by Elise Hooper
Finally Alice declared it was time to return to her rooms to prepare for a dinner engagement. Unsteadily, May eased out of her chair and unfolded herself over her petite friend. Alice pulled her down into a tight embrace, yet their height difference made Alice’s shoulder dig into May’s sternum painfully. They promised to keep in touch.
When May shuffled out of the tearoom and into the crowds of theatergoers flowing to Covent Garden, she could not remember how to get home, though she had traveled the street many times before. She turned around and around in circles, looking for a street sign or a familiar landmark to ground her. Dizzy, she staggered under the awning of a flower seller to collect herself. The shop had closed already. She looked down at the crushed petals lying plastered to the cobblestones. If she closed her eyes, she could still detect the faintest scent of wet leaves, but any sweet smell of roses had disappeared long ago. Leaning against a brick wall of the storefront, she struggled to breathe, but her lungs felt collapsed, and she started banging on her chest with her fists as panic began to overtake her.
“May?”
May’s hands froze, and she looked up to see her neighbors, Caroline Warner and Phoebe Pierce, materialize out of the fog.
“What are you doing? Are you on your way home?” Phoebe asked, looking at May with concern.
May could not reply but nodded her head. The two women tucked her in between them and walked home to Bloomsbury, their steady hum of quiet conversation soothing May back from the ragged feeling threatening to unravel her moments earlier.
At the boardinghouse, their landlady waylaid the trio as they entered the foyer, and she handed May an envelope with Louisa’s writing on the outside. A shiver of anticipation ran down her spine. Finally, a letter from her sister! She hugged her friends and raced up the creaking stairs, tearing the letter open.
November 19, 1877
Concord
Dear May,
Marmee’s health has deteriorated in the extreme. You must come home, for we are in dire need of your assistance. I’m also feeling poorly and am not up to the tasks at hand. I must hand off all responsibilities to you. You’ve had your fun. Please, book passage on the next available ship. I will pay for your ticket.
May let out a cry after the first paragraph and tossed the letter to the ground. It wavered back and forth as it settled to the floor. Was Marmee as sick as Louisa expressed? Or was this a ploy by her sister to get her home? May clenched her hands at her sides. Louisa still couldn’t stand to see May enjoying success; she couldn’t bear to see her own position as most talented sister threatened.
It was impossible to gauge the truth of the situation from her sister’s letters; Louisa’s tendency toward exaggeration muddied everything. May tugged on her earring as she paced around the tiny living room. She undressed for the night, but sleep seemed impossible, so wrapping herself tightly in her shawl, she stared out into the dark night.
The truth appeared indisputable: she was alone and accomplishing nothing, while on the other side of the earth, her mother suffered. May dropped into a chair and buried her face in her hands. She worked so hard, gave up so much, but why? What did she have to show for all of her sacrifice, all of her heartache, all of her efforts? It felt as though her career had stalled, but did she even have any career to speak of? She fooled no one, she was no artist. When she stacked up all of the facts, it seemed obvious she should go home.
Yet her vow to never go home at anyone’s behest, especially Louisa’s, lodged itself in her heart. She hated to give up. She hated to let her sister rule over her life. Louisa’s cruel words before May left for Europe still rang in her ears. Who was really the selfish sister?
Her head throbbed as she remembered the spitefulness of her sister’s accusations. Louisa’s letter still lay neglected on the floor next to her desk. May walked over to pick it up, plunked herself down in the nearest chair, and commenced writing. Once her hand started moving across the page, she could not stop.
November 29, 1877
London
Louisa,
I was delighted to receive your recent letter, because I desperately hoped to find a thaw in our recent estrangement. It’s been over a year since we last spoke, and I have thought of you every single day since I left. I’ve replayed our confrontation in the parlor many times in my head since leaving for Europe. Each time, I remain convinced your words were unnecessarily cruel and punishing. Yet through all of this, I’ve hoped for reconciliation.
I can only believe that your demand for me to come home stems from your jealousy of me. I’ve realized you’ve always envied me. I believe your unkind portrayal of me in “Little Women” is evidence of it. No matter how much money you make, the truth is that you remain a mean-spirited person at your core. You support me only so you may control me. I refuse to suffer under your dictates for a moment longer.
Before I left, Marmee made me promise to spread my wings and make something of myself, so I’m determined to do just that. Now that you find yourself in the enviable position of producing money, please use it. Hire people to help you with your housekeeping and health. Rather than racing across the Atlantic, my time should be spent improving my artwork. I refuse to come home every time you tire of tending to our family. Furthermore, I must encourage you to take better care of your own health so you’re not constantly beset by misery. Your litany of constant complaints is tiresome. I will return home when I am good and ready and not a moment sooner.
May
Louisa can stick that in her cap for a few days and see how it feels, May thought while she sealed the envelope. She marched downstairs and stuffed the letter in her landlady’s outgoing post basket, expecting to feel satisfaction. Instead, remorse niggled inside her belly.
