The wind stiffens; I feel the tug of the jib sheet in my hands. Elly pleads to “steer the boat,” and while Bob observes churlishly that women are bad luck on ships, William cedes the tiller to her. We are headed in the direction of the rocky shoreline. William reminds Elly that she must come about soon. “I know, I know!” she says. A few minutes later, without warning, she panics. She shouts, “Ready about!” and pushes the tiller sharply toward the sail. Wrong! After “ready about” she should have waited a decent interval so we could release the sails and then said “Hard-a-lee!” and only then pushed the tiller to make us come about. Now we are in a mariner’s worst pickle: the sails close-halt on the wrong side, and strong gusts knock us over sideways. The leeward rail dips dangerously and water starts to pour in. Now, much too late, Elly screams, “Hard-a-lee! Hard-a-lee!” William leaps over me, grabs the tiller from her, and tries to point the bow into the wind. Bob releases the mainsail and I the jib sheet, and the sails flap wildly. We barely avert capsizing.
I wait for Elly to apologize or act contrite, but she doesn’t.
We are searching for something on the shoreline. Five black rocks that point toward a cleft in the granite cliff. About five minutes later, there it is. Elly breaks into gales of laughter. “It looks—it looks like—” She can’t talk for laughing.
“What?” Then Kitty sees it. “Elly, you shameless hussy. You mean like a vagina!”
William is gazing dreamily at the cleft in the cliff. We hear the dull roar of the tide rushing in.
“Well, I’m only saying what we’re all thinking.”
The others—Wilky James (Harry was absent that day) and Will, Minny, Henrietta, and Bob Temple—wave to us from the small drift-wood-covered beach. As we approach, I make out a picnic hamper, a checked tablecloth, a few towels, and flashes of sunlight reflected off several metal flasks, which no doubt contain whiskey. Drifting toward shore in a din of luffing sails and clicking halyards, we pull up the centerboard, lower the sails, and roughly furl the mainsail. That is, William and I do. Bob nimbly leaps out with the painter and pulls us in. Elly and Kitty do nothing but chatter like magpies.
Ignoring evidence of corks, bottles, handkerchiefs, and other artifacts of civilization, we have on a previous occasion declared ourselves the discoverers of this place. The Abyss, we call it. Above us the cliff rises steeply, covered with brambles, wind-bent pines and cypresses, and narrow deer trails. Down one of these paths the rest of our gang has come, bearing our picnic lunch.
Our clothes are damp from our near-drowning. Elly peels off her outer garments and Henrietta follows suit, although she didn’t go sailing. I keep my damp clothes on, shivering in the sun. After eating our sandwiches, we race around collecting shells and sea glass and wading in the surf. Between the sun-dazzled sea and the whiskey in the flasks, a wildness begins to crackle in the air. I feel it breaking out in goose-bumps on my skin. Henrietta leaps from boulder to boulder stripped down to her drawers and bodice, the wind whipping her hair like a mare’s tail.
After lunch we follow the deer-trail up the hill and gather at the lip of the Abyss (which I think would more accurately be called a chasm), watching the rising tide pour in four to six feet below.
“Let’s take off our clothes and jump in!” Kitty says. Elly’s eyes widen. “Yes, we’ll be mermaids.” Will Temple, Wilky, and Bob laugh; I see their teeth. (Two years later the three of them will march off to war; Will Temple will be killed, Wilky gravely wounded, Bob will survive unharmed but will suffer night terrors for the rest of his life.)
“Are mermen invited? Do such beings exist?” William asks.
“They must exist,” says Minny, perched on a flat rock, dreamily pulling off her stockings. “Otherwise the mer-people would die out.”
The boys peel off shoes and socks, unbutton trousers; the Temple girls giggle in a froth of petticoats, laying out their clothes on the boulders, with smaller rocks to hold them down. William is staring at the girls, transfixed. Blue eyes flecked with green. I stand with my bare toes on the lip of the chasm, staring down at the roiling green water with its flailing banners of yellow foam. The others start jumping in; their splashes and voices echo off the rock walls. There is a moment when I might have jumped, but I pause too long. I think too much; I already know this is one of my problems.
