Alice in Bed

by Judith Hooper

  After four days’ absorption in the letters—it has been like a long trance, to be honest—I feel the chills of a grippe coming on. Perhaps it is the Russian influenza, which, according to the Telegraph, is sweeping through Britain, killing scores of people. Having longed for years for some more palpable disease, I begin to pin my hopes on this Slavic ’flu.

  “For all we know,” I tell Nurse, “the microbes might be cruising through my bloodstream even now.” But why bother to discuss this with Nurse, who rejects the Germ Theory and insists that diseases are brought about by drafts and vapors? What a sweet caretaker she is, though. It calms and comforts me to watch her arrange my bedroom for the night, setting out the medicine bottles, filling the pitcher on the washstand, smoothing my covers, bringing me an extra blanket. The blanket feels heavy, almost suffocating, but when I cast it off, my teeth chatter as icy waves sweep through me.

  I believe these are symptoms of the Russian influenza.

  TWO

  THE NEXT DAY, THE CHILLS ARE GONE, LEAVING ONLY A HEAVINESS in my head and a sense that something inside me is trying to claw its way out, like a raccoon trapped in a gardening shed. My hopes for the Russian ’flu are dwindling. Nurse folds me into my violet dressing gown and helps me to sit up, then brings me tea and a soft-boiled egg on a tray. I can eat only half the egg, and she casts a disapproving glance at my plate as she clears it.

  “I don’t seem to have much appetite, Nurse, but at least I have recovered from the Russian microbes.”

  “I am glad to hear it, but if I may say so, Miss, I believe what’s making you ill are those old family letters of yours.”

  “They bring back my childhood and youth, Nurse. My parents come back to life in them, and Aunt Kate and my brother Wilky, almost as if I had them in the room with me. It is such an exquisite sensation, you’ve no idea.” She looks dubious, but I am the boss. Rather impatiently, she fetches the next bundle, and I fancy I hear the door shut a bit emphatically on her way out.

  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Father. In the next bunch of letters, he pops into view, delectably describing meetings of the Saturday Club in the 1860s. Mr. Hawthorne’s divine rusticity, Charles Norton’s spectral smiles, the latest pedantry of Bronson Alcott, father of the authoress Louisa May.

  My heart broke for Hawthorne as that attenuated Charles Norton kept putting forth his long antennae toward him, stroking his face, and trying whether his eyes were shut; it was heavenly to see him persist in ignoring Charles Norton, eating his dinner & doing absolutely nothing but that.

  What fun Father had rolling out his thundering superlatives! Of Mr. Emerson he writes, He has no sympathy with nature but is a sort of police-spy upon it, chasing it into its hiding-places, and noting its subtlest features, for the purpose of reporting them to the public. But there had been a time, not long before, when Mr. Emerson had been a god to him. Almost everyone Father put on a pedestal disappointed him in the end.

  Speaking of gods, I have just come across a letter in which Father writes that William is the only one of his children with any intellectual gifts. I can’t wait to inform William of this confirmation of his genius. Of me Father writes, Poor dear child! Her brothers are her pride and joy! True enough, I suppose.

  In the next letter I come to, he writes to Mother:

  I have often told you when I come thundering down into the dovecote scattering your and the children’s innocent projects of pleasure that I have no doubt they will all get along much better without me than with me: and I have made the same admission to the juveniles.

  If I was aware of Father’s telling us children that we’d be better off without him, I’ve forgotten it. I do remember him swooping down upon us at our games, covering us with kisses, tears coursing down his cheeks. I wondered why we made him cry. Father looked, at midlife, like a rosy little grocer and was celebrated for his eloquence, wit, and optimism. I never read his books or articles until I was fifteen. After hearing The Secret of Swedenborg mocked by my classmates in the school cloakroom, I tried to read a few paragraphs of it and found it too dense to follow, so I picked up Substance and Shadow instead and ran smack into this sentence: The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life, is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and every obscene bird of night chatters. That was when I knew. That unsubdued forest with its obscene bird of night was in the James blood; in mine, in Father’s, in Bob’s and William’s too.

