Afternoons with Emily (19 page)

Emily was very interested in Uncle Thomas’s correspondence with Tennyson. With all her vaunted independence, Emily was as
impressed as anyone else by fame. Furthermore, she had confessed that she herself longed and worked to be famous someday as
a poet.

“Shall I bring Uncle Thomas to meet you?” I teased her. I was feeling bold that day. Besides, she had allowed Ethan over her
threshold; perhaps she was edging toward opening her doors. “Then he could tell you all about his new friend Alfred, Lord
Tennyson!”

She ignored me. “Shall we go down to the kitchen?” Emily must have been feeling bold herself; we rarely spent time in the
more public areas of the house. “I can make you some prune muffins as we talk — and today we must do some REAL talking.”

I followed her to the kitchen, worried about possible prune stains on her spotless white dress. Emily wore various materials
according to the season — dimity or challis or merino — but the cut was always the same: high-necked, with sometimes a pointed
collar; long-sleeved and cuffed; pleated and full-skirted, worn without crinolines. Her shawls varied, and sometimes she wore
a cameo brooch or a child’s coral necklace, but her dresses were always pure white.

I was relieved when she covered up in a bibbed canvas apron and went efficiently to work. She had the rough slapdash confidence
of an experienced baker.

I, on the other hand, simply hovered. “Is there anything I should do?” I asked.

“Stay clear of flying flour,” she said, waggling her whitened fingers at me. I leaned against the counter, wondering what
it was she wanted to talk about.

“Miranda, I have reached a decision,” she announced. “I plan to ask you an important FAVOR, and you are more apt to oblige
me if you understand why I am asking. So I have decided to tell you things about myself that no one else has ever heard. People
guess and WONDER, but only you will know the truth!”

I was transfixed.

“Actually, some do know PARTS of this story, but no one has heard it ENTIRE. When you do, you will understand why I have made
my world so NARROW. The wider world showed me its FEROCITY very early.”

I hoped I was nodding in a mature and compassionate way. I worked to conceal my intense anticipation.

“Do you remember when I told you about my dear cousin Emily, who died before she ever lived? A part of me died with her; we
were buried together.”

I nodded. Of course I remembered.

“Soon after, I had a second
mortal
wound. I had a brilliant young Master who taught and trained me for a long, sweet time. He was my Preceptor, teaching what
to read, what authors to admire, what was most grand or beautiful in Nature. And through his instruction, I learned that sublime
lesson — a faith in things unseen. Mr. Newton believed in my own POWER, Miranda. He saw my future, and it was GOLDEN.”

Emily worked at the pastry marble, brisk and skillful. She was untroubled by the tear that trickled down her cheek; her small
hands were too floury to wipe her face.

Aching with compassion, desperate to be useful, I could think of nothing more than “Emily, shall I blot you?”

“Don’t bother. I’ll just weep again. This means that the muffins will be extra tasty. All my best baking is salted with tears,
Miranda.”

She gave me a brave smile. I returned it with a sad, encouraging one.

“Well, I can’t stop my story now. My young Master was another DOOMED victim. Consumption, AGAIN. He forsook me in 1853, just
before he was thirty.” This time, she blotted her own cheek with her apron.

“Emily!” I was deeply shaken, thinking about my own precious mentor, Mr. Harnett. Our parting had been painful enough; to
have lost him so finally would have been a blow impossible to withstand. “However did you bear it?”

“You bear what you must, I have learned. But I have more to tell. Did you know that my father once served a term in Congress?
Lavinia and I went down to Washington too, for several weeks. That was in the spring, three years ago.”

The picture startled me. “Did you live in a hotel? How did you like it?”

“Amherst is very much LIVELIER. I disliked the crowds pushing against me and the noise on the streets. I vow the whole town
stayed up all night! And I never once heard a bird sing in Washington. But I do remember some good talk, though I never joined
it. I was still looking for a way to be among STRANGERS in those days.”

“And did you find one?”

“I might have, but . . .”

