Mr. Emerson's Wife

by Amy Belding Brown

  In the evening, the wind picked up. Trees tossed their naked limbs against the sky and the house shook as one gust after another broke against the northeast wall. My groans were buried in the gale’s howls. Just before ten, everything went suddenly still. The pains ceased and the wind died. An hour later, my son slid from my body, slick as butter, his head molded to a lopsided cone, his face streaked with mucus and blood. Yet it was the most beautiful face I had ever seen.

  When I put him to breast a few moments later, he suckled with the skill and mastery of a veteran. The midwife opened the door and permitted my husband to enter. He said nothing at first—it appeared that words had entirely deserted him. Then he took my hand and kissed it.

  “We have a son,” he whispered. “My Queen.” His eyes were shining with tears.

  ELIZABETH HOAR CAME the next day, bearing gifts—a box of fresh pears for me and a silver rattle with a mother-of-pearl handle for the baby. She bent over the cradle, cooing, “What a beautiful baby! My little Charles!”

  “His head’s not right,” I said, for my son’s ill-shapen skull worried me, though Eliza had assured me that it would come right within two weeks.

  “His name is Waldo.” My husband spoke from the doorway.

  Elizabeth straightened and turned to look at Mr. Emerson, then at me. “I thought it was understood. If it’s a boy, his name would be Charles.”

  “The first son is always named for the father,” Mr. Emerson said.

  I was astounded. We had not yet discussed a name. “But I assumed, like Elizabeth, the name would be Charles,” I said.

  Elizabeth gave my husband a look that sliced open my heart. It was a look of both intimacy and outrage, a look of abject betrayal.

  “Elizabeth?” I said, to the woman who’d been my only friend since I arrived in Concord. But her gaze was locked on Mr. Emerson’s.

  “His name is Waldo,” he said again, and turned away.

  I stared at the space where my husband had been, trying to grasp what had just happened. What was most disturbing was that I was given no say in this matter, that the name of my child was not in my custody. The dispute lay between my husband and Elizabeth.

  “I was certain he’d be Charles,” Elizabeth whispered. Suddenly, shockingly, she threw the rattle on the floor and ran from the room in a flurry of gray satin.

  I rose from my bed and lifted my son from his cradle. “Waldo,” I said, testing the name against his small, sleeping face. “Waldo, my beautiful son.” How could anyone not care for such a beautiful child? What did it matter what he was called? No name on earth could signify his splendor.

  MY WORLD GREW very small. At its center was my son—his cycles of sleep and hunger and his small body with its amazing, silken skin. I couldn’t bear to be separated from him for more than an hour at a time. Everything about him charmed and fascinated me. He woke before dawn, and I nursed him in the dark, warm bed. I heard the birds wake and sing and knew they were begging me to feed them from the window, but I could not pull my gaze from my son’s small face. The sounds he made as he suckled mingled with the cooing doves, creating an entrancing music.

  At times, when I fed him in my husband’s presence, I detected an odd jealousy in Mr. Emerson’s eyes. This surprised me, for my husband rarely exhibited any unpleasant emotion. He seemed to be a man who had so disciplined his heart that it beat only when he wished.

  That spring Waldo—whom we’d begun to affectionately call Wallie—was christened by Dr. Ripley, along with two other children of the village. I dressed him in his uncle Charles’s christening gown, which Mother Emerson had stored away in a garret trunk. During the ceremony, I watched Elizabeth, waiting for her to raise her eyes and return my glance. But she kept her head bent and her eyes on the floor, as if finding some great wisdom in the worn wooden boards. Though she had not spoken of it since her outburst the day after Waldo was born, I saw that she was still hurt and betrayed by my husband’s choice of name.

  In the middle of Dr. Ripley’s long prayer, I stole a glance at Mr. Emerson. I was suddenly glad he’d stood his ground. His tenacity felt to me—briefly—like a great protecting wing of love.

