Afternoons with Emily Read online

  I ducked my head in embarrassment. I deserved that; I had talked too much.

  If she noticed my discomfort, Miss Dickinson made no mention. “Now, about next Monday afternoon — you will tell me every word you said to Mr. Meeker,” she stated.

  I was pleased — a repeat invitation meant I had neither bored my hostess nor behaved impolitely. And to think I had tried to find excuses not to come today! What a chance for interesting and amusing conversation I would have missed.

  “That will be fine,” I responded eagerly, “since Lolly and I have our recorder lesson on Tuesday.”

  This seemed a good time to leave, since I had made her laugh — and I had learned to talk less.

  “Thank you for the lovely visit, Miss Dickinson,” I said at the door to her room. I waited a moment, expecting her to walk me out, but she sat in her chair and never moved.

  “I think you have always called me Emily,” she replied very gravely. Then she turned her head to gaze out the window, and I left.

  At supper that evening, everyone wanted to hear about my visit to the Dickinson house, The Homestead. I felt like a returning Marco Polo.

  “Did you actually see the two sisters together?” Father asked. “They say Miss Emily never leaves her room.”

  “The lady who opened the front door must have been the sister,” I replied. “But she sent me straight upstairs to meet Emily. She never told me her name.”

  “And what did you find to talk about, besides salvation?” Father asked. He smiled. “Or your lack of it?”

  “Lots of things.” Father’s patronizing annoyed me, since he was the one who had pushed my acceptance of the invitation. “She didn’t profess either, though everyone tried to make her. She told me she turned it down, over and over.”

  “Why did she want to see you?” Kate asked, trying to steer our talk elsewhere. Religion was not a subject for the table.

  “I think she’s lonely. She needs someone to speak her language.”

  “Doesn’t she speak English?” Aunt Helen was intrigued.

  “Not really. It all comes out sideways. She likes to pretend things have feelings, as though they’re people. Sometimes she talks as if she were a thing, and sometimes as if things were people. And she accents the oddest words in a sentence — not the ones I would choose.”

  “Excellent, Miranda!” Father liked my description. “Miss Dickinson has been good for your conversation, anyway.”

  “Can you really understand this language of hers?” Kate asked later, when we were alone upstairs. I knew Kate would want to know more than the brief account given at the dinner table.

  “Most of the time.” I cocked my head, thinking back to the precarious balancing act of the afternoon’s conversation. “I think . . . it’s a game,” I said finally, “and it’s fun, when you know how to play.”

  “Do you really want to go again?” I could see Kate was concerned for me. “You know you don’t have to,” she continued. “Uncle Jos just wanted us to be on calling terms with the Dickinsons, and now we are. You’ve done that for him once, and that’s plenty.”

  “I think I do want to go again.” I tried to define my mixed feelings, and not just for Kate’s benefit. “Miss Dickinson seems to read a lot of books; I like that. And she knew all about The Tempest, and Miranda!”

  I saw Kate suppress a smile. “Well, then, of course you must return,” she said. “She knows Shakespeare! ”

  We laughed together. It was a bit silly for me to put such store in Emily’s knowledge of Shakespeare; most educated adult women would also have read the great writer.

  “Emily’s very . . . different,” I tried to explain. “And I am too. We have that in common. And that is an even deeper connection than a mutual admiration of Shakespeare.”

  Kate looked perplexed. “Why do you say that? You are no different than I am.”

  Dear Kate. She was so openhearted that she accepted me without noticing the accommodating she had been doing to include me. She saw only the Miranda she loved, not the Miranda who struggled to fit into the Amherst world.

  “Besides,” I continued, “I think she likes me.”

  “Why shouldn’t she?” My loyal Kate flared up. “You’re funny and fun and very kind. You’d make a wonderful friend for anyone. You’re my best friend ever.”

  Smiling, blushing, listening to all this, I could almost believe her.

  The next Monday afternoon, I made the same journey through the gardens of frostbitten chrysanthemums. I went up the walk at four o’clock, imagining I felt Emily’s gaze on me from the upstairs window. I resisted looking up to check, fearing it would make me appear childish or self-conscious.

