10
Elizabeth enters my room without knocking, wearing a frown and dressed for travel.
“I want my copy of ‘Endymion’ back,” she says.
“Must you go?” I ask.
“You should not have to ask me that.”
I feel a stab of guilt. Elizabeth is leaving for Boston to live with our brother Nat, and his wife and infant, to start a boys’ school. I believe, however, that it is this dance between the two of us and Nathaniel that has taxed her beyond bearing. She cannot endure it any longer.
“I am sorry you feel you must go,” I say, scooting from my hammock and crossing the room to retrieve Elizabeth’s book. I remove my poem from its pages and hand it to her. She snatches it and turns to leave.
“Elizabeth,” I say, my voice contrite.
How can I speak my apology out loud? For I am very sorry for her. I knew that Elizabeth cared for Nathaniel when I stepped into the parlor that day, but I also knew that she would never marry. Mother has ingrained this wish for us in our minds since we could understand language. Elizabeth has embraced this ideal for the freedom it allows her in occupation and relation, and she encourages me in the same way. How could I have known the harm of two sisters unfit for husbands befriending the same writer? I never could have anticipated the force that was activated the moment Nathaniel and I set eyes on each other. But it pains me to see that Elizabeth is hurt. She has only ever wanted what is best for me, and to be so divided from her now feels like a little death.
“I apologize that you leave so unsettled,” I say. “You are very dear to me.”
She stares at me for a moment, and then looks away. Dear Lord, there are tears in her eyes. Elizabeth never cries! I begin to feel my own eyes fill, and reach to embrace her. To my relief, she returns my gesture, and we tremble in each other’s arms, sniffling until we must pull away to attend to our damp faces with handkerchiefs.
“How ridiculous,” she says. “It is not as if I go across the ocean. I can be home for lunch any day I feel inclined.”
She places her handkerchief in her skirt pocket and again becomes serious. The rattling sound of George’s coughing reaches us, and she shakes her head.
“Life is short,” she says. “It would be a shame to ever waste opportunity or . . . love when it presents itself.”
Oh, I am crying again. Dear, dear Elizabeth has given me her blessing.
She smiles at me, straightens her posture, and departs.
Nathaniel left a note with Mary for me the day I would not come out of my room.
“To the queen of the journalizers: Pray accept this lowly serf so he may question Her Highness on the captivating insights of setting and character conjured at her fingertips, but only when it suits said queen in health and in temperament. Most Loyally, N. Hawthorne.”
I cannot stop my pleasure at his address, and I decide that I will see him the next time he arrives. I am greatly relieved that he wants to see me, and having Elizabeth’s blessing has loosened the last of my reserve in dealing with Nathaniel.
The opportunity to visit with him arrives a fortnight later. Nathaniel knocks, and I answer the door with a smile of the sweetest serenity on my face, and my hair and dress arranged almost as well as Josepha could have done. I am shocked that instead of the usual smile I am able to coerce from his dark face, Nathaniel is as stormy as a tempest. He walks into the parlor, where he commences pacing around the room with the Cuba Journal in his hand.
“Do you not find the inadequacy of words a tremendous frustration?” he says.
I do not know how to respond to this artist who curses the medium in which he works, so I place my hand on his arm and say, “What troubles you?”
He looks at me from inches away, and this time I do not flinch or pull back. There is a gradual change in his visage, a softening that lifts each of his downturned features like the light of sunrise. When the glimmer reaches his eyes, his entire countenance is open to me.
“Sophia, in your white clothes with your pale skin and diet of milk and bread, suspended in your hammock, you are like a dove, like the very doves about which you wrote. How do you calm me so?”
I look down at the floorboards, overwhelmed by his speech.
“There is nothing I like to do more than calm you,” I say.
He squeezes my hand that still rests on his arm, and leads me to the settee, where we sit. He places my book on his lap.
“I must ask you a very important question,” he says.
I meet his eyes again, nearly dizzy with anticipation.
“May I take your Cuba Journal with me when I leave next week?”
My smile evaporates. “Where will you go?”
“I will not speak of it,” he says, his face again darkening, as if a veil is placed over it.
I draw my hand from his arm.