  IT WAS AT THIS TIME that Margaret Fuller entered our lives. She’d been repeatedly recommended to Mr. Emerson as the most remarkable woman in Boston and he fell immediately under her spell. How can I describe the woman who became both my friend and rival? She was striking, though less in appearance than personality. She had thick, red-blond hair that often escaped the confines of her combs. Her gray eyes blinked with unnerving frequency and she was always on the verge of laughter. She had an odd habit of drawing her lips back when she talked so that her teeth were exposed. She was young—seven years my husband’s junior—but age matters little when it comes to friendship. The house fairly crackled with the electricity of her presence.

  Mr. Emerson was entirely bewitched by her. He sat all evening in the parlor, his eyes following the movement of her hands as he listened to her talk. I was bewitched myself, but not by Margaret. It was my son who enchanted me—his small face and tiny hands continually beguiled my heart. He was a miracle of perfection. I carried him about the house, not wanting to be parted from him for even a moment. I wrote letters while he was nestled in the cradle of my arm. I mended clothes by the parlor fire with one foot on his cradle’s sturdy rocker. I took him outside daily, convinced of the benefits of fresh air, pushing him all the way to the Mill Dam and back in the wicker perambulator I’d purchased.

  Lucy, who came from Plymouth to help after Wallie’s birth for a few weeks, admonished me for my devotion, and warned that I was inducing an unwise dependency in my son. She had taken great pains, she reminded me, not to spoil Sophia and Frank. I assured her that I’d try harder to restrain myself. But one look into Wallie’s dark and serious eyes, one brush of his satin curls against my fingertips, and all my resolve evaporated. I had not imagined that motherhood could so utterly bind me. Where my son was concerned, I was hopeless, a slave to inclination and impulse. A captive of love.

  When Wallie was nearly nine months old, Mr. Emerson began to complain that I spent too much time with the baby. “It’s time you weaned him,” he said. It was a rainy morning in early August; I sat in the rocking chair by the east window of our bedroom, my dressing gown open to expose my breasts, for I was nursing Wallie. It was raining hard and the wind was blowing so that the rain smacked the glass and ran down in watery undulations. Wallie lay suckling contentedly with his head propped on my left arm, his left hand raised to my face, which he occasionally patted, his baby fingers light as down feathers on my skin. He gazed at me, his dark blue eyes serene. As usual, I could not pull my own gaze from his, and answered my husband without looking at him.

  “He’s an infant,” I said, my tone more strident than I’d intended, for the thought of weaning Wallie was so abhorrent that I could not contemplate it without alarm. “Not yet a year old. He still needs my milk. And will for some time.” What I did not say was that nursing my baby was the sweetest pleasure I’d ever known. It was more than the comfort of holding his small body against mine several times each day, more than the innocent intimacy between us. There was a bliss in nursing him that was entirely physical; a heightened sensitivity of my skin, a sensation that my blood had been infused with the rarest liquor. With his innocence and need, my son had redeemed my body from my father’s touch.

  “He absorbs you so,” Mr. Emerson’s voice was low, a thick rumble in his chest. “Sometimes I think you’ve forgotten you are a wife.”

  I felt the weight of his tightly harnessed anger pressing against me from across the room. And I felt my own anger rise in response, climb through my pelvis and chest and lodge at the base of my throat, where I knew I could not hold it long.

  “I have not forgotten. How could I forget?” Finally, I tore my gaze from Wallie and looked at my husband. “I’ve been in exile from my home for two years now.”

  A look of pained surprise leaped into his face, but I c
ontinued.

  “Our son is my chief duty, and he needs me. And I won’t pollute his milk by enjoying marital intimacy before he’s weaned. Nor will I wean him early.”

  “Lidian—”

  “You don’t need to lecture me on my duty as your wife. I know my duty and will perform it when the time comes.”

  “You mistake me. When have I ever spoken of duty?” He moved to the bed and slowly lowered himself so that he was sitting, facing me. His hands hung between his knees; the slight smile that usually graced his face was gone. “Is that what the marital act is to you? A duty? Another obligation?”

