Amherst (20 page)

He makes me happy.

Such a simple statement, but the fact is she hasn’t felt this way since the early days with Jack. She feels the urge to tell somebody. But who?

Hey, Mum, I’m having a great time. I’m having an affair with a man who’s older than my dad.

My girlfriends wouldn’t get it either. Only Chloe, who actually did fuck my dad, and she’s not exactly my friend. Or Laura, who’s Jack’s mum. So it’s not simple.

Except it is simple. He makes me happy.

Then it jumps into her mind that the person she wants to talk
to is, of course, Jack. She doesn’t stop to ask herself why. She texts him before she can change her mind.

You home? Want to Skype?

Barely a second later his reply has bridged the three thousand miles and five time zones between them.

Online now.

She brushes her hair and buttons her blouse. Then she’s at the writing table, her laptop open before her, and the machine is warbling into cyberspace.

She hears Jack before she sees him.

“Alice?”

“I’m here.”

And there he is, blinking out of the screen, his gaze not aligned with hers because the camera is above the image. He looks tired, hesitant, but that may be down to the erratic signal. His face freezes, jerks, comes back to life, as if he’s a ghost appearing to her from beyond the grave.

“How’s it going?”

“Really well,” she says. “I’ve been to Yale. I’ve seen Mabel’s actual diaries.”

“Cool.”

“How’s things with you?”

“Exhausting,” he says. “Can’t wait for half-term.”

“How are the sexy girls in hijabs?”

“Oh, God! Did I tell you that?”

He covers his face with his hands in mock shame. Seeing Jack is disconcerting, but also touching. Like being home again.

“Isn’t Skype weird?” she says. “I feel like you’re very near.”

“I don’t,” he says. “I feel as if you’re in a parallel universe.”

“I think I may be in two parallel universes. I’m in Amherst now,
and I’m spying on Mabel and Austin back in the nineteenth century.”

“How’s the screenplay coming along?”

“Hardly at all. I keep trying out fragments, but none of it adds up. What do you think of the idea of telling the story from the point of view of Emily Dickinson, only without ever seeing her?”

“Like the camera is Emily Dickinson?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“I’d say that’s really exciting.”

“Oh, Jack.” His round face beaming, frozen, on her screen. “It’s so good talking to you.”

“I don’t suppose,” he says, “you’d consider putting on a hijab?”

“Turning into a fetish, is it?”

He sighs and nods.

“I do feel a little ashamed of myself. But I don’t think it’s exactly a fetish. I think it’s about proximity. You know, like priests fondle altar boys. It’s whatever’s within reach.”

“Oh, Jack. That’s so like you.”

“Do you think I’m wrong?”

“No, I think you’re horribly right. Listen . . .” She realizes with a shock that she’s going to tell him. That this is what she called him to say. “I’m alone in this house with a man twice my age, and guess what?”

“You aren’t!”

“Just a little bit.”

“Alice! He’s Mum’s old boyfriend! That’s practically incest!”

“Think of it as a holiday romance.”

“Bloody hell! That beats me fantasizing about girls in scarves.”

“He’s getting a divorce, so it isn’t really adultery. He thinks I’m using him to work through my father obsession.”

“I expect you are. Which father?”

“Guy, I suppose. The useless one. But I prefer your idea. It’s just proximity.”

“Proximity and opportunity. That covers just about everything.”

How amazing to be able to say it all like this. The only people you can talk to about new lovers are old lovers.

“Do you think I’m mad?”

“Depends what you want out of it. I got the impression from Mum that he was pretty flaky.”

“He talks about your mum a lot. She’s the one who got away.”

“Christ, Alice, just think! If she hadn’t, he’d be my dad. You’d be doing it with my dad!”

He clasps his head in his hands and rocks it from side to side, as if trying to pull it off.

“But she didn’t and he isn’t,” says Alice. “And you know what? Being so much older makes no difference at all. He’s as screwed up as you or me. More so, maybe.”

“Well, babe.” He puts on a bad American accent. “I do not know what to say to you.”

“Why are you talking like that?”

