Afternoons with Emily (33 page)

We spent a few days with Cousin Ellen Curtis Lyall, a bride when I saw her last, who seemed to have replaced now elderly Cousin
Daisy Powell as the official herald and liaison officer of the Latham family. Cousin Ellen lived on Mount Vernon Street, across
and down from number 32. Her husband was Dr. Hallett Lyall, a surgeon; she had a little brown-haired son, Ames, a year older
than our Josey. She welcomed us with the grace and warmth I remembered from childhood.

“It’s time we had another blond beauty in the family,” she said with a smile. “Your Cabot grandmother was very tall and fair
too. You’re quite like her.” She showed us our own portrait of Miss Eliza Cabot, wearing a low-cut yellow silk dress and holding
a matching parakeet. Cousin Ellen still “borrowed” the portrait from Father, but she reminded us it was ours. “I’m just keeping
it till Miranda marries and has her own house.”

I had often felt far removed from my mother’s family tree; I was grateful that kind Cousin Ellen had found me a perch on one
of its branches. We went over the clothes I had brought; Cousin Ellen was very taken with the laurel-green silk costume I
wore for Kate’s wedding.

“You’d know that for a Madame Lauré anywhere! We must have another in black velvet, the same French cut. With your hair and
your complexion, you must do black velvet. I remember you always wore that at the New Year’s parties. You were so serious
then, watching the other children. But you’re not standing on the edges anymore, are you?”

“No, I’m not — not for some time, it seems.” I smiled.

“We’ll need to find you some dresses for school and daytime engagements too. Do you go out much during the week?”

“Not this summer, Cousin Ellen. I just study.”

“I see . . .” Her expression grew concerned. “That must be quite lonely.”

“It’s not,” I assured her. “Truly it’s not!”

I could not explain to her that the daily visits from Davy through his letters were companionship enough for me.

We went to several grand stores, crowded with clothes for modish Bostonians. Cousin Ellen was endlessly helpful, guiding me
toward my own style. “You have a classical figure and wonderful coloring; let us
see
them. You must always be simple and uncluttered. You’re a goddess, not a shepherdess, Miranda!”

Father admired the results of our shopping. His favorite dress was the indigo printed challis with the velvet piping and yokes.
He admired the gray moire too and the mauve velvet.

“I do like to see a handsome woman, well turned out,” he told us. “And you’re the one to show us how, Ellen!”

“We want only to do the family credit, Jos.”

How easily they chat, I observed, as one personage to another! Someday I too will be this sure of my own worth.

The last day, we crossed Mount Vernon Street to choose a desk for me from among the pieces still in number 32. I had dreaded
this errand, stepping back into those shadowed years — but the tenants’ new colors and possessions had changed the house beyond
recognition. Only the black-and-white entrance hall resembled my memory. It was far less difficult than I feared to choose
a Sheraton mahogany writing table from an upstairs landing.

“I much prefer this to a desk with drawers,” I assured Father. “There’s room for my long legs! And it reminds me of the table
you used at York Stairs. This can be my seventeenth birthday present.” I was practicing getting my way. It did get easier,
as Kate and Davy had promised me, and in our constant letters, I described it all.

When we returned to Amherst, we eased into a slow summer pace, with the town quiet and the campus empty of students. I often
went to The Homestead to garden at dawn for the pleasure of Emily’s company outdoors. She was entirely different when we were
away from her room, where the shelved books and the formal furniture set the mood for our time together.

“It pleases me to give my flowers more liberty than I myself enjoy,” she confided one day. “That is my LARGESSE. I say to
them what no one said to me: ‘Just be yourself!’ ”

“Davy always tells me that,” I offered.

Emily nodded distractedly. “Yes, real friends should.” But she wasn’t interested in my experience of this ideal friendship;
her attention was on herself and her perceived loss.

“Susan and I were that to each other, long ago, before her affections wandered from us and turned toward the fashionably affected.”
She looked away, remembering.

I wanted to hasten to Mrs. Austin’s defense, knowing how much she still cared for her difficult sister-in-law, but held my
tongue: I could see that Emily was building toward a fiery display of her own. I had no wish to have her fireworks directed
at me.

