I didn’t say anything.
“And if you’d feel better talking to someone who isn’t part of Hawthorne—”
“No.”
“There’s no shame in calling a doctor when you’re sick, Emily. And there’s no shame in seeing a therapist when—”
“No.”
She was quiet for a minute. Then she went on, “You may not believe this, but the girls are very concerned about you. Brianna has asked after you, and so have Natasha and Chloe.”
Chloe? Anxious Girl was worried about me?
“Lucy,” Ms. Lurie went on, “has practically demanded to be allowed to come and see you, and when I told her that wasn’t a good idea just now, she grilled me quite thoroughly on your eating, sleeping, and work habits.”
“Don’t tell her about that,” I warned, gesturing at my plate. “She’ll call the sugar police.”
Ms. Lurie smiled. “I’m very interested to see where life takes that girl, or rather where she takes life. I have the feeling Hawthorne may be hatching its first CEO.”
She became serious again. “I haven’t wanted to bring this up—”
Don’t.
“—but I know that M is very worried about you.”
She waited.
“There’s no reason for her to be,” I said when I couldn’t stand the silence any longer.
This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As freezing persons, recollect
the Snow—
First Chill—then Stupor—then
the letting go—
I genuinely thought pushing M away would take things back to where they’ve always been.
It’s not just that I knew I had to do it. I believed the hard part would be finding the strength for that push. And then after, I’d simply curl up into my usual cold ball of nastiness and get on with my old life.
It turns out there’s all the difference in the world between renouncing the idea of companionship, and giving a specific someone up.
She’s hurt, I guess, but she’ll get over it. She has other chances.
I don’t.
Afraid! Of whom am
I afraid?
I tried to go to the dining room to have breakfast this morning and I couldn’t.
I’m not afraid, any more than I’m afraid to fly to the sun. I just can’t.
Do they think I’m just being stubborn?
Now I know how vampires feel when they don’t have an invitation. Only they can’t get in, and I can’t get out. And neither of us can even bring ourselves to touch the door.
I reason, Earth is short—
And Anguish—absolute—
And many hurt
But, what of that?
Maybe someone wants me to be willing to sacrifice myself—to offer my own life. “No, not her—take me instead.” Boom! The curse is lifted and the fairy tale ends.
But no one’s ever given me the chance. The killings go on and no one consults me.
Unless the murderer is waiting for me to commit suicide.
That’s a pretty roundabout way to kill someone. Not to mention inefficient.
But it would work, wouldn’t it?
Even if it didn’t end the murders, I couldn’t be to blame for them anymore. And I wouldn’t have to see them.
I enjoy much with a precious fly, during sister’s absence, not one of your blue monsters, but a timid creature, that hops from pane to pane of her white house, so very cheerfully, and hums and thrums, a sort of speck piano. Tell Vinnie I’ll kill him the day she comes, for I sha’n’t need him any more, and she don’t mind flies!
There are no flies in my room. I do see a spider now and then, which probably accounts for the lack of insects.
I can’t remember where I read about prisoners making friends with bugs and spiders. I hope it was just a story. Even I’m not crazy desperate enough to try that.
Of course, a pet I don’t care about would be ideal under the circumstances, but it does seem to defeat the whole point of having a pet. Surely there ought to be more to it than simply being conscious in the same room as another conscious creature.
Assuming spiders and flies even count as conscious.
I guess the fact that we even have to ask says a lot right there.
I wouldn’t mind trying to keep a mouse as a pet. That might work. It’s an animal most people see as a pest, and it’s a survivor, and it’s much more companionable than a housefly.
But a cage of any kind would be a dead giveaway: someone I care about lives in here.
Maybe I could just let it wander free? Surely even my watcher wouldn’t notice a free-range mouse.
That wouldn’t exactly be a pet, though. I might as well let rats infest my house.
People used to get cats just to keep that kind of vermin under control. It’s not as if Ma and Pa Ingalls went shopping for cat food. F ind a rat or go hungry was the rule for cats back then.
I wonder if Lavinia Dickinson fed her cats or just let them catch their dinners.
Considering the names she gave them—Tabby, Drummydoodles, Buffy, and Tootsie—I have a hard time imagining them as bloodthirsty hunters.
Of the two of them—solid, practical Lavinia and dreamy, poetic Emily—you’d think Emily would have been the crazy cat lady. But she hated cats. Emily was pro-dog, pro-bird, and pro-mouse. Cats had no place in her universe, other than a destructive one.
She didn’t keep any animals as pets except one dog. Carlo. Her father got him for her, hoping he would make her feel safe, and he did.
Dickinson named her dog Carlo after a dog in Jane Eyre. She was okay going out and about when she had him with her. She went for long rambles, and even took him on visits with her. He shows up in her poetry.
And then he died and her life curved completely inward.
My life closed twice before its close
She was already named Zoë when Aunt Paulette brought her home. I don’t remember it being a holiday, or any particular day at all. I just remember Aunt Paulette saying she hoped I’d stop moping around now, for God’s sake.