  I stared at him. Suddenly, I wanted to take the words back. My terrible words. For he was right—he had never spoken of duty. He had always advocated complete honesty and self-reliance. I was the one who navigated duty’s fearful waters. I looked down at Wallie again. How could I find words to tell my husband that, while I enjoyed the pleasures of the marital act, it paled in comparison to the profound pleasure of cradling my son?

  “Because if my caresses are unwelcome, I will not press them on you.” He paused. “I have other options.”

  I winced. The hiring of women was a common male vice—one that not only degraded the husband but also shamed the wife. It was not a subject Mr. Emerson and I had ever discussed, and it was hard for me to imagine a man of his integrity paying a woman for her favors. Yet it was not the thought of a nameless prostitute that caused my wave of nausea, but the image of Margaret Fuller.

  I looked at my husband again and almost said her name out loud. My head was so full of thoughts of Margaret that for a moment I could not form any other words. Margaret, whose first visit to Bush had lasted six long weeks, who spent hours privately discussing philosophy with my husband behind the closed doors of his study. Margaret, who came and went from our home with the capricious fervor of a spring wind, who taught my husband the rudiments of German—a language I did not know—and who threw lively German phrases to him across the dinner table. Margaret, who always commanded any conversation in which she participated, who created a flurry of excitement each time she entered a room. Installed in the Red Room, she had made an evening habit of visiting my husband’s study. Often I’d heard her laughter issuing from behind those closed doors after I retired for the night.

  “Options,” I said dully, unable to erase the pictures of Margaret from my mind.

  He pressed his palms together, then separated them and splayed them on his knees. “It’s not intended as a threat,” he said quietly. “I would free you of obligation.”

  I slid the tip of my little finger into the corner of Wallie’s mouth, releasing my nipple. He whimpered, but I lifted him quickly to my shoulder as I closed my robe, and the patterns of rain on the glass soon distracted him. “I’ll wean him shortly,” I said, stroking his back as I rose. I glanced out the north-facing window, which offered a view of the road where a carriage was passing, its wheels throwing a great cushion of water into our front yard. “I’ll go to Plymouth for a week or two and leave Wallie here with you. When I return, he’ll have forgotten the taste of my milk.”

  Mr. Emerson rose from the bed and reached out to brush the top of Wallie’s head with his fingers. His blessed smile had returned.

  That evening, Mother Emerson, Louisa, Nancy, and I gathered as usual in the parlor before retiring. Mother Emerson’s knees were grieving her, as they always did in wet weather, so I helped her into the chair nearest the door and took my place on the couch. Mr. Emerson sat in his rocking chair, gazing down at his Bible, which lay closed on his lap. The rain had stopped and the sky cleared at dusk, but water still dripped from the eaves. I was about to suggest that Mr. Emerson read a passage from Genesis, but before I had the opportunity, he placed the Bible on the floor beside him, rocked back, and announced that he no longer felt called to lead family worship. It seemed to him a barren formality left from another age, devoid of meaning and purpose. One in which he could no longer in good conscience participate. He then dismissed the servants and left the room.

  I looked at Mother Emerson and saw my own shock registered in her expression. As the stairs creaked beneath my husband’s tread, her eyes grew watery and I saw tears slide down her cheek. For the first time, I felt sympathy for her, pity for this woman who had trained my husband to be a follower of Christ.

  “It’s all right,” I said, taking her hand—which was always cold—to warm in mine. “I’m sure it’s just a passing whim.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve seen this day coming for years,” she said. “It was only a matter of time.”

  Again I sought to reassure her. “He’s always followed the requirements of his own logic,” I said. “His mind is perfectly sound.”

  But Mother Emerson’s tears continued to fall; one dropped onto my own hand as it clasped hers. “I hope you’re right.” She searched for her handkerchief, which she always kept tucked in her sleeve, but it was not there. When I offered mine, she accepted it, wiped her eyes, and looked at me. “There are things you don’t know, Lidian. I fear for him.”

  I felt the skin across my shoulders tighten. I couldn’t imagine what Mr. Emerson had done to concern her so. I did not want to imagine. Yet, having heard her words, I could not refrain from asking.

