She lay on top of her teddy bear quilt and read poetry for hours. The perfect day for it. Curious about the two Emilys of Zoe’s new title, she’d found a volume of Dickinson’s poetry on one of Dora’s shelves of favorite books and then a Dickinson biography. Zoe’s books followed the course of a writer’s life as it was bound to the work they created. Jenny had read a few by now and was fascinated at how the authors’ lives worked out in their stories or poetry. For good measure, since her day was going to be spent in other worlds—where she didn’t have decisions to make about anything—she pulled down Emily Sutton’s book even though she wasn’t one of the two Emilys Zoe was writing about. Inside the book were folded sheets of paper.
Jenny went back to her room to sit on the window seat with a pillow at her back and read Emily Sutton’s poems, finding that, despite herself, she was comparing her to Dickinson. It seemed to her—though she wouldn’t say a word to Abigail Cane—that Dickinson dug deeper. Especially about death, where her brevity cut like a knife.
In Dickinson, Jenny read, “Death is a supple Suitor / That wins at last.”
In one of Emily Sutton’s new poems, she read again,
Echoes in the house
Predict the universe.
Simple sounds that
Only death can know.
A gong, as time hangs waiting.
The rasp of winter’s cough.
A crack marks temperature descending,
From silence to divinity.
Jenny thought hard about the woman she knew. It wasn’t easy to put the brittle woman together with the words in front of her. Certainly, Emily Sutton was alone. Echoes in the house made sense, but the rasp—whose “winter’s cough”? Was she talking about herself? That she’d been sick? But “silence to divinity” sounded as if the person in the poem had died and was looking back from the grave.
Jenny felt goose bumps run up her arms. Did poets ever write about their own deaths, imagining the moment? Probably. What else did Emily have to think about, in that stone house all alone?
She put the new work down and thumbed through the book of Emily Sutton’s published poems, searching for the poem Zoe quoted that first day; the line Emily didn’t recognize or seem to know. As Jenny remembered, it was “A person gone missing cries for the discovering voice.”
She found it in a poem called “Illusion”:
A space. An emptiness of breath.
A lightness in the air where she once stood.
The phantom waits beyond the edge of being
As the one gone missing cries for my discovering voice.
My instead of the, but the right poem. Odd that Emily didn’t recognize her own work. Or maybe she’d been too excited that night, her first interaction with people since her cousin had stopped coming. So nervous. So ethereal. One of those people out of time who could make you believe in an afterlife. Emily had come asking a favor, not knowing what her reception might be. Jenny put herself in the woman’s place and forgave Emily her lapse, even her odd ways of being. What would she be like—being raised in that terrible, cold house? What would she be like—after a mother’s awful death? What would she be like if she came home and never left again?
But the big “WHY?” just sat there. What drove Emily Sutton home to begin with? What was there at home that never let her leave? Then she was all alone and still she stayed. But writing poetry again. Coming back to herself?
Jenny leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. She thought how relative things were. In her own life, love, or the misery of love, was huge. Then there was Emily, her young life cut short, as if disappearance was a goal.
Mental illness? Agoraphobia—the sickness Emily Dickinson probably suffered from? Maybe, as with Jenny, there had been a cruel love. Maybe there was a man, still out there somewhere, who’d failed her.
Jenny had to smile. She’d found a place of kinship with Emily Sutton, something she didn’t think was even possible. Couldn’t stand the woman. Didn’t want to be anywhere near her. But now she’d dug deep enough—as Zoe always said to do—and there it was. They were probably sisters after all.
Jenny thought of the weird eyes and the weird clothes and the changing face, either mean or pathetic, and felt tepid warmth toward her. Enough to make Jenny vow she would never get like that. No damned cats in fancy dresses. If she ever considered a tea ball, she’d have herself committed. A good solid mug with a crack in the handle, not a fluted cup with a golden rim atop a fluted saucer, a small round cookie sitting at the edge.
