“Who’s this little sister?” She pronounced it sistuh, perhaps as part of her new in-your-face racial attitude, parading her blackness in deliberate contrast to the privileged upper-crust whiteness of her fellow students. Enfield did that to me, too—made me want to throw my French-Canadian, mill-town origins in the face of its WASP smugness, wear jeans and cowboy boots to class, play Emmylou Harris during office hours.
Shamega continued to study the photo. “She is black, isn’t she?”
“I think so. And I don’t know who she is. That picture was in the book.”
“Cute kid,” she said. “I hope she darkened up a bit when she got older.”
After Shamega left, I packed up my books, took the last sip of cold coffee, and surveyed the room, checking, as usual, to see if anyone had left anything behind. A crumpled sheet of paper on the floor in the back caught my eye. I picked it up, intending to toss it in the wastebasket. On an impulse, I smoothed the paper out. It contained a vicious penciled caricature of Shamega Gilfoyle portrayed as a stereotypical pickaninny, in a ragged dress, with braids poking out all over her head, and heavy lug boots on her enormous feet. I went cold with anger. Tibby Brewster had drawn this ugly thing; I knew that, but I had no proof.
I had my hand on the knob of the Dean of Students’ office door, thinking to show the offensive cartoon to Earlene, when Shamega’s words came back to me, warning me off. “It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she’d said. In other words, “Buzz off, Professor.” This vicious cartoon was surely a different matter than mere heated repartee in class, but I didn’t think it came under the category of hate speech: It hadn’t been posted or mailed. Shamega didn’t know about it, and I didn’t particularly want to show it to her. If I brought the Dean of Students in at this stage, would she feel duty-bound to pursue the issue? If she did, Shamega would hate me. I turned back and headed for my office.
The coffee shop has fake mullioned windows and white stucco walls with pseudo half-timbering. In the good old days, when Enfield students were all male, and eighteen-year-olds were legally permitted to pickle their brains in alcohol, it had been a beer cellar. When I stopped by on my way to the parking lot, it was crowded with late-afternoon snackers. Tibby Brewster was seated in a booth near the door with a middle-aged woman whose blond hair looked as if it had been ironed permanently into its shoulder-length blunt-cut pageboy. He sipped at a can of Dr Pepper, while she ignored the coffee in front of her. As I passed their table the woman’s low, heartfelt tone became almost inaudible. Tibby’s mother—I assumed that’s who it was—leaned as far toward him as he slouched away from her; like all parallels, the lines of their bodies never came to a meeting point. Mrs. Brewster’s expensive hairdo swung stiffly across her face, but I could see the family resemblance nonetheless in the soft mouth, the bow-shaped lips. On her, it would have been attractive had she not been so very fashionably skinny.
I hefted the coffee pot and tried to eavesdrop. Shamelessly. Maybe this conversation would help me understand what was going on with my troublesome student.
Mrs. Brewster had ceased speaking, but the urgency in her gaze was compelling. The enormous dark eyes, hollow cheeks, and pale skin were arresting. As if drawn by a magnetic force, Tibby’s eyes met his mother’s. For a few seconds he appeared vulnerable, his girlish mouth quivered. Then the heavy coffee-shop doors flew open, and Shamega entered, laughing up at the attractive male student who followed her. Her friend was tall, dark, and lithe, and I thought I recognized him from the basketball court. Instantly, Tibby’s expression shut down. He dropped his gaze from his mother’s face, his lips twisted, and the line of his jaw hardened. I’d poured a full cup of coffee and paid for it before I remembered I’d come into the shop in search of a Coke.
I had wanted to talk to Tibby about the drawing that was burning a hole in my pocket, but this didn’t seem to be quite the right moment.
Three
“Mr. Smallwood?” I peered over stacks of books on the battered oak table that served as a desk in this cluttered secondhand bookstore. The arc of ornate gold lettering on the plate-glass window said Smallwood’s Antiquarian Books, but this musty, miscellaneous gathering of nineteenth- and twentieth-century volumes spoke more of the old-and-unwanted than of the antiquarian.
