Afternoons with Emily Read online

  “Or gumbo soup!” Father teased. We were all very festive, and the bad feeling about my delayed birthday was over. All was restored to its usual happy state. Then Dr. Hugh frightened me with his next words.

  “Miranda, even though you’re thirteen now, would you say good night? Adelaide, I need to talk to you and Josiah on the gallery.” His request that I leave them alone, his unsmiling face, his calling Father “Josiah,” all spoke trouble.

  Back in my room, I paced and worried. Thoughts about my health were always in my mind, bobbing just below the surface. Dr. Hugh’s examinations and his constant questions seemed ominous now. Only yesterday, he had weighed and measured me again. I must be sick, sicker than anyone will tell me.

  Ladies and gentlemen said “consumption,” but I had heard doctors in Boston call it “TB” or “tuberculosis.” Will I have to stay in bed? I came to Barbados to get well — and instead I may be sick. I may be dying. I flung myself onto my bed and crossed my arms over my chest. Well, if I must die, it is a lot better to die here than up in the nursery at number 32.

  I couldn’t lie still. I got up and paced again. I knew that eavesdropping was vulgar and dishonest. (I must have read that in Jane Austen.) I had never been tempted before; what conversation was there to overhear in Boston? But this was not mere casual eavesdropping for gossip purposes; this was mortal. This was my life!

  Honesty and good taste would have to wait. I opened my tall window and stepped out into the night. I was directly below the gallery and could hear every word of the conversation there.

  “. . . Miranda’s health, past, present, and future,” Dr. Hugh was saying. “I will speak as her doctor, not as your friend. You won’t like it.”

  “Please do, Hugh.” That was my father’s voice. “I count on you to tell me the truth. How do you find her lungs?”

  “Perfectly sound. Miranda does not have tuberculosis; she never did. Her lungs were as clear as a bell the day she came to York Stairs.”

  I leaned against the wall and shut my eyes to concentrate. I was having trouble taking in what I was hearing.

  “Hugh, what are you saying? Dr. Jackson is the finest lung specialist in Boston. He warned us to be careful and watchful always.”

  “Dr. Jackson was simply indulging Marian — and Marian was using her own illness to keep the poor child out of sight. Jackson and I have corresponded about this. He truly regrets not being more frank with you. It’s hard to tell a man his wife is an inadequate mother.”

  “But what could poor Marian have done from a sickbed?”

  “A great deal, Josiah.” Dr. Hugh sounded exasperated. “She could have bought Miranda a pony, arranged music and skating lessons, found her a walking group, taken a summer beach cottage. But above all, she should have gotten a decent, educated nurse for Miranda. The child doesn’t know it, but she was as neglected as any tenement orphan. She was on her own!”

  “But Jackson was always asking me if she was coughing blood,” Father protested. “She was pale and listless all the time. We expected the worst. She was always so tired —”

  “She was tired of her life — of having no life at all.” I heard Dr. Hugh getting louder. “She didn’t need a doctor, she needed action and challenge and other children. Have you looked at Miranda lately? She’s two inches taller and ten pounds heavier than when she came in June. She’s on the move from morning till night! This must be the only normal life she’s ever had.”

  “Hugh, with all respect, you’ve never been a parent —”

  “And neither have you!” Dr. Hugh was actually shouting now. “You kept Miranda like a pet, like a goddamned canary! You call yourself a father? Did you know she had only one friend ever — and it was an adult hired to tutor her? Did you know she was brave and witty? Did you know her governess was abusing her? She says she tried to tell you.”

  “Hugh, let me speak.” Miss Adelaide’s gentle voice broke in. I could easily picture her laying her hand lightly on her brother’s arm, the soft concern on her face.

  “Josiah, we know you love Miranda. It is not a question of that.”

  “Yes,” said Father softly.

  “I think I can explain what Hugh means,” Miss Adelaide continued. “I love my flowers; everyone knows that. But love is not enough — I must weed and water them too. And if there was a gardener who was supposed to help me, and then he didn’t — then I would have to work twice as hard! You see, Josiah, I would remember it was I who started the garden. I planted the flowers in the first place.”

