Christmas in My Heart

by Joe Wheeler

  She was a 33-year-old June to his 21-year-old April. But hers was a young-at-heart 33, and his a maturity far beyond his years, forged by the crucible of war and imprisonment. But it was his seared, but cheerful still, spirit that won her heart. In spite of his recent residence in hell, this bruised and tattered lark was a living embodiment of the poetical portrayal of two men looking out through selfsame bars, one seeing walls, the other stars. Ladislas Wisniewiski saw the stars.

  Used to the cold formality and austerity of New England, she was totally unprepared for warmhearted Ladislas, who smashed through conventions and formalities as though they were so much kindling, a Mozart minuet stormed by a Liszt rhapsody.

  In truth, Louisa had been the object of many a lovesick swain through the years, but none had been able to break through her self-imposed barriers of reserve and indifference; prior to Ladislas, not one had been able to raise her temperature so much as one degree.

  The days and evenings that followed were full of adventures, large and small. He taught her French and she taught him English; he regaled her with the culture, history, and lore of the alpine country of Switzerland and France, and she introduced him to the New World of America; they rowed almost daily on beautiful Lake Geneva, framed by the snowcapped Alps; they explored the grounds of the chateau and area sights of interest such as the nearby Castle of Chillon, which Byron had immortalized; they took frequent tramps along the mountain sides, pausing often to drink in the stunning deep blue sheet of water spread out below them, the verdant hills around them, and the sawtooth mountains above them, cutting notches in the sky.

  And woven into the fabric of that never-to-be-forgotten summer of ’65 was talk—talk when talk added color, silence when talk was superfluous. Their talk recognized no barriers, no constraints. The subject was life, life with all its complexities, inequities, and unanswered questions. In the evenings, Ladislas would perform in the parlor (he was an accomplished professional musician), and Louisa would join the others and listen. Deep, deep within her, seas long dead would be stirred into tempests by Ladislas’s fomenting fingers.

  He was good for her—far better than she knew, for Louisa was (and always had been) a caregiver, a Martha, one who sublimated her own dreams and desires so others could fulfill theirs. All her life, others had always come first. She had grown up early, realizing while yet a child that it was her beloved mother who bore the full weight of the family’s financial problems, for her father—bless him!—seemingly dwelt in another world. Like Dickens’ immortal Micawber, he blithely assumed that something would always “turn up” to enable the family to muddle through. Certainly, God would provide. Somehow, some way, God always did, but in the process her mother, Abba, grew old before her time.

  Louisa had early recognized that she, by nature and temperament, was born to be an extension of her mother. She had sometimes resisted and resented this burden, but not for long, for hers was a sunny disposition; duty was not an ugly Puritan word but something you shouldered with a song in your heart.

  Rummaging around in her mind, Louisa took off a dusty cobwebby shelf a Christmas reel of her childhood: images of that bitterly cold New England winter flooded the walls of memory. They were down to their last few sticks of wood, and the winter wind howled around the snow-flocked house, icy fingers reaching in through every crack and crevice and chink. Besides the three sisters, a newborn was now at risk when the firewood was gone. “God will provide,” was her father’s rejoinder to his wife’s worried importuning. “God will provide as He always has.”

  Just then, there was a knock on the door. A neighbor had braved the banshee winds to bring over a load of wood, unable to escape the conviction that the family needed firewood. “Needed firewood?” Abba’s face resembled a rainbow on a golden morning.

  Later that memorable evening, Father had disappeared for some time. When he returned, stomping his half-frozen feet on the fireside hearth to restore circulation, he jubilantly announced that another neighbor, with a sick baby in a near-freezing house, had asked for help—how providential that the Lord had sent his family wood. Abba’s face grew coldly pale: “You … you didn’t … certainly, you didn’t!” But she knew even before he answered that he had. How could he? They had a baby too! This was just more than flesh and blood could bear.

  But before her pent-up wrath could erupt there was another knock on the door—and another load of wood waited outside. “I told you that we would not suffer,” was her father’s trusting response. Abba and her girls just looked at each other, absolutely mute.

  Louisa stirred, aware of a change in the tide: it was beginning to return. A dream-like full moon had risen, and the breakers were now luminous with a ghostly-beauty. The wind had died down at last.

  Truant-like, before she knew they had slipped away, her thoughts returned to that golden summer in Vevey. How lonely she had been. At first, the mere idea of seeing Europe had entranced her; all she had to do was care for a family friend’s invalid daughter: be a companion. But the girl was so insensitive to the beauty and history Louisa revelled in that her joie de vivre had begun to fade.

  And then came Ladislas.

  He filled a long-aching void in her life, for, growing up, she had been so tall, coltish, and tomboyish that romance could be found only in storybooks and in dreams. Her sisters were the soft, the feminine, the lovely ones.

  Then, when she had grown up, this ugly-duckling self-image refused to go away, in spite of the refutation in her mirror and in the eyes of men. As a result, she remained shy and unsure of herself—and certainly, so far, success in her chosen career was mighty slow in coming.

  Ladislas had unlocked an inner Louisa that even she had never seen before. Free for the first time in her life to be young without heavy responsibilities and worries, her day-by-day interactions with Ladislas brought new gentleness and vivacity to her face, and his open adoration, stars to her eyes. The older travelers staying at the pension watched the couple, subconsciously envying their youth and happiness. In the evening, in the flickering candlelight, Louisa’s face was graced by that inner radiance that comes but once in a woman’s life: from the full knowledge that she is loved and adored by the man she perceives to be her world.

