Emily's House

by Amy Belding Brown

  Austin bent and kissed his father’s forehead. Staggered me, it did, for I never saw one Dickinson kiss another in all my time there. When he straightened up, he had the strangest look on his face—tender and sad and angry mixed together.

  In truth, seeing the Squire’s body set me remembering how flinty and hard he was in his ways and looks and how he seemed to have no feelings. How I rarely saw him smile except at Emily. How he obliged me to work for him when I wanted to leave. How I stayed to keep him from hurting my family. How all that time my neck was under a boot.

  Now, with the Squire’s dying, the boot was gone.

  * * *

  The funeral was Friday afternoon. All the shops and offices in Amherst closed out of respect, and the air was so hot it made me feel flimsy and spent. Austin came before breakfast to attend his mother and was by her side the whole long day. I could see by the way his face twisted he was mighty distraught.

  Emily hadn’t stepped out of her room since the woeful news came, not to sit with the family nor give her mam a daughter’s comfort, nor even to visit the privy. I thought it mean-spirited of her, but nobody in the family complained and Vinnie said it was for the best—Emily’s nerves were fragile things. So it was myself going upstairs and down with the slop bucket, emptying her chamber pot. And it was myself bringing her meals and setting the tray on the floor in front of her door, for she’d not open it to my knocking. At first I felt sorry for her. Sure, I knew what it was to lose a father. But the truth is, I didn’t have Vinnie’s patience and after a while I commenced fretting. Any eejit knows it’s not wise being by yourself after a death. It’s a way of beckoning the Banshee to your own bedside.

  “She’s not eating enough to keep a bird alive,” I told Vinnie. “She’ll wither and die in that room of hers, surely.” But when I saw worry jumping into Vinnie’s eyes, I stopped my prattling, thinking it best to hold my tongue. At least till the funeral was over.

  * * *

  Tim made a proper bier and six lads from Kelley Square carried it into the Homestead. I covered it with a black mourning sheet and they set the coffin on it. The lads moved chairs from the library and parlor into the hall. They fetched benches from College Hall to set in rows on the front lawn. Neighbors came with flowers for the big vases in the hall and parlors.

  Vinnie spent the morning of the funeral dashing in and out and ordering workmen about. As soon as they finished one task, she was giving them the next. Sue came at noon, bringing Ned and Mattie, dressed in black the three of them. Mattie seemed to know her grandfather was dead and wasn’t going to be greeting her. But she kept looking for Emily. She even crept into the kitchen and stood in the corner watching me, looking the picture of a lost soul. I finally told her to go on upstairs and knock on her aunt’s door. Maybe she could lighten Emily’s grief, or even coax her out of her room. It was no secret Emily had a special place in her heart for Mattie.

  Soon after the child went up, the mourners commenced filling the house with their black sorrow—Aunt Elizabeth, stiff and solemn in her mourning gown, Louisa and Frances Norcross, Fanny Boltwood, and President Stearns from the College.

  Talked in low voices, they did, and sat lightly on the chairs. Vinnie greeted every guest and offered pastries and coffee. Mattie came downstairs, but Emily wasn’t with her. Vinnie set the girl scattering flowers in the front parlor, and her little face was squeezed so tight she looked the most heartbroken person there.

  When I opened the door to Judge Lord, Vinnie pushed past me to greet him. I remembered him from all the times I’d made up the guest bed for himself and his wife. He was a tall, proper-looking man with a great head of white hair, but something in his eyes was fierce and hungry.

  Mr. Bowles came with his sickly wife hanging on his arm. He was editor of the Springfield paper and a great friend to Sue and Austin. A handsome man, surely, with a full beard and sparking eyes. The kind of lad could make a girl’s knees crumple. When I answered the door, he surprised me by leaning down to talk in my ear.

  “Where’s Emily?” he whispered. “I must see her.”

  “Sure, she’s not seeing anybody,” I said. “Took to her room soon as word came of Mr. Dickinson’s death and she won’t come out.”

