Afternoons with Emily

by Rose MacMurray

  Now in the last week of August, the nights were cool, and all the summer greens were faintly gilded. Aunt Helen had decided there was time before classes began for me to visit Kate and Josey, so I took the cars to Springfield while Ethan was out of town.

  It was nice to spend the time on my own with Kate, away from the tensions with Father, from the household chores, from my usual life. One afternoon, we had washed our hair and were brushing it dry on the sunny slope of Kate’s garden. We lay on the grass like Barbados lizards, with Josey on a blanket between us. He was an amiable, portable five months, suddenly discovering his toes. We smiled at his concentration, and our conversation darted and swooped from one topic to another without either of us missing a beat. It was as if we were in perfect rhythm, as we had been when we still lived in the same house.

  “Do you have any news of Lettie and Mira?” Kate asked.

  “Miss Adelaide wrote that my namesake is nearly three, and clever and beautiful. I’ll always be sorry that Lettie didn’t tell me what was making her act so strangely just before we left.”

  “It won’t matter when you see her again. I can’t blame her — you really need a husband when you’re expecting!”

  I gave her a sideways glance. I sat up and hugged my knees to my chest. “Kate . . .” I began, a little uncertain how to proceed.

  She could tell by my tone that the subject was going to become more serious. “Yes?” she asked.

  I stared down at my bare toes, feeling the grass blades between them. “What is it like . . . to be expecting?”

  Kate smiled. “It is a trial, and it is uncomfortable, and it is quite, quite glorious. And it’s the perfect time to get your way in any disagreement!” Her green eyes sparkled mischievously.

  I gave her a grin but grew thoughtful again. “And . . . and before then.” My voice dropped almost to a whisper, and I found it difficult to raise my eyes from my toes. “What is it like? Is it also . . . glorious? ”

  I understood the mechanics of lovemaking — Aunt Helen had done her duty when I was twelve years old. That knowledge was supplemented one recess last term when Lolly Wheeler smuggled her parents’ Advice to the Newly Married manual into school. I realized what I was asking couldn’t quite be put into words.

  Kate reached over and took my hand, peering into my face. “With the right man, and the right marriage, yes, it is even more glorious than you can imagine right now.” She stroked my hand. “Miranda, is Davy . . . ?”

  I quickly raised my eyes to hers. “No, of course he isn’t. He’s a perfect gentleman. I — I just find myself wondering . . .”

  “Of course you do,” she said. “That’s only natural when you’re in love. I thought about Ethan all the time.” She dropped my hand and leaned back to enjoy the sunshine. “I still do.”

  I smiled. Kate’s words — but more than anything her manner, her happiness — reassured me. “Thank you,” I said.

  “I want you to feel you can ask me anything,” Kate told me.

  We brushed away companionably while Josey sang to us. I ran my fingers through my hair. “Look, Kate, it’s dry already.” I tossed my curls in the warm air. “Wouldn’t you like to have yours short too? It’s so easy! ”

  “I never could. Ethan — well, he loves to see it down.” Kate blushed. “And besides, mine doesn’t curl into its own shape the way yours does.”

  “Davy likes the way mine springs back.” And then I blushed too.

  Near the end of my visit, Kate and I were once again sunning ourselves in her yard. Josey was practicing his crawling. Kate kept her eye on him while I read a newspaper.

  “What does Ethan say about the news these days?” I asked.

  “Oh, he’s as gloomy as all the other men. He says that if Lincoln is elected, then there will surely be a war.”

  I folded the paper and laid it aside. So Ethan also felt it inevitable. “Father told me Lincoln made a speech in 1858 to the Illinois state legislature that practically guaranteed a war. It was called ‘A House Divided.’ ”

  Kate nodded, then looked perplexed. “Miranda, do you understand why the northern states are so angry? I’ve been so busy with Josey I barely have a chance to read the newspaper these days.”