  There was a long silence.

  “I hear you,” my father said at last. “You are good friends; you have helped us both. I will remember what you have said and try to do better as a parent.”

  “Do give yourself a little credit, Jos,” Miss Adelaide encouraged him. “You obviously found her a remarkable teacher.”

  “And you brought her here to us,” added Dr. Hugh. “That is no small thing.”

  “Yes, I did, didn’t I? Well, I thank you for your thoughts. I’d better go and sleep on all this. Good night, Adelaide; good night, Hugh.”

  I heard Father’s departing footsteps.

  “Hugh, do you think he heard a word of what we tried to tell him?” I believed Miss Adelaide was crying.

  “I reckon it’s too soon to say.” Dr. Hugh still sounded upset. “As long as I live, I won’t rightly understand how he just stood by with his hands in his pockets. He let Marian turn that lovely child into a puny invalid for her own selfish convenience.”

  “You were rather forceful, Hugh. I know he’ll try to be a better father now.”

  Kind Miss Adelaide may have expected changes after tonight, but I did not. My father and I were fixed in our pattern of amiable parallel lives. He might make fine plans for our futures, but he would delegate my daily care to someone else — as I imagined most fathers did.

  But none of that mattered in this moment. I took a deep, shaky sigh of easement and relief. I was no longer shadowed by an invisible disease and its silent inroads — and death. Now I could live like anyone else. Now I could grow up — and I intended to!

  I learned tonight, from my shameful eavesdropping, that my lonely years up in the nursery were my mother’s doing. Perhaps she had truly believed I was dangerous and was trying to protect her relatives from our illness. More likely, she simply did not know how to arrange a better life for me and had no friend to advise her. Maybe she was simply too selfish to bother and my father too self-involved to notice. But this seemed unimportant next to the shining new fact that I was healthy — actually, truly, entirely, and forever! Ara under the eaves, with her doll and her books and her dormer windows, tonight seemed as remote as a tiny landscape inside a china Easter egg — long, long ago.

  Tomorrow I would wear my yellow chiton; Miss Adelaide said it matched my hair. Tomorrow I would eat the last of my mango birthday cake. Tomorrow I wanted to find more shells and see more dolphins, and learn to dive. This birthday began as a disappointment; it ended as the beginning of my brand-new life.

  As the rhyme promised, “October, all over.” The flowers recovered, the trade winds returned, the repaired windmills creaked again. November and then December were like a sunny April in New England. With garlands of red and pink hibiscus twining the columns and the traditional swim on Christmas Day, we had a fine un-Bostonian holiday.

  We received all the York Stairs families on the gallery on Christmas Eve. We exchanged presents of rum and sugarloaves, and Dr. Hugh gave each married adult a silver pound. Miss Adelaide and I had a toy for each child; we chose them in Bridgetown. Then we set off a fine dazzle of gold and silver rockets, and everybody cheered.

  Father gave me a true young lady’s present: a gold locket, heart shaped, on a blue enamel chain.

  “Don’t hurry to fill it up with a sweetheart!” he told me. “Wear it empty for a while.”

  I blushed at the idea while reveling in the knowledge that he was beginning to see the changes Barbados had wrought in me. I was
growing up, and Father was finally noticing.

  I bought Lettie an oil lamp with a pretty painted shade, and she made me a braided bracelet of tiny scallop shells in every tone of pink and orange. I put it on and wore it all evening.

  I was overcome by my present from the James family. Miss Adelaide designed a small cedar chest of drawers for my shell collection, and Dr. Hugh arranged that Julius, the York Stairs carpenter, build it in his shop. There were many little drawers and cupboards, all lined in blue velvet. MIRANDA CHASE was carved on the top, inside a garland of pectin shells. I had never before had presents that were planned and made only for me. We sang Christmas carols until dusk, standing on the gallery in a warm wind flavored with sugarcane. Lettie, usually so well informed, asked me shyly about Good King Wenceslas and his snow, “deep and crisp and even.” I sensed she did not really believe my answer.

