For Robert M.

Price, in appreciation of his friendship and good counsel

The Glade by the Lake

By

Steffan Aletti

“The entire lake used be ringed by these huge late Victorian cottages – you know,
gabled and spired, totally surrounded by porches set up with those clumsy chairs with the
big, wooden slats painted dark green, or maybe those high-backed wicker monstrosities,

both of them damned uncomfortable. Apparently some influential 19th century designer
thought that look appropriate to the country, as though you don’t have to be comfortable in
the country.”
The big-boned old man trudged ahead of me, talking away. I don’t imagine that he
cared at all if I was listening. I had bumped into him on my first hike around the lake, and I
was glad to have any sort of guide as I was a complete stranger here.
“Anyway, most of those houses are gone now, torn down years ago for
development. The next generation was probably more rental cabins than anything else – it
was the depression – and they turned into early motels, making the lake much less
exclusive and a lot less attractive to the few remaining wealthy summer people. Gradually,
through the ‘50s and ‘60s they started building multiple-unit dwellings, which in turn
became condos and time-shares, so now the lake has been returned to the well-off but not
necessarily the classy. Money don’t always make you classy, I say.”
We continued walking, following a path that was growing less discernible by the
foot. “Well,” he said, “Gotta break off and go up to the main road. It’s gettin’ late and the
wife don’t like me being out too late. We dinner at 5, and she’s a creature of habit, God
love her.”
“Well, thanks for the history lesson,” I said, “I enjoyed it. Before you go, are any of
the original old houses left, the turn of the century summer cottages?”
“Couple,” he answered. The Beeches ain’t far from here – take that path…”
he pointed to what was little more than an indistinct rut snaking away from the lake and up
 2

the side of the hill “and follow it until you come to the fork, then take a hard right and
you’ll see its attic windows breaking out above the trees. It’s a grand old house, with a big,
big porch. Always was one of the nicest. Owned by the Pierce family out of Boston from,
oh, I guess the turn of the century to around the First World War. Their cousins the
Pattersons have owned it solid the whole time since. Gotta be the only family to own
hereabouts for such a long time, but every summer they’re back. Nice folks. Gives a
pleasant feeling of continuity to the older residents here. Seein’ new faces all the time
makes you realize the pleasure of an old face.”
The old man turned and offered me an old face indeed, along with a hand gnarled
with arthritis, or maybe just the kind of manual work I and my urban contemporaries aren’t
very familiar with. When I shook it, the misshapen old bones gave my hand a squeeze of
surprising strength.
As he made his stiff-kneed way up the path, I called “and if I just follow the lake
here?” pointing down the path we had been following.
“You won’t run into much of anything – just lapping water,” he said. “Earth here’s
loose, so there’s no building directly at the water until ‘bout halfway round the lake.
Couple nice little glades that the old families used to use for picnicking and for evening
parties where they’d set up Japanese lanterns and play games into the night or until the
bugs ‘d eat ‘em alive.” He smiled at the memory. “Not any more. Everything’s empty
now…but peaceful and pretty. Keep on that path. You won’t regret it.” He turned away
again, but abruptly turned back to me. “You may even…they say…” then he shook his
head and smiled. “Nah, forget it. Silly. Lots of old superstitions around here. Just follow
the path. But,” he added mischievously, “watch out for sireens hereabouts.” He lifted his
arm stiffly, gave me something of a salute and turned and walked away.
I watched him for a while, wondering how old he really was. He seemed ancient,
but certainly had legs and stamina to match a much younger man. I figured him to be in his
eighties somewhere, old enough maybe to remember the days when the wealthy of Beacon
Hill would empty out of Boston in the heat of the summer to grace the marvelous cottages
that once surrounded this lake. He’d certainly remember the First War, and the era of
flappers, Model T rumble seats and bathtub gin. I continued on the path, imagining the
 3

wild, Gatsby-like scenarios that must have played out here among the “wealthy young
things” during prohibition. Flappers - maybe that’s what he meant by “sireens.”
I lost track of time. A city boy, I fall under the spell of nature easily because it’s a
novelty. It was a treat to get out of New York, even for a while, to be lulled by the gentle
lapping of the water, the sound of insects whirring and buzzing and the smell of pine and
fir trees warming in the late afternoon sun. The solid lakeside wall of brush would be
broken by the occasional window in the foliage where a low bough jutted out over the
water to reveal a built-up area across the water: the not-quite tasteful condos, the small
shopping mall, the big bulbous water tower and the occasional neon sign and billboard.
At length I broke through a nearly solid thicket to arrive at a clearing, a little glade
totally enclosed by trees and coloured the strangest yellow-green as the light filtered
through the canopy of late summer leaves. You couldn’t see a lick of sky, the overhead
foliage was so impenetrable. And the colour: it was like staring through a lens made of
peridot – not just dark, late summer green, but a strange yellowy sort of olive green, a dark
but somehow very buoyant colour that made every other colour very intense and slightly
surrealistic.
I could smell honeysuckle, strong, sweet, late-blooming honeysuckle, though I
couldn’t see any evidence of the vine or the blossom. And I noticed as well that the minute
I stepped into this strange glade, everything became absolutely still. There wasn’t a sound –
no insects, no careening lake birds honking, not the least whisper of wind rustling the
leaves and branches; in fact though I didn’t notice it at the time, I no longer even heard my
footsteps crunching into the branches and dead leaves and earth. It was as if I had walked
into a bubble where time and the world held their breath and just listened.
“Hello, is there someone there?”
I had thought the place completely empty, but when I looked around again I saw at
the edge of the clearing a small table covered with a checked red and white cloth, a pitcher
and glasses and a few plates. A wooden picnic basket sat on the ground near the table, and
two of those ugly big-slatted chairs were on either side of it. On one of them sat a beautiful
young woman who waved shyly at me as she stood.
She was stunning. Small-boned, fairly tall – perhaps 5’5” or 5’6” – with an
unbelievably small waist accentuated, as was her bust, by her peculiar, tight-waisted
 4

embroidered white cotton skirt, which was very long - all the way down to her white linen
shoes; and her heavily pleated, long-sleeved blouse, closed at the neck with a choker and
cameo. Her hair was a lively blonde firing sparks of green as those few shafts of sunlight
that filtered through the leafy canopy caught it and ricocheted off it; made up into a wide
chignon, it leaked several golden tendrils to cascade down the side of her face. Her eyes
were green – that same golden peridot green that seemed to breathe such a magical spell
into this place. She was dressed very formally for a country lakeside – as if she had just
stepped out of a William Merritt Chase portrait – but how elegant she was, with that thin
waist and long, long skirt, how…ladylike, and feminine, words one barely ever uses
anymore. When she smiled my heart skipped, she was just so beautiful.
“Do you live here or are you a summer visitor?” She asked, her voice sweetly
resonant and cultured, with a shadow of a Boston accent.
“I’m just here for a couple weeks’ vacation,” I replied. “And you?”
“My family lives in a cottage called the Beeches, just up that path. We spend our
summers here. I swim, but I also bring my studies from Boston.” She held out a green book
and let it fall open to show me a page of music. “It’s a harmony textbook; my teacher wrote
it. I take private lessons from him in addition to my studies at the New England
Conservatory.”
“You’re a musician?”
“Studying to be one,” she laughed. “I’ve got my masters in composition from
Harvard, and I’m well on my way to a doctorate. I plan to teach and compose. As well, of
course,” her eyes shone slyly “find myself a beau, marry and have children.” She sat back
down and gestured towards the other chair. “Please join me.”
I sat next to her.
“Would you like some limeade? Mother made it fresh this morning.”
I nodded and she poured a clear liquid into a beautiful cut crystal glass and offered
it to me. I took a sip, and was surprised to find it musty and completely tasteless.
“What do you play?” I asked, putting the glass down by the pitcher.
“Piano.” She responded by putting her hand out and spreading her fingers wide,
demonstrating that years of practice had stretched out her elegant hand to reach an octave
and beyond.
 5

