Emily Dickinson Is Dead

by Jane Langton

  “Oh, wow,” said Alison. “Is that what I’m going to wear?”

  “It is indeed.” Dombey held the dress high on its padded hanger. In the slight flow of air from the door the white gown trembled. The long pleats lifted at the hem and fell back. The soft cotton had a glistening surface, a small pattern of woven flowers.

  “Was it really hers?” Alison took the dress from Dombey. “I mean, honest to God?” Holding it up against herself, she looked in the spotted mirror over the dresser. Wide-eyed, she turned to Dombey. “Where can I change?”

  Dombey went to the door and pointed down the hall. Then he grimaced. Owen Kraznik was coming up the stairs.

  Owen looked doubtfully at Alison as she hurried past him with the dress. Gravely he walked into the bedroom, wanting to interfere, to protest. But then he thought better of it. He had already been at odds with Dombey. Perhaps he had better let this transgression pass. But when Owen saw Alison’s overnight bag flung down on the small green sofa, it was too much. He couldn’t quell the reproach that rose to his lips. “Now, see here, Dombey—”

  Dombey was expecting it. He jumped in with a counterattack. “Oh, for God’s sake, Owen, you’ve already wrecked my carefully planned schedule for tomorrow. What the hell is it now?”

  “This room,” said Owen sternly. “Is that girl going to be sleeping here? Don’t you think that’s a little—?”

  “Irreverent?” Dombey looked sour. “Good God, Owen, it’s just another bedroom. Alison deserves a room in this house, just like all the other speakers. I see no harm in putting this one to good use.”

  Owen thought of a rejoinder, but he didn’t know how to put it into words that would mean anything to Dombey Dell. Owen was remembering the story of a particular day when Emily Dickinson had refused to see a caller, because, she said, My own Words so chill and burn me. Those words had been hundreds of poems, written within these four walls. For an instant Owen felt in the gooseflesh on his arms and legs the fever of that unearthly chill. But it was no use. If Dombey felt no such bodily alarms, there was no way to transfer the sense of violation. Owen knew he would merely sound stuffy. He shook his head and kept still. Then Alison entered like a vision, and he caught his breath.

  Dombey clapped his hands and crowed with delight. “My dear, you look charming. Your hair, you’ve done it just right. Emily Dickinson in person. Well, you’re a damn sight prettier than she ever was, but, what the hell, who cares?”

  Owen spoke up honestly. “Lovely,” he said. “I must say, my dear, you look lovely.” Then Owen turned in surprise. “Oh, Winifred, there you are. Come in.”

  But Winnie couldn’t budge. She stood massively in the doorway, staring in horror at Alison Grove. “You’re not going to let her,” she gasped, glowering at Owen and Dombey Dell. “She’s not going to wear that dress? She can’t. She just can’t.”

  “Well, she is,” said Dombey angrily. “What’s all the fuss?”

  Winnie tramped into the room, struggling for words. “But I need it. I’ve got to conduct a tour of this house in half an hour, okay? She’s got to take it off right now.”

  Alison looked archly at Owen, dimpled at Dombey Dell, and swept past the fat woman without a glance.

  “Oh, well, in that case,” said Dombey, looking at his watch, “we’ll all clear out. Come on, Owen, help yourself. Bring on the Japanese Poetry Society. The place is yours. For a while, anyway. Then it goes back to Alison.”

  Owen nodded graciously at Winnie, and left the room with Dombey. Only, then did Winnie see the overnight bag on the sofa, the coat on the bed. The truth dawned on her. She, Winifred Gaw, was not good enough to sleep in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom! Instead, they were giving it to Alison Grove, her mortal enemy.

  Rushing out into the hall, Winnie bawled after Dombey and Owen as they started down the stairs, while Alison disappeared in a flutter of white pleats around the corner, “She’s not sleeping in there? She can’t. I thought you said—”

  “Oh, dry up, Winnie,” said Dombey Dell.

  15

  … a Lynx like me …

  By four-thirty Dombey was getting itchy again. “Say, Owen,” he said, “would you take over now? I think I’ll drop over and have a drink with the Smiths. So if you see the guy from The New York Times, just send him up to the Lord Jeff. I mean, he’ll want to talk to me. I’ll be in the bar.”

