But listening to the chatter following the talk and finding my heart stirred for a passion as it hadn’t been in a long while, I vowed to speak of such things to my husband again. To pull at his thoughts—and perhaps his heart—once more. When was the last time I’d been moved to action, moved to care? And I longed for Nathan to be beside me in this. Men were at this club. Some men cared. Perhaps Nathan would as well, as he once said he had.
We’d forgotten such small things as meaningful conversation. We’d forgotten adventure. Had we ever worked together for a worthy cause? If it couldn’t be in literature and writing, perhaps something else. I only wanted to feel a part of him, to change the world for the better, even a small bit, for the sake of our little one.
After a lively conversation which served to further inspire, we bade the members of the club farewell, and Louisa led me east.
“How I wish Marmee could have been here for that!”
“It was absolutely splendid. My heart is on fire. Tell me, how is your mother getting on?”
“Achy and old, I’m afraid. The last she came to Boston, she broke down in King’s Chapel, poor dear. Several old ladies came in who knew her and she got to thinking of the time when she and her mother and sisters and father and brothers all went to church together. Still, she says she will live to get the vote, even if her daughters have to carry her to the polls!”
I smiled. “I’ve no doubt that she will.”
We continued chatting about the meeting, me asking many questions and her answering them and seeming to enjoy the role of teacher immensely.
The sun shone bright, the leaves in the trees above Granary Burying Ground vivid with autumn color against the blue of the sky. Louisa told me she wanted to show me as much of Boston as time—and our energy—would allow, including the Old Corner Bookstore, which housed her publisher’s office on the second floor. “How about an early dinner before the theater? Do you think Nathan would mind if I spoil your appetite? I’m not one for extravagance, but we simply must stop at the Parker House Hotel and order a chocolate cream pie. It is the most delicious thing you will ever taste.”
I couldn’t argue with that. We walked a block or so, then allowed the doorman to grant us entrance into the hotel. My jaw fell open at the extravagant interior—plush carpets, elaborate wainscoting that rose all the way to the ceilings, where golden chandeliers lit the place with cheery brightness. Louisa bustled over to the entrance of the dining room and greeted the attendant.
I followed her, a bit self-conscious in the room full of mostly finely dressed gentleman. I put my hands in front of my burgeoning belly as the man led us to a spot by the window.
“Are you certain it’s fit for us to be here?”
“Of course it is! Were you not inspired by any of Mrs. Weiss’s speech? Are we not people like the rest? Besides, we are not the only women.”
I thanked the waiter as he handed us each a menu, then looked around with discretion to assure myself that we were indeed not the only women in attendance. Louisa might have felt fine forging ahead into the world of men, but I was most definitely more cautious by nature. Thinking to enjoy a meal and pie in front of so many gentlemen seemed a bit assuming, even for me.
But yes, there was a scattering of women about. Though I didn’t see any others dining without men, or alone, like Louisa and me. My eye caught a table of two couples enjoying themselves over sumptuous plates. I wondered why Nathan hadn’t brought me to Boston more often. And though I knew he thought it improper that I was out so far along in my pregnancy, I secretly hoped he would show me around the city before we left.
I caught sight of a striking woman in a dashing bonnet in the far corner. I looked again at the man she dined with, though I was certain it was only because I was just thinking of my husband that I noticed a similarity.
I blinked. Looked again. But no. There could be no mistaking my husband across the way. The jacket he wore that I had helped him into that very morning, the one I had lovingly stitched a button on three nights prior. His strong and handsome profile beneath his noteworthy blond curls, the hand holding his wineglass, the smile—the very same smile with which he favored me when we were courting and in the first few months of our marriage. Only now he smiled at the beautiful woman before him.
The cut of her dress wasn’t immodest . . . exactly. And yet the way she leaned over the table at my husband was. The way she put her hand out and rubbed his arm in such a familiar manner. The way he leaned toward her, the smile falling into something else—something much more dangerous. A sort of passion I recognized but hadn’t seen in quite some time. He placed his hand on top of hers—the one on his arm—and I thought I might be sick right then and there as all feeling leached from my face, my arms, my legs. My stomach twisted and churned as if tossed on a violent sea of discord.
“Johanna, are you ill? Is it the babe?”
I shook my head, unable to find my voice.
“Do you wish to leave?”
I shook my head again. For leaving would mean walking by my husband and that woman. Risking being seen. Risking seeing more than I wished to see.
Louisa turned to where my attention was focused, seeming to search.
“Don’t,” I managed, though I couldn’t quite understand why she shouldn’t. Because it was impolite? Because she would see something that would reflect poorly upon me?
Why did any of it matter?
She turned slowly back toward me, and I could tell she’d caught the same sight I had.
Still I longed to be wrong. “Please tell me that isn’t my husband,” I whispered.
“Johanna, I’m so sorry.”
My chest tightened as if it were being squeezed through a laundry wringer. I couldn’t breathe. Suddenly my legs strengthened and I was up. I must leave. Leave the hotel. Leave Boston. I stood, settled my hand on the edge of the table to keep the room from swaying, then launched myself toward the exit.