A pianist myself, I couldn’t believe my luck. I held out my hand, also showing that
distinctive stretch that forms a straight line between the little finger and the curve of the
thumb. “Why you play too,” she said, delightedly. We touched palms and our hands fit
perfectly together, our outstretched fingers and thumbs matching exactly in length. My
hand is fairly small for a man’s; hers was fairly large for a woman’s. The feel of her soft
palm and fingertips against mine unaccountably made me shiver with pleasure. “I wish we
could play some duets. I play some four-hand with my little cousin, but she’s not really
very good.”
“Well, I would love to. I don’t have any music here, but I’m sure you do.”
“Yes, I do,” she answered, somewhat sadly, “but it’s up at the house.”
“Well, perhaps I could come by some evening and we could sight read it together.”
“No, I don’t think we could. I’m not sure you can visit me there.”
My heart sank a little at this unexpected reticence. I didn’t argue, but I was sure that
she had felt at least something of that electricity I felt when we put our hands together. I
didn’t doubt for a moment that we would be seeing each other again; but this was, after all,
New England, and she was clearly the pampered, golden daughter of a wealthy family that
probably kept her as insulated as possible. She seemed, in that strangely-coloured glade, a
rare hothouse flower, delicate and exotic.
“It is getting late and I want to go in for a last swim,” she said. “Perhaps we could
meet again tomorrow? This is my favourite place, my secret spot.” She suddenly held
herself, as if to contain a shudder. “I have always thought that if I could just wait here long
enough, my soul’s mate would eventually come by and that we would live happily ever
after.” She shook her head and laughed. “A schoolgirl’s thoughts. I’m afraid I’ve read too
many romantic novels.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being romantic,” I said. “Just so long as you are
practical as well. You will have to leave the glade to make your way in the world. You may
have to work as hard to find this ‘soul’s mate’ as you do to perfect your music. Nothing
comes easy.”
“I know that now,” she said, sadly. “I have waited for what seems like a hundred
years for the right person to come by my secret glade. But you are here,” she said,
brightening, “and I didn’t have to go out and search for you.”
 6

She stood. “I will take my afternoon swim now. I’m sorry you don’t have a bathing
costume or you could join me. I may seem awfully forward, but I ask you again, would you
like to come by tomorrow?”
“There is nothing I would like better. I would love to see you again…Miss…” I
looked quizzically.
“Pierce. Louisa Pierce.” She held out her hand. I took it, held it for a moment, then
kissed it. “My, aren’t you romantic.” She actually blushed as she raised her other hand to
her breast. For one breathless moment we stood, her hand in mine, and stared into each
other’s eyes. She wore no makeup. A spray of tiny freckles ran across the bridge of her
small, upturned nose like stars scattered on the face of a summer night, giving her at close
quarters more the look of a schoolgirl than the elegant, New England matron she had
seemed from a distance. Her small mouth stretched into a shy smile, dimpling her cheeks
very slightly. I dove headfirst into those matchless green eyes and felt myself drowning in
her.
“You inspire me to transcend myself, Miss Pierce,” I said breathlessly. I was
actually perfectly serious, but I immediately regretted saying such an extravagant thing. I
hoped she’d just think I was being silly. “My name is Peter Coogan, and you may from this
moment number me among your conquests.”
She smiled and her sparkling green eyes laughed. “I’m afraid you will not have
much company. I have not had any conquests that I know of.”
“That’s because you hide and wait here in this magical glade. But I’m glad for it, as
your insularity has kept all those scoundrels here and in Boston from discovering you. I
consider my footsteps to have been guided to you by a greater and a most benevolent
power.” I do believe I bowed slightly when I said that.
She laughed. “Oh my, I shouldn’t have told you I read romantic novels. How good
you are at imitating their language and rhythm. Why you must sweep every shopgirl you
meet off her feet.”
“Louisa, you are no shopgirl. You are an intelligent, educated woman. And I want
very much to get to know you better.”
“Tomorrow then?”
“You may count on it.”
 7

I watched her go to the thicket at the end of the glade and work her way through it.
Then I lost sight of her behind the leaves. I toyed with the thought of waiting for her to
come back, but I felt we had accomplished enough for one day. She seemed nearly as taken
with me as I was with her, and willing enough to meet with me tomorrow. No need to
appear pushy.
Walking back, I laughed to myself at my rhetoric. For Christ’s sake: “You inspire
me to transcend myself, Miss Pierce?” I was amazed she didn’t burst out laughing. Still,
that’s sort of the way she spoke – sweet, very formal and old-fashioned – so I guess I just
fell into the rhythm of it, especially after she told me she had a weakness for romantic
novels. It was quaint and charming and I liked having the opportunity to be charming
without being thought an idiot. There’s damned little charm these days of cutoff jeans and
flipflops. I had never kissed a girl’s hand before either; I found that too not only charming
but also a little sexy. And I hoped there’d be more of her to kiss before I had to go back to
New York in a couple weeks.
I found I could barely sleep that night. I kept thinking of Louisa with her blonde
hair and green eyes, Louisa tall, slim and elegant, with her strong pianist’s hands. And that
night everything I dreamt was bathed in that deep golden peridot green of the glade.
The next morning went by in glacial time. I drove to the lake and began to repeat
my walk of the previous day, afraid if I tried to enter the path from a different route I’d
miss the glade. Early in the afternoon, I found it, entering into that strangely silent, sweetly-
scented spot that seemed like no other on the lake. I thanked God that Louisa was there,
waiting.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” she said. I was delighted that she was apparently
as worried that I wouldn’t come as I was that she wouldn’t be there. I sat by her and she
offered me some lemonade. Freshly-made, she said, but it was as strangely insubstantial
and tasteless as the previous day’s offering.
“I wish I had my cameras here,” I said, admiring her. “I would love to take a
portrait of you to show my friends at home the beautiful young woman I found in the
Massachusetts woods.”
She jumped up. “Well, instead let me make a photograph of you. She reached into
her picnic basket and pulled out an old, leather-covered box camera.
 8

