Amherst (24 page)

Millicent, left to her own devices, wrote in her diary:

This has been one of the saddest days that I ever passed in my life. Mama has been crying all day, and Papa has cried some and has looked so sad that I have been perfectly bewildered.

The funeral was set for Monday, August 19. Until then Austin’s body lay in an open casket in the library of the Evergreens. Mabel knew that she was forbidden to enter the house, but in her anguish she appealed to Ned, who had loved her once. Ned took pity on her. He left the French doors to the library unlocked while the family was at dinner, and so allowed her a moment alone with Austin to say good-bye.

That evening Mabel wrote in her diary:

My Austin has left his dear beloved body and gone—I do not know where, but away, out of sight. I kissed his blessed cold cheek today and held his tender hand. The dear body, every inch of which I know and love so utterly, was there, and I said good-bye to it, but all the time I seemed singularly conscious that my own Austin himself was out in the sweet summer sunshine, more lighthearted and blithe and strong and hopeful than he has ever been before since he was a boy . . .

The town shut down for Austin’s funeral. The service took place at the Evergreens. The coffin was interred in a grave in Wildwood Cemetery, his own creation. A great crowd followed the hearse, but the Todds were not among them. Mabel stayed home, reading and rereading Austin’s letters to her, weeping ceaselessly.

To the scandal of the town she put on full mourning, with a black veil over her face and Austin’s ring on her finger beneath
black gloves. In this way she announced to the world what she knew in her heart, that she was Austin’s true widow.

She longed to die.

I feel my eyes closing to Earth—and opening—to Austin. I want Austin—I agonize for him—I call for him, I reach to him. If only I could die this night!

The reality of his absence is so crushing that I start up from force of habit thinking I hear his dear knock—and his beloved garden across the street is so empty that it makes my physical heart actually ache to look over there. The dear old hat and coat he wore when he was browsing about among his shrubs and trees seem actually before me . . .

I try to be busy but I cry and cry and cry. My heart is dead and I want my body to be.

Apart from the letters of her dead lover, her only other recourse was to the poems of his sister Emily. Austin’s death drew Mabel even closer to Emily. Here was one who by some sympathetic magic had known what it was to feel as she felt now.

Pain—has an element of Blank—

It cannot recollect

When it begun—or if there were

A time when it was not—

It has no Future—but itself—

Its Infinite contain

Its Past—enlightened to perceive

New Periods—of Pain.

As for God, to whom Mabel had prayed, and who had given her false promise with a rainbow on the Leverett road, Emily had his measure:

God is indeed a jealous God—

He cannot bear to see

That we had rather not with Him

But with each other play.

20

Left alone in the house on Triangle Street, Alice sits in the kitchen drinking coffee, eating cookies, and thinking of Nick. She tells herself to get up and go to her room and work on her screenplay or to go out into the town or simply to move at all: but she remains, as if paralyzed, at the kitchen table. To her horror she is gripped by a sensation she’s never felt before, as if she’s nursing an injury that’s left a deep wound, only in place of physical pain there’s this aching emptiness, this universe of regret.

I want Nick. I want him back. Bring him back to me.

Like an infant deprived of the breast: knowing only the intensity of her need, crying for the return of what has been lost.

She doesn’t cry out loud. Instead her mind tortures her with memories that bring him before her, that return him to her so that she can lose him again and be hurt again. Fragments of things he said come back to her. Piecing them together she understands what she never understood at the time and punishes herself for her stupidity. Again and again—she sees it now—he was telling her how much life has hurt him, but she saw only what she
wanted to see, his intelligence, his beauty. “We all live our lives in hiding,” he said. In hiding from what? She never asked.

Forgive me, Nick. I had my eyes closed. I wasn’t looking. All I cared about were my own needs. You told me I was beautiful. You told me you wanted to make me happy. What did I ever give you in return?

Now that he’s gone she cries to have him back, cries inside herself, without tears. She wants to hold him in her arms again and kiss him, soothing his pain. She wants to be in the forest with him again, and this time when he asks for her love she’ll give it, she’ll lie down with him on the leaf-soft ground, she’ll hold him closer than close.

Love me, Nick. Make love to me. Be happy with me. Find your joy in me. You’re not alone.

“Who cried?” he said, when she told him about breaking up with Jack.

Why didn’t I understand? Of course someone always cries. He knows that because he’s one who’s cried. That’s what he was telling me.

I cried, Nick. I cried when you left me. I’m crying now.

Alice jumps up from the table and clatters the crockery about in the sink and is angry with herself.

This is ridiculous. This is shameful. A man twice my age, a man old enough to be my father, a man I’ve only known a few days. What nonsense is this?

Then into her mind comes the memory of the mirror in his bedroom, and the reflected image of herself naked in his arms, and it stops her breath. She gasps with the pain of it.

Hold me in your arms again. I’ve never loved like that before.

Oh God, why give if thou must take away the loved?

Who else is there in all the world who knows Emily Dickinson’s poems as well as he does?

You left me—Sire—two Legacies—

A Legacy of Love

A Heavenly Father would suffice

Had He the offer of—

You left me Boundaries of Pain—

Capacious as the Sea—

Between Eternity and Time—

Your Consciousness—and Me—

She calls to him, calling him back. Look, Nick. Listen. Here’s Emily again, putting into words what I can’t say for myself. We each of us make ourselves an Emily in our own image. You told me that.

God help me, it’s the understanding that devastates. You understood me. No one else does. Now that I’ve found it’s possible, how am I to do without it? How am I to do without you?

A Door just opened on a street—

I—lost—was passing by—

An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed—

And Wealth—and Company.