A stronger woman would have confronted him. Gone over and asked to be introduced to his companion. Or simply thrown the wine he was drinking in his face.
But I was not strong. Perhaps I’d fooled myself into thinking I was for a short time—when I came to Concord in the first place, when I chose to have my own life, when I sat with Louisa at the women’s club among so many intelligent and capable women—but now, with the truth of my life before me, with the man I loved caught up with another woman and me about to give birth to his babe, I felt only brittle and weak. Like a piece of laundry that’d been used as a rag for so many years and long since served its purpose. Thin, weak, too easily stretched.
I did not know my way around Boston, but I did know the direction from which we came and the Common nearby. I walked hastily toward it, anxious to be away from people and tall buildings, the squeeze and press of betrayal. I heard Louisa calling my name behind but could not bring myself to stop even for her. Or maybe especially for her. She, who had warned me about Nathan both before marriage and after. She, who had seen me perhaps in her heroine Rosamond and Nathan in Phillip Tempest. Was I little more than a woman who had been tempted and duped by a man and would now spend the rest of my life suffering the consequences?
But no. I had seen the signs of trouble firsthand, had chosen to ignore them. Had I not in some ways brought this entire torment upon myself?
And looking back now, I saw I was a fool. The change in our relationship had been gradual, slow, like the toll of a distant bell that draws closer and closer, boding disaster. Only I stopped my ears against it. Much like I stopped my ears against Louisa’s initial warnings about her neighbor, much like I stopped my ears against the doubts calling out to me when I first accepted Nathan’s proposal.
I wondered how things could have been different had I heeded them. But he came with swift charm and force, much like a tempest. And I was captured by it, by the good I saw even despite the warnings. By a need to feel wholeheartedly loved. By a need to feel as if I belonged and was a part of something bigger than
myself.
I thought I could save him and perhaps myself in the process. But now it was too late.
I heard fast footsteps behind me, forgot that Louisa still ran when she felt up to it, that she had few qualms about doing so in public. When she came beside me, she did not say a word. Only walked with me.
I did not know what I should say, where I should go, how I could reconcile what I’d seen with what I thought to be true in my head. I knew some men—even gentlemen—had mistresses. But I did not think mine would have.
I had tried to be attentive to his every want or need. Yes, I sometimes failed, but what wife did not?
When I saw a bench near Frog Pond, I sat with a huff, unable to walk any longer. Back at the Parker House Hotel, my husband no doubt still sat with that woman. Did he stay at the hotel when he was in Boston on business? Did he meet that woman often? Invite her into his room?
A spout of tears came over me at the thought of him sharing such intimacies—intimacies that belonged only to me. I knew he wasn’t perfect, knew his worst side, but never in a million years had I imagined unfaithfulness.
Louisa sat next to me, did not speak into my tears or take my hand and try to comfort me. Instead, her presence was enough. For I knew the one thing that would make this moment more unbearable was to bear it alone, and she was doing what she knew best—that which she considered the “most noble thing one may be called to do in life.” She had done the same for John as he prepared for death, and now she did so for me as I faced the truth of my husband’s actions—she shared another’s suffering.
When my tears finally died down, she spoke. “When I was a little girl, I played here often. One day I was racing so fast with my hoop, running around topsy-turvy as usual, that I did not look where I was going and I fell into the pond, right here, unable to swim.”
I didn’t see why she would tell me such now. Yet I couldn’t be choosy over how she wished to help. If she chose to do it in a story—something she no doubt possessed skill with—then why should it bother me? Perhaps if I had been more attentive to the story of Rosamond and Phillip Tempest, I would not be so surprised by this unpleasant turn of events.
“I remember going under the water and being so frightened. I’d been completely taken by surprise. One minute my mind was on the hoop; the next all that consumed my brain was the frigid water swallowing my limbs, making my senses frantic. I saw light at the surface, but it was so far away. I couldn’t breathe.”
I hadn’t heard this story before, and I realized then that while Louisa was generous in sharing her fiction with me, there was much of the “real” her I was coming to discover in only bits and pieces.
“All of a sudden, I felt a strong hand grip my arm and pull me up, a sopping wet girl who no doubt looked more like a half-drowned rat than a proper little Boston lady. The hand set me down on solid ground, and when I looked at it, I saw how dark it was. It released me when I saw the face that belonged to it—a large black boy with deep, somber eyes who stared at me for only a moment, and then he was gone, probably afraid to be seen touching a little white girl.”
I peered into the body of water before us, the place in my mind thirty years older. The story had a way of numbing me to reality, and I let it.
“I never did know who he was, and I never got to thank him. But that set my little abolitionist’s heart on fire. And it showed me something else. That sometimes when I feel very grief-ridden, very weak, God will step in and make a way.” She stopped, stared at the waters of Frog Pond. “To go very near death teaches one the value of life. I think of the time after the war when I suffered the typhoid. I think of the time I had to say goodbye to Lizzie. Great grief has taught me more than any minister, and when feeling most alone, I find refuge in the almighty Friend.”