“My goodness,” I marveled, “how old is that camera? You’re obviously not one of
these photographers who has got to have the latest SLR.”
“Oh, I’m not a photographer at all,” she said. “This is my father’s camera, and it is
old, though hardly antique. It takes perfectly decent pictures.”
She bade me stand where the light was strongest. I stood stiffly and tried to mount
something between an idiot grin and smile. She looked down into the camera, moving it
slightly from side to side for what seemed like an interminable amount of time. Finally,
rather too forcefully, she tripped the shutter with a loud click. The camera jerked in her
hands, and I could tell that if that shutter speed were as slow as it sounded, the photo would
be blurred.
“May I?” I held out my hand.
She smiled and, after advancing the film with a knob on the side, handed me the
camera. “Wow, it’s heavy,” I said, “to say nothing of bulky.” I had seen old cameras like
this, bruised and tattered, with peeling leather. I had never seen a new one. “What is this,
an anniversary model or a replica?” She shrugged her shoulders.
I looked down into the viewfinder and moved closer to her.
“That’s too close,” she said. “It will be out of focus.” She stood very stiffly, almost
holding her breath. It didn’t seem close at all to me, but I stepped back, framing her from
the waist up in the viewfinder.
“The light isn’t very good. It doesn’t do you justice.”
She smiled and blushed a little. “They say I look a little like Elsie Ferguson. Do you
think so? Could you make me look like her?”
“I’m sorry I’m not familiar with her,” I said, still looking down into the viewfinder.
“Well, whoever she might be, never let it be said that you look like her; rather, she looks
like you. And the more she looks like you, the luckier she is.” She smiled.
I tripped the shutter, advanced the film and handed the camera back to her. “Is Elsie
Ferguson an actress?” I asked as we sat back down.
“Yes, an accomplished stage actress,” she said as she stuffed the camera back into
her hamper. “I’ve seen her on Broadway. Do you see many Broadway shows Mr. Coogan?
Much as I love Boston, I find New York exciting, if slightly vulgar.”
“New York is my home. I was born and raised there.”
 9

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, flustered. She coloured deeply. “I didn’t mean to insult
your home.”
“I’m quite used to it up here. Bostonians have always flattered themselves for no
apparent reason that they are somehow more aristocratic and elegant than New Yorkers.
We New Yorkers allow them that conceit as we know they have little else to brag about;
and everyone outside of Boston knows better anyway.
“But to answer your question, I see Broadway shows fairly regularly. This past
winter I saw ‘A Chorus Line’ and ‘Dream Girls.’”
“Oh dear, I’m afraid I’ve never heard of those shows. I saw ‘The Social Whirl’ this
past Spring and it was wonderful – such professional singing and dancing, and another
excellent score by Mr. Gustav Kerker. Why I don’t think the Metropolitan Opera could
mount a better production. By the way,” she added, “I did see some of the recent Italian
novelties at the Metropolitan, but I’m afraid my heart is still with the German school and
Wagner. Last year I went to Bayreuth to hear Burgstaller sing Parsifal.”
I smiled and nodded, though I wasn’t sure what she meant by Italian novelties.
“They say our music is too closely modeled on the German tradition, but our musical
tradition is only 100 years old and it has to come from somewhere. I can’t think of a better
place,” she said.
“I thought that up until about 25 years ago American music was considered too
French, after the generation that studied with Nadia Boulanger.” She looked blankly at me.
“You know,” I added, “Copland, Thompson and that group.”
“My,” she said, “the music scene in New York must be very different from ours in
Boston.”
“See now, you must get out of the glade more often. There is a world beyond here,
and even beyond your beloved Boston.”
After we said goodbye and promised to meet “on the morrow,” as she quaintly put
it, I drove into Boston, found a big music store and bought the largest portable keyboard
that I could run off batteries. I brought it with me to the glade the next day.
“I have something for you, Louisa,” I said.
“Really?” She said delightedly. “I can’t imagine what.”
 10

I unstrapped the keyboard from my back and unzipped the case. “Here. It’s too
small for four-hand duets, but now you can play for me and I can play for you.”
She stared at it wide-eyed. “It’s…a little keyboard,” she said wonderingly.
“It’s not a very good one, but it has the best battery life…”
“Battery?” She seemed baffled. “Surely it doesn’t make a sound…”
I switched it on and started playing the Little Fugue in G Minor. Her eyes grew
large as quarters and her mouth fell open. “Bach,” she said in awe.
When I finished, I handed her the keyboard. “Now you play something.”
She launched into a very old-fashioned but charming concert piece with a quasi-
oriental flavour, its sinuous melody underpinned by surprising but wholly satisfying
harmonies. It seemed simple, but I could see that it was not at all easy to play – five sharps
with lots of accidentals – and I felt her frustration at the small keyboard which not only
couldn’t sustain chords, but which forced her on the fly to find alternatives to the low and
high notes that the original piece must have contained. Still, it was a lovely performance,
and clever the way she improvised to overcome the keyboard’s shortcomings. I could also
see by the way her hands caressed the keys that she was playing with a subtlety and nuance
lost entirely on the electronic instrument. It would have sounded gorgeous on a real piano.
“What is that piece?” I asked. “You played it beautifully.”
“It’s the first of the Five Character Pieces after the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam. It
takes as its text the quatrain ‘Iram indeed has gone with all his rose.’ It is by my teacher Dr.
Arthur Foote; if you’ll recollect, the day we met I was studying his harmony textbook.”
“It’s charming,” I said rather surprised. “But it doesn’t sound contemporary.”
“Well, neither Dr. Foote nor I are very much in sympathy with the avant garde. I
can understand what Mr. Schoenberg is doing, but I can’t for the life of me understand why
he’s doing it,” she laughed. “But this…thing! I’ve never seen anything like it. The keys are
narrow, it’s a couple octaves short for playing any concert piece, and the sound isn’t very
congenial but…but it’s absolutely amazing. How on earth does it work? What powers it? It
has no strings to hit with hammers, it has no compressor to blow air into pipes.”
I tried to explain the concept of electronics to her, realizing in the process that I
didn’t understand it myself. “Of course, you have a real piano at home,” I said, “but now
 11

you can play for me everyday here in the glade. Until,” I added pointedly, “you invite me
to The Beeches to play four-hand for your family.”
She smiled the prettiest, saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “I don’t think I realized until
now,” she said distantly, “how far apart we are. How long I’ve been here, waiting for you.”
She stared at me. “How many things you must have seen, how many things you must know
that I have no inkling of. How much has happened since…” and she began to weep.
I put my arms around her. Her tears were hot on my shoulder as I stroked her hair.
“What’s wrong Louisa? What could possibly be wrong? We have found each other, against
all the odds, here in this lovely glade. Your wait is over. I didn’t realize what I was waiting
for, but now I know. Now I know what has been missing from my life all this time: you,
you, Louisa.”
I held her close, then at arms length to look at her. The tendrils of golden hair were
plastered to her cheeks by her tears. Her eyes were red, and she was biting at her lower lip.
She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. I thought I had never ever seen anything as
beautiful and desirable as she was at that moment, there in that green and gold light. We
stared at each other for a breathless moment, and then she drew me to her and kissed me
voraciously.
My God, what a kiss. She sucked the breath from me, she devoured me, she pulled
me inside out. Holding onto each other with what seemed almost like desperation, we
lowered ourselves to the grass, warm and prickly. We just kissed and held and caressed
each other with a kind of desperate intensity and an intimacy I had never experienced.
I lay next to her, her hand in mine. There was no sound in that strangely quiet glade
beyond our coupled breathing. It never occurred to me to attempt to take our passion to a
climax. That moment, which now seemed inevitable as tomorrow’s sunrise, would come
when the time was right. I was completely satisfied for the time being. “I have never,” I
said, grappling for the right words, “experienced anything even remotely like that.” I raised
myself on one elbow and looked at her. “You are amazing, just astonishing, perfection
itself. I can’t believe my fortune, finding you. I am the luckiest man alive.”
She lay next to me smiling, staring at me with eyes well…just full of love. I’ve
never been looked at like that before. It changes you forever, you know; you can’t help but
love yourself when someone you love looks at you with such love in her eyes. I felt myself
 12

