by Norman Lock
You led me into the parlor, where a handsome man of middle age, with a patrician nose and air, was waiting to receive me. The room was bright, as was your father’s hair, shining like copper in the light of the fireplace. The floor was varnished to a sheen and islanded with a rug of deep blue sown with pinks, the furniture sufficient and sturdy, as became a New England house, and the limestone fireplace proportioned for a man to stand beside without seeming to be engulfed. It was too pleasant a room for an inquisition.
“Father, I believe you are acquainted with the Reverend Winter, lately of the war with Mexico. Mr. Winter, you know my father, Mr. Edward Dickinson.”
Nervous, I gave him an exaggerated bow, which might have been mistaken for ridicule. He remained seated.
“It is good to see you again, Mr. Dickinson. I hope you are in good health. And Mrs. Dickinson?”
“Tolerably,” he said as his eyes bore into mine.
He seemed to be enjoying my uneasiness and to be intent on prolonging it, until you said, after a discreet glance at my walking stick, “Won’t you ask Mr. Winter to sit down?”
“Please do,” he said, gesturing toward the sofa, on which the dog, Carlo, lay asleep.
I complied, while you perched birdlike on the ottoman in front of your father’s chair.
“Shall we have tea?” you asked brightly.
“If Mr. Winter wishes,” he said—reluctantly, I thought.
You sprang up from the ottoman.
“Emily!” he admonished. “Where are your manners?”
“I beg your pardon, Father, but you know how fuddled I become when company calls.”
You curtsied to us both and flew into the kitchen with a rustle of skirts. We were left with the feeling that we had been mocked.
“You must forgive my daughter, Mr.—or do you prefer Reverend, or Captain, perhaps?” He regarded me coldly.
“Please call me Robert.”
He looked askance at me, as if I had been a rat catcher inviting him to look inside his grubby sack.
“I shall call you Mr. Winter, if you have no objection.”
He seemed determined to deny me even the smallest authority to which I might reasonably lay claim.
“None at all, sir.” Not in this world or—I expect—in the next would I address him as Edward.
I crossed one leg over the other and saw that I had brought snow inside on my boots and that it had melted in a puddle on the floor. I was mortified and wished that I were somewhere else—even the Fortress of San Carlos, where a ghost walked the battlements, croaking about the American future and the Mexicans’ revenge.
“You have been to Mexico,” said your father. I could not decide if his words had been intended as a question or a declaration.
“I have.”
I nearly began a recitation of the past year’s events but decided I might appear prideful in his eyes. What’s more, I knew that your father was a Whig and had been opposed to the war. “He’ll disapprove of you, you know,” you’d said. “You had better hide behind your cloth.” I had taken your advice and come dressed as a minister of God and not a chaplain representing a militant Christ bearing “His terrible swift sword” against the enemies of the chosen people in the New World. I was beginning to understand that I had been in Mexico not for the reasons I had supposed, but to consecrate President Polk’s territorial ambition, and that of slavery’s apostles.
“Doubtless, you witnessed many gory scenes,” said your father in a tone of voice suitable to the denunciation of unspeakable crimes.
“I regret to say that I arrived home with a poorer opinion of men.”
He nodded in what I took to be agreement. By his humorless face, however, I knew that a low sort of person like me could expect no pardon from the “Squire of Amherst.”
“At such times as these, misanthropy comes out in us like a rash. May I inquire as to your politics?”
I had none, nor had I rehearsed an answer that could have satisfied him. You chose to arrive at that moment with gilt-edged cups and saucers and a pot of India tea. I have always suspected that your intervention was not by chance, Emily. In any case, I was saved from the pillory and allowed to speak thereafter of less weighty matters.
You laid out the tea things on a table whose pedestal had been carved into a pineapple—an American symbol of hospitality, betrayed by your father’s peevishness, which you managed to ignore.
“What do you think of our new looking glass, Robert?”
Disapproving of such intimacy of address, Edward hemmed into his china cup.
