Emily's House

by Amy Belding Brown

  Brooklyn is a grand place, full of shops and parks. There is work here for anyone who wants it. You could find a job in a minute if you came. I think you’d like New York, for it’s as thrilling as the grandest adventure.

  A flush came over me and I felt myself falling into the old sweet yearning. I remembered the way Patrick’s arms felt around me, and how good his mouth tasted when we kissed. The pit of my stomach filled with heat. Then I turned to the last page.

  I have some news you will want to hear. I am to be married in June to a lovely Irish lass. She came two years ago from County Cork. Her name is Nora Sullivan and she’s a true patriot. After the wedding we will move to Dublin and do what we can to free Ireland.

  He signed it, With affection, Patrick.

  The news staggered me. I’d wondered if Patrick might marry, but now I was having trouble taking it in. I read the letter three times, then sat on my bed a long spell. There was no hint of himself resenting me. He didn’t accuse me of wronging him. He was the same Patrick as ever, charming and lively. Still fighting for the cause. It was who he’d always been—who he’d always be.

  I told Mary about the letter, confessed I sometimes still had regrets for not marrying him, for who doesn’t want a lad’s comforting arms around her from time to time? Mary tsked and shook her head and said the saints had been looking out for me, surely. What sort of life would I be having in Brooklyn and Ireland, so far from my family and friends?

  I knew Mary was right, but it was Emily who gave me true comfort. When I told her what Patrick wrote, all I saw was compassion on her face. “The heart spans distances and time,” she said. “But gives no quarter to the mind.”

  “Is that one of your poems?” I asked.

  She shook her head and smiled. “It just came to me while I was listening to you,” she said. And she opened her arms and gathered me in.

  * * *

  My time for wild adventures was over. I wanted excitement of a different kind now—adventures of the spirit. And the hours with Emily on late-winter afternoons were mighty adventures, to be sure. Every conversation started the same, with news and weather and the health of her plants, but they soon found their way to deeper things—faith and love and hope.

  As the days went by, Emily talked more and more about death. I didn’t want to hear it at first, fearing it would be opening the door to new troubles. But it was always on her mind, so I listened. It didn’t surprise me, surely. Her poems were filled with mourning. So many people she loved had gone, it was no wonder she was bowed low. Death tries to crush us all, doesn’t it? I’ve done my own share of grieving, to be sure.

  When someone you love dies, you first feel sorrowful, then lonesome, and after a while, jealous. It feels as if Death has stolen your heart and will never give it back. For most of us the jealousy fades with time and the hole in your heart is filled by others and the sorrow turns into a kind of peace. But with Emily nothing ever faded. The pang of loss went on and on, fresh as its first strike.

  * * *

  Spring came with its birds and flowers, and I was hoping Emily might revive, for it was her grand season when she usually grew lively and bright in the long-stretching days. The birds at her window did cheer her and she talked of walking in her garden, and twice declared herself ecstatic. But she never ventured from her room. Walking from her bed to her writing desk and back took all the strength she had. She complained of losing her velocity. I thought it a quare word till I got to thinking how she used to flit about the house. It was the perfect word for how she used to be. But now she was slow as a snail and leaned on my arm when I was with her.

  She talked and talked about her garden. Came a morning she begged Vinnie and myself to take her outside, though every step taxed her. “I must salute the crocuses,” she said. “Their pretty parade is as martial as a drum.”

  Vinnie fretted and I scowled, but we did what she asked. For she was Emily after all, and the iron in her soul was fierce as her body was weak. We half carried her downstairs and wrapped her in a cloak, though the sun was bright and the air soft as a kitten. She leaned on each of us by turns and tasked me with picking a spray of daffodils for her windowsill. But it wasn’t more than an hour before she asked us to help her back to bed.

