Emily's House

by Amy Belding Brown

  I didn’t know what scripture she was meaning, but I believed her. One thing I’d learned—Protestants in America were fond of quoting the Bible. Even Emily—who never went to church—could pull a scripture verse out of her head at the blink of an eye.

  I wondered if Eliza was right about Emily. I never heard of a woman writing poems. Didn’t sound proper at all. I wanted to know more, but there was no time to ask, for the guests were starting to arrive.

  By one o’clock the house and yard were swarming with people. It was a happy confusion, with Eliza making pitchers of lemonade and myself loading trays with squares of gingerbread and cake. My two eldest nieces—Mary and Meg—came up from Kelley Square to help serve.

  At two the Squire and Mother Dickinson walked down the front stairs like royalty and commenced greeting folks in the parlor. Austin and Sue brought Ned and Mattie. Vinnie was a swirl of liveliness, bustling through all the rooms and outside too, her hair done up in ribbons and a new lavender gown showing off her shoulders. And Emily was wearing a new frock of white lawn embroidered with roses and floaty as goose down, her hair caught in a gold net. She looked a picture, standing behind the punch bowl in the dining room, pouring cups of wine from a decanter. She was laughing and flirting and her cheeks were glowing as if she’d got a fever. Truth to tell, I was gawking at her more than once, for I’d never seen her acting so. She was having as grand a time as anybody.

  Late in the afternoon I saw herself and Sue out walking in the garden. They made a pretty picture, Sue in blue and Emily in white, arms around each other’s waists and their two heads bent together like they were whispering the sweetest of secrets.

  Chapter Seven

  After what Eliza Thompson told me the day of the Tea, I started taking note of Emily’s poem writing. God’s truth, I’ve always admired a poet. I’m guessing it’s the Tipperary in me—for there’s no place on earth grows more noble poets. At first it was when I was tidying her room and saw some of the papers were poems written out in lines across the page. Then I started finding little verses salted with dashes around the house, scribbled on envelopes and the backs of recipes and other scraps. Sometimes she stored them in her pockets and they fluttered out when I was sorting laundry. I watched her in a new way after that.

  Since I first came to the Homestead I’d been mailing letters from Emily to a Mr. Higginson, Editor. But it wasn’t till after the Tea I thought to ask Vinnie what an editor was. She told me it was a man who decided what to print in a magazine or a book. Like stories or essays or poems, she said.

  “Is Mr. Higginson printing Miss Emily’s poems, then?” I asked.

  Vinnie laughed. “Emily would be overjoyed if he were. We’d not be able to keep her in Amherst—she’d be off ascending Mount Olympus. But”—she tapped the silver-and-amethyst brooch at her neck—“I fear it’s unlikely. Mr. Higginson has pointed out that her poems lack form and polish.”

  I didn’t know where Mount Olympus was or why Emily would be climbing it. But I felt a kinship with anybody whose dreams had been crushed.

  Then came a hot summer morning with both Emily and myself in the kitchen when a lad came rapping on the door. It was the delivery boy from the Amherst House handing me an envelope. “For Miss Dickinson,” he said.

  “Reward him with some gingerbread, Maggie.” Emily was standing right behind me. Startled me, it did, because she usually whisked herself out of sight the minute she heard a knock. “And don’t let him leave until I’ve composed a reply. Bar the door if you must.” She plucked the envelope from my hand and off she went upstairs.

  I gave the lad his gingerbread and went back to mincing kidneys for a pie. He chattered away, telling me he lived in the woods north of town and wanting to know if I’d seen the Independence Day fireworks at the fairgrounds. I was about to slice more gingerbread to quiet him, when Emily came back and pushed a folded paper into his hand.

  “Now hurry on your way and be sure to give my note directly to the gentleman,” she said, sliding a peppermint in his pocket as he went out the door. “It’s of great importance.”

  She turned. “Mr. Higginson will be visiting this afternoon, Maggie,” she said, her cheeks near pink as the peppermint. “And everything must be”—she paused a minute—“a perfect, paralyzing bliss.”

