Classics Mutilated

by John Shirley

  She hadn’t thought she would miss him.

  I cannot live with you, she wrote. It would be life, and life is over there behind the shelf the sexton keeps the key to….

  She paused, sighed, and held the pen away from the paper so it wouldn’t blot.

  She wasn’t alive without him. He had taken something from her. Everyone noticed it. They had always thought her strange, but now they feared her, and she wasn’t quite sure why.

  She hid away from them, mostly because she didn’t want to see the fear in their eyes.

  She wrote, I could not die with you.

  Was she writing him a letter? And if so, where would she leave it? Did she truly want him to find it, to know she missed him?

  Nor could I rise with you, because your face would put out Jesus’s….

  Her hand trembled as she wrote.

  They’d judge us—how? For you served Heaven, you know, or sought to. I could not.

  No one dared see these. Not him, not anyone. Think of what they would say. Think of what they would do to her, even in this enlightened time.

  She shuddered, feeling the temptation to go to him. But she could not. She dared not.

  So we must keep apart, she wrote to him. She was writing to him now. She had known that, but she finally acknowledged it. You there, I here, with just the door ajar….

  The door ajar. That was what the others felt. She straddled the world between, half her life there, half here. She hadn’t fled him quickly enough.

  She hadn’t known what he would cost her, what she had chosen. Then, five years ago, she had tried to go back to a normal life, not realizing it was too late.

  So she lived in this strange half-world, neither here nor there, not willing to cross the threshold into his life—and Eternity, not able to fully live in hers.

  She hadn’t expected this, and she had no idea how to live with it.

  Except to scrawl the maddening thoughts. Except to try to quell the feeling of panic, always rising inside.

  Her pen, her paper. Her silence. She had nothing else left.

  April 20, 1862

  Worcester, Massachusetts

  The envelope itself looked a bit odd, the handwriting tiny, the edges a bit too thick. That Higginson noticed it was odd too, considering the volume of mail he got lately. He had published an essay titled "A Letter to a Young Contributor" in the Atlantic Monthly, hoping to slow down the volume of unsolicited submissions the magazine got as the war got underway. Instead, his essay increased them. And worse, they were all addressed to him.

  Only the most select made it to his study in Worcester. Later he would say he added the thick envelope because he had known it carried something marvelous, but at the time, he had taken it only because it struck him as unusual.

  He sat in his leather-backed chair, a mound of manuscripts on one side, and his own writing paper on the other. Books surrounded him. He didn’t keep newspapers in his study, preferring they remain in the parlor. The news since Lincoln’s inaugural a year before had been ugly at best, and Higginson wanted to keep horror out of his study.

  He had a hunch it would enter his life all too soon.

  He slit the envelope with his letter opener, careful not to disturb the papers inside. A second envelope tumbled out, followed by five sheets of paper—four poems and an unsigned letter. He opened that envelope first, only to find a card inside with the name Emily Dickinson printed upon it in pencil. The five pages had been written in pen.

  Intrigued, he started with the letter:

  Mr Higginson,

  Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?

  The Mind is so near itself—it cannot see, distinctly—and I have none to ask—

  Should you think it breathed—and had you the leisure to tell me, I should feel quick gratitude—

  If I make the mistake—that you dared to tell me—would give me sincerer honor—toward you—

  I enclose my name—asking you, if you please—Sir—to tell me what is true?

  That you will not betray me—it is needless to ask—since Honor is its own pawn—

  The breathless style startled him and it carried over to the poems, all untitled. Of course the verse lived; he had never seen such life in poetry, and he had read a lot. An untamed life, that reflected the writer more than any other poems he had ever read, as if the writer put herself on the page without regard to convention, or even to a reader.

  He reread all of the documents before answering Miss Dickinson. Her verse was alive, her words breathed. But the grammatical errors grated on him. He tapped the tip of his pen against his teeth. He had somehow to tell her that she wasn’t yet ready for publication without destroying the spirit that crackled out of the poetry.

  Finally he decided he would operate on the poems himself, and she would be able to learn from his surgery. He meticulously copied what she had done, then set about to repair it.

  October 5, 1883

  The Evergreens

  Amherst, Massachusetts

  It was a mistake, Emily knew it was a mistake, but she couldn’t stop herself, she didn’t dare stop herself, didn’t dare think about any of it as she clung to Vinnie’s arm and stepped outside the house. The fresh evening air seemed a mockery—next door, right next door, little Gilbert was dying, didn’t the Gods know that?

  Of course they did; they had ordered it, and because they had ordered it, she cursed them for reveling in the death of children.

  She adored Gib, her brother’s youngest child, born late. Witty and funny and oh, so alive, he made her feel like a child again. Certainly she hadn’t laughed so hard in the years before he learned to speak—maybe she hadn’t laughed at all.

  She loved him, her heart’s child, and now typhoid was taking him, and she couldn’t stay away, even though she knew she should, even though she tried.

  She had picked the right moment to flee her own mother’s bedside, and her father’s too. Vinnie had to tend the dying, because Emily could not, frightened as she was of ever seeing him again.