  Like sunshine in her room those daffodils were, and I added new ones every day. When the daffodils were done it was the turn of the fritillaria, with their checkered pink bells hanging down like the heads of guilty boys. After that it was blue hyacinths, Emily’s favorite. But as the bouquet changed from yellow to pink to blue, it seemed to me Emily’s health was slipping away with it.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  It was plain Emily was sinking. She was sleeping both early and late and complaining of pains in her chest and back and eyes. Her writing slowed and her letters grew short—barely a sentence or two. But she still wrote them and had myself delivering them all over Amherst, tucked in my basket along with flowers from her garden or conservatory.

  Sue came, still in the black mourning she’d worn since Gib died. Her visits always cheered Emily. Sometimes she stayed for hours and the sound of their murmuring voices was a comfort when I passed in the hall. One rainy afternoon I heard her singing a lullaby Mary sang to her little ones when they were new. The tune was so familiar and Sue’s voice so sweet I couldn’t stop myself peeking in. Sue was sitting on the bed cradling Emily in her arms and stroking her hair, like the tenderest mam.

  In spite of Sue’s devotion and all my prayers, Emily didn’t rally. She slid from a bright hope in early spring to sober forbearing by mid-April and finally—as her garden burst into full, bright glory—to calm acceptance. I’d sat with the dying before, so I knew the grace and comfort of that kind of peace. But I couldn’t stop thinking of a verse from one of Emily’s poems—about hope being a bird that never stops singing.

  The climax came early on a Thursday morning. I was just back in the kitchen from feeding the chickens when Vinnie called from upstairs, leaning so far over the banister I wondered she didn’t fall.

  “Run and fetch Austin!” Her face was twisted and pinched together, her voice full of tears.

  Instead, I ran upstairs, knowing Vinnie’s dramatics got the best of her sometimes. But before I even reached the room, I could hear Emily’s breathing—like an engine, it was. She was lying in bed with her left arm thrown over the side, as if she were reaching for the hyacinths on her windowsill. Her eyes were half open but I knew she wasn’t seeing anything.

  “She’s had another fit,” Vinnie was saying, foostering around the bed like a fretful hen. “I can’t wake her.”

  “I’ll go for the doctor,” I said, already halfway out the door.

  “Fetch Austin first, Maggie,” Vinnie said, her voice gone wobbly. “Please.”

  So I hurried down the stairs and ran to the Evergreens. And wasn’t the grass on both sides of the path filled with blue violets, as if the world hadn’t rocked off its hinge?

  Austin was reading the paper but he jumped up soon as I went in. “Is it Emily?” he asked, and went straight out the door when I nodded. Didn’t even put on his hat.

  * * *

  Emily’s dying was a terrible thing. Two long days it took. Even when I wasn’t in the room, I could hear her rasping and shaking. Dr. Bigelow gave her chloroform and olive oil to ease the fits, and then she lay limp as a rag, though those awful sounds were coming from her poor throat. I was shaking myself, just listening.

  The doctor kept saying she felt nothing, but I knew it couldn’t be true. It was plain Emily was suffering. At night I prayed three decades of the rosary before going to sleep. Early in the morning I crept into her room, stood by her bed, and whispered the Our Father—three times for the Holy Trinity. Seemed to me her breathing gentled a bit, but maybe it was just my wishing it to be so.

  Austin sat with her day and night, while Vinnie and myself went in and out of her room, t
oo restless to stay in one place. Sue came every morning and Vinnie’s friend Marriet came in the afternoons to comfort her.

  An hour before sunset—with gold light flooding her room—Emily stopped breathing.

  I had just come into the room with an armful of fresh linens. The quiet was so quick and sudden I felt struck deaf. Then Vinnie moaned and the hat factory whistle sounded, so I knew it wasn’t my ears. Marriet helped Vinnie from her chair and led her out. Austin stood looking out the window with his back to Emily, saying nothing at all.

