The Raven and the Nightingale

by Joanne Dobson

  One of Emmeline Foster’s black copybooks slid out of the manila file folder containing the semester’s backlog of notes for my Emily Dickinson seminar. Where the hell had that come from?

  Returning from lunch at Rudolph’s, I’d taken advantage of the few hours left in the afternoon—miraculously with no meetings or student conferences scheduled—to get myself organized for the end-of-semester grading crunch. This was Wednesday and final grades were due on Friday. I knew myself well enough to anticipate that I would engage in all sorts of codified procrastination rituals before I actually sat down and graded these exams. First I had to alphabetize the bluebooks. Then, I had to turn back the covers so I wouldn’t actually know whose exam I was reading until I’d already graded it. Then I had to sort the tests into piles of five, which I stacked crisscross on each other in preparation for grading at home. During the next few days I wouldn’t get through more than five exams or papers at a time without giving myself some kind of reward. Read five: have a cookie. Read another five: watch fifteen minutes of CNN. Yet another five, and take a brisk walk on the wooded road that runs past my little house. Another five: run a bath. It was the only way to survive grading student papers without incurring permanent brain cramp.

  Finally, surrounded by the orderly piles of bluebooks, I’d pulled the semester’s mess of file folders out of my book bag. I needed to organize my class notes in case I had to check them while grading. When the ancient black notebook slipped out of the folder, I stared at it in astonishment. And then I remembered that on the day we opened the Foster box, I’d been so enthralled with its contents I’d forgotten all about my afternoon seminar meeting. When Shamega Gilfoyle showed up to remind me, I’d hastened off to class, slipping the volume into my book bag. Whoever had stolen the other journals from my office over the long holiday weekend hadn’t gotten this one. I’d been carting it around all this time in my overloaded bag!

  Placing Emmeline Foster’s recovered copybook in the center of my green desk pad, I reached immediately for the phone; since part of his commission to me had been to search for the lost Foster material, my first impulse was to call Lieutenant Piotrowski. But I let my hand drop before it touched the receiver. I’d already called Piotrowski today to tell him about Harriet’s long-term grudge against Elliot. What else did I have to report? Nothing but my own forgetfulness.

  Reverently, I opened the journal, then—half-embarrassed at my paranoia—closed it, rose and crossed the room to shut and lock my office door. Who knew? Some nefarious killer might just be skulking around out there in the busy hallway looking for this one remaining volume.

  Settled comfortably again, this time in the green vinyl armchair, I turned to the first page of Emmeline Foster’s journal and began to read.

  10 January 1842

  Dear Friend:

  A gratifying notice in Mrs. Hale’s magazine. She says, “Miss Foster’s The Nightingale sings of everything that is delightful in woman’s nature, with much that is strong and beautiful, and much more that is quiet and courageous.” If she only knew how courageous! Mr. Cummins says the book has been selling briskly, and that the Godey’s notice will increase the sales. If only my mother’s husband would allow her to visit me here in the city, I think I would be the happiest woman in the world! I know I could make her comfortable. But, as I have been forbidden Tarrytown, and I am certain Mr. Lawrence reads my letters before passing them on to her, I have little hope of that happiness. Would that I could be certain she has received the little volume I sent by the hand of Mrs. Thrall. Mr. Poe has written today, asking me for verses for Mr. Graham’s magazine. Shall I venture the new poem?—

  The entry ended there, without an answer to its concluding question. This was fascinating! Edgar Allan Poe had actually solicited poems from Emmeline Foster. Was this how she’d met him? And what did she mean by mentioning her “mother’s husband”? Emmeline’s father must have died, and her mother remarried. I remembered the young girl’s warm relationship with the Papa who had given her “a story by Miss Austen” for her birthday, and felt for her a twinge of loss, even after all these years. From this entry it seemed that there had been a falling-out in the family, and Foster’s stepfather had forbidden Emmeline to visit with—or even correspond with—her mother. What, I wondered, had brought that cruel proscription about? And what did she mean by referring to her “courage”?