  Suddenly an absurd picture pops into my mind: my father holding a rake, wielding a hammer. This is like a magic lantern show projecting an impossible world, for Father had no practical side and was never at any time observed with a tool in his hands. But his presence—how to convey that? I am young again, sitting near him, feeling the irresistible pull of his personality. I try to comprehend how Mother, feet planted firmly on the ground, should have fallen into the orbit of this man who spoke in the tongue of angels. For me my father’s inner being was a mesmerizing pressure in which one was helplessly caught up, like a riptide. There seemed to be an overwhelming need in him, forever unsatisfied. At the same time it seemed as if he, not Mother, had given me life.

  “It is time to take your bromide, Miss, if you are to sleep.”

  My body practically jumps off the bed at the sound of her voice. “Oh Nurse, I had quite forgotten your existence! I have been traveling back so far!”

  “Let me fetch you another candle.”

  “Oh, don’t bother, Nurse. I am just thinking now.”

  “I don’t know how you think so much, Miss, and never run out of things to think about. Have you memorized any poems or great speeches? My father says that is a good thing to do, just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “I suppose going to prison, or falling ill. I memorized a few bits of ‘The Angel in the House.’”

  I refrain from giving my opinion of her poetical tastes. “Somehow I don’t see you in prison, Nurse.”

  Nurse worships her father and quotes him on numerous subjects. Daughters are fated to absorb their fathers’ theologies, I suppose. While she packs up my letters, I close my eyes and fall softly through the space inside my head, dates and years running backwards until, just on the border between sleep and waking, I am back at the age when all stories are true.

  We are living in Paris, in the grand hotel particulier full of gilt and ormolu, and an elderly lady calls on us one evening. For more than thirty years I haven’t thought of her, but here she is now, risen from the dead, swathed in black taffeta, her upper arms jiggling like jelly as she cuts her meat at supper. I am riveted by that as well as by her old-fashioned lace cap, the small grey curls pasted like commas on her forehead, and the way the flesh clumps around her elbows in fat little dumplings. Who is she? I ask Aunt Kate.

  “Why, Alice, she is the lady your papa met in England years ago, before you were born. He went to a spa, very broken down, and she told him about Sweden Borg. He said she saved his life.” Indeed, at dinner, the lady and Father are chatting amiably about angels, the New Jerusalem, the Spirits of Mercury, and Dr. Garth Wilkinson, the man for whom Wilky was named, who is also from Sweden Borg. But if this old lady is from Sweden Borg, why does she speak English?

  At bedtime, after Mademoiselle Guyot brushes and braids my hair for the night, I press my knees to the cold flagstones and say my little French prayers, and then Mademoiselle snuffs out my candle and is swallowed up by the dark. After a few minutes I remember my doll, Alphonse, left downstairs. I call to Mademoiselle but she is out of earshot. I don’t want to go into the darkness, which turns the landing and hallway into the deep dark woods of fairy tales, where ogres and witches and wolves with their eyes shining gold lie in wait for lost children. I have learned from fairy tales to be wary of many things. Wicked kings, spindles that prick, jealous stepmothers, obtuse fathers, surly trolls, bad bargains.

  But it is my custom to have Alphonse sleeping by my side, with his head on his own tiny pillow. I don’t want to l
eave him to the mercy of Robbie, who has beheaded or dismembered several of my darlings, resulting in days of weeping and elaborate funerals. I do not understand why he is a kind father to our children when we play house one day and a rampaging madman toward them the next, but there are so many things about boys I don’t understand. I get out of bed, shivering, and creep down the wide staircase on tiptoe, the stone floors ice-cold under my bare feet. (I could not find my carpet slippers.)

  A small oil lamp burns smokily on a massive low-boy in the hall, its feeble light reflected in a mirror. Above it is a large panoramic painting that frightens me, so I look away. I find Alphonse face-down on the floor next to a majolica urn. As I pick him up and cradle him in my arms, I hear voices. The door to the parlor is ajar. I creep closer and hear the Sweden Borg lady say that the children have lovely manners, and I smile because I like to hear myself praised. I wait to hear more and there comes a prickly feeling in my nose, like the beginning of a sneeze. As I am pinching my nostrils, I hear Father say, “At one time, I said to God in my inmost heart, Take these dear children away before they know the soil of sin. I could not bear the thought of these babes forfeiting their innocence and becoming odious to my human heart.”