  “Well, of course it’s about slavery, but Davy says that they’re not so much antislavery as pro-Union. He told me the North believes that if the country splits, then it will split again — and we’ll end up all in tiny jigsaw pieces, fighting each other, like in Europe. Besides, most of the commerce of the Middle West goes down the Mississippi River, and it should not have to go through a nation that has become foreign to reach the rest of the world.”

  “Well said, Miranda!” That was Davy’s voice — and there was Davy himself, coming across the grass and smiling at our surprise.

  “Davy — oh — it is you, it is! ” I ran to embrace him. Then I stood back, abashed. “Why have you come early? Is anything wrong?”

  “I’m here to see you, Miranda. I came back early so we’d have some time before classes started and to accompany you back to Amherst, once your aunt told me where to find you.” He turned to Kate, who was holding Josey. “And look at this mature young man. Is he shaving yet ?”

  Kate smiled. “Surely you must stay with us,” she invited Davy. “To protect us from robbers, with Ethan gone.”

  “I’d be less than a gentleman if I refused,” Davy said, bowing in a courtly manner.

  The next day, Davy rented a buggy; we spent a sun-soaked day together on and in the Connecticut River. I liked the slow, opaque green stream, stirring the reeds along the bank and reflecting the shadowing trees dipping to the jade water. It was beautiful in a New England way — very far from the lively translucent sea of Barbados. We took up exactly where we left off, although I sensed a change in Davy, a maturity that I had not seen before. I wondered at the reasons but was too enthralled with the joy of being with him again to give this much thought.

  For a few lovely days, we had a summer paradise. On the last day, we settled ourselves on the bank, taking our time with leisurely kisses. Davy in the sun smelled like watercress. After a while he released me gently. Lulled by the scent of jasmine and thyme, I began to doze. Soon he wakened me with a kiss and a bouquet of wildflowers. “Miranda, we have to talk about the future.”

  “Now?” I was dazed with sun and sleepiness, and wondered why he wanted to discuss wedding plans this minute and why he sounded so serious. Surely that was what he meant by “the future”?

  “All summer, I’ve been listening to my father’s friends talking,” Davy said. “They’re wise men, powerful men — and they all feel that war gets closer every day.”

  He had thrown a stone of hard reality into the pool of our enchanted afternoon. This conversation wasn’t what I thought it would be at all. I felt wide awake now. “But what can you and I do about it, Davy?”

  “You know what I want most to do: get married right away.” Davy took my hands in his. “My father is entirely willing.”

  I frowned. “Well, mine won’t even allow an engagement. You know that.”

  Davy released my hands and ran a hand through his thick dark hair. “I surely do. But I hope he may change when war comes.”

  He said “when” war comes — not “if.” The sun spun and darkened; with his words our idyll ended. We would not remain carefree, and as we returned to Amherst and our future, I felt full of private apprehension and regret as I started my last year at the academy.

  There was little talk among the students of impending war, just an occasional remark against the southern practice of slavery, prompted by the students’ reading of a new book by Miss Stowe — this was sneered at by Emily as “propaganda” but was diligently discussed by our professor of civics.

  Emily had welcomed me back very sweetly. She appeared to remember with contrition her ill humor and unkind words at our last meeting. I had learned in three years that her moods were constantly inconstant. Emily never disciplined herself toward modification
or concealment; I was expected to take her just as I found her — that hour of that particular day.

  Whenever I found myself relaxing in a patch of serenity with Emily, I realized how hard it was to be forever gauging and adjusting to her shifts and zigzags. I was spoiled by Davy, who never expected me to adjust to wildly shifting moods but presented himself clearly and assumed that I would do the same. With Davy — unlike with Emily — there was also an awareness of my feelings. He recognized that there were two of us in our friendship; we were not a planet and its moon, as I so often felt with Emily. I was secure in the knowledge that Davy would not change anything about me and asked only the pleasure of my company.

  Now Emily was excited about some bulbs she ordered from Holland. They had just arrived, in lumpy brown linen sacks, labeled in odd pointed script. She gave me a learned lecture about the “Tulipomania” of 1637, when kings speculated in tulips and the great merchant banks were beggared in a day, gambling in bulbs. Who but Emily would know all this lore and still be too shy to enter a library!

