Emily's House

by Amy Belding Brown

  In truth, I was stirred by his tale. Admiration was leaking through my vexation.

  “We made our way back across the border, though it wasn’t easy with dodging bullets all the way and having to leave the wounded and dying behind.” He shook his head. “ ’Twas a shameful thing, Margaret. O’Neill upbraided us for cowards and told us to rally and redeem ourselves. Sounded to me like he wanted to send us all to our deaths. Before we could heed him, a US marshal arrested him. After that we all ran away. One lad turned his jacket inside out to show he wanted no part of the Fenians anymore.”

  “So you quit them?” I said.

  He shrugged. “It was more like disappearing. I took the Hoosac Tunnel job. Went belowground, like a rabbit to its den.” He gave a small laugh.

  “Disappearing,” I said. “Was it the shame of it?”

  He drained the rest of his glass and put it on the bench between us. “Let’s talk about something else now, lass. I’ve done enough remembering for one day.”

  I scowled. Vexed me, the way Patrick was forever hiding secrets. I didn’t like himself not trusting me. A flash memory of the day we met came to me, when he wouldn’t tell me his message for the Squire. I still didn’t know what he was hiding all that time ago. Made me wonder what else he’d been hiding since.

  “Sure, I’ve no more time for chatting today.” I stood up and took the glasses inside.

  “Margaret—agra,” he said, following me. “This is a day we should be celebrating—not fighting.”

  He was right, surely, and so I let him kiss me. But then I told him I had work to do and he’d best be on his way.

  “You’ve made me the happiest lad in America,” he said, and tried to kiss me again.

  “Go on now,” I said, ducking and pushing him away. “We’ll talk after Mass.”

  * * *

  First thing I saw when I stepped inside St. Bridget’s the next morning was Patrick. On his knees with his hands folded and his head bowed. I curtsied to the altar and slid into the pew beside him. When he lifted his head and looked at me, his face was so hopeful it touched my heart. Wanted more than anything to see his carefree, rascally smile again.

  So I leaned close to him, right there in the sanctuary at the beginning of Mass before the Gloria. Leaned close to his ear and whispered I loved him and was as happy as himself we’d soon be married. The smile that came up on his face was so wide I nearly fell into it.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  If Emily guessed what had happened between myself and Patrick, she never said. I tried to find a good time to tell her we were engaged, but the next week she sickened again and took to her bed. Vinnie sent for Dr. Bigelow and Emily didn’t argue, though she didn’t like seeing anyone—not even Sue—when she was having one of her spells. Worried me, they did, those spells, for they were coming more often and lasting longer.

  The doctor said she must take to her bed for a fortnight and dosed her with laudanum and belladonna. So I had to be nursing Emily as well as Mother Dickinson. Made my days long, and dreary too. A cold snap came for a week and I kept fires going in all the stoves and heated blankets for comforting. Emily, whose tongue was sometimes sharp as a knife, was sweet and grateful and sad. Seemed like the only cheer she welcomed were letters from Judge Lord. When I brought her one she’d ask me to leave and close the door behind me. She said she wasn’t being unkind—she just needed to keep herself to herself for a while. I understood, to be sure. When it comes to love, all women need to cherish it in their hearts.

  Emily missed her writing, and some days she talked on and on about her letters and verses. On days she felt strong enough, she had me prop her up with pillows and bolsters and set her lap desk over her knees so she could scribble away. I fretted she’d weary herself and begged her to rest. I made a point of trying to tuck her in every night before going off to bed myself. Times I wanted to be prying those papers out of her hands, for it seemed to me the writing stirred her up and troubled her spirit.

  One night I came right out and told her. “Rest is what you’re needing, miss,” I said, taking her lap desk from her and smoothing the blankets back in place. “ ’Tis plain all this writing is distressing yourself. Wears you out, it does.”

