Afternoons with Emily Read online

  Between us, we eliminated all but the neutral colors. Finally we chose a pale Vandyke brown to match the trunks of our elms and maples.

  “Tree trunks don’t change, thank God,” said Uncle Thomas. “We won’t be sorry.”

  From Amity Street, you could see the original house, with the new portico and its four Doric columns. The front door and the shutters on the six tall windows were black. We had a front parlor with a fireplace, a center hall, a dining room with a stove, and a square, sunny kitchen. We added a washroom and a kitchen entrance with pantry shelves.

  Upstairs, we had three big bedrooms and a storage and linen closet. Kate and I looked out on Amity Street, and Aunt Helen looked east over the garden. All of us were shaded by the “wineglass” elms arching over the house. There were maples along the little brook at the end of the property.

  “Your mother’s mahogany shouldn’t have to compete with patterns,” Father had stated, insisting on plain white plaster downstairs. But we ladies were allowed wallpaper in our bedrooms.

  Our choices, made from an enormous album last spring, delighted the three of us. Aunt Helen had a tiny allover dot, like muslin. Kate’s walls were delicate stripes of wildflowers. Mine were a miraculous design straight from Learner’s Cove: tiny white shells scattered on a pale, rosy beach. I had not believed my eyes when I turned the page in the sample book and found this pattern waiting.

  Like Emily, I had a corner room facing south and east. On the long wall between the windows, Ethan designed bookshelves for me, and little closed cupboards too. There was a high, tipped shelf all around the room, like a frieze; this was for my shell collection, with an invisible molding to hold it safe. All the woodwork was a rosy beige, like Barbados sand at the water’s edge. My curtains at the three windows were white dotted swiss.

  I wrote Miss Adelaide an exact inventory of my room. But though I could list its contents, I could never, ever describe how deeply my room satisfied me. It reflected me and my tastes, my interests, and my hopes. It was my image, my emerging self. In this room, my room, I had an identity; I existed as a valid person.

  My father’s new wing was to the left and repeated the windows and rooflines of the main house. It had a handsome library, with three walls of bookshelves and a fireplace using the same chimney as the parlor. The familiar mahogany ladder from Mount Vernon Street was back in use. There were two bedrooms up a little curving stair — one for Father, one for guests — with a round skylight in the stairwell like a ship’s porthole. There was no access from the parlor to the library; my father came and went by his own outside entrance. He explained that his students preferred this.

  The wing at the back — the temple — was the glory of the house. It was invisible from the street; you could not guess at its existence. From the parlor, you stepped into our crystal connecting passage. Father called this the “punch bowl”; Aunt Helen called it the “conservatory”; Uncle Thomas called it the “atrium.” This led to the temple itself. Here, one’s spirit soared to the sixteen-foot ceiling. There were three tall windows on each side, facing east and west, and a glowing floor of Italian terra-cotta in varied tones of burnt sienna. Otherwise, the great room was empty; the braziers had not yet arrived from Italy, and we were still deciding how to furnish so much inviting space. Kate and I had already tested the sound from the stage, doing our favorite scenes from The Tempest.

  By the time we had completed the finishing touches — put away the linen and china, hung the small paintings, and arranged the books — it was the first day of school. Lolly Wheeler stopped by for me, and we walked up the hill, chattering. I barely remembered my last year’s fear and shyness as I walked arm in arm with Lolly and waved at our converging friends.

  The academy opened in the usual whirlwind of greetings and confusion. I found I had moved up one class in math, though I was still with embarrassingly younger children. I was now one year ahead of Lolly in Latin, and two in history and English. I did botany and natural science with Lolly and her friends; they accepted me cheerfully. The school year was a fine predictable vista: our recorder lessons, and Halloween, and then Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

  When I came home to Amity Street on that first day of school, Emily had sent word she was expecting me for tea in a return to our former schedule. I was eager to tell Aunt Helen about my classes and show her my book bag full of new textbooks — stiff and squeaking and smelling of glue — but instead I hurried upstairs to wash and put on a clean pinafore. I tied the sash of my blue striped one, Emily’s favorite. Aunt Helen had let it down as far as she could — along with all my other dresses. I had grown a waistline too.

