The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson

by Jerome Charyn

  “I will close my eyes,” she said, “and you will remove that adventuress from your lap.”

  He had the want to answer Miss Farley, but the words wouldn’t come. I was proud to be an adventuress, and I would have told her so, but I couldn’t interfere in the mechanics of his house in Salem.

  Phil struggled to hold me, and then the struggle stopped. The tears were streaming now, and they didn’t resemble worms or wet stars. I climbed off his lap. I’d rather croak than have the Little Lord Protectress see me cry. She took my Phil by the hand.

  “Miss Emily, your sister is worse than you are. I have never in my life endured such an affliction—cats, cats, cats!”

  I’m not certain what I would have done had Mother not been paralyzed. I might have scratched Farley’s eyes out and barricaded Phil inside our doors. But the town marshal would have come and put both Dickinson daughters in Jail. It was Farley who had jurisdiction over him, not his Jumbo. A bride-to-be didn’t have a whole lot of rights, particularly one who couldn’t see herself in Salem as Mrs. Jumbo Lord.

  Letters still flew between his town and mine. He hadn’t lost his ardor on the page, no matter how apoplexy had disabled him. Our courtship seemed to prosper from afar, like some wild plant with its own irrational roots. That plant would not have survived away from Father’s house, but I could not bear to tell him so. His Jumbo performed in her own Circus of little lies. I was a dreadful coward. I told Phil nothing at all.

  Perhaps I deceive myself. He must have known we would never marry, and it had nothing to do with the bulldog or Ma-ma or Salem’s soil. The vail I wore was my own wildflower. And a man might have been scorched had he ever dared peek under that net.

  44.

  I WASN’T BLIND TO THE ABUNDANCE AROUND ME—THE PIPES from Pelham that sent water gurgling into our kitchen, the Ice Cream parlor with its blood-red awning, the new Roller Skating rink. The Queen Recluse never actually saw the rink. I had to depend on my spies. Lavinia was frightened to prance around on wooden wheels, but Mattie skated. So did Sue. She had special skating skirts sewn for Mattie and herself. They practiced duets together, took lessons from the local skating champion. No one was a match for them in their blue skirts until Mabel Loomis Todd came onto the rink. She could skate with one leg held high in the air until she resembled a schooner with her own taut body as a mast.

  She wore a skirt of many layers, like a Russian ballerina, and long white stockings that snaked above her kneecaps. Little Sister was disturbed by Mabel’s “daring show of flesh,” but I doubt that I would have been. Spectators who sat on benches surrounding the rink couldn’t take their eyes off Amherst’s new ballerina. I tried to imagine her marauding among the other skaters, marking an infallible line as she wove around them. They must have moved in stuttering Prose, unable to penetrate the circumference of this Poet in white stockings. I wish some angel had transported me there. I would have danced with Mabel Loomis Todd, but only in my mind.

  Yes, a true rival had come to town the very year my Salem took ill. She was the ravishing young wife of the College’s new astronomy instructor. Mabel had a multiplicity of talents—poet, pianist, painter of flowers—and a burning ambition to become America’s own Charlotte Brontë. She was a metropolitan who had grown up in the District of Columbia, while with all her soirees and musicales and skating skirts, Mrs. Austin was still very much the country kangaroo. At first they were fast friends. Susan had adopted Mabel, brought the astronomy instructor’s wife into her own little cabal. They went on excursions together with Ned and Mattie in a hired coach. They had picnics in the mountains. Ned, twenty at the time, fell in love with Mabel, who was twenty-five, and Susan seemed to encourage this infatuation. But she hadn’t expected her own husband to occupy the territories of her son—Mabel would become Austin’s exclusive business. My poor brother had perhaps found a Siren worthy of himself.

  He and Mabel began to meet in our parlor; it was Sister who encouraged such rendezvous. She was fiercely loyal to Brother and had also found a way to avenge Susan’s rough treatment of her cats. Austin and Mabel sat on the same divan where I had once sat with my Salem. But I did not see them together in the house. Always the good conspirator, Vinnie had timed their visits to the very minute I was in the conservatory with my plants and flowers, in the kitchen with the freshwater pipes, or upstairs in my room. But I did catch a glimpse of her once, while I hid in the Northwest Passage and could not be seen. My heart thumped as I watched Mabel, who was no taller than Susan, but had a soft mouth and huge brown orbits instead of eyes. I would have loved to conquer her myself had I been a lofty soldier and not some prickly pear.

