Afternoons with Emily (10 page)

We had a cold lunch and exchanged damage reports. Dr. Hugh announced two windmills wrecked and innumerable chickens blown
out to sea. Miss Adelaide showed us a grotesque rose from her picking garden, where the cruel wind turned her flowers inside
out. I felt tired and let down now that the danger was over. Father must have sensed this.

“Would you like to help me with my manuscript, Miranda?”

I sat bolt upright. Father had employed me to answer his letters, but he had never before asked me into the tight circle he’d
drawn around his private and privileged world of work. I was honored, and to my amazement I found that when we got down to
work, I was actually useful. As I proofread his cool, precise prose, I twice suggested another word, and he took my advice.

“I’m promoting you to editor!” Father stated. “I always need someone as literate as you seem to be.”

Of course, this was the sort of game Mr. Harnett and I had played for years. He would write a theme as badly as he could,
and I would correct his absurd mistakes. I was pleased that this nursery experience was helpful to Father now.

With all the wonderful surprises being offered to me on regular days, I eagerly anticipated what would await me on my upcoming
birthday. On the morning of September 16, Lettie came to me with my morning eggnog and banana.

“What are we going to do today?” I asked with a small smile. I imagined an extravagant outing.

Lettie selected a maroon chiton and paired it with pale pink trousers. “Is there something special the missy would like to
be doing today?” Her open face carried no hint, no secret.

I decided to wait to see what had been planned. But as the day wore on and there were no acknowledgments of the day from Father,
Miss Adelaide, or Dr. Hugh, I realized the unhappy truth: my birthday had been forgotten.

Father had never failed to remember it before — but this year he was entirely engrossed in his book about Pericles. And, of
course, the Barbados weather of perpetual May offered him no reminders of autumn’s arrival, I told myself. Perhaps he believed
it was now Miss Adelaide’s responsibility to arrange, as she did so much else. That would have necessitated informing her
when my birthday was, however. Clearly that hadn’t happened.

I should not have told Lettie, but I did want to hear “Happy birthday!” from someone and to feel thirteen — though I already
did feel that, with all the new hard muscles in my arms and legs. Then Lettie must have told Miss Adelaide, who must have
spoken to Dr. Hugh, who may have scolded Father. At any rate, dinner was quite late that evening. But there was a beautiful
mango trifle with thirteen candles, and grown-up toasts with wine.

The carriage must have gone into Bridgetown late that afternoon. I was given a handsome album from Father, for recording my
growing shell collection. Dr. Hugh presented me with two finely bound shell books from England; the endpapers had overlapping
pectins, as at the water’s edge in Learner’s Cove. Miss Adelaide’s present was the best of all: a tiny bar pin of aquamarines
set in gold.

“I wanted you to have something that was mine.” She smiled and touched my hand. “I wore that when I was your age, before I
ever knew there was a true sea that color. In Charleston, the water is more like coffee.”

“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.