The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott (32 page)

“Well, if we must go, that seems like a gentle way to do it,” Louisa said.

“Yes. Though we’d all of us rather she had stayed here a little longer. Please excuse me a moment.” He exited through a narrow passage that led to the kitchen, and in a moment she heard the sound of spoons and cups and saucers being arranged on a tray.

Hearing Joseph fumble to arrange the tea himself touched her, and she felt keenly the loneliness of his domestic life. To have known companionship, however imperfect, and then lost it seemed more of a burden than never knowing it at all. It was plain to see that he
had
loved Nora, and Louisa chided herself for feeling surprised by that fact as well. He may have felt nothing but friendship for her when they were young, Louisa knew. But she suspected that love could grow out of time and proximity just as well as it could strike in a passionate flash. Perhaps the particularities of Nora and Joseph hardly mattered; perhaps two strangers who stood together through life’s long journey would find themselves in a kind of love at the end of it.

He returned to the parlor carrying the tray and placed it on the low table between them.

“What beautiful children you have,” she said, pointing at two portraits hanging side by side above the fireplace, a boy and a girl.

“Only one child now, I’m afraid. Our daughter Jane drowned in the Connecticut when she was five years old.” Joseph lifted the porcelain pot and poured the steaming tea into two cups. Its lid clattered and he silenced it with his palm before setting the pot awkwardly back on the tray. “But we are blessed with a son, Timothy, though at eighteen he is no longer a child.”

Louisa imagined a ginger-haired girl, like her mother, walking across a field with her arms full of wildflowers, a low sun painting the sky orange behind her. And then with dread Louisa saw the cold and heedless river that swallowed the girl. Louisa knew the physical pain of grief, knew its current could be just as deadly as a river’s. She wondered how it happened that joy finally returned to Joseph and Nora’s life. Did their mourning separate them, or did the sight of Nora’s silhouette unleash something wild in Joseph that allowed her body to save him? It didn’t pain Louisa the way it once had to imagine his bare arms holding Nora, his palm resting on the small of her back. Life was so full of sorrow, and a body was a touchstone, a physical reminder that we are more than our grief, even if it owns us for a while.

And it was plain to see that he did know happiness again. Perhaps the day he first held his swaddled Timothy, in the yellow dawn light, the sadness subsided. Perhaps gratitude raked his veins and he thanked God for life and breath. Sometimes we are repaid for our concessions in ways we couldn’t have imagined, she thought.

An uncomfortable moment passed as Louisa strained to think of the right thing to say. She shifted in the armchair, pressing against the cushion wedged behind her aching hip. “I’m sorry to hear of little Jane. That must have been a terrible time.” Louisa took a sip of her tea. “But a boy of eighteen! Goodness, that makes me feel old.” She felt a surge of emotion at the thought of this boy, who probably looked just like his father had that summer.

Joseph shook his head. “The time has flown. And what of the Alcotts? My condolences are long overdue for the loss of Elizabeth. I heard she passed not long after your family left Walpole.”

Louisa nodded. “Scarlet fever. She picked it up from some children my mother was trying to help through one of her charities. My mother always meant well, but looking back I almost have to laugh—we were hardly in a position to be giving away bread. The six of us rarely had enough to eat ourselves.”

Joseph gave her a sad smile. Louisa wondered if he was thinking back on the way she rebuked his offer of help the day she and Anna came to his father’s store for flour. Or perhaps he was thinking of his own family’s financial troubles. It was exhausting, the unending effort people made to shield the truth of their lives. The root of a good share of life’s problems could be traced back to keeping secrets, Louisa thought.

“Elizabeth’s passing must have been a trial,” Joseph said. The afternoon had waned and the room was growing dim. He reached to the table behind him and turned up the lamp.

Louisa’s voice softened and her heart ached to say the words aloud. “You had better save some of your condolences for more recent losses. Marmee died nearly four years ago. Her passing was a comfort, for she suffered long and was ready to go, though I miss her every day. But the worst was yet to come. May died not two years ago, in Germany.”