  And, then, there was that intriguing mention of “Mr. Poe.” Foster was obviously contemplating letting him publish one of her poems. I glanced up to the entry’s date—January 1842. In 1842, if I recalled correctly, Poe was editing Graham’s, a well-regarded literary magazine published in Philadelphia. If Poe had been soliciting Foster’s work for Graham’s, her poetic career must really have been hot. I wondered if she’d ever actually let him have a poem. The next time I went to the American Antiquarian Society to do research, I’d request the 1842 run of Graham’s and check it out, see if he’d published any of Foster’s work there.

  Outside the casement window, the late-afternoon darkness had gathered, and I could hear the twilight cawing of the crows. I reached for the desk lamp switch, illuminating my desk and a small island of shiny oak flooring, and banishing the far corners of the room into darkness. It was time to go home. I packed the Foster notebook carefully with the exams and papers I’d be grading over the next few days and slipped into my coat.

  Unexpectedly hearing a child’s voice as I passed the department office, I poked my head in curiously. Joey Cassale sat at Monica’s computer. With a gazillion enemy warships hovering in the sights of his Stealth Bomber’s precision guns, the boy deployed the computer mouse with valor and panache. Once again I was seized by a sense of Joey’s familiarity. Then, like a lightning bolt out of a clear noontime sky, it hit me. The dark curls, the close-set ears: Joey Cassale looked exactly like Elliot Corbin! Joey Cassale was Elliot Corbin’s child!

  21.

  “Tears are our birth-right …”

  —LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY

  AT AMAZING CHINESE, LIEUTENANT PIOTROWSKI sat at a table near the door, deploying chopsticks with grace and skill on a heaping platter of General Tso’s Chicken. He rose from his seat as I stopped in at the restaurant to pick up a carton of Mu Shu Pork. “Dr. Pelletier. Glad I ran into you. Now I don’t have to bother you at home.” He motioned me to a chair. “You weren’t going anywhere important, were you?”

  “Home,” I said, wistfully.

  “Well. Then.” His meaty hand flapped dismissively. “Why don’t you join me?” It wasn’t really a question. “You like General Tso’s?” Without waiting for a response, Piotrowski beckoned the waiter. “Another order of the chicken, please. And bring the professor a cup of wonton and a spring roll while she’s waiting.”

  “Piotrowski, you’re shanghaiing me!” I picked up a fork, reached over to the platter, and speared a chunk of chicken.

  He grunted and gestured around the room with a chopstick. “Well, this is the right place for it.”

  Some inhabitants of Enfield would have considered that to be a derisive ethnic slur. I laughed. Piotrowski could be good company. I might as well relax and enjoy myself; I wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

  A thin waiter in a white shirt and a black vest embroidered with green metallic thread brought the soup, and, while I scooped up a wonton, the lieutenant got to his questions. “Doctor—”

  “Piotrowski,” I interrupted, “you don’t have to call me Doctor all the time. Why don’t you call me Karen? Everyone else does—even some of my students.”

  He gave me his most inscrutable look. With no more than a second’s contemplation, he replied, “No, I don’t think so. Now, what I wanted to ask you, Doctor, is—how well do you know Ms. Cassale?”

  “Monica?” An image of little Joey sporting Elliot’s curls flashed into my mind. Did Piotrowski know the truth about Joey’s parentage? Should I tell him? “Not well at all, Lieutenant. Monica’s been with the department for, let’s see, maybe four months, but s
he’s not exactly the friendly kind. Why do you ask? Because of the knife?”

  “Hmm.” That wasn’t really a response, but what did I expect from the man? He was expert at asking questions—and at evading answers. “Do you know anything about Ms. Cassale’s beliefs?”

  “Beliefs? You mean … as in politics, or as in what church she belongs to?”

  “Well, not exactly a church.…”

  “Huh?”

  The lieutenant lowered his chopsticks. I picked up the crisp spring roll the waiter had set in front of me and was about to chomp into it, when Piotrowski asked, “What do you know about Wicca?”

  I paused, spring roll halfway to my lips. “Wicca?”

  “Ms. Cassale claims to be a follower of a … religion … called Wicca.”

  The spring roll thudded onto my plate. “Monica is a witch?”

