But the afflictions began to mount. Father curiously had died without a will. Hence, Brother became our new Cromwell, lord and master of the Dickinson estate. And just as Lavinia had begged her way into Pa-pa’s purse, or I would have been “undressed” without writing tablets or ink in my bottle, she now had to humble herself before the master and mistress of the Evergreens. Austin was courteous and distant in his new role, but Mrs. Austin began to ride roughshod over Lavinia. She would solicit her own first-born, Ned, who was fourteen or fifteen at the time, dispatch him to our kitchen as her cavalier, whereupon he would chide his spinster aunts for spending too much of Austin’s money. Lavinia had bathed him as a boy, seduced him with kites and sleds, and I had worn a mustache for him once and posed as his Uncle Emily; now he came to us in Sue’s behalf with a look of contempt upon his lip. He was taller than Lavinia and myself, and as father’s surrogate, hoped to bully us into submission. He had two or three hairs upon his chin and wore a silk cravat like any young squire. I had to fight the urge to spank this little giant.
He was clever enough to steer away from the asp’s sting of my tongue. But he went to market on Lavinia, who’d been minding Mother day and night. Mrs. Austin must have practiced him in brutality. He didn’t even say “Aunt” or “Auntie” to my sister.
“Miss Lavinia, my mother worries that you will leave us high and dry. You have been running up a bill at Cutler’s general store that is a mile long.” He’d memorized every item; that’s how Susan taught him to attack. “A whole yard of lace and a small fortune of lacelets, two gallons of kerosene when one would suffice, and a bushel of sweet potatoes when there are only three women in the house. Surely, you could economize.”
Vinnie did not say a word, she was shivering so. But I lit into Susan’s courtier with his silk cravat.
“Squire Ned, if you count every needle and pin, Miss Lavinia will have to capitulate.”
He turned one suspicious eye toward me. “A bushel of sweet potatoes aren’t needles and pins.”
“Ah,” I said, “but when the handymen have to feed your father’s stepper half a dozen sweet potato pies, then one bushel is hardly enough.”
Brother was proud as hell of his new dappled horse, Princely Sue, and let her prance in front of the family carriage while the little squire held the reins. Ned could not answer the asp—and now I stung him on the other side.
“Dear,” I said, like the most maidenly of maiden aunts. “Tell your mother that I will stop using ink, and will address all my envelopes in my own blood.”
It saddened me to say that. I had to swallow some of my own feathers—it was Zilpah who wrote in blood, not I, Zilpah who scratched her own forlorn biography on a wall. But I had caught Squire Ned with this little tale of blood. He began to twitch under his collar; Susan must have told him my ink bottle was a sacred font that didn’t permit the least economy. But I wouldn’t press him. I adored this damn boy, smug as he was, and would have perished for him on any given day.
I SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN SO CRITICAL OF SISTER SUE; A LITTLE boy was born to Brother and Sue fourteen months after Father died. A blond angel with blue eyes—Gilbert, whom we called “Gib.” We did not mean to spoil him, but spoil him we did; he eclipsed his brother, Ned, and his sister, Mattie, in the wholesale affection of the Dickinson tribe from the moment he appeared.
Lavinia and I had a cradle carved for him—it was Horace Church, the handyman, who did the carving, the same Horace who had leered at every female in the house and spied on us from different trees in the Orchard. I had wanted to sack him after Father died, but Vinnie said we should hold on to that Peeping Tom out of homage to Pa-pa, who admired him for some obscure reason. Perhaps they read the Bible together; Horace purported to be a religious man. He must have had the palsy—his hands shook all the time, but they steadied once he gripped a knife. He was a greater genius than Michael Angelo at carving cribs. Lavinia paid him with the very last pennies she had. That’s how strapped we were for cash under Mr. and Mrs. Austin’s regime. And shrewd bargainer as he was, Horace wanted my pocket watch thrown in.
“Miss Im’ly, ef you lend me the darn thing, I’ll wire up the cradle in gold filigree. And ef not, it’ll be plain and simple as a nigger baby’s bark.”
And all the while he was leering at me, a spinster who was forty-four at the time, same as Susan, with a face that often frightened me to look at in the mirror—it had none of Cleopatra’s charm. But I wanted that cradle with gold filigree. And I had to give in.
