by Jane Langton
“Perfect,” said Owen. “Oh, Homer, I’ve been meaning to ask you, has there been anything new in the investigation of the Coolidge Hall fire? Or is it hopeless? Have they given up?”
“Given up? Good grief, ho. I talked to Archie yesterday. He says all the likely suspects have been cleared, but they’re still working on the notion that it was some disgruntled psychotic student. Poor Archie. That means sifting through twenty-five thousand kids, one at a time. And of course they’re still trying to track down the source of the kerosene, or gasoline, or whatever it was in those burned buckets. You know, they’re checking garages, hardware stores, talking to kids who pump gas.”
Owen looked sadly at the empty hearth of the fireplace, where for some reason a volleyball lay behind the fender. “But, Homer, you can get kerosene in the supermarket. I remember buying it there. Catherine used to light the fire with kerosene.”
“Oh, sure.” Homer jumped up quickly, snatched the salad bowl, and got to work vigorously with spoon and fork. Soon fragments of cabbage and iceberg lettuce were flying all over the table.
But that night in bed the empty fireplace haunted Owen’s dreams. It was a black pit, an endless narrow flue into which he was falling. When something shrilled at him, something insistent, something demanding, he opened his eyes and sat up. The window was gray with the half-light of early morning. The harsh noise was the telephone. Gratefully, Owen reached for it and said hello.
Once again it was his cousin, Dr. Harvey Kloop. Harvey’s whisper came hissing out of the phone, inviting Owen to come with him to Quabbin.
Owen whispered too, aware of the sleeping menace of Eunice Jane. “You’re going fishing again?”
“Again? This is the first time, and the fishing season started a month ago. I’ve packed a lot of sandwiches and beer. How about it?”
“Oh, Harvey, I’m sorry. Someday I hope to see that Quabbin of yours. But today I’ve got to be at the Homestead to greet the people who are coming to the Emily Dickinson symposium. I’m really sorry.”
“Emily Dickinson? Not again? The hell with Emily Dickinson! Who cares about Emily Dickinson?” It was a joke between them. Owen didn’t blame Harvey for being sick to death of Emily Dickinson, or at least of the tiresome incarnation of Emily Dickinson that loomed over the Kloop household in the dread imagination of Eunice Jane. “Well, too bad, Owen. So long, then. I’ll get going right away. I’ve got to get out of here fast before somebody calls, Mabel Grout or somebody like that, with one of her spells.”
“Why don’t you just take the phone off the hook?”
“Oh, no. Can’t do that. It’s against my Hippo-something oath.”
“Your what? Listen, Harvey,” said Owen wistfully, “have a good time. I wish I could come with you.”
At the other end of the line, Harvey Kloop put down the phone and crept back into the bedroom for his heavy sweater. Then he froze in his tracks. Eunice Jane was rearing up in bed. Staring straight ahead, she was croaking another weird passage from the insane poetry of Emily Dickinson: “Below Division is Adhesion’s forfeit.” But it was all right, decided Harvey. Eunice Jane was sound asleep. She was flopping back on the pillow with a snort.
Grinning, Harvey tiptoed downstairs. Already a picture was glowing in his head, a bright vision of the boat-launching dock at Gate 43. Already he could see the lively scene at the pier, he could hear the scrape of the aluminum bottoms on the concrete ramp, the jocular greetings of the men in their orange flotation vests and duckbilled caps, and the sputter of the out-boards as the boats curved away from the dock and headed for open water, to float for the rest of the day above the drowned cellar holes of the little lost villages at the bottom of the lake.
Picking up his fishing gear and his lunch box, Harvey struggled with the back door, thinking about those old ghost towns under the water and the empty cemeteries down there—even the coffins had been removed! And all those dislocated people whose houses and factories and churches had been destroyed back in the nineteen-thirties. It was terrible, really, what had happened, even though the resulting lake and its surrounding watershed were Harvey’s idea of heaven on earth, the heaven that was to be his for the rest of the day, if he could just—get out—the back door. Carefully, Harvey closed the door behind him, tiptoed down the porch steps, climbed into his car, and rolled down the driveway.
