The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson

by Jerome Charyn

  I thought to depart from this wretched place, but the guardian held me with his mean little eyes and a flick of his battledore.

  “Where’s the hurry, Miss? You’re a guest of the establishment.”

  I was so paralyzed, I couldn’t even whisper a word to Carlo outside the door, and then Brainard Rowe leapt into that corrupted light with a beaker of rum and two whiskey glasses. He was still wearing cape and scarf.

  “Currer Bell, did you know that rum is the preferred drink of our bravest generals? Benedict Arnold would never go into battle without a beaker of rum.”

  “Mr. Rochester,” I say, “that is not much of a recommendation, since your Benedict Arnold was the villainest man in America. That is what my father holds, and he does not usually express himself on the subject of villains.”

  My Rochester laughs. “I would not dream to contradict the Squire. He is lord and master of my intended.”

  My eyes rove upon his darker ones. He has not even pumped me with Domingo yet, and he is up to his tricks. But I will not allow him to astonish Currer Bell.

  “Goodness,” I pronounce, with the plainest mask I can muster. “Who would have guessed that you cared so much?”

  “Well,” says he, “did not little Gould ask for your hand? Confound it! Must I be last in line?”

  “Gould is not so little in my estimation, Mr. Rochester. He does stand at least a head above us all. He is the orator of his class, and he will make a most promising preacher. And still my father refused his request—or I should say stalled him for six months.”

  “But the Squire will not stall me.”

  “And why is that?” I ask, with a slight tremor that I manage to hide.

  “Because he will hurl me out of the house…here, have a drink.”

  Both of us laugh like conspirators, but in truth my heart is a little sore. I could have married Brainard Rowe I now confess, would have run away with him, lived in China or Timbuktu, had he but asked me in earnest, and not over a beaker of rum. Perhaps I am nothing but a naughty, fickle girl, but why does little Gould annoy me, and my Rochester does not?

  He pours that caramel liquor into a glass, and I taste Domingo for the first time. Lord, I am not giddy in the least.

  “A toast,” he says, knocking his glass into mine and producing the solidest sound I have ever heard. “To Arnold, may he rot in Hell. And to Master Edward Dickinson, may he look with a little mercy upon my desire to steal his daughter away from him.”

  My tongue begins to thicken after a second sip. “Rochester, you toy with me. One must not make light of marriage proposals with an old maid.”

  His tongue is not as thick as mine. “An old maid with the Devil’s wit about her? You toy with me, I fear. I would paint your eyelids with rum and relish every lick were I a less cautious man.”

  I have never had such gymnastics performed upon my face, but I would not have prevented Brainard from doing so. Yet he does not move an inch closer to me from across the table, and I have to watch that silent nibbling of rum by the lost Seniors of Phi Upsilon.

  “Brainard,” I whisper, “can nothing be done to aid such poor souls?”

  “Ah,” he says, “they displeasure you. We could march upstairs to the gaming room. It is much livelier in tone. But it is the domain of Alpha Delta Phi. We might stumble upon your brother, and need I give you the scenario? He will call me a bounder for bringing you here and feel obliged to defend your honor.”

  “But you did not bring me. I came of my own volition.”

  “Austin will think the worst of me for that. And he will suggest swords, a pen, or a plough.”

  I redden, and it is not from Domingo. “Sir, you mock my Valentine that was so ruthlessly published in the college magazine by your drinking companion, Mr. Shipley.”

  He smiles, and I redden all the more. “I am serious, Sir, and I can see that you are not. Hence I—”

  He has the gall to lean over and kiss me in the middle of my articulation, and it was no polite peck; he burgled my mouth while gnawing at my face, and I burgled back. I must have startled him, because he stopped. I’d been pecked at by one or two of my beaux, but never had I experienced anything close to a burglar’s kiss. My mouth had been sucked raw and quivered with the taste of rum and molasses.

  “Lord,” I say the second my breath returns, because this burglar has stolen the wind right out of me. “Do you think that dreadful man with the seam on his face will spy on us? I told him you were my escort, or he would not have let me in.”

  “Old Breckenbridge? He is my protector. No harm will come to you from Breck.”

  “Then let me have some more Domingo, for God’s sake.”

