Afternoons with Emily Page 14

  She made such a funny, horrified face that I burst out laughing. “And what about Mary?” I asked as I gulped for breath.

  “She’s still in Amherst, they say. I think I heard she was engaged to a Mr. Crowell at the college.”

  “Mr. Edward Crowell? Why, he’s in Father’s Classics Department.” This pleased me. “So you do have one ‘Triplet’ friend still!”

  She shook her head sadly. “Not really, Miranda. I have found the marriage of a friend to be the death of a friendship. People change; time changes them. I have written Mary sometimes, but I do not see her anymore.”

  “Well, I can tell you that when Lolly and I grow up, if we are both still living here, we’ll see each other just the way we do now.”

  Emily rose and went to the south window, where frenetic sparrows were rocking the bird feeder.

  “Come and see something, Miranda.”

  I crossed to stand beside her, looking out into the twilight. Did she want me to watch the birds?

  “I still do see my friends,” Emily said softly. “Here we are now, the three of us, coming back from the academy with our books on a sled. We are going to Mary’s to make a snowlady with a calico apron!

  “Do you like our new stocking caps? We all got matching red ones from Mr. Cutler’s — but I’ve already lost the tassel on mine.”

  As Emily spoke, I shared her vision. I could see the three little girls there below us, laughing and pulling a ghostly sled along Main Street — in the faint blue dusk of a winter long ago. I was deeply struck by the power of words to capture the scene; by Emily’s ability to transport me to her own childhood; and by the vivid presence of Emily’s past in Emily’s present.

  Since the Monday afternoon when Emily described her friendships with men — and I learned that they were entirely on paper — I found my mind kept returning to her solitude. I thought of the correspondents she named for me proudly: all successful and worldly men. I saw that these editors, ministers, and authors were the company Emily chose to keep. This was where she saw herself, rather than in the limited society of Amherst.

  No one could deny that the Dickinsons were the leading family in the village. Emily was frank about her superior standing. Once, when I admired the elevation of her house and the views from her windows, she said with emphasis, “My grandfather built ABOVE the town,” as if by rights that was precisely where her family belonged.

  That was one sort of family superiority — by patrician birth and breeding. But Emily went further than that. She also believed she was superior in intellect and in moral fiber. She was openly contemptuous of the occupations and preoccupations of Amherst women — especially their religion. “There is no God in it, just His housekeeping and His ACCOUNTS,” she once said. She laughed at Aunt Helen’s sewing circle and their “dimity convictions.” These ladies certainly had few thoughts beyond doilies, according to Emily.

  Her relationship with her sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson, was more perplexing. She often spoke of the wonderful times they had before Sue got married and her delight that her brother, Austin, had brought such a cherished friend into the family. Yet she also spoke disdainfully about Sue’s way of life. She respected Sue — sometimes. She doted on Sue — sometimes. She certainly corresponded with Sue — all the time. Despite their proximity, the two women exchanged notes and letters on a very regular basis. From what I could see, Susan Dickinson had created at The Evergreens the circle of acquaintances that existed only in letters for Emily. Was some of her criticism of Sue motivated by jealousy? I didn’t like to think that of Emily. She certainly didn’t seem envious.

  There were times after a Monday that I would return home and view my own family through Emily’s eyes. I’d watch Kate and Aunt Helen in the kitchen or sit in on one of the sewing circle meetings, and I couldn’t deny that much of the time among women was spent on the trivial — the day-to-day running of a household and a life.

  But one day I realized something that eluded Emily. There was value in the seasonal round of teas, suppers, and shopping that bound neighbors together — the gatherings for no purpose other than female congeniality. These were the bonds that enhanced a life, that allowed information to be exchanged, intimacy to be experienced. Emily ignored the ladies’ practical charity for the poor families nearby. She missed the good that women did one another through their active interest and participation. This secure and defined world of women had a dignified integrity just as noble as her personal pursuit of scholarship and letters.

  I didn’t know whether to be angry at Emily for her blindness, sensing it to be willful, or to feel sorry for her for missing such an important component of life.