But once again he was intercepted. There was a screech from the bedroom window: “Harvey, telephone!”
Wincing, he looked up to see Eunice Jane grinning cruelly down at him.
This time it was Mabel Grout, in person, flat on her back on the floor of her breakfast nook, with the telephone entangled, she said, around her neck.
10
… all is jostle, here—scramble and confusion …
Owen packed up the notes for his speech, his shaving kit, a clean shirt and his pajama bottoms, and said a regretful good-bye to Homer Kelly. Then he walked around the corner to the Homestead. From now on he would be at the mercy of Dombey Dell.
Walking up the driveway, Owen stood behind the Dickinson house for a moment, looking up at it, reluctant to go inside. It pleased him to think that the light must have fallen on the high bulk of the brick walls a century ago just as it did today. Lofty and solid, the house rose above him on its granite foundations. It was like the poet who had lived in it, decided Owen, in her hard-won sense of self.
The Props assist the House
Until the House is built
And then the Props withdraw
And adequate, erect,
The House support itself
And cease to recollect
The Augur and the Carpenter—
Just such a retrospect
Hath the perfected Life—
A past of Plank and Nail
And slowness—then the Scaffolds drop
Affirming it a Soul.
For a moment as Owen stood on the back porch, house and poet became one. He put down his bag and rang the bell.
Dombey Dell opened the door. “Oh, there you are, Owen. Good.” Behind Dombey a chambermaid from the College was carrying a pile of sheets. “Come on in. Your room’s at the front, upstairs, across from the sacred bedchamber. Right this way.” Briskly, Dombey ran up the stairs ahead of Owen, and threw open the door of Lavinia Dickinson’s bedroom.
Owen wanted to protest, to ask for a different room, but he didn’t want to be a nuisance. Here he couldn’t forget Catherine, who had shared it with him once, back in the good days before she had become so ill. Painful memories crowded in upon Owen as the chambermaid ballooned a clean sheet over the bed and Dombey rushed away down the hall.
There is a finished feeling
Experienced at Graves—
A leisure of the Future—
A Wilderness of Size.
A Wilderness—that described it exactly. Since his wife’s death, Owen had found himself stumbling through a wilderness, a bleak forest where no light fell.
The doorbell rang. There was an anguished shout from Dombey. “Get that, will you, Owen?”
Owen hurried down the stairs and opened the back door. There on the porch stood a slight young man with fair hair and high tense shoulders. He was carrying a square case and a heavy bag. “How do you do?” he said, speaking with painful care. “My name is Wiggins. I hope I am not—”
It was the professor from Pancake Flat. “Oh, Professor Wiggins,” said Owen. “Come right in. We’ve been expecting you. My name is Kraznik. I’m eager to hear what you have to say about that intriguing photograph.”
Peter Wiggins took a deep breath, and stepped inside. His shoulders relaxed. He put down his slide projector and his bag, and followed Professor Kraznik, looking reverently this way and that at the sanctified spaces of the house of his dreams. In the kitchen he sat down timidly, awed by the august presence of the great Owen Kraznik. But soon he was disarmed.
“Tea bag?” said Owen. “Good heavens, I wonder if you can help me figure out how this stove works. Milk? S
ugar? Oh, sorry, no sugar, I’m afraid. Now where are the spoons?”
And then Owen expressed a flattering interest in Peter’s precious picture. Soon Peter was removing it from his billfold and unfolding it delicately from its tissue paper.
“How fascinating,” said Owen, gazing at it eagerly. “What a handsome young woman she is, indeed. Would you like to see your room? We’ll have to find Professor Dell.”
On the landing they ran into Dombey. Shaking hands with Peter Wiggins, Dombey was lordly and energetic. “Sorry, Wiggins, but we have to stow you on the third floor. We decided you were young enough to make it up two flights of stairs—not like some of us, cough, choke.” Playfully, Dombey pounded his own chest. “Oh, say, Owen, did I tell you The New York Times is sending somebody?”
“Yes, you did. More than once, as a matter of fact.”
“Well, listen. This is brand-new. I just got a phone call. The Smith Brothers are coming. Do you know them, Wiggins, the two brothers from Harvard?”