She’d come to Dickinson and Sutton to understand how they had lived and why. She thought she had a handle on her own life now. What the hell was she thinking? So much invested in being loved when life really wasn’t about that kind of love at all. It wasn’t about being loved. It was about giving love. Love had to go where it was welcomed. No more of this victim shit, she told herself. No more silly Hollywood movies. She was Jenny Weston. Thirty-six years old. Plenty of life ahead of her to find her place out in the working world, where she belonged with other people—like her new friend, Zoe Zola—and where she was as a daughter, a sister, a human being standing on her own, no matter if it was in Bear Falls, Michigan, or in Timbuktu, which she decided she might visit one day soon.
God! But she felt good. The poets had done it, handed her a life back. Jenny got up and sat down at her dressing table. She pulled a strand of long black hair out and looked at it. Did she want it long or was it long because she thought men liked long hair?
She liked it.
She looked at the makeup littering the table’s top and wondered if she wanted to wear that phony stuff anymore. She put on a little pale lipstick and decided she liked that better than the bright shade she usually wore. She looked at what she had on—a faded yellow T-shirt, with a sagging bra underneath.
In the closet there were a few halfway decent outfits she’d brought home with her. She took one out—slim white pants with a blue silk top.
Who cared if it was a weeknight? Who cared if she had nowhere to go? Who cared, even, if no one but Dora would see her? Nothing was going to be about other people anymore.
She put on her pretty clothes, brushed out her hair, applied more of the pale lipstick, and went out to shock the crap out of Dora, who widened her eyes and whistled when she saw her daughter looking beautiful. She took note of the confidence in Jenny she’d been praying would come back.
* * *
Sitting on the porch later, Dora set her newspaper down. She sighed. “First Abigail and Minnie, then people calling about you and Zoe. Others calling to get as much dirt as possible: ‘Who was it that got killed again? Is that a relation to our poet?’ ‘What’s Jenny got to do with all this mess?’ I tried to be nice but I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to hang up.”
Dora searched Jenny’s face.
“Was it about you and Tony? The thing that happened yesterday? And who you became today?”
Jenny made a face and sat down to rock, looking over through the pines to Zoe’s house, where she heard Fida barking at someone or something or perhaps at nothing, just to hear herself bark.
“I’d like to help,” Dora said.
“It’s all right, Mom. I’m handling things.”
“If he’s done anything to hurt you, I won’t ask him here again.” Dora’s face was set.
“It’ll be fine, Mom.” Jenny got up and leaned down to kiss her mother’s curly hair. “I’m starving. I’m cooking dinner. I’ve asked Zoe over to make up for last night.”
“What are you cooking? I was going to make a vegetable soup.”
“Great! You make soup. I’ll make a salad.”
“You call that cooking dinner?”
“Close enough.” Jenny shrugged. “Will Alex be here? I guess we’ve still got to talk.”
“She didn’t say. Let’s wait and see.”
Dora made her vegetable soup, though the soup heated the kitchen and the house reeked of cabbage, not one of her favorite s
mells. Jenny tossed her salad, adding in walnuts and cheese—anything to make it special. She felt a little guilty about claiming she would cook.
Dora set the table for four, not knowing if the Shipley girl would be back for dinner or not. The yellow dishes with green and red apples were bright on her yellow cloth. She felt deeply that there were times that called for special touches and soothing meals, like a hot vegetable soup.
Jenny ran out for an hour to find something to wear to Abigail’s meeting since they’d all been invited. She couldn’t wait to see what she would buy now that she only had herself to please.
“Don’t want to get the fish eye from the movers and shakers,” she’d said before leaving, only to be back in an hour with a short, flowered dress that made her look like a flower box and would certainly set the women to talking.
“Good enough, don’t you think?” she’d asked, parading in her dress of muted flowers.
Dora’s praise was as colorful as the dress. She understood the need. She knew how small-town life could tie you into cords of similarity. How she’d always wanted to fit in, until she fit the life of Bear Falls perfectly but wasn’t sure where the old feisty Dora Findley had gone.
