Afternoons with Emily (47 page)

Every day, after her breakfast, Elena trotted behind Aunt Helen or Bridget for an hour or two. I spent the morning studying
and writing. As I worked, I heard her sweet flute voice and sometimes her laughter. Of all the pleasures of her new existence,
her favorite was conversation.

We took an early lunch, and then Elena napped — so that we could have a long afternoon together. We shared one event a day,
so she and I tried to extract the most from it. My students had taught me never to rush or crowd their learning. When we went
to the village, it was for one errand only. If I wanted to order a book, or if Grandma Helen needed stockings or Elena undervests,
then these needs took three separate expeditions and choices. Elena learned the shops and their owners, and loved to be greeted
by name as we went around town.

Sometimes Lolly, or one of the ladies for whom I still read aloud in the dressing factory, asked us to come for tea. Elena
was not so much shy as wary at these times, waiting to see what was expected of her. She watched the other children carefully.
Once she had relaxed, she, like her mother, was gentle and sociable.

We walked home in the pale snow-lit dusk, trying for “mouse talk” with our squeaking boots. Elena had her supper in the kitchen
and related her day to her grandmother while Bridget and I helped with the adult dinner. Then I told her a benign version
of a Greek myth to give Father pleasure when he returned from abroad.

After the mythic story hour, Elena enjoyed an hour or so of “alone time” with a book or the wooden blocks Sam made for her.
This interval lasted as long as she was quiet and occupied, and she knew it! Then one of us tucked her in, with one (one only!)
good-night kiss. Her door and mine stayed open all night.

One might call this a day when nothing important happened — and yet everything did. Two minds were stimulated; two characters
were affirmed; two hungry spirits were fed. Two people went to sleep smiling.

This involvement, this profound contentment, was difficult to explain to Emily, who lived unattached by elaborate choice.
One afternoon I drew on all the language she had helped me to use, trying to explain my feelings. If Emily could only see
what having Elena in my life meant to me, perhaps she would also understand Sue’s devotion to her children — and thus improve
their worsening relationship. And perhaps, secretly, I hoped that it would also help Emily under-stand me.

“You weren’t exactly withering away, Miranda,” she said disdainfully. “You traveled, you held a position, you were WORLDLY.”

I never knew that my aspirations rankled till now. But of course they would. Like with Sue, who had left Emily behind upon
her marriage, Emily was hinting now that I abandoned her too by my widening interests, by my leaving. Diplomatically, I decided
not to venture down this rutted lane.

“That’s true, Emily, but I wasn’t using my heart. I had turned that off.”

“But there goes your privacy, your time, your IDENTITY! Can you spare these? I am sure I NEVER COULD.” She set her jaw, no
bigger than the imaginary child’s she was rejecting.

“Elena and I both hungered for mother love. Elena longed to receive it, and I longed to give it. We needed each other desperately!”
As I spoke, I realized with bell-like clarity that I could not send Elena away now, nor could I leave her.

“Emily, it’s a trade,” I insisted. “I get a great deal in return.”

“For me, raising a child would be a treason against myself,” she declared. “A TREASON!”

“Elena’s only three. She hasn’t crowded me out of myself — and she never will.”

Emily shook her head, denying this. “I would be squeezed out of shape. I would DISAPPEAR! If I had to live with a child, I
would sign away my years and my GIFT — all for company that was demanding and selfish and narrow.” Here she gave me one of
her purring little cat smiles. “But I suppose you will say I was all those things already.”

I returned her smile with a sly one of my own. “Not all, Emily. No one could ever call you
narrow.
”

“TOUCHÉ! That was
‘a hit, a very palpable hit!’
Emily was delighted. “Your ÉPÉE has a deft duelist’s touch. I think Sue should learn FINESSE from you. Her preferred blade
is the SABER. I wrote about that once . . .” She turned to her bureau, alert, distracted, self-absorbed, enchanted with herself
for the way she had taken command of this conversation and steered it back just where she liked it, to herself. All thoughts
of Elena banished, Emily found the right poem in no time. Since our fortnight of organizing almost six years ago, she had
kept her writings in her own mysterious order.