  So it was Owen, single-handed, who acted as welcoming committee for the official symposium tour. In flocks and batches people came to the door and rang the bell. Owen invited them in and shook their hands warmly and urged them to sign the guestbook. And then he handed them over to Winifred Gaw, who dragged them upstairs to Emily Dickinson’s bedroom for one lecture, then down to the parlor for another.

  Winnie was in her element. Grandly she commanded each squadron of visitors, marching them up to the second floor, growing ever more domineering as the afternoon progressed, giving orders—“Stand here, not there!” For this fleeting moment Winnie was happy. Once again she was working with Professor Kraznik. Once again it was just the two of them, paired together like a team. Her heart beat with triumph. Her face flushed red. Her voice rose louder and louder.

  People kept surging in the front door, college professors from Illinois and California and Arkansas, grammar-school teachers from Stockholm, two middle-aged women from Queens, a salesman for wood-burning stoves from New Hampshire, an endless stream of poetry-lovers from Tokyo, and droves of Dombey’s sensitive ladies from everywhere, including Marybelle Spikes from Springfield.

  Among the last to arrive at the front door of the Homestead was Dr. Ellen Oak.

  Owen was delighted to see her. “Come in,” he said, smiling with pity, remembering the shabby behavior of Tom Perry, her two-timing fiancé.

  Ellen smiled wanly back at Professor Kraznik, hoping the physical signs of her wretched afternoon didn’t show on her face. In the Gaslite restaurant she had discovered why Tom Perry had been so busy lately, so very much too busy to see her. It had not been meetings and student conferences and departmental affairs. It had been a girl with red-gold hair. The revelation had come as a brutal blow. Ellen had locked herself in her rented room and given herself up to misery. If only she had never met Tom Perry at all!

  Had I not seen the Sun

  I could have borne the shade

  But Light a newer Wilderness

  My Wilderness has made—

  A wilderness, that was what her life would be from now on, a landscape of bleak loneliness—not so much a jungle or featureless plain as an enormous cold warehouse filled with meaningless machinery.

  Professor Kraznik was looking at her, waving a pen. “Would you like to write your name and address? I’m supposed to ask everyone to sign the guestbook.”

  Ellen took the pen and stared at the space where she was supposed to write her name, Ellen Oak. With a pang she remembered the name that was to have been printed on her office door, Dr. Ellen Oak Perry. It wasn’t going to happen. She would always be Ellen Oak now, never anything different. The split with Tom was final. She had made the break herself. She had written a letter, a dignified letter, and dropped it in Tom Perry’s mailbox.

  Her hand was still shaking from the feel of the envelope slipping from her fingers into the slot. And now she was exactly the same person she had been before Tom came along, Ellen Oak. But that wasn’t such a bad thing to be, was it, after all?

  Ellen Oak, Northampton, she wrote in the guestbook.

  “The last tour is just beginning,” said Professor Kraznik. His face bobbed in front of her, smiling gaily. “Well,” he said, “I think I’ll come along myself.”

  They were late. Winnie had already started her memorized recitation in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom. With her feet planted heavily on the floor, wide apart, she was taking command of her miscellaneous captive charges and possessing herself of the writing table, the sleigh bed, the Franklin fireplace, the dresser, the windows, the view of the front walk and the driveway, the light of aftern
oon and the flowers of spring. In a flat drone she said her piece, hurrying along too fast, glowering at the Seth Thomas clock, the ruby glass decanter, the hat-box, the pictures of George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thomas Carlyle. “Please don’t touch that,” she said sharply as someone’s hand reached out to rock the cradle.

  In the faces of her listeners Owen sensed a patient disappointment. Totally absent from Winnie’s talk was any sense of the woman who had lived and worked in this room. Closing his eyes for a moment, Owen tried to imagine her for himself, Emily Dickinson, a small woman with dark red hair, moving quickly from door to window, from table to dresser to bed. I rise because the sun shines and sleep has done with me. I brush my hair and dress and wonder what I am and who made me so.

  One of the women from Queens was asking a question. “Could she see the hat factory from the window?”

