Afternoons with Emily (63 page)

“Siobhan, come and join us,” Alan said. “You have worked hard too, getting this all ready.”

Siobhan colored. Inviting the servants to the party was not a usual practice, but this was not a “usual” school. She wiped
her hands on her apron, then took the proffered champagne glass. “Thank you, sir. I’ve never had French wine before.”

“To our shared success,” Roger said.

“To Miranda,” Alan said.

“And to Davy,” I added. Solemnly we raised our glasses together.

Then, as we sipped, we settled into chairs, filled with the happy fatigue that follows hard and satisfying work. Little Henry
crawled into his mother’s lap while Alan perched on the arm of the chair beside Fanny. Julian sat on the floor at her feet.

“Should we go out for a celebratory dinner?” Alan asked. “I don’t believe I managed to eat anything today.”

“I am afraid I am too tired to eat,” I confessed.

Fanny gave me a grateful look; I knew I had done her a boon by sending her husband home with her.

“Siobhan, why don’t you just leave those until tomorrow?” I suggested. “You have had a long day on your feet.” She had begun
to gather up the glasses.

“Let me take these up to the kitchen, ma’am, and then, if it’s truly all right, I’d be that grateful to take a rest,” she
agreed.

I saw the Harnett family and Roger out the front door and heard Siobhan retiring. I sat down in the classroom for a few minutes,
exhausted and exhilarated, so I was there to answer the door when Roger returned.

“I told Alan I had left something behind,” he said quietly. “I barely spoke a word to you today.”

I waited. I could not tell what he wanted me to say; I was not certain what I wished to say myself. Roger stood, his hat in
his hand, looking at me with a longing that spoke to my own.

“I will not stay long. I wish I could —”

“Why can you not?” I asked. “As far as the world knows, you left. Siobhan has gone to her quarters. You could stay and talk
—”

Roger shook his head. “Talk?” His tone made the idea absurd. “For all our sakes, I will only stay a few minutes. You will
be returning to Amherst tomorrow, I imagine. I wanted only to ask how you are and to let you know that you are never far from
my thoughts.”

I wanted to weep with frustration. “I am very busy,” I said at last. Did he wish me to say that I was pining for love? Or
that I was not? “And when I return to Amherst I will, I suppose, be busier.”

“You will not find time to come back to New York again for a time,” he said.

“Probably not,” I agreed. “Will that present a problem for you?”

Roger smiled unhappily. “It is probably better not even to speak of it,” he said. “I wanted only to see you, Miranda. And
to tell you that someday . . .”

“I know,” I said coldly. “Thank you.”

I stepped back, closed the door quietly, and went upstairs to my solitary bed.

AMHERST AND NEW YORK

1867–1869

I
returned to Amherst in a fog of misery. The long journey home gave me far too much time to think: Had I done the right thing
in sending Roger away? Worse, had he ever loved me, had I imagined feelings he had never shown? I barely thought about the
school or the opening. When I reached home and Aunt Helen lovingly demanded every detail of my trip, I had to wrench myself
out of my preoccupation to give her the answers she wanted. I described the day, the press of visitors, their comments, and
the enrollment list Mrs. Quinn had compiled during the reception.

Aunt Helen clapped her hands with pleasure. “Miranda, I could not be more delighted! After all your hard work, to get the
school off to such a promising start!”

I agreed, hollowly, that it had been a wonderful day, an excellent beginning.

“Is something wrong, my dear? You sound —”

“Just tired, Aunt. We worked very hard to prepare, and the reception was exhausting. And then the trip home . . .”

The tiny frown of concern between Aunt Helen’s brows smoothed instantly, and she swept me up to my room, put me to bed, brought
me soup and tea, and instructed me to sleep. “Tomorrow you will be right as rain!”

