Mr. Emerson's Wife

by Amy Belding Brown

  A dark image of my infant brother laid out in his coffin rose in my mind. I saw my mother weeping and Father sitting alone in the darkened parlor near the head of the coffin, his head bowed forward on his chest. The odor of flowers was wet and ropy.

  “You must not allow yourself to think morbidly, Charles. You need to conserve your strength.” I was speaking to myself as well as my brother-in-law, for I was aware of the harm such thoughts could do to the child I carried.

  “I’ve spent years fighting these melancholy thoughts. Did you know that for a time I wanted to follow my father and Waldo into the ministry? As a bulwark against despair, I suppose. But my mind wasn’t made for the mysteries of faith. I’m much too practical.” He paused to briefly raise his free hand to his mouth and I feared that he was about to hemorrhage again, but his thin white fingers soon fell upon the bed. He gave me a sad smile. “Yet even Waldo could not preserve his faith when Ellen died.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean? Waldo leads our family prayers every morning and evening.”

  Charles shook his head. “When Ellen died his hope and confidence in God disappeared. He’s more seeker than believer now.”

  “His faith will return in time,” I said.

  He gazed up at me. “You are too innocent for us Emersons, you know. A lamb among wolves.”

  “Innocent?” I released his hand. “I’m far from innocent, Charles.”

  “Compared to your husband, you are. I love Waldo dearly, but he’ll never be able to love you as he ought.” He took a breath, let it out. Fresh blood blossomed at the corner of his mouth. “His heart is not free.”

  I took up another towel and gently wiped his mouth. “I know that,” I said. “I’m not as innocent as you suppose. Nor am I without my own resources.” I rose and smoothed my skirts. “In any case, I have confidence that time will loosen those bonds.”

  He gave me a sorrowful look, but I didn’t allow him the opportunity to continue his low thoughts. “You must rest now. And I must fetch Dr. Bartlett.”

  I left the room then, carried the bloodied towels down to the kitchen and pushed them into the wash barrel behind the door. Nancy was at the table, cutting apples for a pie.

  “Where’s Lucy?” I asked.

  “Gone for a walk.” Nancy didn’t look up at me. The apple slices slipped off her knife in slick, white crescents.

  “If Mr. Emerson comes out of his study,” I said, “please tell him I’ve gone to fetch the doctor.”

  Nancy dropped her knife and looked up at me. Her dark eyebrows were raised in two perfect arches. “You’re not going out in your condition?”

  “My condition should not be an embarrassment,” I said. “It is, after all, the most natural of circumstances.”

  I left the house and walked to the Mill Dam, paying no heed to the budding trees and new calls of the spring birds, for my mind was in a state of great agitation. I had not realized that Charles so clearly perceived the complex nature of my union with Mr. Emerson. It troubled me that he’d noticed it. I’d cherished the superstition that silence protected me, that things that had not been spoken aloud did not fully exist. I had not yet confessed to anyone else—not even Lucy—that I hoped to change Mr. Emerson’s heart. It had been a furtive, secret hope, well hidden beneath the pleasure I expressed in my marriage, a hope I examined and nurtured in private. Yet Charles had not been fooled; he’d discerned the truth of it. And I was both ashamed and relieved to know that the understanding was no longer mine alone.

  Dr. Bartlett was not at home, but his housemaid assured me she would send him word that he was needed immediately at the Emerson home. I thanked her, refused the cup of tea she urged on me, and continued down Main Street to Judge Hoar’s, where I found Elizabeth sewing in her chamber. Her look of alarm when I told her of Charles’s attack was heightened by concern for my condition as we waited for the Hoar family buggy to be brought to the door. I reassured her that the exercise had been beneficial to both me and the child and she seemed to draw strength from my reassurance.

  Dr. Bartlett’s familiar horse and buggy was standing at the east entrance when Elizabeth and I arrived. We found him in the parlor, solemnly conferring with my husband.

  Mr. Emerson turned when we entered. “Elizabeth! Lidian!” He crossed the room to us, extending his hands to offer a necessary comfort. Elizabeth, who was naturally ardent of feeling, turned away and burst into tears.