  She borrowed not from the future but accepted each day, each hour, each minute, as a gift from God. The realities of life were swept aside to dissipate in the mists of the mountains as they lived each moment with the intensity of those who live on the slopes of a volcano or on an earthquake fault. Time enough for harsh realities later, when the cherubims of circumstance barred them from Eden with their flaming swords.

  But like all Shan-gri-las, this one too had to end. As the cool autumn winds swept down from Mont Blanc, Louisa’s invalid charge decided it was time to move to a warmer climate—southern France would be ideal.

  Louisa tearfully packed her trunks. It was no longer possible to pretend that this idyllic island in time would be their home. The age differential, Ladislas’s lack of livelihood prospects and his weakened health, their cultural differences, Louisa’s commitments to her family as well as her own career uncertainties—and, of course, the slight tincture of the maternal in her love for him—all added up to a gradually growing conviction that it would never be. Even as they rowed together, it was her sister, May, whom she envisioned opposite Ladislas down through the years; her age equating with his, her love of music and art responding to his, her infectious love of life feeding upon his boyish blandishments, impulsiveness, and warm and tender heart.

  But none of this took away from the bittersweet parting. Masking his intense feeling, he kissed her hand in the European manner. As she watched his waving scarf recede into a blur down the train tracks, her eyes filled with tears.

  For what right had she to dream of marriage? She who had vowed to shore up her mother’s failing strength, assisting her in every way possible; and then, when that beloved caregiver could no longer function very well, quietly and cheerfully taking her place.

/>   Then, too, Louisa vaguely realized that she was out of step with most of the women of her age, in that marriage, children, and domesticity was really not her, all in all. For she had career dreams of her own, and had little inclination to turn over her life to a man, becoming old before her time by repeated pregnancies and brutally heavy housework.

  But even that could not check the tears running down her cheeks … for love is not governed by the mind.

  She pulled out her watch and, by the light of the climbing moon, discovered it was almost II. Just before midnight, she planned to take a carriage to the ancient cathedral and see the nativity scene everyone had been talking about. She hungered to hear the choir and pipe organ celebrate the birth of Jesus 18 and a half centuries ago.

  In her pocket was a letter from home (worn and tattered from many readings) that her fingers touched in the darkness. She had no need to reread it for she knew it by heart: Father’s lecture tours were not doing very well; Anna had just given birth to her second son (how good John was to her!); Mother continued to weaken, her gradual buckling to the resistless juggernaut of the years becoming ever more apparent to the writer of the letter, May; and as for May—how much she needed a chance to flower, to become a real artist: she must be given the opportunity to experience Europe, too.

  And never far from mind was Beth—little Beth with her endearing ways, whose untimely death seven years before had left an aching void that time would never fill or completely heal. What a dear family she had! And how they loved each other! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she could use her writing talents to somehow recapture those magical childhood years, so permeated with sunlight and shadows, laughter and tears.

  But every story, especially a story of four girls, has to have a hero, too. Perhaps—the image of a dark-haired Polish musician, forever teasing, laughing, and cajoling … She could no more resist him than she could the incoming tide now lapping at her feet. Brother, sweetheart, and friend. But “Ladislas” would never do. Um-m … how about “Lawrence” … but she’d call him “Laurie.”

  She sank into a reverie outside the stream of time. She had no way of foreseeing the future: of knowing that four months later, “Laurie” would be waiting for her at the train station, and that for two wonderful weeks he, she, and Paris in the spring would coalesce in memories that would never die. Nor could she know that three years later, her book, the first half of the story, would be published, and a year after that, the second-half sequel would be snapped up by a constantly growing audience. The book would become the most beloved story ever written about an American girl. For, in spite of all her efforts to show off her sisters, offsetting their portraits with unvarnished depictions of her own frailties, mistakes, and weaknesses, she would fail in her purpose—for it would be Jo with whom generations of readers would fall in love.

  And who among us could ever read that unforgettable passage, set in the eternally flowering gardens of Vevey, wherein Amy, still mourning the recent death of her sister Beth, looks up … and sees him standing there:

  Dropping everything, she ran to him, exclaiming, in a tone of unmistakable love and longing, ‘Oh, Laurie, Laurie, I knew you’d come to me!’

  Yes, who among us could ever read that without sensing that the words were really Jo’s, that the broken heart was really Jo’s, and that the longing for a love that would forever remain imprisoned in the bud of might-have-been, never blossoming into the rose of marriage, was Jo’s. Who among us can read that heartbroken call without tears?

  “Miss Louisa?… uh, Miss Alcott?”

  “Uh … I’m sorry, Jacques, I guess I … I must have dozed off. What is it?”

  “You asked me to have the carriage ready at 15 minutes before midnight.”

  “Oh, yes! Thank you—just give me a minute.”

  Soon Louisa was settled within the carriage. The horses snorted in the cold night air, and the wheels complained as they chattered and clattered over cobblestone streets. She looked out her window and took in the festive crowd and air of expectancy that hovered over the city. She realized that she regretted nothing—even if she had the opportunity to live her life over again she would change not one line. Joy and pain, hand-in-hand—without both she would have but a one-dimensional ditty or dirge; with both, a multifaceted symphony of life.

  She could ask for no more.

  Then she heard them, faint at first, soon gathering power as they were joined by other bells across the city. The crescendo continued until the ringing and the clanging swallowed up every other sound on earth.

  It was Christmas … Christ was born in a manger.

  Written December 1990. I am deeply indebted to Cornelia Meigs, for without her moving Invincible Louisa, with its invaluable biographical material and discussion of the evolution of Little Women, this story would never have been. And I must not forget my American literature class at Columbia Union College—it was the lecture I wrote for them that inspired this story.