  She gave me a look I’ll never forget, as if I were a ghost come to haunt her into madness. “You’re right, Maggie,” she said in that slow, whispery voice she sometimes used. “It drains my soul. And the worst of it is there’s no point. My ink might as well be invisible for all that comes of it.”

  “Ah no, miss,” I said. “It’s not what I’m saying. I just don’t like seeing you so weary.”

  She put both hands to her forehead, covering her eyes. “I don’t know what drives me but I must do it.” Her voice was like a lonesome child’s, dropping into the silence of the room. “I’m powerless before it. My poems are an obsession.”

  “Poems are born of yearning, surely,” I said, thinking of all the poems and tales I’d heard growing up. “I’m familiar with the sting and hunger folded into them. ’Tis ofttimes said Tipperary grows as many poets as potatoes.”

  Her hands fell away and she was staring at me. “Yes,” she whispered. “ ‘Sting and hunger.’ That’s it precisely.” She shifted on the bed, propping herself higher on the pillows. “But mine have all come to nothing. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.”

  I didn’t like hearing her talk that way. “I’ve read them, miss. They’re not dust and ashes, to be sure.”

  “You’ve read them?” She frowned. “That’s impossible.”

  I smoothed her top blanket again, for she’d rumpled it shifting. “Haven’t I been rescuing them from the laundry for years? I’ve read dozens, surely.”

  Sick as she was, she laughed. “Oh, those are just scraps,” she said. “Musings and notions. There are hundreds of real poems, Maggie. More than you can imagine. More than anyone knows.”

  This seemed unlikely. “Hundreds, is it?” I gave the blanket one more pass with my hand. I waited for her to tell me she was jesting, but instead she nodded.

  “Possibly more.” She slid deeper into the bed. “Though I don’t know why I keep them all. I’m running out of places to hide them and I should probably throw out every last one.”

  “ ’Tis your fever talking,” I said. “Why would you be hiding them? Folks want to read them, surely. They’re so clever and sharp.”

  “Ah,” she said, sighing. “I fear not. There’s no market for singularity. And my poems are nothing if not singular.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t even sure what she meant. But I knew Emily was different, and if that was the same as singular, then she was singular, surely. Yet now what she needed was sleep and I feared all the talking was only getting her stirred up. “Don’t be throwing them out,” I said, turning out the lamp. “Not before I’ve read them.”

  “You shall have them all,” she said into the dark, her voice bitter. “Every last one. I’ll bequeath them to you and let you read them to your heart’s content, as long as you promise to consign them to the fire when you’re finished.”

  I didn’t answer, for she needed her sleep more than she needed my talking. But I was thinking I’d not be promising anything of the kind.

  * * *

  In truth, I didn’t give Emily’s poems another thought till the next afternoon when she put me to work gathering them together. They were everywhere—tucked into old hatboxes and spilling out of satchels and stacked in piles on her closet shelf. She sat propped in her bed watching while I dragged them out and piled them in the middle of the floor. By the time I was done all the words in my head had left me. There I stood, ringed around by her poems. In truth, I was flabbergasted.

  “You see my dilemma,” Emily said.

  “But when?” I said. “How did you write so many?” I turned in a circle to face her.

  She was looking at me close. Made me r
emember the time she showed me how to look at a leaf under a magnifying glass. “I’ve been writing at night,” she said. “For years. Father encouraged me when I was young.”

  I tried to imagine the Squire encouraging anyone. He hadn’t been the encouraging sort. Yet I knew—everybody knew—he was awfully fond of Emily. If anybody could get him to do something against his nature, it was herself.

  She made an open gesture, sweeping her hands around the room. “They are my children. But sadly they’ve all come to a bad end.” The darkness was in her voice again.

  “Sure, I’ll help you put them in order,” I said. “Not all helter-skelter like this.”

  She nodded. “Together we’ll prepare them for a proper burial. Shall I order a casket?”