Joseph looked stricken. “May? But she was yet so young.”

“Just thirty-nine. A few years ago I sent her back to London to study, and there she met Ernest. He was still a very young man and though it seemed unlikely to the mean-spirited gossips, May wasn’t too old to fall in love. They married at once and she returned with him to Germany. We were happy to hear of their good news, though we’ve never had the chance to meet her husband.”

“He must be devastated. Was her illness sudden?”

Louisa’s eyes swam as she reflected on this fresh grief. “We can’t call ‘illness’ the travail that transfers life and spirit from one generation into the next. May gave birth after a long and difficult labor and had a month with her baby before she died. She named the little daughter Louisa May—Lulu.”

“And the child?” Joseph asked, bracing himself for more tragedy.

“Rosy and blond and full of more energy than I know what to do with. The babe came to live with her Aunt Louisa and proud Grandfather Alcott just last year. May made her wishes known to Ernest before she died: she wanted Lulu to live with me. But we had to beg him to let his little one come to us. After all, she could be May’s double with that blond hair and her pale eyes, and she is all Ernest has to remind him of his late wife. But caring for a child is a trying business, especially for a man who travels. If she had stayed in Germany, she would have been raised by the governess. Here, at least, she can be with family. She will be two years old next month.”

Joseph broke into a relieved smile and stirred cream into his cup. “Ah, so there is some joy, then, despite the loss. Did you travel to bring Lulu home?”

Louisa shook her head. “I’ve been too weak for some time now for that. Seasickness makes me absolutely wretched. We enlisted the help of a friend who sailed to collect the child and bring her back to me. But I’ll have you know I was the first one at the wharf, waiting to catch a glimpse of the ship as it came into the harbor.”

“What a happy day it must have been! Did you know the child the moment you saw her?”

“There were so many babies in the arms of women as they came off the ship. I kept wondering as each one passed which one was our Lulu. At last the captain approached and he held in his arms a babbling little thing with yellow hair and blue eyes, just like May’s. The captain placed her in my arms, and I tell you—she looked at me and she said, ‘Marmar,’ just as clear as a bell.”

Louisa’s voice wavered as her tears spilled over. She brushed them away as Joseph reached over and put his palm on her hand a moment before sitting back in his chair to muse over the happy reunion. They shared a long glance as the uneasiness that had filled the space between them fell away.

“So you are a mother now after all,” Joseph said gently. “Think of everything you will teach her.”

Louisa brushed away his comment with her hand. “I’m too old and sick and tired to do a proper job. I fear I will fail her when she needs me most.” She hadn’t realized this was what she felt until she said it out loud. She remembered Joseph had had a way of getting her to admit to thoughts she didn’t know she had. Here he was, doing it again after all this time.

He looked at her carefully, noting the change that came over her demeanor with this confession. “And what of the eldest Miss Alcott? I pray that story has a happier ending, after all she went through. . . .”

A shiver snaked its way down Louisa’s back at the memory of Anna rocking in her chair in front of the window, watching the leaves turn. “Thankfully, yes. After my mother and father left Walpole to return to Concord, Anna came home from Syracuse and took up acting as a hobby once again. She played in
The Loan of a Lover
opposite Mr. John Pratt. When the curtain went down, they found the role of lovers suited them. He was a poor man but proud and hardworking. He gave her two sons, my boisterous nephews. Sadly he became infirm when he was still quite a young man and left us too soon.” Time had blunted Louisa’s sadness for Anna’s loss and she could speak of it without losing control of her emotions. She took a long breath.

“Well, what a host of difficulties the Alcotts have endured,” Joseph said. “It makes my own troubles seem like nothing in comparison.”

“Tragedy cannot be measured out and compared on a scale. Loss is loss. And you can never be sure how one is affected. I may speak plainly of these events, but let me assure you, my grief is quite alive just below the surface. It’s only that I’ve learned not to let quite so many of my feelings show.”

She hadn’t intended to reference whatever it was that had passed between the two of them so long ago, but now that the words were out it seemed the only thing she could have meant.