  Emily had written steadily all summer and was becoming confident about her “PROCESS of distilling poetry.” She was still adamant that her work was not yet ready to show to Thomas Higginson, her chosen Mentor.

  “That will be the CRUCIAL test for me; EVERYTHING will depend on it,” she explained. “I have waited so long to achieve DOMINION, that golden thread of influence and power. I don’t want to rush in unprepared, when it is a question of ETERNITY.” She was half laughing, half deadly serious.

  Very early one morning, avoiding neighborly interest, she and I planted her bulbs from Holland. We worked and talked in a soft silver mist, almost invisible to each other. The Dickinson trees were tall gray ghosts around us. Emily was natural and unaffected, not concerned with “presenting” herself. I enjoyed our odd privacy in the fog.

  “It’s so easy to converse when you can’t see your partner waiting to POUNCE!” Emily remarked.

  “No one is waiting to pounce on you, Emily!” I assured her. “You just imagine they are.”

  “They used to, when I was still going about in society and meeting people. Whatever I said, men would reply, ‘What? What? REALLY?’ At first I thought it was a new fashion — a modish phrase like ‘La, sir!’ Then I realized they truly didn’t believe what I had just said. They thought I was lying — or MAD.”

  I stopped gardening and studied her. I believed I was hearing a truth from Emily. I had been curious about how she became so reclusive.

  “So I stopped seeing people,” she continued, “and having to watch my words. It’s much easier now, seeing no one.

  “When I met you, Miranda, you were the first new face I had seen in MONTHS. But I plain HAD to MEET the brave little girl who preferred Zeus to Mr. Meeker!”

  At this we smiled companionably at each other and softly touched our spades together, toasting our friendship.

  September was passing, and the Amherst trees caught fire, one by one. The other fires, the cones of raked leaves in every garden, lifted their smoke signals, and the dark fragrance of autumn veiled the valley. The maples had flared and failed all over town, but they seemed less of a festival than in other years.

  Davy and I were allowed three study evenings a week this year because of the Special Academic Excellence Prize I won earlier and also because I was now seventeen. I had turned in my Greek drama paper, but I was discouraged about my early childhood education report. I had worked as a classroom aide at several elementary schools last spring and started again this fall, and took dozens of pages of notes — but I could not reconcile what I saw in the valley classrooms with my own learning experience. I told Davy my problem during one of our study evenings.

  “Until I came to Amherst, my education with Mr. Harnett was certainly unconventional — but it worked! This year I have seen no learning in the valley schools. It’s all memorizing.”

  “What do you think these schools are leaving out, Miranda?”

  “Joy, for one thing! And individuality.” I shook my head. “No one cares about whatever it is that makes each child unique. The children are taught just the way you fill muffin tins — each one right up to the brim, with exactly the same ingredients!”

  Davy smiled at me. “Then say just that, my darling. There’s your paper — waiting for you to write it.”

  So I went to work, but Davy’s restlessness remained. One of the many things I had loved in him was his total concentration on one idea, one person, one event. Now he had lost that unique single-mindedness. One Saturday afternoon, we were walking from the college library, our arms piled with books, and we met Jonathan on the path.

  “What a gluttonous pair of bookworms!” he teased us. “Those should last you till graduation.”

  Davy gave a small smile as his only response, and his face was thoughtful. He spoke when Jonathan was out of earshot. “You know, Miranda, I don’t really believe I will graduate — not from here or anywhere.”

  My breath caught, and I looked away. I could not answer him. Once again a shadow had fallen on our lives, and I wondered if it would ever lighten.

  That night at our dinner table, I asked Father for his opinion on the likelihood of war.

  “All of us are hopeful that cool heads will prevail” was all he would answer, but I saw by his expression and Aunt Helen’s that they feared the worst. I went to my bed that night with a chill in my heart that the Indian summer warmth could not melt.