  We emptied the beaker and Breck brought us another; he did not seem so menacing now and forlorn with his damaged face. He too had once been a member of Phi Upsilon, but hard as I tried, I could not imagine him as a Senior at Amherst. Rum had ruined him, according to Rochester, had aged him without mercy, and that seam the result of a drunken brawl on College Hill.

  “I cannot believe you, Sir. That man has the air of a troglodyte.”

  “You might at least call me Brainard or Tutor Rowe. We have the same rum upon our lips.”

  “A burglar’s rum,” say I, my poor head swimming in Domingo all of a sudden. “And I will call you Burglar Brainard or Bandit Brainard, and whatever strikes my fancy, but I still do not believe in that brutal scholar of yours.”

  And when Breckenbridge arrives with still another beaker of rum, my rambunctious Tutor begins to query him in the rowdy manner of a drunken man of privilege.

  “Breck, will you honor us and perform for this young lady?”

  “Shall I sing or dance, my lord?” asks this educated guardian of Tardy Tavern.

  “No, you numbskull. Disclose to me who your favorite poets are.”

  “Lord Byron, my lord, and Mr. John Keats.”

  “And what is your opinion of Jane Eyre?” Brainard seems in a bother when the guardian purses his lips. “Be quick on your feet, man. I do not want a measured response, and neither does Miss Dickinson.”

  “I am at a loss for words. I cannot adumbrate with your facility, my lord. But I would mention that Jane’s journey is the journey of our time.”

  “How so?” asks my Tutor, his lips the color of caramel.

  “That women might not be deaf and dumb, but have their own grammar and music, the prerequisites of a proper voice.”

  “The grammar of Currer Bell?”

  “Precisely, my lord.”

  “And would I astonish you, Breck, if I were to reveal that this young lady before you is Currer Bell?”

  I am at a loss. Suddenly the gruesome stamp on the side of Breck’s face wasn’t sinister at all, and I can imagine him as a scholar who lost his footing and landed in a rum house.

  “Brainard, you must stop this inquisition,” I say, with tears in my eyes like great drops of molasses. “I have never met a crueler man.”

  “He is not cruel, milady. It is the manner of Tutors such as himself. He must behave like a predator, to rip the knowledge out of us…might I kiss your hand, milady?”

  Lord, I have no idea what to do. But I would not insult this poor wretch of a man. I hold out my hand, and he peruses it as some great thinker would.

  “It is exceedingly small, my lord, like a bird’s hand.”

  “Birds do not have hands,” says Brainard with much derision. “They have wings and claws.”

  “But might I correct you, my lord. I did see a bird once with hands…in a book devoted to mythological monsters.”

  “Monsters do not count,” says my Tutor, dismissing Breckenbridge with a wave of his own hand. And I seethe where I sit. I would not marry Brainard, or go with him to Timbuktu, not in a million years.

  “How dare you misuse that man! You are awfuller than Mr. Shipley. I will not remain another minute with you.”

  He laughs with his dark, undamaged eyes, reaches out and swoops me into his arms like the predator he is
and seats me upon his lap. I am sick with anger and a crazy, indescribable joy, but no less curious about him.

  “Brainard, why did that poor soul address you as ‘my lord’?”

  “Ah, but I am the ninth or tenth lord once removed of some paltry estate in Devonshire. It brings no income, and I have none. But if I were to return to a country where I was not even born, I could reign over a manor-house that resides in ruin.”

  “Then you are lord of nothing but air and a few burnt bricks. I like you better now. But you must promise to reform yourself and be kind to Breck.”

  But he does not have the chance. Breckenbridge returns with a look of great despair.

  “My lord, the brother of this young lady has just entered the establishment and is looking to skin you alive. There will be carnage between Phi Upsilon and Alpha Delta Phi unless you leave with Miss Dickinson under cover of your cape.”

  I wanted to sit for a century. I could feel Brainard’s manliness against my flanks, like some curious harpoon that swelled and did not sting. But the harpoon went away the moment Breckenbridge sounded his alarm, and I felt nothing but a quiver, as if manliness itself could jellify.

  It was all a mystery, but I have no time to reflect. Brainard lifts me off his lap and carries me like a parcel under the manifest folds of his cape.

