by Jane Langton
Ellen was delighted. “An Emily Dickinson conference? Oh, say, that’s just great. When is it? I’ll come.”
“Oh, no, you won’t want to come. Boring speakers, a lot of claptrap. And I’ll be so busy keeping the thing going, I won’t have time to be with you.”
Well, I’ll come anyway, thought Ellen stubbornly, I’ll keep out of his way. I won’t be a pest.
Ellen wasn’t the only one to be delighted at the news about the Emily Dickinson Centennial Symposium. Two thousand miles west of Amherst, in Pancake Flat, Arizona, Peter Wiggins was thrilled to find Dombey’s invitation in his mailbox. Joyfully, he kicked a tricycle off the doorstep and brought the letter indoors to show Angie.
Angie was not impressed. Angie didn’t want to be left alone with the children for days on end. “You’re going to give another talk about that old photograph again? God! Who cares about a picture of somebody dead as a doornail?”
“You’re jealous,” said Peter angrily. “Just because she’s so beautiful. You’re jealous of my photograph.”
“Jealous? Me? Jealous of an old photograph? Honestly, Peter, sometimes I think you’ve gone bananas. You’ve got this obsession. I mean, face it, that’s what it is, an obsession with a dried-up old corpse in a cemetery.”
“You ignorant little bitch,” shouted Peter.
Nicole and Michelle began to shriek.
“Now see what you’ve done.” Weeping, Angie gathered up the two babies and rushed out of the kitchen.
Left to himself, Peter went to the sink and gazed eastward out the window, hardly seeing the raw red hills, imagining instead some college in the East, with mellow brick buildings set tenderly around a tree-shaded lawn, where Peter would have an office to himself, a room like a green bower, engulfed with leafy growth, entwined with ivy, moist with dew.
7
The Sky is low—the Clouds are mean …
Spring was a mixed bag that year. There were balmy days in March, sucking the cold out of the ground, drawing everybody out-of-doors to admire the crocuses and quote Emily Dickinson—We like March. His Shoes are Purple—and cold, raw days in April, spitting rain and sleet. Who knocks? That April. Lock the Door.
The weather in Bartlett Hall was changeable too. Running into Dombey Dell in the corridor, Owen often found him testy. “Sensitive ladies, so far, that’s all we’ve got. Bushels of responses from sensitive ladies. Marybelle Spikes, Jesus! Eunice Jane Kloop, my God!”
At other times, Dombey was jaunty and self-important. His big-deal arrangements were going well. The National Endowment for the Humanities had contributed ten thousand dollars, the University was going to pay the travel expenses of Peter Wiggins, and Amherst College had agreed to underwrite the cost of food and drink. The New York Times was sending a correspondent. There were applicants from all over the country, and from Sweden and Mexico. Far away across the Pacific Ocean, the Japanese Poetry Society, a men’s club, was chartering a plane, an entire plane.
“Thank God, Owen, the Coolidge Hall fire isn’t front-page news anymore. Now we can get a little attention. We’re going to restore the good name of the University in the public eye, right?”
“Well, I fervently hope so,” said Owen. “Oh, Dombey, do you have a brochure? I don’t think you ever sent me a brochure.”
“A brochure?” Dombey shook his head. “Oh, too bad, Owen. As a matter of fact, I’m all out. Got to print up some more.”
And therefore it wasn’t until Dombey posted the new brochure on the bulletin board at the bus stop in front of Stockbridge Hall that Owen saw the list of symposium speakers. Only then did he discover that there were to be no women on the program. Instantly he called Dombey and complained.
“Oh, but you don’t know about Alison Grove,” said Dombey. “Alison’s going to be on the program. She’s going to wear Emily Dickinson’s white dress and read a poem.”
“She’s going to wear the white dress? Listen, Dombey, you know that’s a sacrilege. And, anyway, that’s not enough. Alison Grove may be a woman, but she’s certainly no scholar.”
Dombey groaned. What the hell! Owen was so damned unpredictable. Most of the time the man was quiet and unassuming, and then for no reason at all he’d turn intractable and stubborn. “Listen, Owen, it’s too late. And, anyway, there’s no room in the Dickinson Homestead. That’s where all the speakers are going to be staying. You and me, too. Special arrangement with the College. And the brochure has already gone out, all around the world. I can’t change it now.”