  Then it was 1857, and the winter sky was usually a deep, unclouded lapis lazuli. We sat out on the gallery after dinner, and Dr. Hugh taught me about the stars. First I told him the right myth (he always pretended he did not know it!), and then we located the constellation. This served to confirm my belief that the myths were truly part of the natural world.

  After my astronomy lesson, I lay in the rope hammock beyond the lantern light. I had discovered that if I didn’t talk and didn’t swing, the grown-ups forgot I was there. I became as much a part of the darkness as the sweet wind or the swarm of moths at each lantern. I learned a great deal that way. This wasn’t eavesdropping, I assured myself. I wasn’t hiding — I was in plain sight, if any chose to see me.

  “But Jefferson started that classical craze,” my father was saying. “The best thing that came out of it is the Greek Revival architecture. Do you know it?”

  “They were putting up those temples all over the South when we came here,” Dr. Hugh recalled. “I remember you told us York Stairs was an island version of Greek Revival.”

  “Tom Bulfinch’s father did a few beauties in New England. They are houses for gentlemen — unpretentious and livable. I’d like a Greek Revival house for myself someday.”

  “And where will that be, Jos?” Miss Adelaide asked Father.

  “My letters have just gone off, Addy, so we will wait and see. It will be good for Miranda and me to be on our own, with a new start, away from Boston and all those Lathams looking down their Puritan noses at us.”

  I clutched the ropes of the hammock. This was news.

  “On your own, then . . . away from Hugh and me . . . ?” Miss Adelaide teased.

  “We will always consider ourselves indebted to you. You have healed us in body and spirit. We need to think of you now, to take our leave and allow you to return to your old routines. We have been a handful, I should think!” With this, Father began to chuckle.

  “Nonsense, Jos, we —”

  Father raised his hand. “No, Addy. It is time for me to get back to work and to take Miranda home. To see she gets her chances. We want our own house, probably in a small town, preferably somewhere near my sister, Helen.”

  I longed to hear where this was leading, but Lettie arrived to remind me about bedtime. As we went down the sweeping stairs, I was very thoughtful. Until this evening, I had never imagined beyond Barbados. Everything that had happened to me in the past seemed to be in preparation for coming here. Now I saw that York Stairs too was a passage in time, leading on, leading elsewhere. I wondered when they would tell me what would come next.

  Spring in Barbados was a bouquet. There were new flowers budding, old flowers returning; there were blossoming bushes, blooming trees. The delighted eye drifted like a butterfly, flitting from one pleasure to another, hardly knowing where to light.

  One March morning, working with Miss Adelaide, I arranged some gardenias in an antique gilt tureen and wove the stiff glossy leaves into a garland around the container. Miss Adelaide made my arrangement the centerpiece on the dining table. Just as she promised me, I knew when it was finished; I knew when it was right. The flowers told me. For the first time in my life, I experienced the satisfaction of a successful creation. No one else in the world could have made exactly this; it was entirely my doing.

  A few days later, I returned from a morning walk on the beach to find that everyone seemed to be waiting for me on the gallery. Though it was only noon, there was a mysterious excitement: a silver tray with champagne flutes, and smiles all about.

  “Here she is!” Father cried. “Miranda, take your glass. We’re toasting the future!”

  “Whose future?” I inquired. I was given a glass of prickly golden wine and a kiss from everyone.

  “Yours and mine, Miranda — yours and mine!” Father exulted.

  I turned to Dr. Hugh, who was smiling broadly. “Please, will someone just tell me what has happened?”

  “You know your father has been busy for months, choosing a college where he would like to teach and you both would like to live.”

  My pulse began to race. There was now actual shape and substance to Father’s “plan.”

  “The excellent news is that two colleges wanted me.” Father picked up the narrative here. “Both in small New England country towns — and both close to your aunt Helen Sloan.

  “Then Dr. Hugh was inspired! He said we should write Mr. Harnett and ask about schools for you — and we just heard from him today.” He waved the letter. “Mr. Harnett has written that one of the best schools in the whole country is right there in the village. How about that?”