  I heard Dr. Bigelow coming up the stairs with his heels cracking the floorboards like gunshots, and a powerful fury rose in me. I wanted to stand at the door and keep everybody away from Emily. Hadn’t it been my job for seventeen years? But in he came and laid two fingers on her neck and shook his head. And didn’t a sob come out of my throat?

  Soft as a whisper, I put the linens on top of Emily’s chest of drawers. Tears were running down my face and I didn’t even wipe them away. Seemed disrespectful somehow. Austin turned from the window, took a long look at Emily, then left the room. The doctor drew the bedsheet up over her face and went after him.

  I was alone with Emily. I pulled back the sheet and knelt beside her. I couldn’t bear to see her dear face covered while I prayed for all the saints and angels to be coming quick to carry herself straight past Purgatory to Heaven. Then I opened the window nearest her, hoping it wasn’t too late for her soul to get out, and I crept downstairs to fetch cloths for the laying out.

  As I washed her, my tears dropped onto her face and I had to wipe it. Yet it was comforting, surely. I’d washed her so many times those last months, her body was familiar as my own. I dressed her in a clean nightgown, fitting her arms gently into the sleeves and drawing the hem all the way to her ankles. Then I brushed her hair, folded her arms across her bosom, and pulled the top sheet to her waist.

  Just as I was folding back the hem in the pretty way she liked, a slice of light fell across her hands. Like a long gold knife. God’s truth, I jumped back, it startled me so. I turned. Through the west window I saw ribbons of gold and purple clouds with the sun peeking out beneath. Had the uncanny thought Emily had arranged it so to comfort me.

  I couldn’t bring myself to leave her room, so I sat with her till my tears stopped. Took a while. Finally, I closed the window and drew the curtains so her spirit wouldn’t be coming back and making mischief. For I knew she would try. Emily had a talent for mischief and I wasn’t so foolish as to think Death would be stopping her.

  Downstairs, I burned the cloths in the kitchen stove. Tom came up from Kelley Square and I told him Emily had died. He said he already knew and put his arm around me and kept it there for comfort while the light drained away. Later, I wiped my eyes with my apron and touched the empty sleeve where his arm used to be. It offered a quare comfort, made me think how his accident was the reason I stayed in Amherst and started me on the path of working for the Dickinsons.

  We went through every room in the house, covering the mirrors. Everybody but Vinnie had left. She was still in the parlor, sitting with two kittens on her lap, stroking them for all she was worth. She pretended Tom and myself weren’t there. But we were used to that. It’s the way of some not to see what’s right before their eyes.

  Emily was different, though. Emily paid attention to everything.

  * * *

  In the morning Sue came to help Vinnie with the funeral arrangements. The two of them hadn’t been friendly since Austin and Mabel started their trysting, but both loved Emily dearly and she’d made plain how she wanted to be buried. She must be wrapped in a white robe and buried in a white coffin. Like her father, she’d be borne on foot to the cemetery. But instead of parading up Main Street, she was to be carried through the barn and over the fields by lads who’d worked for the Dickinsons. Irish lads all, and Tom the head mourner.

  Austin shook his head at the plans, saying they weren’t at all proper for a Dickinson funeral. But it was what Emily wanted, so there was nothing he could do.

  Sue ordered a robe of white flannel but I was the one putting it on Emily. It made me think of the Irish wakes I’d told her about. She’d asked a hundred questions and I’d told her about the praying and weeping and keening and laughing. I’d told her about the toasts and storytelling and how the dead were wrapped in white shrouds. I think it would have pleased Emily to see the coffin—painted white, with canvas handles, and the inside lined with Russian flannel, white and soft as a cloud.

  * * *

  The morning of the funeral the sun came up like a pearl through clouds and fog. The undertaker’s lads brought Emily down in her coffin and put her in the library. Austin came and went all morning. But after eleven he slipped away, telling me on his way out the door he was after some private time with Mrs. Todd. As if I approved.

