I battened her pillows with my tiny fists, untangled her bedclothes, and had her lie under the covers. Then I rocked Gib’s cradle while he sucked on his lip. It was near dawn when I returned to the Homestead like some wayfarer out of the water, dreaming of white dogs and a sled.
41.
MR. SAM LINGERED ON FOR A YEAR, DEATHLY PALE, WITH A feeble step and a constant cough; not one sign remained of his Arabian presence. He limped when I saw him last. He still showed up at the Evergreens, but less oftener now. And he didn’t have the strength or the will to appear at Austin and Sue’s on his sled. All that old verve was gone. He took to his bed and no longer had the heart to climb out of it. He was dead at fifty-one, worn out from his own wanderings. But at least his family was at his side. And I couldn’t help but think of Pa-pa dying all alone in a Boston hotel.
It was as if Mr. Sam’s ghost still lingered, still hovered over the Evergreens. Sue went about as a widow, wearing a black vail. I didn’t mourn in so public a fashion, but I missed sad Mr. Sam almost as much as she did. And it made her irascible. She had become a drunkard like her own Pa-pa. She imbibed under her black vail, even fell off the porch once. And she was mean as a rattlesnake.
Susan’s piebald pointer, Sport, as if under her command, began to raid our lawn and frighten Sister’s cats to death. Sister was tempted to retaliate. She planned to poison Sport by feeding him skewers of lamb laced with strychnine. But I could not take Sister’s side. I myself longed to hire Assassins against that pestilence of cats. The pussies were partout, and filled the house with cavernous hair balls. But it was our wondrously fat dictator, Margaret Maher, the Homestead’s Irish housekeeper, who arranged a truce. Sport could have the south lawn as his mandate while the pussies roamed the rear porch. Thus a battle was avoided between the two houses. But the real warfare was internecine and had little to do with our side of the family estate. Not even the blond angel who slept beside them could bring Austin and Sue together again. There were more and more of Sue’s drunken carousals, more of her pulling at Mattie and Ned as her own little pawns, until Brother felt like an infidel in his own house. Sue was diabolic about trying to have me abandon my own brother and sister. She enlisted Mattie to soften me up and win me over to her side. And she planned to do it through my own weakness for Poetry.
Susan sent Mattie across the hedge to become my disciple. She was twelve or thirteen at the time, with her mother’s smoldering eyes. Lord, another Volcano! I worshiped the child and would have done anything for her.
“Aunt Emily, Mother says you must instruct me how to be a Poet.”
A pencil hung from her waist, and she carried a writing tablet as if it were a divine thing. I would have been overjoyed to have a disciple, yet what art could I have taught this girl, who had been schooled by a master—Susan herself!
“Mattie dear, your mother versifies as much as I ever did.”
“That doesn’t count. Mother has sacrificed her talent, spent it on her family, but your own melody is pure—that’s what Mama says. And you must teach me.”
“I wouldn’t have the faintest notion. All I know how to do is sing in the dark, and I haven’t done much of that ever since Pa-pa died.”
I was scattered, all askew, without the sight of Pa-pa’s slippers. No Monster could retrieve my Pen, even if he talked like Pa-pa. Lord, most of the lightnin’ was gone, and I didn’t have thunderbolts to catch or throw. Surely the best little girl in town should have recovered from Pa-pa’s death. I could not. I had froze in a thousand years of ice. But Mattie was on fire. Her smoldering turned into a genuine fit. She tore the pencil from its string and brandished it like one of her mother’s knives, though she wasn’t really menacing me. It was part of the drama she had learned at the Evergreens, that swagger of emotion, Susan’s sway.
“Then might I sit with you while you compose?”
“I never compose—the lightnin’ comes, and I mark it down.”
“But I’ve seen you at your desk in the conservatory, scribbling on scraps of paper.”
“Oh, that,” I tell her. “It’s the recipe for a new frosting on my ice cake. You know how I love to experiment whenever I bake.”
And she starts to cry, her tears as fine as crystal. “Then I will tell Mama that you have refused me as your disciple.”
Even now, with slightly crooked teeth, she is beautifuler than Sue had ever been. And it’s like worshiping a comet that can fly all over the place. How will I ever teach myself to contain Miss Mattie Dickinson?