You rose and went to stand before the mirror.
“Each time I look at it, I am reminded of a monkey.” You spun around to face me and said, “Oh, Robert, when I was at school last fall, a menagerie stopped in front of my window! How strange to see bears and monkeys on the lawn of Miss Lyon’s school! You would have thought she would be furious, but I suppose she is inured to the antics of little monkeys.” You turned again to the mirror and pulled a simian face. “Well, I oughtn’t to mind the resemblance—they are so very clever.”
“Emily, must you chatter so?” scolded Edward.
“Pray, Father, what else should a monkey do?” you replied with a mock seriousness that dissembled your insolence.
In his annoyance, the teacup rattled on its saucer. The clock thudded out the seconds one by one.
You looked at me with mischief in your pretty eyes and asked, “Did you happen to see monkeys when you were in Mexico?”
You had come away from the mirror, and, shooing Carlo from the sofa, you sat down beside me. If your father had had a glass eye, his ire would have shot it across the room.
“You are indecent, girl!” he barked.
“Nonsense! There is no more decent girl in the entire Amherst sorority of female fools and busybodies!”
“Emily!”
“Well, Robert?”
So unnerved had I become that I stared at you without comprehension.
“Did you see monkeys in Mexico?”
I put down my cup and, distracted, did not pick it up again. “I saw spider monkeys in the lower elevations.”
“How fortunate for you! I am sure their antics made you laugh. I must tell Austin—he has never seen a monkey except in Mr. Elliot’s stereoscope. Would you care to see London? Mr. Elliot would be delighted were you to take an interest in his views, although his London is not so interesting as Mr. Thackeray’s or Mr. Dickens’s. Have you read Nicholas Nickleby? I think it very fine indeed, but what cruelties there are in the world! I can scarcely credit them!”
I began to fume. What do you know of cruelty? You are a brash young student at the South Hadley seminary, of gentle background and more than modest means. You may have suffered a toothache or a hangnail, but I’ve seen men’s arms and legs blown off. I’ve prayed over departed souls gone to whatever comes next. I was preening myself in self-righteousness—you know how I was in those days. A prig. I bore a sense of injury as pleasant as hunger about to be appeased by Sunday dinner.
“Emily, why don’t you play something for Mr. Winter?” said your father hotly, his face the color of a turkey wattle.
“I shall be happy to, my dear.”
You flounced to the piano bench, sat, and settled your skirts. Vexed, your father leaned back in the easy chair. “She’s a most irksome young woman!” he complained, while you began to play “The Juniata Quick Step.”
“Something less jarring to the nerves!”
“He means a plain tune for a plain New England girl.”
The tune modulated into a dirge.
“Father would prefer to hear one of Isaac Watts’s dour hymns.” Your fingers paused on the keys, before walking soberly onward into one:
“Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.”
You sang badly, I thought.
The hymn came to an abrupt halt. If
fingers can be said to pout, yours did. “In heaven, our ears will have their fill of common measure,” you carped, turning the pages once more to Mr. Burditt’s quickstep. “While here on earth, I prefer something lively.”
Your fingers pounced. The parlor jangled. Carlo, the dog, whined. Your father breathed heavily, and, given his beet red complexion, I feared for his heart. And then you stopped again and closed the piano lid with a bang, which made the dog jump and your father grumble like a grampus in its sleep.
We fell silent, Edward, no doubt, to repair his frayed nerves.
“Yes, a most irksome young woman. I fear for the peace of my house when she is in one of her moods. Pity Miss Lyon! Her patience almost certainly reached its limit with Emily to try it. She has refused salvation, you know, to her family’s shame.”
I would not let him draw me to his side. I wanted to be your champion, your cavalier. Had I had a sword instead of a walking stick, I’d have flourished it in your father’s face.
“What do you think of her, Reverend Winter? Is she very wicked?” Having been asked for an ecclesiastical opinion, I couldn’t very well admit my fondness for you, which he would have scouted.