  He frowned. “All the more reason, then. Please let her know I’m here.” He had a way about him, Mr. Bowles, made it hard to be saying no. But I tried.

  “ ’Tis no use, sir,” I said. “She won’t even open the door to her own sister.”

  He looked at me, those jewel eyes shining. “One moment.” He took a slip of paper and a pencil from his pocket, scribbled a note, and pressed it into my hand. “Be kind enough to bring this up to her. Slide it under her door if you must.”

  I went up feeling cross, but a bit sorry for the man too. It wasn’t the first time I saw how Emily’s solitary nature had a cruel side. I knocked and said I had a note from Mr. Bowles. I was bending to slide it under the door, when it opened and there she stood, with her hair unbound and her frock wrinkled and her face looking all broken. When I gave her the note I saw the tiniest spark of light in her eyes.

  “Send him up, Maggie,” she said. “And thank you.”

  Nettled me, it did. It wasn’t right for her to turn away her own family but welcome Mr. Bowles. But down I went, found Mr. Bowles, and led him up the back stairs. Emily was waiting in her doorway. He bowed and followed her inside. The door closed again, all but a crack. It wasn’t a bit proper but I kept remembering that light in her eyes when she read his note. Whether it was proper or not, I was glad somebody was with Emily at her father’s funeral.

  * * *

  In truth, I never got used to the Protestant way of doing funerals. When Reverend Jenkins came from the Congregational church with his black robes and Bible, the lads opened the coffin and there it sat, smack in the middle of everybody. There was no music or incense or Communion and all the praying and reading didn’t unlock the tears waiting to be shed. There wasn’t even a cross on the bier, just a wreath of daisies.

  There was so much gloomy quiet I slipped back to my kitchen to be breathing again. After a time I heard Mr. Bowles come down. He peeked into the kitchen but didn’t speak to me, just went through to the hall. There was a scraping of chairs, and soon Mattie and Ned came and told me it was over. I shepherded them back to the parlor. Everybody had gone outside to walk to the cemetery. The family had hired no hearse but asked the important men of Amherst to carry the coffin through town. I stood at the parlor window with Mattie and Ned, wondering if Emily was watching from her own.

  I hoped Mr. Bowles had consoled her but I knew she was likely still longing for some way out of her sorrow. It wasn’t healthy she spent so much time alone. Sometimes folks who live by themselves take their own lives purely out of grief.

  After the burial folks came back for the funeral collation and the house filled up again. My nieces were there to help, and Sue sent her second maid. We put out custards and cold meats and gingerbread and black cake in the dining room and served coffee and tea. I was in and out of all the downstairs rooms more times than I cared to count. Vinnie was busy as myself, acting the hostess and telling everybody who asked that Emily was bearing up as well as could be expected, though she looked like a ghost. Mother Dickinson sat in the parlor and received condolences like a forsaken queen.

  By late afternoon most mourners had left. I was in the pantry resting my bones on a stool when I heard ladies’ voices in the Northwest Passage. Took me a minute to figure out they were talking about me.

  “So what are you suggesting?” It was Mother Dickinson, sounding worn-out with misery.

  “Just that she bears watching.” Made me bolt upright, for I knew that voice as well as my own—it was Fanny Boltwood herself. “She’s skilled at what she does,” Fanny went on. “And she can appear very competent—even reliable—for months and years. But she lacks loyalty. She has no allegiance but to herself. She�
�s quite capable of leaving you on a whim, as she did Clarinda.”

  Her words tumbled me back to the memory of the day she cut me. Walked right past as if I wasn’t there. How it filled me with humiliation and sorrow.

  There was a silence before Mother Dickinson spoke.

  “My dear Fanny, I do appreciate your concern. But I simply can’t bear thinking about this at present.” Her voice was splintering into sobs.

  “Aunt Margaret?” It was young Nell, come into the pantry. I stood up, hoping I didn’t look as stricken as I felt. But the way she took my hand and frowned into my face told me I wasn’t hiding anything. “You look done in,” she said. “Go up and lie down for a bit. We’ll take care of things. Most of it’s done.”