I step backwards, away from the chasm, sealing my fate.
I shade my eyes with my hand and gaze out at the sea. Black and white ducks bob for fish. They look like clockwork toys. Far away to the left is a wide curve of pale sand roughly the color of naked human flesh.
I must record what happens next, but I shrink from the task. Do I dare disturb the past?
Bob Temple comes up silently behind me, like an assassin, his hand at the nape of my neck. Didn’t know he was there. My whole body flinches. “Why don’t you take off that dress, Cousin Alice! It looks damp and you’re not allowed to just stand around watching.” He laughs pleasantly.
“Oh.” As the eldest, Bob Temple imposes the rules. He is a grown man, twenty-one years old, with black hair on his knuckles and chest. My stomach flutters and I feel queasy.
“Do you know what our sisters and brothers are doing down there, Alice?”
“Playing. I suppose.”
His attention throws me into confusion. Wanting it and dreading it, paralyzed and confused, I stare down at my feet, which seem miles away suddenly.
“Don’t you ever play, Alice?” His voice is soft, almost caressing.
“Yes.” My face grows hot.
“Well? Why aren’t you down there with them?”
“Don’t want to ruin my clothes.” Feeling stupid and tongue-tied, I fix my eyes on a patch of emerald moss on a grey boulder. I don’t look at Bob, but I feel him staring at me hard. The small hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I can’t think why such a worldly and (to me) terrifying young man would have any interest in me.
“Have you heard of ‘kissing cousins’? You and I are kissing cousins, Alice.”
I can’t think what to say to this. Wilting under the burden of my mousiness, my awkwardness, my inability to banter brightly like my cousins, I nudge a pebble with my toe and squint at the horizon with its faint band of citrine. We stand at the edge of America: low bluffs, promontories, islands, and ocean as far as the eye can see. On the other side: Europe. Harry always says that Newport is “midway between America and Europe, culturally” and thus a fitting location for the James family.
I must have drifted off, because the next thing I am aware of is being perched on a boulder, with Bob Temple sitting cross-legged about ten feet away, his back against another boulder, smoking, watching. I feel his eyes burning into me. Then I see that he is naked. I didn’t observe him undressing; it is as if his nakedness occurred by magic while my mind was away.
“Little Alice,” he says gently, “you ought to let your hair down, you know, or you’ll turn into a prune like your mother and Aunt Tweedy. I’ll wager you are a good little daughter, the best little girl in the world. But the world is full of good vanilla pudding daughters who turn into good vanilla pudding wives. There is nothing in it, nothing at all.”
He sits waiting and smoking, the smoke unfurling into the wide sky. “May I share a little secret with you, Cousin Alice? A secret between kissing cousins? More than once I have seen Uncle having his way with Aunt. I wish you could have been there. It made me think of the barnyard, jiggling rumps, squeals, grunts and ruffled feathers. Who’d have thought the old people had it in them?” He smiles lazily.
What does he mean? Why is he remaining behind to talk to me, anyway? He sits gazing at me for a long time, too long. I try not to look at his thing, a pale rodent in a tangle of black hair. I shut my eyes and feel invisible, like a small child. The sun beats down and the sweat stings my scalp and face. From the Abyss come shrieks of merriment.
I try to think myself back to the verandah at Kay Street, reading magazines while Mother and Aunt Kate sew or embroider. I must have “gone o
ff” again, because the next thing I know, Bob is sitting next to me, his arm thrown fraternally over my shoulder. “How about your parents, Alice? Is there a peephole in their bedroom? There is usually a peephole somewhere if you look well.”
“I don’t think so.” My eyes blur. I want to go home but I can’t move. It is like a dream in which you are paralyzed by inaction and words run together and blur and the more you try to get out of the muddle you’re in, the deeper you sink into it. A cloud passes over the sun. I shiver, goose-bumps on my skin. Bob is carefully unbuttoning the buttons of my dress. Says he is not a lady’s maid, I could help a little. I say, “What?”