“No, Mr. Dickinson,” I replied with the dawning of a smile, which I suppressed. “She is high-spirited. She will quiet in time, when she comes to marry.”
“She will never marry.”
“But surely when she is older——”
“She will never leave this house,” he said like a judge pronouncing sentence.
I persisted. “Someday she will want her own life.”
“It is quite impossible.”
“What if a man were to ask for her hand?”
“No man would dare!”
I nearly asked him why he could not picture me as an eligible suitor, but the sternness of his countenance forestalled questions. I never did discover the reason for his dislike. Of course, I know now that no man would have pleased him as a son-in-law.
“It would be cruel to keep her here . . . a spinster.”
“She is unfit for anything else, and she must help her mother, who suffers from sick headaches. No, Emily’s place is here.”
“What of Miss Lyon’s and Emily’s poetry?”
“The seminary is not congenial for anyone whose nerves are tightly strung.”
I was about to raise an objection, but he cut me off.
“I know her better than she knows herself. I am her father, after all. As for her poetry, she can scribble here to her heart’s content. The world comes in at her window; it is enough.”
Have you really been content to be as you are, Emily, or was it Edward’s doing? If that is the case, I curse him and consign him to the tyrants’ hell.
Carlo began to bark. Your father took a wooden darning egg from your sewing basket and shied it at him. He yelped and ran to his wicker bed and lay down on the serape I had given you the day before. Did you put it there, or did Edward to spite me—to spite us both? I didn’t understand any of it. The dog licked its paw. I thought your father a brute and wished circumstances allowed me to rebuke him. “I have cried to see him beat the poor horse,” you told me later. “Father has a fearful temper. I know how to handle him—just—but you must take care, Robert, not to provoke him.” It was a ghastly afternoon.
Your mother entered the parlor, wan and haggard. She held a handkerchief dampened with spirits of ammonia. I could see she was unwell. I stood to greet her. She nodded and sat on the rattan rocking chair.
“It is Mr. Winter, Mother,” you twittered, taking the handkerchief from her hand and dabbing her forehead with it. “He has just returned from the Mexican War. He’s come to pay his respects.” You had spoken as though she were deaf or in her dotage.
“I am pleased to see you again, young man,” she replied with difficulty, one side of her face stiffened by neuralgia. “I hope you did not suffer much.”
“Hardly at all,” I said, ashamed of the walking stick in my hand. “It is nothing, ma’am.”
Your father grunted from his chair. I’d have liked to break my stick over his head or shy the darning egg at him.
“Has Emily looked after you?” She glanced at the walnut table, where the tea things sat. “I see that she has. My daughter is a capable young woman.”
“I’ve committed to memory Mother’s copy of Letters to a Young Lady, by the Reverend John Bennett, gone to heaven, who, when he was among us, had much to impart concerning the proprieties.”
“I was telling our guest what an excellent homemaker and companion Emily will make when she has sufficiently matured,” said Edward with a fulsome smile.
“Father rules me like a patron!” you jeered, with a glance at the neglected serape.
“Emily has all the graces,” replied your mother. “You are a good girl, Emily dear.”
“I’m a good girl,” you parroted. “Robert has been telling us all about the monkeys.”
“Monkeys, you say!” Your brother, Austin, had arrived, his boots sopping. “Hello, Robert! I’m glad to see you.” We shook hands amiably. He sat on the ottoman, you on a cushion on the floor next to Carlo, whose tawny curls you stroked absently. “You must tell me about them, Robert.”
“We have heard enough about monkeys!” growled Edward. “Such talk will distress Mother.”
“Will it upset you, Mother, to hear about the monkeys?” Your innocent tone concealed a barb intended to wound Edward. Even in my nervous state, I could feel it.
“Oh, I——”
Before she could reply, Edward had turned to rebuke his son. “Good heavens, Austin, look at the mess you’ve made on the carpet! How many times must I tell you to use the front-door scraper on your dirty boot soles?”