Owen was outraged. Dombey was surely headed for disaster. No women speakers at a conference on the nation’s foremost woman poet? The man was asking for trouble.
And Owen was right. Trouble was already brewing in two separate quarters in the town of Amherst. But when Owen stumbled on evidences of it himself, later on, he failed to recognize them for what they were, the first fierce sputterings of two powerful engines of rebellion.
He came upon the first crackle of defiance at a meeting of the Amherst Historical Society in the old Strong house on Amity Street.
As president of the society, Owen always came early to turn on the electric heater and arrange the chairs in a circle in the downstairs parlor. But now, hearing voices from above, he decided the meeting must already have gathered upstairs.
On the second floor he found another bunch of people entirely. It was the executive committee of the Amherst Women’s Emily Dickinson Association. The guiding spirit of A.W.E.D. was his old friend Tilly Porch. There sat Tilly with Dottie Poole and Barbara Teeter and Marilyn Wineman and Carolyn Chin and all the rest, gathered around a big table with their needles poised over a large piece of cloth. It looked to Owen like a gossip session, an old-fashioned sewing circle. “Oh, good afternoon, Tilly, Dottie, everyone. Sorry, wrong meeting. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
He had taken them by surprise. Tilly took one look at him, then snatched up the piece of cloth and tossed it upside down on the table. Pins and needles flew. Sitting back in their chairs, the women gasped, and then began to laugh.
“I’m sorry, Owen,” said Tilly. “Big secret. You’re not in on it, I’m afraid.”
But then Dottie Poole clasped her hands and beseeched, “Oh, Tilly, don’t you think we should tell Professor Kraznik? I mean, what if he thinks we shouldn’t do it at all?”
The other women were horrified. “Heavens, Dottie, of course not. How can you say such a thing? Never!”
Owen put up his hands as if to say, Far be it from me to inquire. And then, smiling, he ran downstairs to find the other members of the Historical Society collecting in the parlor.
Afterward, when his meeting was over, when all the other members of the Historical Society had dispersed, Owen lingered for a moment and listened to the voices from upstairs.
Once again Dottie Poole was sounding a note of distress. “Oh, Tilly, do you really think we should? Now that we’re all done—I mean, now that I really get a look at it, I just feel so uncertain. I mean, I didn’t know how really huge and real it was going to look. I mean, I just wonder if we should really go through with it?”
“Nonsense, Dottie.” Someone else was speaking up firmly. Again Owen recognized the voice of his widowed old friend, Tilly Porch, who had lived all her life in the house of her ancestors on Market Hill Road. “Of course we should go through with it. Shouldn’t we, everybody? Are we mad at those men or not?”
There were cheers from the other women, and cries of defiance. Owen stood with his hand on the latch of the front door as Tilly’s voice rose above the rest in gallant reassurance. “Courage, Dottie, you have nothing to lose but your good name, your family and friends, and your reputation as a law-abiding citizen. Forward, Dottie, forward!”
The rest of them were shouting it too, in exuberant chorus. “Forward, Dottie, forward!”
And then there was a pause. “Oh, well, then, forward, I guess,” came the voice of Dottie Poole, faltering down the stairs.
8
How martial is this pl
ace!
Had I a mighty gun
I think I’d shoot the human race
And then to glory run!
Nor did Owen perceive the first signal flare of the second revolution against Dombey Dell’s all-male Emily Dickinson symposium. Although it passed right in front of his eyes, he failed to recognize it as a flaming rocket in the sky.
It was merely a rectangular notice at the bottom of one of the soggy pages of The Hampshire Gazette, picked up from Owen’s rain-soaked front porch and spread out to dry on the kitchen table.
Before supper Homer used the paper to catch the slop as he beat up his omelette aux fines herbes, a concoction of eggs, basil, taco seasoning, and hot dog relish. But Homer paid no attention to the little notice, and neither did Owen when he mopped at the front page after supper and looked the paper through. Even the forest of exclamation points didn’t catch his eye.