  It wasn’t Vinnie who bore the brunt of these rendezvous, but myself. Empress Susan had one of her royal messages delivered through the medium of our housekeeper, Maggie Maher: I was summoned to meet Sue in the Northwest Passage at 41/2 the next afternoon.

  HER HIGHNESS WASN’T LATE. BOTH OF US STOOD IN THE strange half-darkness that was so soothing for me. My eyes had gone weak again, and I had to squint in order to determine the outline of her face; she was trembling as I had never seen her tremble. Sue was riddled with rum. I could taste the Domingo on her breath. She started to reel like a ship in choppy water. And then she capsized, toppled onto the floor, sat in the folds of her gown, her face mottled with a terrible rash that seemed to spread like poison through her skin. I was bewildered, lost. Sue couldn’t seem to rouse herself. And she slapped my hand away when I tried to help.

  “I wouldn’t hold a witch’s paw,” she said. I might have been flattered if I hadn’t pitied her so. Witches write Poetry, witches dance in the dark.

  “You have conspired against me. You are worse than a witch.”

  And then Sue began to rise up like some sea monster with a mottled face. But she couldn’t stand without holding the wall. And while she was struggling, I ran to the kitchen and returned with a chair. It took her more than a minute to negotiate herself into the wicker seat. But even in her wretched state she was still the Queen of Pelham, and I could have been the queen’s servant.

  “Dear, might I trouble you for a glass of water?”

  I brought her a pitcher of well water, and both of us drank from metal cups. She patted her lips with the handkerchief in her sleeve.

  “Emily, why have you welcomed this slattern into your house?”

  I was the one who trembled now, defeated by so fine a riposte when I hadn’t even attacked.

  “I welcomed no one. I haven’t met Mabel Todd. But this is also my brother’s house, and he is free to come and go with his guests.”

  “Oh, you are as much a slattern as she.”

  For a moment I thought Susan had gone mad. But I smiled in the dark, a bitter smile. Sister Sue was calling me Cleopatra.

  She continued. “Miss Farley said you have a craziness for men—I should have listened.”

  The trembling stopped as I put on my Plumage. “Listened to what?”

  “I saw you once in the parlor, sitting in a man’s lap.”

  Dear God, I wanted to slap her face, and I might have done so had the Queen of Pelham not been such a wreck in her chair. But I couldn’t have her malign me and Phil.

  “That was Judge Lord and his Jumbo—and he was probably sitting in my lap.”

  “Go on,” she said. “Laugh at me. You’re not the one who has to suffer. I married a philanderer, an uncouth man.”

  I could feel Susan’s poison sprout on my own skin. None of us were philanderers. If Austin had strayed, it’s because Sue had shuttered him, shuttered her queen’s boudoir.

  “Uncouth? He’s the kindest brother in the world.”

  “So kind he calls you cracked.”

  “And suppose I am?” I insisted. “Suppose I am—cracked a little. You pushed Austin away from your own affections. Didn’t you tell me once that your wedding was nothing more than a kiss and a soggy piece of cake?”

  “I said no such thing.”

  She wasn’t even true to our own little s
ecrets. Perhaps all her imbibings had pickled her mind. I didn’t mean to invoke a dead man but I did.

  “You were in love with Sam Bowles, always in love with him.”

  Her eyes began to wander, and she shivered in her chair. “But I never sat upon his lap.”

  “Perchance you should,” I said, like one of Cleopatra’s snakes. I loved her and did not know how to declare this love except through little bites.

  The shipwreck began to move. She stumbled out of her chair.

  “Susie, I didn’t…”

  But she was already gone. And for the first time I didn’t follow her after one of her explosions, didn’t smooth the roughened lines of our friendship, didn’t hide my Plumage, didn’t play meek. Vesuvius would have to smolder all by herself.

  A younger witch had replaced her in Brother’s affections, a witch who wasn’t so worried about “a man’s requirements.” I would have to reckon that Mabel Todd pretty much relished such requirements, and she clung to Austin as a Volcano never could.