I glanced at the floor, where my own boots rested guiltily.
“Odd, is it not, that boots should have soles when so many who stand in them do not?”
Edward glared. I withered, but you would not be cowed. In fact, you almost smiled.
“I’ll clean Brother’s mess. Austin, talk to our guest awhile. I fear we have bored him.”
You went into the kitchen and returned with a brush and bucket. My nose was stung by a caustic smell. While I answered the first of Austin’s questions concerning the war, you scrubbed the carpet.
“Mr. Winter, I’ll thank you to speak no more of unpleasant matters!” ordered the mogul of North Pleasant Street. “Mrs. Dickinson is delicate.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied with ill-concealed anger, while my mind recoiled from the genteel madness of the Dickinsons’ parlor to grim memories of the madness I’d witnessed in Mexico.
I was again at Chapultepec Castle, where thirty soldiers of the Saint Patrick’s Battalion twisted on the gibbet like apples on a tree—soon to fall and rot. I saw a Mexican woman lying in the street like a broken doll—black eyes fixed on eternity or vacancy. I recalled the peculiar odor of scorched wood and roasted flesh and how fat flies settled on the dead. “Our Words are too nice to render stench & gore. They decorate Corpses as prettily as flies do, armored like a Shogun’s warriors in bottle green & bronze.” You wrote those lines to me during the late war. I seem to have been always at war, even in peacetime, which is nothing but a prelude to the next conflict—an interlude between brutal acts, when actors and spectators stand about and drink tea.
“Unpleasantness does not belong in a well-regulated home,” said Edward as a gentleman might talk of a maggot he has just discovered on his dinner plate.
“You must be careful of what you say, Robert, or Father will force his castor oil on you.”
I feared for the teacup in his hand, but he turned his anger abruptly to solicitude aimed at your mother.
“Emily, my dear, you should be in bed. Daughter, put the bucket away and take Mother upstairs.”
You got off your knees—a most unladylike attitude, more becoming to a servant girl—and set the bucket in a corner of the room with an unnecessarily loud clatter.
“I should be going,” I said, ri
sing from the sofa. I couldn’t leave fast enough.
“Will you be staying long in Amherst?” asked Edward.
His eyes burned beneath his beetling brow. I could have lit a lucifer with them. How have you stood him all these years? I would have lost my wits and been manhandled into an asylum, or lost my temper, murdered him, and been hanged.
“I must be in Springfield, Illinois, in five days’ time. I am to be the chaplain at the fort there.”
“I will say good-bye, then,” he said. “You must visit us when you are next in Amherst.”
He opened a newspaper, and I understood that I had been dismissed.
Austin rose and warmly clasped my hand. I saw my humiliation reflected in the young man’s eyes.
“Good-bye, Mr. Winter,” your mother said as you led her from the parlor. “Please give my regards to your aunt.”
I thanked her and, with a glance at you, left that most unwelcoming of houses. The urge to smash the jar of relish in my hand was almost irresistible.
–6–
I LAY ABED IN MY AUNT’S HOUSE and watched a spider write its morose tales in cursive filaments. Your penmanship, Emily, is hardly more legible than its. I’ve had to strain after sense over a letter or poem. But I’m grateful for the expense of time and ink and thought—though they do seem “dashed off”—and hope to receive others. I’ll need them now that you are no longer “at home” to guests.
Austin writes that you seldom leave the Homestead. Except to take the air or tend the garden, you are secreted in your opalescent shell. But I see through you, Emily. It’s all a ruse, because your poems are as angry at God as ever, although the anger lies too deep for common intelligence. You aren’t the dotty Belle of Amherst you would have us believe. Rather, you are the Tigress of Amherst, and I’ve discerned your fugitive tracks on paper as an Indian does his prey’s imprinted on the ground. I sometimes think I ought to set off and rescue you. I’d storm the house as once—in a kind of dream—we rushed the walls of Chapultepec and took Mexico City for the United States.