought you’d like to read about someone who is both an artist and a mother.”

  “No woman does that!” Maybe that was what hurt most. She’d been wanting something that was impossible. May’s face felt thick with tears under her skin—for John, for Anna and the boys, for herself. She could hardly fuss about a book when her dear brother-in-law had died and her oldest sister must cope. Her own concerns couldn’t compare to that. She couldn’t protest when Louisa was doing so much good, even more than her duty. This wasn’t like when she’d been sent away to her aunt’s house when Beth had been dying. She’d stayed away from John all by herself. There was no one to blame, but anger stayed with her during the following days. She wished Louisa hadn’t burned her stories, but she envied her that moment, hearing flames gust higher and louder, and her sense of purpose. Even if Louisa didn’t love the book she felt bound to write, she had something to do.

  She was always busy now. May also missed the company of Alice, who was increasingly preoccupied with a young man introduced to her by her aunt, the nephew of the owner of a textile mill. May stuck a pin set with jet beads in the wide brim of her topaz-colored hat and met Alice in a piazza, where convent girls walked in two straight lines. Women sold fresh fish packed in snow brought down from the Alb
an hills.

  “What does Milton think of your painting?” May asked.

  “We’ve never talked about it.”

  “Alice!”

  “The truth is, it’s a relief to stop sketching. Don’t say you’ve never imagined that! I might enjoy art more now that I’m not always comparing others’ work with mine.”

  “You don’t mean you’re giving it up?”

  “Giving up what? Questions and ridicule? Some people want to play the piano in concert halls, but most are content with parlors. I’ll consider it a blessing if I can teach my children the joys of line and color someday.”

  “Children? Has Milton spoken to you of marriage?”

  “I expect he’ll first want to speak to my guardian in New York. We’re going back with my cousins after the ice breaks in the harbors.” Alice took a breath. “It seems though his uncle has a fortune, he does not. He knows I have an inheritance.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “I believe what I feel could turn into that.”

  “Make sure he acts tenderly toward you.” May squeezed her hand.

  “He does. We read Miss Browning’s poetry together.”

  At first, May questioned Alice’s choice, but as the days passed, she thought how it might be a relief to stop trying to be someone who she was perhaps never destined to be. How could May protest giving up art when she’d hardly taken out her paints in Italy? Was it because there were few painters among plenty of men with marble dust in their hair and studios that resounded with the crack of mallets on chisels, the ring of chisels on stone? The paintings in the churches and museums were gorgeous, but none seemed to speak to her, none whispered that she, too, might one day leave a mark. Instead, the art that had survived for centuries seemed like signs that she could never paint anything worth sharing such a wall.