The Northbury Papers

by Joanne Dobson

  Most of the students had left for home, and the village, with its white churches, brick storefronts, and green common, lay basking in an idyllic spring sunshine that lent it the aura of some eternal haven of peace and quietude. If I hadn’t known the real Enfield, with its petty quarrels and incestuous intrigues, I’d have thought I’d died and gone to Norman Rockwell heaven.

  In Miles’s yard, clusters of men and women in pastels and whites—there were carefully delineated shades of white in these wardrobes: Coconut, Ivory, Bwana—perched picturesquely on wicker chairs, expounding on the evils of Eurocentric literary imperialism. In the glass panes of a French door I caught a fleeting glimpse of myself, a long, almost lean, stripped-down figure in a sleeveless black tank top and brightly colored Indian skirt. Dolores Jewell, Miles’s wife, met me at the back door and directed me to the kitchen. I like Dolores. She’s a saggy, comfortable, gray-haired woman who has always made me lust for cookies and milk. The Jewell household was more complicated than Dolores’s grandmotherly appearance would suggest, however. The third member of the Jewell ménage greeted me in a kitchen sweet with the odor of recently smoked cannabis. Luke Bierce was a portly man of uncertain age whose tough-skinned tan and network of fine wrinkles belied his mop of wind-tossed, auburn curls. He wore off-white pants—I couldn’t tell if they were Tarzan-white or Bwana—and a mint green safari shirt with a pattern of elephants. I took a deep sniff of the redolent air. Like his hair, Luke’s recreational habits remained amazingly youthful.

  Luke, a gentleman of private income, had made his home with Miles and Dolores ever since he’d been a ravishingly handsome Enfield undergraduate thirty-five years ago. Deciding whether he was Miles’s special friend, or Dolores’s—or, maybe, the lover of both—had been a favorite parlor game of the Enfield community for almost four decades now.

  Luke relieved me of my wine, glanced at the label, and hastily slipped the sweating green bottle behind a thicket of finer vintages. I gave a mental shrug; I had more important things to do with my life than learn the delicate nuances of choice booze.

  “I’ve been hearing rumors about you, you naughty girl.” Luke raised his tinted eyebrows at me as he poured an undoubtedly superior wine into a Waterford goblet.

  “You have?” I was baffled. I wished I’d been doing something—anything—to justify Luke’s arch tone. He handed me the diamond-like glass with its clear blond contents. I sipped. It tasted like wine.

  “Dear Miles is quite upset.” The gleam in Luke’s aquatinted eyes was positively gleeful. The last time I’d seen him, his eyes had been green. The time before that—amber.

  “What?” I didn’t want to play this game.

  “Oh, my dear.” His hand on my arm had the substance of a moth. “I am sworn to secrecy.”

  “Oh, well, then …” I detached his hand and headed toward the patio. I passed through the open French doors and stopped dead in my tracks.

  Gerry Novak slouched on a white wicker love seat, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his worn black jeans. He seemed intently involved in a muted conversation with Ned Hilton. Gerry Novak? What the hell was he doing here? I glanced around for Jill. She was nowhere to be seen—which was no surprise, since she wasn’t a member of the English Department. But if Jill wasn’t at this party, why was Gerry? And—I looked a little closer—what was that object he was slipping to Ned? Something small enough to fit in the palm of the hand? Some kind of envelope? When Gerry glanced up and caught me staring, he scowled. I shuddered, turned hastily toward the buffet table—and ran smack into Miles Jewell.

  “Karen—a word, please,” he said, grabbing my arm to steady me.

  “Certainly, Miles.” I detached my arm from my chairman’s firm grip. His carefully balanced gin and tonic sloshed over the side of its tall glass.

  Miles led me to a curved marble bench by a bird-bath, but didn’t avail himself of the opportunity to sit. “I feel,” he said, a white shoe braced on the bench beside me, “that it is only fair for me to warn you that I intend to protest this situation formally.” He was deeply serious, and his words had the weight of anvils.