“To indicate the withdrawal of my primary self from this conversation.”

“Oh, please, Jack. Can I have the primary self back?”

“I am only flesh and blood, Alice.”

But his accent has reverted.

“Look into the camera,” she says. “I want to see you looking at me.”

He does as she asks. Those gentle brown eyes, so incapable of deceit.

“Now I’ll look at you.”

She stares at the tiny hole in the top of the screen’s frame, trying to imagine that Jack is there. Odd that they can’t look at each other at the same time.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m better now.”

They resume their misaligned exchange.

“I blame Mabel Todd,” he says. “She’s stuffed your head with heavy breathing. Oh, I get it.” He smacks his head. “This is research. You’re Mabel, Nick’s Austin.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought it.”

“What about your plan to tell the story from the point of view of Emily Dickinson? Maybe you should stop all the sweaty stuff and become a celibate recluse.”

She smiles as she listens. Just hearing him grounds her, gives her perspective on the heady events of the last two days. The sweaty stuff.

“I’ll do my best,” she says. “But there is something to be said for bad behavior.”

“No,” he says. “No. I’m being so strong-willed. I’m being so good. If I elope with a doe-eyed Bangladeshi, it’ll all be your fault.”

“You do know that they only make up their faces where they can be seen? Take off the scarf and all the edges will be raw.”

“How on earth do you know that?”

“I’ve got a makeup marketing account.”

He gazes solemnly at her chin.

“That is probably the single most useful thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“I do love talking to you, Jack.”

“Even though nothing I ever say’s useful to you.”

“Yes, it is.” She’s nodding at the screen, wanting him to believe
her. “I’ve remembered what you said about endings. It just isn’t so easy actually finding one.”

“For Mabel’s story?”

“Yes.”

“There’ll be an ending sitting there somewhere,” he says. “But it may not belong to the story you’re telling.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Switch the story. Use the ending you’ve got. I’m telling you, that’s what’s important. Work backwards from the ending, and wherever that takes you, that’s your story.”

“Yes, but . . .”

What he says begs so many questions she doesn’t know where to begin. His flickering features betray impatience. Or maybe her confession has bothered him more than he’s saying.

“Or you could just ignore me.”

“No, I’m really trying hard here.”

“Sorry, I’m tired. That’s the trouble with Skype. It’s free, so we can’t say, Oh, God, this call’s costing a fortune, we’d better hang up. So we have to go on forever.”

Alice looks at the time. Five hours later for him than for her.

“Long day?”

“I’m on my knees.”

“You go, darling. Go to your bed.”

“To a can of Stella and
Game of Thrones.
”

“Can I call you again?”

“Anytime, doll.”

That’s the dodgy American accent back. His primary self has checked out.

“I’m switching you off now. Bye!”

The screen goes black.

She gets up to go to the bathroom. As she stands, staring into the mirror, she remembers and looks away, as if caught in some shameful act.

Did I really call Jack “darling”?

17

The new cottage being built for the Todds at the bottom of the Dickinson Meadow started construction in the fall of 1886. By the turn of the year the shell of the house was in place, and part of the plumbing and heating had been installed. The kitchen in the basement was usable, as was the top floor, which was to be Mabel’s studio. Then with very little warning the owners of the house they were renting decided not to renew the lease, and the family was obliged to move into the unfinished house. They named it the Dell.

They camped out through that bitter winter. Millicent caught a throat and ear infection. David suffered an attack of kidney stones. Mabel worked. She oversaw the builders, directed the setting out of trees, and painted oil friezes round the upper walls of the entrance hall and the parlors. And every day, whenever she had a spare moment, she continued the long task of copying out Emily’s poems, and then typing them on a Hammond typewriter, borrowed from a friend. David helped when he could, acting as a second pair of eyes, checking Mabel’s guesses at the words that
were harder to read. Even Millicent was pressed into occasional service, forming and re-forming the little bundles of papers. The great work went on in the third-floor attic room, where Mabel had pinned to the wall a copy of the daguerreotype of Emily Dickinson, taken in 1847 when she was a student at Mount Holyoke College. Beneath this image of the serene and beautiful sixteen-year-old, the only likeness that Mabel had been able to obtain, Emily’s poems and their transcripts slowly spread across the floor.