“Horace Church, you don’t deserve this watch. You’re the worst scamp I ever saw.”
But he was as satisfied as the Devil to have my watch inside his pocket. And I only realized now, reminiscing about the cradle, that the Dark Eyed Mister of my dreams spoke with the stilted music of Horace Church. The Monster who plagued me in the sweetest fashion had Pa-pa’s eyes and Horace’s scratchy voice. Lord, it was even more of a riddle.
The only route I had to Pa-pa was Mr. Dark Eyes. I might have captured him without Cleopatra’s wiles, but he was indifferent to my feathers. I could have tried one of Zilpah’s ruses, her panoply of paper clips, but it wouldn’t have roused the Monster. No, I had nothing to bargain with. And no matter how hard I clucked, Mr. Dark Eyes didn’t answer my call.
39.
I DIDN’T THINK I’D EVER MEET THAT MONSTER WITH HIS lipless hole of a mouth either in Purgatory or Paradise, or in Satan’s own Vestibule. I’d have sold myself to the highest bidder for one last glimpse of Pa-pa, even in Purgatory. And then on the night of Susan’s annual birthday party, which I had stopped attending ages ago, because I could not bear the yards of silk her female guests wore like fancy hieroglyphics, I listened to the revelers across the lawn and suddenly landed in a dark well. But this dank hollow had as many cushions and pillows as my bed. And lo! the Monster was sitting upon my lap, and you could have called me naked, since my nightgown was hiked above my knees—Mr. Dark Eyes was smaller than I had imagined, practically a gnome. I was the Colossus here. And he kept whimpering in that waspish voice of his.
“Quiet, my Dark Eyed Mister, or I’ll squeeze ya to death.”
I had not meant to be that bold, but the words flew out of me like the cry of a trumpet, full of its own brass.
“Miss Im’ly, I believe you ought to attend Susan’s soirée.”
“Why is that? And be quick about it.”
“’Cause ya might just have some time for Ned. Ef you don’t run to him, Miss, it might be too late.”
“Monster, who told you such a thing?”
“Master tol’ me. Who else?”
I struggled out of my dream with an anxiousness that should not have come from the interrogation of a gnome. I put a shawl on over my nightgown and dashed down the stairs in my slippers, as if I too could strut like Cromwell in my father’s house. I had not been to the Evergreens in years. It was not an embargo per se, or a boycott. I had no malice against all its personages, including the maids.
I slid across the narrow path of roots and rubble that separated the Homestead and the Evergreens. The cold bit under my shawl. I thought I heard the practiced wailing of an owl. I nearly snagged my ankle on a treacherous root. Our gardener should have combed this path, but it had turned wild after Pa-pa’s death. And the truth of it is that I loved the wildness and would not have wanted it any other way.
I let my lantern dangle from its leather strap, as Father would have done in the old days, when he crossed this path with such magnificent strides to fetch his wandering daughter and bring her home. Austin’s green shutters glowed in the dark with a glare that tore at my eyes until I had to look down.
I padded into the house with my sparrow’s feet, past the furniture that had been piled into an alcove behind the stairs for Susan’s birthday party—she liked her guests to roam during one of her musicales, but these guests had left behind all sorts of debris; hats and feathered chokers lay about the floor with sheets of music that were dusty and dog-eared. It was no surprise. Vesuv
ius couldn’t have had much of a birthday party without some volcanic ash.
I went upstairs to the little squire’s room. I wasn’t startled to find Austin with Ned. My brother hadn’t even discarded the purple pantaloons he must have worn at Sue’s salon. He sat beside Ned, his gold-tipped cane at his side, looking as dismal as a dead man. He had taught himself to play the earl, but he did not have Father’s confidence, and he masked his own bewilderment with scorn.