  The hat factory? Winnie quailed. She didn’t know. And at that instant Winnie caught sight of Professor Kraznik standing modestly in the rear. She was flustered. Craftily she decided not to hear the question. It skittered away from her ears and lodged between the folds of fat where she kept secrets from herself. Turning away, she pointed to the other pictures on the wall, the photographs of Samuel Bowles and Charles Wadsworth and Otis Phillips Lord. Scowling, unable to look at Professor Kraznik, Winnie talked of love. Then she pushed her way shakily past three or four members of the Japanese Poetry Society and threw open the door to the closet.

  “This was her dress,” she said, hauling it out, holding it high.

  There were exclamations of pleasure. One of the sensitive ladies reached out her hand impulsively, then snatched it back. The dress hung among them, glistening.

  Marybelle Spikes summed it up. “It was her father’s fault, right? He wouldn’t let her go. So she couldn’t get married, so she was unhappy in love, and that’s why she retired from the world and wore white dresses and wrote her beautiful poems, right?”

  Owen cringed. He wanted to speak up and say, She retired from the world to get away from people like you, because they talk of Hallowed things, aloud, and embarrass my Dog. But he kept still and studied Marybelle’s neck, a plump expanse of flesh rising from a nest of ruffles. A bizarre vision was appearing in his mind, a dream of Emily Dickinson as a great spotted cat, leaping at Marybelle’s throat. Emily, he knew, had often thought of herself as a leopard, or some other kind of catlike beast. It made a pleasant picture, Emily Dickinson tussling with Marybelle Spikes like a lion worrying the carcass of a wart hog. In spite of himself, Owen smiled.

  But Marybelle was still alive and well, callow and inquisitive. “Do you think she was pretty?” she asked Winifred Gaw. “I mean, really, really pretty?”

  This time Winnie heard the question with painful clarity. She blinked sideways at Owen, then answered loudly, “No, she wasn’t. You don’t have to be pretty to have beautiful thoughts, okay? Emily Dickinson had a beautiful soul, deep down inside.”

  Owen closed his eyes again, wishing he could leave the room and go downstairs. But that would hurt Winnie’s feelings. He glanced at Dr. Oak, but she seemed distracted. She was gazing at the floor. Then someone spoke up behind Owen. “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong.”

  Owen turned in surprise. It was Peter Wiggins.

  “A photograph exists,” said Peter boldly, “so we know very well what she looked like.” His pale eyes shone. “And Emily Dickinson was very beautiful indeed.”

  Winnie put the dress back in the closet and turned to him scornfully. “Oh, that. If you’re talking about that dumb picture that turned up in New York City, nobody believes in that. That’s not a photograph of Emily Dickinson, okay? The whole thing has been disproved.”

  “On the contrary,” said Peter Wiggins, “it’s a genuine photograph of the woman who lived in this house. I’m going to prove it tomorrow.”

  It was a kind of battle. Owen could feel the tension in the air. The Japanese visitors were looking back and forth between Winifred Gaw and Peter Wiggins, obviously embarrassed. One of the Swedish schoolteachers giggled. The wood-burning-stove man whistled ironically through his teeth.

  Owen felt sorry for Winnie. It wasn’t Peter’s beautiful photograph that was on trial, it was Winifred Gaw herself, in her obesity and ugliness. Somehow she had climbed gigantically into the balance, and her overloaded side of the scale was crashing to the floor. Owen wanted to warn her, to tell her to let it go, to move on to something else. But Winnie wouldn’t.

  “What does it matter, anyway, okay? What a poet looks like?” Her voice was too high, too sharp. “When you’re, you know, a genius, okay? Who cares about looks? Who cares?”

  But they all did, that was the trouble. They cared about looks, and they condemned Winnie for hers, for the grossness of her bulk, for her swollen arms, for her slablike hips, for her massive ankles, for her flat feet in their gum-soled shoes. And Winnie cared, too, thought Owen. You could sense the invisible track of her caring in the expressionless mask of her face. For an instant something irrelevant whisked into Owen’s mind—“fat girl with a paper bag,” the fat girl who had been seen in Coolidge Hall—but then it whisked out again, and he wondered what to do now.