“Seeing us now,” Emily went on, developing momentum, “you must find it hard to imagine that we were ever close — but we were,
WE WERE. Of course Sue benefited from my PROTECTION THEN.”

Emily glanced my way and arched an eyebrow in response to my skeptical expression. “It’s true,” she insisted. I had begun
to notice that her soft voice became almost shrill whenever she had to assume a posture of persuasion. “We were schoolmates
and friends, though our backgrounds were so OPPOSITE. Her father was a mere tavern keeper here, and they say he served himself
a few times too often. Ah, I see you are astonished at these origins,” she added when I could not contain my surprise. “He
and Susan’s mother both died when Susan was a girl at the academy. An older married sister in upstate New York agreed to take
Sue and a younger sister; her country childhood was spartan. There was little about it that was either pastoral or romantic
or FASHIONABLE. She was truly brilliant, you know — but I was always aware of a deep cultural VOID from her unfortunate childhood.”

I was offended by her snobbery; if Emily believed Mrs. Austin to be brilliant, her origins should not matter. And this narrative
explained to me Mrs. Austin’s ostentatious displays and increased my admiration for her.

“If that’s how you feel, I’m surprised you show her so many of your poems, Emily.”

“Susie has natural taste and judgment. Had she been raised differently, she might have been a real SCHOLAR. She is by far
my best critic.”

I bristled a bit at this. I had imagined myself in that capacity for Emily. She still saw me as a mere sounding board and
didn’t value my views. Yet how was I expected to develop as a critic when she never allowed me to have an opinion? I pulled
up weeds rather angrily, wondering how Mrs. Austin had accomplished this.

“Do you know what Lavinia calls Mr. Cutler, Sue’s brother-in-law?”

“No, Emily, I don’t.” I tugged another weed.

“It’s so cruel I shouldn’t repeat it. I do so only to show you how WITTY Vinnie can be. She calls him a ‘counter-jumper.’
” She giggled behind her spade.

This truly shocked me: not Miss Lavinia’s malice but Emily’s glee in repeating it.

“But Austin welcomes Mr. Cutler into the family and treats him with brotherly love,” Emily went on.

“And Mrs. Austin?” I asked. “Does she do the same? Does she agree with Mr. Austin’s friendliness?”

At first Emily dug vigorously without answering me.

“As it happens, they agree about very little. They seem to be pulling in different directions these days,” she said at last.
“Austin said Sue has become intolerably aggressive and opinionated, and of course he was raised with GENTLE WOMEN around him.
Nowadays he confides a great deal to me about his marriage. A sister’s love, you know, is unwavering, although one cannot
always make the same steady claims for a sister-in-law’s.”

“Surely your taking sides doesn’t help his home life, Emily.”

“Oh, but he needs a sympathetic ear, Miranda.”

But not your envious heart or treacherous tongue, I thought to myself.

Whether Emily realized it or not, she was showing me a good many ways that she herself was endangering her brother’s marriage.
There was a stinginess about Emily’s position concerning Sue that troubled me. Here were two women of formidable intelligence
that each had determined to utilize, although each had selected a different means.

If Mrs. Austin welcomed recent guests such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emily,
on the other hand, with narrow-minded petulance, labeled them fiendish social frauds and intellectual impostors. Nor could
she credit her sister-in-law for finding her own path to a goal Emily herself endorsed. No — Emily had to criticize, divide,
and conquer. She thereby caused mischief in her brother’s marriage — and did so from spite.

I went back to Amity Street when the sight of passing neighbors sent Emily indoors. There was usually mail for me from Davy
and often from Miss Adelaide too. She was bitterly disappointed the last two summers, when Dr. Hugh’s failing health prevented
our returning to York Stairs. I could tell that she truly missed me and my company. “Now that you’re almost seventeen, and
so much has happened to you, you and I will be even better friends,” Miss Adelaide wrote. “Do you think we can hope to see
you here next year, in the summer of 1861?”

I could not answer this — or even imagine any time beyond Davy’s return to Amherst, so all I could say was “We’ll see.”

Now in the last week of August, the nights were cool, and all the summer greens were faintly gilded. Aunt Helen had decided
there was time before classes began for me to visit Kate and Josey, so I took the cars to Springfield while Ethan was out
of town.