“I have never let anyone have the Cuba Journal for so long,” I say. “What more could you want with it?”
“I need a friend on my solitary travels, and your voice whispers in my ear when I read your words.”
My heart softens, but I keep my exterior cool and narrow my eyes at him.
“Little Sophy,” he says with a cheeky grin. “You are a changeling. One moment you are a sweet dove; the next you are a naughty woman. I never know which you will be, and I cannot say which one I like more.”
I stand and walk across the room to the fireplace, feeling my anger grow as he laughs behind me. When I turn to glare at him, he is contrite.
“I must be alone for a while,” he continues. “So much is confusion right now, and I need to clear my head. There are so many letters from so many of you. I do not trust myself with anyone.”
Is his concern for Elizabeth at the root of this leave-taking? I wish I could tell him that she no longer stands between us, but it is too soon—far too soon to speak such words aloud.
He looks at the Cuba Journal in his lap and runs his hand over the binding. Again I am covered in chills, and must turn away from him to regain my composure. I cannot stand the thought of being without him for an extended period of time, and the discovery horrifies me.
“I need to write and think without distraction,” he says. “But I also know this: I need to have you . . . near me.”
This is the first time he has admitted any kind of affection for me, and I wish I could feel nothing but bliss. Instead I am confused and angry and so many other unpleasant emotions. Is this love? If so, I know why the poets are so conflicted.
“Please, Sophia. You have no idea how your journal has fueled a writing fire in me, one that was in desperate need of kindling. I am on the edge of something.”
In his gaze, I feel our souls rise up to meet each other, and allow that communion of thought and intention to fill the silence.
If I let him go without trouble, he will see my strength, and that will fuel his growing affection for me and deplete all other distractions. If my uncensored words are in his hands when he is alone, we will be more deeply bound to each other.
“Very well,” I say. “Take my little book that holds the essence of my soul with you. Just please come back to place it in my hands after a short time. I will be unsettled until we are reunited.”
And unsettled I am.
As soon as Nathaniel walks out of our home, I am overtaken by chills and my hands feel as if they have been submerged in melting snow. My entire body holds a clamminess that drives me to my room, where I stare out the window, down the path Nathaniel has walked so often. I am plagued by the idea that I will never again see him. He is nothing but a shadow in my mind, and I cannot even perfectly conjure his face in my delirium.
I am sure the beggar girl will appear to torment me, and I scan the young summer landscape, but do not see her anywhere. I see only the graveyard below my window, and I know in my heart that Nathaniel will be there before I am given a chance to tell him of my love. He is going to die on his mysterious trip!
It has been days since I have indulged in morphine. I have not had headaches, so I have tried to restrain myself, but now the physical need is back, gnawing from the inside out, demanding satisfaction.
She arrives in seconds.
“What ails you, Sophichen?”
I clench my teeth and make my request. “I know I have not needed morphine for days, but I feel an ache coming on.”
“You know Father says you should try to suppress the ache.”
“I know, and I also know that we must wean ourselves from the need. Only one dose today, and I will be more functional. If I do not have it, I will be of no use to this household, and will only be able to shiver in my hammock.”
“You do not need to worry about being of use. You are an artist, Sophy. Your calling is different from that of your sisters or your brothers.”
“But I want to help. I want to sit with George at the very least, and if I am overcome like this, I cannot even offer him simple company.”
I clench my teeth again, praying she will grant my request.
A film of memory clouds Mother’s face. She is a nurturer. Any success this household has experienced has come about because she educated us, cultivated our talents, taught us girls to make lives apart from men. She does this—quite against the standards of the day—with the vehemence of a Puritan preacher. She sympathizes with the holy beauty of a preserved self, separate from others. Elizabeth subscribes to Mother’s teachings as if they are gospel, and for most of my life I did too. Until Cuba. Until now.
“Please, Mother. Just today. Tomorrow we will try something new.”
She finally nods, though her face is troubled, and when she returns with my coveted antidote, I snatch it from her fingers and drink it down before she has a chance to reconsider. The warm waves overtake me, bathing my head, then my shoulders, then my torso and legs in divine lethargy and peace.