  Emily wrote me once in Rhode Island, hoping I was well again and “inhabiting” the sea. Except for that one amusing letter, I had not heard from her, and during my long stay at the beach, I had tucked her away to a corner of my life. Part of me wished that she not reenter center stage. This would be an easy time to stop the Monday afternoon visits — but did I really want to? More important, did I have a choice?

  I walked from Amity Street to Main Street cross lots, enjoying our new neighbors’ fiery marigolds and chrysanthemums. Mrs. Barton and Mr. Miles greeted me and praised the changes to our house. At The Homestead, I found the back door open. The big house was still and waiting; the hall clock ticked. I knew Emily was in her room at the head of the stairs, waiting. Only I had changed — I and my odd new reluctance.

  Emily stood at her door, smiling. She had become at least four inches shorter than I.

  “Oh, my Miranda, how long it’s been! Without you, it was a CAGED summer.”

  “You wouldn’t have seen me very often, Emily,” I pointed out, wanting to keep her to the reality of things. “Even if I’d been here in Amherst. I come only on Mondays.”

  “That’s true — FACTUALLY true. But I count on you as my window on Amherst. You’re my SCOUT in enemy country! Having you nearby makes me feel CONNECTED.”

  Every word she said today had a charge to it; I was keeping an eye out for symptoms, for evidence, for exaggeration. I didn’t enjoy scrutinizing every word and gesture, but I couldn’t stop myself. Mrs. Austin had revealed too much for me to be with Emily without questions.

  “Now let me look at you.” Emily took my hands and held them out as she studied me. “You’re STATELY!” she told me.

  I smiled. A person of fifteen much preferred this to “How you’ve grown!” Emily chose the perfect phrase.

  “How fortunate you are, to turn gold leaf in the sun,” she said. “I become a single walking FRECKLE when I go outdoors.”

  Then she suggested we have tea. “I have devised a new lemon-peel cookie for us, and I packed a basket for Kate to try them too. Won’t you please sit down, Miranda?”

  Then — only then — I discovered what had been added to her room: a tiny red armchair, perched like a fat robin.

  “It’s yours, even though it must live here.” She smiled. “You won’t mind if I borrow it on winter nights, to be CLOSE to my fire?”

  When Emily put her mind to it, she could be downright irresistible!

  While we had tea, I brought Emily up to date: the mumps, the beach, our new house. I had learned over time that she became impatient and restless during casual, careless conversation. I was expected to tell a story, exact and brief, and illustrate it with a few revealing images. These must express my moods and feelings; they must justify the narrative.

  At first it seemed pointless and difficult to talk this way, but Emily made it into a game. (“Can you say that in one sentence, Miranda?” or “Make me see that more clearly.”) So today, instead of telling her all about our weeks at the beach, I described a single evening in late August, just before we came home.

  The sea was “wine dark,” like Homer’s Aegean — neither indigo nor purple. The air was so clear that you could see the tiny houses on Block Island — even the miniature lighthouse. As Kate and I picnicked, the sun sank lower and lower inland behind us, and the crests of the slow, smooth wave
s turned ragged gold. The same pure western light, coming straight from the horizon, gilded Kate’s skin and her brilliant scarlet shawl. We stayed till dark; we could not bear to leave so much beauty.

  Then I told about our new house on Amity Street — and my room in particular. When I was done, I made an impulsive attempt to share my joy.

  “Would you come and see it? We’d send a carriage, and I promise there’d be nobody else there.”

  Emily sighed regretfully. “I cannot, I truly cannot. I have struggled to limit my horizons and my acquaintance. Now I have reached the point where I am no longer ENDANGERED by new people and new places.”

  “How could my house be dangerous?” I struggled to understand, struggled not to feel insulted.

  “It would be — for me. I don’t CONTROL it; anything could happen if I went there. I might act foolishly or say what I did not intend to say. I have my boundaries of SAFETY, and I have learned to stay inside them.”