  I presented myself at the front door. As before, the smiling lady — whom I now knew was probably her sister — answered.

  “I am Miranda Chase,” I announced. “Miss Emily Dickinson has invited me to call.”

  “Bless your heart, child!” she exclaimed. “You have better manners than I do! I’m Miss Lavinia, Emily’s sister. Emily has told me all about how you will be visiting every Monday.”

  I tried not to show my surprise that these visits were now assumed to be a fact in my regular schedule. I let it go as Lavinia continued talking in a bustling, slightly giddy manner. She seemed excited by the prospect of Emily having a regular visitor; suddenly the thought of spending weekly afternoons with Emily excited me as well.

  “You’ll use the back door. That will be easiest.” She pointed to a door in the back wall of the high square hall. “I’ll leave it unlocked for you. Emily prefers the house to be locked if we go out. You will stay for two hours and then leave by the same back door.”

  She stepped to a side table and picked up a tea tray. “I will leave a tea tray at the bottom of the stair.” She handed me the tray. “Take this up. I made you Emily’s favorite honey cake.”

  I nodded, trying to remember all my instructions. As I went upstairs, I wondered why Miss Lavinia managed the arrangements for my visits, as if Emily and I were both ten years old. But Emily, waiting and smiling at the door of her room, was gleeful that her sister had handled this.

  “Lavinia does all the plans for Mother and me,” she confided. “Vinnie’s plans are the sturdy kind — they stay made. Mine UNRAVEL.”

  I noticed Emily said her important words in capitals. I would have to try this myself. It gave her conversation such urgency.

  “Now, what have you there?” she asked, nodding her head at the book tucked under my arm. “Is that a present?”

  Father had inscribed one of the “presentation” morocco-bound copies of The Great Plays, his compendium of classical plays, for me to give to her.

  “ ‘To my daughter Miranda’s friend, Miss Emily Dickinson, with high regard,’ ” she read. “What a treasure chest you bring! I have entertained only a few of the lesser gods till now, and I have always wanted to enlarge my Olympian acquaintance. May I take a moment from your visit to thank him?”

  “Of course,” I said. I stood, uncertain what to do while her attention was elsewhere.

  Perhaps she noticed my discomfort; she handed me a small book. “Why don’t you talk to Keats, Miranda, while I’m busy?” Emily smoothed her skirts and sat down at a little writing table between the two windows.

  I smiled at the lovely idea that reading was a form of conversation with the author. This unique perspective of Emily’s was exactly why I loved to read, but I could never have expressed this so well.

  I opened the book and discovered it was a collection of poems, new to me. There was a spray of violets pressed at “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” so I started there. The poem was so packed with language and jammed with girls and garlands and flutes and oxen that I forgot Emily and myself. When I returned to awareness, my little enamel watch, the Jameses’ good-bye present, told me my time was up.

  Emily sat at her desk, paper littering the floor surrounding her small feet. She must have felt my eyes on her, for she looked up from the paper she scrutinized and g
lanced at me. Consulting a small clock on her table, she cried, “Oh, Miranda, what have I done with our time?” She smiled then, and I knew she felt her own time had been well spent. “A lady must always thank a gentleman promptly,” she said. “Of course I needed DIAMOND-CUT language for your father. All this” — she poked the papered floor with a disdainful slipper — “is merely GLASS, unfit for him.”

  She ignored the cold tea and cut a big slice of honey cake as I stood to leave. She handed me the letter she had written to Father.

  “I know you had better company than me with Keats,” she said. “But let’s not invite him next week, Miranda. It will be we two ONLY.”

  After all that, her note to Father turned out to be only a line or two, in her fine flowering script.

  My Dear Dr. Chase,

  What Company I keep these days! First you send me Miranda, and then her Olympian Cousins do your bidding. The view from my Window is far beyond Amherst now.

  Your very indebted,

  Emily E. Dickinson

  At supper, Father skimmed this and handed it back. He seemed amused.