Joseph locked eyes with her, the veil of formality lifting. “It has its risks—that is clear.” He shifted in his chair. “But I suppose time changes the way we see these things.”

“Perhaps.” But Louisa wasn’t sure if time had changed anything in her, other than giving her less energy to deal with more grief.

Joseph couldn’t wait any longer to broach the subject. “It’s wonderful to have you here, Lou—Miss Alcott. But I know you didn’t come just to visit.”

“Call me Louisa, please.” She felt almost desperate, suddenly, to hear him say her name.

He watched her a moment, his eyes peeling away the wrinkles and the faded color of her hair. “Louisa,” he said, resting on the word, drawing out its rounded vowels. “What brings you here?”

She straightened up. “I’ve been very fortunate to have had a little success with my writing later in life,” she began.

Joseph chuckled. “I should say so.”

“Why do you laugh?”

He gave an amused shake of his head, stood, and crossed the room to his desk, where he pulled open the bottom drawer and reached to the back. Beneath a pile of papers was a carved wooden box with a hinged lid. He pulled it out, set it on the desktop, and swung open the lid. He plucked up one of the folded clippings inside and his reading glasses, then stood in the middle of the room, reading, as if to a crowd.
“Miss Louisa May Alcott, who is generally regarded as the most popular and successful literary woman in America, did not at once jump into sudden fame, although the slow-developing bud bloomed into flower in a single night, as it were. . . .”
He lowered the paper and gave her a coy smile. “That was in the
Boston Herald
a few months back. It isn’t the first.”

Louisa felt equal parts mortification and glee. She thought it sheer vanity to read the articles that appeared from time to time—and so she never did. But she
was
proud of all her success, and not just because she had finally been able to pay off her father’s lifetime of debt. A sort of astonishment dawned on her. “You saved this? Why?”

“I saved them all. That box is nearly full,” he said, pointing to it, “if you’d like to hear any more.”

She shook her head and put out her palms. “No—please!” He thought for a moment before he spoke. “When you left me standing on the train platform that day in Boston, I was so angry. And hurt. Don’t misunderstand me—looking back, I see now how everything was meant to turn out. But at the time I was . . .” He paused, as if he wasn’t sure whether he should speak plainly. “Well, I was heartbroken. And so saving these clippings helped remind me that you had a good reason for—”

“—Joseph.” The syllables of his name felt strange, like marbles in her mouth. “I cannot tell you how sorry I am for . . . what happened.”

He waved away her apology. “That’s all well in the past now.”

Louisa could see in his face that the long-ago summer may have been well in the past, but seeing her brought all the old thoughts back to the present. She had never stopped wondering what exactly she had given up by staying behind on her own. It was a blessing he had not come back to Mrs. Reed’s after she sent Caroline to the station with her letter. If Joseph had begged Louisa to change her mind, she might have conceded. And what a lovely concession it would have been! She remembered his long brown arms, the whisper touch of his finger as it traced the curve of her hip. But where would it all have gotten her? Hanging laundry on a line in Walpole. Brimming with bitterness and untold stories. She had escaped a fate full of disappointment, and she knew it.

“I should have written to you,” she said. “Or tried harder to explain.”

“No.” Joseph waved off the suggestion. “I knew . . . I understood.”

She could see in the slant of the afternoon light that his eyes swam. “Some things just aren’t meant to be. I’ve had a wonderful life. You have had a wonderful life. Both wonderful, just in a different way than we might have imagined.”

Louisa hesitated to dredge up old memories, but her curiosity overwhelmed her manners. “What did you do? Did you go on to New York after all?”

He smiled. “Well, first I sat on a bench for a few long hours after Caroline brought your letter. I debated myself a hundred different ways about whether to go back to Mrs. Reed’s and try to win you over. But I think I knew your mind was made up. My
God
, you were stubborn.”

Louisa gave him a sheepish look. “It’s true. I like to think I have perhaps
some
charming qualities, but that is not one of them.”

“Well, it charms me now, when I think back on it. You were like a full-speed train back then. Nothing was going to stand in your way.”