Ghosts of Romances Past

by Laura Briggs

  No danger of that, considering her feet were rooted in place. She squeezed her eyes shut and forced a long, even breath. The bump is gone, everything should be fine. She repeated the words in her mind, like a memorization exercise from school.

  Because it was absolutely impossible that she saw her dead great-great grandmother, MaryAnne Headley.

  Ghosts Of Romances Past

  25

  Should she call the doctor and make an emergency appointment? Alice ran a hand across the back of her head, searching for a bump that wasn’t there anymore. No point in hoping the tests had missed some abnormality, some lingering side effect of her fall. Perhaps it was time to acknowledge that some things just can’t be explained scientifically.

  Is this from you, Father? These visions…they frighten me. If I could just be sure there’s a reason behind them—that I’m not losing my mind. Show me what to do; show me the message, if there is one.

  “Drink this,” Jamie ordered, placing a glass of ice water in front of her, his gaze full of concern. “We shouldn’t have fought,” he added, with a guilty look. “I mean, you’ve been through enough lately without me ruining your big day.”

  “Don’t talk like that. It’s not your fault.” She reached to touch his hand, but he pulled it away.

  “I should get going.” He shoved the contract in his bag and slipped the strap over his shoulder. “I think I’m only making things worse for you by sticking around.”

  “Jamie, wait.” She reached for his arm, but he was already past her. Turning quickly, she watched as he pushed open the cafe door and took off down the sidewalk. As the glass door swung closed, she saw the clear outline of a red-haired woman in a long dress.

  Alice turned away from the reflection. Her eyes darted around the cafe, but no mysterious woman in old-fashioned garb was seated among the customers. Where are you? What do you want?

  Head-spinning with questions, she took a long sip from the ice water. Guide me Lord; give me the courage to face this. Shrugging on her coat, she looped her burgundy scarf around the collar. With a last look over her shoulder, she pushed her way into the afternoon cold.

  Valentine’s Day shoppers crowded the sidewalk, their arms cradling pink and red gift sacks, bouquets of roses, and ribbon-tied candy boxes. Alice made her way to the edge of the curb and waived down a passing cab.

  “212 Birch Street,” she said, giving the address to her apartment building.

  Because it didn’t matter if she turned the corner and entered a Laundromat, or hid among the maze of shelves in the book store. No matter where she went or how fast she ran, Alice knew the phantom would find her.

  And this time, she was going to be ready for it.

  ****

  As a little girl, Alice heard stories of MaryAnne Headley almost as many times as she heard the story of Red Riding Hood and the wolf. It was her red hair that encouraged them, her mother laughed. Alice squirmed to hear grown-ups tell how she inherited her fiery curls; it was much more pleasant to hear she inherited her great-great grandmother’s talent.

  MaryAnne’s poetry was something of a legend in the family. Surprisingly so, since the thin volume of verses had been out of print for more than one hundred years. Only a few editions remained, but virtually every descendant owned a copy.

  Including Alice, whose volume was one of the original editions bestowed on MaryAnne herself by the publishing company. With careful fingers, she opened the book under her father’s watchful eyes. He helped her turn the fragile pages, glimpsing the simple copperplate illustrations.

  “As soon as you’re grown up, you can have this to read all the time,” he promised. Until she was eighteen, he kept it tucked in a glass bookcase in the living room—the same curio case now present in Alice’s own apartment.

  The little book of poetry wasn’t the only treasure her father received from the New England branch of the Headley family. He was also given MaryAnne’s girlhood diary, an antique wooden box, and a portrait she posed for the year her book was published.

  Painted by an artist who was also no longer famous, the portrait depicted a smiling woman, her red hair fastened in an elegant bun. Her dress, a pale lavender blue, was elegantly trimmed with delicate lace.

  It hung in a heavy box frame made of oak, suspended over the mantelpiece when Alice was a child. After her father died, her mother gave it to her, along with the other memorabilia.