blush with pride and happiness. It is terrible to have seen love like that reflected in the eyes
of someone you love; and then not see it anymore.
The next day, we decided to improvise for each other. I pride myself on my ability
to improvise at the keyboard – it’s a discipline no longer really taught or even encouraged,
with the result that we’ve got a whole generation of musicians who are mute if you snatch
away their sheet music. I figured I’d impress Louisa.
She went first. She started with a theme of her own, but as she played I thought of a
good, catchy melody that could be manipulated nicely. I pulled out a musical notebook I
always carry and hurriedly wrote it down. “When you’re through with that, let’s see what
you can do with this,” I whispered in her ear, as I put the paper down on the keyboard in
front of her. Not looking up, she nodded.
She glanced at the music briefly, and within no more than a few measures, she
brought my theme into her improvisation, pulling it here, extending it there, so that
rhythmically and harmonically it fit seamlessly into the material she was already working.
Shifting it through inner voices from the base into the treble, she turned the theme upside
down and played it against itself, then played it backwards, then played the retrograde
inversion. I’ve never seen a performance like that – within a split second to assimilate a
theme while already improvising on something else, tailor it to fit, and manipulate it in all
sorts of complex ways while sailing along at an allegro tempo! It demonstrated an
astonishing musical mind, to say nothing of an incredible facility to translate thought
instantaneously into nimble fingers. It was the most amazing demonstration I’ve ever seen
of sheer musicality and perfect reflexes. I got chills watching her.
She finally concluded her improvisation by developing my theme into a three-part
fugue, doing the same for her original melody, and then bringing the two themes together a
fifth apart into a tremendous double fugue.
When she finished, she looked up at me and smiled. “Now, if this were a real organ
with pedals, I could have brought in more voices and another theme,” she laughed. Seeing
me standing there stunned and mute as a cigar store Indian, she added “I’ve spent years of
Sundays working with Dr. Foote at the First Church, Unitarian, improvising at the
console.” She laughed again and handed me the keyboard. “Your turn,” she said.
 13

Thoroughly humbled by her brilliant performance and certainly unable to match her
tour de force with my melody, all I could manage was a lugubrious, square-jawed chorale
theme that started nowhere and didn’t stray very far.
Louisa had an extraordinary musical mind, and she knew it; what’s more, she
obviously enjoyed showing it off to people who could understand and appreciate the
complexity of what she could do at the keyboard. It made me love and admire her all the
more.
That’s how it was the balance of the summer. The mornings moved like molasses,
the afternoons spent talking, playing, holding hands – sometimes more – sped by like
minutes, and the evenings and nights, which I spent sometimes with friends but usually
spent alone, were devoted entirely to reliving the afternoons. No matter how I insisted,
cajoled or wheedled, she would never meet me for dinner at night in the town, or invite me
to The Beeches, or visit me at my time-share. But we spent every afternoon together, rain
or shine – the leafy covering over the glade was so thick that it kept even the most
persistent of summer showers out.
“Why it must be raining,” she would say, seeing me arrive wet from the waist
down, my umbrella dripping torrents. And we would lie on the grass together and look up
at that opulent peridot canopy and not only wouldn’t a drop of rain penetrate, but you
couldn’t even hear the rain.
One day I commented on that – how there were no sounds in the glade.
“That is because this is a special place. It is another world, a world where natural
laws are suspended. They were suspended to let you find me, you know. We are
completely alone,” she said, smiling. “You can’t imagine how alone we are.”
“We’re hardly alone,” I responded. “Your family is within a few minutes’ walking
distance that way…” I said, pointing over her right shoulder, “and my friends and time-
share condo are within a mile or so that way,” and I poked my thumb towards the lake.
“And, I’m sure just on the other side of that dense foliage there are people sailing by within
a few yards of shore.”
“You’re wrong,” she smiled with an achingly sweet smile. “We are alone. We are
the only two people on earth at this time and in this place. This is not your place, nor does
 14

it belong to my time or my family and friends. This is my place, and you are here with me.
Peter, while we two remain here together we are the only people on earth.”
“Louisa, the summer is nearly ended,” I said. I had avoided this discussion because
I had the feeling, though I was absolutely sure that Louisa loved me and wanted to be with
me, that this conversation would not end the way I wanted it to. “It won’t be long before
you have to go back to Boston to resume your studies and I have to go back to New York –
at least for the time being. If we want to remain together we have to plan for it. I want to
meet your family; I want you to meet mine. I want everyone to know that I love you and
want to marry you. I want to visit you in Boston and I am prepared eventually to move and
continue my career there while you pursue your studies. But I also want you to broaden
your horizons and visit me often in New York before I make that move.”
“I don’t think you understand,” she said, downcast. “We can’t meet anywhere but
here. I wasn’t sure at first, but now I know. We cannot visit each other’s families. Why do
you think this whole summer we could not have dinner together in town? This is our place.
And this is our only place.”
“Why?” I asked, baffled. “Are you married? Affianced? I’m not. I am free to do
what I choose. I will overcome whatever obstacle your family might represent. I will do
anything for you.”
“Oh Peter,” she said so sadly, “I am not married. I am not affianced. Look,” she
came over to me and kneeled in front of me, taking my hands in hers and looking up at me
with green eyes that glowed in the supernatural light. “I have waited for you for a long
time. I hope you have waited for me as well, but I must think the circumstances are
different. I am fulfilled finally and I’m not sure but I think I must go now.”
“Go where?”
She put a finger on my lips. “Shh. You must go somewhere too. You have a future.
You are a fine musician, and I’m sure your future includes success and fulfillment and
maybe even greatness. You can’t imagine how I envy you that future. But I am forever
grateful for you. You have answered my prayers and I will never forget you. Please say that
you’ll remember me as well?” She looked imploringly at me.
The most terrible feeling crept over me. It knotted my stomach and pushed the air
out of me as if a fist hit me in the solar plexus. Tears began to well up in the corners of my
 15