If only it had been so simple. In my memory the days that followed were misty gray. Not the black, lost days of my life after
Davy’s death but a strained, nightmarish time when the world was drained of its color. Even the crimsons and ochers of an
Amherst-leaf fall seemed pallid and sere. I went through the motions at school and at home, wrote thank-you letters to Mrs.
Austin, Alan, and Lucy Quinn for their hard work in making the reception a success. I breathed no word of my unhappiness to
my friends and family — particularly to Aunt Helen and Elena. The pretense was exhausting, when everything, even Elena’s sweet
face, reminded me of Roger. When I thought of him, I doubted my memory, his heart, my heart. Was I not pretty enough? Not
clever enough? Had I given myself to him too readily, too easily? Had all our talk in Barbados of a rich future been make-believe?
Was I really just a great fool?

If Aunt Helen had wanted all the details of the opening, Emily Dickinson, predictably, did not. I visited her a fortnight
after I returned, still in my gray mood but pretending to be the normal, sociable Miranda in the hope that that would somehow
become true. When I mentioned that I had met Colonel Higginson, she demanded a detailed description of him and of our meeting.
I did my best, and at last she sat back with the air of a well-fed kitten.

“Well, Miranda, and did you like my choice of Preceptor?”

“I did, very much indeed. I found the colonel sensitive, intelligent, and gentlemanly.”

She nodded, as if taking the compliment for herself. “His letters have already shown me all of that. Now I will be able to
imagine his face when he writes to me. We talk as very OLD, CLOSE FRIENDS, you know.”

She was claiming her territory, and I allowed it without demur; competing in this fashion did not interest me. Instead, I
acknowledged her special rank in the colonel’s esteem.

“Colonel Higginson wishes you were his protégé
,
Emily,” I said. “He told me so.”

She was dismissive. “Yes, he would like me to be his REFLECTION in the mirror.”

She was equally dismissive when I went on to tell her about the opening and the school. All she would say was, “I am sure
it went very well, for that SORT of thing.”

“
What
sort of thing?” I was tiring of playing this game.

“The SOCIAL sort of thing, of course. Not my sort of triumph at all. My successes are all PRIVATE ones. I suppose you were
CHARMING. Weaving WEBS OF INTEREST. Such a great scurrying to support one little school.”

Anger pierced the gray in my heart and my mind like a lick of flame.

“That
little
school will educate hundreds of children who will go and make their marks upon the world. I expect this sort of small-minded
belittling from old men and timid matrons, not from the forward-thinking Miss Dickinson! Or is it just because the idea came
from me?
One little school
— I don’t presume to criticize your poetry, Emily, so don’t presume to talk about
my little school.
” I was so angry I could barely speak.

Emily stood stock-still, her tiny frame rigid, her hands clenched. And then her light brown eyes crinkled up, and she began
to laugh.

“Oh, Miranda! You’re like a daisy-spotted hill suddenly ERUPTING into flame! My dear Miss Vesuvius!” She crowed as if at a
tremendous joke. “You — criticize poetry?”

I stared at her.

Emily continued to laugh, but there was a steeliness in her eyes. “I think all your WORK has tired you. You’re clearly not
yourself. Go home, go home, and visit me when you’re in your right MIND!”

I left, the anger churning in me with each step. As I went, an echo of something she had said about Colonel Higginson occurred
to me.

What do you want me to be, Emily, if not a reflection of you?

I did not see Emily again for a long while, nor did I wish to see her, yet she managed to insert herself into my life in a
curious way. One afternoon, while Elena accompanied Aunt Helen on her shopping expedition, I was planting bulbs at our front
walk when I had unexpected callers — two smiling women, one my age and one younger, wearing plain worn country clothes and
antique boots. They believed they were expected; they kept saying, “She told us it was all arranged.”

Eventually we sorted it out. The ladies were the Misses Norcross, from Monson. Emily’s legendary “little cousins.” Emily had
decided we should meet and sent them to call — without telling me. I was not surprised by Emily’s failure in etiquette: she
could be quite exacting about social niceties when it served her or forget them entirely when it did not.

I brought the women inside. They gave my house one or two knowledgeable compliments and murmured, “That’s my last duchess,
there upon the wall,” as they met a Latham matriarch, frowning in the parlor. They had a subtle, threadbare dignity.

