Afternoons with Emily (64 page)

— but what is possible is not necessarily wise. Divorce would expose you and the foundation to scandal and gossip as surely
as discovery would. You might lose the school, or lose Elena, and such a loss could not help but burden our life together,
until perhaps it broke under the weight. I cannot allow that.

We have each had a great love that came before. Please understand that I do not trivialize your feelings for Davy when I say
that your loss was easier: Davy’s death may have been brutal, but it was final. Since Cecilia’s illness she has been in a
kind of twilight state, neither fully alive nor fully dead, and I have shared that state with her. Your love brought me alive
again, and it is painful, for reasons I know you too well to believe you will not understand, to know Cecilia still dwells
on the shores of the River Styx. Before you think too harshly of me, remember that I am caught between Cecilia, sleeping in
the shadows, and you, waiting in the land of sunlight.

I read the letter through twice, then burned it. He loved me — I had not imagined that — but there was no end in sight, no
happiness for us. The sweet, piercing joy I felt on reading his words of love turned to ashes. Then to anger. I had struggled,
in the months since we last met, to master my feelings and live my life. Roger’s letter, tantalizing in its promise, had torn
open a wound that had begun to heal without my knowing it.

And Christmas, that time of light and joy in the Amherst year, was approaching.

The decorations went up. The schoolchildren made gifts and planned a pageant, and we needed many rehearsals for our caroling
night through the town. Elena, old enough to understand and anticipate the wonder of the holidays, was caught between giddiness
and an uncharacteristically angelic manner. I wore a mask of pleasure, hoping Elena would be happy if I could not. My act
did not convince me, and I think Aunt Helen was sometimes troubled by my unhappiness, but she was too tactful to say anything.

Emily, of course, was not.

Just before Christmas I decided to make up our quarrel. Emily-like, she greeted me as if there had never been a cross word
between us.

“Welcome, snowbird.” She helped me with my shawl and heavy coat. “Warm yourself by my fire.”

“It is bone-chilling out there,” I admitted with a shiver. “I had not realized before I left my house how much the temperature
had dropped.” I sat beside her stove and held my hands out to its warming haze.

“Have you been cooped up indoors as I have been?” Emily asked. “Once it becomes this cold, I don’t even venture into the garden.
I spend most of my time here or in the conservatory.” She stood by the window and gazed down at her neglected territory. I
noticed small transparent line drawings on the pane; she must have been amusing herself by making finger drawings in the condensation.

“How are your flowers thriving?” I asked. “I fear we lost some of Elena’s plants to the early frost.” I gave her a rueful
smile.

She playfully waggled a finger at me. “Not paying attention, I see. The gardener must always be on her toes. You see Nature
as benign, but I know better. She can be FIERCE and UNFORGIVING.”

Despite her scolding tone and strong words, I knew she was in jest. I held up my hands in a gesture of supplication. “I admit
it, it’s true. Elena and I missed our moment, and now Nature has taught us that everything has a cost.”

Now she turned wistful. “That is all too true.” She stared out her window a few moments, and I worried that my lighthearted
comment, completely in keeping with her own, had triggered the melancholia that I had detected in her on previous occasions.
But then she turned and gave me an appraising look. “I wonder what cost you are bearing now?”

“What do you mean?”

“There is something sad in you, something that all your worldly TRIUMPH does not touch. You have had challenging times and
now you reap your bounty, but it does not wholly . . . touch you.”

“I am only a little tired,” I told her. “We take the cars in a few days to visit Elena’s family in Springfield. There is so
much to do.”

“No. It is something more.” Emily tilted her head to one side, birdlike, and regarded me with fierce inquisitiveness. “If
you are not happy with your schools and your little girl” — as she had before, she made them sound trivial, as if they were
a child’s playthings — “there is something more.” Emily looked out the window, silvered with condensation and frost. “Do not
tell me you think you are in love, Miranda. I thought you had more IMPORTANT concerns.”

I stared at her. I had no intention of telling her about Roger, but I knew Emily would not be put off easily.

“Who is it? Do you intend to marry him?” Her mouth drew into a tight straight line, and she crossed her arms over her chest.

“I do not intend to marry anyone at this time,” I said crisply. It was hard to know whether to be appalled or amused.