  The tour had come to an awkward halt. Peter Wiggins was nodding his head wisely, and leaving the room. The others were shuffling out after him to find their own way downstairs. Two members of the Japanese Poetry Society nodded graciously to Winnie, murmuring their thanks. Dr. Oak turned to go.

  But Winnie stood frozen in the middle of the room. She was ponderously stranded. Owen decided it was up to him. He would have to take over for Winnie. Hurrying out into the hall, he ran downstairs to deliver the second lecture in the parlor.

  Winnie watched him go. Her breast heaved, her disfigured left hand opened and shut in her pocket, as Professor Kraznik’s light voice began drifting up from below. He was taking her place downstairs. Winnie didn’t move until his voice stopped at last, until the noise of departure swelled and faded in the hall. Then she went to the window and watched the visitors saunter to the street in twos and threes.

  And then her heart stopped, and began thumping painfully. Professor Kraznik was walking down the porch steps. He was not alone. He was accompanied by Alison Grove. They were wandering to the left, moving out of Winnie’s sight beyond the blossoming dogwood tree. Now she could see only their legs. The legs were slowing down, standing still. Winnie craned her neck. To her horror she saw Alison’s white sandals turn toward the feet of Professor Kraznik. The toes of their shoes were touching. The heels of the sandals were rising. Alison was standing on tiptoe.

  A sob rose in Winnie’s throat, and she whimpered out loud. Alison Grove had stolen Winnie’s job, she had stolen Emily’s bedroom, she had stolen Emily’s white dress, and now she was stealing Professor Kraznik! Hot tears streamed down the pinched passages between Winnie’s nose and her fat cheeks, and she lifted her fist to the ceiling.

  Alison Grove was not going to get the dress! She was not going to get this room! And she was not going to get Professor Kraznik, not if Winnie could help it!

  “It must be some kind of pollen,” murmured Owen, “from one of these flowering trees.” He stood very still with his eyes closed, while Alison Grove worked on him with his handkerchief, pulling his eyelid down, trying to swab away the obstruction. “There, that’s better. Good for you.”

  “Is it gone?” Alison backed away, looking at him doubtfully. “I’m not much good at first aid, or, you know, anything like that.”

  “Yes, it’s much better, thank you.” Owen took back his handkerchief. “Tell me, Alison, are you and Tom planning to get married? Or is that an interfering question?” He smiled at her shyly. “Forgive me.”

  “Oh, right, we certainly are. Well, okay, there’s this little problem. Tom’s sort of mixed up with some girl over in Northampton. This woman doctor. But he says it’s okay. He says she’s a really good kid. You know, just an incredibly good sport. He says she won’t mind.”

  Onc
e again Owen felt intensely sorry for Ellen Oak and disappointed in his friend Tom Perry. “Well, after all,” he said politely, “love will have its way.”

  16

  The Soul selects her own Society—

  Then—shuts the Door …

  While Owen was changing his shirt before dinner, someone rattled his doorknob and shouted at him. Fumbling with his buttons, Owen opened the door and found Dombey standing outside, a pillar of wrath. Behind Dombey stood Alison Grove. Alison was pouting.

  “Now, listen here, Owen,” hissed Dombey in a kind of whispering roar, “what are you going to do about this one? I mean, Winifred Gaw is your problem.” Dombey jerked his head at the door of Emily Dickinson’s bedroom across the hall. “It was your big idea to bring her here. Now she’s locked herself in and she won’t come out. You and your lame ducks! I told you what would happen. Didn’t I? Didn’t I?”

  Owen closed his eyes. For an instant he was transported to the sky-reflecting surface of the Quabbin Reservoir, drifting with his cousin Harvey over the drowned steeples of lost churches and the smokestacks of abandoned factories while silver fish darted below them in the limpid water. Then Owen opened his eyes and stiffened his shoulders and walked across the hall.

  The locked door was blank and featureless. Behind it Owen could sense the morbid presence of Winifred Gaw, breathing heavily on the other side of the door. Alison’s coat and overnight bag lay tumbled on the floor of the hall.

  “Winnie?” said Owen.

  There was no answer.

  Dombey Dell watched with satisfaction as Owen drew his hand over his face. The great man had certainly got himself in a fix this time. “Tell her to get the hell out,” said Dombey.