Chapter Twenty-Three #2
Julia felt a bit wary suddenly, wondering what more they could possibly have to tell her, but when she heard her mother’s bicycle on the pebbles outside, she rose to meet her at the door, resolved to be more generous, less hasty.
“I’m so sorry, Mother,” Julia said, as she hugged her.
“I’m sure I have much to apologize for, too, Julia. We can have a long talk later, but there’s something Anna and I need to speak to you about.” She nodded toward the living room. “Let’s sit.”
Julia curled up beside Mother on the sofa, with Anna opposite. When Mother and Anna exchanged a glance, Julia detected grimness in it and felt a surge of anxiety. “Is everyone okay?” Julia asked anxiously. “You? Father?”
“We are fine, Julia. But Louisa is not.”
“What do you mean?” Julia had a strange feeling in her limbs, a presentiment of something terrible.
“Louisa has a weak heart, and her condition has worsened in recent months. I know she told you she was in Boston for work, but she was actually there receiving treatment. The doctors have done all they can, however, so she is coming here to Haven Point tomorrow.”
“But isn’t that good? She can rest and recover here, can she not?” Julia said, but then her mind flew to Mother’s strange peremptoriness in asking her to come to Haven Point, and she had a dreadful feeling that she was wrong.
“No, she is not coming here to recover.” Mother paused and looked down, as if to gather herself. When she lifted her face again, Julia saw sorrow etched in every line. “Louisa is coming here to die.”
Julia snatched her hands away and stood. She took a few steps back, holding her arms out before her, as if to ward off this news. Then a bubble of anger rose up, not a pleasant feeling but preferable.
“Everyone is just giving up, then? There must be someone, something that can be done!”
“She has seen the best doctors there are, Julia,” Anna said.
“When did this happen?”
Mother looked down again. “She was not well at Christmas. When I came to see you in January, she was worse. I brought her back to Boston with me.”
“If it just happened, can’t it get better?” Julia said, though she knew she sounded desperate and childish.
“But you see, it did not just happen, Julia,” Anna said gently. “When Louisa was a child, she had a very bad case of rheumatic fever. We have always known it compromised her heart. She lived much longer than anyone expected.”
“Why did no one tell me?” Julia screamed. “I might have taken better care of her!”
Mother shook her head. “Nobody but your father, your uncle and Eugenia, and the two of us ever knew. Louisa wanted to live her life, to do as much as she could for as long as she had, and for no one to hold her back. We had to respect her wish.”
“But why did you not tell me in January?”
“I wanted to, and I felt terrible leaving you when you were still in the hospital, but she was in very bad shape. Louisa wanted you to heal, though, and not be worried about her. She hoped to wait until it was time for her to come to Haven Point, but if things had progressed more rapidly, we would have brought you to her.”
Julia looked from Mother to Anna, hoping she might see some cause for hope, or even something else she might lash out at.
There was nothing. She was unarmed, undefended, utterly exposed to this terrible, terrible truth.
She felt her legs weaken, and she sank back into the sofa next to her mother, her face in her trembling hands.
“I don’t think I can do this.”
“I know,” Mother said, her tone at once resigned and also perfectly in sympathy. Julia looked up. Mother’s eyes were damp. However blind Julia had been to her mother all these years, she could see her clearly now. I know how you feel, she was saying. I don’t know how to do this either.
“Oh, Mother…” Julia took a shuddering breath, and then the tears came, great heaving sobs.
“I saw Louisa before the Knickerbocker,” Julia said, when she could finally speak. “We had argued and parted on chilly terms. Her letters after were so distant. I thought she must still be angry or she would have found some way to come see me.”
“She couldn’t be angry at you. Never.”
Julia pushed herself up, put her hands on her knees, and took a deep breath.
“So when is she coming?”
“Your uncle is bringing her in two days. She will need you to be strong, Julia. We all do.”
Louisa spent the last ten days of her life on Haven Point.
It was raining when she arrived, and they set her up in Julia’s bedroom. Anna had warned her about how Louisa looked. Julia hoped she did a creditable job, but it cut her to the quick to see her friend’s once lustrous hair so thin, her pale skin so gray.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to know until you had to,” Louisa said, once she was comfortably ensconced, blankets to her chin.
“I know, Lou. It’s all right.” Julia climbed onto the bed beside her.
Louisa’s breath did not come as easily, but she was, as always, peaceful.