“Aunt Emily, you are crueler than King Saul.”
I smile to myself. Crueler than Saul, the king whose only song was to fight, since the Lord wouldn’t whisper in his ear. Saul’s kingdom was the kingdom I knew best—a land of silence where animals were stunned in midair and birds fell like bombs from the trees. This was my address after Father passed to the other side.
Without my tutelage, Mattie abandoned her pencil and decided to remain a Siren.
Half the schoolboys of Amherst flocked outside her gate, smitten by her smoldering looks. They could not comprehend the mystery of a thirteen-year-old who had become the town’s latest belle. Maggie Maher, our Maggie, had to chase them with a broom, while Mattie watched from a rocking chair, indifferent to the spectacle around her. Lord, I could feel that little girl’s electrical charge from my window. What catastrophe awaited her suitors. She would devour them all.
42.
MY PENCIL HUNG ON ITS STRING AT MY SIDE LIKE A SICK snake, or a pendulum that could sometimes breathe. Not even that Monster, Mr. Dark Eyes, could make it stir. I longed for Father’s footsteps, not a weasel with a wound for a mouth. And then a surrogate arrived, who wasn’t a tempter, like Mr. Dark Eyes. One of Father’s oldest friends, Judge Otis Phillips Lord, who ruled the Commonwealth’s Supreme Court, had just become a widower. His wife, Elizabeth, had died right on my forty-seventh birthday. I should have sensed that it was an omen of some kind, but my pencil and I were fast asleep.
Judge Lord took to visiting Amherst twice a year with his niece, Miss Farley, a terrible little bulldog who watched over him and his every leap. He was only nine years younger than Pa-pa. And when he called on us with that bulldog, I ignored her as best I could, fed him black cake and berry wine; in his own vigorous face, with full jaws and fierce white hair, I’d have the sweetest recollection of Pa-pa, as if some kind of angel had lent him to us for an hour, while Judge Lord was at the Homestead.
So when the Judge came a-calling two years into his widowhood, but without his niece, I might have figured that something irregular was afoot. He could frighten the whole justice system of Massachusetts with his saber-toothed pronouncements and bullet-like stares at criminals and clerks, but he was a lamb with us on Main Street. He visited Ma-ma in her bedroom, brought her flowers from his own garden in Salem, where he lived with his niece; the Judge even played with Sister’s ferocious cats, congratulating them on the mice they had captured. “Phil,” as we called him, was in his sixty-ninth year. He’d grown a little deaf, but couldn’t even consider retiring from the court. I had known him since I was a little girl and should confess that I had often sat upon his knee, since Phil and his wife were Father’s frequent guests. He would dandle Lavinia on one knee and myself on the other while he was in the middle of a game of whist. It was great adventure as Vinnie and I flew under the chandeliers.
But we weren’t flying now. And after Ma-ma began to doze, the Judge asked me to take him on a tour of the Mansion. I thought it peculiar, since he’d stayed overnight with Mrs. Lord quite often when Father was alive, and he could have walked the Homestead wearing a blindfold. But I didn’t mind indulging Judge Lord, who had not looked at me once while Mother was awake, had not used that Revolver in his eyes to pierce me with a glance.
“I’m a man who doesn’t like to live alone, Miss Emily.”
“But I’m much too old to dandle now, and you do have a niece,” I said, pitying him for that bulldog.
“She’s just about invis
ible to me. I couldn’t even tell you the color of her eyes.”
And I didn’t mean to trap him, but I did. “Why, Judge Lord, I find that men are not terribly observant about women’s eyes. They’re too worried about questions of the world, or about metaphysics and men’s souls.”
“I wish you’d call me Phil. That’s what you called me when Mrs. Lord was alive. And your eyes are exactly the color of the sky just before a summer storm—hazel, with a strong hint of red.”
I couldn’t hide my own hint of red. That’s how hard I was blushing. No man I can remember had discussed the nature of my eyes in half a century.
