Afternoons with Emily

by Rose MacMurray

  On the days when I went home to launder my clothes, to catch up on news, and to answer Aunt Helen’s litany of questions, I found it easy to tell Aunt Helen the pleasant truth about my visits.

  “Working with Emily is really splendid! She treats me as her amanuensis, quite like an adult. I don’t think she is really aware of the age difference between us — not even of her own age. She simply acts as if we are equals.”

  “If she asks you, you can tell her she’s almost thirty — a very strange thirty. Tell her she’s about twice your age. I want you to be very different when you reach thirty, Miranda.”

  Aunt Helen, with her unselfishness and restraint and discipline, would never understand what I saw in Emily, who had none of those qualities.

  This was a happy time, visiting Emily. Our days settled into an easy, productive rhythm, filling the empty space left by Kate’s departure. Until one day at the academy, when Lolly proposed that she should come and call on me at The Homestead.

  “Lolly, it’s not my house,” I protested, surprised by the presumptuous request. “You know I can’t invite you there.”

  “Then tell her to invite me. Tell her you miss me.” Lolly’s dark brown eyes grew coy, while her full lips pouted. “You never join us in any of our outings anymore. So let me join you.” Now her eyes flashed with challenge.

  I couldn’t understand her insistence until I remembered Emily’s own assessment of herself as the town mystery. Hadn’t she implied my popularity at school was based in part on my proximity to “the myth”?

  I shook my head. “Lolly, you can’t make me be rude. I won’t do it.”

  Lolly, used to getting her way, glared at me. She seemed uncertain how to handle my surprising rebellion.

  Then Alice Fay, one of Lolly’s followers, decided to gain Lolly’s favor by falling in line behind her.

  “My mother says you’re Miss Emily’s ‘familiar,’ ” Alice sneered. “All her friends say that.”

  The other girls all gasped in horror over Alice’s comment, so this must have been a fearful accusation — but one I didn’t understand.

  “Alice, be quiet!” Lolly wouldn’t allow anyone else to criticize me, which was loyalty of a sort. “Let’s go,” Lolly then commanded her coterie, and I watched, still pondering the meaning of Alice’s insult, as they filed back inside the brick schoolhouse.

  How was I to find out? I couldn’t ask Emily, certainly. As for Aunt Helen, the word “familiar” suggested those dark matters she had already hinted at — just over the edge of my comprehension. But I had to know — and Mrs. Austin seemed my only hope. Lolly and her set — girls I had thought of as my friends — avoided me all day, but that was a relief. I went directly to The Evergreens from school, and I found Mrs. Austin and her gardener installing a huge reflecting sphere in her rose garden. It suited the showy house.

  “The birds love these in Italy,” she stated. “Let’s hope our proper Puritan birds are allowed to look in the mirror!” Then she invited me in for lemonade and heard the reason for my call.

  “I know the slander you fear, Miranda, and you can relax,” Mrs. Austin assured me. “A ‘familiar’ is a witch’s cat, her accomplice in spells and magic. That vicious Alice Fay was saying that Emily is a witch, and you are her companion, helping her do ill. The Archie Fays can just stop expecting any more invitations to The Evergreens.”

  “So this isn’t anything that will hurt Emily?”

  Mrs. Austin’s face softened into a dimpled smile. “What a loyal friend you are, Miranda! No, it’s impossible to hurt the Dickinsons in Amherst; they own it. Someday they might hurt themselves — but only a Dickinson can damage the Dickinson name.”

  She leaned toward me and patted my knee, expertly changing the subject.

  “Now I want to hear about Emily’s manuscripts. How goes your work? Emily says you are a ‘ruthless Solomon’!”

  “All I do is choose between versions of the same poem, so we can get all the ones together that are ready to publish.”

  “And then what?” Mrs. Austin looked surprised. Of course, she would know of Emily’s resistance to publication even better than I did.

  I gave her a rueful smile. “Then comes the hard part — persuading Emily to show them to an editor.”

  Mrs. Austin smiled back. “How I wish all her friends would help her the way you do. But she always gets so fatally intense and scares people away.”