“Are you in Amherst for a Dickinson matter?” I asked as we took tea.

“Nothing particular, Miss Chase,” answered Miss Louise Norcross, the confident elder sister. “Emily sends her carriage for
us sometimes.”

“When she is feeling maternal!” explained Miss Fanny, who was dainty and ringleted. “She likes to give us a little outing.”

“Do forgive me,” I said, “but somehow I had the impression, from Emily, that you were both — younger.”

“Emily prefers to have us younger and smaller than we actually are.” Miss Louise smiled. “Of course she does the same thing
to you. She sees you — or at any rate describes you — as a headstrong schoolgirl.”

“And about her own height!” Miss Fanny added.

Our laughter was a treaty, a wordless acceptance. We would not deny Emily’s fantasies — and we would not call them lies. This
reminded me of a poem Emily had given me a few years ago. I brought out the draft to show the Norcross cousins.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

“Why, this is precisely the way Emily thinks,” Miss Louise observed.

I nodded. “It’s true. She is saying, ‘Never use the whole truth. Change it, fix it, tell it
slant.
’ ”

We passed a delightful afternoon. The Norcrosses were witty and cultured company. My heart went out to them — forced by poverty
and war into vicarious lives. Emily’s “little cousins” darned their gloves and drank weak tea, waiting to be needed. They
went from one house to another, “helping out” in family crises — journeys and illnesses, moves and births and deaths. They
were part of a new generation of surplus women: girls and young women whose lives never developed, whose lovers were killed
before they had ever met. These tragic figures, prepared only for the homes they would never have, the children they would
never bear, affected me deeply. Or the slightly older women, widowed before their time, often with few resources — social,
emotional, or, often, financial. Had they and their generation been educated for a profession, they might have been useful
now — working to heal the nation. Without Davy’s foresight and generosity, without the foundation, I might have been among
the “extra women” — a new phrase in society for an unevenly seated dinner party but also a pitiless truth about a new class.

Again, I found myself troubled by Emily’s tunnel vision, her inability to care how she diminished the Norcross cousins by
keeping them
small.
She could not see their struggles or their worth. And as Miss Louise and Miss Fanny revealed, she did the same thing to me.

Halloween jack-o’-lanterns were carved, shone their orange light into the frosty darkness, and were discarded. Halfway into
November, a letter came from Roger on a day when the sky was steel colored, and the trees, stripped of their autumn colors,
seemed to huddle together against the cold and wind. I took the fat envelope up to my room and read it in private. It was
as well that I did so.

Miranda,

I have not written, not because my heart was not full but because I could not think of what I could possibly say. I understand
your feelings; I wish you could see that this is a hard time for me as well. My feelings are all that they have ever been,
but I know, as you do too, if only you will remember it, that everything you and I value — excepting only our love — could
be destroyed by discovery. Would parents send their children to be educated at a school organized by a woman known to be in
an illicit relationship? You have said Elena’s father is a conservative man. How long would he permit Elena to remain with
you if our relationship were uncovered? Would your dear aunt Helen be able to accept so unorthodox a union? You have managed,
with tact and charm and your formidable intelligence, to carve out a profession in a new field, a field that stands to benefit
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children.

I do not think you would wish to risk any of that.

It is fully as difficult for me to contain expression of my feelings, on paper or in person. I was hurt when you sent me away
in New York, but after much reflection I know that you were right. That was my own longing speaking and not good sense. That
same longing drove me to investigate a solution — a difficult and imperfect one but one that was much on my mind. I have studied
the law on this point, and I know it would be possible for me to divorce Cecilia —

I drew a breath and stared at the letter in dismay. Divorce? I had never met a divorced person; I did not think that anyone
in my family had ever done so. No one but those experiencing the most desperate cases of depravity, cruelty, or abandonment
obtained a divorce. If Roger, upright and honorable as I knew him to be, could suggest such a thing, his feelings were more
engaged than I had imagined.