  Sure, I never saw a woman take more care getting ready. She wanted everything just so—fresh flowers in the parlor, the pillows plumped, and the drapes drawn to keep it cool. No one was to disturb Mr. Higginson and herself. Not even Vinnie or Mother Dickinson. I was not to offer refreshment—she’d be doing it herself. And once I showed himself into the parlor, I must stay out of sight in the kitchen till he left.

  She sent me to the garden for flowers—cinnamon roses, lilies, sweet williams, and zinnias. I filled the garden basket till it was rioting with pink and orange and yellow. She arranged them in three vases and then chose two lilies the colors of sunset to carry up to her room.

  When I heard the clunk of the front door knocker, I opened it to a pillar of a man. “I believe Miss Dickinson is expecting me,” he said into his beard. He handed me his card and I took it straight up to Emily. She came out of her room wearing a blue net shawl over her white frock and tiptoed down the stairs. The two lilies were cradled like babbies in the crook of her left arm. I felt I was watching a dream.

  It was a long afternoon, and quiet too. The house was empty of sound as an unrung bell, except for those murmuring voices in the parlor, which could have been mistook for the humming of bees. Vinnie and her mother had gone out to please Emily, so I made myself useful in the kitchen. At five I heard the front door close and then Emily’s footsteps running up the stairs. She stayed in her room the rest of the day. Didn’t know if that was a good or bad sign.

  But when she came down the next morning, she was glowing. Her eyes danced and cheeks flushed so she almost looked pretty. She ate a hearty breakfast—which wasn’t at all like her—and had two cups of coffee. She was pouring a third when Sue came in. Emily jumped up, her smile so wide I thought her face would split. The two of them scuttled off to Emily’s room, whispering like schoolgirls.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d be thinking Mr. Higginson’s her beau,” I said to Vinnie later. She was dusting the parlor chairs and I was polishing the piano. Had my eye on the sorry droop of a Damask rose looking ready to fall out of its vase.

  She laughed and spun around so her skirt flipped its hem and I could see her neat black slippers with their perfect bows. “Emily’s beau? Oh no, Maggie. Emily admires him exceedingly, but not as a suitor. Although”—she shrugged and smiled in a way that told me she was up to some Dickinson mischief, and pleased with herself for putting a fanciful idea in my head—“we never know with Emily, do we?” And her eyes twinkled at me as she came over and plucked the poor rose from its vase.

  Sure, that was the truth of it—no one ever knew with Emily.

  * * *

  The very next afternoon, it was, I found six of my little apple butter tarts gone from the pie safe. I was certain there’d been an even dozen when I put them there to cool. But Mattie and Ned had been in and out of the kitchen all morning long. Mighty distracting they were too—Mattie was always asking questions and Ned poking about the pantry.

  “Go on with you now,” I’d told them more than once. “ ’Tis a grand day with the sun pouring down and you should be out in it.”

  And out they’d go—likely to pet the horses or plague Tim, the stableman, awhile—only to come running back in to pester me for milk and cake. Thing is, I couldn’t remember if they were watching when I put the tarts away. I didn’t think Ned would be stealing them, but in truth I didn’t trust Mattie not to.

  Had a mind to march myself over to the Evergreens and learn the truth of it. I was about to untie my apron when I heard children calling and laughing near the house. Vexed me, it did. The Squire had made plain one of my chief duties was keeping
the place quiet so Emily wouldn’t be disturbed. All week I’d been chasing neighborhood boys away, and when I went out the kitchen door, I followed the voices around to the front of the house. And wasn’t there a flock of young ones—girls and boys both—giggling right under Emily’s window?

  “Whist!” I called, waving my arms. “Be gone with yourselves this minute! You’re not to be coming inside the gate.” Then I heard Mattie calling in her lisping voice, “Thank you, Aunt Emily!”

  All the children were looking up. And there was Emily, leaning out her bedroom window and pulling up a basket on a rope. She was laughing away, merry as the children.

  Mattie spied me then and ran up, cheerful as the sun itself. “Look what Aunt Emily gave us!” And didn’t she hold up one of my apple butter tarts? I was cross, to be sure. Would have snatched it out of her hand if I didn’t know it was Emily’s doing.

