- Author: [[Melanie Benjamin]] - Full Title: Alice I Have Been - Tags:: books [[inbox]] -  - ### Highlights first synced by [[Readwise]] [[2020-09-03]] - Those eyes remembered, recorded everything, including things like secrets; including things like sympathetic hearts that were, as yet, barely noticeable even to those who possessed them. ([Location 521](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0030CMLI4&location=521)) - Try as I might, I could not understand how one man—one shy man with a camera, a stammer, and an endless supply of stories— Could be responsible for so much disarray. ([Location 694](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0030CMLI4&location=694)) - My dress was unbuttoned; I started to wriggle out of it but somehow became tangled up in the hem. Mr. Dodgson steadied me, his hands upon my shoulders; his hands felt both warm and cold at the same time. They felt different; they felt— Bare. He had removed his gloves. My mouth was dry, for some reason. I wished I had some lemonade. Or tea. “Here, let’s get you out of the rest,” Mr. Dodgson said, his voice still very soft and patient. His hands, though, were not. They trembled, and twisting around I saw, as he unfastened my top petticoat, that they were stained, black on the fingertips; I hoped they wouldn’t stain my petticoats as well. ([Location 906](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0030CMLI4&location=906)) - I felt my skin—my naked, vulnerable skin—warm under his gaze. “How do I look?” “Like a gypsy girl. Like a wild little beggar girl. Go on—run about, run all you want, roll if you want. I know you want to!” ([Location 930](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0030CMLI4&location=930)) - Only Mr. Dodgson was there, watching me, always watching me, looking quite as if he wished he could roll on the ground with me, but that was too silly to contemplate. He smiled, and asked nothing of me other than that I enjoy this moment. And that he be allowed to share it with me. ([Location 940](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0030CMLI4&location=940)) - Do you know what I dream of?” “No,” I whispered. I was afraid to move; I was afraid not to. “I dream of you,” Mr. Dodgson whispered back. “Of Alice. Wild and charming and ever young, yet also old. I dream of you as you are—and you as you would like to be. As I would like you to be.” “Which am I now?” I tried very hard to understand what he meant, but his words would turn and twist, allowing me no clear path to follow. “You’re who you want to be. You always are.” “Mayn’t I just be the gypsy girl now, please?” ([Location 984](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0030CMLI4&location=984)) - Every time I tried, it always sounded too ridiculous—Dear Mr. Dodgson, Of course I remember the feel of the grass against my back, while you watched. Then I would become confused. Why had he been watching? At the time, it seemed perfectly natural. The words on the page, however—there was nothing natural about them. They were unsettling, and had nothing to do with the Mr. Dodgson I knew or the happy, carefree moment we had shared. ([Location 1072](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0030CMLI4&location=1072)) - “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. ([Location 1287](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0030CMLI4&location=1287)) - 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. Dodgson looked confused. He also looked very, very tired. His fine, curly brown hair was more mussed than I’d ever seen it, and his lips were chapped from the sun. When he was this tired, his eyes looked even more lopsided than usual; the left one drooped more. “The story—my story. It is mine, isn’t it?” “If you want it to be.” “Oh, I do! I do!” Just like that, I reached out and took it, so bold, so sure that it was meant for me, as sure as I had been when he told me that only I could be his gypsy girl. And no matter how much older Ina was, she could never, ever be so confident, so certain with him; I knew she hated this about herself. “Then it’s yours,” Mr. Dodgson said. “So you’ll never have to grow up, in a way.” “But that’s what I mean!” I could scarcely believe he understood so well what was in my heart; it was only later that I realized all he had to do was look in my eyes, to see. “If you write it down, I won’t grow up—ever! Of course, not truly, but in the story. I’ll always be a little girl, at least there, if you write it down. Could you?” “I don’t know—I’ll try, Alice. But I’m not sure I can remember it all.” “Oh yes, you can! I know you can—and if you can’t, I’ll help!” ([Location 1315](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0030CMLI4&location=1315)) - Still, I couldn’t help but feel as if I was being watched, as I’d been watched ever since I was a little girl playing croquet with my sisters in the garden. Only I wasn’t a little girl anymore. And my games were much more complicated. ([Location 2148](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0030CMLI4&location=2148)) - I had wanted to live forever as a gypsy girl; I had wanted to live forever as a child, tumbling down a rabbit hole. I had been granted both wishes, only to find immortality was not what it had promised to be; instead of a passport to the future, it was a yoke that bound me to the past. ([Location 2512](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0030CMLI4&location=2512)) - For eighty years I have been, at various times, a gypsy girl, a muse, a lover, a mother, a wife. But for one man, and for the world, I will always be a seven-year-old girl named Alice. That is the only letter that need remain; it is the memory I decide, in this moment, to hold on to, as I watch the rest disappear into cinders and ash and, finally, smoke; smoke that flies up the chimney, out into the cold air, floating down across the peaceful grounds of my home, of Cuffnells. Alice I am, Alice I will be. Alice I have been. ([Location 5155](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0030CMLI4&location=5155))