I heard the heavy front door open. Emily dropped her wooden muffin spoon and bolted for the stairs. As I followed her, I had
a fleeting image of Emily as a ringmaster. She cracked her whip, and I performed. I pushed the unworthy thought from my mind.
She had suffered, as had I; I should be able to be compassionate. But I was feeling overwhelmed by her autobiography, as if
the weight of her losses were tangling themselves in my skirts, sinking me down.

“Where was I?” she said, once we were safely settled in her room. “After our stay in Washington, Lavinia and I stopped for
a few days in Philadelphia, visiting our cousins. There, my life was forever changed. There, I met my FATE.”

“What happened?” I wished I had lines to read. I had never played a confidante; I didn’t know how.

“A rare INTIMACY. Not what the world would acknowledge, but OUR OWN. He will be my shepherd, guiding and guarding me always
— even though we may not meet again. He will be my MASTER forever.”

This was romantic and thrilling — but what exactly was Emily telling me? That she has a lover? Or once had a lover? That he
died? That he was married, or imprisoned? And what of the dead Mentor, Newton? Had his attachment to her deepened to that
of a lover’s before death cruelly claimed him?

Whatever it was, I recognized the singular honor of her confidences. I would certainly not reveal my unworldliness by asking
a lot of childish questions — so I waited.

“So now you know my INNERMOST secrets, Miranda, and now you CANNOT refuse my favor. My happiness depends on it — and on you.”

“Of course I’ll help you, Emily.”

“Now that I have confined my bodily self, I need my spiritual freedom to SURVIVE. I need to voyage freely beyond my boundaries,
toward greater minds than my own. I need your help — to reach and touch my FRIENDS.”

Of course, she meant her correspondence. In a sense, her letters — from the authors and ministers and editors — were like
my nursery visits from Mr. Harnett. Emily and I had both been marooned, each in our way, with this single vital link to the
world outside. But my isolation had been involuntary, while hers was chosen, devised and perfected by Emily herself.

When I did not answer her, Emily became a pitiful Dickens waif, wringing her hands — still dusted with flour. My hard heart
melted. I obeyed the crack of the whip; I leapt to my perch in the ring.

“All right, Emily. I’ll mail your letters.”

She nodded with a satisfied smile, then stood and paced the room. “I knew you would see this was NECESSARY. I have never liked
to ask Lavinia, who PRIES — and the hired girls really can’t be expected to know the VALUE of a letter. I will have them ready
for you every Monday. Many personages in high places will be obliged to you, Miranda.”

Astonishing. She went from waif to empress in under a minute.

Spring washed across Amherst like a Barbados breeze. The delicate blown petals moved in the wind like spray. Uncle Thomas,
used to May in Boston, was lost in admiration and prolonged his visit. He and Father and I often walked in the afternoon,
following the progress on our house.

“The workmen say we’ll be in by midsummer,” Father told us. “But Ethan predicts September.”

“I should go home next week,” said Uncle Thomas. “I’ll come back when you’ve moved in. I’ll help you with your library.”

“You must stay over graduation, Tom,” Father insisted. “I know you’ll get a card to the Edward Dickinson reception. It’s the
high point of the week. He entertains all the nabobs under a tent in The Homestead garden, and I hear he spreads himself for
once.”

I wondered if Emily would make an appearance at her father’s party. It was difficult to imagine her there yet even more unlikely
that her father would allow her to be absent.

“Is that the handsome yellow Federal on the hill?” Uncle Thomas asked. “How my father would have loved that ‘solid citizen’
appearance.”

“The Dickinsons are certainly ‘solid citizens’ — when they aren’t paupers!” Father laughed.

This caught my attention: the lofty Dickinsons living in poverty? “What do you mean, Father?” I asked.

“Yes, Jos,” Uncle Thomas seconded. “I sense a story here.”

“Oh, there is one indeed,” Father replied. “Samuel Dickinson, the old patriarch, built The Homestead around 1813. He also
founded Amherst College and poured several fortunes into it. Finally he went bankrupt for its sake. He left the east and died
as a horseback preacher somewhere in Ohio.

“His son Edward, the present squire, was stuck with his father’s debts. He had to sell The Homestead and move his family into
rented lodgings. It must have been a painful comedown, for such a proud man.”

