The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott (17 page)

“Mr. Sutton, this is my father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Alcott. And of course, you know my sister Louisa.”

Nicholas nodded, smiling as he took each of their hands. Louisa felt a rush of pride that her father had dressed so carefully for the evening. His coat was a little faded and his cravat not starched quite as stiffly as it could have been, but his attire was entirely appropriate for the occasion. No one in the room would have guessed that Bronson’s ideas about clothing had once been a source of mortification for his daughters. Not so many years ago he had insisted on strict adherence to his philosophies in even the mundane arena of dress. He rejected anything made from an animal’s hide, including leather for shoes and belts, and eschewed cotton because of its connection to the slave trade. Fleece belonged to the sheep, and man had no right to take it. Linen was nearly the only material that did not carry with it the burden of some sort of oppression, and his daughters spent many New England winters chilled to the bone in the name of his peculiar morality. Fortunately, in recent years Bronson had relaxed on matters of dress, compelled to accept gifts and hand-me-downs of all kinds. But Louisa would take this rather dusty and rumpled father over his more severe former self any day, especially because tonight he appeared so jolly. As much as he claimed to loathe the trappings of society, Bronson loved a good party.

Anna had refused to tell her mother and father much about Nicholas and her feelings for him. She told Louisa she felt it was premature, since he had not yet pledged himself to her or come to speak to Bronson. Louisa could see, though, watching them talk together, that there was no question of what was to come. She felt her heart give way, a wilted flower finally dropping from its stem. Nicholas’s affections were wonderful news for Anna. She would be able to leave home and have a secure future. She would be a mother and have a garden and nice dresses—all the things she wanted.

Louisa knew that her own anguish on the matter was pure selfishness at best. Perhaps it even revealed slight jealousy. It wasn’t that she was jealous of Anna’s prospects; in fact, Louisa’s chest tightened at the very thought of spending her days as mistress of an enormous house like this one. Rather, she envied the way Anna so effortlessly complied with others’ expectations of how she should live, what she should dream about. Anna yearned for things, but they were all within the boundaries of acceptability. What Louisa wanted—to have freedom and money of her own, lots of it, so that she could control her fate and take care of her parents, to come and go as she pleased, to have an apartment of her own, with big bright windows and a desk so wide she could curl up to sleep on top of it when the words wouldn’t come—these weren’t the sorts of yearnings one discussed at parties. Anna was a blade of grass, swaying in the wind in concert with all the other blades. Louisa was a rare bird poking its head above them, a thing with purple feathers and a strangely hooked beak. She just could not, would not, adhere to convention when it went against her own heart.

Becoming a spinster didn’t bother her. In fact, it appealed to the part of her that ached to go against the grain. Spinsterhood seemed a powerful position. At Louisa’s age of twenty-two, people still asked questions, still hoped that she would find a husband. But in a few more years, certainly by her thirtieth birthday, the clamor would die down and her position would set, like the hardening of sculptor’s clay. After all,
someone
has to be the governess;
someone
has to teach school and nurse the sick. No, Louisa didn’t mind being a spinster, but the prospect of being completely alone troubled her. In her mind, marriage and love had little to do with one another, and she wished there could be some kind of middle ground. A few lucky people saw the two states coincide, but when they did, it was a complete accident, for it seemed marriage by its very design was meant to seek out love and destroy it. Seen with a cold, practical eye, the state of marriage was nothing more than indentured servitude, legal dependence, a claiming of property. One surrendered her mind and her autonomy when she pledged her fidelity. It was as simple as that.

Louisa’s thoughts were interrupted
as the party guests
were
called to take their seats. She felt the scuffed toes of her boots sink into the red carpet of the octagonal dining room. The table stretched toward the fireplace, recently stoked, with flames leaping up the chimney. A servant showed the Alcotts to their places and Louisa eased into her chair, her eyes roving the collage of ivory china, silver, and glass that adorned the table.