Dora laughed at her daughter. “When your father and I first moved here, people looked at me as if I were a rare thing, never seen before. A big city girl. A librarian to boot. And then they got to know me, and I got to know them, and that rare thing melted away.” She sighed. “And still, I try to fit in. I’m wearing my blue dress. They’ve all seen it before.”
Jenny laid the napkins around at each of the places, linen instead of paper, then pulled the linen napkins off the table and set out paper because she wasn’t a linen kind of person.
Jenny sat down to wait for Zoe and Alex while Dora headed outside to pick flowers for the table. Asters had survived the early frost, she said. And there were a few roses left.
“I’ll fill in with fall leaves, if I have to.” She slipped into a light jacket and was out the door with scissors in her hand.
The evening ahead was wearing Jenny out already. Back to Emily, at the center of everything, when all she could think about was Althea Sutton. She’d called Detective Minty earlier, but he didn’t call back. She’d call Ed Warner, but he didn’t call back either. Probably her use to both of them was finished. She’d have to watch the newspaper and the nightly TV news for updates on the murder.
* * *
“She pooped all over the house” was the first thing Zoe reported, though not unhappily, when she walked in, setting Fida on the floor and bending down to shake a finger in her face.
“Yes, I’m telling on you,” she said, though the dog, completely unembarrassed, rolled her good eye toward Jenny and settled under a chair to sleep.
They all sat down to wait for Alex, who had called saying she would be there in a while. Zoe was quieter than usual because she’d been to Emily’s house that afternoon. Another grocery order and another delivery.
They talked about Alex and her uncle’s red car and were soon interrupted by a call from Detective Minty saying he would like to come over to speak to Zoe and Jenny in the morning.
“Did you get the money Emily owes you?” Dora asked Zoe, worrying about the liberties that woman was taking.
“I didn’t see her. I left the groceries on the porch.”
“I went shopping for a dress to wear to Abigail’s tea.” Jenny tossed her salad.
“What tea?”
“She hasn’t asked you? She said she wants everyone there.”
“Am I ‘everyone’?”
“They’re planning a huge event at the opera house. Emily will read her new poetry.”
“Did she tell Emily? Good luck with that one.”
“I think she left her a note.”
Zoe shrugged and spread her paper napkin on her lap. “If I know Emily, she’ll eat that right up. I’m telling you, she’s nothing at all like her poetry. I expected a good mind. I even thought we would sit and talk about wonderful things. I thought I’d have my own version of Emily Dickinson to talk to as I wrote this new book. But it’s nothing of the sort. This Emily runs and hollers and then gets sweet for thirty seconds and is off again, complaining about the soup I brought last time or the hair dye I had to exchange.”
Zoe shook her head and looked over at the soup pot as if wondering when they were going to eat.
Dora was mentioning that they were waiting for Alex when the phone rang.
As Dora hung up after a very brief conversation, she turned to look from Zoe to Jenny, her hand at her mouth.
“That was Ed Warner,” Dora said. “We have to get over to the police station. Alex is there and might be arrested.”
Chapter 14
Alex Shipley was bent forward, hands between her knees, long hair hiding her face, sitting next to a desk in the Bear Falls police station. She looked up when the women walked in, then back at the floor.
“What’s going on?” Jenny was the first to greet Ed Warner, who was seated behind his desk.
“Jenny.” Ed pushed back his chair and unfolded his hunched back to stand and greet her.
She looked into her old classmate’s dark eyes. “I can vouch for Miss Shipley, if that’s necessary.”
“I already know her pretty well myself.” Ed nodded, setting his head bobbing to one side. “I heard the whole story when she got to town. That’s why I sent her over to you and your mother. Thought you could help her, what with that neighbor of yours buying groceries for Emily and all. Least, that’s what Delaware over at Myrtle’s tells me. Only thing is, the girl can’t trespass, no matter how much she needs to talk to Miss Sutton.”