  “Go to Charles,” I said, though it was plain she did not need my urging, for she was already running up the stairs.

  “It’s good that you brought her.” Mr. Emerson passed a hand over his eyes. “She’s his chief comfort now.”

  Mother Emerson sat in the corner chair, her knitting lying untouched in her lap. I sat slowly upon the red claw-foot settee, removed my bonnet, and silently laid it in my lap. When Dr. Bartlett began to speak, I found that I was stroking it for solace, as if it were one of my beloved cats.

  “He must go south at once,” the doctor said. “His situation is very grave. Only sun and warm air will save him. I’d recommend Puerto Rico.”

  My husband drew in a sharp breath but said nothing.

  “I’d like your assurance that such a long journey would be efficacious,” Mother Emerson said. “It would do Charles little good to wear himself out in travel.”

  Dr. Bartlett nodded gravely. “I wish I could give you my warranty, Mrs. Emerson. All I can promise is that Puerto Rico is his only hope.”

  “Then it’s decided.” Mother Emerson picked up her yarn, as though she intended to begin knitting, though in fact her needles remained still. “Charles shall go to Puerto Rico. I’ll take him there myself.”

  ON THE FIRST DAY of May, to accommodate Charles’s weakness, the morning coach to Boston pulled up in front of our east entrance, and Charles and Mother Emerson slowly descended the steps and walked across the short strip of grass between the house and the coach. Elizabeth was present, struggling to manifest a cheerful countenance despite her sorrow, while my husband held a last-minute conference with the drivers, informing them of their passenger’s grave condition.

  Mother Emerson insisted that she had long been planning a trip to visit her son William and his family and that Charles’s journey offered a perfect excuse. She planned to stay at least three weeks, and would oversee Charles’s recovery from the trip and his subsequent departure for Puerto Rico. I experienced an unworthy gratification as I watched her settle into her seat. For nearly a month I would be able to manage my own house without her scrutiny.

  As Charles boarded the coach he looked like the ghost of a man, barely able to smile. He clung to Elizabeth’s hand through the open door until the coachman came to close it.

  “We’ll be married as soon as you return!” Elizabeth called as the door was firmly shut. She stood waving until the coach was out of sight. Only then did she tearfully collapse on my husband’s supporting arm.

  Mr. Emerson drove Elizabeth back to her home in our buggy while I retired to the kitchen to oversee dinner preparations. The cracks and thuds of the carpenter’s hammers were oddly comforting—they seemed to signal a matter-of-factness to the day, as if to reassure all within hearing that Charles’s illness was not a matter of great significance, but only one small incident in a long and interesting lifetime.

  On the fourth morning after their departure a letter arrived in Mother Emerson’s hand. Since Mr. Emerson was lecturing in Salem that afternoon and would not be back until dusk, I opened it at once. Its contents and brevity alarmed me—it insisted that my husband hasten at once to Staten Island. The trip had proved too much for Charles, seriously weakening his already frail health. William’s doctor had purged and bled him and insisted on complete bed rest. It was clear he could not sail until he regained some measure of strength.

  All day I was beside myself with worry, distracted from every task, unable to think of anything but Charles’s affliction. I dispatched a messenger to Mr. Emerson, telling him to cancel his lecture and c
ome home at once, but when he arrived, late that afternoon, his composed expression told me instantly he hadn’t received my communication. He was still seated in the buggy when I drew his mother’s letter from my apron pocket and handed it to him without speaking. His face blanched, as if he already knew its contents. He read the letter and looked down at me, and I noticed an odd thing—the blue had gone out of his eyes and they were only smudged shadows in his face.

  “Where’s Elizabeth?” he said in a voice that tore my heart.

  ELIZABETH AND MY HUSBAND left for Staten Island just after daybreak on May ninth. Had it not been for Lucy, I might have traveled with them, but she’d taken to her bed with a fever the day after the letter arrived. And so I stayed to nurse her and wait for word of Charles.