His eyes squint at me. He takes my face in his large hands, forcing me to turn toward him. His eyes are obsidian—a basilisk gaze, I will think years later, hypnotizing me, pulling me down toward the center of the earth. Suddenly, I grasp why he sought me out: He wields absolute power over me. He is drunk on it; some people are like that. His tongue is prying my lips apart, and my mouth is thick with the yeasty, smoky taste of him, his hot breath. I don’t know what to do or think. “You are a nervous Nelly, aren’t you? If it’s about your little flower, cousin, don’t worry. I won’t take that.” His hands are busying themselves inside my clothes, and then I am on my back staring at the sky and the wind lifts my skirt and my petticoats and Bob says, as if from far away. “Be nice, Alice.” His voice is rasping and needy, like a giant baby.
His hand is cupped over my mouth, his sweat drips onto my face and eyes, stinging my skin. Glare in my eyes; I shut them. Something is happening, it has been happening for some time, miles away. A tree trunk pinning me down, my tailbone grinding against rock. Perhaps I am caught under a hemlock limb? Can’t move. Should I scream? If I called for help, the wind and surf would drown me out.
Moans and a sort of growling, then for a long while nothing, just sky and hot sun and metallic gleam of sea. I hear the cries of gulls and the breeze in the pines, and possibly an animal grunting, nuzzling at my thighs with its snout.
For how long do I “go off”? When I open my eyes next, there is the wide sky, and a tall cumulous cloud that passes, stately as a galleon, and floats off. I cannot feel my legs and wonder if I am dead. I close my eyes and try to feel my way back into my body, into my limbs, bones, skin, and muscles, but I lose myself again. And then Wilky’s face hovers above me. “Alice! What are you doing? You’ll get sunstroke.”
I see the goodness shining from my third brother’s face; he appears to me an angel, without sin or guile. Tenderly, he helps me sit up. I feel very old. I see the sea with its rim of white foam, I see the sky, the wheeling gulls, the low bluffs in the distance, the horizon. None of it has any connection with me. Bob Temple has vanished; perhaps he never was there.
I wish I knew what is real and what is not. I thought something happened but it may have been a dream. My dress is buttoned all the way to the neck, all the mother-of-pearl buttons fastened, and the faun, the creature, with its hot panting animal breath, is gone. After helping me to my feet, Wilky leads me down the lane, past the wooden houses with green shutters and the painted wooden palings. The squeals and shouts of my brothers and cousins down in the Abyss fade away. My legs are wobbly. A dog barks, a woman in a white frock waves from a pony phaeton, a baby wails out of sight. I tell no one what happened. How should I? I don’t understand it.
SEVEN
IF I WERE GRANTED THREE WISHES, I WOULD SPEND ALL THREE on making Bob Temple go away or (preferably) die. I do not ever want to see him, his eyes drilling into me. My cousins and brothers go blueberry picking, riding, sailing; they take sea-baths, collect shells, visit the library, walk to the village green in the evening to listen to the band. I tell Mother I am unwell and stay home. I flip through the pages of Godey’s Lady’s Book in the misty mornings and the sparkling afternoons, lying on my stomach on the verandah, bits and pieces of advice sticking to my brain at random.
English waterproofs are all the rage now in Paris and consequently are rapidly gaining favor here.
The earth has been made fruitful, subdued, and embellished by man alone. The ground is tilled by men. The cities are built by men. Nor is there the slightest indication either in Nature or in Revelation, that the work was intended for Woman.
Perhaps because Woman is not a builder or a tiller, the editresses staunchly oppose female suffrage, although they are very keen on the higher education of the fair sex.
Humility leads to the highest distinction because it leads to self-improvement, Study your own character, endeavor to learn and supply your own deficiencies.
The others get used to my being unwell and stop expecting me to join their outings. Aunt Kate shoots me worried glances. I ought to be out in the fresh air, she says, I am looking peaky. In the clarity of vision brought on by misfortune, I have noticed something about my mother and aunt. In middle age, their mouths turn down at the corners, as if frozen in permanent frowns of disappointment. I wonder why, as they are both cheerful, optimistic people. I see them differently suddenly. Has life etched on their faces a dissatisfaction of which they themselves are unaware? Aunt Kate’s eyes brim with sadness when she is not being busy and cheerful. Is their habitual cheerfulness a form of resignation? Is that what it is to be a woman?