He glanced at Alex, who looked away, embarrassed. “That’s a puzzling story about her uncle. I agree about that. Maybe I should have gone over to talk to Emily for her. As it is now—with the trespassing charge—it’ll be very hard to get to Miss Sutton. She might even get a lawyer and press charges against Miss Shipley.”
“Trespassing?” All three women turned to look at Alex, who shook her head and stared down at her fingernails. When she got up and walked over to them, she looked younger than twenty-three, and far past miserable.
“I looked in a garage at the back of the house.” Alex brushed her hair away from her face. “That was the only place I went on the property. I swear. I just got a glimpse when she started yelling. I was going to go up to the house and explain to her what I was doing but the chief here arrived before I got a chance.”
“Shouldn’t have been there at all, Miss Shipley.”
She turned to Jenny. “I saw something in the garage. I swear I did. Something big. Covered with a tarp. That’s got to be a car.”
“Lots of sheds have old cars in ’em,” the chief said. “Or old tractors. Their place was a farm once. Years and years ago now. Fields were across the road, and the swamp wasn’t so big then, from things I heard.”
Alex shook her head. “What if it’s my uncle’s? He loved that red Saturn. He wouldn’t have gone anywhere and left it behind.”
“If you ask me,” the chief was going on, “I think you should get Miss Zoe here, or Miss Weston, to take you over there so you can ask the woman what you want to know. She’s a little strange but no worse than a lot of people we’ve got around here. When I told her I was bringing you back to the station, she asked who you were and what you were doing on her property. I told her you’d come to town to see her. That kind of grabbed her interest. She wanted to know what you wanted to see her about.”
“Did you tell her?” Alex leaned toward the man. “What did she say? Can I go talk to her?”
He let his head loose, shaking it again and again. “I didn’t saying a thing. Figured that was your business. You and these ladies will have to figure that one out for yourselves. I just got off the phone with Miss Sutton.”
“Is she pressing charges?” Jenny asked.
He shook his head. “She called back to get Miss Shipley’s name and where she’s staying.”<
br />
He turned to Dora. “Hope you don’t mind. I told her it was you she was staying with. Thought that was what I heard.”
Dora said no, she didn’t mind. That was fine. “And we’ll have to see if we can get Alex back over there—legally.”
She turned to Zoe. “When are you shopping for her again?”
Zoe didn’t look pleased. “Soon. She told me she needs a dozen sky-blue scarves. Lord knows for what, or where I’m supposed to get them.”
Dora grinned at Jenny. “No doubt she’s making a dress for Abigail’s tea party. Emily Sutton’s got a lot more to be nervous about than the rest of us.”
“She must’ve got ahold of Abigail, if she knows about the committee meeting.” Jenny turned to Zoe. “I guess the opera house event is on.”
They took a chastened Alex home to soup and a half-wilted salad. Their talk, at first, was about Alex’s uncle, then about Alex’s plans. “I can’t stay here forever.” She put her head into one hand and looked up at them like a little girl. “I’m got to get back to school.”
“The evening’s still pleasant, why don’t we take our ice cream out to the porch and I’ll make us some tea.” Dora ushered the three women from her kitchen and fixed ice cream glasses and a plate of cookies. What she was thinking, as she worked, was how much Alex Shipley was like one of her own daughters. Headstrong. Willful. And plunging ahead until she ended up in trouble. Not so much Lisa, who had grown out of that stage, but certainly Jenny, still butting her head against stone walls, then getting mad because her head hurt.
With nothing left to talk about, the porch was quiet. Zoe talked about going home. She had edits to do in the morning and then a few phone calls.
“Christopher called,” she said, leaning toward Alex to whisper that Christopher Morley was her editor. “Can you imagine that he’s buying my plane ticket to New York? But not until the week after next now. He had to change the meeting with PBS. To listen to him, he’s got almost a book a day coming out and every one of them has a nervous writer behind it.”
She Stopped for Death Page 12