!!! SINGLES FOR EMILY DICKINSON!!!
????????????? Are you a SURVIVOR ????????????
Somehow myself survived the Night
And entered with the Day …
Poem by E. DICKINSON
!!! WOMEN SURVIVORS!!! Are you SINGLE ??? HURT ???
EXPLOITED???
??????? HAVE YOU had it with MEN ???????
!!! JOIN S.I.N.G.E.D.—“SINGLES FOR EMILY DICKINSON” !!!
!!! Talk sessions every Tuesday night at 8 in the basement
of the First Congregational Church !!!
!!!!!!!! NOW PLANNING ACTION !!!!! URGENT !!!!!!!!
But the ad was not lost on Winifred Gaw.
Since last fall, Winnie had been struggling to keep going. Her panic over the investigation of the fire in Coolidge Hall had quieted down. No longer did her heart pound when she heard a knock at the front door or a shrill ring from the phone in her mother’s kitchen. “Fat girl with a paper bag,” the TV had said. They were looking for a suspicious fat woman. Well, they hadn’t come to the right fat woman. And the paper bag with its contents was gone forever. On the night of the fire, the heavy bag had plunged one hundred and twenty-five feet down into the empty blackness of Shaft 12, and then it had been carried away through the tunnel to Boston in the torrent of water from the Quabbin Reservoir.
So the danger was over. And Winnie’s van had stopped smelling of flammable chemicals. Her clothes had been washed ten times. The crisis was past. She could breathe more freely.
And Professor Kraznik had been right about the job at the Homestead. The job was okay. Winnie liked going to Emily Dickinson’s house every Tuesday and Friday. She liked the nice smell of the house. It reminded her of Professor Kraznik, because it was sacred to the memory of Emily Dickinson. And Winnie was getting her self-confidence back. Standing spread-legged in Emily’s bedroom, saying her piece over and over to clusters of visiting tourists, she was beginning once again to feel in charge. The place was hers and hers alone, every Tuesday and Friday. Emily Dickinson’s white dress in the closet was Winnie’s own personal possession. She could show it or keep it an arrogant secret. She could let people in the door, or slam it in their faces, if they didn’t have an appointment. Serve them right.
It was only at night that Winnie’s wretchedness came back. She couldn’t sleep. All the things that had been tucked into the folds of her fat during the daytime came creeping out at night, from the rings of flab around her throat, from the deep dimples in her elbows. The two guys whose lives had been snuffed out in Coolidge Hall—they were a knobby bundle that refused to stay hidden away in a fatty cranny. And the thought of Alison Grove, sitting at Winnie’s desk, waiting upon Professor Kraznik in Winnie’s place, Alison Grove with her torrent of red-gold hair, her bewitching prettiness—that was another terrible thing that kept spilling out of hiding, night after night.
Therefore the ad in The Hampshire Gazette was heaven-sent.
Somehow myself survived the night
And entered with the Day …
It spoke to Winnie. It was just what she needed.
!!! Talk sessions every Tuesday night at 8 in the basement
of the First Congregational Church !!!
!!!!!!!! NOW PLANNING ACTION !!!!! URGENT !!!!!!!!
It was always hard for Winnie to enter a group of strangers. On the next Tuesday evening at quarter past eight, she stood for a moment outside the basement door of the Congregational church, gathering her courage, and stared at the sign that said TAG SALE ON LAWN MAY 15. It had rained all day, but now the clouds were clearing in the west. There was a tremulous glow of sunset in the air.
Winnie opened the door. Immediately she was confronted by a huge banner, declaring the church to be in favor of
JOY!
There were voices down the hall. They stopped as Winnie paused in the doorway. The women in the folding chairs looked up. Winnie scowled. She knew what they were thinking: fat girl. Maybe in a little while they would notice her eyes. My eyes are my best feature, thought Winnie. Instinctively she put her left hand with its stump of a little finger in the pocket of her pants.
