After Alice Fell: A Novel

by Kim Taylor Blakemore

  “We needed this rain,” I say.

  “But not thunder.”

  “No, not thunder.”

  Toby hums a tune, and I tap our hands to my knee and sing.

  I’ll be in Scotland afore ye,

  But me and my true love will never meet again,

  On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomond.

  We listen to the thunder grow fainter, the lightning shimmer far off. Sing “Oh! Susanna” and “Froggie Went A-Courtin’.”

  The rain stops abrupt as it came. The sky clears, and the moon glows behind a long wisp of cloud.

  “Look.” Toby points past the main pond to where the shore pinches and turns out of sight.

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “It’s a Bad One. It’s come from the Narrows.” Toby’s got his hands pressed to the glass. He dips his head to peer around the rainwater.

  “Bad Ones don’t exist. I told you that. It’s make-believe. It’s . . .” I let out a breath and take his elbow. His body is rigid, on alert. “Alice made it all up.”

  But it’s Alice’s arm I hold, and Alice’s eyes round with terror that look at me.

  “Nothing will happen, Alice,” I murmur. “Nothing is there.”

  Her mouth moves without a sound. She pokes her finger against my breastbone.

  No—it’s not her—it’s Toby, twisting and pulling his arm free, his elbow sharp to my chest. “Look. Just like Alice said.”

  There in the water, a dark shape slips the surface. I rasp a breath and lean forward to the glass. It’s blurred now, human shaped, then not. I can’t tell if it twists and rolls or it’s the trick of the waterlogged moonlight. I fight with the window latch, my fingers clumsy and numb, then throw the window open. I grip my fingers to the sill, hard enough that the paint chips under my nails. Toby presses his shoulder to my arm as we lean out to look.

  “It’s a Bad One. It’s come to cut my tongue. Alice said it’d come.” His voice lifts into a shriek.

  “It’s a log, Toby. Just a log.” I grab Toby’s arm and shake. “Alice told you stupid lies.”

  We stare at each other, both our breaths shallow.

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “She doesn’t lie.” He whimpers and slips away from me, darting out the door before I can pull him tight.

  The morning comes, the sky a faded lavender, the warming earth loamy and rotten. The log has beached in the shallows. I have not moved from the chair. My back and legs are stiff and sore. I leave the window open. The pond laps the shore, the tail of the storm still stirring the water, still slipping through the trees, liquid and smooth.

  Behind me, Alice’s trunk lies open. I hold her inventory list, written in precise cursive with a diagram drawn below of the contents’ placement. All the items are still intact; I can’t bear to touch it.

  Cathy rakes loose branches and leaves from the garden beds, flicking them to a pile. Toby crouches, intent on an insect or worm that’s crawling amongst the detritus. When he’s lost track, he scoops a mound into a pan and dumps it into the wheelbarrow. Saoirse stalks the vegetable rows, hands on hips, shaking her head. The tomato plants are beaten and sodden. She shifts the leaves with her foot, then twists off the fruit that’s still good. The bean posts tilt and twist into the garlic. The peppers litter the soil like Christmas bulbs flung from a box.

  “Would you look at this?” she says. “All a-ruin.”

  A saw bites into wood; the sound zigs through the trees. Elias must be in the front, and a part of the hedge must be down.

  The cicadas are quiet. A bird warbles and is answered by another.

  Alice’s clothes are folded neat and tidy.

  Two dresses, one striped, one plaid. Three petticoats. Three bloomers. A pair of black garters. Two corsets. Her plum bonnet and her peach.

  Tomorrow I will go to town and order two headstones from Darius Meek and he will tell me there will be a delay. Too many stones to carve of late, the bodies of townsmen home like clockwork, and the church bells worn down in grief. I will ask for a flat rectangle granite for Benjamin; his name on the left and the right half blank, awaiting mine.

  One silver-plated brush of boar bristles to take the tangles out. A wide-toothed bone comb. The hat pin I gave her on her sixteenth birthday—a songbird of green glass and pearl perched on its end.

  I will ask Darius for a quartz marker, so it catches the sun and scatters the moonlight: Alice Snow, beloved sister.