“Well, of course, I’ve heard of them.” Greatly daring, Peter ventured a joke. “I’ve often wondered—ha, ha—if they have short and long beards like the Smith brothers on the cough-drop box.”
“Oh, yes, ha, ha,” echoed Dombey. “Well, it’s true, they do. They’re famous for it. It’s common knowledge.” Then Dombey poked Owen slyly in the ribs. “Rumor has it they’re headhunting. Looking for somebody to replace that poet, Pulsifer Rexpole. Lousy teacher, apparently, Rexpole. So there’ll be an opening at that distinguished institution of higher learning on the River Charles. What do you think of that?”
Peter’s hand tightened on the strap of his canvas suitcase. A job opening at Harvard, Perhaps when the Smith brothers hear my significant platform address, they might think—Peter followed Owen to the third floor, thanked him effusively, closed the door, and turned around, grinning, to gaze at his room.
He was in the attic, Emily Dickinson’s own attic. She had come up to the attic to read Shakespeare. The room was filled with cool green light. Hurrying to the narrow arched windows, Peter looked out upon a landscape thick with new spring foliage. Through the branches of the trees he could see the cupola of Emily’s brother’s house next door.
She must see everything too. Swiftly, fumbling at the latch, Peter took his slide projector out of its case and set it up on the top of the dresser. Soon the beautiful face of the woman in his photograph was looking back at him from the blank wall above his bed.
“You’re home at last,” said Peter softly. Smiling at her in congratulation, he imagined her great eyes staring out of the front page of The New York Times the day after tomorrow. And there would be a headline: WIGGINS PROVES VALIDITY OF DICKINSON PHOTOGRAPH.
And then, perhaps, by some crazy stroke of luck, he might win the job at Harvard. Or if not at Harvard, somewhere else, anywhere east of Albany. Anywhere in the green and wooded East, far from the desert country of Pancake Flat, Arizona. “Dear God,” muttered Peter, who didn’t believe in God, “get us out of there.” He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. “Soon, soon, soon.”
11
Noon—is the Hinge of Day …
At lunchtime Owen managed to sneak off by himself, grasping at a last cowardly moment of anonymity. He felt a little guilty. He should have asked Peter Wiggins to go with him. But there was something about the naked want in Peter’s face that suggested an incipient lame duck, and Owen was wary of encouraging him.
In the Gaslite restaurant he took the next-to-last empty stool, consulted the sticky menu, and ordered a Superburg Delite. As he finished it and pushed away his plate, someone sat down beside him, deposited her pocketbook nimbly on the floor, and opened a pamphlet. Recognizing the brochure, Owen spoke up amiably. “Excuse me,” he said. “Are you attending the Dickinson conference?”
The woman took off her glasses and smiled at him. She had a thin face and keen eyes. “Yes, I came early to find a place to stay. Actually, my fiancé is helping to run the symposium, but I don’t want to be in his way. He doesn’t even know I’m coming.”
“Dombey Dell?” Owen was astonished. “You’re engaged to Dombey Dell?”
“Oh, no.” The woman laughed. “Not Professor Dell. Tom Perry. My name is Ellen Oak.”
So this was the doctor from Northampton. Owen was stunned. His irrepressible compassion rushed to the surface. Blushing scarlet in anguished sympathy, he mumbled something in congratulation, aware at the same instant of the arrival of Alison Grove. Alison was standing beside the door, looking for an empty stool. Heads turned. The boys behind the counter looked up. For a split second everything in the Gaslite restaurant came to a halt, then went on as before.
“The hamburgers are very good,” said Owen courteously, pointing to a grease spot on the menu, “and the French fries are delicious.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Ellen. Promptly she ordered Lunch #17, Quarter-pounder with French fries and coleslaw.
Then Owen introduced himself. It was Ellen’s turn to be surprised. “Oh, Professor Kraznik, I’m looking forward so much to your lecture tomorrow afternoon.”
“Oh, no,” said Owen. “I’m sure it will be dull. I don’t think you should bother to attend.”