  I SHOULD HAVE REALIZED THAT ZILPAH MARSH HAD TOLD ON me. Perhaps it wasn’t her fault. I could not conceive of a fellow nun from Holyoke as a traitor. Father must have worried when he returned from his office and could not find his supper on the table or his Emily. And so he summoned Austin from College Hill and the two of them interrogated Zilpah until she confessed that I had gone to the rum resort at the end of Merchants Row.

  Brother isn’t blind. He had to notice how I’d looked at Brainard in the sugar-house and sensed that his wild sister was involved in some misadventure.

  At least that is what I intuit while I travel under the cape. Carlo can barely recognize his mistress. But he does not seem overly alarmed.

  “Brainard, you must put me down and flee. I do not want to be the cause of your dismemberment. I can stroll the Commons on my own. Carlo will protect me.”

  Brainard does put me down, but he will not flee.

  “I will escort you home,” he says. “How could I be any less gallant to Currer Bell?”

  “But I am not Currer Bell at this hour, with Austin and his fraternity brothers on the warpath. I am the little runaway of West Street.”

  He clutches his chin. “Miss Emily, have you ever been in love with a man?”

  Why does he have to counter with so difficult a question? Pondering hard, I practically disappear inside a snowbank.

  “I had my own Tutor once, Ben Newton—my father’s former clerk. I did love him, I think. He told me that the most secret friend I could have was my Lexicon. And he said he hoped to survive until I became a poet. He suffers from consumption, you see. He moved away from Amherst.”

  “Why didn’t he steal you from the Squire?” Brainard asks, walking nonchalantly in the snow, as if we did not have a whole fraternity fast upon our tracks.

  “He might have,” I say, “had he not been ill. I cried for weeks after he went to Worcester.”

  “Did you ever sit on his lap?”

  “No, my lord. There was always a Lexicon between us. But I might have sat on someone else’s lap if I’d ever had the chance.”

  Brainard’s pace diminishes. I’ve caught him unawares. Alpha Delta Phi is gaining on us, but it means little to him, wrapped up as he is in a rival he had never even considered.

  “And whose lap might that be?” he asks, without picking up his pace.

  “The Handyman’s at Holyoke.”

  It is dark and we have no lantern to light our way, but I can still catch a wrinkle under his mouth in the faint glimmer off the snow. Brainard is baffled. He does not know what to say or what to do. A Handyman is outside his ken, does not fit within the range of beaux for Currer Bell. He broods, and I have the glee of a glutinous child. Who would ever have believed that I could make my Domingo, the rum drinker, jealous? Finally he speaks, while I hear the footsteps of Alpha Delta Phi in the snow, and the voice of my late fiancé, Mr. Gould, resounds like a rifle shot in the icy cold. “We’re gaining on him, boys.”

  But it is Brainard’s voice that appeals to me.

  “Was he a self-taught poet, your Handyman? Did he scratch poems on his sleeve with his own sweat and blood?”

  “Tom the Handyman could neither read nor write. But he had the blondest hair in history. And if Mistress Lyon hadn’t kept me from him, I would have sat on Tom’s lap every day of the week.”

  This last sentence lands like a blow. My Domingo falters, lost in a miasma of words. I feel some pity for him as a lover must, since I am the cause of his pain. But I would not have mentioned Tom, would not have retrieved him from my box of memories, had Brainard not been so arrogant as to ask if I’d ever loved a man.

  His questioning has cost him dearly—he has an air of ruin about him, like his own lost estate. And now Alpha Delta Phi has fallen upon Brainard, with Brother and little Gould in the lead, clutching a lantern. Austin does not even look at his wild sister. His own face is filled with savagery, as if my Domingo were the housebreaker of College Hill who stole the President’s clock.

  It is Carlo who is confused. He would not leap upon Austin and his fraternity brothers unless my own life were at risk. Yet I would not have Alpha Delta Phi manhandle Domingo. I step in front of him.

  I can hear his hot breath. “You must stand aside, Miss Emily.”

  “But I will not have them hurt you on my account. I will explain to Austin that—”

  I can feel him tremble. It is not out of fear, but humiliation. “Please.”

  I step aside, ashamed of myself. I’ve brought my Domingo misery.

  “Sir,” says little Gould, like a big-eared tower in the snow, “you have damaged the honor of Alpha Delta Phi, played most foul with Brother Austin, met with his sister in secret, introduced her to rum in a resort where no fraternity man would ever bring a respectable young lady.”