  “I don’t think it will happen with me, Mrs. Austin. I don’t really count as a person to Emily. I’m more . . . an audience.”

  Mrs. Austin leaned back against the brocaded settee. “You are much wiser than I was at your age.” Then she leaned forward and took my hand again. “And you are very much a person to me.”

  I kissed her good-bye gratefully. I liked her shrewd honesty about Dickinson affairs.

  One evening, in the second week of my stay at The Homestead, I returned from school to find Emily — tidy, formal Emily — rumpled and trembling and distraught. I could tell she had been weeping for some time. Her round face was even rounder, her eyes slitted. The curtains were closed tight, locking out the midafternoon light.

  “Miranda, forgive me. Having Father away has recalled some poignant Homestead ghosts. We lived here my first ten years, you know. Our family was so close in those days, just the four of us! With Father gone — gone rebuilding our name and fortune — only then did we escape his rod and rule. Every morning of my childhood when he was home, the voice he used at the Statehouse was trained steady on us. Every morning was Sunday school at the Dickinson house.”

  Emily was coiled in her armchair like a baby as she related this; she unwound herself, rising slowly. “But in Father’s absence we were at rest and free. Vinnie was mild and innocent then, and Austin could show his devotion to us without Father there to scorn him for unmanly feelings. And Mother needn’t fear Father’s stormy moods. She used to play along with us.”

  Her swollen eyes grew distant, as if they were looking inward at her past. “Mother was always laughing then. There never were happier children when he was gone, not in this unhappy world.” Her gaze shifted to me. “Oh, Miranda, how could it all change so much?”

  I went to her at once. “It sounds as if you were a very happy family, Emily.” I handed her a small linen handkerchief, embroidered like the spring outside with tiny blossoms, but she was so shaken and distressed that I persuaded her into bed in broad daylight. I brought her tea, and fresh pillowcases smelling of lavender, and cologne pads for her swollen eyes — just as Aunt Helen had done when I had my mumps. I saw her smile under the cooling cloths.

  “What a delight to be COSSETED! It must be like this to have a mother.” Her mouth reset into a straight, quivering line. “I never had a mother. I had only a merry playmate once, and now — a tragic child.” She gave a piteous half sob.

  Not knowing what else to do, I held her hand until her deepening breaths told me she had slipped into sleep.

  Careful not to disturb her, I unlaced my fingers and went to my temporary room, intending to study. But I was too distracted by Emily’s revealing images of her childhood. I was moved by her merry little ghosts, but at the same time I glimpsed some stunning truths. Emily recalled a carefree time, but I sensed something quite different behind her memories.

  I saw a silly, irresponsible mother; an effeminate son; two possessive little sisters, overattached to their brother and competing for his favor. I saw an Old Testament father looming over his awed family, breathing damnation and hellfire unless they followed his Puritan rules. Whether this last was true or false, it was Emily’s own vision of Mr. Edward Dickinson.

  I tiptoed down the stairs, back to our worktable. I picked up and began to read the verse fragments scattered about, obviously just as Emily left them this morning until the upset took over. I searched the papers for the trigger but found none I could recognize. Finally I pushed the papers away and sat a long time while daylight faded. This explained so much about this puzzling, unhap
py family: the mother, with her nervous complaints and obscure maladies; poor Vinnie, with her lingering angers toward the parent she blamed for sending a great love away; and Austin, the son with everything except a father’s respect. Affection was like bread, I mused. It was unnoticed until we starved, and then we dreamed of it, sang of it, hungered for it — and never knew anything else but the longing for it.

  And Emily, whose uneasy ambivalence toward her father drove her work. Unseen, unknown, to him, this daughter’s ferocious intellect was the only one in the family’s to rival his, yet it was unrecognized and unregarded. She was neither his namesake nor his heir. How deep her misery, her anger. When she reproached God, it was her own vision of Mr. Edward Dickinson that she addressed.