Mr. Charles Sutton stood at the head of the table, a forearm resting on his great shelf of a belly. He waited patiently for the rest of the guests to take their seats, then raised his glass in the air. The loud talking subsided, though a few of the women could be heard expressing a last giggle before he had the room’s attention. He appeared to be poised to make an announcement or propose a toast. Louisa looked over at Samuel and Margaret. It seemed odd that Mr. Sutton should be the one to offer public congratulations, since Margaret’s parents hadn’t yet had time to organize a gathering of their own, and it was only proper that
they
should announce their own daughter’s engagement.

“My friends,” Mr. Sutton began, his baritone a viscous liquid oozing into every corner of the room, “as you well know, the book of Genesis, that splendid chronicle of beginnings large and small, beginnings of man, yes, but also the sun and planets, our oceans and rivers, from the thundering Nile to our stately Connecticut to the stream that bisects this very property, it is from that book of Genesis that we learn the story of Adam and Eve, the first example of that holy companionship . . .”

Louisa and the other guests continued to hold their glasses suspended above the table, though it seemed Mr. Sutton was only beginning a somewhat lengthy speech. She cut her eyes at Anna, seated beside her, and Anna raised an eyebrow, a substitute for a shrug, as if to say,
oh dear.

“. . . that we call marriage. Adam, you see, was lonely. Despite the paradise that surrounded him, which we only can imagine and will not know until we enter that heavenly place when our last breaths leave us, despite the beauty and tranquillity—no money, no death or sin or shame—he was lonely. That is how elemental our need for companionship can be. And God made the animals, all the beasts of the world, ‘all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small,’ but it was not enough for Adam . . .”

Louisa wondered wryly whether she had accidentally stumbled upon a Sunday service. She glanced around the long table, which held at least twenty guests. Mrs. Sutton and Nora looked more like sisters than mother and daughter. Each had a porcelain face framed by orange hair and they had the same delicate hands. Mrs. Sutton clasped hers in the pose of prayer and tilted her chin up toward her husband, her face full of adoring dotage. It appeared she was the only one enthralled with his speech. Next to Mrs. Sutton, Nora and Nicholas fingered their cutlery, a little embarrassed of their loquacious father. Next was Margaret with her mother and father, then Samuel Parker with his parents. Louisa continued around to a family she did not recognize, which exhausted the list of guests sitting opposite her. Those on the same side of the table, down at the other end from her sister and parents, were too hard to see without the kind of stretching and straining that would appear rude.

“. . . and so God created woman. Beautiful, mild, steadfast, gentle . . .”

Margaret bugged her eyes and Louisa suppressed a giggle. She nodded her head in the direction of her father, whose eyelids fluttered on the verge of sleep, his cup of wine tilting dangerously sideways as he faded from consciousness.

“. . . and it has always been thus, two people bound together by God to stand against the tyrannies, disappointments, illnesses of mind and body that are the signatures of this world. And the joys too. We can only hope and pray for many of those . . .”

Louisa’s wrist ached from holding her glass aloft. She considered setting it down when she heard the familiar sound of tapping fingertips, this time on the underside of the dining chair a few guests down from her. Before she could think what to do she leaned back in her chair slightly, looking in the direction of the sound. Joseph was looking back at her, a beguiling grin on his face. Louisa would always think back on his expression, the look of a boy, really, just a boy, unaware that in a moment his life would change forever.

Mr. Sutton had gone on, though Louisa’s heart seemed to fill her mouth and plug up her ears. She couldn’t get her brain to focus on what he was saying. Suddenly, Mr. Singer was standing, looking quite ill, his face grave.

“And so it is with hearts full of joy”—apparently not in Mr. Singer’s case, Louisa noted—“that we announce the engagement of my Nora to Mr. Joseph Singer. We wish them all the happiness God can bestow.”