  Three books, wrapped and knotted in twine. A Treatise on Astronomy. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The Last of the Mohicans.

  The wheelbarrow squeals as Cathy lifts it, pushes it past the shreds of iris leaves and down to the bare roses. She drops the handles and gestures for Toby.

  Two pairs of boots: ivory white with black buttons and summer soles. Her scuffed, flat-heeled lace-ups. Five rolled stockings. Two black, two blue, one gray wool with a mend to the toe.

  I rest my hand to the paper, spread my fingers over the black ink, then pick at the corner with my thumb.

  Alice had been so desperate to go with me, those years ago.

  “I have been accepted, Alice. As a nurse. You will return to Turee, just until Christmas. The war can’t go on much longer, can it? And think, you can help Lydia with little Toby, and I will retrieve you by Christmas, and Benjamin will be back and . . .” But she’d stomped the stairs to her little room and left me alone in the cottage hall. She would not have it. Note after note written and pushed to my fisted hands, under the bedroom door, taken to the post so I would find it with the mail. How can you leave me? How can you forsake me? A postcard with peonies: Selfish. Salt put in my tea. Letters from Benjamin, speckled with mud from Fort Magruder, Spotsylvania, Poplar Hill all torn to bits and offered as a puzzle to fill my time.

  “I will not have our Union fail,” I said. “If I can do one thing—the army needs nurses.”

  Her pencil ripped into her notebook. She tore the page out. Not a nurse.

  “I will learn. I took care of Mother.”

  Take me with you.

  “No.”

  Alice flailed her hands, and her voice came out then in a ragged grunt. She knocked over a porcelain angel that cracked but did not shatter. She kicked it across the front room. It spun and skidded under a bookcase heavy with Benjamin’s textbooks and atlases.

  Her next note was ripped into the paper and shoved at my chest.

  You didn’t take care of Mother.

  “Go pack your trunk.”

  This same trunk. I said it was all agreed: she would live with Lionel and Lydia and help with the child. Lionel came for the night and drove her away in the morning. I did not watch them leave. I had my own valise to pack and my own stage to catch.

  So full I was of righteousness. So tired I was of her.

  I look back to the yard. Toby’s wandered away to the boathouse. He grabs the metal lock and drops it so it thuds against the wood. The door quivers. He does it again but grows bored, and Cathy calls him back.

  The locket isn’t listed in her inventory, not drawn in the diagram, wasn’t on her body when I cleaned her. The locket I see in my sleep. The one she never removed. Mother’s once. Alice had purloined it. Snatched it from Mother’s jewelry drawer and refused to give it up. And why should she? It was the last she had of her.

  Five cloth notebooks, blank. Seven pencils tied with string.

  Lionel’s gone down now to Cathy, wipes the dirt from her cheek and kisses her. He swings his hat and Toby grasps for it, catching the brim.

  I turn the paper over: This is the property of Alice Louise Snow. June 1864. If found, please return to Marion Abbott specifically. Turee, NH. Otherwise destroy.

  My ears fill and roar. I crumple the words in my fist. But the words slip through the paper and between the list of corsets and boar’s-bristle brushes. Each letter chained to the other and wrapping up my wrist and elbow. I lurch from the chair, throw the note on top of the clothing she never needed.

  Today is T
hursday. Cathy takes callers in the afternoon; she’ll sit in the parlor, perched on the edge of the settee and wait and hope this week someone will come. No one has in the weeks I’ve been here. Lionel will ride into town this morning, sit at his broad owner’s desk, and mull what the hell to do now there isn’t a war and the orders for bullets have dwindled away.

  Cathy rests her hand on the rake handle and looks up. “I could do with help.”

  I grab up my straw bonnet and wave it out the open window. “Coming.” My voice rasps rough and odd. I turn away, tie the knot of the hat tight to my throat. I close the trunk lid and click the lock. “Coming.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Turee Jun 6. 64

  Marion—

  I have chosen Brawders House for Alice. It is close enough we can visit on occasion and is assuredly more congenial than the public asylum in Concord. The doctors are confident the environment and facilities will improve her mental unease.