  “Really?” I responded. Whatever was he talking about? Oh—must be my decision to proceed with the Dickinson seminar. My heart sank: This was all I needed, a battle with my department head over course listings. And me still untenured. But, goddammit, everyone else in the department got their choice of seminar topics—Ned had just completed one called Satanic Verses: Transgressive Milton; Nicole Gottesman was scheduled for a seminar on Queen Arthur’s Court: Queer Texts in Medieval Contexts; Fred Finney of Art had cross-listed a course on PoMo in Soho: Why not a seminar on Emily Dickinson?

  “Well, you couldn’t expect otherwise, could you? The college will be the laughingstock of the Ivy League!” What? Because of an Emily Dickinson seminar? “I haven’t poured my life’s energy into creating a department that—with a few exceptions—” he glared at me, “reflects the heights of legitimate academic achievement, only to see its reputation tainted by—” His face grew red. I began to fear for his heart.

  “Miles, darling.” Dolores was at his side, her plump hand on his pale, hairy arm. “Miles, that promising young poet you invited is about to leave. Wouldn’t you like to say a few words to him before he goes?”

  “Gerry’s leaving? I rather hoped he’d stay long enough to read us a few works-in-progress.”

  So that’s why Novak was there: his poetry!

  “He seems restless, says he’s going to take off.”

  “In that case …” But before Miles followed his wife toward the cluster of guests, he turned back to me. His mouth opened, but he must have found himself speechless because no words emerged. Instead he lifted an admonitory finger, and wagged it at me twice. Then he spun on the sole of his white mesh shoe and hustled after Dolores.

  Why did Emily Dickinson make this man so angry? I lifted my wineglass, forgotten until now, and followed Miles with my eyes as I sipped. Dolores led him to Gerry Novak, standing awkwardly by the side of the house, hands deep in pockets. Miles kept up on young poets, and he must have heard—or read—some of Gerry’s work and invited him to give a reading. Gerry Novak? But not Emily Dickinson? I simply didn’t get it.

  More than a little unsettled by my encounter with Miles, I turned gratefully to Ned Hilton when he approached carrying a plate of crudités. I selected two carrot sticks from the proffered vegetables, and smiled at my colleague. “I’m glad to see you, Ned. Miles was just giving me an earful. I seem to have offended him, but I’m not certain why.”

  Ned was not interested in my griefs; he wanted to talk about his own. The gloomy expression on his long, sallow face did nothing to cheer me. Nor did the aroma of pot that clung to his wrinkled cotton sahib shirt and white linen pants. Someone’s been in the kitchen with Lukie, I thought. And neither of them had gone there to strum on an old banjo.

  “Who knows, Karen?” Ned carped. “The ways of the mighty are inexplicable to mere mortals such as we. I just found out that the college denied my request for a merit increment this year—in spite of my position on the Editorial Board of English Literary Renaissance. Those pricks in the Dean’s Office are so fucking shortsighted.…” And he was off on the imbecility and moral turpitude of college administrators, a topic dear to the heart of all professors.

  I said little; I’d just that morning gotten the letter awarding me my merit bonus—pittance though it was. And besides, I intended to keep my mouth shut about everything until I knew for certain what had gotten Miles’s shorts in such a twist.

  After five minutes I’d had it with Ned’s melancholy. His tirade, which I didn’t listen to, had allowed me time to brood over Miles’s narrow-minded bias against one of America’s greatest poets. I’d become angry. Furious. Goddammit, who did Miles think he was anyhow to pass judgment on Emily Dickinson? Sexist old fart: I’d tell him a thing or two. Quitting Ned in midsentence, the word asinine just emerging from his lips, I marched back toward the house where I could see Mi
les deep in agitated discussion with Edmund Brooks, another departmental dinosaur.

  “Miles,” I began speaking in a tone so resolute it must have taken my chairman by surprise, because he cringed a bit. The whites of Ed Brooks’s eyes expanded, and he scurried away with a mumbled excuse. “Miles,” I repeated, “I must say I resent your assault on my intellectual autonomy.”

  “What assault?” The distinguished white head jerked; Miles was taken aback.