  Took me some time to quiet myself. Good thing I didn’t see Emily till supper, or likely I’d have said something I’d be regretting. But the mischief was still in her eye when she sat at the table. It was clear she thought it all a grand jest, though I was out six tarts and feeling mortified besides.

  * * *

  It was the next spring when a change came in the way I saw Emily. Maginley’s Circus was in town and Molly and myself had a grand frolic on my afternoon off, watching the clowns and acrobats dancing on the horses. The next day I had a mountain of ironing to be doing but I was still feeling the cheer of it. There I was, bent over the long board and humming a tune, when I heard a scream from the barn. I plunked my iron back on the stove and ran out the back door.

  It was Emily sitting in a heap in front of the horse stall. One foot poked out from under her skirt and her face was puckered with pain. Soon as I knelt I saw she’d buried a nail in the bottom of her slipper. It was sunk into her foot near up to its head and blood was oozing out around the shaft. My stomach heaved.

  “You’ll be all right, miss,” I said. “I’ll have that out in a jiffy. My brother Tommy stepped on a clout nail once and I fixed him up good as new.” Quick as a cricket, I ran back to the kitchen for a clean paring knife.

  God’s truth, I eased the wicked nail from Emily’s foot in no time. Smooth as butter it came out, with only a flinch from herself. The only sound out of her had been that one awful scream.

  I peeled off her slipper and wrapped her foot in my apron and tied it around her ankle. She was shaking all over and leaning against me as we hobbled to the kitchen. Like a child, she was, with her head resting on my shoulder, her hair smelling like sunlight and cherry blossoms and sadness all mixed together. I could feel the lonesomeness coming out of her, same as I knew myself when I first came to America. Sure, I didn’t know what hers was made of but I could feel it deep as my own.

  Not a whimper came from Emily when I washed her foot and wrapped it in a plaster of pork rind and oiled silk. She wrinkled her nose at the smell, but I said it worked for my brother, drew the corruption right out. “Tobacco works too, miss,” I said. “But I amn’t rummaging through Mr. Dickinson’s library to find some.”

  Surprised me when she laughed. Felt like a tiny spark between us. Soon as I settled her on the dining room sofa, I ran to fetch the doctor.

  Dr. Bigelow admired my plaster, and the pair of us carried Emily up the stairs and put her to bed. All the rest of the day, I was running up and down, bringing her tea and food and changing her dressing. Truth is, I didn’t mind the extra fetching and carrying, for I’ve always liked helping the sick. But I was glad at the day’s end to creep off to my room.

  I’d just finished saying my prayers when Mother Dickinson knocked. She looked like a world of troubles had come down on her.

  “Ma’am?” I was shivering in my shift with the night chill around me and my head swirling with weariness.

  “Emily’s asking for you,” she said with her voice wobbling. “She says no one else will do.” It wasn’t her words compelled me, but her look, frayed and worn as a threadbare towel too old to soak up water.

  “Sure, I’ll just be taking a minute to grab my shawl,” I said. “Now go on to bed and get your rest.”

  Emily was awake in her bed with the blankets drawn up to her neck and her face pale as the pillows. Her hair had escaped its braid and was spread around her head in dark red waves. I plumped her pillows and smoothed her blankets. “Is it pain you’re having now?” I asked. I knew sick folk—no matter their age—were comforted when someone was taking charge, even a maid. I put my palm on her forehead to check for fever, but her skin was blessedly cool.

  “You’re as welcome as sun after a rainstorm.” She smiled, a small curve of her lips like the Blessed Virgin contemplating Our Lord. “You’ve brightened my darkness,” she said.

  “Hush now,” I said. “ ’Tis the laudanum talking, and you’re making me blush besides. Is there something I can be doing for you?”

  “Tell me an Irish tale,” she said. “I want to hear you talk.”

  A sad vexation came into the pit of my stomach. I wondered if she was mocking me again. “Why would you be wanting an Irish tale?” I asked.