We were walking side by side in the darkness of my favorite corridor, the Northwest Passage, when he grew as flustered and shy as one of Pa-pa’s mares, and suddenly I felt the squeeze of his hand. He wasn’t yattering away. Both of us were silent. I did not dare move from Phil’s side. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing heavy or not, or if wandering through the house had tired him. His hand was firm as a steel glove. Startled as I was, I did not swoon. I took that steel glove of his and squeezed back with all my might.
THAT WAS HOW I FELL INTO ROMANCE. IF WE COULD TALK SO cavalierly of the unexpected, then wonder itself would be washed out of our race. I had not fancied Phil as my suitor, had not dreamt of him at all. Of course, it was a curious affair. How could it not be? Phil was a widower, I an old maid. He was either at the courthouse in Boston or at home in Salem. He had little time to travel, or follow his inclinations. And when he did come to Amherst now, it was always with his niece. She did not want to share the Judge and was jealous of all intrusions. And so I had to waylay Miss Farley, trap her into doing things while Phil snuck out of his hotel and stole through our gate. It delighted me to watch him romp like a Boy.
I could feel Phil’s longing as we lay together, and it emboldened me to think that I could arouse the want of a man. I did not scheme like Cleopatra in my Salem’s arms. If I held back, did not allow him into the Moss of my own little garden, it was not to punish or declare my modesty. I had none. It was just that my Salem was not a male witch. Whatever magic he had wasn’t enough to slay me into submission.
But our ecstasy did build with all the slow craft of a snail. My Salem could not free himself but twice a year. And so our letters flew like rockets that burst in secret. He had to hide them from that little bulldog, who had already begun to slander me, said I was a fortune hunter right in front of Vinnie—Sister had to hold back from slapping Miss Farley’s puggish face out of respect for Phil. Dear God, what fortune did I have to hunt? My own small Treasure rarely left my room.
Yet I shouldn’t be so coy about my Plumage. I wrapped my own feathers into the rockets I sent Phil, scratching with my pencil—To my dear Salem from his Amherst, who awaits his words like the sweetest of wolves. I could not allow these rockets to fall into enemy hands. Miss Farley might say I was a Siren who was trying to trap her uncle into marriage. But marriage was not on this sweet wolf’s mind. I couldn’t have packed up, moved my little House of Snow to Salem and abandoned Lavinia, while Mother remained an invalid. But most of all, I couldn’t have abandoned my Dark Eyed Mister, who haunted whatever sleep I had.
I guarded Phil’s letters and my own penciled drafts, plunged them inside my housedress, until I resembled some robust creature who was carrying a child, though I wasn’t a day under fifty. I happened to meet Phil once while the Circus was in town with its pregnant elephant, Jumbo, female star of the Menagerie. I watched her waltz up Main Street, with the ground swaying under her until I thought she would provoke an earthquake.
And Phil wondered what earthquake I might provoke. He took to calling me Jumbo, and thus I had one more name in my Menagerie of names.
“Dearest,” he said, “you would make a worn old man happy if I could start addressing you as Mrs. Emily Jumbo Lord.”
I panicked at his pronouncement, as if the sweet wolf inside me suddenly wanted to be fed—fed on what? The wolf was gnawing at the very flesh of that name. Mrs. Jumbo Lord.
And I realized that the Circus drew me to its panorama of tents for another reason than its prima donna of an elephant. I was troubled by a particular clown, wondering if my blond Assassin was still hiding somewhere on Circus grounds under a mask of red paint. But I did not have the sass to wander over to the Commons in my shawl and find out for myself. Perhaps I was frightened of what I would find, that the clown of my dreams was a banal character who did not have half of Tom’s beauty, and that I had wished this Circus clown into being as Tom.
My Salem kept talking marriage. Mother’s illness, he said, would be no impediment.
“I will carry her on my back to Salem. Lavinia will live with us, cats and all, and your housekeeper with the truculent look. I will double her wages.”
I adored my Salem’s persistence, his want of me, but perhaps I was frightened that his very want would bring me woe. I was on much better terms with that old maid, Emily, than with Mrs. Jumbo Lord.
“What about your niece? She will look upon the Dickinsons as Privateers who have invaded her territory.”
“Then I will teach her to love you, or else I will find her another uncle, who is more docile and less inclined to look for a wife.”