A week later, May dressed in her favorite navy blue silk dress and prepared to meet Caroline at the Sloane Gallery. As she stood in the front door vestibule of the boardinghouse with her gloved hand on the doorknob, her landlady called to stop her and handed May two letters: Father’s graceful handwriting was on one; Louisa’s, the other. May’s heart plummeted. She turned, willed herself up the stairs, and closed the door behind her.
Father’s letter explained Marmee’s health had taken a dire turn, but he insisted May remain in London, explaining it was unlikely she would be able to get home in time. May gasped and raked at the envelope to check the postmark. It had been mailed thirteen days earlier. She flipped to Louisa’s latest letter and the postmark showed it had been mailed eleven days earlier. A cold, hard pit grew inside May. After she slit open her sister’s envelope, a lock of white hair slipped out and fell to the floor. May collapsed. Marmee was dead.
Chapter 33
May lay in bed for several days, allowing the weight of the coverlet to pin her down. She thought about a time when she went swimming in the Concord River with her sisters. She had waded through the water, but a slimy rock made her feet slip out from under her. The unforgiving current pulled her deeper onto the floor of the riverbed, where she lay anchored to the bottom in her heavy woolen swimming costume, looking toward the surface. The distant, garbled sound of her sisters calling her name eddied around her, but May closed her eyes, lulled into the peacefulness of her resting place until a burning in her lungs made her fight her way to the surface, spluttering and coughing. This time, submerged in grief, May did not feel the same burn to rescue herself. Not only had she lost her mother, but she probably lost her sister, too. Somewhere over the Atlantic, in the hold of a ship, a letter lay in wait for her sister. A wounding letter. A letter May regretted writing.
In the distance of her consciousness, someone knocked at her door. Go away, leave me alone, May thought. The knocking persisted and grew to an impatient, constant pounding. Desperate to stop the incessant noise, May crawled out of bed. Her legs buckled as she staggered to the door and opened it.
“Good God, May! Are you ill? Let us in.” Una, her neighbor from Buffalo, looked aghast as she took in May’s appearance. “The landlady says sh
e hasn’t seen you downstairs for meals in three days.”
Caroline’s face appeared over Una’s shoulder. “And you never showed up at the Sloane. What’s wrong?”
May stepped back and melted to the floor.
UNA AND CAROLINE fed May, cleaned her, dressed her, and pinned up her hair. They each took one of her arms, and the three women left the boardinghouse. May wanted to huddle down on the gritty sidewalk, in the shadow of a stairwell, and fade away into nothingness. It would be so easy to wander off into the opaque soot-filled clouds enveloping them and disappear. Every winter in New England, stories circulated about people lost in blizzards; these poor souls eventually curled up in the snow and succumbed to a wakeless sleep. May dwelt in a comparable state of surrender, but Una and Caroline maintained firm grips on each arm and propelled her forward.
“Let’s go to your beloved Henry VII Chapel. I’ve seen your beautiful sketches of it, come on,” Caroline said.
Her friends led May to Westminster Abbey and slid into one of the pews. The stained-glass windows usually gleamed with rich hues of amethyst, sapphire, and ruby, but now they were dulled from the darkness outside. From somewhere in the distance, the honeyed voices of young choirboys sang hymns.
A commotion disrupted the blankness of May’s mind. She looked up to see a woman in rags with ratted hair kneeling in the Innocents Corner. A priest pulled at the old woman’s arm, trying to drag her away from the alabaster tomb of a baby in a cradle. The woman sagged in the man’s grip. “But this is where I find peace,” she moaned.
The priest ignored her and continued to drag her out of the chapel. May’s numb chest suddenly seared with anger at the sight of the woman begging for mercy. She jumped to her feet and marched across the chapel to the priest.
“I demand you take your hands off her,” May commanded. The priest froze in place, but kept his grip tight on the woman. “If she cannot stay and find some peace, why is this building here?”
The priest’s face puckered as if he had swallowed something distasteful.
May did not back down. “I have a letter from the Dean of Westminster granting me permission to paint here. I’ll vouch for this woman if you allow her to remain.”
The priest gave her a baleful look. “When you leave, so must she.”
May rose up to her full height, for even in God’s uniform, the priest was still just a man. “As you wish.”
The priest grimaced and let go of the woman’s scrawny arm. She skittered sideways like a crab back to the Innocents Corner. Without a backward glance, the priest glided away into the gloom.
May went to the tomb of the baby in the cradle and knelt next to the woman. The rancid stench of her unwashed body and God knows what else assaulted May, but she remained.
“My eleventh babe was just carted off to potter’s field,” the woman mumbled into her hands clasped in prayer. Her voice was so heavily accented, it could barely be understood.
“You have my sympathies,” May said.
The woman recoiled in surprise, and May realized, with embarrassment, the woman was not speaking to her. The woman’s watery, yellowed eyes took in May’s black bombazine dress and bonnet, but she said nothing more and went back to her murmuring. Eventually, she staggered to her feet and hobbled away to the gate. May started to follow her, but the woman vanished like a wraith into the nave of the cathedral.
“It was kind of you to stand up for her,” Una whispered.