  I started to imagine Brother’s paramour on the skating rink in her many-layered skirt. I was the only one in the audience, not Brother, not Mattie, not Sue. She was giving a command performance while I sat in my blue shawl. As she glided above the burnished wood in her long white stockings, her kneecaps could have been made of snow. And I’d have fastened myself to Mabel, remained in that rink for life, if I could have shared her two little mountains of snow.

  45.

  EVEN WHILE SHE LANGUISHED IN BED, PARTIALLY PARALYZED and with a broken hip that never healed, Ma-ma worried about my spinsterhood. Little Sister had her pussies and didn’t have to spear a man, while I had nothing but my gardening and a subdued Pen. And Mother insisted on making a husband for me. She knew that Judge Lord was locked up in his own apoplexy and was in no position to court a spinster or a goose. But while she plotted in my behalf, Ma-ma grew delirious and kept rambling on about Pa-pa, so damn sure was she that he was still alive.

  “Is Father in the barn? I don’t want him to see me in such a state. Will you help me darken my eyes, Emily dear?”

  It was contagious. Ma-ma got me believing that Pa-pa would step right out of the barn and come a-courting. She had never worn eye paint in her life. But I wouldn’t disappoint her little passion. I pretended to darken her eyes with a pencil stub. And in the middle of my masquerade she started to cry.

  “I have not been a proper mother, Emily, or you wouldn’t have run rampant…Oh, I saw you chase after that census man.”

  The census man had come a week ago, had blundered through the house like an elephant, and when I would not converse with him, he listed me in his census book as one more female “without occupation,” while Ma-ma sat with that smug little frog for half an hour and let him gorge himself on my black cake.

  “Emily, you ought to have married him. He won’t be back until there’s another reckoning and I’m not sure when. You ought to have seized the chance.”

  “Forgive me, Ma-ma, but I forgot to propose.”

  I was sorry soon as I said it. I shouldn’t have provoked Ma-ma. I promised her I would propose to the census man the instant he knocked on our door again. That calmed her. She drank lemonade and devoured beef tea and custard. Mother’s appetite had come back—she ate like a horse. She’d been coughing a lot, but her cold was suddenly gone, and Mother turned tyrant. She wanted to sit in the Orchard, she said. There was a November chill in the air, and Vinnie was concerned that an escapade like that would do her in. But Mother triumphed—it was the Orchard or she would never eat another morsel.

  The handymen had to carry her down the stairs. Mother could have been the Queen of England in the sedan chair they had rigged for her, handles and all. That contraption didn’t waver once. We’d wrapped her in blankets and a shawl, covered her ears against the wind, and the handymen forged into the yard with Ma-ma, the new Matriarch, high above their shoulders; once they arrived in the Orchard, they set her down under an apple tree, and there she sat.

  The handymen’s faces had gone ripe with exhaustion, and they nipped at their own whiskey flasks after saluting Ma-ma.

  “Horace,” she said, “I wouldn’t mind a sip.”

  And she drank with the handymen, pretending that Vinnie and I were as inconsequential as a broken gate. The Orchard had its own afternoon calm that was like no other noise in creation—wind and a scatter of leaves. It had always been a holy place for Pa-pa and me, a garden that went into the woods, with its world of creatures: I imagined a coven of bears watching us behind the stone wall, their eyes on fire, both curious and uncurious about us.

  “Where’s Father?” she asked. “Em, is he up in the apple tree?”

  The Matriarch drank too much; she fell asleep, and the handymen had to return her to her room. They were not so steady now, and I worried they would drop her; the sedan chair dipped and found its balance again, and Mother never did fall.

  She had a brittle night. Her eyes were wild in the morning. Lord knows what her dreams had been like. She clutched Sister’s hand.

  “Vinnie,” she said, “I’d like to buy a man.”

  “Mother, we have all the men we need.”

  Her eyes were raw and red. “The Lord spoke to me. I must not go to Heaven until your sister marries.”

  And Mother was so agitated, so delirious, that we had no choice but to deceive her and perform a ceremony on the spot to calm her down. I did not relish the idea of marrying Horace Church, even in jest. Vinnie had to provide the ring. She found one in her jewelry box, but I didn’t care for the way Horace coveted it. I could do very little while Mother watched us with a terrifying interest and eagerness. Sister had to play the preacher in her housedress.

  Horace grabbed the ring in his grubby fingers and snorted. And thus the wedding began.

