Alice I Have Been: A Novel by Melanie Benjamin

recognized it. Was it the same look he had given me that day in the garden, when he told me he had dreamed of me? Perhaps, but that had been such a long time ago.
    I knew only that, under his gaze, I felt—beautiful. Beautiful, and free to say whatever I wanted, think whatever I wanted, for I could make no mistakes. Not in those blue eyes.
    “Yes, please, do tell us a story,” said I.
    And so he did.
    “There once was a little girl named Alice,” he began.
    “Oh!” I couldn’t help myself. Mr. Dodgson had told us hundreds of stories, stories with people in them we recognized, even if they had nonsensical—different—names. But never before had he named a character after one of us. I smiled up at him, waiting; Ina looked down upon her lap, glaring.
    “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank,” he continued, without giving that sister a name, to my everlasting delight.
    So he continued his story, of a little girl named Alice, a white rabbit—who reminded us all of Papa, right down to the pocket watch; even Ina laughed at that!—a tumble down a rabbit hole, a crazy adventure with such curious creatures—“Curiouser and curiouser!” I shouted, as the story wound itself around in circles and curlicues and love knots.
    It took the entire afternoon to row to Godstow, but none of us was in a hurry, mesmerized, as we were, by Mr. Dodgson. His thin voice, just soft enough so that we had to lean in to hear him, which only made the story more exciting, rose and fell as the tale spun itself; even Mr. Duckworth was hanging on every word.
    “Dodgson, are you making this up?” he interrupted once.
    Edith cried out, “Shhh! Do go on!”
    Mr. Dodgson turned and nodded. “I’m afraid I am,” he said, although I wasn’t sure Mr. Duckworth believed him.
    Astoundingly, he made the story last the entire day. Just when he would seem to trail off, running out of words, one of us would cry out for more and he would be off again. He kept talking, taking breaks only when necessary, such as when we landed at Godstow and he helped us out of the boat, tied it up, and followed us girls (hamper in tow) as we raced about, stretching our legs from the long journey. We searched for the perfect haystack—there were always huge sheltering haystacks just far enough back from the river so that the ground was dry and the bugs weren’t horrid—spread a blanket, and consumed the tea and cakes from the hamper. Mr. Dodgson drank gallons of tea—he must have been parched from all his talking—but then he picked up the story exactly where he had left off, right around the caterpillar.
    So we spent that golden afternoon (we did break once, so that Edith and I could climb over the ruins of the nunnery; the tumbled stones, dark corners, and musty smell always gave me a thrill, even though I never once spied a ghost). Then we packed everything up and rowed downstream, back home; the light was fading by the time we crossed Tom Quad, exhausted, starving (the cakes long gone), still hanging on Mr. Dodgson’s every word. He finally came to the end, where Alice’s sister woke her from her dream.
    When he stopped talking, then—we were in the middle of the Quad, by the quiet fountain full of lily pads—no one said a word. We couldn’t; my mind, at least, was still filled with the images of the story. Also, with a melancholy. A story—like my childhood—was so fleeting. I thought of the hundreds of stories Mr. Dodgson had told us over the years; I couldn’t remember a single detail from any of them. Yet once they, too, had filled my mind with pictures, notions—with dreams.
    I didn’t want this story to disappear; I didn’t want the day to end. I didn’t want to grow up.
    “Write it down,” I said finally, as we were gathering ourselves to say good-bye and go inside the Deanery, with its cheerful, welcoming lantern over the front door. “Please, could you—write it down?”
    “What, my Alice?” Mr.