  “Your opposition to my Dickinson seminar represents an unwarranted imposition of power—”

  “What do you mean—Dickinson?” His tone was incredulous. “I wasn’t talking about Dickinson. I was talking about Serena Northbury. And the so-called Northbury Research Center.” He began to sputter. “The college will be a national laughingstock if it associates itself with this wrongheaded venture. A literary study center at Enfield named for the author of those witless sentimental novels! Positively humiliating! And funded with the money earned from schlock fiction! I won’t be able to look my fellows in the eye at the next meeting of the MLA.” Miles pulled a linen handkerchief from his pants pocket and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. “Call it the Emily Dickinson Center, if you wish. Or the Eudora Welty Center. Or even—God help us—the Gertrude Stein Center. But not the Serena Northbury Center.

  “As soon as this gathering is over, I intend to sit down and write a letter of protest—in the strongest possible terms—to the president and the Board of Trustees. I will insist, in the name of all sanity, that they turn down this ludicrous bequest. I simply cannot allow the college to mortify itself in this fashion! And I’m appalled that you—even given the radical bent of your literary politics—would acquiesce to such an endeavor. To the profession at large, we shall look like absolute fools.” He stormed off toward another gin and tonic.

  So much for Avery’s attempt to keep the Hart bequest under wraps until he had resolved the legal problems. Nothing—I repeat, nothing—remains confidential at Enfield College for more than forty-five seconds. And now another problem was about to land in our president’s—mailbox. I was about to say in his lap, but I didn’t want to think about Avery’s lap. Especially not after what Greg had told me about President Mitchell’s feelings for his ex-wife.

  The blinking red light on the answering machine was the only sign of life at my house that evening. Avery’s sonorous tones greeted me. Karen, can we talk? I’d like to arrange a walk-through of the Hart property. Although there are, ah, complications regarding the bequest, Dr. Hart’s executor has given permission for us to make an initial assessment of the house with its suitability as a research center in mind. Would you give me a call, Karen? So we can set up a time? And he left me his private number at home. It was after ten, too late to call, but I played the message over again. Twice. The hell with Greg and his warning. There was something about Avery’s voice that reminded me of the scent of lilacs.

  Sixteen

  I should have been ashamed of myself, but when I entered the library’s Special Collections room a week after Thibault Brewster had accosted me there, I peeked around the doorway first, as if I were a child; I was half-convinced Brewster would be lurking inside, waiting to pounce. But no. Nothing there but the golden oak tables, the librarian’s elevated desk, the glassed-in bookcases containing the college’s collection of Edwin Arlington Robinson first editions and related works. Robinson had some association with the school, I could never remember what—had he taught here?—and he’d been given prominence on the shelves. Miniver Cheevy, Child of scorn, I recited to myself every time I entered this room, Grew lean while he assailed the seasons; Da dum, da dum, da dum dum dum. Da dum, da dum dum. It was that kind of poetry.

  Gazing around at the floor-to-ceiling shelves with their packed-together, multicolored books, Robinson’s and others, I tried to visualize a Serena Northbury book collection here. Perhaps I could donate my books to the college; then they wouldn’t have the excuse that Northbury’s books were simply too hard to find. “Professor Pelletier?”

  I gasped, startled; I hadn’t realized anyone else was in the room. “Shamega? I thought you’d gone home for the summer.” My student had let her hair grow, and stubby dreadlocks now haloed her delicate features. She was back in street garb, slender body almost overwhelmed by the baggy khaki shorts and oversize orange-and-green striped T. She looked tired and even thinner than usual. Her usually melodious voice sounded strained.

  “I didn’t really want to go home. I’m a bit out of favor there at the moment.” She tightened her lips, as if to repress further words on the subject. “So,” she said, “I got a room off campus, and a prep job in the kitchen at Rudolph’s. And, at the last minute, the library found work-study money for me; I’m here as a runner until the fall. But …” She broke off, her brown eyes uncertain. Then she looked directly at me. “But staying in Enfield may have been a mistake.”

  “What’s the problem, Shamega?”

  Shamega had invited my question, but the return of the desk librarian, garbed today in a wraparound army green skirt and a flowered blouse with a Peter Pan collar, prompted an abrupt change of subject.

  “So, Professor Pelletier,” my student said, “I’m spending the summer working in Special Collections here. Whatever you want, I’ll get it off the shelf for you.”

  “Well, good,” I said, catching on. “You can help me track down material related to Mrs. Northbury.” I explained to her about the Pinkworth family papers.