A tall, hollow-cheeked woman stood up. She had lank colorless hair and steel-rimmed glasses. “Come on in. Join us. I’m Helen Gaunt. Here, sit down.” Then Helen Gaunt explained the business of the evening. “We have this really important item on the agenda. This is sort of an emergency meeting. But first We want to get to know our new members. We were just talking to Debbie Buffington. She’s new too. Okay, Debbie, you were saying you decided to keep the baby? What’s his name? Elvis?”
Debbie was a pale young woman who looked about twelve years old. There were blue shadows under her eyes. She sucked on her cigarette. “Like I thought it would be just so great, having this, you know, cute little doll to play with. Like he’d stay in the corner in his crib. Only, like, wow, it isn’t like that at all. I mean, I’m the teeny person in the corner, and Elvis is this really gigantic—” Debbie waved her transparent hands. “All he does is bawl.” She sank back and took another drag on her cigarette, her face empty of feeling. “Like tonight I couldn’t even get a sitter. I had to dump Elvis with the lady across the hall, and she was really pissed.”
One of the women was hugely pregnant. She gazed at Debbie with frightened doelike eyes. Next to her a big-boned woman spoke up with bitter emphasis. “Listen, you think you got trouble. I am the mother of ten. Wait till Elvis starts running around and getting into everything.” The mother of ten shook her head in dire warning.
Helen Gaunt cut the whining short. “You don’t need a baby-sitter,” she said to Debbie. “Why don’t you just bring Elvis along?”
“Oh, Jesus, I couldn’t do that,” said Debbie. “He bawls all the time.”
“So?” said Helen Gaunt. “What’s this big guilt trip? We were all babies once. All babies bawl. You can’t let your whole life-style be cramped just because your kid acts like a kid. And, hey, listen, that baby will fit right in. Wait till you hear what we’re going to do. We’re all going to be in it. Elvis, too. I’ve got this plan. I mean, Emily Dickinson is our role model, right? She was a single woman, right? She thumbed her nose at the world, right? She’s one of us, isn’t that right? Well, okay, wait till you hear about the latest insult to her memory.” Helen Gaunt looked around the circle. “There’s this conference. This big Emily Dickinson conference. All these big speakers are going to talk about Emily Dickinson. And get this.” Helen’s voice sank an octave. “They’re all men.”
“Men?” whispered the expectant mother.
“Men?” gasped the Mother of Ten.
“Men?” breathed Winifred Gaw.
“Every—single—one.” Helen Gaunt sat back grimly.
Winnie Gaw was dumbfounded. Of course Winnie had heard about the conference, because she had been asked to conduct special tours for visiting scholars. But nobody had said the speakers would exclusively be men. Winnie was flabbergasted.
“Wait till you hear my idea,” said Helen Gaunt solemnly, leaning forward like a conspirator. Then she looked at Winnie. “Oh, I forgot. It’s your turn
to introduce yourself. Go ahead. Tell us all about it.”
“Well,” said Winnie, “like it said in the ad in the paper, people that have been hurt.” To Winnie’s amazement, her throat filled with sobs. “You know, when somebody—” She paused again, uncertain how to go on. “You know, when a man—I mean it’s a lot like what they did to Emily Dickinson.”
There were kindly murmurs, clucks of sympathy.
Winnie stopped. She had gone far enough. She let the implication hang in the air that her pain had been inflicted by a perfidious lover.
Helen Gaunt looked at the fat girl, and wondered how Winnie could ever have attracted a man, even for a moment. But she muttered gently, “Join the club.”
“God, I don’t know what I’m doing here,” said Debbie Buffington, dropping her cigarette on the floor and grinding it under her heel. “I mean, like, Jesus! Who’s Emily Dickinson anyway, for creep’s sake?”
9
God keep me from what they call households …
Homer felt comfortable in Owen’s house. For one thing, he didn’t have to pick anything up from the floor, the way he did at home. And that was all right with Owen, who had little sense of house pride himself. And both of them enjoyed Homer’s gourmet meals, which were new and different every day.
On Monday the twelfth of May, the day before Dombey Dell’s symposium was to get under way, dinner was beefsteak. “Why don’t we just put it in the oven and let it bake slowly during the happy hour?” said Homer. “And then I’ll toss the salad and we’ll be all set.”