eyes. “What are you saying? You’re not saying goodbye are you?” I was almost frantic. “I
love you…Louisa...”
Rising from her knees, she suddenly seemed weary, distant. “And I love you too,
Peter. But summer’s over. I want to go for one last swim.”
“I’ll come with you,” I cried.
“No, I’d like to be alone. I usually take the last swim of the summer alone.”
“Then I’ll wait for you.”
She bent over and cupped my face in her hands. She leaned towards me and kissed
me, her lips were warm and moist and tender, but she withdrew before I could kiss her
back. “Don’t wait for me as long as I waited for you,” she said.
She unbuttoned her shirtwaist and slipped out of her long, white linen skirt, skinned
off a layer of petticoat revealing an odd sort of pantalooned undergarment that wasn’t a
great deal more revealing than the shift itself. Barefoot, she walked through the trees as I
followed at a few feet’s distance. This was the first time we had exited the glade together.
As she arrived at the water’s edge, she pushed back the branches and turned to me to blow
me a kiss. “Remember me, Peter. Remember me and we will always be together.”
She turned, it seemed sadly, and walked gingerly into the water, which by that hour
must have been quite cool. The tree branches slowly swung back into place, and I lost sight
of her. I ran to the trees and parted the same boughs in time to see her lean forward as the
water drew up to her mid-thigh, and kick herself into the deep water. She pulled herself
away from me with long, practiced strokes, keeping her head and hair above water. She
never looked back, and I never took my eyes off her until I lost sight of her.
I turned back into the glade and sat in the uncomfortable old slatted chair and
waited. Her lips still burned on mine and, and I realized that while watching her swim away
I fancied the far bank still forested and empty beyond a few old cottages.
I sat there the rest of the day. And the entire night. What little dreaming I did
seemed disconnected and unpleasant. The bright peridot green seemed to give way in my
subconscious to a dark, cold and murky blue-green. I awoke with a start, covered in sweat.
In the morning, I tried to remember my old guide’s directions to The Beeches –
backtrack a bit, then take the not-very-visible path to the left and then right at the fork until
you see a gable. After some meandering, as I wasn’t sure of distances, I saw the gable with
 16

its eye of a window. I made for it and soon came across a big old, square Victorian three-
story house with a wraparound porch. By now it was well into morning, and I could smell
breakfast cooking, so I knocked. An old, weathered wooden sign above the door said “The
Beeches.”
A middle-aged man, pleasant-looking, dressed perhaps a bit too formally for a day
in the country, came to the door. “Yes sir?”
I introduced myself and we shook hands. He was Allen Patterson from Boston, and
his family had owned this house for nearly 70 years. I asked after Louisa, expressing my
concern that I had not seen her return from a late swim yesterday afternoon. I said I hoped
that she passed by without seeing me as I dozed waiting for her in the gathering darkness,
and that if Louisa hadn’t returned that we should call the police immediately.
Patterson closed the front door behind him and bade me sit with him on the porch.
“This is a shocking story,” he said.
I agreed and again expressed my concern. “Can’t you check to see if she’s here?
Maybe everyone’s not up yet?”
“No, no” Patterson said, “there’s no need. There is no Louisa here.”
“Louisa doesn’t live here? Why should she lie?”
“There was a Louisa here a very long time ago. She was the daughter of cousins
who originally owned this house. Our two families vacationed here – I think probably
every summer from around 1900 to 1908.” He paused and looked out over the porch at the
lake. “Louisa drowned at the end of that summer.” He looked closely at me to study my
reaction.
My mouth dropped. My hair gathered in prickles on my neck as if I were suddenly
wrapped in an arctic wind. I jumped immediately into a rationalization. “There was a
Louisa in this house who drowned…what, 67 years ago? Well, that’s a whopping
coincidence, but it can’t have anything to do with my situation. If there’s no Louisa here
now, I guess the girl I met just wanted to pretend she was from a fine house like this
instead of one of the motor lodges or summer rentals on the other side of the lake. I guess
that’s why she would never invite me to this house. That all makes sense now. I’m sorry to
have disturbed you.” I got up to leave, though I knew in my heart that Louisa was a monied
aristocrat, just as I knew instinctively that she belonged to The Beeches.
 17

“Well, maybe.” He held up his hand as if to slow me down in my headlong pursuit to

avoid more unpleasant revelations. “My cousins didn’t have the heart to keep the house, or
even visit it after Louisa’s death, so my family bought it. We’ve summered here every year
since except during the two world wars. But you know it’s terribly odd, every now and
then, through all those years we’d hear stories – from both locals and summer people –
stories about Louisa.
“Her body was never found, so for a while it was easy for the family to believe that
she wasn’t dead. Our great, great aunt was swimming with her when she disappeared, so
they really – deep-down – knew that she was gone, but they kept being upset by frequent
reports that Louisa had been seen. Many people around here knew her, and she was popular
because she was so talented and pretty. So those first few decades after her death, she was
being seen by people who actually had known her and recognized her. She’d be seen
swimming. She would smile and wave from a picnic as people walked by. She would even
talk to people in a secluded glade. So when these people said they saw Louisa, my parents
and cousins knew that…they must have seen Louisa. After the first few reports brought
false hopes and bitter disappointments, each new sighting was a fresh wound.
“Of course Louisa’s memory eventually faded. Now there are very few who knew
her and would recognize her, but we still get these reports, though now she’s simply a
nameless blonde at a picnic, or a mysterious young woman sighted swimming in the
gathering dusk, or a statuesque beauty waving at hikers like some siren as they follow the
rim of the lake.”
“A sireen,” I said to myself. Now I understood what the old man had said.
“They have no name for her now. She’s just an anonymous but beautiful presence,
glimpsed briefly. But you are the first to bring us such a detailed story about a relationship,
which is why I don’t just want to dismiss it – or you – out of hand.” He was quiet for a
moment. “In fact, I’m fascinated by what you’re telling me, because I saw her myself once,
I think.”
“What did you see?”
“I was around 20. I was walking down the path to the lake for a swim. I cut through
this strange, quiet little glade, and I saw her out of the corner of my eye: tall, thin, blonde,
dressed very old-fashionedly in what they used to call white lawn. I recognized her from
 18

the old pictures in the family albums. She was standing at the edge of the glade, and I
fancied that she smiled at me. She was strikingly beautiful, but I knew what she was and
she frightened me. I turned away for a moment, and when I regained my courage and
looked back, she wasn’t there. She just seemed to melt into the trees of the glade.”
“Well perhaps there is something uncanny out there, but believe me, I’m not talking
about some will o’ the wisp.” I stood, leaned on the porch railing and looked out over the
lake at the mall and water tank on the opposite bank. “I’m talking about a living, breathing,
fully-fleshed woman whom I not just saw but held in my arms and kissed, and spent hours
with every day with for the last three weeks or so. We talked endlessly. She has played the
piano for me. I know she studies at the New England Conservatory and with a teacher
named Foote. The Boston Symphony has performed her music. She intends to be a teacher
and composer. She’s 26, and wants to get her doctorate before marriage. I know…”
Patterson put his hand on my shoulder. “Come with me into the house.”
Inside, it was a real turn-of-the century rustic country home – or what would have
passed for rustic in the eyes of wealthy city-dwellers a century earlier – well-worn bare
hardwood floors, mission furniture, no paint. The interior smelled like decades of wood
polish. Patterson walked over to a bookcase and took out a thin, green volume and held it
out to me. I read: “Modern Harmony in Its Theory and Practice by Arthur Foote and Walter
R. Spalding.”
“That’s her book,” I said. “She was studying it the first time I saw her. She is here!”
Patterson opened it and passed it to me. “Read the inscription. Read the letter folded
inside.”
The inscription read “To Louisa Pierce, my most talented pupil.” It was signed
“Arthur Foote. 1905.” I could feel the blood drain from my face as I looked up at him.
“1905?”
“Foote died in the 1930s. Read the letter.”
Shaken, I unfolded the note. It was old and brittle.