This was all news to me but explained many of Emily’s cryptic remarks. Emily kept her secrets with the same calculation as
she doled out her confessions. And what about Father? I gave him a sidelong glance. I would have to reconsider my notion that
he was simply a befuddled professor. His nose may have been mostly in a book, but his ears had become sails that caught every
passing wind. If I stayed quiet, I could learn much, I realized. Emily had taught me to listen.

Uncle Thomas was perplexed. “But, Jos — I thought you just said that he had sold the house.”

“He did — and for years he ate humble pie, and not much else! He was a lawyer and was very political — always with a seat
in the legislature, making deals. He’s a very able man. Then in the early ’50s, he brought the railroad and the telegraph
to Amherst, and his money came rolling back. He repurchased The Homestead and added cupolas and conservatories and other costly
modern trimmings — just to remind the village the royal family was back in residence! Squire Dickinson runs the First Congregational
Church, the college, and the town — it’s all his domain.”

“What an American story!” Uncle Thomas was delighted. “Riches to rags to riches again. I love it.”

“The Dickinsons have been here in Amherst as ‘solid citizens’ for two hundred years. It’s old money restored and the old name
repolished.”

“What is the present Squire Dickinson like these days?”

Father smiled at Uncle Thomas and me. “One senses a certain satisfaction in what Squire Edward has accomplished, working with
his partner, God.”

I laughed out loud. “Father, that’s exactly the sort of thing Emily says!”

Father gave me a grin. “Does she? Well, pride is often hard on the bystanders.”

That evening, I related all my new Dickinson knowledge to Kate, who had been as puzzled as I over the Dickinson mythology.
I found I was a little less critical of my friend’s ways, now that I knew her family history. All that instability — no wonder
she kept her life so closely contained within that hard-won homestead.

At first, I believed my new position as Emily’s letter carrier was something she and I would never discuss — an unspoken understanding.
She had, after all, entrusted me to the task because she feared “prying eyes.” I discovered instead that Emily liked to be
asked about the letters I mailed and the distinguished men she wrote to. She enjoyed recounting her social life, limited though
it was to paper.

There was always a stack waiting for me; Emily must have spent hours each week writing to a wide-ranging audience. Knowing
her exacting nature, I knew this meant she sacrificed reams of paper on a near daily basis.

“Samuel Bowles, Esquire,” I read as I picked up a thick cream-colored envelope from the silver letter tray. “Who is he?”

“He is my INTIMATE friend,” she said. “He is said to be the most brilliant young editor in the country. He has made the
Springfield Republican
famous.”

I knew the newspaper; Father read it at home.

“We are studying Emerson and Thoreau together. I myself meet him in the PARLOR!”

She seemed to expect congratulations for this, that she actually met with someone face-to-face, and a gentleman at that! I
wasn’t quite sure I believed her. “Do you really receive him, Emily?”

“Oh, never alone. I do not want to cause trouble in his marriage. His wife is unstable and — POSSESSIVE. One hears she resents
his admiring even a FRIEND.”

I held up another envelope. “And Dr. and Mrs. Holland? I see they’re in Springfield too.”

“My dearest and closest friends! He’s a journalist too. His wife, Elizabeth, is very WISE. She knows I would take her advice,
so she does not give it.”

With Emily’s copious output, I wondered if she was also a recipient. “Do all your correspondents write back?”

“Most do. I am the gadfly they have to SWAT!”

There were often thick envelopes for Reverend Charles Wadsworth, Arch Street Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia. Emily’s only
Philadelphia addressee. I assumed this was her other Master, and accordingly alive. As she had never spoken of him again,
I did not ask.

One May Monday, as I left Emily, she slipped a note in the pocket of my pinafore. I glanced at her, startled by the close
touch as well as the secretive gesture.

“I want you to have this,” she whispered. “But we won’t discuss it.” She stepped back and gave me a smile. “See you next week.”

Curious, I couldn’t wait to examine the note, wondering what Emily could write but couldn’t say. I unfolded the crisp paper
on my walk home. The sun shone brightly, and I had to squint a bit to read.

I never lost as much but twice,

And that was in the sod.

Twice have I stood a beggar

Before the door of God!

Angels — twice descending

Reimbursed my store —