  For three days I waited in suspense, with no knowledge of what had transpired. On the fourth day, a public coach pulled up in front of the house and Mr. Emerson stepped out. He did not look at me as he helped first his mother and then Elizabeth down the wobbly steps.

  Only when they had entered the house did he face me. “Charles is gone,” he said.

  I put my hand to my throat. “No!” I whispered.

  My husband turned away and followed the two women inside. By the time I entered the house, he’d already retired to his study, and I was left to comfort Elizabeth and Mother Emerson as best I could.

  Aunt Mary Moody attended the burial, which took place on an unseasonably cold day. Clouds the color of an old bruise threatened rain. The new leaves looked gray and pearly in the wan light. Mary leaned on the arm of Sarah Ripley and stared down into the grave with such a fierce expression on her face that my gaze instinctively leaped away. After the ceremony, Mr. Emerson invited her to return to our home for the collation, but she shook her small head so violently that her bonnet strings snapped.

  “I keep my vows,” she said.

  Despite her stubborn words, I detected a terrible regret in her eyes, which looked as dull and tarnished as a winter’s sky.

  In the days following Charles’s death, Mr. Emerson spoke little except to voice his concern for Elizabeth. When I tried to comfort him by reminding him that Charles was no longer sick and in pain—that he had surely found in heaven the joy and peace he’d given so often to others—Mr. Emerson turned away, declaring that he did not care to speak of a heaven in which he had no hope.

  A week after his return he told me that he wanted Elizabeth to come and live with us at Bush. I could not imagine why she would want to leave her own family in her time of sorrow, but I gladly extended the invitation. She accepted immediately.

  “My dear Lidian,” Elizabeth said the day she moved in, clasping both my hands with grateful fervor, “it’s so generous of you to take me in. I know that I’ll find Charles’s spirit in residence! You still feel his presence, don’t you?” And she looked at me with such earnest hope in her lovely face that I could not confess to her that I’d felt only Charles’s absence since his death. Or that I was shocked to discover how thoroughly the atmosphere at Bush had been charged with his charm and good cheer. For there was a darkness about the place now, a pervasive melancholy that was not created by grief alone. It was as though the house itself mourned his passing. I decided that, should our child be a boy, I would name him Charles.

  At Elizabeth’s insistence, we moved our parlor furniture into the new room behind Mr. Emerson’s study. “It will accommodate more guests for your conversations,” she said. We turned the old parlor into a guest room, and it was quickly designated the Red Room, in honor of its crimson carpet.

  Elizabeth was installed in Charles’s room, where she stayed for three weeks. During that time, my husband turned to her often for comfort in his grief. Some days they were nearly inseparable. He brushed off my attempts to console him and retreated to her companionship or the fortress of his study. My skills as a wife seemed very meager.

  As I watched Elizabeth and Mr. Emerson, I saw that she was able to offer him a solace I knew nothing of. A bond had formed between them that replaced Mr. Emerson’s affection for his brother. I tried to convince myself that this was a good thing. But it pained me, nonetheless. I was his wife, the woman he should turn to in his grief.

  But the dead are formidable adversaries. To challenge them is a profitless endeavor.

  AFTER CHARLES’S DEATH, Lucy’s growing discontent became clear to me. She spent most of her time alone. She took long walks, often visiting the graveyard to brood over stones, as if to extract counsel from the ancient Puritan verses. She no longer confided in me, or shared Sophia’s letters, but retreated into extended silences from which I was unable to draw her. One day she came to me and announced that she wished to leave Bush and return to Plymouth and board with Aunt Joa.

  “You’ve been a gracious hostess,” she said. “But a hostess after all, and I require my own home.”