  “She likes to keep a fellow on his toes, doesn’t she? But I do appreciate a woman who doesn’t gush and spew when she thanks you.”

  I decided not to tell him that she had used up two hours and a dozen sheets of paper on this little note.

  Next week, as directed, I entered The Homestead by the stair hall door and started upstairs — but Emily was already there on the landing.

  “I thought I would introduce you to the rest of my house,” she explained. “It’s a good afternoon; EVERYONE is out.” She made it sound as if she lived with a jostling crowd of housemates, even though I knew it was only the two sisters and their mother at home. Emily’s father traveled often, and Austin, her older brother, lived nearby. But this was all I knew.

  I expected a sort of tour with stories, the kind Miss Adelaide gave to visitors at York Stairs, but Emily led me straight to the kitchen. This was square and sunny, with two windows on each side facing each other, like a ship’s hull. There were cupboards, a marbled pastry table, hanging platters, and big pots of herbs. I had the sense of the place as a happy workroom.

  “Here is my other refuge and domain,” Emily told me proudly. “This is where I create, and this is where I get angry. I’m very good at BOTH.”

  It surprised me that she should proclaim her anger as if it were a badge of honor. “What makes you angry, Emily?” I asked, expecting to hear about the frustrations of cooking, a skill I had not mastered.

  “Usually stupid people,” she replied. As my father had observed, Emily was someone to keep one on one’s toes.

  “Sometimes people’s cruelty angers me as well. Never events or things. I come here when I have anger to USE UP. Most women weep or turn on those nearby — the innocent bystanders. But I make PASTRY instead!” She stroked the marble tabletop lovingly. It was well used. She must get angry fairly often, I thought. Her solution seemed far more productive than pouting or crying or shouting.

  She moved to a corner of the kitchen. “The next best thing for anger is churning butter,” she said, gripping the thick wooden handle and demonstrating. “If I find myself CHURNING in the middle of the night, I make butter!” Laughing, she replaced the butter paddle. “I’m told you can hear me thumping away at midnight from the street, but I don’t mind. This way I’m famous for my pastry and my butter, instead of my anger.”

  I liked this approach. Perhaps when I was frustrated by something Lolly had said, or was bothered by upsetting events, I could use the feelings in this way, rather than pretending they weren’t there.

  Emily led me down the hall, passing several rooms. “I won’t bother to show you the dining room and the parlors,” she explained. “I don’t use them anymore.” We stepped into a library that looked out onto Main Street. “This is the only other room I consider even partly mine,” she declared.

  If she felt any glimmer of ownership, she didn’t display it. Emily stood in the center of the cold, standoffish room, where all the books were behind glass. She gazed about as if she were a guest or a stranger.

  She eyed the books vaguely, curiously. “You know, I used to read all these once. Perhaps there are still great minds here.” She turned and crossed to the piano. “And I used to play the piano to please Father — and then he would tell me what books to read. Actually he still does. He’s here in this room right now.” She shivered.

  It seemed best not to argue this; besides, I could also feel a presence — no, that was not precisely accurate. What I felt was an absence, the lack of warmth, the lack of conviviality and engagement. Perhaps that lack is what Emily felt as her father. I could understand absence as presence — it defined my childhood. My mother’s ghostly place in my life; my father’s distracted, erratic participation. It occurred to me that Emily and I had more in common than books. But I didn’t feel I could discuss any of this with her. Not now. Not yet. I knew enough to take my cues from her as to how to proceed; this was the same caution and strategy that allowed me to present the appearance of fitting in here in Amherst.

  I peered at the titles of the dark, uninviting volumes. I loved books, but behind glass they seemed more like objects to be looked at rather than enjoyed — no “conversations” with these authors!

  I turned away from the case and looked out the window. Two cloaked and bonneted women were coming in the gate. Did my hostess expect them?

  “Emily, I think you have guests,” I said.

  She turned so pale that I saw her whole round face was covered with tiny freckles, like a sprinkling of cinnamon on a custard. She grabbed my hand so suddenly and so hard that I cried out in surprise. We rushed up the stairs and fell inside her bedroom together.