  “But dear George,” I say to Mr. Gould.

  Domingo touches my shoulder with his trembling hand. “You must be quiet, Currer Bell.”

  “Sir,” says little Gould, “you will kneel right now and apologize to Brother Austin.”

  But Domingo stands defiant in the blaze of snow that feeds off the lantern light.

  “Austin Dickinson, it was never my intention to wound you. But I will not kneel to you and your brothers, and I will drink rum wherever I please and with whoever pleases me.”

  Little Gould does not have the chance to leap upon Domingo with his lantern, as a long wooden ladle interrupts the space between the two men. Breckenbridge has arrived with his battledore.

  “Breck,” groans little Gould, “this is not your battle. It is a fraternity matter. You must yield ground.”

  “Will I now?” says Mr. Breckenbridge, shoving the battledore into little Gould’s chest with a light flick that sends him tumbling into the snow.

  Domingo will not depart until he rubs the edge of my shawl. Then he bows to Alpha Delta Phi and trudges back to Merchants Row with Mr. Breckenbridge. And I am left alone with Brother and his lantern boys, who have robbed me of my sudden suitor.

  17.

  I DREADED RETURNING HOME. I KNEW WHAT LAY IN STORE for me at head-quarters—Father’s wrath. I had struck on my own, defiant of him, found a fiancé at a rum resort. But couldn’t he let me wear whiskers once in a while and behave like a man, with a man’s right to plunder? I had captured Domingo, hauled him in. How could I make Father understand that I was a warrior, not a meek little mouse?

  I couldn’t approach the Patriarch.

  Father would not speak to his prodigal daughter for two days, though I prepared his favorite dish—roasted fowl and lentils—and sat mending his slippers, while Mother looked at me as if I were some wicked creature who had just come back f
rom Sodom and Gomorrah. And Brother was worst of all. He sulked in my presence, as if I had defiled him and his fraternity forever.

  My first communiqué from Father was a note sent through his emissary, Zilpah Marsh. I was not to leave head-quarters unaccompanied, even to have a stroll with my dog—Father considered Carlo as one more accomplice and spy. My only authorized companions were Mother, Brother, Father, or Zilpah, whom he had taken into his trust. I was forbidden under any circumstance to see “that Yale boy,” as Father described Brainard, though it must have been difficult. Father himself had gone to Yale, and at great sacrifice; he’d had to drop out of Yale twice because his own father, Squire Sam, was adrift in bankruptcy.

  He could have had Brainard plucked from College Hill posthaste and sent back in ignominy to Yale, but he was reluctant to soil his Alma Mater, nor did he want the trustees of Amherst involved in his own family affairs. So without any formal charge he had President Hitchcock limit Brainard’s time as visiting Tutor to one more week.

  It was cowardly of Father and most unfair. He never confronted Brainard, or asked me what had happened at the rum resort. He had President Hitchcock deliver a sermon on the evils of rum, and then seized the opportunity to have every rum resort in the township of Amherst closed. This the Squire accomplished in a matter of days, without a single ordinance—that was a good summary of his power. He was indeed the earl of Amherst.

  What was it that riled him so? My new bravura? By ridding himself of Brainard, he thought to hold on to me. My Domingo threatened him in a way that a fraternity boy like Gould never could. Gould had to depend on Pa-pa’s purse. But Brainard was closer to Father’s own footing—a lord with a manor-house, even if such house could bring in no rent. If Brainard himself had been more rentable, would it have made a difference? Not in the least.

  Father had the ultimate weapon to tame Miss Emily Dickinson. In such a state of “emergency”—said emergency being myself—he had Lavinia whisked out of Ipswich for a week to look after her wild sister. Lavinia was my closest friend and confidante, and I was much lonelier since she’d gone away for the year. Austin was preoccupied with his own “Seniorship,” and I could not confide in him, could not bare my soul about girlish matters. He had hoped I would fall in love with his fraternity mate, little Gould, and instead I had “eloped” to a rum resort with his rival, Brainard Rowe of Phi Upsilon. But the irony of it all was that he had once been fond of my Domingo, had considered him the very best of visiting Tutors, had even studied Goethe’s Faust with him, had memorized most of Mephistopheles’ lines. Didn’t the Devil himself wear the clothes of a wandering scholar? And now my Domingo has become that scholar!