  “But don’t you get tired of being all alone?” I asked.

  “But I’m not alone, Miranda, and I travel a great deal.” She smiled at my perplexity. “I have conversations with some of the most brilliant men in the country — and I go everywhere!”

  I knew she meant her letters and her books — all secondhand experiences. Thinking of Barbados and Westerly, and the living miracle of the ocean, I pushed her a little bit. “Emily, have you ever seen the real sea?”

  “No, I have never seen the Atlantic AS SUCH.” She was serene and untroubled; once removed was close enough for Emily. “But I can CONCEIVE the sea.” So that was settled, on her terms — as usual.

  We trilled and chirped a little bird-feeder news, and then she announced “a plan to uplift us — you and me and our Monday afternoons.

  “I wrote a few letters this summer, asking advice on this attempt to improve our INFERIOR female intellects. At first this plan was vague as a cloud, but now it has a shape and an edge.”

  “Emily, tell me!” I was intrigued; Emily’s plans could be exciting.

  “I was looking for something we could study together, two companions, learning for pleasure only. I consulted your father — did he tell you? — and also Mr. Crowell, who has married my old friend Mary Warner. So we have some fine classical scholars helping us!”

  Emily, so shy in person, had not hesitated to approach two professors she had never met, asking a favor. She could be brave when necessary. And Father — he had never said a word! Had he wanted to allow Emily to surprise me or, more likely, had he thought no more of Emily’s questions once they were asked and answered?

  “Both gentlemen agreed that you and I should study the Greek plays, the true LINEAGE of Shakespeare. They told me to begin with Aeschylus, he being the first playwright. Here is the translation they advised. Shall we start today?”

  Thus, without discussion, I was swept along by Emily’s will to her intention, and of course she chose right. Agamemnon was thrilling to read aloud, and I loved meeting all my old Iliad friends again. As she planned, it was both an uplifting and a sociable time. Even if I had been consulted, I could not have chosen better material for our afternoon.

  “See you next Monday,” I called as I left.

  As I walked home from the post office to Amity Street, I prepared myself for Aunt Helen’s questions. I would have to defend my decision to continue my visits with Emily. Aunt Helen would quiz me; my father would not care either way.

  “Tell me why,” said Aunt Helen, once I returned home.

  “For fun, for one thing. Emily’s very amusing. I think she talks better than anyone I know. And you have to speak really well for her. She keeps you on your toes, as Father said.”

  “What do you do together, Miranda?”

  “We’ve just started a Greek play about all the same families as in the myths! She has a fine voice; I wish you could hear her read.”

  “Do you feel comfortable there? It’s such an unbending house!”

  “It is, but we use only her room and the kitchen. Those are both happy rooms. If I felt boxed in, you know I wouldn’t go.”

  “I was afraid perhaps you were just being kind, because she is lonely.”

  “She’s not the least bit lonely!” I made one last effort to explain. “I need her more than she needs me, Aunt Helen. She treats me like an equal. Sometimes I feel I’m much too old for Lolly Wheeler and the girls in my class.”

  This seemed to end the questions.

  Up in my room, I felt guilty about what I had left out. The most important reason of all, the reason I had to continue my Mondays with Emily — the one I could not tell Aunt Helen: I had promised to watch Emily for Mrs. Austin. I must notice if she edges further from reality. I would try to protect her from incurring Mr. Dickinson’s rage. It was a terrible responsibility for someone of fifteen — but from my knowledge of her small circle, I believed there was no one else to do the job. I felt that if it came to living with a guard or a keeper and being forbidden her correspondence, Emily would die. I believed I faced a terrible fact: I was responsible for Emily’s welfare.