  I was saddened and sympathetic, and felt the need to express this. Who better than to David Farwell? I had always felt defensive on Emily’s behalf at home because I sensed the disapproval and begrudging acceptance of our friendship; I felt I could not reveal my own ambivalence about Emily there. Davy would make no judgments and, in my letter, allow me to simply share these thoughts. I wrote for the rest of the afternoon, and by the end of five pages, I felt unburdened and refreshed. Folding the letter neatly, I slipped it into my pocket to be addressed and mailed from home. Then I cooked myself a simple supper; Emily did not stir till morning.

  At the end of a fortnight, we received word that the Dickinsons were leaving the New Hampshire resort and returning to Amherst. Lavinia’s note implied that Mrs. Dickinson remained uncheered.

  “Her sadness is a QUICKSAND,” Emily said, handing me a soapy dish.

  “At least your mother tries to be part of your life,” I told her a little sharply. “Mine never did.”

  Emily’s immediate understanding surprised me. She placed her wet hand on mine. “Yes,” she said, nodding. “You and I were equally robbed, weren’t we? Most people take the miracle of a MOTHER entirely for granted.”

  The next day Emily and I packed up my belongings, and I returned home. Our house on Amity Street seemed vivid and welcoming to me after the formal reserve of The Homestead. “It seemed very impersonal,” I told Aunt Helen as I hung my dresses in my wardrobe. “There was nothing that said, ‘He chose this. She likes that. We are reading these.’ ”

  Father must have heard our conversation, because he came into my room, clearly amused. “So what does The Homestead tell you instead, Miranda?”

  “It says, ‘Are your feet clean? Then enter on probation. Remember our superior ancestors!’ ”

  Father burst out laughing. “Bravo, Miranda! Your friend is a regular finishing school for style. Between Miss Dickinson’s conversation and young Farwell’s letters, you’ll soon have a degree in advanced English usage.”

  I didn’t think Father had noticed the letters.

  I had never read a love letter except in novels, and ours were certainly not like those. Mostly Davy and I wrote about our extreme mutual awareness, our insatiable interest in each other. We wanted to know all there was to tell — about the years before we met.

  “I intend to be a part of your life,” Davy wrote over and over. “Here is what I am like. I want you to know all about me, just as I want to know you.” Answering a letter like this was very demanding. As I wrote to him, I could tell that talking with Emily had made me more selective, more adept with image and metaphor — though a narrative for Emily was much easier than introspection for Davy.

  At our only meeting, I had been impressed with his easy, confident manner — his total lack of self-consciousness. Therefore, I had been astonished when I read that he was as uncertain as I was about fitting in with his friends at home.

  No one in Lake Forest reads — that is, no one my age. We ride and swim and skate — and that’s what we talk about. So I hide my books — and the fact that I love school, and always have! Most of the time I feel as if I were going about in disguise, hiding what I’m really like. Have you ever felt this way?

  “All the time!” I answered him. “I talked more about important things with you — the evening you came to supper — than I had in all my time with my academy friends. Let’s never wear masks with each other.”

  Father was right: living up to Davy’s letters had taught me a lot about good writing. When he wanted to hear my happiest memory (Learner’s Cove) or my most fearful experience (almost losing my foot), then I related it clearly and chronologically.

  Davy wrote as easily as he spoke. His letters were vivid, witty, and completely original; no one else could think or write as he did. He was back in Illinois now, reading and playing in Lake Michigan — and thinking about me. He planned to teach his little stepsister to swim, and I had written him a sort of primer of steps to follow. Because I loved Ovid, Davy was doing his own translation of Metamorphoses. He was going to start reading Browning on my advice, and I planned to try Wordsworth on his. I knew that the summer would pass, autumn would come, and Davy would soon be back in Amherst, attending college less than a mile away.

  This was to have been the summer we returned to Barbados. We had made our plans and arranged our passage, but then Dr. Hugh had a sudden and serious return of consumption, his old enemy. We decided not to intrude on Miss Adelaide at such a time. We tried not to feel alarmed, though it was clear that Father realized he might never see his dear friend again.