  “But where, Father? What village? Where are we going to live?”

  “Why, Miranda” — he laughed and drained his glass — “I’m going to be head of classics at Amherst College, right near where I grew up. You and I are going to live in Amherst, Massachusetts! Now I’d better write and tell them so.”

  Father waved and went inside, as joyful as I’d ever seen him.

  So now my future had a name and a setting, and I began to dread it. Boston was easy because nothing whatsoever was asked of me. Barbados was easy because I knew all that was required, and I enjoyed every aspect of my life there. Also, several people loved me, and I loved them back, which was most important.

  But Amherst, Massachusetts? What will they want of me there? What about school? This was a great mystery. I had never actually been to school. I had had only four friends in my life: Mr. Harnett and Lettie, Miss Adelaide and Dr. Hugh, all grown-ups. I wasn’t sure how to behave with other children. I remembered my awkwardness with my own cousins. Would I ever have a young friend who would forgive my being different and perhaps even value my bookish nature?

  But I liked the idea of Amherst the village. Father told me a great deal about the place. I could picture myself walking about, along leafy streets and past painted wooden houses. I would know the names of all the families. I could even imagine having a friend in one of those houses. She might have read a lot; she would want to talk about books. She might think I was an addition to her life; she might have been lonely too.

  As the days passed, I became more confident. I could see ahead to our last weeks here, to packing up and saying good-bye — and I went on imagining the friend who might be waiting for me in Amherst. Perhaps she’ll have a garden behind her house, and I will show her how to arrange flowers. I will tell her about York Stairs, and then we’ll lend each other books.

  Father had decided to complete our full year in Barbados. He preferred to finish his book on Pericles in the peace of York Stairs, without the distraction of a new house and a new position. Since I did not yet belong to any school, there was no concern about my falling behind in my schoolwork. So we would stay until June, when passage would be easiest.

  Miss Adelaide never once entreated us to stay on at York Stairs. This was an open invitation, unspoken but understood. But I realized that Barbados, however delightful, was a very small and limited world. All my reading had given me intimations of a larger one.

  “You’re right to go back,” Miss Adelaide assured me as we sat on the gallery o
ne April afternoon. “You’re an American, you belong in the United States. Barbados is England, really — England with dolphins.”

  When we sat like this in the afternoon, we often played the Hamlet game: finding images and faces in the cloud shapes over the sea. I did this now to change the subject.

  “Look, Miss Adelaide, to the left of the last cedar — a turtle dancing!” And then together we said the proper Hamlet response: “ ‘Very like a whale!’ ”

  In a strange way, Lettie left me before I could leave her. She was present during our time together, but her mind was elsewhere. She stopped going into the water with me and instead waited on the beach. She stopped my diving lessons too and never even touched our picnics. She lost interest in my myth people.

  Lettie refused my earnest assurance of our return in two years and ignored my promise that Miss Adelaide would read her all my letters. Her lovely delicate face turned puffy, and she had a new sharp laugh. We were not in harmony. For the first time, I felt her hours with me were bought and paid for.

  “This is a bad time for Lettie,” Miss Adelaide explained when I consulted her. “She never meant to become so attached to you. You were just a job at first. Losing you is terrible for her, and her sweetheart, Elijah, has found another interest. I’m afraid, though, that it’s already too late for Lettie.” This was unclear, but I chose not to ask any further.

  Suddenly our York Stairs life had a boundary; we heard ourselves saying, “Before I leave,” and “After you’ve gone.” The mail came and went like flights of paper gulls. Father’s publisher accepted Pericles, and Amherst Academy accepted me. Mr. Harnett enthused over this school, “a beacon of learning.”

  Uncle Thomas Bulfinch reserved some hotel rooms in Boston for the week after our return. Cousin Ellen Curtis had been designated to help me buy clothes, as Cousin Daisy was abroad. Then Aunt Helen Sloan invited Father and me to Springfield for the rest of the summer, and my cousin Kate Sloan wrote me a shy welcome. I was impressed with Father’s planning.