  But she could not flee Gib’s bedside and forgive herself. Sometimes love made harsh demands, and this was one.

  She walked across the yard into a house as outwardly familiar as her own. Huge, built in the style of an Italian villa, the Evergreens housed the other Dickinsons, the ones who ran her life—her brother Austin, his wife Sue, and their three beautiful children.

  That Austin had all but abandoned Sue few knew except Emily. She didn’t approve of Austin’s mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, but Emily didn’t dare disapprove either, not after the way she had lost herself all those years ago. Austin was here tonight, but Miss Todd was not, and Emily was grateful for that. Even though she knew Miss Todd frequented Emily’s home, Emily had not seen her and preferred to pretend that Miss Todd herself was little more than a ghost.

  Vinnie put a hand over Emily’s as they walked up the steps into the Evergreens. Emily had not been inside in fifteen years, seeing it only from the windows of the Homestead. Her heart pounded as if she had walked a thousand miles, and the smell—the smell nearly turned her stomach.

  It was a sick house, reeking of camphor and vomit and despair.

  But she continued forward, leaning on Vinnie a bit too much, walking up the stairs to Gib’s bedchamber, the smells growing stronger, harsher, more insistent.

  Vinnie, bless her, did not say a word. When they reached the door, Emily let out a sigh of relief. He was not there. Gib would not die this night.

  The boy looked small in his bed, too thin for an eight-year-old, too frail to be the vital child Emily so adored. Sue—grown matronly in middle age—saw Emily and hugged her so tightly that Emily couldn’t catch her breath. Austin peered at her from his post near the bureau.

  “You’re too frail,” Austin said. “We don’t need you ill as well.”

  Emily glared at him, and Austin looked away, as everyone did when she gave them her gimlet eye. Then she sat beside Gib and took his hand.

&nb
sp; His eyes opened for a brief moment and he saw her. “Aunt Emily,” he breathed, his voice raspy and congested.

  “Gib,” she said, unable to find words for the first time in her life.

  His skin was too hot, his eyes glistened with fever. He turned away from her, but kept his hand clamped around hers. Sue placed wet cloths on his forehead, and Austin fretted about feeding the child.

  But Emily simply held his dry little hand, hoping he would look at her again.

  He did not.

  Instead, there was an emptiness in the room. She looked up, the hair on the back of her neck rising. She and Gib were momentarily alone. Sue had gone for more cloths, Austin for water or perhaps just to escape, Vinnie to find camphor to ease Gib’s increasingly labored breathing.

  The light suddenly turned silver, and Emily inwardly cursed. She had not made her escape.

  He had come, and he would see her, an old woman, losing a child of her heart.

  She didn’t look up. Instead she wrapped her free hand around Gib’s.

  “Don’t take him,” she said. “Please don’t take him.”

  “You know I can’t do that.” His voice was as she remembered, only more musical, deep and filled with warmth. “I have missed you, Emily, more than I could ever express.”

  “Don’t.” She brought her head up, and her gaze met his.

  Damnation, he was still beautiful. His cowl was down, his scythe against the wall. He looked like he had moved in, and despite that, despite the horror of it, she felt his pull even now. He reached out to touch her and she leaned away.

  “This is about Gib, not me,” she said. “Don’t take him.”

  “I must,” he said. He didn’t sound sorrowful. He didn’t know Gib. She did.

  “Take me instead,” she said. “My life for his.”

  He shook his head. “You’re already half mine, Emily,” he said. “It’s not a fair trade. Is there another life you would give for his?”

  Her heart chilled. He would have her trade someone else’s life for Gib’s? What kind of bargain was that?

  “Take me, please,” she said. “You have always wanted me.”

  He nodded. “And I still do. I love you, Emily.”

  She knew that; she also knew that she had loved him once, and feared him too. She didn’t fear him now. All she feared was his power.

  “So you have what you want,” she said. “Leave Gib. Let him grow up.”

  He looked at his hands as if they were not his. Then he sighed. “I cannot, Emily. His soul is incandescent. Pure.”

  She knew his next words, but she didn’t want to hear him say them. “And mine is not.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “But you can come with us.”

  “No,” she said. “No.”

  He touched Gib, and Gib froze—froze!—the heat leaving his body.

  “No,” she said again. “No!”

  And then they were both gone—he and Gib, the scythe, everything—leaving only a frail shell behind.

  Everyone came back into the room as if they had been summoned, Sue leading, tears on her dear familiar face, Austin looking ancient and horrible, and Vinnie, Vinnie, hands clasped to her chest.

  They crowded the body and Emily staggered away, mouth tasting of paper, eyes dry, head aching.

  “Take me home,” she said to Vinnie. “Please.”

  Emily had to go home now, taking her fragile, ragged, worthless little soul. If she hadn’t had a fruitless romance with him, if she hadn’t wasted all of that time, she still would have seen him here, and she could have bargained with him, she could have given him her soul in place of Gib’s and it would not have been worthless. Gib would have lived, and so would she.