  “Miss Im’ly, wear this ring as a token of my love.”

  I was a-shiver with shame, but I wouldn’t disappoint Ma-ma. I wore the ring and pretended to wear a vail. That seemed to satisfy her. She clapped her hands and said, “Ain’t it a miracle, Em? I lived to see you as a bride.”

  I looked in the mirror and a freckled girl looked back—this girl didn’t have to pretend; she was wearing a vail and a gown of white tulle. But Horace Church wasn’t standing next to her, or the census man. It was Pa-pa in his Prince Albert coat and silk cravat. Pa-pa was perspiring, and it seemed as if he’d come strutting from the barn. Ma-ma, I wanted to say, Lavinia, look! But they couldn’t see Pa-pa’s apparition. And what was the girl in the mirror doin’ in a bridal gown? Pa-pa already had a bride, who sat under the covers like a forgetful queen. I turned from the mirror and took her in my arms, but Ma-ma had already rambled away.

  “Miss Im’ly,” Horace said with a look of alarm, “your mother’s passed to the other side.”

  Vinnie kissed her and closed her eyes. We waited until Horace Church skulked out of the room, and then we started to cry. I looked up. Father’s apparition was gone, but the girl in the mirror was still wearing her vail.

  46.

  AMHERST HAD ENTERED A GOLDEN AGE WHERE DRUMMERS arrived from everywhere to sell us velocipedes that could fly. I saw these contraptions from my window with their enormous front wheels and seats that almost came up to my sill. I saw them crash into children, while their riders spilled into that relentless traffic of machines. But they weren’t the town’s only pests. We began to attract a new breed of housebreakers, who didn’t have to pedal their way into our lives. They pounced in broad daylight, when families were in the midst of dinner, and did not leave a trace, not one clue; they could ransack a whole floor while soup was being served.

  And this curious carnage always seemed to happen when some Circus was in town. Why didn’t our police arrest the whole Menagerie, with its elephant cages and lion dens? It was as if the town had fallen into paralysis, or had been cast under a spell by the Circus itself. I might have become a better citizen had Father been alive. I would have gone to him, enlisted his aid in finding the burgla
rs. We might even have descended upon the Circus together—it wasn’t camped in China. It was only a few hundred giant steps away, housed on the Commons in a panoply of tents.

  What burglar could have survived Father’s wrath? But I dreaded that confrontation, even in my dreams. I knew the outcome. The ringleader of the band had to have been my blond Assassin, Tom, who had burgled in Amherst once before with Zilpah as his pilot; he’d metamorphosed from handyman to housebreaker, pickpocket, army deserter, and housebreaker again, while he toiled in a Circus under the guise of a clown. And what if Tom had ever hurt Pa-pa, or Pa-pa hurt Tom? I would have had to rush through Purgatory, riven with guilt and howling like a lunatic at Pa-pa’s own hospital in Northampton. No, it was best by far that Pa-pa and my blond Assassin never meet.

  I would suffer each time Circus season arrived—mid-May through August and September. I dreaded the drumrolls, the tinny, pathetic roar of tamed lions, the squeal of rotting wagons, and longed for these very same sounds; the nearness of my blond Assassin intoxicated me, and I wasn’t even sure that Tom was a renegade clown in the Circus. But that was the disease of Miss Emily Dickinson. I had to invent what I could not ascertain—no, did not want to ascertain. I was the voluptuary who lived on the thinnest air, who survived and conquered through invention alone.

  It seemed that the Circus would not come this summer. I waited into July and had my reward in the second week of the month, as I heard that familiar prelude of the drums. God is my witness. I was now fifty-two years old, yet my heart thumped like that of a child seeking rapture. But rapture soon turned into alarm. I shivered at the sight of Jumbo parading under my window with some fool juggler on her back. She wore red lace round her neck like a ruche; her toenails and earflaps were painted red, but she was not a proud elephant mother dancing in the sun with her newborn calf.

  I saw no calf, nothing but Jumbo herself, emblazoned in magenta and completely shriveled, as if some cruel burglar had absconded with half her size and half her strength. I was so involved with my own longing, my wish to dredge up that blond Assassin from out of my dreams, it took me a full five minutes to comprehend that Jumbo had lost her calf; the elephantess under my window was in deep mourning.