  I would have protested more vigorously had my pregnancy absorbed me less. I spent my days marveling at the rapidity with which my body changed, at its peculiar combination of strength and delicacy. During my cold-water bath each morning, I examined my breasts, marveling at their tenderness and the prominence of new veins—like undiscovered rivers crossing desert sand. I puzzled over the increased intensity of my moods. I struggled with nausea, nibbling dry salt biscuits in bed after waking, avoiding the kitchen until afternoon. I took long naps. I woke late in the afternoons when the sun was already low in the sky, making long shadows on the roads and fields. Despite all the sleep, I felt wrung out, weary, the way an aged cat is weary, one who can barely drag itself from one sunny window to another. And so, when I embraced Lucy the morning she left, my sorrow was mixed with a blessed relief.

  On a Sunday in late May, as I sat alone in the dining room writing a letter to Sophia, something soft fluttered deep in my lap, a peculiar and unfamiliar sensation that made me think of moths trapped within a lantern. It was late afternoon; Mr. Emerson was out for his daily constitutional and for some minutes I did not move, but simply sat puzzled and wondering. Quite suddenly I understood what it was and put down my pen. In awe, and with a nearly giddy excitement, I rose and went to the window, hoping to see my husband returning from his saunter, for I was thrilled and impatient to announce that my child had quickened.

  In the distance, I saw a figure advance toward the house across a neighboring field. Thinking it must be Mr. Emerson, I ran outside without my shawl, my skirts and apron in disarray, my cap sliding halfway off my head. It was only when I reached the gate that I perceived that the man’s stride was too limber to be my husband’s. Nor was he sufficiently tall. Yet there was a buoyant grace about him that was familiar, a lightness of step that seemed to echo the joy in my own heart. As he came closer, the sun fell on his shoulders and face and, though he was nearly the length of the field away, I recognized Henry Thoreau.

  I stood grasping the top rail of the gate, wondering if I ought to greet this man I had foolishly mistaken for my husband—for I was certain he had seen me—or if I could return to the house without giving offense. I felt the flutter again, a fretful twist at my center that made me mindful of my disordered state. I looked down at my waist, as if there might be some visible manifestation of my experience, but there was, of course, no sign. When I looked up, Henry had crossed the road and disappeared into the scrim of trees beyond.

  11

  Experience

  True wisdom lies in finding out all the advantages of a situation in which we are placed, instead of imagining the enjoyments of one in which we are not placed.

  —LYDIA MARIA CHILD

  My first labor pains came on me late in the morning on the thirtieth day of October in 1836. I was kneading bread dough in the kitchen, when my lower back convulsed. The pain curled around my hips and pressed hard into my abdomen.

  I stood still. I tried to think of what I must do. Lucy was in Plymouth and Nancy had gone to the Mill Dam. I sank into a chair, where Mother Emerson happened upon me a few minutes later. She knew at once that I was
in labor and helped me to bed before sending Louisa to fetch the midwife, Eliza Wilson, who lived over the butcher’s shop. My husband, roused from his studies by the sound of his mother’s sharp commands, came and stood helplessly by the bed until Eliza arrived. She immediately set about putting things in order, after firmly closing the chamber door on my bewildered husband.

  I’d attended deliveries before, had wiped away the sweat and heard the moans, held women’s desperate, clutching hands, had even held the legs of one of my cousins while the midwife pulled out her dead son. I knew that labor was aptly named, that pain and struggle lay at its heart. But what I experienced in my own labor was a new frontier, beyond the realm of suffering.

  I had no control. I, who’d always prided myself on my deportment and ability to govern my body, was ambushed by labor. The sheer wildness overwhelmed me. I was no longer myself, but another person, writhing on the bed, moaning and slapping away Eliza’s hands in fury. I screamed and wept and tore at the sheet with my teeth. My husband, who was grudgingly granted entrance once during my ordeal, retreated in horror.

  The nature of childbirth is eternal—a woman in labor feels as if it will never end. I was pinned liked an insect to a specimen board, nailed like Christ to His cross. I knew, even as these thoughts darted through my mind like scuttling mice, that I was blaspheming God. That the birth of this child was part of His will and purpose for my life and, in resisting it, I was resisting Him. Yet I was no more in charge of my thoughts than of my body. I moaned and raged at heaven, but no relief arrived. Eliza repeatedly wiped my face with a cold towel. Mother Emerson held my hand and prayed aloud.