“Good.” Emily smiled. “I have given the matter some thought, and I have decided you should NEVER marry.”

“
You
have decided? Don’t you think that perhaps that is a decision for me to make for myself?”

Emily gave no sign that she had heard me. “You could never obey a man’s WHIM. You could never be his PROPERTY.”

“You are right,” I said. “And I would never marry a man who would treat me in such a fashion.” I did not say that I had known
two men — Davy and Roger — who would not harbor such an attitude.

Emily’s eyes narrowed, and an odd glint came into them. “You misunderstand me. You are someone who should never . . . SUBMIT.
You do not have the temperament.”

I realized with a pang of shock that she was talking about intercourse.

“Emily, how can you possibly know that?”

“I know more than you think,” Emily told me enigmatically. She pulled her red shawl tighter across her shoulders, although
the little stove kept the room very warm. “I know you believe I am a naive recluse, but before you met me I lived in the wider
Amherst world. I am not as IGNORANT as you imagine.”

“If you intend to advise me, you had better talk plainly.” I was curious as to what she would say.

“I will try. You must listen carefully, for I could not possibly say this twice. I want to PROTECT you.”

What in the world — her strange, fanciful world — was coming now?

“My father bought The Homestead back for our family in 1855. Before we moved back in, when there were workmen making repairs
here, I came up to the barn very early one morning and went in to get a hoe. Probably he thought the place would be empty
at that hour.”

“Who thought, Emily?” I could not imagine where this story was heading.

“Whoever it was — that ANIMAL. He was there, up in the hayloft, with his — mate. They were like a boar and a sow, COUPLING.
Squealing and gasping and tearing at each other. You cannot possibly conceive what I heard and saw.”

I was speechless.

“I learned all I needed to know about so-called love that morning. Love is not sympathy and tender attentions. Love is bestial
violence. Love is RED MEAT.”

Her eyes glittered. I was repulsed to see how much she relished describing this incident to me so that I would be persuaded
to choose as she had.

“I consider myself very fortunate to have been forewarned,” she declared. “Think of the women who must go into marriage UNPREPARED.”
She gave a fastidious shudder. “But I was always conscious of the DARKNESS in men, and I want you to become so too, Miranda.
It was my duty to warn you.” The avidness left her face, and her demeanor returned to that of a prim spinster. I think it
was this, as much as anything else, that outraged me.

“But that is not what real love is — coupling in a barn. Emily, you have allowed this one dreadful incident to confirm everything
you believe, and now you want me to believe it too! Physical love need not be bestial, any more than an individual need be
bestial in any other part of his life. Love and physical love, together, are —” I stopped, caught in a memory of Roger’s hands
and lips, stirring my heart and body at once. My skin went hot all over, and I bit my lip, recalling ecstasy.

Then I saw Emily’s face. Her eyes were narrowed again.

“I am too late, I see,” she said with deadly quiet.

“No, Emily —” I reached a hand out to her, but she did not see it. She was watching my face. “It is not —”

“Who was it? Did he persuade you it was LOVE? Oh, yes.” She turned back to the window. Her voice, when she continued, was
low and sympathetic, but her eyes were avid. “You are still almost a child, despite your accomplishments. When did it happen?
Where? How did this man take advantage of you?”

“He didn’t.”
My voice was as quiet as her own, but Emily had touched the nerve laid bare by Roger’s letter and my fears about the future.

“How did it happen?”

Haltingly, I began to tell her. I had wanted so badly to confide in someone, and once I began I could not stop. Without my
being aware of it, she guided me to my red armchair and sat me there, and put a cup of tea in my hand. The tea cooled as I
talked, trying to give Emily, who so loved the small details of life, a sense of the golden warmth of Barbados, where everything,
including love, had seemed right and possible.

Emily listened intently.

“But now you have returned from EDEN,” she said when I finished my tale. “You do not mean to continue?”

“I do not know what I mean. Roger is right that many people — most people — would condemn what happened between us in Barbados
—”

“It has not happened since?” Emily looked at me sharply.

I shook my head. “Time, place, and the world have worked against us.”

