Afternoons with Emily (15 page)

She eyed the books vaguely, curiously. “You know, I used to read all these once. Perhaps there are still great minds here.”
She turned and crossed to the piano. “And I used to play the piano to please Father — and then he would tell me what books
to read. Actually he still does. He’s here in this room right now.” She shivered.

It seemed best not to argue this; besides, I could also feel a presence — no, that was not precisely accurate. What I felt
was an absence, the lack of warmth, the lack of conviviality and engagement. Perhaps that lack is what Emily felt as her father.
I could understand absence as presence — it defined my childhood. My mother’s ghostly place in my life; my father’s distracted,
erratic participation. It occurred to me that Emily and I had more in common than books. But I didn’t feel I could discuss
any of this with her. Not now. Not yet. I knew enough to take my cues from her as to how to proceed; this was the same caution
and strategy that allowed me to present the appearance of fitting in here in Amherst.

I peered at the titles of the dark, uninviting volumes. I loved books, but behind glass they seemed more like objects to be
looked at rather than enjoyed — no “conversations” with these authors!

I turned away from the case and looked out the window. Two cloaked and bonneted women were coming in the gate. Did my hostess
expect them?

“Emily, I think you have guests,” I said.

She turned so pale that I saw her whole round face was covered with tiny freckles, like a sprinkling of cinnamon on a custard.
She grabbed my hand so suddenly and so hard that I cried out in surprise. We rushed up the stairs and fell inside her bedroom
together.

Her panic was infectious — who could those women be? What was so frightening? “Emily —”

“Hush!” She locked the door and leaned against it, trembling and listening. I stood silent, my wide eyes upon her, wondering
what sort of danger we might be in. I could hear voices downstairs. Worried, I waited for Emily’s reaction.

“Thank goodness, it’s just Mother and Vinnie!” Her color returned. “My, what a narrow escape! It could have been ANYONE, anyone
at all.” The crisis was over as suddenly as it had begun; she poured me a glass of cider and gestured for me to sit. I lowered
myself to the chair, slowly regaining my equilibrium.

“As you can see,” she said with complete composure, as if she hadn’t dashed up the stairs moments ago in fear, “my house is
really very SMALL.”

Small indeed, I thought as I nibbled diamond-shaped molasses cookies. They were very thin; Emily must have been particularly
angry yesterday. We discussed John Keats, his sad, narrow life, his wasted love for the unworthy Fanny Brawne.

“If Keats had only had a sweetheart like you or ME . . .” said Emily.

I giggled at the thought. Then I wondered — did Emily have any sweethearts? She was a grown-up lady; certainly there had been
— or may currently be — some suitor. Emily might be a good source of information on the subject of courting, being older than
Kate and Lolly but not as motherly as Aunt Helen. But the conversation wound back around to writing, to poetry, and then my
time was up.

When I walked from Northampton Street to Main Street, coming east, I always passed a large unfinished gray-green house next
to Emily’s. It was somewhat foreign in style, with elaborate parapets and a big square watchtower; the rest was hidden by
scaffolding. It was evidently so new and stylish, so exotic, so deliberately different from its plain Puritan neighbors, that
I could not resist asking Emily about it. She must know her next-door neighbors, I thought. I had to pick and choose my questions
carefully; after several of our visits, I had observed that Emily evaded direct questions whenever possible. I could usually
be successful with only one or two at most per visit.

As was often the case, Emily’s answer produced more questions. “That is Austin and Sue’s Borgia palace,” she informed me.
I knew that Austin was Emily’s older brother; Sue must be his wife. “They are building their home for strangers and COURTIERS.
That is where Sue will hatch her plots and do her poisonings.”

Whatever could Emily mean? She spoke as if her sister-in-law were planning to murder people! She made it sound as if they
were all partaking in one of the history plays from Shakespeare, complete with intrigues and royalty. But I dared not ask
any more, and once again the talk turned to books and words.