“My mother would have made that priest weep for his treatment of that woman. She probably would have dragged him over to Parliament straightaway and demanded he be defrocked.” May wiped at the tears welling in the corners of her eyes. “She was always trying to help people.”
“Well, that poor woman was lucky you were here today.”
“I felt my mother in there with me. Do you think I’m crazy?”
Caroline cupped May’s chin in her hand and gave her a sympathetic smile. “I think you’re grieving. What exactly did you feel?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I just miss her.” But it was more than that—May did not hear her mother’s voice; May’s mother did not appear as an apparition—but May sensed Marmee somewhere inside of her. The location of the feeling was not specific; it was not near her heart, and not necessarily in her head. May never understood where the soul resided, but now she had a sense of it. It was an energy inside her, a burn to move forward, a longing to love.
Chapter 34
May’s headaches disappeared, and she began to paint again. The bilious fog outside lifted, making the days brighter and longer. Because of the western-facing windows in May’s room, Una set up her easel beside May’s. The two would work for hours, rejoicing in the natural light flooding May’s room.
An evening in late February brought her neighbors—the Pierces, the Warners, and Una—to her door with a young man in tow. “Goodness, there’s not enough room in my cave for everyone!” laughed May, as she waved them all in. “I’m afraid we’ll be sitting on each other’s laps if we stay here.”
“I get May.” Robert flashed a wicked grin at Caroline, his wife.
Amid the gaiety, the newcomer stood watching the others, until Walter remembered introductions. “This is Ernest Nieriker. He’s taken a room next to Phoebe and me.”
“You’re a painter?” Ernest asked, nodding at May’s jars of paintbrushes and colored pencils on the windowsill. May detected a faint German accent.
“On a good day,” she replied.
Everyone managed to find a spot that evening. Walter amused them with a story of one of his students who had been caught cheating; the boy wrote some formulas for algebraic equations on his hand, and then rested his cheek in the same hand, as he worked on the exam, only to finish with the inked answers stamped across his face. Caroline read some of her poetry, and they finished up the evening singing. Ernest sang in a deep baritone that harmonized effortlessly with the group.
And so a new pattern developed to her days. May would rise, paint in her room, and visit art galleries in the afternoons. She sold two flower panels and a painting of her stuffed white owl to support herself through another month. Evenings often brought her new, young Swiss neighbor to her door. Sometimes he’d come with the Pierces or the Warners, and they would all play whist. Sometimes he’d be alone, and the two of them would talk while playing chess. May tended to play an aggressive game, often leaving her king unguarded to Ernest’s attacks.
“You’re far more patient than I,” she lamented as he announced checkmate. “I always see those decisive combinations too late. You notice everything.”
“I think you don’t give yourself enough credit. Artists are patient people.”
“Perhaps, but my mind tends to wander off the board.”
“Well, that is different from patience. You’re very curious. Your questions draw people to you. I admire the ease with which you attract friends.”
May could feel herself flushing under his compliments. He spoke quietly as he rearranged the chessboard. She couldn’t concentrate on his advice about positioning her pawn structure more strategically, but she watched the seriousness with which he tried to help her. He claimed their evenings together offered him the perfect opportunity to practice English, but his language was already impeccable. His manners were also faultless. Whenever he showed up at her room, he always brought a small cluster of lily of the valley or a sweet treat from her favorite pastry shop in Covent Garden. Though he possessed a solemnity that made him appear to be older, May wondered at his age. His descriptions of his life back in Baden made it clear his employment was relatively new, and she could not glean any further information from him about an earlier occupation.
One evening he arrived carrying a violin case.
“I had no idea you played the violin. Please, play me a song,” May urged him. “My eyes are exhausted from a long day of painting.”
“Some Viotti will be just the thing.” He placed the violin under his chin and closed his eyes as he slid
the bow over the strings. The smooth grain of the spruce and the ebony of the fingerboard gleamed. How could a mere four strings bring forth such rich sound?
Ernest moved his body with the music. His brows furrowed during parts of the song, and then his face would relax and assume a dreamy expression, all the while his upper body moved behind the delicate hourglass-shaped instrument. A quick range of emotions played across his face, and she watched the muscles underneath his jaw shift from one expression to the next. His broad shoulders dipped and rose. The rhythm with which his arms struck the bow across the strings was sometimes slow and fluid, sometimes staccato and tense. Uncomfortable with such a private moment—as though she had come upon him sleeping in bed—May turned her head, but found herself pulling her gaze back to him. She could not look away. His light brown hair, pomaded into a perfect part when he started playing, began to loosen, and May had to restrain herself from reaching forward to smooth back some of the stray curls falling across his forehead. At one point, he opened up his eyes and looked directly at her. A shy smile skirted the corners of his mouth.
When he finished playing, May inhaled a sharp breath and then clapped with enthusiasm to cover up the fact that she was trembling. “Beautiful.”
Ernest looked steadily at May for a few beats, saying nothing.
“Oh my, it’s gotten late,” she said, pointing to her clock on the mantel and jumping to her feet to usher him out the door. “I have to visit one of my dealers first thing in the morning.”
Ernest stood, tucking his violin under his arm, and bowed his head. “Thank you.”