Read Online Alice in Bed by Judith Hooper - Free Book Online

mostly I worried that he’d flee to Europe, too.
    In the first weeks following my homecoming, Sara was fond and loving, asking concerned questions about my health, laughing at my tales of the Brothers Taylor and the invalid hotel, filling me in on all the Norton atrocities I’d missed. I saw that she had really missed me; she even admitted as much. While I was away, she’d tried having heart-to-heart talks with Theodora, she said, but it was hopeless. She’d gone to a dozen or so plays and concerts and lectures with Fanny Morse, who, though delightful, of course, was too tame-Boston to conceive of a world that did not revolve around “the Shore,” Beacon Street, and all the “dear people” of her acquaintance.
    Sara was anything but tame; she was drawn to vivid, violent things—volcanic eruptions, Nor’easters, revolutions, shipwrecks. The details made her eyes shine. Pompeii was her favorite place in Europe. She could not stop thinking about the dogs struck dead alongside their masters, and all the people mummified in the act of eating grapes or patting the family dog or scrubbing the floor, their agony preserved for eternity. “It is almost indecent to look, they are so exposed. Your heart is pierced by pity. And yet isn’t that its great appeal?”
    â€œBut how do you stop your mind from cramping around it?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œNothing. Never mind.” I made a mental note to steer clear of references to my mental cramps around Sara.
    It was a mild July evening and, still in our clothes, we were lying on the lawn under the stars, holding one of our rambling conversations about everything. Whether we believed in God (Sara didn’t; she’d given up on Him when her parents died), whether it would be worse to be blind or deaf (“Don’t forget crippled,” I said), what our deepest fears were. I told her about a girl at school I’d disliked so much I could think of nothing else; every day I felt my thoughtssharpening like daggers inside me. Later this girl went down in a shipwreck off the shores of Nova Scotia and I was aghast at my witchy powers. Since then I’d tried to police my mind and not think ill of anyone, but people who advised you to do this had no idea how difficult it was.
    â€œArthur says that you should never try to be good. You either are or you aren’t. Or you are as good as you can be, given who you are.”
    â€œThat’s rather facile.” It was irksome to have Arthur Sedgwick cited as an authority. In my view, Sara’s brother was conceited, fancying himself too urbane for Boston, and never made the slightest effort to be cordial to me. In contrast, my brothers adored Sara—as did my parents, for that matter. It was rather amusing to hear them singing the praises of the corrupter of their only daughter.
    Sara jumped to her feet. “What we need, Alice, is some absinthe!”
    So we drifted inside and Sara headed for her secret cupboard.
    â€œWait, Sara! First you must ponder this gem from Godey’s Lady’s Book .”
    I dug the article out of my reticule and handed it to her. She read it aloud in a didactic old lady voice, the way we imagined the Godey’s editresses would speak:
    Quarrels are bad things and no one within his senses—his moral senses we should say—would advocate them, save under such provocation of insult as should be chastised if self-respect is to be maintained.
    â€œHa, young Alice James!” she laughed. “This is possibly the most fatuous sentence ever penned by Woman or Man. Perhaps its significance can be discerned only under the influence of la fée verte. If you catch my drift.”
    She gave me a wink, then poured the emerald liquid into two Bohemian glasses, and we drank it in the flickering candlelight. She lit a joss stick (part of her new séance equipment) and whipped out her pack of tarot cards (which she kept