But he was not scornful tonight. He hummed a tune while Ned tossed in his sleep, a stick wedged in his mouth to keep him from biting his own tongue. Ned wasn’t aware of his seizures. He would awaken with a sore tongue, thinking he’d suffered some fitful ague in his sleep—Susan did not want to attach the stigma of epilepsy to her own son, and thus the secret was kept from him and the whole town. But Susan could not bear to sit with him at night. The attacks terrified her. She would hide under her bedclothes whenever the ceiling began to sway. It was Brother alone who held vigil, who stroked Ned’s hair for hours on end. White streaks had arisen in his own red hair, and he had begun to dye it with an even fiercer red, though his scalp had a greenish look in the lantern light.
I knew about the seizures, but I’d never seen Ned with a stick in his mouth, foam on both sides of his face. Ned wasn’t much of a squire now, but a boy caught in a maelstrom that left him all alone in some dark country. I pitied him and his secret seizures. He couldn’t fly very far. He was grounded at the Evergreens.
Austin’s face grew alert the instant he could hear my sparrow’s steps. He beckoned me to sit beside him, and I kept the same silent vigil.
It was Brother who broke the silence.
“I dreamt of Father the last three nights. Lord, the only time I ever kissed him was when we carried him into the house—dead. And in my dreams, Emily, he rebukes me for not attendin’ to the town. Didn’t I become Treasurer of the college? Didn’t I drain the swampland out of the Commons? Do you ever dream of Pa-pa?”
“Most nights,” I declare with a lugubrious smile. “But he’s much too clever for his own backwoods girl. He wears a monstrous shape, with a black hole for a mouth, and talks like Horace Church. But he can’t disfigure his dark eyes—Austin, don’t get mean if I say it. But Pa-pa disguises himself as a lover might.”
Austin casts his own blue eyes at me with a certain disdain. “Father would never do that—he’s too serious.”
And then Ned began to knock with an unholy rhythm. Pictures fell from the wall. I thought the chandelier would plummet onto our heads. But my brother clutched that boy with all his might. He couldn’t visit with his son in the same dark country. No one could. But he contained some of the fury, softened it even. And frightened as I was, I also held on to Ned. It seemed like a snake was passing through his body, right under my hands, and this snake felt unnatural. Some of it was rigid, and some of it could bend, but I held on as if my life depended on it. And after that snake fell asleep, I kissed Brother on the forehead, stroked Ned once, and went downstairs to Sue.
40.
SHE CONSPIRED AND BLED BITTER SMOKE, AS ERUPTING volcanoes often do. But none had been as beautiful as she, even with all her bile. I fell in love with her when I was but a Boy, nimble and full of a teasing sport. My heart thumped whenever she was near. Her olive looks were so foreign to the Dickinsons and our race of freckles and red hair. I would have gladly wooed her away from my brother had I been able to do so. Then she would not have had to worry about the barbed complications of “a man’s requirements.” But I did not have the courage to woo her, nor did I know how.
And so I was Enobarbus who loved his Cleopatra from afar and breathed in Egypt’s purple smoke. Her mind was much more volatile and quick than any other woman’s—or man’s. She had been my shrewdest Preceptor once upon a time. Brother could not bear to look at what I wrote. Its feathers frightened him. And Little Sister, who was my fiercest ally and protected me from intruders, could not enter my House of Snow. It was all hieroglyphics to her, sounds adrift in a sea of silence. And then there were my other Preceptors, Colonel Higginson and Samuel Bowles, who saw my irregular lines as the mark of a strange enchantress, but were not half as supple as Sue. And yet I sought their acceptance, like a Circus animal that could not survive without some trainer.
I did not want to be trained, and “Marm,” as servants called her, had never tried to do so with her Egyptian might. But she did not resemble much of a queen in her rumpled bedclothes. She shivered under her blankets in the royal bedchamber she condescended to share with my brother and his “low practices,” by which she meant his conjugal rights and privileges.
I had to untangle the quilt she wove around herself like Cleopatra’s net. I’d never seen so wide or large a bed. It could have reached the Indian Ocean—or so it seemed to this old maid.
“Is my Ned all right?” she asked, with blotches on her olive skin caught in the sway of my lantern.
“He’s asleep,” I said. “You shouldn’t worry. Austin won’t let any harm come to him.”
“But when the knocking starts…I shrink, as if an elf lived inside me and gnawed at my picayune powers. I cannot mother Ned when he starts to bite his tongue. The Susan you know is feeble.”