“Miranda, you know that I do not place much stock in the CONVENTIONS of the world, but I think you have been FORTUNATE. You
might have been DISCOVERED and all your plans brought to ruin. You might have MARRIED and lost everything in submission to
a man’s WHIM. The physical submission is only part of it, Miranda, a sign of the larger submission of your dream and your
WORK to his. The WORK is the important thing. At least, to people such as you and I.”

I remembered the Emily who had stolen into the church for my father’s memorial; it seemed that this was the friend who sat
with me now, not the increasingly moody and self-involved woman of the last few months.

“Take comfort in your WORK, Miranda. And in TRUE FRIENDS. In time you will see more clearly and know that this excursion into
the — physical world — was an aberration. Men are — well, we need not discuss it further.”

My tea was cold. Emily took it and poured more. She passed a plate of her exquisite cakes to me. I sipped my tea and nibbled
at a cake, exhausted. It had taken more strength than I had imagined to keep my secret. And telling it had not changed Emily’s
mind; my experience of physical joy was so different from what she had seen, and her revulsion and terror had not been touched
by my story. Emily was what she was. I was too tired and too grateful for her sympathy to be troubled by how desperately Emily
wanted me to be what she was.

Eased of a burden of secrecy I had not realized was weighing upon me, I floated through Christmas. To Springfield and back
we went, and on New Year’s Day Aunt Helen, Elena, and I made our rounds of Amherst’s various festivities. This year Aunt Helen
surprised me by consenting to stop by The Evergreens for Mrs. Austin’s annual open house. “As Mrs. Austin has been so helpful
to the foundation, it is only mannerly that we call,” she said firmly. As we passed The Homestead that afternoon, I glanced
up and saw Emily in her familiar place at her window. On impulse I stopped.

“Would you mind taking Elena ahead?” I asked Aunt Helen. “I would like to wish Emily a happy New Year.”

“Can I come with you?” Elena asked, her sweet face red from the cold. “To meet your friend?”

I gazed down at her, wondering how I could make her understand that, due to Emily’s nature, Elena would not be welcome. “I’m
afraid not,” I said. “Miss Dickinson hardly sees anyone. She’s very private.”

Elena’s brow furrowed as she puzzled this out. “Is she all alone?”

I squeezed her mittened hand, touched by her obvious concern. “No, she has her sister and her mother and father with her too.”

Elena nodded, satisfied that my mysterious friend was not lonely.

Aunt Helen held out her hand to Elena. “I’m sure Mrs. Austin has all sorts of surprises in store.” She gave me a sly smile,
and I knew she was registering her disapproval of Sue Dickinson’s excesses while taking care not to spoil Elena’s pleasure
at the outing.

Emily still stood at her window, so I waved. Oddly, she didn’t wave back. I hurried up the walk to the door, and as I reached
for the door pull Lavinia bustled out, wrapped in several woolen layers. She started, then said, “Why, Miranda, Emily never
mentioned you would be visiting.”

“I was passing by,” I explained. “You are going to the Austins’?”

She nodded. “But of course Emily refused to join me. This year she didn’t even bother to make gingerbread for the little ones,
so I’ve had to find an alternative.” Lavinia held up a large glass jar bedecked with ribbons. Inside I could see candies as
colorful as rubies, emeralds, and topazes. She gave me a conspiratorial smile and lowered her voice. “I must confess, I did
enjoy making the selection!”

I smiled back as she gestured me inside. “Emily?” I called up the stairs, surprised that she wasn’t hovering in her doorway;
she must have heard me talking to Lavinia. Hearing no reply, I went up and knocked at the closed door. “Emily?” I repeated.

“Come in, if you like” came the indifferent reply.

I stepped into her overheated room. She sat at her desk, her back to me.

“I wanted to wish you a happy New Year,” I said.

“I saw you,” she replied without turning around. “Hurrying, scurrying, establishing your social network in a PUBLIC display
of meeting and greeting.”

Her hostility was evident, and her interpretation of our leisurely and pleasant tour of the neighborhood was so far from the
mark that for a moment I was speechless. The only sound in the room was the hissing of the stove and the scratching of Emily’s
pen on her paper. Had I interrupted her writing? Is that what made her so unpleasant? Even so, that was no excuse for her
tone and her judgment.