She dealt her pretty words like Blades —

How glittering they shone —

And every One unbared a Nerve

Or wantoned with a Bone —

She never deemed — she hurt —

That — is not Steel’s Affair —

A vulgar grimace in the Flesh —

How ill the Creatures bear —

To Ache is human — not polite —

The Film upon the eye

Mortality’s old Custom —

Just locking up — to Die.

This one jarred and shocked me, with its hate masked as irony. I handed it back gingerly, at arm’s length, and Emily smiled
at my aversion.

“Now you see why all my best poems go unread! This is another one I could not have written without my SOLITARY days and nights.”

“And what will become of it now, Emily, if no one reads it?”

“Miranda, how could I know that? That is not my DUTY. My only responsibility is to WRITE it. Someone else will see that it
CIRCULATES.” She was serenely sure of this outcome, and perhaps she knew best — best about that inexorable end and the personal
economies required to arrive there. As I watched Emily return page to packet, and as I glanced about her chamber, for the
first time the wisdom of her seclusion impressed me as purposeful rather than merely calculated. Genius, I had read, knew
itself, knew the elixir that soothed and inspired, and when to mine the gold. Perhaps Alan was right; I should judge Emily
by other standards. And yet . . . wasn’t I to judge friendship on its own terms — whether or not that friend had extraordinary
gifts?

Now I needed to leave; it was time for Elena’s bath. I was happy to part with Emily, but suddenly, walking down the familiar
streets and smiling back at the scattered snowdrops, it struck me that all afternoon, all through our conversation, Emily
and I had been using abstractions — unusual for women of our class and time. I realized that that was why I came here — and
would continue to. I too liked a change from “doily talk”!

But I had meant what I had said regarding my joy in parenting Elena. Aunt Helen and I discussed my deep wish and decided she
should write to Ethan, asking to prolong Elena’s visit. I was certain that, preoccupied with his own concerns, he would agree.
Then I wrote to Alan Harnett, assuring him that our work together would continue absolutely but that I must delay my return
to New York. I would take a leave of absence from my teaching position at Friends Seminary, but I would not abandon our important
goals; rather, I would pursue them from another angle from Amity Street, and with an additional, personal goal of rearing
Elena.

The decision felt as natural to me as the rhythm of a beating heart. When there is no home, no place of repose for the soul,
as Miss Adelaide once said, an emptiness follows that haunts you all your life. As Miss Adelaide had done for me, I would
do for Elena. She would grow up feeling a part of the encircling community that was Amherst.

I told Mary Crowell of my plans to stay while we were at a luncheon hosted by Mrs. Austin.

“Yes, I can see this is the right decision for you,” she said, smiling at me. “You look positively serene.”

“Mr. Harnett and I will continue to work together,” I explained. “I’ll work on more books, and we hope to open a model school
in New York next year.”

The woman seated to my right glanced up from her bisque. “You are Miranda Chase?” she asked. “I’ve been hoping to speak with
you.”

“Really?” I replied. “Why?”

“Oh, forgive me,” Mary said. “Let me introduce you. Miranda, this is Ruth Witherspoon. Her husband also teaches at the college.”

“I’ve heard about your work with children,” Ruth said. “Tell me, will you be teaching here in Amherst?”

“I hadn’t actually thought about it,” I confessed.

“What a splendid idea!” Mary said. “Many of the faculty wives have been discussing the choices for their children.”

“I’ve heard about some of your ideas for teaching,” Ruth said. “It’s exactly what I’d like to find for my Molly and William.”

“I will give this considerable thought,” I promised.

I looked around the table and realized many of the women there were married to men who taught at the college. These women,
without professions of their own, nevertheless stayed active and involved in the community, and they took their roles as mothers
and helpmeets very seriously. Not only would their children benefit from a kindergarten such as ours but I believed the mothers
would be inspired by becoming active partners in their children’s education.

I smiled. Emily was wrong; I was not subjugating my own will and goals by becoming Elena’s mother. Rather, I was expanding
my possibilities, growing deeper and in more directions.