“Julia, I want you to know that I am all right. I want us to have this time together and not tiptoe. Do you understand?”
Though Julia did not want to say the words, she knew she must. “You mean you know you are going to die, and you don’t want us to pretend you’re not.”
“Thank you. Yes.”
“Can we pretend to be rumrunners, though?”
Louisa laughed weakly.
“I just found out about my mother and your father,” Julia said.
After sharing the terrible news about Louisa, Mother had finally told Julia about her relationship with Calvin Stannarius.
She had told Louisa, too, though evidently only a few months ago.
“I wondered what you thought when you heard, if you felt deceived.”
“Not at all,” Louisa said. She turned to look at Julia. “I thought it was sweet.”
“I did, too.” Julia took Louisa’s hand. “It made you feel even more like my sister than you already did.”
It was Julia’s idea to take Louisa to Liberty Island.
She spoke to Mother first, who agreed, then to Maudie and Ruthie, and finally to Duncan Douglas.
On a bright morning, a few days after Louisa’s arrival, Julia and Duncan went out to Gunnison Island to get things ready.
Julia had been trying not to cry, but when she looked at Duncan and saw his tears falling, she let her own fall, too.
In addition to a comfortable chair for Louisa with blankets, pillows, and a footstool, they set up a few other chairs and a table, and Julia helped Duncan put up two hammocks.
They worked steadily, silent tears streaming down their faces the entire time.
Other than Duncan offering a handkerchief, they did not say a word. There was no need.
An hour later, Duncan and Julia fetched Louisa in his boat, while Maudie brought Ruthie in her own. Maudie had packed a big picnic, and they arrayed themselves around Louisa, who sat on the comfortable chair, blankets tucked about her, declaring she felt “like an old grandma.”
They had a lovely time, reminiscing about Clem the bootlegger, and all the idyllic days they had spent running around this island.
After Maudie and Ruthie left to return to their families, Julia picked up Louisa, who was as light as a small child, and moved her to one of the hammocks, tucked the blankets around her once more, and put a soft pillow behind her head.
She climbed into the other hammock, facing the opposite direction, so she could see her friend’s lovely face.
“Now will you finally tell me what happened with Pelham?” Louisa asked.
“Are you sure you want to talk about such rubbish?” Julia had only told her it was over.
“Yes, I do want to talk about such rubbish,” Louisa said. Her voice was thin, but she had not lost her command. “You have spent days keeping me comfortable, doting on me, and telling me you love me. I’m tired of it. I demand to hear about you.”
“All right!” Julia said, a warning look in her eye. She told Louisa everything—about Pelham’s novel, her reaction to his sordid interpretation of Margaret Fuller’s life, and then about the discovery of his and Mina’s betrayal.
“You knew he wasn’t right for me, didn’t you?” she said, when she finished.
Louisa looked off for a moment. She was very still, lost in thought.
“When I heard you had been in the Knickerbocker Theatre,” she said finally, “I thought of you, stuck under that seat in the pitch dark. It was the very worst thing I could imagine for you. In a way, I felt similarly about you and Pelham. You need light and open space, and he seemed so … so cramped and dark.”
“How so?”
“So many things. All those ideas about psychology, for example. We are controlled by our unconscious selves, and there’s no escaping terrible harms from our childhoods, even if we don’t remember them.
It’s the worst kind of bondage that I can imagine.
There’s no room for transcendence, or even a soul. ”
“I had some hope last summer, when Pelham and I got back together,” Julia said.
“He seemed to like my more optimistic nature. But when we were around his friends, he was just as miserable. In the end, I realized that what he liked about me wasn’t that I believed in a better tomorrow. It was just that I believed in him.”
“They’re all very intelligent,” Louisa said. “But not smart enough to know they’ve made a religion of their ideas, or to see what a miserable corner those ideas have painted them into.”
“And Mina?” Julia asked.
“I felt like whatever you had that she did not, or could not, have, she didn’t want you to have either.
I felt at times like she was taking a blacking brush to everything people love about you—your enthusiasm, curiosity, openness, candor, humor.
” Louisa paused, frowning. “Maybe I am saying too much?”
Julia shook her head. “No, no … not at all. I am so grateful. And of course, hearing you say this, I do see how she tried to diminish everything, everyone in my eyes. She wanted me to dislike my mother, my friends, this place.”
“Haven Point or Liberty Island?”