  I didn’t like her jesting. Poetry was the marrow of speaking and there were books and books of poems in the Dickinson library. A whole shelf of them. “If they were made into books with pages of print and fancy covers, folks would be paying to buy them,” I said. “From the look of it, you’ve all the poems you need for making dozens.”

  She laughed, but it was a bitter laugh. “You don’t understand. No publisher will print my poems. They’re not considered suitable.”

  “Sure, that can’t be true.” I took a page from the nearest hatbox. Her handwriting was spiky and hard to work out. I read it three times before putting it back. “It doesn’t look unsuitable to me,” I said. I didn’t tell her it was a puzzle no matter how many times I read it.

  Emily smiled. “You’re very kind to say so, Maggie. But you don’t understand the world of publishing.”

  My cheeks got hot and I turned away to clear my anger. I opened a hatbox and found a stack of booklets. There must have been dozens. Bits of string fluttered from the sewn edges. I lifted them out and placed them on the end of her bed.

  “These are clever, miss,” I said. “Did you make them?” I held up one of the booklets.

  “I did,” she said. “They’re like the manuscript books we made in school.” Her eyes were weary-looking but sharp. “I don’t mean to make sport of your kindness, Maggie. For a time I endeavored to share my poems with the world. But the cost is too high.” And she closed her eyes as if to make an end to it.

  This made no sense to me. I didn’t know what costs she was talking about but I wanted to help her. “I could be putting them in order for you,” I said. “Finding a safe place for them.”

  She sighed. “I ran out of places long ago. My closet is bursting, as you know.”

  “Why not in the library?” I said. “I can make room on the shelves. And there are empty drawers in the desk.” I was the one who’d cleared Mr. Dickinson’s things from the cupboards and drawers and I knew all the empty nooks and crannies.

  “No, no. I can’t have them out where they could be found.” She placed one hand on her forehead. I suspected a headache. “You’re the only one in the world who knows they exist, Maggie. You must make a solemn vow to keep it so.”

  This seemed unlikely. “Why would you be keeping them secret?” I asked.

  She sighed and looked out the window. “A good deal of my life has been hidden. Perhaps it’s simply become a habit.”

  “Habits can be broken,” I said. “With confession and penance.”

  She gave me one of her quare looks, and for a minute, I thought she was going to laugh. Instead, she said, “Not easily. I’ve long suspected habits are the price of our humanity. God’s little joke, if you will. Or perhaps the key to grace.” She made an odd sound in her throat—halfway between a sob and a laugh. “The truth is, I can’t bear the thought of them lying around. They’d be frightfully exposed. I’d fear for their virtue. They’re better off as ashes.”

  I tried to stretch my mind around the idea of poems having virtue. If anybody else said such things, I’d think them cracked. But it was the way Emily talked—as if the whole world and everything in it was alive with feelings and thoughts. It was a peculiar notion, but when I didn’t study it too hard, it made a kind of sense.

  Then I had an idea. “I can put them in my trunk,” I said. “It’s near empty—just sitting under the window with nothing to do.” It struck me I was talking the way she did—as if my trunk had a will of its own. “No one will be finding them there. Who would be looking in a maid’s trunk?”

  The quirk of her mouth made me laugh, and for just a minute, I thought she was going to say something spiteful. Then she nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I do think they’ll be quite comfortable there.”

  It lifted my heart, seeing Emily satisfied and happy. It was too rare a thing.

  * * *

  I laid Emily’s poems in my trunk later that afternoon—forty booklets she’d stitched up with string, and fifteen more she’d yet to stitch. It seemed a pity to leave them undone, but I hadn’t the time nor skill to be sewing them myself.

  Three days in a row Emily made me promise to keep them secret. Sure, it went against my inclination, for it seemed to me a poem wasn’t quite real till it’s shared. And it was plain she once wished them published. It was why she wrote so many letters to the editor Mr. Higginson, surely, and why he visited all those years back. Emily herself told me she wrote to him first. Her letter had been so coy and flirtatious he came to Amherst to find out who she was. But he never promised to publish her verses.