Violet was gone and I don’t know if I was finally starting to get the hint. It wouldn’t have mattered much either way, since no one near my age wanted anything to do with me now, not even to make fun of me. But I couldn’t have understood completely, because I was overjoyed to be given Zoë.
And either Aunt Paulette didn’t understand the rules yet or she thought there was some kind of loophole for animals. I think the first one. Aunt Paulette wouldn’t accept the idea of a universe she’s not the center of.
Sometimes I wonder how it was clear to my watcher that Aunt Paulette was nowhere near enough to even my poor desperate heart to be in danger. She did take me in. She took care of me. And she even did non-required things like giving me a dog.
But it was all with a great air of impatience and annoyance. Even bringing Zoë home was clearly not an oh that poor child—she needs somebody to love who’ll love her right back moment. It was more like if that kid doesn’t stop moping around my beautiful house I swear I’ll kick her out into the streets and there’s not a jury of my peers that will convict me.
I was a kid. Kids like dogs. Aunt Paulette liked being right, and being left alone. Bringing home a dog would give her a little of each.
Aunt Paulette is going to die of extra old age.
“You can choose a new name for her, if you want,” Aunt Paulette had said as Zoë shyly licked my hand and then my face. Aunt Paulette made it sound as if she were granting me a huge favor. But I didn’t think it was right to rename someone who’d already had a name long enough to get used to it. She was a dog, not a doll. Anyway, Zoë was a cute name.
Zoë was a beagle, which surprised me since she didn’t look anything like Snoopy, even allowing for artistic license.
“You have to walk her a lot,” Aunt Paulette warned me. “Not just to let her go to the bathroom, but for exercise. She needs a lot of exercise. Two or th
ree long walks a day, and let her run around in the backyard off her leash, too. And you have to clean up after her when she does her business. I got you some special bags. You have to tell me when you’re running low, so I can get more. Don’t wait and then tell me when you’re already out of them,” she warned, since she thought I was a certified idiot. “Tell me when you still have a few left.”
Zoë’s fur was pretty short, but she shed a lot, so Aunt Paulette was always complaining about hair all over the place. Which was totally unfair. The housekeeper, Jonella, adored Zoë, and Jonella was the one who had to do all the extra vacuuming.
Zoë also smelled very doggy, which meant that I began to, too. More for Aunt Paulette to complain about. I was baffled by that. I liked to hug Zoë just for a whiff of her scent.
On the plus side, Zoë was small enough to not be in the way when she was inside, but not so small that she was easy to trip over. Aunt Paulette turned this into a fault anyway, calling Zoë a sneak and a thief.
It was true that Zoë ate anything she could find, and she could find a lot. She sniffed out treats Aunt Paulette thought she’d tucked away securely. Aunt Paulette accused me of feeding Zoë on the sly until Zoë devoured an entire loaf of bread that Aunt Paulette had left on a counter while I was at school.
After that, Aunt Paulette stopped blaming me for the disappearing food. She also started keeping Zoë out in the backyard when I wasn’t home.
I got up an hour early every school morning so I could take Zoë for a long walk, and then I walked her as soon as I got home. I hated having to leave her for so many hours, but there was no getting around it. They wouldn’t let me take her to school, and they wouldn’t let me not go.
Jonella would take Zoë inside for a few hours every day while I was gone. She liked Zoë, and Zoë liked her. And Zoë barked a lot if she was outside alone for too long. It was sad to hear, and the neighbors complained.
Sometimes Jonella would even take Zoë for a walk “to get her jitters out.” She couldn’t do it often, though, because Aunt Paulette would grumble that Jonella wasn’t getting paid to do any such thing. That made me furious. The house was still as clean as ever, and Jonella was doing extra just to be nice. If anything, she should have been paid more—or at least thanked. Instead, Aunt Paulette made it sound as if Jonella was dodging work, when anyone with half an eye could see that Jonella was the only one at Aunt Paulette’s house who did any work.
Jonella was home sick one day with a bad cold, so Aunt Paulette left Zoë in the backyard the whole day while I was in school.
Jonella would have known what to do when Zoë got bored and restless and loud enough to be a nuisance, but Aunt Paulette’s dog expertise seemed to begin and end at bossing everyone else around.
Zoë was out there unattended long enough that she could have chewed through our little fence if that had been the only way for her to escape. But she was a jumper, a climber, and a digger—all of which Aunt Paulette could have known from the beagle research she spent so much time bragging about, or from her attempts to keep Zoë away from the food they both adored.
At any rate, Aunt Paulette didn’t pay any attention when Zoë kept barking and barking, and then she didn’t give it a thought when she wasn’t barking anymore—other than to be glad that she’d finally stopped making all that damned noise.
They told me it must have been a car, but one of the lovelier kids at school left a newspaper article on my desk. It went into a lot of detail about how Zoë looked when they found her, and warned local dog owners to keep a closer-than-usual eye on their pets until the perpetrator was found.
It’s hard for me to remember the order of events because it all happened at about the same time, but Jonella left and Aunt Paulette stopped talking to me and I was handed a new name and sent to boarding school.