The Door as instant shut—and I—

I—lost—was passing by—

Lost doubly—but by contrast—most—

Informing—misery—

His words keep coming back to her, mingled with the poems. Now, hearing him again, she wants to rip time apart, go back to the living, breathing moment, play it again. Only this time she’ll hear him truly and give him true answer. For example: he told her her screenplay was about two lonely people who start loving for the wrong reasons, but their love turns into the real thing.

Is that what you want, Nick? Do you think it might happen with you and me? I want it to happen. Shall we try?

She remembers how he said the staff would clear up their dinner and how she heard him later washing up all by himself. What was wrong with me? Why didn’t I go down and help?

Because I thought I was the one in need, and he had all the power. He the older man, the irresistible one. I never thought to ask myself what fears haunted him in the night. In the day too, up in his glass-walled tower.

Forgive me, Nick. Come back to me and let me make amends. You told me but I didn’t hear you. You said, “I’ve none to tell me to but thee.” I’m listening now.

She is listening. There’s a car pulling up outside. Her heart bounds. Is he back?

She hurries through the back door, through the screen door, to the yard outside. A Mercedes convertible stands in the drive. A tall, elegant woman is getting out. Slim black trousers, silver-grey top, dark hair cut in a perfect bob. A pale face, not attempting to look young, but beautiful.

“Hello,” she says, turning, reaching out a soft leather bag. “You must be Alice.”

“Yes, I am,” says Alice stupidly.

She feels badly dressed, ugly, ashamed. This is the kind of woman Nick could love.

“I’m Peggy. Nick’s told me all about you.”

She smiles and shakes Alice’s hand. Alice meets her eyes and realizes this beautiful woman is looking at her with undisguised curiosity.

“I hope you don’t mind me still being here,” she says.

“Not one bit,” says Peggy. “Is Nick in?”

“He’s gone. I thought you knew.”

She follows Peggy into the house.

“Nick’s been going to go for weeks,” Peggy says. “So he’s actually done it, has he?”

She doesn’t seem surprised or in any way bothered. She parks her bag in the room Nick had called her office, pulls an iPad out onto the desk, plugs it in to charge.

“He left early this morning,” says Alice. “He loaded up all his stuff and drove off.”

“Did he say where?”

“No.”

“Most likely he’s gone to his cabin in Vermont.”

Peggy turns her full attention back to Alice.

“So you’re the girl from England. You’re working on some Dickinson project, right?”

“I’m supposed to be,” says Alice.

“You want a coffee? I’ve just driven from Boston and I need coffee.”

They go into the kitchen. For all her clattering at the sink, Alice has not cleared up properly. She sees Peggy taking this in.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know you were coming today.”

“No problem,” says Peggy.

With brisk movements she restores order, sets a pot of coffee to percolate, smooths her cheeks with her hands, sits down at the table.

Then she gives this wordless interrogative look. She just stares at Alice, head cocked a little to one side, seeming to say, So?

Alice feels an absurd urge to confess everything. Peggy looks so smart and so kind, it’s hard not to believe she knows it all already. But Alice controls the impulse.

“I really appreciate being able to stay here,” she says.

“Nick told me you have mutual friends back in England.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And when do you go home?”

“Friday.”

“I’m just here for a couple of nights. I have a dinner in town. Then I’m off on my travels again. So you’ll have the house to yourself.”

“It’s really good of you,” says Alice. “It’s such an amazing house.”

“Yes, it is,” says Peggy. “It’s very special. It was built by my great-grandfather. But I don’t use it enough, to tell you the truth. And now that Nick’s gone, if he really has gone, I can’t see myself keeping it.”

“You think he might come back?”

“I don’t know.” Again that searching look. “You probably know better than me.”

“He said he was moving on.”

She can’t help herself, her voice gives her away. Just the smallest catch in her throat.

“Moving on?” says Peggy drily. “Yes, that’s Nick.”

Peggy’s phone rings and she takes the call, cup of coffee in hand, to her office. Alice hears her there, making further calls, her voice brisk and decisive. It’s past noon by now, and Alice is just beginning to realize she’s hungry when Peggy reappears.

“Got any plans for lunch?”

They walk up the road to the Lord Jeff Inn.

“It’s not so bad,” says Peggy. “You can hear yourself talk there.”

They sit at a corner table in the hotel restaurant. They talk about Mabel and Austin. Peggy knows all about the affair.

“So who’s going to play Mabel?” she says.

“Oh, it’ll probably never get that far,” says Alice.

“Has to be someone very sexy, don’t you agree? I mean, she really threw poor old Austin for a loop.”

“I think maybe he was ready to be thrown,” says Alice.

“I guess he was. He didn’t get much action with Sue, as far as we can tell.”

“I don’t think it was just about sex,” says Alice tentatively. “He seems to have had an awful lot of emotion penned up inside him, waiting to break out.”

“And boy! Did it break out!”

“How much do you think Emily knew?” says Alice.

“Please!” Peggy lifts her elegant hands, disclaiming expertise. “I’m no scholar. I read the book about the affair, and I’ve forgotten half of that. All I can remember is they both kept up this great wail about how their love was holy and blessed and God was up in heaven rooting for them.”

Alice laughs.

“There is rather a lot of that.”

“But you buy it, right? I guess you have to if you’re making a movie out of it.”

“I believe they loved each other, yes. But people love each other for all sorts of reasons.”

“You don’t think they, oh, I don’t know, worked it up? How could they stay so hot for each other for so long?”

“It’s because they weren’t ever able to settle into any kind of
regular routine,” says Alice. “Their love was always forbidden, always secret, always stolen. That’s where the heat came from.”