  Her panic was infectious — who could those women be? What was so frightening? “Emily —”

  “Hush!” She locked the door and leaned against it, trembling and listening. I stood silent, my wide eyes upon her, wondering what sort of danger we might be in. I could hear voices downstairs. Worried, I waited for Emily’s reaction.

  “Thank goodness, it’s just Mother and Vinnie!” Her color returned. “My, what a narrow escape! It could have been ANYONE, anyone at all.” The crisis was over as suddenly as it had begun; she poured me a glass of cider and gestured for me to sit. I lowered myself to the chair, slowly regaining my equilibrium.

  “As you can see,” she said with complete composure, as if she hadn’t dashed up the stairs moments ago in fear, “my house is really very SMALL.”

  Small indeed, I thought as I nibbled diamond-shaped molasses cookies. They were very thin; Emily must have been particularly angry yesterday. We discussed John Keats, his sad, narrow life, his wasted love for the unworthy Fanny Brawne.

  “If Keats had only had a sweetheart like you or ME . . .” said Emily.

  I giggled at the thought. Then I wondered — did Emily have any sweethearts? She was a grown-up lady; certainly there had been — or may currently be — some suitor. Emily might be a good source of information on the subject of courting, being older than Kate and Lolly but not as motherly as Aunt Helen. But the conversation wound back around to writing, to poetry, and then my time was up.

  When I walked from Northampton Street to Main Street, coming east, I always passed a large unfinished gray-green house next to Emily’s. It was somewhat foreign in style, with elaborate parapets and a big square watchtower; the rest was hidden by scaffolding. It was evidently so new and stylish, so exotic, so deliberately different from its plain Puritan neighbors, that I could not resist asking Emily about it. She must know her next-door neighbors, I thought. I had to pick and choose my questions carefully; after several of our visits, I had observed that Emily evaded direct questions whenever possible. I could usually be successful with only one or two at most per visit.

  As was often the case, Emily’s answer produced more questions. “That is Austin and Sue’s Borgia palace,” she informed me. I knew that Austin was Emily’
s older brother; Sue must be his wife. “They are building their home for strangers and COURTIERS. That is where Sue will hatch her plots and do her poisonings.”

  Whatever could Emily mean? She spoke as if her sister-in-law were planning to murder people! She made it sound as if they were all partaking in one of the history plays from Shakespeare, complete with intrigues and royalty. But I dared not ask any more, and once again the talk turned to books and words.

  The Mondays continued, a punctuation of my week. I looked forward to them, even as they perplexed me. I was never relaxed with Emily as I was with Kate, and as I was beginning to feel with Lolly and my schoolmates. But the tension I felt as I approached The Homestead wasn’t an uncomfortable tension — it put me in a heightened state and made me want to perform well. I wanted to try out new words and hear Emily’s slantwise perspective on things, which somehow turned out to be precisely right, despite the unusual juxtapositions in her speech. As with my dear tutor Mr. Harnett, I wanted to soak up what knowledge Emily had to offer and prove a worthy student. I still didn’t quite understand why she wanted to include me in her small world but was flattered beyond measure to have been brought into it.

  Another Monday, when I returned our tea tray to the kitchen, I met someone new in the hall: a striking woman with Roman features and complicated terraced hair. She wore jet and braid and rustling taffeta like a city person. She smiled and put a finger to her lips — and she carried an envelope in Emily’s writing. This must be Sue, she of the Borgia palace, collecting one of the many notes addressed to her that I had seen waiting on the card tray. She placed an envelope of her own on the tray and then vanished out the door, her dress whispering as she walked.

  Why had she not made her presence known to Emily? And why would Emily write so often if she felt her sister-in-law was one of the dreadful and dangerous Borgias? When I asked Aunt Helen to explain all these mysteries, she was entirely informed!

  “Let me try to explain the Dickinsons for you, Miranda dear. Mr. Edward Dickinson, the father, is a lawyer. He has also served as the treasurer of the church and the college, and is the wealthiest man in Amherst. He is Amherst’s leading citizen.”