  Yet the activities of autumn continued, and we acted as though all was normal. We almost pretended that things were like last year, when Davy and I were so confident and carefree. There were one or two hayride parties, followed by singing around glowing bonfires. The sparks ascended to the autumn constellations, moving overhead in the vast indifference of Time. Davy held my shoulders with both hands as we joined in the bittersweet ballads of lovers parting, lovers lost. Our friends made a firelit circle, their faces intent and unsmiling even as they sang. We were all shadowed by uncertainty. There was no sunny future anymore. Davy had said to me one night, “When we go to war, I will want to fight beside my friends.” This had a fatal historic ring. From Troy, from Agincourt, from Valley Forge, came the voices of all the young warriors. I heard them saying, “I want to fight beside my friends.”

  The range of our planning had shrunk. He evaded preparing a scene with me for his Shakespeare class party. (“They shouldn’t count on me.”) Then he postponed renting a sleigh with Jonathan for the winter term. (“Maybe it won’t snow this year.”) There was a brittle temporary mood between us. Even my promised visit to the Farwells at Christmas seemed unlikely.

  Thanksgiving repeated last year’s. Davy went to Boston, and Father and Aunt Helen and I took the turkey and ourselves to Springfield. Kate and Ethan were fine hosts, and baby Josey seemed to welcome us too. He was a strong child, active and muscular; Kate looked exhausted from hauling him about. I learned she had had no time for her music. Still.

  When Davy returned to college, he brought bad news. His stepmother had broken her ankle while skating; my Christmas visit to Lake Forest, which Father had finally permitted, must be put off — until summer, Davy said. I did not really believe I would ever see Illinois.

  Christmas in Amherst came and went, darkened with uncertainty and silent apprehension. The war clouds collected. Now it was 1861.

  Davy returned to Amherst just after the New Year and appeared after supper on our usual Wednesday evening. Behind his loving manner, I sensed an enormous strain.

  “My new courses haven’t started yet, so I didn’t bring any books,” he stated. “I just came to see you and go over the draft of your childhood education paper if you’d like.”

  I gave it to him, highly aware that there was more here than he was revealing. But I said nothing and allowed him to read the draft. He did so, slowly and carefully. I watched him in silence.

  “I am truly impressed,” he told me, his eyes warm on my face. “Your ideas are organized and original. You express
them very well.”

  “Thank you,” I said, pleased with his approval.

  “I hope you will go on studying and developing these thoughts, even after this paper. This could be an important interest for you all your life, Miranda.”

  It was as if he’d read my mind. “That is something I’ve been seriously considering,” I admitted, “ever since I began the research on this project.” I worked to find the words to express to Davy the pull I felt when surrounded by the children in the classrooms I’d visited. “I look at their faces and I want to share with them what learning has done for me. The way it opened up the world. I would hate for any child to miss out on that experience.”

  I studied the outline, something still nagging at me. “But what does the paper need right now, Davy?” I asked. “It feels unfinished to me.”

  He held out his arms to me, and I went to him, sliding onto his lap, still gazing down at my papers. “It needs you to convince us to change, darling Miranda. First you tell us what’s happening in elementary schools now, and you document it well. Then you relate what you want these same schools to do instead.

  “Now you must persuade us to make these changes! You can be very convincing, you know, when you put your mind to it. This paper lacks only persuasion.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I promised. I stood as I heard Aunt Helen’s footsteps in the hall and sat down opposite him, scribbling notes in the margins of the outline draft.

  Putting on his coat to walk back to the college, he became serious again. “I’m glad to see this passion in you for this subject,” he said.

  I nodded. “It feels right,” I declared. “As if I’ve been preparing for this work since my own childhood.”

  “Then you must pursue it,” Davy said. “And I want you to always remember how much I want to see you doing this work.”

  Two evenings later, he was back, again without books — very preoccupied, very distraught.

  “Please, Mrs. Sloan, just this once — might I take Miranda to your church? The choir is practicing ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,’ and a friend of mine has the solo.”