  “He would want you to hang it up in your studio,” her mother explained. “After all, she’s your most famous relative. And I think you have a little of her talent in you.”

  “I’m a painter, not a poet, Mom,” Alice said. “I don’t think great-great grandma would consider the two skills quite the same.” Holding the framed portrait between her hands, she studied the smiling face. “Was she this pretty in real life?”

  “Well, you’re pretty enough, so it hardly matters, does it?” Dolores teased. She wrapped the portrait in a blanket for protection, as Alice lifted the wooden keepsake chest.

  “Isn’t this her jewelry box?” Alice asked, popping open the lid to reveal the girlhood diary, the poetry volume, and a few buttons and broaches.

  “I think so. At least your father always kept them together. He said there were more things similar to it, but they were divided up amongst the family. Apparently your great-grandmother and her husband had quite a few children.”

  “Was he a poet, too?” Alice asked. “No, wait. He was a merchant or something, right?”

  Her mother frowned. “Maybe so. I know he worked with boats. He made that by hand, so he must’ve worked with wood as a hobby.”

  Alice’s fingers traced the carvings on the box. Trumpet vines and morning glories, sparrows and even a tall heron stationed in one corner that surprised Alice with its presence. If nothing else, the carver was diverse in his subject matter.

  “I think your Uncle Jesse has MaryAnne Headley’s family Bible,” her mother continued. “You really ought to ask if you could look at it sometime.”

  “I will,” Alice said. She placed the carved wooden box into the container filled with books and knickknacks from her father’s workshop.

  Whenever her fingers sketched its design on letters or artistic proofs, her mind wandered to the story of her complacent great-great grandmother. MaryAnne’s life consisted of ten children racing through a crowded boardinghouse where she and her husband lived in a coastal town in Massachusetts.

  “Do you think she looks like me?” Alice had asked the first time Jamie viewed the portrait hanging on her wall. He gazed at it with a slight frown, his forehead wrinkling.

  “Maybe if you have a strong imagination,” he answered. “But I think it’s a little unfair to compare, don’t you?” His fingers were busy untangling his laptop’s cord from his chair’s leg, the screen flashing a “low battery” signal across their graphics collaboration.

  She handed him a cup of coffee. “Maybe so. After all, she was the mother of five by the time they painted this.”

  He spluttered slightly at these words. “Are you serious? In that case, I take it back. She looks gorgeous.”

  Alice rolled her eyes. “What were you expecting? Gray hair and wrinkles? “

  “Face it, Ali, people tended to look a little older back in the 1800’s. Especially when they had a large family,” Jamie pointed out, his tone slightly more humble.

  “My family possesses excellent genes that cause us to age slowly.” She took a sip of her own coffee and enjoyed the astonishment on his face, electing not to tell him that her grandmother would go on to have five more children.

  But as a child, Alice would listen with similar astonishment to stories about her great-great grandmother’s life. A life of solitude by the lonely sea with a crew of rowdy children and a husband who worked his fingers to the bone to support them. How had she ever found time to write one poem, much less a whole book’s worth?

  There would never be a second volume of poetry. MaryAnne Headley’s story would fade into obsc
urity alongside her husband in a grave somewhere on the East Coast, her memory kept alive as a faint and flickering candle by her descendants.

  “Maybe Alice will grow up to be a poet, too,” her relatives once teased. But Alice shook her head in stubborn refusal, despite the inheritance of red curls clustered around her face.

  There was no way she intended to end up anything like MaryAnne Headley.

  Ghosts Of Romances Past

  26

  “Where is it?”

  Alice tossed aside old magazines and paperback books, as she ransacked the shelves in her living room. Already, family photos and mementos were spread across her rug like squares on a checkerboard, while the contents of the curio cabinet formed five tall stacks on the coffee table.

  All this to locate her great-great grandmother’s diary.

  With Phylis, it had been the letter; with Ruth the thoughts recorded in a prayer journal. So why not the diary for MaryAnne?