  “Does she criticize her own family too?” asked Kate, when I confided that this arrogance of Emily’s offended me. We were tidying the linen closet as we talked.

  “She surely does. According to Emily, her brother, Austin, is a weak husband, and her sister-in-law is a social climber and a shrew. Yet she still counts Susan as one of her best friends! She says poor Mrs. Dickinson is tiresome in her litany of symptoms, and Miss Lavinia spends too much time housekeeping to be very stimulating company. She wants a different life than all that. She wants to attend to her own thoughts, and all else is trivial.”

  “It’s not so trivial if no one does the cooking!” Kate grumbled.

  What a privilege to be responsible to only oneself, to one’s thoughts, to one’s desire, I thought. Emily continued to fascinate me.

  One late winter Monday, I came upon Emily writing at her table, with the customary surround of paper strewn on the floor around her chair.

  “You go through more paper than a publisher,” I remarked.

  “Don’t look so disapproving! I have to have fresh paper for every new idea. If it’s good enough, it goes in there.” She pointed to her little chest of drawers. “It doesn’t have to be finished; often I save just a WORD or two. But the FAILURES go in the stove.”

  “Are you separating the sheep from the goats, Emily?”

  “No, I’m dividing the souls bound for Heaven from those tagged for Hell. Those words on the floor are fit only for burning, but those I save are for IMMORTALITY, sooner or later.” She repeated this, rolling the words on her tongue like wine. “SOONER or LATER . . .”

  “Can you tell me what you are writing about?”

  “Circumference.”

  I gave her a coy look. “A geometry text?”

  She was very amused; her lovely burnt sienna eyes gleamed and danced at the joke. “Hardly that. But my BUSINESS is circumference — just as Lavinia’s is dusting the stairs.”

  Emily sensed this judgment displeased me and spoke seriously to explain. “Miranda, just listen to me. You know I am a fine cook. Father won’t eat any bread but mine! I’m a specialist, a true expert. But there was one spring not so long ago — Mother was very ill, and Lavinia was away at school, and I became everybody’s sustainer and retainer. Cooking and cooking again was all I did, all day long — and not fine baking either. Cooking CABBAGE! And in between I would dust and polish till it was time to cook another meal. The chores bled into one another; there were no boundaries. They call it ‘household’ because it holds you IN and holds you BACK,” Emily concluded. “So it is my duty to MYSELF to draw a circle within which I can work. Now, shall we get on with our Battle of the Brownings?”

  I allowed her to change the subject. We had a playful argument from week to week, with Emily advancing Elizabeth and me passionately defending Robert.

  “Let’s do ‘My Last Duchess’ again,” said Emily, to please me. “I can just see Sue in brocade, there among the Borgias!” I gave her a slightly guilty smile — so could I!

  In Amherst, March meant winter was over, but spring delayed. The eaves and the evergreens dripped, the ground was a sponge; the mud traveled everywhere through the damp houses. For the first time, I found Amherst dour and confining. I longed for the sun, for Barbados — for any other place.

  “You never told me you had yo
ur own conservatory!” I gasped.

  Emily was pleased by my obvious admiration. “It is my jewel box and hardly larger.” She smiled. “You can’t share something this size! And I write here too. You have to be alone for that. But my flowers visit around in the house; they enjoy the EXPERIENCE.”

  “Was it always here, Emily?” Light feathered the room. I went from shelf to shelf, naming the blooms. Breathing the rich, sweet air made me think of York Stairs. I was enchanted.

  “No, Father built it for me when we moved back to The Homestead.”

  I found this very touching, coming from the formidable gentleman I met at Christmas. “You must be very dear to him, Emily.”

  “Zeus can’t love mortals,” she corrected me. “He OWNS us; he does not love us — and we don’t PRESUME to love him either.”

  If only Emily could recognize her father’s gift for what it was — an unspoken declaration of devotion. I thought about my own father’s demonstrations of affection. They were obscure or indirect, but they were heartfelt, nevertheless. And I was much happier once I had decoded his system, allowing his gestures to speak as loudly as any words. But for Emily, words were paramount.