We women have a world of our own, in which we reign supreme. It is the Kingdom of Home. To teach, to console, to elevate, to train in all goodness and nobleness, to concentrate around ourselves the purest and most intense joys.
Since teaching, consoling, and elevating do not fall within my scope, I don’t see how I will ever attain successful womanhood. As for “the purest and most intense joys,” what do the editresses have in mind? From day to day I watch life pass through veils of helplessness. My brothers are growing brown as summer progresses. Wilky’s hair is bleached the color of straw. They all go barefoot, as do the Temple girls. Their feet will turn into hooves, says Aunt Kate, who frequently refers to the girls, half critically, half affectionately, as “wild Indians.”
Home is a sort of Heaven on earth and occupies the same relation to the world that the Sabbath does to the rest of the week.
Every day dawns with a gnawing in the pit of my stomach. My skin is clammy, my throat parched, my heart races. I try to blot out the horrid dreams I have been having every night. I will have to see Bob Temple someday; it cannot be avoided. There is something wrong with me. I feel it inside me, a strangeness, an otherness, growing like a tumor.
One morning I wake up to find blood on my nightdress and bed-sheets. For a moment I think I have been stabbed in my sleep; then I remember the pamphlet Mother gave me a few months ago, informing me that, whether you are a scullery maid or a queen, Nature requires you to bleed for days; that all women walk around with this incurable wound, which has something to do with Eve’s disobedience. And it is so much worse than I imagined! Mother and Aunt Kate congratulate me, but I am mortified and see nothing to celebrate. The long dresses and corsets that make running and climbing difficult, when it was easy before? That my legs must be called limbs and hidden away, as if I harbored something scaly and fishlike under my skirt? That I must bury my true self under a mask of cheerful servitude?
Why cheer the sorrows of womankind?
One day Bob Temple appears in our parlor with several of his sisters. There is no time to escape. I press my back against the wall and wait in dread like a fly caught in a spider’s web. But Bob pays no attention to me except to say, in a bored tone, “Hi, Alice.” No secret smirk, no spark of interest, nothing. What happened on the rocks must have been a kind of dream. I decide to forget the whole thing and go on as before.
But it is not so easy to find my way back to “before.” There is a strange laxness in my knee joints. My legs quaver as if they were made of custard. Since my legs always worked properly in the past, I wonder if this has something to do with puberty, which is shocking me daily with new and startling manifestations. It covers me with shame and sets me apart from my brothers. One evening Father is rant
ing about the vileness of a memoir written by a Frenchwoman. The look he casts in my direction makes me feel that I, too, am in some obscure way covered with filth, or might become so shortly.
Mother, meanwhile, attempts to prepare me for my future as a woman with random pearls of wisdom drawn from her experience. “Marriage requires adjustment in the beginning,” she will say. “The wife needs to cultivate patience, knowing that a man’s animal spirits may impel him toward all sorts of dangerous situations.” I briefly wonder what dangers Father rushed into in his youth. In my own case, none of Mother’s advice is helpful. But there is nothing for it but to try to embrace the awful mysteries of femininity and accept that my Realm is Home and my Fate to Do for Others. My parents pretend (and may actually believe) that I am a household angel, but I know better. To be a proper woman I shall have to kill my spirit.
The Emerson children come to visit toward the end of August, and Ellen and Edith remark on how grown-up I have become; they hardly recognize me. Edward Emerson is shaken by the ferocity with which our family argues at the dinner table. I’d always thought it perfectly normal for members of a family to launch ad hoc rants, spew colorful insults, stand on their chairs to make a point in a debate, waving knives and forks at each other in a cutthroat manner. “Don’t worry, Edward,” Mother says, “The boys always do this. They won’t stab anyone.” Father encourages his sons to argue; he wants them to rebel, and keeps poking at William, especially, to train him to be a credible philosophical adversary. But it is taken for granted that I am meant to be a “comfort” to my parents. My views on any question are rarely solicited, and I almost never speak up at table.
Alice in Bed Page 34