  “Cool,” she said, and when I’d given the call slips to the librarian, Shamega gathered them up and headed toward the closed stacks where the noncirculating material was kept. She hadn’t referred again to her earlier remarks, and I didn’t press her. I was concerned about Shamega, but I could talk to her later. Right now I was eager to get back to the letter I’d had to stop reading when Thibault Brewster had so rudely interrupted me, the one from the Reverend Eddie to his daughter Serena. By the time Brewster had slammed out of the reading room, I’d been too upset to continue my work.

  I didn’t know what to do about Brewster’s threats. Avery was the logical person to mention them to, but I hadn’t seen him since that encounter. When I’d returned his call about scheduling a visit to Meadowbrook, Avery had been in the middle of a meeting, so our conversation had been short and brisk. And what was I going to do? Call President Mitchell again, solely to tattle on the chairman of the Enfield board? And, then, what about Miles’s showdown with me about the research center? Surely Avery would have received my department chairman’s irate letter by now. I’d mention both incidents on Friday, when I met Avery for the tour of what Miles thought of as The House That Mrs. Northbury’s Ill-gotten Gains Had Built. But, oh, good God. How had I gotten into this complicated mess?

  Shamega unloaded the Pinkworth boxes from her book cart, and I began sorting through the reverend’s correspondence. The letter I wanted—October 11, 1836—was in the middle of the batch.

  It is with the utmost dismay and disapproval, [blah, blah, blah. Okay, here we go]—the weak and vulnerable Female Disposition. Now I feel myself driven to extreme actions. I must inform you, Daughter, that if you do not cease—

  [This was where I had broken off.]

  If you do not cease to follow your Disastrous and Blasphemous course I will find myself compelled to disclaim all Responsibility for you. I think you will not find it comfortable to supply your wants and needs in the manner to which you have been accustomed when you are reduced to Earning your own Living. I repeat, if I hear, from you, yourself, or from any other, that you have proceeded with your Intention to enroll at Oberlin Collegiate Institute, or any other institution of Higher Learning, you will not see One Red Cent Of Support from he who has stood so staunchly and so lovingly in a Paternal relationship to you.

  Your father,

  the very reverend Edmund Pinkworth.

  Fatherly love Victorian-style! But the rhetoric sounded familiar, not so very different from my own father’s response to me when I’d w
alked out of my abusive marriage. Not one penny, my father had said on the phone, not one goddamn penny. You made your bed, now lie in it. And then I’d stood outside the phone booth at the McDonald’s in North Adams that winter day sixteen years ago with fifty-seven cents in my pocket, no job, and nowhere to feed or shelter my child.

  The Reverend Pinkworth’s words swam on the page by the time I got to the end of the letter. With Tony’s marriage, Edith’s death, and the shock of finding myself smack dab in the middle of a ten-million-dollar-plus brouhaha, I was just the teensiest bit overwrought these days. The quiet scholarly life I’d so carefully constructed—teaching, research, writing—had proved insufficient defense against the messy demands of love, death, and money. No matter how hard I tried to keep my feet on the high road of intellectual detachment, the slippery slope of human need tripped me up every time. And, now, just look at me—bawling over words uttered in anger a hundred and fifty years before.

  Returning the letter to its folder, I rose from the table. “Coffee break time,” I chirped to Shamega, who pushed a cartload of file boxes toward the front desk. She gave me a complicated look, but I didn’t know how to read it, so I headed for the door.

  Shamega caught up to me in the coffee shop, just as I took the first sip of the steaming black brew. She slid into the seat across from me, and without saying a word slapped an envelope on the table. My questioning glance resulted in a firm nod toward the envelope. It was addressed to Shamega at her college post office box and had been sent through campus mail. From the envelope, I extracted an eight-by-eleven-inch lined notebook sheet folded in half, then in three. I smoothed it open and immediately went cold with anger: It was a twin of the racist cartoon I’d found weeks ago on my classroom floor. Only this time the image of the pickaninny had been circled with a black magic marker and then slashed across boldly with the same marker. And—I looked closer—the figure in this ugly sketch was dressed only in underwear: a huge, pointy bra and enormous flowered panties.