“Ayah?” The down-east voice emerged from behind a display case that held a small collection of leather-bound books in decent condition. I peered over the case. An elderly man with a fringe of gray hair surrounding a shiny pate sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor with a dust cloth in one hand and a large, ornate, blue-covered book in the other. He made no attempt to rise, just sat there regarding me quizzically. I stared at the book in his hand. Surely that couldn’t be a copy of Rufus Griswold’s midnineteenth-century Female Poets of America? It looked exactly like the one in the Rare Books collection of the Enfield College Library. A wave of book-lust engulfed me. I resisted it; I was here on an altogether different quest, trying to find out where the Jane Eyre with the Northbury bookplate had come from. I was hoping that the previous owner might have more of Serena Northbury’s books. It was an extremely remote possibility, but if I did go ahead and write her biography, it would be useful to know what else Northbury had read.
“Mr. Smallwood, my name is Karen Pelletier.” Rather than continue to loom over this gnomelike figure, I hunkered down beside him and pulled Jane Eyre out of my jacket pocket. “Last week you sold this to a friend of mine.”
The man made a show of pulling rimless spectacles out of his shirt pocket, donning them, giving the book a thorough perusal. Then he glanced up at me.
“Pretty girl? Red hair?”
“Sounds like her. Well, I—”
“Purple jeans? Weird boyfriend? Tall, skinny fella?”
“The jeans sound right. I don’t know anything about the boyfriend.”
“Yep. Sold her this. Gave her a good price on it, too. Pretty girl. Lotsa life. Don’t know what she was doing with a sourpuss like that.” He passed the dust cloth over his shiny head, then applied it to the book in his hand. “A real sourpuss.” He handed me back the newly dusted Brontë.
“Mr. Smallwood, do you remember where this book came from?”
“Ayah.”
Nothing more was forthcoming. He picked up the large gold-embossed tome again, finished dusting it, and replaced it in the showcase. I waited. Then he took a small red-covered book, applied his cloth, concentrated on dusting.
“Could you tell me?” I ventured. “Please?”
“Tell you what?”
“Where the Brontë came from?”
“Oh, ayah.” Mr. Smallwood replaced the red book in the case and sat back on his heels. “It was one of that there Dr. Hart’s books.”
“Dr. Hart?” Was I supposed to recognize the name?
“Yep. Nice lady. Lives over Eastbrook way. Brought me in a buncha books a year or so ago. Musta been in February; there’d been one a them big storms, and …” At length, he went on about the storm, the perilous sidewalks, the cost of heating his store.
I waited him out. Then I asked, “Do you have any more of Dr. Hart’s books?”
“Probably.” He waved a hand at the cluttered shelves.
I blanched. “You don’t keep records?”
“Only for first editions and other rare books. The rest just go on the shelves. Coupla dollars each. I kept the Jane Eyre up here …” he pointed at the case, “’cause it was so nice. Don’t remember ‘bout the rest.”
“Eastbrook, huh?”
“I think it was Eastbrook. Somewhere over there.”
I thought about the myriad small towns sprinkled across the mountains of western Massachusetts like salt on popcorn. Should I even bother? What could this Dr. Hart, nice lady though she might be, possibly tell me about a hundred-and-fifty-year-old book that somehow had fallen into her possession?
I rose when Mr. Smallwood did, but with considerably less groaning. Dr. Hart might know where the book had originally come from, but it was a lo
ng shot. Certainly not worth the time it would take to comb the New England wilds; there were probably dozens of Harts scattered through those hills. This was a wild-goose chase, and I wasn’t going to waste any more time on it.
“Thanks for your help, Mr. Smallwood.” I walked past the sagging shelves to the door. It closed behind me with a jangle of bells and I turned back down North Street toward the center of town. The unseasonable warmth lingered through this sunny Saturday, and the shoppers on the wide sidewalks moved just a little less briskly than the usual New England late-winter double-time. As I passed the bookstore window with its dilapidated arc of gilded letters, I glanced in at the volumes on display. Not an impressive selection: A copy of the original Joy of Cooking; an array of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books from the 1950’s; a shabby set of Hardy Boys mystery novels. In the back of the shop, Mr. Smallwood’s diminutive shape was visible. He was fumbling through a small metal file box. Hmm, I thought, and pivoted, setting the bells to ringing again as I reentered the bookstore.