  My eyes tear up in the struggle not to sneeze. What is odious? What is forfeiting? I wait in trepidation, my heart racing like a trapped hummingbird. Since Mademoiselle informed me that you die if your heart stops beating, I have been compulsively checking mine dozens of times a day. It is beating right now, but it could stop at any moment. Dread paralyzes me.

  “What dreadful mystery of sin haunted me night and day,” Father is saying. “During that time I was on my knees from morning till night. I prayed and God gave me no relief. I fell ill, and would have stayed ill if not for Sweden Borg.”

  The urge to sneeze has passed, but I must not be seen. I don’t want Father to pray for me to return to God. I want a chance to live; I am only seven years old! I fasten my eyes on a worn hanging tapestry depicting a horde of fauns (or something) carrying off a troupe of near-naked women. Where are the fauns taking them, and what will they do to them? And what are fauns anyway, with their horrid faces? (I will ask William, who is the one who told me they were fauns.)

  Clutching Alphonse to my chest, I mount the staircase, dwarfed by the high ceilings and vast stony spaces. The ordinary world vanishes. The Giant is nearby; I hear his teeth crunching on someone’s bones. There is no escape; everything here belongs to him. A cold dread burrows into my stomach, becoming a sick ache, a nausea. In the Giant’s House I am small and powerless, like an ant you step on without even noticing. My heart could stop like a watch at any time; the sight of the Giant would probably do it. I picture myself falling backwards, my hands clutching at my chest, bouncing end over end all the way down the marble stairs. Groping the walls with my hands, I finally reach the top of the stairs and then fumble along the dark, cavernous hall to my bedroom. I tuck Alphonse under the covers, and kneel beside the bed, press my hands together and pray that this cold stone floor that stings my knees will touch God’s heart. I pray fervently to le bon dieu, in the words Mademoiselle taught me, to cancel out Father’s “inmost” prayers about me.

  The next morning I wake to songbirds singing sweetly in the watery early-morning light. I hear Aurore’s hearty Bonjour when she comes to collect the chamber pot and leave off a basin of hot water for washing. And then Mademoiselle comes in and plaits my hair and says I may wear the dotted Swiss muslin today.

  “And how were your dreams, dear—pleasant, I hope?”

  Because I suffer from frequent nightmares, I am often asked about my dreams. It is believed that when they are bad it is because of something I ate. Last night’s dream comes back to me through layers of mist—the old Sweden Borg lady with her dumpling arms, Alphonse missing, half-naked ladies carried off by fauns, Father asking God to take his children back.

  “I had a little nightmare but I have forgotten it now.”

  A month later, Mademoiselle, whom I adore over all other mortals at this time, will mysteriously leave our employ. Father has cast out another governess.

  HENRY JAMES SR.

  KAY ST., NEWPORT

  JUNE 30TH 1861

  TO (NAME BLURRED)

  Kitty evidently fancies her fiancé, Dr. William Prince, to be the greatest hero that ever lived. She seems to keep up her ardent sympathy for his conjugal bereavement in the old days and is proud to be the ministering handmaid to such stupendous sorrow. I don’t think I could conceive of such conscience if I hadn’t seen it.

  KITTY JAMES

  NEWPORT

  JULY 2ND 1861

  TO JULIUS SEELYE (HER BROTHER-IN-LAW)

  I think I never saw such a family. The boys are delightfully companionable, full of intelligence, free from anything that is disagreeable in boys of their age, each one having a strongly marked individuality. I enjoy conversing with Uncle Henry and Aunt Mary too & Alice is a sweet little girl. It is all too nice, most likely a trick of the devil. I will steel myself against the temptation to remain here forever in the bosom of this vivid, amusing family. I have promised myself to Dr. Prince and how could I dream of letting the poor man down?