“September 8, 1908

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Pierce,

 19

Words cannot possibly convey to you my sorrow at learning of

Louisa’s death. She was not only a favourite pupil and a musician
whom I expected to achieve great success in both performance and
composition, but a respected colleague and a very dear friend.
The afternoons and evenings after class when we played duets
and discussed the craft of music, and the long Sundays at the organ
console at church will forever be among my most treasured memories.
I cannot yet bring myself to believe that these idyllic times are ended,
and that she will not in short order arrive here at the Conservatory to
continue her studies.
I am inconsolable, as are all the Conservatory faculty and her
fellow students. She was acknowledged to be special among us,
touched by not just beauty and the most congenial of personalities, but
by that invisible something which most of us ordinary mortals can
only wonder at.
Whether you call it genius, or say she was somehow touched
by God, she had a rare and special gift, and we all envied her and
exalted her for it. I can only regret deeply that God withdrew her from
us before she could share that gift fully. It is a terrible loss.
May I offer you and your family my deepest and most heartfelt
sympathies. I will never forget her.

Yrs. Very truly and with the most profound sorrow,

(signed)
Arthur Foote”

I folded the letter and placed it back in the book, which I closed and sat back on the
table. “I don’t know what to say.”
I thought a moment and rallied. “Do you have a picture of your Louisa? Because
I’m just not ready to believe such a fantastic story.”
Patterson leaned back and thought. “Well, the family albums are back in Boston,
but my great great aunt Eliza used to carry a miniature photograph of Louisa in a locket.
They were very close – in fact it was she who was with Louisa on her last swim – they
were best friends and she never quite recovered from Louisa’s death. She’s very old, so she
lives in a home now; this year we decided to bring her out to spend the last few weeks of
the summer with us. She may have the locket with her.”
We rose from the table and went into the dinette, where I was introduced to
Patterson’s wife Holly, who was puttering over breakfast, and their two daughters and son.
The matriarch of the family, great, great aunt Eliza remained upstairs. I saw at the front of
 20

the parlour a stately old upright, a well-used Chickering that must have been handsome in
its day.
“Is that the piano Louisa played?”

“Yes, I guess it is. It’s been here since my cousins originally bought the house. The
sounding board is cracked, but we keep it in tune in the generally unrewarded hope that my
daughters or my son might consider practicing a little bit.” He raised his voice as he spoke
and cast a pointed glance over his shoulder at his children.
All three said nearly in unison “Oh Dad, it’s summer vacation.”
“Don’t be such a stiff!” added the youngest girl through a thicket of braces.
I went over to the old piano. “May I?”
“Please.”
I began the Andante Commodo from the Foote Five Character Pieces. Louisa had
played it so enchantingly that I asked her often to play it again, and I memorized it from her
performances – not note perfect, but close. Only someone who knew it very well would
realize I was fudging it here and there. “Louisa taught me this. It’s by her teacher, Arthur
Foote.”
It was a pleasure to play it on a real piano with a sustaining pedal and a responsive
touch. As they sat listening, I heard a clumping and dragging sound coming up behind me.
I saw out of the corner of my eye a very old, bent figure dragging herself forward with a
walker.
An old lady came to my side and intoned in a hoarse, trembling voice:
“Iram indeed has gone with all his rose, and Jamshyd’s Sev’n
ring’d Cup where no one knows; But still a Ruby kindles in the
Vine, and many a Garden by the water blows.”
It was the quatrain from The Rubaiyat that inspired Foote. Louisa had recited it
several times. Tears began to stream down the old lady’s face.
When I finished to modest applause, Patterson rose to help the old lady to her chair.
“Aunt Eliza,” Patterson said, rising to help her to a chair, “this is Mr. Coogan. Mr.
Coogan, this is my great, great aunt Eliza.” I stood and shook her feeble hand.
“That is the first of Foote’s Five Character Pieces. How do you come to know
this?” she asked in a thick, unsteady voice. “I didn’t think anyone played it anymore. My
 21

dear cousin Louisa and I used to play it over and over in a four-hand arrangement made
expressly for her and me by Dr. Foote, an arrangement he cleverly designed to give Louisa
the hard part and me the easy. It made me look good while Louisa did all the work.”
She smiled at the memory and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “My, I haven’t
heard that piece in nearly 70 years.”
Eliza seemed impossibly old; her parchment skin, mottled and deeply wrinkled like
a badly ironed sheet, fell into puddles at the sides of her mouth and jaw; and under her chin
it seemed to cascade down her throat like a mudslide. If she had been in her late teens or
early twenties when her Louisa died, she would now be around 90. She showed clearly the
burden of every one of those many years.
Patterson walked her over to the table and helped her sit. He pushed the walker
away, collapsed it and leaned it up against the far wall.

“Mr. Coogan, may I ask you why you take those extreme ritards in the 4 th and 8th
measures, and again just before the recapitulation?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Eliza,” I answered, “I learned this piece by ear. I have never
actually seen the music, I just play it the way it was played for me by…by a friend.”
She seemed agitated. “But those ritards are not marked. Louisa always said they
should have been, but they’re not there. Nobody ever performed the piece with those ritards
but Louisa, not even Dr. Foote.”
Patterson said: “Mr. Coogan has actually come here to enquire after Louisa.”
The three young people exchanged amused glances and fought unsuccessfully to
suppress sardonic smiles and giggles. Mrs. Patterson looked tired and annoyed, all but
rolling her eyes. Aunt Eliza, however, drew in a breath and looked very uncomfortable.
“Aunt Eliza,” Patterson said gently reaching over to take her bony hand. “Aunt
Eliza, would it disturb you to talk about Louisa?”
Aunt Eliza said nothing. She just turned and stared at me and shook her head.
“Aunt Eliza,” Patterson continued. “Do you still have that picture of Louisa?”
Aunt Eliza still stared at me. “I won’t show it to everyone,” she rattled.
“You don’t have to show it to anyone if you don’t want to.”
“I’ll show it to him. But not to just anyone.”
“Him?” Patterson asked, confused. “Whom?”
 22

“Her man. The man she was waiting for. Not all those others who just catch sight of
her or wave at her. They mean nothing. But I’ll show it to the right man and no one else.
Only those who love her deserve to see her.”
“Very well, Aunt Eliza,” Patterson said tentatively, “you don’t need to show it to
the gentleman.” He turned to me. “I’m sorry. I don’t think we should pursue it further. She
seems to be upset. Will you at least stay for breakfast? You deserve some reward for that
wonderful performance. You’re a very accomplished pianist.”
I realized, to my surprise, that I was hungry. I couldn’t imagine why, considering
the turmoil my stomach was in. “Yes,” I said thankfully. “I don’t believe I’ve eaten since
yesterday morning.”
“So you’ve glimpsed our family ghost,” said the youngest girl mischievously, as
several platters of eggs and sausage were being passed around. “I do believe poor dead
cousin Louisa gets more action than all the rest of us put together.” The three young people
laughed heartily, and the older girl leaned over the table and whispered something into the
boy’s ear – I could make out the words “woods still full of crackpots.”
Before Patterson could interfere in what looked like it might turn into a rude attack
on my sanity, I replied forcefully. “I didn’t just glimpse her. The woman I met in the woods
is named Louisa, but I don’t have the least reason to believe she is a ghost or anything of
the sort. Not only have I seen her, I’ve talked with her and we’ve spent nearly every
afternoon together for the past several weeks. We have held hands, we have kissed…” I
stopped short. “We have played the piano for each other. We are in love, and I don’t for a
moment believe that your family’s long-ago tragedy has anything to do with my situation. I
am thankful for your family’s kindness, and I must say, I am astonished and unsettled at
these unbelievable coincidences, but I assure you, my Louisa is very much alive as you.”
Aunt Eliza clearly hung on every word. She seemed to chew on something a few
moments, and then said “Young man.”
I looked up. “Yes Ms. Eliza?”
“Who taught you the Character Piece?”
I hesitated and looked at Patterson, who nodded. “A young woman named Louisa
whom I met in the woods near here, in a strange, quiet little glade.” She paled and began to
tremble.
 23

“You actually spoke to her?”

