Afternoons with Emily (14 page)

This recalled Mr. Meeker, who had brought me to this room and this meeting and this odd, oblique conversation.

“Did Mr. Meeker want you to profess too?” I asked.

A cunning look crossed her face. She gave a wry, pleased smile and leaned close to me. “Many better men than Mr. Meeker have
tried to persuade me — men who were much closer to God than he is.” She sat back up and sighed. “And friends I dearly loved
— even my own brother. They were all after me like a pack of hounds. Yes, they hounded me.”

I could see she liked the analogy. I did too. “And what did you do?”

“For years I would say ‘perhaps’ or ‘soon.’ I hid in thickets and underbrush, and doubled back on my tracks. But you were
braver; you turned to face them and bared your teeth, didn’t you?”

“But you really can’t call Mr. Meeker a pack of slobbering hounds,” I offered. “He’s more like a puppy nipping at the heels.”

To my delight, Miss Dickinson gave a bright, full-throated laugh — and at a joke of mine.

“That is certainly true,” she replied, still laughing. “Not just a puppy. The runt of an albino litter.”

We shared a wicked laugh together at poor Mr. Meeker’s expense.

“Enough of our close escapes,” Miss Dickinson said. “Now I would like to hear about your name. Miranda. Inspired by Bermuda
and the bard?”

I was enchanted that she knew the private Shakespeare origin of the name Miranda. How had she guessed? By the time I had told
her about our Shakespeare evenings in Barbados, and why I was there, and the James family, and the dolphins — by then, Miss
Dickinson knew a good deal about me. She listened quietly, her head tipped, her hands clasped. She asked very few questions,
but her alert, intent eyes compelled me to keep speaking.

“You are a regular Sinbad, a Gulliver,” she said at the end. “Parts of that were very interesting.”

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 glanced 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.