over her for a minute and feels for her pulse. Her fingers are rough and warm.
âDonât tell my parents,â Hazel slurs, but the nurse is gone. Her parents will see reports of the crash in the papers anyway, and her mother will write her a letter asking, Why? Why must you put yourself in harmâs way every week? Every day?
What they donât know: nothing has topped the feeling of standing next to the motordrome, smiling into the din of applause. Nothing has topped the way men shake her hand and look her in the eye, what itâs like to be able to call a man chickenshit to his face and get away with it, to mean it, to feel free and dominant and in control of your life.
Iâll fight my way back to that vital feeling, she thinks. I will raise the stakes, put a lion in my sidecar like they do down in Alabama.
Her coastal life had been full of loons, gulls, rocks, and maps. âWeâre the first to see the sunrise at the equinox,â her mother had reminded her, as if this alone was compelling enough to keep a family isolated from society, tending a light day in and day out.
The sunrise is beautiful, Hazel had thought then, but it will never be enough. She was questioning then, as she does now: what makes you empty and what makes you full?
The morphine is a tidal wave of warmth through her body. She shudders. Her eyes are closed, but she can sense light, a sort of redness seeping in through her lids. Sheâs living now in the interior of her mind, and there is the familiar view of looking up, forty-nine feet up, at the twisting staircase that leads to the blinding light. Tend it; do not look into it.
What do my daughterâs eyes look like? she wonders, thinking back to the moment when the screaming child had slid from her body, the child that could have changed everything, if sheâd let her, and she had not let her. The first time she held the child sheâd let her fingers rest on the babyâs soft spot, the place where the skull had not yet closed over the pulsing brain.
Thereâs also the familiar view of looking up from the cylindrical wall of death, the sensation of seeing people but not knowing them as individuals, never catching their eyes.
The audience is looking down, she thinks, or is it my father? I am looking up. I am spinning. I am fast but not empty. I am swimming in the strong currents near the jetties, I am crying with the gulls, bobbing like the buoy on a lobster trap, looking through the fog banks over the churning Bay of Fundy.
Allegra Byron, illegitimate daughter of Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont, 1817.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALLEGRA BYRON
O n the first of March, 1821, Allegra Byron entered the Convento di San Giovanni like a small storm, accompanied by nonrelations, overdressed women who handled her with cool affection. It was a clear morning, so we met our charge in the prayer garden, a patch of grass where a few ancient olive trees were waking up to spring. Though lauded by her guardians as an early talker, three-year-old Allegra greeted us with silence.
This, her chaperone said, is your new home.
Allegra looked at our faces, then the grounds and buildings. I donât like it, she said.
I stood with another Capuchin sister, flanking the abbess, who lorded over the garden with a solemn stare. A breeze whipped our brown habits around our knees, exposing our humble shoes. I felt my job was to soften the harsh presence of the abbess. These moments, when a child was left in our care, struck me as pivotal in the childâs life.
The convent was not a place of peace; it was a place of noise, an almost holy sanctuary carved out in the heart of Bagnacavallo innortheast Italy. It was a boarding school, repository for unwanted children, and abbey for Capuchin nuns. The surrounding buildings were a pastiche of gray-, cream-, and flesh-colored bricks and plaster; the streets were irregular and winding and smelled of thick peasant soups. Soon the convent
âDonât tell my parents,â Hazel slurs, but the nurse is gone. Her parents will see reports of the crash in the papers anyway, and her mother will write her a letter asking, Why? Why must you put yourself in harmâs way every week? Every day?
What they donât know: nothing has topped the feeling of standing next to the motordrome, smiling into the din of applause. Nothing has topped the way men shake her hand and look her in the eye, what itâs like to be able to call a man chickenshit to his face and get away with it, to mean it, to feel free and dominant and in control of your life.
Iâll fight my way back to that vital feeling, she thinks. I will raise the stakes, put a lion in my sidecar like they do down in Alabama.
Her coastal life had been full of loons, gulls, rocks, and maps. âWeâre the first to see the sunrise at the equinox,â her mother had reminded her, as if this alone was compelling enough to keep a family isolated from society, tending a light day in and day out.
The sunrise is beautiful, Hazel had thought then, but it will never be enough. She was questioning then, as she does now: what makes you empty and what makes you full?
The morphine is a tidal wave of warmth through her body. She shudders. Her eyes are closed, but she can sense light, a sort of redness seeping in through her lids. Sheâs living now in the interior of her mind, and there is the familiar view of looking up, forty-nine feet up, at the twisting staircase that leads to the blinding light. Tend it; do not look into it.
What do my daughterâs eyes look like? she wonders, thinking back to the moment when the screaming child had slid from her body, the child that could have changed everything, if sheâd let her, and she had not let her. The first time she held the child sheâd let her fingers rest on the babyâs soft spot, the place where the skull had not yet closed over the pulsing brain.
Thereâs also the familiar view of looking up from the cylindrical wall of death, the sensation of seeing people but not knowing them as individuals, never catching their eyes.
The audience is looking down, she thinks, or is it my father? I am looking up. I am spinning. I am fast but not empty. I am swimming in the strong currents near the jetties, I am crying with the gulls, bobbing like the buoy on a lobster trap, looking through the fog banks over the churning Bay of Fundy.
Allegra Byron, illegitimate daughter of Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont, 1817.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALLEGRA BYRON
O n the first of March, 1821, Allegra Byron entered the Convento di San Giovanni like a small storm, accompanied by nonrelations, overdressed women who handled her with cool affection. It was a clear morning, so we met our charge in the prayer garden, a patch of grass where a few ancient olive trees were waking up to spring. Though lauded by her guardians as an early talker, three-year-old Allegra greeted us with silence.
This, her chaperone said, is your new home.
Allegra looked at our faces, then the grounds and buildings. I donât like it, she said.
I stood with another Capuchin sister, flanking the abbess, who lorded over the garden with a solemn stare. A breeze whipped our brown habits around our knees, exposing our humble shoes. I felt my job was to soften the harsh presence of the abbess. These moments, when a child was left in our care, struck me as pivotal in the childâs life.
The convent was not a place of peace; it was a place of noise, an almost holy sanctuary carved out in the heart of Bagnacavallo innortheast Italy. It was a boarding school, repository for unwanted children, and abbey for Capuchin nuns. The surrounding buildings were a pastiche of gray-, cream-, and flesh-colored bricks and plaster; the streets were irregular and winding and smelled of thick peasant soups. Soon the convent
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