Louisa and I didn’t talk much of faith and religion. It was a part of us, much as it was a part of anyone. But after John died, I found myself thinking on such things less and less, on forging my own way. And in truth, I found the Alcotts’ belief that one must constantly be improving upon oneself to obtain a more godly state tiring and wearying. I knew Louisa’s beliefs to be unorthodox. She also had scant tolerance for religious talk, instead demanding faith in action. But here, I wondered if this wasn’t a truth I could grasp—a God who was not only just, but a friend.
“I don’t see what way that will be,” I said. “I am about to have a child. My husband does not appear to be the man I . . .” I sniffed, muffling my unfinished thoughts. “Could I have imagined what I saw?” I knew the question was desperate, but was it wise to leap to conclusions? Could there be an explanation?
Louisa gathered a deep breath, seemed preoccupied with two boys racing fast across the Common. “I suppose there could always be an explanation . . .” My heart leapt at her words. “But you may be a fool to listen to one. If I saw John Pratt with another woman in such a state, I would be in a fit of fury for Nan’s sake. Even if nothing more than what we saw occurred . . . Johanna, no self-respecting woman would stand for it.”
Again she called me to something I couldn’t own. For what options did I have? Go back home to Mother and George? Live in my brother’s home, raise my child without a father?
“I am not like you,” I said.
“And I am not asking you to be. I am only asking that you open your eyes to the facts before you. Think of your child.”
“I am thinking of my child! What kind of life is it to be raised without a father?”
“What kind of life is it for a father to be away, making another life apart from his wife and babe?”
I stood. “Only you would be so bold as to speak of such things. Any other respectable woman—”
She stood, her eyes meeting mine. “Hang respectable!” I felt the gazes of passersby upon us. “Is your husband respecting your marriage vows? Are you, if you go on pretending you didn’t see what you saw back there?”
My bottom lip trembled.
Her voice softened. “I only wish to help. At least confront him. Don’t sweep his actions under the rug and allow them to become worse. Our men deserve our respect, but we also deserve to be treated respectably. Talk to him now, before it goes further, if it hasn’t already.”
More tears at her words, and this time she placed a hand on my arm. “I would help you how I could.”
“I do not wish to be another beggar at your door.” I gently pulled my arm from her. “I will talk to Nathan. I promise.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes,” I let out before I could let fear suppress it. “Tonight.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I’ve made so many resolutions, and written sad notes, and cried over my sins, and it doesn’t seem to do any good!
~ LMA
Taylor
“THIS IS WHY they should still teach cursive in school.” I flipped another page to read a letter from Louisa to her childhood friend, Alf Whitman, who I noticed referred to her sweetly as his “little woman.” With much effort, I read through the letter, saw glimpses of Jo’s Laurie in it, including a recollection of some fun the pair “had at the last ball . . . staring our eyes out at the people ‘bobbing around’ down below.” I rubbed my eyes after reading the paragraph. “Even I’m a bit rusty.”
Victoria looked up from where she sat at the breakfast bar of the Bennett kitchen. “Really? I’m not having a problem.”
I rolled my eyes. “What a surprise. Why do I feel like we’re back in high school, me struggling over homework or a story and you breezing through everything?”
She laughed. “And yet look who’s the one breezing up the bestseller lists now, right?”
Again I rolled my eyes, then nudged her with my elbow. “Look, from Louisa, 1862—‘saw many great people, and found them no bigger than the rest of the world. . . . Having known Emerson, Parker, Phillips, and that set of really great and good men and women living for the world’s work and service of God, the mere show people seem rather small and silly.’”
Victo
ria caught my gaze. “You are great, Taylor, but not because of your books. Because you’re here. Because you care. Because you came back.”
We went back to our reading. The kids came home and Victoria spent some time talking with them about their day, reiterating to them that they would all be staying at Grandma and Grandpa’s for a while.
When she returned, she went straight back to the letters and didn’t seem to want to talk.
I continued reading, my eyes burning from straining them against the old, copied handwriting. There were countless letters from Louisa to her mother and her sisters, to her childhood friend, Alf, and later, many to editors and publishers in Boston and New York. Though I found it interesting, I began to skim, searching for Johanna’s name.
“You know, she destroyed a lot of her personal letters and journals after her mother’s death—both hers and her mother’s. I guess there was a lot there that spoke of how hard things often were for Abigail Alcott. Louisa didn’t want things left behind.”
“I can’t say I blame her. I mean, would you want strangers reading your personal thoughts?”
She shook her head, looked at me pointedly. “Definitely not.”
I winced. Right. “Did I mention I was sorry about that?”
“No, but I accept your apology.”
I smiled, savoring her words. “Thank you.”
I sat for a moment, imagining the letters Louisa had destroyed. Most likely those would be the ones of special interest, and yet it would be impossible to re-create them through any effort of imagination or speculation.
We went back to reading. I noted the common theme in Louisa’s life of striving for the better. In one particular entry of her girlhood she wrote:
I was cross today, and I cried when I went to bed. I made good resolutions, and felt better in my heart. If I only kept all I make, I should be the best girl in the world. But I don’t, and so am very bad.
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