“Yes, for hours on end, day after day.”
“Do you love this Louisa?”
“Yes, very much.”
“Did she say she loved you?”
“Yes, more than once.”
Eliza gestured imperiously towards the cupboard. “Alan, my bag.”
Patterson rose and retrieved it for her. She took it and began to shuffle through its
contents. The family began to dig into the breakfast, but Aunt Eliza ignored it, pulling up
item after item from her purse, examining it and putting it back to continue searching.
“Aunt Eliza, your breakfast will get cold,” Mrs. Patterson said testily. “Do pay
attention to it or it will be spoiled.” She turned to us and said under her breath “She’s
probably forgotten what she was looking for in the first place.”
I drank some coffee and had just enough food to discover I didn’t really have an
appetite. All the while Aunt Eliza dug through her apparently bottomless bag.
“Mmmh.” She mumbled decisively, as she pulled out a small locket. “Here. My
arthritis is so bad…” She struggled with it, her thick old fingers fumbling against the clasp.
“I don’t believe I’ve opened it for some time,” Eliza said. “I used to open it every day and
stare at it and cry, but I haven’t been able to now in some months. There are two pictures in
there. One of them is me. You’ll have to tell me if the other is your Louisa.”
Patterson reached over. “Here, Aunt Eliza, let me help you.” He took the locket
from her and started pressing the well-worn catch with one thumb while trying to pry it
open with the other thumbnail. It finally gave way with an audible click. Patterson
automatically looked down at the locket as it fell into two halves. His eyebrows jumped in
surprise and he brought it sharply up to his face. He stared dumbly at it for a moment, then
looked up at me, and back down into the locket.
“What,” said Aunt Eliza, “what’s wrong?” She grabbed at the locket. “Let me see.”
Patterson tried to keep it from her, but she pulled it out of his hand. The old lady
brought the locket close to her face, practically touching the thick lenses of her glasses. She
gasped and shrieked. “No, it can’t be, it’s impossible,” and flung the locket from her. Eliza
struggled to get up from her chair; she pushed herself up with her right arm, but lost her
 24

balance and fell over, taking the chair with her. Crumpled on the floor, she began to gasp
for breath.
“Oh my Lord,” Patterson said, “she’s having a heart attack. Holly, call an
ambulance.” Mrs. Patterson ran out of the room herding the upset children ahead of her. In
a moment I could hear her dialing the phone.
I just stood there while Patterson undid her collar and laid her head on a cushion he
grabbed from the sofa. “Just relax and take deep breaths,” he said, trying to soothe her.
“There’ll be somebody here to help you in a couple minutes.”
“Nobody can help me,” she moaned. “It’s too late.” She looked vaguely around the
room. “I knew I should never have come back here.”
Eliza lay on the floor, mostly on her side. Patterson untangled her legs from the
chair she had pulled over onto herself. He stroked the frail old lady’s white hair, but her
labored breathing grew more fitful.
“Almost the last thing Louisa said to me,” Eliza said between gulps of air, finally
breaking an interminable silence “was ‘he will come to me here.’ We were in our secret
spot, a leaf-covered glade we fancied no one else knew about. ‘I know he will come to me
here, so this is where I will wait for him,’ she said.
“I asked her how long she would wait, and she said simply, ‘until he comes.
However long it may take. Until he comes.’”
The old lady began to cry. “I said me, me, Louisa. Why not me? Why must there be
anyone else. You have me. I am devoted to you, Louisa, I will never love anyone but you.
“I wanted her for myself, you see. I didn’t want to share her with some shining
knight who probably never existed and never would. I dreamt of her, of her green eyes and
golden hair, I wanted her for myself, for myself…” and she began to sob. “So long as I live
I will never be able to forget the look on her face as I unburdened myself to her – the look
of shock, then realization, then horror, then disgust. The woman I loved more than anyone
on earth was staring at me, her devoted supplicant, with disgust!”
“Just rest Aunt Eliza,” Patterson said, “save your strength. You’re upset.” The old
lady waved him off. “Let me finish. It’s time I told everyone. Louisa wanted to go for one
more swim, the last swim of the summer. She turned away from me abruptly. Still
trembling with the passion of my useless speech, I watched her as she slipped out of her
 25

chemise, her bathing costume revealing every curve of her tall, wonderful, athletic body.
She paddled out into the lake. I sat there for a few minutes, crying at the thought that she
would never again want my arms around her, that now that she knew my real feelings, I
would probably never again kiss those soft, sweet lips, or that long swan neck, that I would
never lie abed with her, aching to touch her but settling for snuggling next to her in a
cousinly way and contenting myself with drinking in her honeysuckle perfume. I cried and
cried and grew both fearful and furious: fearful that she would not simply spurn me but
reveal my secret to my parents and hers; and angry, so angry, angry at myself, angry at
God, angry at her for not seeing me for what I truly was and for disdaining my love and
selfless devotion as if they were meaningless…I grew so angry that I swam out into the
lake, towards the deep part from which she’d be returning momentarily.
“We met far out in the lake. ‘Louisa’ I cried, ‘please…’ and she tried to swim by
me and make her way to shore. I followed, frantic, calling after her ‘Louisa, Louisa,’ but
she wouldn’t turn. I caught up with her and grabbed her foot, putting her off her stroke.
Treading water, we faced each other. ‘Get away from me,’ she said. ‘I would never, ever,
for a moment, consider what you propose. It’s disgusting. It’s obscene. I can’t believe I
ever let you put your arms around me, that we ever slept in the same bed, that I ever kissed
you and held hands with you.’
“‘Louisa, I love you,’ I wailed, “please listen to me and try to understand. You’re
breaking my heart.” But she just turned away and began to swim to shore. I was so furious
I jumped on her back and pushed her down. I kept both hands on her shoulders, feeling her
twist and struggle as she punched and kicked me under the water. I watched her golden hair
float on the surface before turning dark as it soaked up the water.”
Eliza gasped for breath and leaned back against the seat cushion, looking at the
ceiling through a constant flow of tears. Patterson’s wife and the children stood in the
doorway, watching.
“I only wanted to scare her. I wanted her to understand how really desperate I was.
It seemed like only a few seconds that I held her under, but suddenly she stopped
struggling. I let her go, expecting her to rise, but instead watched the last strands of that
golden hair, the hair I would kiss as she slept, abruptly disappear beneath the surface of the
 26