Louisa sat frozen in place, her eyes tracing the outline of a flower embroidered on the tablecloth. A great cry of surprise and relief disguised as good cheer went up among the guests and they drank, finally, a sip from the heavy glasses they were so glad to place back on the table. Louisa turned to see Joseph standing slowly, the color gone from his face, as Mr. Sutton pressed Joseph’s hand to Nora’s. She was stunning in an emerald-green dress—the perfect complement to her hair—with a white lace overskirt. The wide neckline wreathed her delicate shoulders, and a tiny locket hung over her collarbone. She is in every way, Louisa reflected, my complete opposite—petite, fair, delicate, soft-spoken. Joseph looked stricken and glanced to his father with wide eyes. The infirm man shook his head slightly, some kind of inadequate apology perhaps, and sat back down, looking away. Mr. Sutton pounded Joseph heartily on the back a few times, and Nora beamed at her father and then her intended, nearly bursting with pride at her luck in men.

And Joseph looked at Louisa. But she turned and kept her eyes on the table and clutched her napkin as if it were the rope that kept the sea from washing her away.

 

 

 

T
he meal passed quickly in celebratory spirit. Two engaged couples in one week was big news in such a small town. The talk was boisterous and ongoing, despite mouths full of food, and guests gulped their wine mid-sentence and prattled on. They were clearly enjoying themselves, but there was also a kind of urgency to their conversation, as if they felt compelled to fill every lull in the talking, in case Charles Sutton attempted another lengthy speech.

Louisa felt she was playing her most difficult role yet—Light-hearted Acquaintance to the Newly Engaged Couple. It was a minor part, which didn’t have many lines and kept her standing upstage for most of the scene. When she’d acted in
The Captive of Castile
and
The Greek Slave
, plays she’d written as a girl to perform with her sisters, she’d found it useful to think about a particular adjective and hold it in her mind as she was speaking her lines. Words were more powerful to her than images, more precise and layered. When she played Mrs. Malaprop she thought of the word
befuddled
. Now she held the word
beatific
in her mind and tried to project its essence in her face. Pleased but distant. Out of reach of more base emotions like jealousy and betrayal. She seemed to be convincing her audience. After all, none of them had reason to suspect she would care one way or the other about whom Joseph Singer planned to marry. She’d met him only a few times and had proclaimed him insufferable within earshot of her mother and sisters. Only Anna eyed Louisa carefully, searching for signs of distress. But Anna couldn’t be sure. Louisa was, after all, a very good actress.

 

 

Finally the meal was ended.
The Alcotts bade good evening to the other guests and congratulations to their hosts, though Louisa abruptly volunteered to see about her mother and sister’s bonnets when she saw Joseph heading across the parlor toward them. The fresh night air was sweet with summer flowers as they made their way along Westminster Street. They had talked themselves out at the party, and now they walked quietly together, noticing the sound of crickets and an obsidian sky flecked with stars. Louisa was grateful not to have to talk. It was one thing to keep up the appearance of her good mood when she was with a group of near strangers, but with her family it was a different matter. She’d never been the kind of child who kept her emotions to herself. Always wanting, yearning, for something, some intangible thing that she could not identify or understand, let alone attain.

Fast on the heels of the memory of these fits was the memory of the shame that went along with them. Self-restraint, mastery of impulse—these were the qualities her father held in the highest regard, the qualities he tried to instill in his daughters from an early age. As he chronicled their early childhood in his journals, he detailed their attempts at identity, their achievements, their sins, and the corrections he made in the hopes of raising them into the best sort of women he could imagine. He was trying to prove his theory that a child came into the world blank, a sponge ready to absorb its surroundings. With Anna the theory held; she behaved just as he instructed her to, never straying or giving in to temptation. But Louisa was different, all fierceness and petulance, poised for combat, then instantly full of regret. Furthermore, he conceded that some traits probably were inherited, particularly the bad ones. He was convinced Louisa had inherited her temper from her mother. He saw in her dark features the mark of the devil and told her often that she was “not a child of light.”