“Come now,” said Ellen. “I’m tired of being told that. Tom said it too. ‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘It will just be the same old stuff. Stay home.’ But I decided to come anyway, on my own hook.” Ellen’s grin was dazzling, a flash of big white teeth. “After all, I’m the biggest Dickinson freak in Northampton.”
Again Owen blushed for the dishonesty of Tom Perry. How could the boy be so two-faced? Getting up from the counter, Owen said a cordial good-bye to Ellen Oak and went to the cash register, nodding politely at Alison Grove as she moved forward to take his place. Paying for his lunch, Owen shook his head, wondering at the difference between Tom’s two girlfriends. There was no comparison. One was so ordinary, the other so striking. What a foolish, careless boy!
Ellen’s hamburger was enormous. Picking it up hungrily, she glanced at the girl who was settling herself on Professor Kraznik’s stool, and felt a twinge of envious wonder. How lovely the girl was! A pinnacle of nature, a sort of masterpiece. In her presence everything else fell away—all achievement, all endeavor. Beside this physical perfection nothing else seemed important. And it was the kind of perfection you couldn’t deserve. You could only be born with it. It was showered upon you from above—or else it wasn’t. You couldn’t get it by trying, by working, by any kind of strenuous effort.
Ellen chewed her hamburger thoughtfully. It occurred to her that Alison’s beauty was like grace, the old-fashioned Calvinist concept of grace. Grace, too, came down from the sky, unearned, a present from God. Right here in Amherst, in the old days, people had prayed for grace, hoped for it, yearned to have it descend upon them. But sometimes in vain. Even Emily Dickinson had never experienced the miracle that was required for conversion. Somehow she could never get the hang of it.
“Anything else?” said the boy behind the counter, snatching away Ellen’s plate, staring at the girl beside her.
“Coffee, black,” said Ellen. And then she smiled to herself as she thought of conversion as it was practiced today, in all the little college towns of the Connecticut Valley, right here and now. These days it was sexual, not spiritual—a sudden overnight metamorphosis from virginity to rapturous understanding. Every day in the week, women students came to Ellen’s office to learn how to win this blessed transfiguration without embarrassing consequences.
The beautiful girl was ordering canned peaches and cottage cheese. Ellen found herself wondering how it would feel to look like that. She couldn’t imagine it. But, after all, she told herself, it didn’t matter. Even without that kind of birthright, she had been lucky. For one thing, she really liked her job at the hospital. She loved figuring out what was the matter with people. It was something she did well. And then this man had come into the emergency room with his inflamed appendix, last summer, and her life had sudden
ly changed—
As if I asked a common Alms,
And in my wondering hand
A Stranger pressed a Kingdom …
Alison Grove left half a peach uneaten, remembering what her mother said, always leave a little on your plate. Sipping her coffee, she was hardly aware of the woman sitting next to her except as part of the universe that wheeled around Alison Grove. Without glancing left or right, Alison knew that everyone in the Gaslite was aware of her, the other people at the counter, the girl at the cash register, the guys making sandwiches. In all her life so far, Alison had seldom beheld the profile of another human being, only full round faces staring at her. Even when Alison was a baby, her own mother had fastened her sad eyes upon her, she had dandled Alison in her lap, she had stroked Alison’s pretty dresses, she had twined Alison’s hair around her finger. Alison had been her mother’s only darling. She would have been her father’s darling, too, only Alison didn’t have a father. Her mother never talked about him. He had vanished long ago.
But she was the world’s darling as well. Whenever Alison walked into a room, she gathered all attention to herself and held it, without lifting a finger, without opening her mouth to speak.
It seemed natural to Alison that this should be so. She hardly bothered to think that she had been especially chosen. But Alison knew one thing, and knew it well. She had not been made so beautiful for nothing. It was like something Emily Dickinson had said—Alison had heard this lecture in Stockbridge Hall—there is always one thing to be grateful for, that one is one’s self and not somebody else.
Now Alison spared a glance out of the corner of her eye at the woman sitting next to her, grateful once again that she was Alison Grove, that she wasn’t really, really ugly, with a long nose and sallow skin and those incredible skinny pigtails fastened on top of her head. How did the woman stand it when she looked at herself in the mirror?