Austin visited daily. By now Mabel considered herself married to him as well as to David. She kept a gold wedding ring that Austin had given her, but she did not wear it in public. Austin kept a soft indoor hat at the Dell and was as much or more at home there than at the Evergreens. But in the world beyond its walls, they continued to behave to each other as virtual strangers.

Mabel found her double life increasingly hard to bear. The great love which seemed to her to be so right and good had settled into a pattern of secrecy and shame, and she could see no sign that anything would ever change. She felt betrayed by the world, and by God.

She wrote to Austin:

As for God, I feel utterly deserted by Him. I have tried so hard during all these years to trust Him, and to wait patiently. Yet He gives no sign. I am pitifully helpless in His hands, and dare not even reproach Him. The heavens are dumb. He has shown us the possibility of a life as happy and as pure and as noble as heaven itself—and then He lets us go. He sits silently up in the great spaces and watches us suffer—if indeed He cares enough even to notice the pain—and we pray and entreat in vain. Only I shall always be glad that He did show us each other, even if I die for it, which I think not at all unlikely. A sensitive nature cannot hold on forever against such odds. We have each other—but we have each other against the bigoted spite of the rest of the world. And we cannot make it otherwise. There seems no real help but in death.

In her growing despair, Mabel took refuge in the strange poems she was puzzling out in her attic room. Emily’s perceptions of the world were sharp-edged, bitter, often profoundly sad. Mabel found this comforting. At the same time, as she untangled the densely packed lines, her admiration for Emily’s poems grew. Here was a fellow spirit with the power to utter truths that no one else would admit, but that Mabel was learning for herself. She felt herself to be Emily’s first, her only, reader. In the poems she found her own story, of her struggle to declare her love, and of her attempt to brave the unkindness of the town. The poet offered her no consoling redemption, which was a consolation in itself.

I took my Power in my Hand—

And went against the World—

’Twas not so much as David—had—

But I—was twice as bold—

I aimed my Pebble—but Myself

Was all the one that fell—

Was it Goliath—was too large—

Or was myself—too small?

Emily gave her the words to express her love for Austin, a love that the world would only allow her to enjoy in snatched moments.

So set its Sun in Thee

What Day be dark to me—

What Distance—far—

So I the Ships may see

That touch—how seldomly—

Thy Shore?

Every day more convinced of Emily’s genius, she worked away at her laborious transcriptions. She purchased a typewriter of her own, which punched out the poems one capital letter at a time. To ease the burden she hired a copyist but found her quite incapable of deciphering Emily’s handwriting. So she continued alone.

As the poems were transcribed, Mabel showed them to Vinnie. Vinnie, devoted to Emily’s memory, fierce in her defense, was timid when faced with the task of presenting them to the world.

“Mr. Higginson has been kind enough to say he will read the best of them,” she said to Mabel. “He will approve, will he not?”

“He’s a bigger fool than I thought if he doesn’t,” said Mabel.

“You truly do think them good?”

“Your sister is a great poet,” said Mabel. “Greater than Mrs. Burnett. Greater than Mrs. Jackson.”

“Do you really believe so?” cried Vinnie, her eyes shining. “You will tell Mr. Higginson so?”

When the great task was completed, it was Mabel who carried the stack of transcribed poems to Boston. She lodged in the Beacon Hill house of her cousin Caro Andrews. Here Thomas Wentworth Higginson met her, at Vinnie’s request, and read through several of the poems.

His response was not favorable.

“Of course I see that there’s some kind of genius buried here,”
he told Mabel. “But the meaning is so obscure, the form so crude. The public will never accept it.”

“How can you say that?” cried Mabel. She was outraged by the verdict, both for Emily and for herself. “You think the poems crude because she writes in her own way and you’re not familiar with it. But I assure you they are not crude, and not obscure, any more than William Blake is crude and obscure.”