  THREE

  DOES EVERYONE HAVE A FANTASY OF HOLDING ON TO SOMETHING and keeping it forever? In the end, even letters can’t preserve the past; somehow time reaches backwards and alters them when we’re not looking. Among Father’s letters, I have just stumbled on one in which he chuckles over the peculiarities of our much-older cousin Kitty James. At the time he masked his feelings well, well enough to fool twelve-year-old me, anyway. I thought that Father thought the world of Cousin Kitty.

  It was the very beginning of the Civil War, when no one dreamed it would drag on for four bloody years and kill so many. The world was innocent still, and we were living in Newport. From our house on Kay Street, with its Gothic roofs and small tower, I see William striding (with his characteristic long, fast strides) across Bellevue and down Church Street to paint in the atelier of William Morris Hunt. This was also my route to the school I attended for a brief time before Father decided it was unsuitable for some reason.

  From my desert isle in Leamington, I take a memory walk down the streets of Newport, lingering over every tree, house, hedge, blackberry bush, widow’s walk, balcony, piazza, scraplet of lawn or patch of moss I conjure up. The pets of the neighborhood come vividly to life, sharpening their claws on tree bark or barking at squirrels. I see Elly Temple arching an ironic eyebrow about Aunt Tweedy, whose pink flesh bulges out of her bathing costume, and I hear Minny saying sotto voce, “It is very difficult not to think of a pink whale.”

  Oh! I had nearly forgotten the radiance of early life before habit dulls us and makes everything stale. In this happy state, I fall asleep and wake up an hour later. Nurse brings me tea and a roll and goes out to do the marketing. I am being pulled by a powerful tide back to the summer Kitty James came to visit. 1861. Before the hospital tent with the wounded soldiers, before Wilky and Bob marched off to war, before our family unit was split up, before so many things. The ancien régime.

  Kitty is in her late twenties and about to be married, and we are in awe of her, at least at first. She is like a fine porcelain figurine and next to her I feel like a crude clay pot. For many years Father and her father, our Uncle William, were not on speaking terms, following a quarrel over religion or a will or both. But fences have been mended now, and the mysterious Kitty being in our midst is proof of that.

  Father makes a big show of doting on our cousin, who is pretty, ladylike, intense, and devoutly religious, sharing his scorn for “the world.” I am used to being Father’s “darling girl” and don’t appreciate having my place usurped by a cousin I’ve never seen before. Kitty’s fiancé, Dr. William Prince, is an alienist, in charge of the big lunatic asylum in Northampton, a fact that heightens her allure in Will’s eyes. That is another thorn in my flesh. He and Kitty keep disappearing down Bellevue, engrossed in conversation. I don’t know w
here they go, and they don’t invite me. Kitty is queenly and aloof, though she pretends to be oh-so-humble. I don’t know why Will is so fascinated by lunacy.

  “What did Cousin Kitty do to win the heart of her Prince?” I say to the others when she is out of earshot. Ha ha, the fiancé’s name is Dr. Prince, get it? But my joke falls flat. When you’re the youngest of five, your jokes frequently do.

  Now it is Sunday dinner and from the head of the table Father is speaking mysteriously of trees. “Two trees grow in the garden of every man’s intelligence, children. One is named the Tree of Life, the other the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.” Kitty, on his right, regards him with rapt attention, nodding her head from time to time.

  Which trees does Father mean? The tall cypresses that are like stately women, or the fruit trees, good for climbing, bearing pears or cherries or apples? I wonder how a tree can give knowledge of good and evil. “Both trees,” he continues, “are indispensable to Man’s conscious development, but it is good to eat only of one of them, the tree of life. If we eat of the other or seek to live by it, we inevitably encounter death.”

  I am mystified. Does this mean not to eat the apples that fall to the ground in the orchards? I certainly don’t want to eat them, but is that how we encounter death, by eating rotten fruit? William is laughing as usual. He waves his fork in the air and says, “Father, that is just the sort of unintelligible metaphor that doesn’t go down well with the reading public.”

  Oh, a metaphor! I know what that is. Why didn’t Father say so?