He was a Judge, after all, who could beat back an entire field of plaintiffs, and though I might have been a lawyer’s daughter, I was not trained in the wiles of a courtroom. But like some Egyptian Monster, I knew how to smother him in my own feathers.
Suddenly I was Cleopatra with a plain simple face. “Dearest,” I cooed, “you wouldn’t want your Jumbo to pine away with loneliness while you’re sitting on the bench. Shouldn’t we wait until you retire?”
“I will wait if you condescend to grant me a kiss.”
And his eyes had a touch of naughtiness that drew me to him. All his life he’d never had a soul with whom to be a little bad. He loved me and loved my Plumage. I was his Monster—Jumbo—whom he longed to tame. He was a man of Prose, but his words had the suppleness and the wicked pull of David’s slingshot. He seldom missed his mark. He tilted toward me. I could feel the rumbling in his loins. He swallowed my mouth. I didn’t suffer much. Lord, I’d left that quilted territory of an old maid.
43.
I COULD ROMP AROUND WITH ALL THE PLEASURES OF AN Apache, bent on stealing love. I didn’t need a Tomahawk to capture a man. I had my girlish tricks, and I had my Pen. But I couldn’t even hold on to Phil, who was plagued with apoplexy a little after I turned fifty-one; he fell unconscious while he was in his chambers and hovered close to death. I had to read the damn paper every morning for crusts of news about his condition. But no bad angel could break his will. He recovered after a few weeks and retired from the bench.
Phil knocked on my door with wildflowers in his fist; he could squeeze me with some of his former strength, but the fiery crackle had gone out of his eyes. He who had been a master of his court, a man in constant control, must have felt enfeebled after he had fainted and lost control. His speech was now slurred. He had spittle on his tongue, but he pressed his pursuit of me. I loved him all the more.
Wizened as he was, he continued to press for marriage and talked of how he had the means to move our whole Menagerie to Salem—Maggie, Mother, and all. I didn’t argue. There was little need of it. We would sit in our front room with Miss Farley, who was more a jailor than a devoted niece. She took to wiping his spittle, and I couldn’t even dig my hand under that high collar of his to feel my Salem’s flesh. He didn’t dare call me Jumbo in her presence, and I did not call him Phil. He was Judge Lord, and I was plain Emily, discussing a marriage contract that I knew was fiction, while Miss Farley hovered over us until all the secret fervor was crushed out of Phil’s face, and my own sweet wolf had gone back into the woods.
Little Sister was much more resourceful than I. She was fond of Phil, but loathed Miss Farley. So she invented every sort of excuse to lure that bulldog out of the parlor and leave us a precious minute to ourselves. But no new recipe could
tempt the Little Lord Protectress, nor an invitation to discover the glorious view from Pa-pa’s cupola. Vinnie had to fall back upon her surest weapon. Sister besieged Miss Farley with an Avalanche of cats. The pussies pounced onto her lap, and Miss Farley rose up with a scream and ran from the parlor, while Sister followed behind her and pretended to call off the cats.
We were alone, at last. I caught a tear in Phil’s eye that glowed like a worm. Suddenly there was no more spittle.
“I have a longing for you, Em.”
I could feel that sweet wolf gnaw its way back into my loins. I didn’t waver. I slowly slid onto my Salem’s lap, wanting him to dandle me again. I ought to have some privileges at fifty-one. My Salem started to cry.
“I don’t have the words to woo you,” he said. “All my songs are gone.”
But I’d had a lifetime of words. And I was tiny enough to fit into Phil’s silences. His skin was scratched where the razor had missed. I had never shaved a man, but I would have been a much better barber than that bulldog. His eyes had the ravaged look of someone who could not collect his own thoughts. But that only made him more attractive. My Salem was wooing me without words.
I ran the hollow of my hand along the rough patches on his skin. He moaned softly; it wasn’t the sound of a man who couldn’t recollect. Phil must have had his own sweet wolf.
I heard a clatter from the kitchen—I tried to break away, but Phil clapped me to him. His niece ran into the parlor, twitching like a stunned rabbit when she caught us together.
The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson Page 25