  The days slowly became less cold, and the ongoing work on our house — which Father called “Grecophilization” — was now moving ahead and would be completed in midsummer. But we had reached an impasse almost as dismaying as the rock under the temple. How should Ethan connect the new temple wing to the old house?

  Ethan had designed a small corridor between the buildings, ten feet wide and sixteen long — with a ten-foot ceiling to prepare one for the soaring temple. This passageway needed to have character, an identity. When I described Emily’s glittering crystal chamber, Ethan’s eyes lit up. He wanted to see it for himself.

  “He may come to my house but not as my guest.” Emily was adamant when I made the request the following week. “I do not RECEIVE anymore, and if I make an exception on his behalf, the whole town will expect invitations. He may come as the flowers’ guest, or as yours. I will not see him.”

  “But you’d like him, Emily,” I protested. “He never talks about doilies either.”

  “My dear Miranda, surely you understand by now that ‘like’ and ‘don’t like’ are unimportant to me. I cannot spare him ROOM in my mind. I do not plant new acquaintances, for I am too occupied WEEDING OUT old ones.”

  I flushed very slightly from the pleasure of realizing that I had been accorded a privilege by being welcomed into her circumscribed sphere. This was made all the more sweet because Emily had not intended to flatter; she was merely stating the facts of her life. Emboldened by the knowledge that my visits were counted among Emily’s accepted practice, I decided to tease her a little.

  “He might attract you, Emily. He might turn out to be another letter-writing beau.”

  She chose not to be teased. “I think not. His work does not interest me. He is an architect and I am a poet.”

  So Emily stayed upstairs when I brought Ethan, who sketched and measured and hummed. I sat nearby, doing homework. I enjoyed seeing a man at work in his profession. Someday, I mused, I should like to be a woman who could share work with a man. I laid the book on my lap. Would I have such a chance? What work could I do that could be shared? This was indeed an important topic to discuss with Emily.

  The professions open to women — what were they? Teaching, of course. Writing, like the Brontës and Jane Austen. But these were solitary pursuits. Surely there were more choices! Miss Adelaide’s work was her home, and Aunt Helen’s work was charitable.

  Before I could follow this enticing train of thought any further, I heard Emily’s door close upstairs. Some petals from an ailing arrangement on the front hall table shuddered and like soft rain fell silently to the floor. She had been listening. Ethan, absorbed in his work, didn’t notice.

  When we went home, Ethan persuaded Father to build the passageway as a conservatory too — an indoor pot garden, unheated, following the seasons outdoors.

  “I love a pot garden,” said Kate. “You see the dirt, but you know there’s a bulb waiting inside. Almost like a baby.”

  “I collected another idea at The Homestead,” Ethan told us. “Miss Dickinson has an Italian tile floor. I think that’s what you want in the temple, Josiah.”

  “Big uneven squares of terra-cotta. Yes, I can see that. What a fruitful visit, Ethan! And then we should get some smokeless charcoal braziers from Italy too. They would be much more Greek than stoves.” The men beamed at each other.

  “I must write Uncle Thomas tonight,” Father said. “I need him to choose the color of the house.” He turned to me. “Would you and he like to do that together? You’ve really earned yourself a reward, Miranda. Just don’t decide on a peppermint pink house.”

  Uncle Thomas’s new book was The Age of Chivalry. He had used almost the same material as that of Sir Thomas Malory: the early British epic heroes and the medieval romances. He had told the Arthurian myths in lively prose and made them as historically accurate as possible. Uncle Thomas asked me to correct his publisher’s proofs, a big honor for someone not yet fifteen.

  Emily was very interested in Uncle Thomas’s correspondence with Tennyson. With all her vaunted independence, Emily was as impressed as anyone else by fame. Furthermore, she had confessed that she herself longed and worked to be famous someday as a poet.

  “Shall I bring Uncle Thomas to meet you?” I teased her. I was feeling bold that day. Besides, she had allowed Ethan over her threshold; perhaps she was edging toward opening her doors. “Then he could tell you all about his new friend Alfred, Lord Tennyson!”