lake. I screamed and began to dive and flail around under the water, trying to catch hold of
her to pull her up. But I couldn’t find her. She was gone.
“I don’t remember swimming to shore. I don’t remember the walk up to the house. I
don’t remember telling my parents and Louisa’s parents what happened. I just remember
waking the next day, with everyone very somber and quiet. Mother and Aunt June were
crying and consoling each other. Papa just stood out on the porch smoking. Uncle Edward
was in his study; he refused lunch and dinner again and again. Not a day has passed since
that day in 1908 that I haven’t relived those awful moments and regretted bitterly what I
did – why I did it I can’t explain, even now. I loved her so very much. How could I kill
her? How?
“As it was the end of the summer, we had to pack and go anyway. They never did
find Louisa’s body, though they searched all that week and for some time after. No one
ever thought to question my story that we went out swimming and I lost sight of her and
came back alone. They thought she must have cramped and drowned and gotten snagged in
some underwater growth that kept her body from rising. Now I know…” she reached her
hand out to me; I knelt beside her and took it. “I know that she never really drowned. Not
really. I didn’t kill her. She just swam back to shore, and went to her favourite spot and
waited, as she always said she would, for the right man. You, I guess. Oh, it took longer
than either of us thought it would, but sometimes you have to wait a very long time for the
things you really want.
“Now I can rest, knowing she finally found what she wanted.” The old lady smiled
and her tear-tracked cheeks briefly brightened. She closed her eyes, and with the slightest
sigh, hardly noticeable, she died, my hand still in hers.
Later, after the ambulance had come and taken Aunt Eliza away, Patterson walked
me to the door. Before I had a chance to apologize for the family crisis that I had
precipitated, he saw the locket lying on the floor where Eliza had hurled it. He bent down
to pick it up, took a deep, slow breath – as if to steel his nerve – and looked closely at it
again. Without saying anything, he handed it to me.
The locket was oval – gold filled, engraved with an ornate heart that was all but
rubbed away: old, old costume jewelry, the stuff they used to make in the Attleboros of
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Massachusetts, not far from where we were standing. I looked at Patterson, afraid, for the
moment, to look down.
My heart sank as I instantly recognized Louisa on the right side of the locket. Even
in the old black and white photo, her glittering eyes and irrepressible smile leaped across
some 70 years to break my heart. On the other side, was a slightly blurred picture of...me.
“How?” He looked squarely at me. “How?”
I shook my head. “Louisa once told me – I thought jokingly – that the natural laws
of time and place were suspended to let me find her,” I said. She wasn’t joking. I think she
must have been right. Somehow I happened onto this bubble in time, and while we were in
that bubble she and I were the only people in the world. If somehow I freed her from her
interminable wait, I am happy for her. Now I guess it’s my turn to wait.”
We shook hands, and I traced my steps back to the area of the glade. But no matter
how desperately I looked, I could never find that exact spot.
I went back to Boston, went through the archives of the New England Conservatory
of Music and the forgotten group of composers I now know was called “The Second New
England School.” Over the years I collected dozens of pictures of Louisa: at the piano, at a
master class with Foote, performing with orchestra, studio portraits, class and graduation
pictures; and her family kindly supplied me with copies of the snapshots from their private
albums. I’ve read all the references to her I could find and was proud to see her mentioned
in a few out-of-print texts such as Howard’s Our American Music as “a musician of
enormous promise whose tragic early death deprived the world of etc. etc.” Not nearly so
much as what it deprived me of.
Then, I found and Xeroxed copies of her music, learning and playing again and again
her piano compositions, often in the practice rooms of the Conservatory, rooms and
possibly even pianos that Louisa once used. I copied out the parts and arranged for
performances of her chamber and choral works and her one large-scale orchestral piece, a
beautifully-scored but almost unbearably wistful tone poem called “A Glade by the Lake.”
I devoted more and more time to Louisa and to her music. I played and conducted
her compositions here and in Europe. I produced several disks of New England School
compositions – Foote, Paine, MacDowell, Chadwick, Beach, Parker, Nevin et al, giving
Louisa a prominent place among them – a place she really had not lived long enough to
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earn. I wrote articles about her for the music journals. Gradually she was embraced, like
poor tubercular Lili Boulanger, by a new generation of music lovers as one of those tragic
might-have-beens of history. Lately, she has been adopted by women’s groups and their
supporters who feel that there should have been a major American female composer in the
generation between Mrs. H.H.A. Beach and the 1920s composers Ruth Crawford Seeger
and Louise Talma. There wasn’t – but some people are more interested in what ought to
have been than what was.
Finally, working with her unfinished pieces and fragments as a basis, I started
composing in Louisa’s style: romantic, melodic, consonant, untroubled by Stravinsky or

Schoenberg, and completely unlike my own mid-20th century international style. Nobody
would perform music like that written by a modern composer – or, I should say, a living
one. But they’re happy to perform it when it’s written by a long-dead woman whose music
is currently being “rediscovered.”
And so, musically at least, I became Louisa. I restored to her in some measure the
life that Eliza took. After decades of my performances and public relations work, Louisa
Pierce has become an iconic American female composer. Her gathering popularity, which
has actually brought in tow with it a new appreciation for the Second New England School,
is helped, I’m sure, by the fact that her photographs reveal her to be an ethereally beautiful
young woman, unlike Beach, who is generally seen in her later photographs as overweight
and very matronly. Louisa’s studio portrait, which I had digitally colored – I want people to
know her eyes were green – makes a compact disk much more saleable than Beach’s,
though Beach was an important and influential composer. Louisa offers youth, beauty and a
sad story – all, highly saleable commodities. Around the world, people are falling in love
with Louisa, like me, after the fact.
Eventually, while working on Louisa’s scores I began to find that I would seem to
lose time – black out perhaps – and awaken to find pages and pages of short score – music I
couldn’t remember writing, music not in my hand.
I would dutifully flesh out this ghostly music and orchestrate it. I confess here and
now that Louisa Pierce’s Symphony No. 1 in E flat, Symphony No. 2 in A minor subtitled
“Spring Symphony,” and the two orchestral suites in E minor and B flat minor were not, as
I announced, discovered in manuscript while cataloguing several large Boston music
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collections. They were freshly written – but I don’t believe for a moment that they were
composed by me; through me if you will, but not by me. This was the music Louisa would
have written if Eliza hadn’t stolen away her life and her future. I am just righting that
wrong nearly a century later.
Sometimes I resent the fact that Louisa has in turn stolen away my life. I had things
to do, music to write, places to travel, maybe somebody to marry, just as she had. Who
knows where fate would have taken me if I hadn’t fallen so desperately in love in that glade
by the lake. There’s no question that restoring Louisa to public consciousness has given my
life a focus, but sometimes in despair I wonder whether Louisa is my angel or a succubus
robbing me of my breath and life. But it doesn’t matter. I still love her and ache for her, so I
treasure any closeness I can achieve, and bend my will to do any service to her memory. I
can no longer see her, but sometimes I believe I can feel her presence at my side when I’m
working on a manuscript. Occasionally, late at night, I swear that I can smell honeysuckle.
I’ve returned to the lake every summer now for thirty years, and I’ve searched every
day. I’ve brought her music – and our music – with me and played it aloud in the woods,
hoping that somehow she will hear it and come to me; but she never has. Nor have I ever
again been able to find that glade where the light shone green like peridots, where my
beautiful Louisa awaited me with golden hair and an angel’s smile.

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