Throughout the spring, Alan and I exchanged frequent letters on foundation business. I circulated among the faculty wives
at the college, asking questions to determine the needs of the community. Once I knew how many children we would serve in
this first year, I could set about finding a location. This work gave an invigorating structure to my days; my life wasn’t
solely determined by Elena’s schedule.

Spring also brought the last desperate battles of the war. Petersburg and then Richmond fell. When I visualized the whole
tragic state of Virginia, I saw it as one of our dressings from the temple, soaked in soldiers’ blood. Finally, on April 9,
General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, a village beside the final battlefield. Father had said
his study of the ancients taught him that victory would go to the side that could replenish its losses. Both sides began the
war by exchanging prisoners regularly; when this ceased two years ago, Mr. Edward Dickinson explained to the ladies of our
bandage factory, our Union leaders had decided that our side could “accept” two men dead for every one of theirs. And so it
had come to this — this war had literally bled our nation to death. The South was defeated simply because there was no one
left to do the fighting. At the end of four years of slaughter, the remains of the Confederate armies were outnumbered by
nearly a million men. And they had not eaten in three days.

Our ordered and stoic Puritan village went mad, in a mass delirium of speeches and parades and ceremonies. There were twenty-seven
boys who would come home now and seven who wouldn’t; we celebrated them all.

We were deafened by church bells and marching bands and hoarse, tireless orators — and even some cannons from Springfield!
At night we were dazzled by torchlight parades and huge bonfires leaping on the common. We cheered for an extravagance of
rockets that my delighted Elena named “sky flowers.” Friends, strangers, and enemies met on the streets of Amherst; they embraced
and wept.

There were persistent rumors of a small unyielding Confederate force cornered somewhere in the South. Nevertheless our rejoicing
continued from Sunday night to the following Saturday morning. Then a wild-eyed boy rushed from the telegraph office, and
a terrible silence fell on the village. The citizens stood about the streets, shocked beyond speech. Then the weeping women
started to drift home, and the quiet men began to take down the stands and bunting. The musicians put away their instruments.
A single bugler attempted taps and failed on the high note. The unimaginable had happened: four years and three days after
the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, our victorious president had been assassinated.

In his first peacetime leisure, he attended the theater. One of the famous Booth family of actors rushed into the presidential
box — and fired a bullet into what Father once called “Lincoln’s miraculous brain.”

Mr. Dickinson came out from The Homestead, stone-faced; he lowered his flag to half-mast. Then every church bell in town began
to ring at once — some held to a slow, portentous tolling, and others were loose in frenzy. This cacophony expressed our horror
for the next several hours.

Throughout the war’s duration, despite the inferno of suffering that consumed both our nation’s energy and its young, I believed
with all my heart (as did dear Davy) that the Union must be preserved. But now Lincoln’s murder made the peace meaningless
and the future dangerous.

The new Capitol dome had been completed just a month ago, just in time for Lincoln’s second inauguration. That morning of
hope was the first ceremony ever held there. Now our dead president lay in state under the new dome, and the silent citizens
filed past his bier to pay their respects, all day and all night.
Harper’s Weekly
related that the marble columns, wound round and round in black crepe, looked like a circle of ghastly bandaged limbs, and
I read in the
Republican
that crowds of Negroes stood outside the White House, waiting in the spring rain to hear what would become of them. I too
awaited the unknown, and I missed my father’s wise historical prescience. I wondered when the news would reach him in Sicily.

When the funeral bells stopped tolling at last, I tried to change — as the bells had changed — from panic to an orderly and
predictable routine. I had Elena and our life together, and I had the foundation, Davy’s gift. These two assets would provide
a framework for the years ahead.

Just as the apple trees blossomed, Emily summoned me to The Homestead. We had not seen each other since before Mr. Lincoln’s
death. At the nondenominational memorial mass that Emily’s father arranged so the community could remember the slain president
together, Miss Lavinia told me Emily had been unwell — “a nasty sniffle,” she said. Her eyes grazed the bodice of my black
dress, and her smug expression and preening suggested that she disapproved of its simplicity.