  She ignored me. “Shall we go down to the kitchen?” Emily must have been feeling bold herself; we rarely spent time in the more public areas of the house. “I can make you some prune muffins as we talk — and today we must do some REAL talking.”

  I followed her to the kitchen, worried about possible prune stains on her spotless white dress. Emily wore various materials according to the season — dimity or challis or merino — but the cut was always the same: high-necked, with sometimes a pointed collar; long-sleeved and cuffed; pleated and full-skirted, worn without crinolines. Her shawls varied, and sometimes she wore a cameo brooch or a child’s coral necklace, but her dresses were always pure white.

  I was relieved when she covered up in a bibbed canvas apron and went efficiently to work. She had the rough slapdash confidence of an experienced baker.

  I, on the other hand, simply hovered. “Is there anything I should do?” I asked.

  “Stay clear of flying flour,” she said, waggling her whitened fingers at me. I leaned against the counter, wondering what it was she wanted to talk about.

  “Miranda, I have reached a decision,” she announced. “I plan to ask you an important FAVOR, and you are more apt to oblige me if you understand why I am asking. So I have decided to tell you things about myself that no one else has ever heard. People guess and WONDER, but only you will know the truth!”

  I was transfixed.

  “Actually, some do know PARTS of this story, but no one has heard it ENTIRE. When you do, you will understand why I have made my world so NARROW. The wider world showed me its FEROCITY very early.”

  I hoped I was nodding in a mature and compassionate way. I worked to conceal my intense anticipation.

  “Do you remember when I told you about my dear cousin Emily, who died before she ever lived? A part of me died with her; we were buried together.”

  I nodded. Of course I remembered.

  “Soon after, I had a second mortal wound. I had a brilliant young Master who taught and trained me for a long, sweet time. He was my Preceptor, teaching what to read, what authors to admire, what was most grand or beautiful in Nature. And through his instruction, I learned that sublime lesson — a faith in things unseen. Mr. Newton believed in my own POWER, Miranda. He saw my future, and it was GOLDEN.”

  Emily worked at the pastry marble, brisk and skillful. She was untroubl
ed by the tear that trickled down her cheek; her small hands were too floury to wipe her face.

  Aching with compassion, desperate to be useful, I could think of nothing more than “Emily, shall I blot you?”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll just weep again. This means that the muffins will be extra tasty. All my best baking is salted with tears, Miranda.”

  She gave me a brave smile. I returned it with a sad, encouraging one.

  “Well, I can’t stop my story now. My young Master was another DOOMED victim. Consumption, AGAIN. He forsook me in 1853, just before he was thirty.” This time, she blotted her own cheek with her apron.

  “Emily!” I was deeply shaken, thinking about my own precious mentor, Mr. Harnett. Our parting had been painful enough; to have lost him so finally would have been a blow impossible to withstand. “However did you bear it?”

  “You bear what you must, I have learned. But I have more to tell. Did you know that my father once served a term in Congress? Lavinia and I went down to Washington too, for several weeks. That was in the spring, three years ago.”

  The picture startled me. “Did you live in a hotel? How did you like it?”

  “Amherst is very much LIVELIER. I disliked the crowds pushing against me and the noise on the streets. I vow the whole town stayed up all night! And I never once heard a bird sing in Washington. But I do remember some good talk, though I never joined it. I was still looking for a way to be among STRANGERS in those days.”

  “And did you find one?”

  “I might have, but . . .”

  I heard the heavy front door open. Emily dropped her wooden muffin spoon and bolted for the stairs. As I followed her, I had a fleeting image of Emily as a ringmaster. She cracked her whip, and I performed. I pushed the unworthy thought from my mind. She had suffered, as had I; I should be able to be compassionate. But I was feeling overwhelmed by her autobiography, as if the weight of her losses were tangling themselves in my skirts, sinking me down.

  “Where was I?” she said, once we were safely settled in her room. “After our stay in Washington, Lavinia and I stopped for a few days in Philadelphia, visiting our cousins. There, my life was forever changed. There, I met my FATE.”