  “Indulge me, Maggie,” she said. “I need some enchantment tonight. And what better enchantment is there than lore from Ireland?”

  Took a minute for my mind to roll back over stories I heard as a young lass. “Have you heard of Dagda and his harp?” I asked.

  She shook her head. In the lamplight her eyes were shining like a child’s.

  I took the chair from her writing desk and drew it close to the bed and sat myself down. “It happened in the misty long-ago times,” I said. “Before Saint Patrick came to Ireland and drove out all the snakes. Dagda came down from the north with his magical things—his magic club and his magic cauldron and his magic harp made of oak and inlaid all over with jewels. When he plucked the strings, he could order the seasons or fit his warriors for battle. Its music could soothe his soldiers’ wounds and heal all their sorrows.”

  Emily sighed. Her eyes were closed but she was smiling. “Don’t stop,” she whispered. So I went on with the story, telling of Dagda’s capture by his enemies and himself playing the harp to render all of them helpless with the Music of Tears and the Music of Mirth and the Music of Sleep. As the story unwound from my tongue, I fell into the enchantment myself. Took me back to Tipperary, it did, sitting with our family around a basket of potatoes at the end of the day, hearing Da’s voice telling this very tale and feeling Mam’s quick fingers combing my hair. The truth of it is I felt more content than I had in months, sitting there in the near dark with Emily.

  * * *

  Coming out of the story was like swimming up a long river against the current. I looked at the bed and there lay Emily, with the tears running down her face. I thought the pain was troubling her, but she said it was just the Music of Tears. “It snares my heart,” she said then, and asked me to sing the harp’s songs to her.

  “I’ll not be knowing them, miss,” I told her. “And if I did, I daren’t sing them, for they belong to the Faeries. Human folks should never play with magic. ’Tis awful whimsical. A charm can curse easy as it can cure.”

  She was watching me. “I should have known you wouldn’t give up your secrets.” She gave a little laugh. “But I thank you for the story.”

  I looked away. The moon was shining in the window, round as a dollar, its silver caught in the tops of trees.

  “If you’re looking for a song, there’s one in that,” I said.

  She sat up to look, then sank back on her pillows. “There is, indeed,” she said. “Or a poem at least.” Her voice was dreamlike and slow. “It’s a truth as old as God.”

  She dozed a bit and I fear I did so myself, till the sound of voices roused us both. She vowed she’d have a look. So I helped her up and together we made our way to the window. Below us, rolling along the street, came two horses pulling a cart piled hig
h with crates. Then more horses hauling carriages, and after that three elephants, tail to tail, with a lad walking beside them. In the deepest part of the night, the circus was leaving town—all that bright color and happy music and quare animals stealing away. It was the most strange and beautiful thing.

  Neither of us spoke till they were out of sight. Then Emily sighed. “There’s something about it that puts red in your brain, isn’t there? I could almost hear drums.”

  Quick as she said it, I saw the color red flashing in my own mind and fancied I heard a band. Made me think of all the grand parades after the War of the Rebellion.

  Emily clutched my arm and I saw she was shivering. I guided her back to bed and checked her foot for signs of corruption. I was applying a fresh bandage when the first dawn bird started singing. Emily looked at me, and I looked at her, and the pair of us were smiling.

  Later, Emily was fond of telling folks how she watched the circus stealing away in the dark. “Like thieves of happiness,” she’d say, her eyes flashing mischief. “All those big strong men softly calling hoy hoy to hurry the horses.” But she never told a soul I was with her. It was our secret.

  That long strange night a bond formed between us, mistress and maid. Thin as a thread it was at first, loose as a ribbon in the wind. But over time it grew sturdy and limber and strong.

  Part II

  Shutters

  Chapter Eight

  1916

  March is fickle as the Faeries. You never know from one hour to the next if it’s winter or spring. Before I met Emily I thought it a sorry month, made of mud and melancholy. But she loved this time of year. Made her feel alive, she said—it was that full of promises. Sometimes she dragged me outside and set me sniffing till I smelled it too. There’s no perfume more hopeful than mud, she’d be telling me. Maybe just to set me laughing and shaking my head.