After Alice Fell(15)

“Your sister wasn’t a child. She was many things, but she wasn’t that.”

“How did she get on the roof of that building?”

With a long exhale of breath, Cathy moves to collect the other bow. “How, indeed.”

“I want to know.”

“Do you know you’ve never once talked about your husband? Where in the world did he die? In a swamp? In a field? A bullet? A minié ball? Dysentery? Did some other woman give him a Christian burial? For God’s sake, will you ever order his tombstone?”

“Be quiet.”

“There’s been too much loss, Marion. We need to let go of it and hold on to the living.”

Benjamin and I were a marriage of practicality. He was Head of Latin—“Soon to be headmaster”—and in need of a wife. My father was impatient for me to wed and to take Alice with me. His “happy accident” whom he coddled as a child became his embarrassment as she grew and her quirks became habit. How to explain a mute daughter? One who freezes midstep to smack her hand to her face not once but six times, always six, before carrying on? One who knocks her head to the wall in the morning and paints exquisite miniatures of flowers to give as gifts in the afternoon?

Our paths originally crossed in the aisles of St. Albans’s library, which carried five times the books Mrs. Brown’s did. Alice wanted an astronomy text. And I had none to give her nor instruction to guide the lesson I gave her. It had been years since I graduated from Mrs. Brown’s, and music and literature moved me more than the stars. I stepped to the counter, for women were allowed no farther in the rooms, wrote my request on a slip of paper, and waited for the clerk to return. The door swung open behind me, bringing a rush of brittle leaves and slicing air. It was Benjamin, smelling of musty books and leather from the satchel slung across his chest.

“I have seen you before,” he said. His beard was trimmed but not full gray, and he knew I would admire the angles of his jaw and cheekbones, making sure to pose like an actor in the one beam of sunlight.

I laughed, and pressed my fist to my lips to stop it.

“Why do you laugh?”

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

He cleared his throat and peered past the counter to the stacks. “Mr. Eliot is never here when you need him here.” Then his eyes turned to the paper I still held in my hand. “What are you looking for?”

“A book. For my sister. She’s ill . . . I would like an astronomy book to bring her.”

“Your sister is in luck. We have many to choose from.” He tucked the books close to his chest and tipped his head. “Follow.”

His back was broad, straining a coat that shined at the elbows. The clerk came around the corner, eyes blinking furiously at my presence amongst the stacks, but Benjamin waved him off. “This young woman—what is your name?”

“Marion. Marion Snow.”

“Miss Marion Snow is in need of a book, Mr. Eliot. A text that ponders on the infinite measure of the universe. We shall get it for her.” He strode on. “I have seen you at the lyceums on Wednesdays. Last week was particularly sodden, was it not? A treatise on corn. Corn! We are choking in the grip of our southern brethren’s penchant for slavery and we are given a treatise on corn.” He glanced back and winked. “Not that the subject is without merit, if you find it has merit.”

“It is of importance to the hogs.”

“Why, it certainly is, Miss Snow. It is quite that.” He stopped so suddenly his bag swung and bumped against my chest. “Here.” He pulled down a large tome from the top shelf. “This is complex. With mathematics. Is your sister good with mathematics?”

“Yes, she . . .”

“Because I am not. But I am excellent with Latin. So, she may avail herself of my tutoring.”

He came to the house regular as clockwork, Tuesday mornings. I sat with him in the parlor, and Alice lurked at the top of the stairs. There was no denying I waited for each Tuesday, impatient at the slow tick of the clock. His voice, as he lectured and read, was rich. His eyes were richer. “Here is a very fine illustration of Neptune, Miss Snow.” He twisted in his chair to call out to the hall. “I shall leave the book open to it.”

“You spoil us,” I said.

He turned back to face me. “I wish to marry you.”

The room hummed. My cheeks burnt. Alice came down two steps and stopped at the creak of a board.

“Your father has agreed.”

“Why me?”

“You do not simper. I have not once heard you complain. We are agreed on the slavery issue.” He tamped a pipe—I remember the match did not take and he tossed it to the plate on the side table in the parlor. But it missed and dropped to the rug, leaving a small smear of black that never scrubbed clean. “And I wish to marry you, Miss Snow.”

“I don’t want to marry.”

“All women want to marry.”

“That isn’t true.” I slid forward on my chair, clasping my hands around my knees.

“What do you want, then?”

I looked out the window, at the dark hedge and the line of white where the road intersected. A dappled shadow from the great tree spread across the drive. “I want . . .” But all I could conjure was a field without end, and myself looking back at myself from the horizon’s bowed edge. Yellow flowers, knee high. “I want myself.”