  Sure, I think Nell was surprised as myself when I went upstairs. I paused at the door to my room but something made me turn. It was my legs, not my thoughts, took me to the front hall to knock on Emily’s door.

  In truth, I didn’t expect her to answer, but a quare panicky feeling came over me and I tried the knob. It turned smooth and easy under my hand and the door swung open. Sure, I thought I was in the midst of a Faery enchantment. It was a quick, bright thought, there and gone, tiny as a hummingbird. I went straight in. Without a notion in my head about what breaking a spell can cost.

  Every window in Emily’s room was flung wide open, the curtains wrinkling and floating in the breeze. Late-afternoon light spattered across the walls, making it look like the wallpaper roses were dancing. And wasn’t Emily sitting in her chair, smack in the middle of the room, turning toward every puff, as if she was conducting a choir of the air? I stood gawking, every word I planned to say gone from my head.

  “Maggie.” Emily didn’t take her eyes off the curtains.

  “Miss Emily?” I had the spooky feeling what she was seeing wasn’t the curtains at all but some invisible creature. I thought again of the Faeries and almost turned and left. I was that scared I might see something no human should set eyes on.

  “What I don’t understand,” she said in a lonesome, gone voice, “is how the world goes on without him.”

  Soon as she said it, I stopped worrying about Faeries. For it wasn’t my ears but my heart did the hearing and I knew there’d be no answering her with words. Hadn’t I felt the same when my own father died? Hadn’t I wondered how I could go on without him? I remembered holding his poor head in my arms when he took his last breath. I thought then it was a comfort to him. But now I knew it was mostly a comfort to myself.

  I laid my hand on Emily’s shoulder, tender as tears. She kept watching the curtains, so I watched them too. And after a bit I saw what she saw—the air lifting and filling the curtains like breaths, coming and going, in and out. It was kin to prayer, surely.

  Time stopped then, or seemed to, while I was standing with my hand on her shoulder. Then her own hand came up and covered mine.

  I don’t know how long it was before I came to myself and slid my hand from under hers and crept out of her room. It could have been minutes or it could have been hours. But in that time that was not-time, we were bound together in a quare enchantment and I knew nothing would be the same again. For years I tried explaining it to myself. The closest I ever got was remembering the old tales of folks falling under Faery spells.

  It was near a fortnight before Emily came out of her room. But her closed door never hindered me after that day. I went in and out free as the wind itself.

  * * *

  It’s hard work tending the grieving, for they don’t have their wits about them. And the dead always leave troubles behind for the living to mend. You might be thinking Squire Dickinson was the sort of man had his affairs in order, being a lawyer and all. Turned out, he never even wrote a will. So his property—the Homestead, the Evergreens, his fine horses, his land and rentals and his money, all of it—was thrown into confusion. Austin took over. Stepped into the Squire’s place, became a landlord and the treasurer of the College while Mother Dickinson fell into a deep melancholy. Vinnie started singing to her cats and Emily took to walking back and forth in the Northwest Passage, sunk in a stupor of mourning.

  The first time I came on her, it gave me a fright. It was the same as seeing a ghost—her in that white frock with her hair tumbled down.

  “Where is he?” she said in a mournful voice. “I can’t find him.”

  “And who would you be looking for?” I thought maybe she was walking in her sleep—some troubled souls do—so I took her arm gentle as I could.

  She stared at me, her eyes looking big and black in that shadowy place. “Father,” she whispered. “I don’t know where he’s gone.”

  Made the ice run down my back, it did. “Oh, miss!” My voice came out thin as a kitten’s mewl. “Best you come in the kitchen and let me wet the tea for you.”

  But she shook her head and ran up the back stairs. Like a fearful rabbit scurrying to its den.