  “She prefers the term neopagan.”

  “Neopagan! Monica?”

  “I said so, didn’t I?” He was beginning to sound irritated.

  Then I recalled the pendant Monica had been wearing the night I ran into her at the supermarket: a five-pointed star enclosed in a circle. I’d seen it again in her purse the morning she was rooting around in there, looking for her knife.

  “The pentagram! She was wearing a pentagram! I should have recognized it.” The pentagram is a symbol of Wicca. I knew, because Jill Greenberg—trend-hopper that she is—had worn a pentagram devoutly when she’d first come to Enfield. Devoutly, that is, for about two weeks.

  “The pentagram supposedly represents the perfected human,” Piotrowski informed me through tightened lips. No one is more leery of occult religions than a lapsed Polish Catholic.

  “Oh? Then you know something about Wiccan beliefs?”

  “Schultz has done a little research,” he replied cryptically.

  Undercover, I translated mentally, and grinned at the image of the hardheaded sergeant sitting around a consecrated coven circle sharing experiences with astral powers.

  The lieutenant filled my porcelain cup with jasmine tea from the bamboo-handled pot, then topped off his own. “But tell me, Doctor, what I wanna know is … well, you seem to be up on everything kinda strange that goes on around here—”

  “Thanks.”

  “—what do you think about this … witchcraft … stuff?”

  I consulted my vast stores of ignorance on the subject. “It seems pretty benign. Witches have a bad rep, of course, because of all the fairy tales and—you know—centuries of patriarchal persecution, and all—but, really, for the most part Wicca is a type of … ah … alternative spirituality stemming—I think—from a belief in the beneficent powers of nature. My sense is that there’s a good bit of Wiccan activity around here, especially out in the hill country—both covens and solitary practitioners.”

  “A neopagan subculture, huh?”

  “Well, all the colleges and the hippie holdovers lend themselves to a certain kind of back-to-nature feminist spirituality—you know, herbal-based health practices, alternative religions …”

  “I never ran into any of these people in my investigations.”

  “That in itself should tell you Wiccans are a fairly benign bunch.” I didn’t remember eating the spring roll, but it had vanished from my plate. “Listen, Piotrowski,” I pointed my chicken-laden fork at him before I popped the morsel in my mouth. “Why are you asking me questions about Monica, and her … ah … spiritual inclinations? Do you really suspect she might have something to do with Elliot’s death?”

  “It’s just that, well … this witchcraft stuff seems pretty wacko. Ms. Cassale might of been using her … er …‘powers,’ ya think, to get revenge on Corbin for … well … whatever?”

  “Joey,” I blurted. “Maybe she—” Then I caught myself. “Well, Jeez, Lieutenant, don’t go persecuting Monica just because she practices an … an alternative religion!”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know: Pagans have rites, too.” I laughed, but the big cop regarded me soberly. “Ms. Cassale has denied to us all along that Corbin was her son’s father. Has she confided otherwise in you?”

  “No! It’s just, you know, the dark curly hair … and his ears!”

  “Yep,” he said, aligning the chopsticks across his empty plate, “I think so, too. But she won’t admit it, and there’s no father’s name on the birth certificate.” He made a spinsterly tsking sound strangely at odds with his tough-guy appearance and shook his head. “What a jerk that Corbin guy must have been.”

  Leaving the restaurant, I turned back toward campus—the Jetta was still in the college lot. As I passed Bread and Roses a glimpse at the display of fancy breads in the darkened window reminded me of Sophia Warzek, and set me pivoting on my boot heel. Lieutenant Piotrowski was already out of sight. Damn! I’d wanted to ask him about Sophia, if she’d ever contacted him about Jane Birdwort. What was it she had said? Jane couldn’t have killed Elliot on Thanksgiving? And she could prove it? But it was too late; Piotrowski was gone.

  The red VW Rabbit was parked by the kitchen door when I pulled into the driveway. “Yessss!” I exclaimed, and gleefully smacked the steering wheel with the flat of my hand. I hadn’t expected Amanda for at least another two days.

  “Mom!” My daughter threw the door open and enveloped me in a bear hug. “My Statistics exam got canceled, so I thought I’d surprise you. Where’ve you been? Is there anything to eat?”

