Free Alice in Bed by Judith Hooper Page A

came with us, and afterwards we went home to Sara’s house and whispered in the dark, loosely intertwined. Holding one of my hands in hers, Sara was caressing the flap of skin between my thumb and index finger, and it seemed to me at that moment that there had never been a sweeter gesture. How safe I felt with Sara—but only after darkness fell.
    After saying all there was to say about Father’s lecture, which puzzled me as much as it puzzled Sara, we went on to discuss our families and their peculiarities, and how we had been affected by these. Tearfully Sara said that she could scarcely remember her parents now. “I have a sort of fog in my head that blurs their faces. I know I loved them . . . maybe the loss did something dreadful to my brain.”
    â€œAmnesia?”
    â€œI don’t know. Something.” She fell silent. After a minute or two, she said, “By the way, most of your father’s talk flew right over my head. What’s a Vastation again?”
    â€œOh, it was a thing that happened to him in England, when William and Harry were infants, before I was born. Father was sitting in front of the fire one day, happily digesting his midday meal when, completely out of the blue, he was struck by an ‘insane and abject terror,’ as he put it.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œNo reason; that was the point. He went on to describe some damned shape squatting invisible to me within the precincts of the room raying out from his fetid personality influences fatal to life .” I made quotes in the air with my fingers.
    Sara laughed delightedly and pulled me closer. “Ye gods! The way your Father talks!”
    Yes, Father could talk, commanding a startling rhetoric full of exuberant and highly original invectives. People recalled his words years later and copied them into their memoirs. There was the time when, speaking at an Astor library event, he proclaimed, “These men do not live, and if books turn men into this parrot existence, I hope the Astor library will meet the same fate as the Alexandrian.” And the time when, somewhere else, he observed, “I never felt proud of my country for what many seem to consider its prime distinction, namely her ability to foster the rapid accumulation of wealth.”
    And was there a Bostonian who did not know by heart his legendary jousts with Bronson Alcott?
    Father: You are an egg half hatched. The shells are yet sticking about your head.
    Mr. Alcott: Mr. James, you are damaged goods and will come up damaged goods in eternity.
    I reminded Sara of this last dialogue now, and she brought my hand up to her face and softly nuzzled it. “You have a bit of the James gift of gab yourself, Alice. To be candid, I find it . . . stimulating.”
    This was a rare admission by Sara, who smelled of lily of the valley, absinthe, and tooth powder tonight and whose skin felt silky and electric at the same time. Her lips curved into a naughty smile. She was tender and droll as she kissed and sucked on each of my fingers in turn. It did not matter whether we used the word love ; we were ruled by forces more potent and subtle than anything belonging to the daytime world.
    I shifted my weight so that my thigh came to rest between Sara’s legs, and she shifted to accommodate me. We were sensitively attuned to each other in this way. If only the rest of life could unfold so easily.
    â€œTo tell you the rest of the fascinating story, Sara—”
    â€œWhat story is that again?”
    â€œThe story of Father’s Vastation.”
    â€œOh yes! I am very interested. I’ve never met anyone who had one before.”
    â€œSo it’s 1844 and Father is desperately broken down—on the verge of suicide for more than two years, according to him. In this sorry state, he betakes himself to the Malvern Spa in England, where he meets an English lady invalid to whom he confesses his troubles. She tells him that his travails sound