  I went back in the kitchen, shaking my head. Something about Emily’s grief I wasn’t understanding. Something dark and sorrowing about the whole family. As if they weren’t living in America but in Ireland in the grip of the Great Hunger. Starving for a scrap of mercy, every last one of them.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Change is the one thing can be counted on in life, and it’s no different if a person’s rich or poor. Sorrow has its day but the tide turns and there’s something new to be putting your mind to. It was as true for the Dickinsons as anybody else. Come the spring of 1875 some of the sadness eased away. Sue was expecting a new babby.

  It was a great surprise to everybody, that news, for Sue was forty-four and it was known Austin and herself had a hard marriage. That was the way Vinnie spoke of it, calling it hard, though everybody knew she was meaning their roaring fights any time of the day or night. Sue had hired my niece as a second maid. Early on all the Dickinsons started calling her Little Maggie. Don’t know why they couldn’t have called her Meg, same as our family. But it cheered me whenever she turned up in the Homestead kitchen for a bit of rest and gossip.

  Thanks to Meg, I found out right off whenever Sue and Austin had a row. Didn’t mention it to Emily, figuring it would sadden her. In truth, though, I think she knew before I did. She was more somber than she used to be, so it was likely Sue told her everything in her visits.

  One hot June morning after one of Meg’s visits—when I was mincing suet for a pork pie and shaking my head because Sue had turned out their laundress for leaving scorch marks on Mattie’s night shift—Mother Dickinson came into the kitchen. Turns out, she was after scolding me for forgetting to close the gate when I came back from the butcher’s. Though the Squire was gone, she still wanted everything done the same as when he was living. I told her I was sorry, it wouldn’t happen again, but she was still scowling so hard I wondered if she had the headache. “Pay attention, Maggie,” she said, shaking her head as she left. “I don’t know what the Good Lord was thinking when he made the Irish.”

  I near dropped the knife, it stung me so. Good thing she left before I spoke my mind. Took me a few minutes to calm myself. I had to remember it was only Mother Dickinson treating me so. Emily and Vinnie sometimes teased but never scolded. Still, they were fond of mockery and I’d sometimes overheard the two of them going on about how lazy and crude the Irish were. I got to wondering if the only folks on earth who didn’t look down on the Irish were Irish themselves.

  And didn’t Patrick jump right into my head when I had the thought? It’s strange how a lad can haunt a sane woman just by stepping into her kitchen on a rainy afternoon and giving her a wink. He’d only spent a couple days in Amherst, so it made no sense I’d even remember him. But it seemed he was only waiting for the chance to step out of the shadows of my memory. Little things sparked my recollections—word of a coal miners’ strike in Pennsylvania, or last week’s newspaper story of another accident at the Hoosac Tunnel. A foreman this time, crushed to de
ath by a chunk of rock. And didn’t I recognize the name? James Gallagher, it was—the very lad whose message Patrick was carrying to the Squire. I never did find out what that message was, though it hardly mattered now. I remembered what he said about the brave Irish lads he knew in the Union Army, and how it was Irish workers in the Hoosac Tunnel did the risky jobs. How proud of himself he was for being Irish.

  So there I was, thinking away, with my arms up to the elbows in the bowl of pork and paste, when there was a clatter and thump upstairs. I wiped my hands quick as I could and ran up. Mother Dickinson was lying on her bedroom floor, moaning and talking gibberish. Sure, I don’t think she even knew who I was. It was clear as day she’d had a seizure.

  Vinnie was out, so I ran to get Emily. Found her in the garden with her hands in the dirt, weeding nasturtiums. Soon as I told her she leapt up and flew across the lawn to the house. Later I thought it quare I was the one shaking that afternoon, not Emily.

  We helped Mother Dickinson into bed and I went for Dr. Bigelow, who said she’d suffered an attack of apoplexy and would be a long time recovering. She’d be confined to her bed for months. After he bled her, Emily sat with her till she went to sleep. Vinnie and Austin came and looked in on her, then sat in the kitchen while I wet the tea. Emily came down after a while.

  “Do you realize it’s exactly a year since Father died?” she said, her face so pale it made me think of the moon on a winter night.