  I held up the bag with the untouched carton of Mu Shu Pork, and she grabbed it from me. “Chinese. Yum!” She headed for the table.

  “Hi, Sweetie,” I said, grinning. “I’m so glad to see you. I love you so very much.”

  “Yeah,” she replied, spreading the little Chinese pancake with plum sauce, “me, too. All of that.” She heaped the shredded pork and vegetables on the pancake, rolled it up deftly and ate it cold. It looked good, and, really, it had been a while since my General Tso’s. I grabbed a plate and peeled a pancake from the stack, spread plum sauce, caught up on all the news.

  Forty-five minutes later, as I cleared the table, Amanda abruptly became serious. “You know, Mom, we haven’t talked about my visit to Lowell.”

  “Oh?” The cold Mu Shu sat in my stomach like a lead baseball. I pushed the faucet handle to its hottest setting, and plunged a plate under the scalding stream.

  Amanda picked up a dish towel. “I know you’re still furious at your family, but I didn’t think they were so bad. I saw Aunt Connie and her kids—I have cousins, you know—and … Grandma.”

  I sat down at the round oak table with the dish towel still in my hands. “How is … Grandma?”

  “Well, she’s sort of a sad old lady.”

  Old lady? My plump, energetic mother had become an old lady? For years I’ve sent monthly checks to help out with her support, but I haven’t seen my mother since my father’s funeral. In a letter to a friend Emily Dickinson had written I never had a mother, and when I’d first seen those haunting words, they were as familiar as if I’d penned them myself. Like my own mother, Dickinson’s had been a shadow presence in a family dominated by an overbearing man. Like my mother, she had left her daughter with a powerful sense of having been … un-mothered.

  “You know, Mom,” Amanda continued, “there’s always only just been you and me. And then Tony, of course. I never had any other family. But all of a sudden there’s aunts and cousins—and a grandmother. You really should have told me about them.”

  I handed her the second dripping plate. She didn’t seem to notice that I hadn’t responded.

  “When I was in Lowell, I was really angry that you’d kept all this family from me. I was … well … gonna give you hell about it—depriving me like that. But then you told me your story, and I didn’t know what to think. What they did to you, they did to me, too, right?”

  I nodded. Sure did, Baby.

  “But that was so long ago, and it was all your father’s fault and now he’s dead. And you, you’ve made it. You’ve survived. Do you think maybe we could give them
another chance?” When I opened my mouth to protest, she raised a hand to stop me. “I’m not just being sentimental, you know. After all, it’s our … well … gene pool we’re talking about here. That’s important. My cousin Courtney looks enough like me to be my sister.”

  Another Amanda walking around in the world without me knowing her. The thought gave me pause—but not for long. “Honey, of course I understand. And if you want to go back to Lowell, it’s fine with me. But don’t expect me to go with you. I know my origins, and I’ve worked damn hard to get away from them. I have absolutely no desire to go back.” Was it heartburn, that hard little knot in my chest?

  She shook her head. The mother’s feet of clay. “Mom, can’t you forgive them? Just a little? You know, Christmas is coming. Couldn’t we—”

  Christmas! Our Christmas! “No! Nothing doing! Absolutely not!”

  I might as well have snarled, bah humbug. Amanda raised both hands, palms out. “Okay! Okay! Just thought I’d ask.”

  At a few minutes before ten, Amanda left for a club date with Sophia. I knew she’d be gone for hours; the music scene around Enfield was hot. The night, however, was cold, the kind of dry New England cold that continues to radiate from objects in a room long after the air has been warmed. I needed to stop brooding about my daughter and her importunate demands. I built up the fire in the woodstove, pulled a rocking chair close so I could take full advantage of the heat crackling from the open doors, and began to page through the recovered volume of Emmeline Foster’s journal. Maybe the nineteenth-century would offer a much-needed respite from the anxieties of my own very-late-twentieth-century life.

  22.

  “The death … of a beautiful woman is,

  unquestionably, the most

  poetical topic in the world—”

  —EDGAR ALLAN POE