  By noon the clouds burned off and it turned into one of those grand spring days Emily loved. When Sue came she went straight into the library and closed the door. I didn’t trouble her— though I longed to give the library one more dusting before the mourners came. After a time, she came into the kitchen and said she was going home—she’d not be at the funeral. I must have looked shocked, because right away she said, “She will be here, won’t she?”

  “I’m guessing she will,” I said, knowing she meant Mabel Todd.

  “Well, then.” Sue was sometimes cold and pretended she didn’t see the servants. But that day the lonesome smile she turned on me would have broken any woman’s heart.

  Later, when I went to the library to draw the curtains and make sure everything was proper-looking, I saw Sue had placed a knot of violets and a lady slipper at Emily’s throat.

  * * *

  Mr. Higginson came and he stood over the coffin, looking down at Emily for a long time. Her face was ghosty in the dim light but her red hair was bright as a sunrise in all that white cloth. “There’s not a trace of gray in her hair,” he said. “She could be thirty.” He passed his hand over his eyes.

  Vinnie came in, carrying two sprays of heliotrope, and laid them atop Emily’s hands. “To take to Judge Lord,” she whispered.

  The vanilla smell of the heliotrope filled the library. Made me think of Emily baking. Made me think of love.

  * * *

  The funeral didn’t take long. Emily’s coffin stayed in the library. She would have liked that, I think—lying amongst all those books. Mourners sat in the hall and some in the parlor. My family came from Kelley Square, wearing their Sunday best. Vinnie sat with Austin on one side and Marriet on the other. Mabel Todd was behind Austin, dressed in the blackest gown I ever saw and her veil so thick I wondered she could see anything at all. She sniffed into her handkerchief and poked it up under the veil again and again, as if she was trying not to cry. But it seemed to me her grieving was all for show.

  Mr. Higginson read a poem Emily liked and the new minister of the Congregational church read from the Bible. Reverend Jenkins came all the way from Pittsfield to say a blessing at the end.

  Everybody stood up while the coffin was carried by friends of Austin down the hall and through the back door, and set on a bier covered with violets and pine boughs. Then Tom and the other lads lifted the coffin and carried it past the garden and through the open barn, just like Emily wanted. We all followed in a sad parade, masters and servants alike—for Emily’s death made us equals in sorrow.

  As we came out of the barn, a strange thing happened—a crowd of orange and yellow butterflies rose up and fluttered around the coffin. And didn’t they attend Emily the whole way? Like they were mourning too. We walked cross-lots through fields of buttercups and violets to the cemetery. The sky was bright blue and all the birds were singing.

  When I saw the open grave was lined with pine branches, my sorrow lifted a bit. I knew it was Sue’s doing—for she was the one who’d be making sure there was a soft, sweet-smelling place for Emily to rest.
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br />   I looked at Vinnie, standing at the side of the hole, the toes of her boots poking out over the edge. The look on her face frightened me and gave me the thought she was yearning to follow her sister into the grave. I moved behind her, close enough to catch her if need be.

  The minister said a prayer. I stood with my hands folded and my eyes wet, watching Emily go down into the earth all in white, tucked like a tiny bird into her nest. It was a kind of poem itself.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Took all my strength to raise myself from my bed the morning after the funeral. Out of habit, I went to light the fire in Emily’s room. Gave me such a start seeing her bed empty, it shocked me wide awake and a terrible lost feeling came over me.

  I stood looking around the room—at her table and chair, the lamp and candlesticks, her basket and chest of drawers. For some reason it was her wallpaper struck me. In truth, I’d seen it so many times I’d stopped noticing. But that morning in the half-light, it looked like the roses were alive. The vines all greeny-blue and yellow with those great pink roses hanging off them, the kind you bury your nose in if they’re real.

  I straightened the stack of books on her mantel, though they didn’t want straightening. Just habit, I guess. I opened the top book and a scrap of paper fluttered down—the flap of an old envelope. When I picked it up I saw it had Emily’s writing: Take all away from me, but leave me Ecstasy.