I’ve dropped my Brain—
My Soul is Numb—
The Veins that used to run
Stop palsied—’tis Paralysis
Done perfecter in Stone—
People think Dickinson stayed inside all the time after she came home from boarding school, but that’s not quite right. She just didn’t leave her father’s property. Not after Carlo died.
She still loved to garden. Sometimes she’d do it at night, so she could be sure nosy neighbors wouldn’t bother her. Word got around, though, and they’d look for the light of the lantern she brought with her, whispering excitedly if they saw it. It was almost as good as catching a glimpse of her.
Is that what’s going to happen to me? Will I become the myth of Hawthorne, with Ms. Lurie my Lavinia and my Maggie all in one?
I can’t risk that.
But I also can’t do anything about it just now.
The movements that used to come so easily to me are completely out of my power. Gone as if by amputation, and I don’t even have phantom limb syndrome.
I remember being able to walk down the hall and sit in the lounge or the dining room with other people—a dozen or two!—but I don’t remember how it felt and I definitely don’t miss it.
I just keep wondering if it really could have been me doing all that.
I suppose in a way it wasn’t.
I can’t even imagine leaving Hawthorne, so what’s going to happen when I have to?
They’ll have to put me outside, and then nothing. A statue, life-size in marble.
“Heaven”—is what I cannot
reach!
Fluttered around in the hall a bit this morning after I heard Ms. Lurie go out for her walk.
Most people wait until they die before they start haunting a house.
Time is a Test of
Trouble—
But not a Remedy—
If such it prove, it
prove too
There was no Malady—
I keep waiting for Ms. Lurie to say something. Something about all this room service she keeps offering me, for instance, which I don’t remember seeing anything about in the breakdown of Hawthorne’s tuition fees.
She doesn’t. She just keeps bringing me soft, simple, sweet food and rich whole milk. Strong tea in the morning; chamomile at night. And a vitamin pill once a day so I don’t get scurvy.
Every day she also brings me a small bowl of soup. I force a few spoonsful down until I can’t hide the effort and she gently moves the bowl away, telling me it’s supposed to be an option, not a punishment.
(It’s a new kind of soup every day. Miss Miller must be losing her mind trying to concoct a bowl I’ll enjoy. Apparently soup is beneficial to the ailing and that’s all there is to it.)
Then, while I’m eating something that actually tastes good, Ms. Lurie sits and talks quietly on soothing subjects. She brings me little finds from her walks—a leaf or a blossom or an herb—and tells me stories about them.
It’s lovely and terrifying.
What if someone is watching closely enough to see
I can’t stop thinking and when I’m able to sleep at all I’ve started to have quiet, bloody nightmares on the subject, but there’s nothing more I can do right now. Nothing more than the nothing I’m spending my days trapped in. I can’t chase Ms. Lurie away the way I chased M and I can’t run away myself. Not yet.
But I will. I have to, so I will.
I’ll leave as soon as I can and then Ms. Lurie will be safe.
I’ll get stronger and keep her safe and that’s as much as I can bear to think about the future just now.
Today as she was about to sit down on the foot of my bed, she picked up a piece of paper that was sitting there. She was just moving it aside, but I grabbed it out of her hands and crumpled it up. “That’s just junk,” I muttered, pitching it into the wastebasket.
“Emily, you know I never tell you girls what to do,” Ms. Lurie began.
“Good.”
“Emily.”
“Okay, okay. But?”
“But I’m a firm believer in never throwing away first drafts, no matter how hopeless they may appear.�
��
“It’s not like that,” I said quickly, before she could get too far into the story of how Robert Louis Stevenson burned his first try at writing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and we’ve all regretted it ever since. “It wasn’t writing, exactly. I mean, it was writing, but it wasn’t creative. It was just copying.”
Ms. Lurie looked amused. “Given the lack of tests at Hawthorne, I’m surprised you’re feeling any need to plagiarize. I’m glad you’re admitting it so readily, though.”
“Not that kind of copying.”
“Of course not, Emily. I was just being silly.”
“I was playing around with an idea—a project I want to do with Dickinson’s writing,” I said. “I mean the writing itself—how it looks, not just what it says. Kind of an art project. But I can’t get it to look right. It never comes out the way I see it in my head. I need to be an artist to do this right, and I’m not.”
There was a long pause while neither of us said the name of the person we were both thinking about.
Then Ms. Lurie said carefully, “I think many artists feel the kind of frustration you’re talking about—of being unable to capture the image that inspired them.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to sound as if I were begging for compliments or asking for encouragement on the artistic path. Also, there’s a difference between not liking the image you create because it isn’t quite right, and rejecting something you’ve produced because it looks entirely stupid.
Ms. Lurie was looking at me.
“I’m getting stronger,” I said, just to say something.
She smiled. “I’m glad,” she said. “But there’s no timetable, Emily. You have as long as you need.”
I’ve always hated phrasing like that. Like if someone says, “Have as much cake as you want!” But what if you want all the cake? What if you want more cake than there even is?
I didn’t say any of this, but it must have shown in my expression. “However long you need,” Ms. Lurie said again, emphatically. “If you want to stay a decade at Hawthorne, you’re welcome to.”
The Letting Go Page 17