  I have to find it, I have to. Lord, help me remember. She raked fingers through her hair, pulling on the roots as if it might jog her memory. If only she’d been more organized all these years, or cared enough to read her great-great grandmother’s diary back when she first inherited it.

  “There’s no time to lose, now, Father. Just three hours before I meet Warren at the restaurant. If there’s something I need to know, then, please…”

  A soft scratching sound caused her to freeze in mid-prayer. She turned slowly towards the corner where her great-great grandmother’s portrait hung.

  Seated beneath it, at the table that held the wooden keepsake box, was a woman with red hair and a long violet dress. She held a pen, its nub scratching faintly against a piece of paper in front of her. Reaching over she opened the carved wooden box and placed her pen inside, then turned and looked at Alice.

  In the blink of an eye, the table and chair were unoccupied, the piece of paper gone. Goose bumps on her skin, Alice rose and moved to the table. Lifting the lid to the wooden box, she confronted its mass of jumbled contents. Antique pen stubs, vintage brooches and loose buttons brushed past her fingers, along with assorted mementoes from her own girlhood years. Forgotten trinkets stuck inside to be sorted through when she had the time.

  And then in the very bottom a slim, faded volume—the girlhood diary of her great-great-grandmother.

  Yes, of course. She’d never taken it out after her mother gave it to her, had never even flipped through it. Assuming MaryAnne’s life to be of the ordinary, mundane kind, she preferred the volume of poetry with all its artistry and romanticism.

  A sense of triumph rippled through her as she pulled the diary from its silk-lined bed, being careful not to tear the cover as she flipped it open to the title page. Old-fashioned calligraphy declared it to be: The private diary of Miss MaryAnne Suder, eighteen years of age.

  With an open heart, Alice began to read.

  ****

  August 4th, 1883. Perhaps, it is due to the gray sky, but today I almost ache to be back at Grandfather’s home in Richmond. Please do not misunderstand—Boston is full of lovely sights, genteel society, and cultural wonders. But on days such as this, I close my eyes and indulge in the memory of summers spent swinging over the lake from an old rope tied to the willow’s branches by dear Uncle Thomas. How glorious to experience that sensation of flight, my unbound hair streaming free behind me.

  However, as mother so frequently reminds me, I am a young lady now, with a duty to choose among the many suitors she encourages to visit weekly. She will not hear of me attending university next fall, though neither Father nor Uncle Thomas seems to consider it an unladylike venture.

  How I dread those long afternoons in the parlor with some polite but dull gentleman, who talks of nothing but business, or bonds, or banking. I nod and smile, tucking my hands in my lap to hide the ink stains, lest mother should notice and scold me afterward. Can I help it if poetry makes demands on one’s heart and soul, as well as one’s beauty?

  Oh, but here comes Willis across the lawn, no doubt to inform me that Miss Alecia Taylor has arrived. We are to visit the charity hospital today, where Alecia says there are many ill children in need of gentle care and comfort. I shall record my experience there tonight, for no doubt it will prove very instructional.

  Alice absorbed this first entry with surprise, amazed that the figure with the pompadour hairstyle and elegant gown had once been so young and impulsive. Or burned so deeply to express herself through artistic creations.

  How can Alecia be so very, very knowledgeable? She is but two years older than myself, yet eons of wisdom seemed to separate us today as I watched her bathe and bandage those poor souls in the children’s ward.

  Could I learn to be so good, Lord? So selfless that I never recoil from pain and suffering? It seems the best I can offer thus far is a story and a handful of toys and candies. Hardly anything compared to those who sacrifice their days and nights within those walls.

  The hospital is but a humble place in great need of repair. Dirty floors and darkened hallways confronted us upon our entrance. Of course, I had to blunder into the doctor’s exam room while he was bandaging a patient’s arm. A handsome young sailor with sea blue eyes and red hair that curled away from his face.