The Mondays continued, a punctuation of my week. I looked forward to them, even as they perplexed me. I was never relaxed
with Emily as I was with Kate, and as I was beginning to feel with Lolly and my schoolmates. But the tension I felt as I approached
The Homestead wasn’t an uncomfortable tension — it put me in a heightened state and made me want to perform well. I wanted
to try out new words and hear Emily’s slantwise perspective on things, which somehow turned out to be precisely right, despite
the unusual juxtapositions in her speech. As with my dear tutor Mr. Harnett, I wanted to soak up what knowledge Emily had
to offer and prove a worthy student. I still didn’t quite understand why she wanted to include me in her small world but was
flattered beyond measure to have been brought into it.

Another Monday, when I returned our tea tray to the kitchen, I met someone new in the hall: a striking woman with Roman features
and complicated terraced hair. She wore jet and braid and rustling taffeta like a city person. She smiled and put a finger
to her lips — and she carried an envelope in Emily’s writing. This must be Sue, she of the Borgia palace, collecting one of
the many notes addressed to her that I had seen waiting on the card tray. She placed an envelope of her own on the tray and
then vanished out the door, her dress whispering as she walked.

Why had she not made her presence known to Emily? And why would Emily write so often if she felt her sister-in-law was one
of the dreadful and dangerous Borgias? When I asked Aunt Helen to explain all these mysteries, she was entirely informed!

“Let me try to explain the Dickinsons for you, Miranda dear. Mr. Edward Dickinson, the father, is a lawyer. He has also served
as the treasurer of the church and the college, and is the wealthiest man in Amherst. He is Amherst’s leading citizen.”

I imagined this was why Father had encouraged my encounter with Emily. He was eager to fit in too!

“There are three grown children,” Aunt Helen continued. “First there is Austin, the son, whom the village calls ‘Mr. Austin’
to distinguish him from his father. He is a lawyer too; he works in his father’s office. He recently married Susan Gilbert,
an old school friend of Miss Emily’s. You have seen them in church.”

I nodded. Of course, that was where I had seen the woman before. Emily never attended but most of her other family did.

“The young couple were going to move to Michigan after the wedding, but Mr. Dickinson promised to build them a showplace mansion
if they’d only stay here.” Aunt Helen delivered a Unitarian sniff. “I call that vulgar house more
eyesore
than showplace!”

“Is there anyone else in the family?” I asked. Despite Emily’s description of her world as being small, The Homestead could
certainly accommodate many relatives.

“Well, there are the two unmarried sisters, Emily and Lavinia. Then there’s their mother, Mrs. Dickinson, who’s very . . .”
Aunt Helen paused, searching for the right word. “Who’s very sad, I would say. Miss Lavinia takes care of her.”

“She does? But I thought she took care of Emily.”

Aunt Helen sighed again. “She tends to them both. It’s such a familiar sad story, the spinster sister who helps everyone and
never has her own life. Miss Lavinia was engaged a few years back, but nothing came of it. Then her beau married another girl.
We’ll never see her wedding.”

I was astounded, as always, by Aunt Helen’s boundless store of facts about people she had never met. “How do you know all
this?”

She put down the scalloped pink shawl she was crocheting for Kate and concentrated on her answer.

“Let me tell you about how gossip works in a small town like Amherst, Miranda. We women have to live very closely and help
each other out on short notice. We have to know what to watch out for and what to expect — so we can be ready when someone
needs us.”

I puzzled over this. It sounded like a wonderful way to be, yet I wasn’t sure how I felt knowing that there were people in
Amherst who knew about my family in the way that Aunt Helen knew about the Dickinsons.

Aunt Helen must have sensed my deliberations. She weighed in with her own judgment. “Just remember, Miranda, the only bad
gossip is the kind you make up.”

“And does everyone always get to hear about everything?”

“Sooner or later, Miranda. Sooner or later, they do.” She picked up Kate’s shawl and went on working, smiling to herself.
For a moment she made me think of Miss Adelaide. How they would enjoy each other! How happy I was to have them both in my
life.

Fall hurried toward winter, and I hurried too. The week could barely contain all the people and events that came rushing toward
me, those late autumn days. When I packed my schoolbag in the morning, crowding in my recorder, my atlas, my paints, my pencils
and pens, my lunch, my loathed math workbook, my textbooks, and a clean pinafore if I was going on to tea — when I did this,
I could not quite believe how smoothly my life had flowed into this new channel and its several branches.