  We all want the best—

  Lionel

  Near Petersburg, VA Aug 20, 1864

  Brother,

  We have been hard maneuvered by the secesh, and reinforcements have come too late. All soldiers exhausted and myself bone weary though brightened by the sewing tack and two aprons mailed August 1. Cathy is kind to think upon me and you, too, for the box of cheroots to pass to the men. They send a large huzzah.

  I have received no letter or word from Alice, though I have written some twenty letters. Out of guilt or kindness I cannot say but certainly out of worry. She is not so able to incorporate such change.

  My dreams are troubled often by her crying. Even in the midst of all this chaos, I cannot elude the tears.

  Have you visited? Can you send her word I love her? Can you ask if she has received my letters? I sent in July 1 dollar and a small porcelain of a dog that looked much like Old Harold. Can you find out if they have been received?

  I am at empty pockets here. Could you send 4 or 5 dollars—I will return when my pay is received.

  Marion

  Turee Aug 28. 64

  Sister—

  Enclosed find 5 dollars. It’s a gift not a loan.

  Toby is into everything, a curious boy and running Cathy ragged. Sometimes he looks too much like Lydia—it is like a fist in the chest. I can’t tell C—of course. She’s been a blessing, really, keeping all spirits afloat. I cannot be anything except in her debt.

  Alice refuses our visits. Perhaps later, Dr. Mayhew says. Letters are held in trust until she is further well. I have much confidence in her treatment.

  Kylie Humphrey is missing. Bill Hardis got shot in Richmond and is now home to rest. Did you tend him?

  Let this war soon be over.

  L—

  Dry rivulets snake the surface of Alice’s grave, smooth and glittery with crushed mica, the leaves and twigs brushed to a pile at my feet. I have ordered the stone and the one for Benjamin, though he rests under oak and moss somewhere in the South. I sent the good doctor the receipt for both. Lydia’s tombstone is simple gray granite, an arched top with chiseled peonies to each corner. Wife & Mother. Father’s and Mother’s tucked into the stand of woods, shadows dappling the rectangle fence surrounding them. Farther still, under the brambles and ferns, other relatives lie with stones laid flat to the ground, words sanded by frost and the passing of time.

  I lay a fistful of black-eyed Susans against Lydia’s stone. Another bunch atop Benjamin’s. The rest for Alice, placed above her heart. Her favorite flower, both plain and showy. We planted the front yard of the cottage full with them, so they waved in the sun, and everything glowed a gold yellow. The bees moved from flower to flower, at first one or two, then too many to navigate the walkway without fear of a sting. Maybe it was her way of guarding the house from whatever scared her. I didn’t ask. They were pretty, and it was amusing watching the schoolboys hop and shriek their way past them.

  Dr. Mayhew responded to my letter; I pull it from my skirt pocket to read again, as if the words will change. As if his words will be less unctuous, the meaning less dismissive.

  Brawders House, August 10, 1865

  Dear Mrs. Abbott,

  Your grief over your sister’s passing is deeply respected. It is always a shock when a family member succumbs to their own demons. The confusion of emotions and thoughts are chaotic at best, and thus I can only tell you that they will lessen, though not fully dissolve, with time. It is, truly, the finest medicine.

  Our reports, though you may wish them of a different nature, stand as is.

  Respectfully Yours,

  L. Mayhew

  I cannot accept his answer.

  “What happened to you, Alice?” I kneel, press my ear to the soil, close my eyes, and pray for a susurration of words. Speak to me in death, since you would not in life.

  A snap of a branch. I sit up, brushing dirt from my ear. I squint at the figure standing behind me. The sun glimmers bright around the boy, outlining him as if he were cut from paper to be framed in the hall. He holds a bow in his fist, the tip dragging by his feet.

  “Will you teach me to shoot?” He thumbs the strap of the quiver, shrugging it up his shoulder and then gripping it so it won’t slide off. He strides around so I see him properly. His lips are rosy and pursed, his cheeks swathed in freckles. He tips his head and waits for me to answer.

  “You should ask your father. Or Cathy.”

  “No, just you.”

  The quiver knocks the ground as he drops to his haunches. He reaches out, touching his fingers to my cheek.

  Then he stands and walks across the graves, over the mounds and into the furrows. He stops at the edge of the woods. “Come on.”