  Book V

  AMHERST

  1858–1859

  One October day in 1858, strolling from downtown, I turned onto Amity Street — and suddenly I saw that our house had settled in and joined the village landscape. It no longer perched on the surface; it had become part of the whole that was Amherst. I remembered how in the spring we had plowed and seeded the earth around the temple and put some pretty flagstones down in the shaded parts as a terrace. From there, we had a fine view of the Pelham Hills. Then we added some beds for annuals to the south, under my window; this would be my picking garden. In the summer, we added nandinas and hydrangeas in groups of three, softening the lines of foundation and cellar. In the autumn, we transplanted laurel and holly from the woods. Now I could see how that hard work had lost its newness — our house and our landscaping looked as if it had been part of Amherst for years.

  When we came here, we were unsettled and unattached. We were newcomers; we did not belong. Gradually we put out tentative roots, joined the existing groups and patterns. Now we had made our place, and the town had closed around us. We were the distinguished professor; his nice sister from Springfield; his beautiful niece, who sang; and his tall daughter, who won prizes at the academy.

  During my Monday afternoons with Emily, I watched her carefully for aberrations, as I had promised Mrs. Austin I would. When it weighed too heavily that I might be thought of as spying on my friend, I remembered what was at stake. Emily, however, never noticed my scrutiny; in fact she may have relished my even more attentive presence. She behaved as she usually did, including continuing to correspond with Mrs. Austin on a near daily basis.

  Things took a different turn after Thanksgiving. Miniature snowflakes were falling in the early dusk as I told Emily about our musical plans for Christmas.

  “We’ll do our program here again,” I promised. “Kate’s voice teacher has found us a medieval Twelfth Night song. It’s beautiful — very earthy and unreligious!” I knew that would appeal to Emily, reminding us both of our first meeting as cheerful unrepentants. “And Mrs. Austin has invited us to her party again.”

  “I may have to miss your music,” Emily warned me. “I may not be here. I might have to go out of town.”

  This could have meant anything or nothing, so I proceeded carefully.

  “Where will you be?” I tried to betray no concern, no suspicion.

  “In Philadelphia. My Master has written; he needs me URGENTLY. I must go to him.” Silently she handed me a letter; silently I read it.

  My Dear Miss Dickenson

  I am distressed beyond measure at your note, received this moment, — I can only imagine the affliction which has befallen, or is now befalling you.

  Believe me, be what it may, you have all my sympathy, and my constant, earnest prayers.

  I am very, very anxious to learn more definitely of your trial — and though I have no right to intrude upon your
sorrow yet I beg you to write me, though it be but a word.

  In great haste

  Sincerely and most

  Affectionately Yours —

  C. W.

  “You can see he is quite beside himself,” said Emily, with evident satisfaction. “It is clearly my DUTY to go to him and comfort him.”

  What had she told him that would produce this disturbed letter in reply? I approached this with the utmost care — tiptoeing on eggshells. One misstep and all could have been lost.

  “Emily, I believe he was upset because you told him you were,” I said evenly. “Why don’t you just write and tell him that whatever happened is over — that you feel better now?”

  “And leave him in such TORMENT?” She was superior and scornful. “I owe him more than that. I must put his mind at rest NOW!”

  “What will you do?” This was the information I needed the most — what were Emily’s plans? And how could they be stopped?

  “It will be a very long day on the cars, with two changes — but I have no CHOICE. I will be making my arrangements.”

  As she spoke, I could envision the whole appalling drama, and I shuddered: the train, the confidences to strangers on the way, the hansom from the Philadelphia station. Then the church, perhaps a confrontation at the altar in midservice. This must not be allowed to transpire!

  I was so distressed that I cut my visit short and ran along the path to The Evergreens. Emily’s room was at the front of The Homestead; she would not see where I was headed.

  The hired girl let me in. Mrs. Austin was in her music room, seated at the piano, practicing Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times.” How apt!

  The moment she saw my face, she knew that Emily’s fantasies had outgrown her miniature garden and threatened to spill into the world at large — and with grave consequences. I related all I knew, panting and shivering, and Mrs. Austin pounded a fierce dissonance of angry notes.

  “I knew it, I knew it,” she muttered. She rose and paced about the sparkling, tinkling room, her purple velvet skirts swaying around her. She was like a great tropical bird.