“There you are,” he said. “Thought you might want the address.”
“The address?”
“Yep. That nice Dr. Hart, good-looking lady. Said she had boxes of old books in her attic, if I ever wanted to take a look. Said someone should have the use of them.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Said something about her grandmother wouldn’t want them to go to waste.”
“Her grandmother?”
“Grandmother. Great-grandmother. Something. Was a writer or something. Lady said no one in her family was interested in the books. I just never found the time to go ail the way over there. Good-looking lady, though. Nice, too.”
Her grandmother! My hand shook as I scribbled down the address from his index card: Dr. Edith Hart, Meadowbrook, Eastbrook, Massachusetts.
Serena Northbury’s granddaughter? Could it possibly be? I did some quick mental arithmetic. Maybe great-granddaughter? Great-great-granddaughter?
“Thank you, Mr. Smallwood. Thank you very much. By the way, is that a copy of Griswold’s Female Poets you’ve got there?”
Well, it was tax-deductible.
Walking back down North Street with the cumbersome volume of poems under my arm, I caught sight of myself in the plate-glass window of the old England Brothers’ Department Store. Big dark eyes, at the moment appearing slightly bemused. Straight dark hair pulled back in a barrette. Pale face with long, thin French-Canadian nose. No makeup. Denim jacket with big patch pockets. Jeans. Amanda’s cast-off cowboy boots. I wondered how Mr. Smallwood would describe me to his next customer. Tall lady. Kinda nervous. Doesn’t know how to dress.
I always keep my car radio tuned to WENF, Enfield Public Radio, for its mix of alternative music, NPR programming, and local-interest interviews. But when I reached my reliable old VW Jetta and turned the ignition key, the last thing I expected to hear over the airways was the familiar voice of Lieutenant Piotrowski of the Massachusetts State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation. “Well,” Piotrowski was saying, “homicide investigation isn’t as dramatic in real life as it is on TV. Basically what ya gotta do is just slog along, one foot in front of the other. And ya gotta pay attention to every little thing. Ya can’t ignore nothing.” He laughed. “Believe it or not, one case was solved by a letter from Emily Dickinson. The poet, ya know? From the 1800’s?” But, in spite of the interviewer’s titillated questions, the lieutenant didn’t go on to elaborate. When I got home, I sat down and wrote Piotrowski a note thanking him for not dwelling any further on the Enfield College murders of the previous year, and especially for avoiding any mention of my part in helping to resolve them.
I missed Lieutenant Piotrowski. I realized that as I signed my name to the note. Last year’s incidents at the college—in the real world they would have been called murders, but within the ivy-covered redbrick walls of Enfield College, they were referred to, if at all, as “unfortunate incidents”—had brought a deluge of police officers to campus. When it became apparent to the lieutenant in charge of the case that the deaths had something to do with the nineteenth-century research of one of the victims, he had retained me as a consultant to look into that research—to re-research the research. Working with Piotrowski had been comfortable; the big cop was smart, sensible, and down-to-earth. I liked him. Besides, I was used to cops; Tony, my longtime lover, was a cop. Him, I really missed. I peeled a self-adhesive stamp from the packet in my desk and affixed it to Piotrowski’s letter. A Valentine’s Day leftover, the stamp featured a chubby Cupid and a lace-edged heart.
Tony and I had broken up when he protested my decision to take the job at Enfield and move a hundred and fifty miles away from our Manhattan home. And now, Amanda told me, Tony was getting married. My daughter loves Tony, the only father she remembers, and she keeps in regular touch with him. Up until Tony set the date for the wedding, Amanda had been hoping he and I would get back together again. She’d informed me of Tony’s marriage gently, as if she were afraid the news would break my heart. But—no problem, I’m not that fragile. I’m fine.
The phone rang. Tony! I dropped the note to Piotrowski and knocked my American lit anthology off the desk in my haste to grab the receiver.
“Karen? This is Miles Jewell.”
My brain registered it: Not Tony. And then, Heaven help me—Miles. My department chair. Again. Miles had been hassling me all semester about the syllabus for my survey course; he thought I was giving Emerson and Melville short shrift in favor of “lady writers” and slave narratives. What now? Was he calling to apologize for almost knocking me down in the Faculty Commons?