By now I had worked out a strategy for life at the academy. I stressed my similarities with my classmates and concealed as
well as I could my differences. I had grown quite fond of pretty, dark Lolly, with her tipped nose and her lively wit. I didn’t
mind taking her orders; they helped me to know what to do. I was becoming very skilled at producing the right Miranda.

For one thing, I discovered that mentioning visits to The Homestead had a complicated double response; it made me stand out
in a way I had been trying to avoid, so I decided to imply, if asked, that they were a duty imposed on me by Father and Aunt
Helen for some vague adult reason and that they were even a little distasteful. The ruse seemed to work, and I received looks
of sympathy rather than resentment if I had to turn down a Monday invitation.

I loved writing Miss Adelaide about my new life, and reading her comments. She was enthusiastic about my new family, my school,
my teachers — but less so about Emily:

I hope you will use your friend Miss Dickinson as a literary companion only, without letting her overinfluence your life.
Her habits suggest an unhappy person who avoids reality. You are entirely without artifice and therefore defenseless against
the purposes of devious people.

I could not conceive of any motive or purpose Emily might have for our visits other than companionable literary talk, so I
simply answered Miss Adelaide that I would indeed take care not to be overinfluenced, and then I changed the subject to Halloween.
I had been disappointed by this, for I had always heard stories about my Boston cousins’ costumes and gala parties. But my
father explained that the Amherst Unitarians, the strict Congregational elders who had founded the academy and the college,
and a group that included Edward Dickinson, believed every holiday should be a sacred festival only.

“Those sour old Puritans are simply opposed to fun,” he grumbled. “At least they permit us some beauty, which was more than
their ancestors did. Have you ever seen a lovelier church?”

Of course I never had, and I shared his enthusiasm; our columned First Congregational Church was Greek Revival at its purest
and finest. When Mr. Howland completed our two wings and added the portico, our new house would look like the First Congregational
Church’s younger brother.

Our young architect came to Thanksgiving dinner with us and asked that we call him “Ethan.” For the first time, I met a group
of my father’s students and found them easy and amiable. They enjoyed the riddles and limericks I had collected at school
— but not as much as they enjoyed singing harvest hymns with Kate. She wore a new dress of deep rose velvet with a hoop and
looked like a Christmas rose herself. Her cloud of dark hair was drawn back with a black velvet bow, and her sculpted oval
face was flushed from the songs. She was quiet as ever, except when she sang; she was unaware that none of us could take our
eyes off her.

Before the party, Aunt Helen and Kate gave me the easiest jobs for preparing our feast — like peeling and mashing — and I
learned by observing them as we went along. As I watched them turn out the orange-spiced yam pudding and cranberry relish
for the next day’s dinner, I told them about my work with flowers and Miss Adelaide. They insisted that I create a harvest
centerpiece. So I took out my shears and twine and made a long S of pine boughs and laurel, and placed dark Winesap apples
along the curve, and to this added little scarlet crab apples, pinecones, and nuts. Aunt Helen and Kate praised my decoration,
so I made a small wreath for Emily from the same materials. I brought it to her the moment I was done.

She gave me no thanks for this. “Miranda, you have put me down right in the middle of a QUANDARY! If I put your wreath on
my door, it would be a lie. I do not ever intend ‘Welcome.’ For me, the key that seals my door opens the one to FREEDOM. And
I can’t hang it in my room either, for there I welcome no one but you.”

Suddenly, and for the first time, I was tired of the whole business.

“I’ll just put it at the foot of the oak tree on the east corner,” I told Emily, gathering up my things. “The squirrels come
there for acorns. They’ll like the nuts for a Thanksgiving treat.”

I walked briskly home. Tears stung my eyes, though I was fairly certain their source was the vicious wind. If emotion was
the culprit, it would be anger, not disappointment or hurt feelings.

Emily needed only to have kept the wreath up for an hour, I thought. Just until I went home. What harm would it have done
to be gracious, to tell a courteous lie to spare someone’s feelings? I realized Emily was unaccountably rigid in her sense
of integrity, in her unwillingness to compromise even the tiniest bit to perform an act of social nicety. I couldn’t decide
if her behavior was to be admired or admonished; I did know I felt my own gesture unappreciated.