  “I don’t have a bow and arrow.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “These are the Sentinels.” Toby sets his bow to a fallen log, pulls the quiver strap over his head, and clambers over, his heel catching and stripping bark. He runs into a small clearing bordered by red maples and dark pines. “Come on.”

  I lift my skirts, follow him to the clutch of trees, and stop at the view beyond. We are on a steep bank of smooth rock, and below slips the black water of the Narrows. I take a step closer, but Toby grabs my skirts and pulls back.

  “You can’t ever go past the Sentinels.”

  I stare at him, not knowing what he means. But then he points to the tree by my right. It is just a tree. He points at the next one, then the next—five in all—and says, “You don’t see.”

  “What am I supposed to—”

  “Here.” He touches a dark line a few feet from the base, a gnarled scar. “And there.” The next tree, and then the next. There’s a glint of color in the knot closest to me. A bit of pearl lodged in the wood. A round red bead. The teeth of a key. I move from tree to tree. Buttons and hairpins. Jewelry clasps and cufflinks. The green glass wing of a dragonfly.

  “I thought I’d lost that,” I say.

  “We were doing a new tree,” Toby says and leads me to a sapling. “Mama gave me a penny for candy, but I put it here.” The gash is recent, not seeping, the curve of the coin just peeking out. “You need to put something here.”

  I take a breath. This is Alice as she really was. Teaching a boy magic and how to keep safe.

  “Do you have something?” he asks. “It’s very important to give something to the tree.”

  “Yes. Yes.” I grab at the buttons on my shirt, twisting one on the cuff until the thread snaps.

  Toby pulls a pocketknife from his vest pocket and clicks it open. He stabs the tip to the tree trunk and digs out a hole. “Alice promised we’d do those four trees too. And the one in front of the house, but Mama had it cut down because it was rotten, so we didn’t.” He smoothed the edge of the hole, closed the knife, and pocketed it. Then he set his hands on his hips and looked up at me. “You’ll need to put it in yourself. That’s very important too.”

  My hand shakes. I close my fist tight, the button warming in my palm. Then I push it to the wood. My thumb is st
icky with sap. I rub it along the bark. I want to ask him when Alice changed, when she began to frighten him. Why she held him out the window and did she threaten to let go. Why she took a torch to the glass house. Why she stopped making rings of protection, as she did so long ago for me and so recently for him.

  I want to grab him by the shoulders and ask him if he remembers his mother, if there is some amorphous image of Lydia sitting on the edge of his bed at night and kissing his forehead. Someone he called Mother. I want to tell him I know what it was like to be motherless, to watch your mother struggle for air, mouth twisted in desperate agony and a look not of fear of imminent death, but fear of her life hanging on. I want to tell him I could not save her. That I failed Alice, and that I owe her a voice.

  I want to say:

  My sister didn’t kill herself. She loved bees and black-eyed Susans and little boys and china teacups with painted landscapes and shoe buttons and whippoorwills, and when she laughed it sounded like bells.

  I want to say:

  I am rudderless.

  “You have sap on your chin,” I say instead.

  And he keeps his hands to his hips and nods. “There might be a treasure in Alice’s trunk. For the tree. We’ll look together. We’ll bring it here.”

  He pats the tree and then my arm, and we walk through the clearing again. He scales the log and helps me over, then hands me the bow. “Do you know how to shoot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is Mama a better shot?”

  “Cathy?”

  He shifts his jaw. “Yes. Her.”

  “I don’t know. Probably.”

  “Will you teach me?”

  “If you wish.”

  With a shift of weight, he’s got the quiver strapped across his chest, the feathers on the arrows peeking out from behind his shoulder. He steps through a tangle of browning vines that snap and break as he kicks and twists his boots. “We’ll need more Sentinels. They stand guard. So no one gets taken.” A finger cocked to the sky. “Come on.”

  The bow grip is smooth leather. I hold it tight to my thigh and follow Toby under the canopy of trees and through a mire of rocks and roots before we reach the flat stones and sleeping dead again. The flowers have wilted in the heat, the leaves a dull green, petals faded yellow, the center florets purple-black and bulging.