“Yes, Miles?”
“Karen, I’ve been reviewing the Department course offerings for the upcoming fall semester, and I’m a little concerned about the American lit coverage.”
“Yes?”
“Well, it’s just that—this seminar you’ve got scheduled? The one on Emily Dickinson?”
“Yes?” I wasn’t going to make this easy for him.
“Well, it seems to me a tad—well, limited—for a senior seminar. You know, focused on women’s issues.”
“Oh?”
“How would you feel about offering a course on Walt Whitman, instead?”
Oh, God. “But, Miles, wouldn’t you be concerned about Whitman’s focus on men’s issues?”
“Oh, that wouldn’t be a problem. Whitman’s concerns are universal.”
“Oh? And Dickinson’s aren’t? Let’s see, last time I looked she wrote about God, love, death, art—”
“Yes, but from a female perspective—”
“And Whitman wrote from an ungendered perspective? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Well, no. But he—”
“No, Miles, I won’t teach a seminar on Whitman. Maybe sometime, but not now. Just leave the Dickinson course on the schedule. And thanks so much for your concern.”
“But—”
“Good-bye, Miles.” I hung up gently. Then I groaned. Unless Miles retired before I came up for tenure, I was in deep trouble. He was going to battle me every step of the way.
I retrieved my American literature anthology and the note to Piotrowski. While the heavy book was in my hand, I leafed through it casually, looking for the Dickinson section. Ah, here it was. I turned to a favorite poem.
I cannot live with You—
It would be Life—
And Life is over there—
Behind the Shelf
The Sexton keeps the Key to—
Was Tony really getting married? Really? I closed the book with a sigh.
I’d met Tony Gorman when I was a Ph.D. student at Boston University. He was a New York State Police drug investigator who’d come to BU undercover, pursuing an interstate, intercampus drug trafficking ring. He’d enrolled as an M.A. student in the English Department, where a hotshot young American literature professor visiting from NYU was peddling more transcendence than Ralph Waldo Emerson, even at his spaciest, ever dreamed of.
I’
d noticed Tony immediately. Who wouldn’t? He was so quiet and serious, and those smoky blue eyes looked straight at you, unlike the self-involved, uncertain gazes of the men around me. But I hadn’t paid much attention. I was too busy for men: studying, taking care of Amanda, teaching my freshman composition courses.
Then, in the middle of a class on the American Renaissance, when Professor Speedball was waxing incoherent about the “exalted, antimaterialist, infinitude of the human spirit,” and I was doodling eyeballs all over my otherwise empty sheet of notepaper, Tony turned his blue Irish gaze on me across the wide seminar table, shot me a surreptitious lopsided smile, and winked. I blinked, blushed, and spent the next six years of my life with him. Two years ago, the Enfield job came up, tenure-track and prestigious, and I couldn’t turn it down. Not after I’d worked so damn hard at my career. So I left New York, my teaching job at a big impersonal city college with no guarantee of a future, and Tony. And I’d spent most of my adult life on my own; I don’t need a man to make my life complete. It was just that hearing Piotrowski’s voice reminded me of Tony. Too many things do.
Maybe I should give Tony a call. Just to wish him well, I picked up the phone, held it for a moment, then put it down. Maybe I shouldn’t.
I slipped the Am lit textbook into my canvas bookbag. Maybe I should concentrate on a new scholarly project instead. Writing the biography of a long-forgotten woman writer could be just the ticket to distract me from any nonsensical regrets about the course of my love life. I pulled my copy of the Encyclopedia of American Women Authors from the shelf and turned to the entry for Serena Northbury. A photograph of a striking fair-haired woman with a straight nose, square chin, and delicate mouth topped the short paragraph the EAWA had seen fit to devote to Northbury. Dark eyes gazed directly at the camera, and straight into my imagination. Picking up the receiver again, I dialed the number I had copied from the precise, printlike handwriting on Mr. Smallwood’s index card. Dr. Edith Hart, great-granddaughter of the American author Serena Northbury, answered the phone on the third ring.
The Northbury Papers Page 3