It was nice to spend the time on my own with Kate, away from the tensions with Father, from the household chores, from my
usual life. One afternoon, we had washed our hair and were brushing it dry on the sunny slope of Kate’s garden. We lay on
the grass like Barbados lizards, with Josey on a blanket between us. He was an amiable, portable five months, suddenly discovering
his toes. We smiled at his concentration, and our conversation darted and swooped from one topic to another without either
of us missing a beat. It was as if we were in perfect rhythm, as we had been when we still lived in the same house.

“Do you have any news of Lettie and Mira?” Kate asked.

“Miss Adelaide wrote that my namesake is nearly three, and clever and beautiful. I’ll always be sorry that Lettie didn’t tell
me what was making her act so strangely just before we left.”

“It won’t matter when you see her again. I can’t blame her — you really need a husband when you’re expecting!”

I gave her a sideways glance. I sat up and hugged my knees to my chest. “Kate . . .” I began, a little uncertain how to proceed.

She could tell by my tone that the subject was going to become more serious. “Yes?” she asked.

I stared down at my bare toes, feeling the grass blades between them. “What is it like . . . to be expecting?”

Kate smiled. “It is a trial, and it is uncomfortable, and it is quite, quite glorious. And it’s the perfect time to get your
way in any disagreement!” Her green eyes sparkled mischievously.

I gave her a grin but grew thoughtful again. “And . . . and before then.” My voice dropped almost to a whisper, and I found
it difficult to raise my eyes from my toes. “What is it like? Is it also . . .
glorious?
”

I understood the mechanics of lovemaking — Aunt Helen had done her duty when I was twelve years old. That knowledge was supplemented
one recess last term when Lolly Wheeler smuggled her parents’
Advice to the Newly Married
manual into school. I realized what I was asking couldn’t quite be put into words.

Kate reached over and took my hand, peering into my face. “With the right man, and the right marriage, yes, it is even more
glorious than you can imagine right now.” She stroked my hand. “Miranda, is Davy . . . ?”

I quickly raised my eyes to hers. “No, of course he isn’t. He’s a perfect gentleman. I — I just find myself wondering . .
.”

“Of course you do,” she said. “That’s only natural when you’re in love. I thought about Ethan all the time.” She dropped my
hand and leaned back to enjoy the sunshine. “I still do.”

I smiled. Kate’s words — but more than anything her manner, her happiness — reassured me. “Thank you,” I said.

“I want you to feel you can ask me anything,” Kate told me.

We brushed away companionably while Josey sang to us. I ran my fingers through my hair. “Look, Kate, it’s dry already.” I
tossed my curls in the warm air. “Wouldn’t you like to have yours short too? It’s so
easy!
”

“I never could. Ethan — well, he loves to see it down.” Kate blushed. “And besides, mine doesn’t curl into its own shape the
way yours does.”

“Davy likes the way mine springs back.” And then I blushed too.

Near the end of my visit, Kate and I were once again sunning ourselves in her yard. Josey was practicing his crawling. Kate
kept her eye on him while I read a newspaper.

“What does Ethan say about the news these days?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s as gloomy as all the other men. He says that if Lincoln is elected, then there will surely be a war.”

I folded the paper and laid it aside. So Ethan also felt it inevitable. “Father told me Lincoln made a speech in 1858 to the
Illinois state legislature that practically guaranteed a war. It was called ‘A House Divided.’ ”

Kate nodded, then looked perplexed. “Miranda, do you understand why the northern states are so angry? I’ve been so busy with
Josey I barely have a chance to read the newspaper these days.”

“Well, of course it’s about slavery, but Davy says that they’re not so much antislavery as pro-Union. He told me the North
believes that if the country splits, then it will split again — and we’ll end up all in tiny jigsaw pieces, fighting each
other, like in Europe. Besides, most of the commerce of the Middle West goes down the Mississippi River, and it should not
have to go through a nation that has become foreign to reach the rest of the world.”

“Well said, Miranda!” That was Davy’s voice — and there was Davy himself, coming across the grass and smiling at our surprise.

“Davy — oh — it is you,
it is!
” I ran to embrace him. Then I stood back, abashed. “Why have you come early? Is anything wrong?”