  A deep sorrow was in her whenever she spoke of them. Like she was speaking from the bottom of a well, her voice echoing through the water and darkness.

  * * *

  After I said yes to his proposal, Patrick came by the Homestead every day. I’d wet the tea and we’d chat in the kitchen. On my days off we’d go on long walks in Amherst or take the train to Northampton. One Sunday we went all the way to Holyoke. It brought back memories and I told him how, when I first came to America, myself and the other Catholics in Amherst would walk to Holyoke for Mass because it had the only church around. When I mentioned it’s where Mary and Tom were wed, he started pressing me to set a day for our own wedding.

  “It would have to be at St. Bridget’s,” I said. We were walking beside the Holyoke Canal, admiring the reflections of the mill buildings in the water. “And St. Bridget’s is a mission church since Father Brennan left. So we have to go to Northampton and talk with Father Barry. And then there’s banns to be read. That takes a while.”

  Patrick stopped and picked up a wee stone on the path. He turned it over in his hand. “Or we could get married in Brooklyn.” He was looking at the stone. Not wanting to look me in the eye.

  “Not if it’s myself you’re marrying,” I said, and went on walking. He knew better than to suggest such a thing, surely. He was Catholic himself and knew we’d have to be married in our own parish church. Besides, I wasn’t about to get married among strangers when my own friends and relations were living in Amherst.

  After that day he began nagging me to speak to Father Barry. I said he should talk to him himself. He said I was the one who went to Mass regularly so I knew him better. The more he pressed, the more I balked.

  “Don’t know what the hurry is,” I said. “We waited this long. A few more weeks won’t harm us, surely.”

  Then came a sunny Thursday afternoon when we were sitting on the porch in Kelley Square, with Patrick plaguing me about the marriage date again. The Brooklyn folks were getting impatient, he said. “They’ll not wait much longer. I have to be telling them this week whether or not I’ll be taking the job. And I can’t bear the thought of leaving you, truly.” He put his arm around me and kissed my ear.

  “Then tell them you won’t,” I said. “There’s plenty of jobs right here in Amherst and Northampton.”

  He let his arm drop. “Are you changing your mind about marrying me, then?”

  “I’m saying I don’t know why you’re so set on going to Brooklyn,” I said. “What’s so grand about a factory job that you’ll give up the life we could be havin
g here? Is it the money?”

  He shrugged. He wasn’t looking at me. A question came to me then, and soon as it did, I wondered why I hadn’t thought it before.

  I twisted so I could see his face. “What is it they’re after making in this Brooklyn factory anyway?”

  I saw him blink, then look away toward the depot. Even though we weren’t touching, I could feel his shoulders tightening.

  “You’d best tell me,” I said. “I know you’re hiding something.”

  He tried to take my hand then, but I slapped him away.

  “You’re trying to charm me with a smile and a kiss and a cuddle,” I said. “But it will do you no good. You’ve got to be telling me the truth, Patrick. Now or never.”

  He was quiet a long minute, hunching over himself. Then he sat up straight. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you. But I can’t tell you here. Not where somebody might be hearing us.” He looked twitchy and the shiver I felt was more fear than excitement.

  “We’ll go for a walk, then,” I said. “Right now.”

  The air had the feel of a storm coming on as we walked up Triangle Street. We went in through the gate of West Cemetery and walked along the path among the stones. I knew the path was shaped like the number eight—curving out and back and around on itself. I remembered Emily once telling me it was the same shape as the symbol for infinity and that was a good thing to have in a graveyard.

  We passed the Squire’s grave—upright as the Squire himself, it was—and went on to the older part of the cemetery, where the slate stones were slanting in crooked rows. I stopped walking. “There’s nobody here,” I said. “And it’s past time you were telling me.”