“As feeble as the Gulf Stream,” I said, unable to stopper my own idiotic tongue.
Lord, it wasn’t the first time I had seen Sue in such disrepair—she moped for months after her favorite sister died. She clutched at me now, as forlorn as Ophelia, though Ophelia could never have mustered one molecule of Susan’s wrath.
“Your brother despises me, says I’ve turned his house into a tavern, just because I like to have a party once in a blue moon. It isn’t fair. I need the noise of other people. He calls me a harridan, says I’ve bewitched Mr. Sam. Sometimes he will not speak to me for days without end. Mattie has to intervene—can you imagine it? My own daughter serves as ambassador of the Evergreens. She alone can make the peace—I threw a carving knife at him just last week. I cannot control my temper…Emily dear, I might have murdered him.”
“But you did not,” I said, like some judge of the highest court, though I did worry about Austin’s life and limb. I got sick thinking of Sue the knife thrower. I dreamt of Austin’s ear with a notch in the middle, but before I could grasp the whole bloody idea of it, Sue went galloping onto another topic, and Austin’s ear fell right out of my dreams.
“I couldn’t invite Mr. Sam to my birthday—he’s much too ill.”
I wanted to soothe my sister-in-law, but a bit of my own bile crept in.
“Lord, he can’t seem to stay put. Lecturing, wandering around in his sled, writing novels under ten other names…half the novelists he discovers in the Republican’s pages turn out to be himself.”
Susie seemed to stir under her bedclothes. “Sister, why do you slander Mr. Sam?”
“It isn’t slander,” I said. “It’s God’s truth.”
Suddenly she wasn’t prostrate and perused me like a hawk.
“You think I was in league with Mr. Sam, that I encouraged him to put you in the Republican. Well, I did. And it gave me real satisfaction to read your lines in Mr. Sam’s pages, bold as brass, even if it gave you none. There, I’ve said it!”
I couldn’t control myself. I was no less a Pugilist than my sister-in-law.
“But you didn’t have to show him a single line. It was like robbing a grave.”
And now Sue was really furious. “Pardon me, but you should have kept a trowel in your pocket if you wanted to bury your poems in the graveyard.”
“Susie, I didn’t say that. But I felt entombed when I saw those lines smothered in black ink, without my own meager electricity.”
But all the fight had gone out of me. I couldn’t burden Sue while Ned was lying upstairs with a stick in his mouth. “Susie, shouldn’t we visit Mr. Sam?”
She fell back onto her pillows. “I can’t go to Springfield, ill as he is. His people will say I’m a hussy—the mother of three children, who has an infant in the cr
adle, and she’s bent on haunting Mr. Sam. I never even held his hand, or sat with him in the dark, but I swear to you that I revile my own marriage. A slice of cake and a kiss, that’s all my wedding was.”
“Sister, Austin loves you.”
“Do not speak to me of love, else I will run for the carving knife.”
My mind wandered, and I imagined Sue running off with Mr. Sam, bent and broken with sciatica as he was. And then my Imagination deviled me, and I saw myself in Mr. Sam’s sled. He was too ill to steer. I had to cluck at his six white dogs, who carried us across the ice on runners sharp as knives. But that ride couldn’t last.
I heard a soft whimper in the shadows near Sue’s bed. I cast about with my lantern and discovered that little darling with his blond hair, Gib, in the cradle that Horace Church had carved for him. Gib had outgrown his cradle, but Sue neglected to furnish him with a full-sized crib; it wasn’t a question of guarding Austin’s pocketbook. My sister-in-law could start a fire with what she spent; perhaps she wanted an eternal infant in the house, an angel of her own.
The cradle had convenient rockers that she could launch with one of her toes, and launch it she did while she was engulfed in black thoughts. She had lent me whatever scattering of courage she had when she herself was an orphan living off the crusts of an older sister, with her father’s ghost as her heritage—a drunkard who had kept a tavern before he died. And if truth be told, Susan herself had become a tippler, and her fights with Brother were often drunken brawls. She had chased down Vinnie’s cats with her own pointer, Sport. She posed as an empress while she “manhandled” us over money. But I still could not abandon her.
The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson Page 24