  But he had cheated her of that. He had known, and he had cheated her, because he claimed he loved her.

  Could one such as that love?

  She didn’t know. She didn’t want to think of it. Not now, and maybe not ever.

  May 24, 1886

  The Homestead

  Amherst, Massachusetts

  Twilight was falling as Vinnie picked up the last pile of poems. She had just lit Emily’s favorite lamp, giving the room a brief scent of kerosene and burned wick.

  Vinnie’s hands shook. She was exhausted, but unwilling to quit. The poems—ah, the poems—they were Emily, and more than Emily. They were about her life too.

  There’s been a death in the opposite house, began one, and Vinnie set it aside. She could not read that. It was about Gib. There were a number about Gib, some even calling him by name.

  Gib’s death had destroyed Emily. From that moment forward, she had been ill, although most did not know it. She continued her letters and, clearly, her poetry, but little else, her eyes hollow, her expression always a little lost.

  Not with a club the heart is broken, Emily whispered, nor with a stone. A whip so small you could not see it….

  Like a poem, Vinnie thought. Like a poem.

  “I can’t do it, Em,” she whispered as if her sister were still here. For all she knew, her sister was alive in the poetry, haunting the room like a restless ghost. “I can’t do it.”

  Burning the poems would be like losing Emily all over again. And storing them would be wrong too, because Austin or his daughter Mattie might burn them, following Emily’s wishes.

  Vinnie would burn the papers, burn the letters. She would do that much. But the poems were alive, like her sister had been, and she could not destroy them.

  Finally, Emily had to step out of her room and let the world see her as Vinnie had seen her, all those years ago—vibrant and witty and filled with an astonishing love.

  May 15, 1886

  The Homestead

  Amherst, Massachusetts

  He came like she knew he would, his face filled with triumph. Emily was too weak to fight him. She couldn’t get out of bed, she couldn’t even open her eyes, yet she could see him, sitting on the edge of the bed, his hand gripping hers.

  “Are you ready to join me, Emily?” he asked, not trying to disguise the joy in his voice.

  “No,” she said. “I will never join you.”

  “You have no choice,” he said. “I take everyone.”

  “But you do not keep them,” she said. “You taught me all those years ago how to defeat you. When the memory is gone, the soul goes too. After Vinnie, after Austin, after Mattie, no one will remember me.”

  “Except me,” he said.

  “And you do not count,” she said, “because you remember everyone you touched.”

  His eyes widened just a little. “You hate me, Em?”

  “For Gib,” she said. “I’ll never forgive you for Gib.”

  “Never is a long time,” he said.

  “But do not fear,” she said. “I have escaped Eternity.”

  “Would it be so bad, Emily, spending forever with me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “It would.”

  “You do not mean it,” he said as he took what was left of her soul. She felt a momentary relief, a respite from pain she hadn’t realized she had, and then a brief incandescent sense of joy.

  Only a few more years and they would go quickly. Vinnie would see to it. Nothing of Emily would remain, nothing except a name carved into a stone above an old and sunken grave—and someday, not even that.

  She had won. God help her, she had finally won.

  May 15, 1892

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  Higginson had the dream again. He used to dream of that clearing in Florida, filled with bodies laid out symmetrically. But ever since he turned in his edited version of The Poems of Emily Dickinson to the publisher, this dream had supplanted the other.

  Emily, as he had first seen her, red hair parted, white dress, beseeching him not to betray her. Honor me, she would say, her eyes silver and terrifying. Honor me.

  And he would say, I am. I am making your work known.

  Then she would raise her arms, like a banshee from Irish lore, and screech, a
nd as she screeched, the hooded figure would rise behind her and clasp his arms around her, dragging her to the clearing and all those dead men….

  And Higginson would wake, heart pounding, breath coming in rapid gasps.

  This morning, after the dream, he threw on his dressing gown and made his way to his study. He knew why he had had the dream this time. Another volume of The Poems by Emily Dickinson had arrived with a note that this was the seventh edition.

  Seven. And more to come. He and Mabel Loomis Todd had barely touched the thousand manuscripts Miss Dickinson had left. He admitted to no one how surprised he was; he had thought her words too strange for the reading public, her gift too rare.

  But they adored it, some, he thought, in part to the surgery he had felt it necessary to perform, ridding it of her excessive dashes and her breathless punctuation. But still, the essence of her lived.

  Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive? she had written him in that very first letter.

  And now he could answer her truthfully: her verse was more alive than ever. She was more alive than ever.

  So why had the first sight of the seventh edition filled him with such horror?

  He picked it up and thumbed through it—stopping suddenly at unfamiliar words. He did not recall editing this poem.

  He eased into his favorite chair, book in hand, and read:

  Because I could not stop for Death,

  He kindly stopped for me;

  The carriage held but just ourselves

  And Immortality.

  There was no despair mentioned in the poem, and yet he felt it, like he felt that banshee scream.

  What had she written to him once, when she mentioned his books about the War?

  My wars are laid away in books.

  Yes. Yes they were.

  He closed the volume, determined to never open it again.

  Anne­droid of Green Gables