  The sailor did not seem at all upset by my intrusion, but I was flustered and could not return his friendly smile. Needless to say, I was quite relieved when the doctor escorted us upstairs to the children’s ward.

  The page crumbled a little as Alice flipped it, her fingers less careful in her haste to find what lay ahead for the diary’s author, what MaryAnne would learn that would benefit her great-great-granddaughter over a hundred years later. And whether the sailor with the striking blue eyes would somehow factor into that lesson.

  Poor souls! They are in need of a gentle hand as much as medicine. One young boy in particular stirred my sympathy. A pale, reedy fellow by the name of Harold, his face badly burned, his left eye covered in a swathe of bandages. His right eye, a striking indigo color, gazed up at me, dark and unfathomable. What painful corridors his thoughts must wander.

  “Harold must be watched,” the doctor had laughed, “since he spends too much time sneaking away from the ward and exploring the hospital on his own.” What a brave, bold spirit Harold possesses.

  I wrapped him in my shawl and held him in a worn rocking chair, as I read aloud the story of David and Goliath. Imagine—many of the children have never heard this account, or any teaching at all from the Holy Bible. Lord, may Your Word give some comfort to their lonely existence.

  Downstairs, there was much to do, as I washed dirty linen and cut swathes of cotton for bandages. I passed through the waiting area many times, where the elderly and feeble were slumped in chairs and sad clusters awaiting a chance to see the doctor.

  The young sailor was there as well, waiting his turn to pay. He spoke to me in a thick New England brogue, inquiring whether I was native to Boston. And although his manner was pleasing and in no way ungentlemanly, I could not help feeling there was more than friendliness in his blue eyes and secretive smile. We did not speak for long, and when I next passed through the room, he was gone.

  The head nurse gave me a basket of clean garments and directed me to take it upstairs to the children’s ward. It was then I encountered Harold’s small, bandaged figure huddled along the banister. His tiny hands were occupied with a set of wooden monkeys, carved separately and made in such a way that they linked together in a chain. He pulled them apart then looped them together, a beautiful smile lighting up his scarred features.

  I told him it was a very clever design and asked if he made it himself, to which he shook his head and responded, “The sailor gived them to me.”

  Not noticing my astonishment, he unhooked the chain and let the pieces scatter again.

  Ghosts Of Romances Past

  27

  August 7th, 1883. Edwin Clark called today and I was obliged to sit with him in the parlor for a half an hour. How unfortu
nate it is that mother encourages him to talk of poetry and literature. For he has no real affection for the subject and only betrays his disinterest with each new remark. To think he mixed up Charles Dickens with George Eliot! Well, it is not his fault that we have so little in common. I only wish that he did not feel obliged to feign so much on my behalf.

  The afternoon passed much more pleasantly, as I once more accompanied Alecia to the charity hospital. The sailor with the sea blue eyes was there again, and he spoke to me in a cheery, familiar fashion. I am sure mother would never approve of such boldness, but I found it strangely pleasant. We talked of books and I daresay he is quite fond of reading. Or as he told me in his sailor’s brogue, “As well as a man can be, whose books may be lost with the next ship.”

  His words sparked an image that has embedded itself deep in my mind. A lonely wind-swept sea, books soaked with salt water vanishing beneath the tide as a cabin fills with chilling ocean’s waves. Perhaps I shall use it in a poem.

  The entry for the following page was titled “Song of the Sailor” and contained but two lines:

  What can there be in life’s despair, if words will never waken dead? If hearts beat yet alive beneath the written words instead?

  Alice knew the lines well. She’d read them many time as a child, whenever her father permitted her to flip through the legendary first edition of MaryAnne’s collected poems. She never suspected they were a tribute to anyone the author knew—or perhaps loved.

  August 14th, 1883. What a strange, wonderful day it has been! And to think, it all came from an invitation for tea at Alecia Taylor’s home. Mother almost forbade me to go. She thinks the Taylor’s are much too social with what she calls the “respectable, but poor” individuals they encounter through charity work.