  “What things?”

  She closed her eyes. She continued to hold my handkerchief, but her hand slipped from mine. “After Ellen died …” She stopped and blinked. She dabbed at her eyes and took a slow, deep breath as if to steady herself for an onerous task. “Months after she died, my son went to her family crypt and pried open the coffin.”

  I swallowed wet air. “I cannot imagine Mr. Emerson doing such a thing.” My voice was scratched and feeble, like a small bird the barn cat has caught and played with. “Why would he look on Ellen’s corrupted body? It must have turned his heart to stone.”

  Mother Emerson turned her gaze on me. “It was my suggestion,” she said. “He mourned her too acutely. He was sunk in his mourning, like a boat submerged in a stagnant swamp. She was an obsession. He could think of nothing but her beauty, of his love for her. He imagined her still living, escaped somehow to some sunny clime. He wanted to follow.” She braced her knobby right elbow against the chair’s curved arm. “I feared for his sanity. For his safety.” This last came out as a slippery hiss—the sizzle of a teakettle just before it boils.

  “He would not—” I hesitated, searching for words. “Mr. Emerson would never do himself harm. He is a Christian.”

  “I don’t know what my son is. But I fear he’s no longer Christian.” She dabbed at her eyes once more. “And I think what he said tonight has proven that.”

  I felt my face freeze, as if an arctic wind had torn through the August night and filled the room. I helped Mother Emerson up the stairs to her bed, but her words stayed with me. The image of my husband prying open Ellen’s tomb months after her death and finding—what? A desiccated and rotting corpse? A scrap of gown he recognized? A handful of black curls? The image was profoundly disturbing. Yet what was far more alarming to me than his violation of a tomb was the possibility that my husband might have entirely deserted his faith.

  12

  Accommodations

  I have urged on women independence of man, not that I do not think the sexes mutually needed by one another, but because in woman this face has led to an excessive devotion, which has cooled love, degraded marriage, and prevented either sex from being what it should be to itself or the other.

  —MARGARET FULLER

  In October of 1837, the Grimké sisters visited Concord. These two plain, devout Quakers from South Carolina had been touring the nation, publicly advocating the abolition of slavery. Mr. Emerson and I attended their lecture and I afterward invited them to tea. I had never met such pure, compassionate souls. They radiated sweetness and simplicity, despite their strident words. They told of women subjected to murderous lashings for crimes no worse than accidentally breaking a vase, and of men chained to stakes and whipped be
cause they refused to work themselves to exhaustion. They described the kidnapping of blacks in Africa, the manner in which they were shackled—more cruelly than any animal—and forced into the holds of ships, where they were stacked like kindling. They suffered and died the most extreme deaths. I could not bear to contemplate the frightful savagery inflicted on those innocent souls.

  That evening, as we readied ourselves for bed, I declared to Mr. Emerson, “I can no longer sit by and do nothing.” I was brushing out my hair with more vigor than usual. “The cause of the Negro will be my compass from now on.

  Mr. Emerson stood by the fire with his back to me, unbuttoning his shirt. “You distress yourself unnecessarily. The Negro race is coarse and obtuse by nature. It knows nothing of life’s refinements.” He slid his arm from his left sleeve and turned to look at me. “They don’t suffer the way you would, Lidian. Your imagination tries to put you in their shoes, but they will not fit.”

  “But they’re human!” I cried, throwing down my brush. “They feel grief and experience pain!”

  He shook his head. “As a dog feels it, not as you or I.”

  “I cannot agree.” I picked up my brush and went to my bureau, where I took longer than usual plaiting my hair.

  It confounded me that he could think that some people felt no tenderness simply because their skin was dark, or because they’d been reared in a land of cannibals. Were we not all bound as one family in the sight of God? I had begun to learn that my husband avoided all difficult and painful thoughts, unless they struck a chord in his mind. I suspected that this irksome habit was the means by which he steeled himself against the blows life dealt him.