  Then another letter from Miss Adelaide brought the news I had nearly guessed two Junes ago. Lettie’s Elijah had married another girl, Susannah, after we left — and Lettie had had a little daughter that same Christmas. She named the baby for me, but she called her “Mira.” I imagined Miss Adelaide had waited until she deemed me old enough to accept Lettie’s circumstances without needing too much explanation. An unmarried woman having a child with a man who chose another wife would have required a great deal of explanation for the sheltered thirteen-year-old girl I had been. My letters to Miss Adelaide in these intervening years must have provided her with the evidence that I was mature enough for this delicate information. I wished only that Lettie herself had told me the reason for her cold withdrawal two years ago, but I understood everything now.

  This year, I won the Latin and geography prizes at the academy at term’s end, and Mrs. Austin invited me for an afternoon visit to celebrate. I took her an armful of Aunt Helen’s crimson and purple anemones. She had admired my flowers at the wedding and asked if I would do an arrangement for her newly Turkish music room.

  My hostess produced the perfect container: a deep-blue enamel bowl with gold stars, exotic and opulent. I could see Mrs. Austin’s quick mind following me as I worked, and I sensed that flower arranging would be her newest society talent. This observation would amuse Miss Adelaide when I wrote next.

  “Now you must bring me up to date on Emily’s poems,” she demanded as we sipped our syllabub.

  “Have you seen any new ones, Mrs. Austin?” I asked. “Emily hasn’t shown me any lately.”

  “Indeed I have! I don’t see Emily herself, but I receive poems from her almost every week. I can tell the organizing with you did wonders for her. Even when we were girls, Emily was always better at starting a new project than completing an old one!”

  This made me curious. “How do all the poems reach you? She told me she would never leave her father’s land again. She said this very finally.”

  “When she needs to, she calls down to the minister’s little children from her window and pays them with gingerbread to take her messages. She has a little basket she lowers down with her notes and the cake. She sends poems to several neighbors too and letters of condolence when needed. Emily is always up to date on Amherst news, you’ll find.”

  Mrs. Austin sighed. “I do wish she would really commit herself to poetry, Miranda. Emily has cut so much out of her life; there’s not a great deal left for that ferocious mind to gnaw on. If she would only publish! It would be an outlet, a goal — and she has so few aims now.”

  “She does plan to publish eventually, Mrs. Austin,” I assured her. “She
intends to submit her poems to some important literary person for criticism. She calls this ‘surgery.’ She truly dreads it.”

  “But publishing needn’t be painful,” Mrs. Austin said, her frustration clear. “We know a thousand people who could make this easy. They would help her, advise her, steer her to editors and magazines — make her an overnight sensation! If she would only come to one of our literary evenings again — but she’s stayed away for years.”

  I was startled. “Emily told me she has never been inside The Evergreens.”

  Mrs. Austin looked perplexed. “My dear child, she was a regular; she lapped up my evenings! All the guests admired her wit; she was a little queen! Once, she stayed past one in the morning, and Squire Dickinson himself came to The Evergreens to drag her home.”

  She saw my distress at hearing this and took my hand. “Miranda, you must always remember that Emily never lies, as you and I understand lying. She rearranges fact to suit her better — into a reality she prefers. Then she believes it herself, utterly.”

  I tried hard to understand, not to feel hurt by Emily’s fabrications.

  “Remember that Emily always tells her own truth,” Mrs. Austin continued. “Not ours.” In spite of her fashionable gray organdy, her jet jewelry, her modish ringlets, Mrs. Austin looked worn. Being a Dickinson must be a complicated business.

  “I think I understand,” I told her, piecing Emily’s strangeness together. “When we lived on Beacon Hill, we had a few windowpanes that were a lovely pale violet. Someone had made a chemical mistake in the glass.”

  I could feel Mrs. Austin’s gaze, waiting patiently for me to make my observation clear to her.

  “I used to love looking through those windows. It was exactly the same view of Mount Vernon Street — only lavender! Isn’t that how Emily changes things? Even though she is looking through the same window that we do.”

  Mrs. Austin nodded thoughtfully. “You are a wise young girl, Miranda. When we first talked, you were just a square, shy little thing. Are you sixteen yet?”