Miss Emily (5 page)

“Dollie is filled with sawdust,” he declared one day, a moment of extreme exasperation, surely, for the Susan I know is wholly flesh, with a heart that pumps hot blood. There is nothing dry or inert about her; she has passion for poetry and every fine thing. She is of the world in a way that I could never be, and I love that she brings the world to me.

On this day Sue occupies her seat elegantly, as if her stomach is not full with a wriggling babe. “It is so hot,” she says, flicking a pamphlet in front of her face as a fan.

“What will hell be like?” I ask, and we both laugh.

“What news, Emily? Entertain me, for I cannot quite entertain myself these days. My brain has dried to biscuit.”

“The chartreuse zinnia we planted in the conservatory has come up.”

“How lovely.”

“And I have been itching to tell you all about our new maid.”

“Austin mentioned you had taken another Irish girl.”

“Yes, and she is a darling. Her name is Ada Concannon. Does her name not sound like a peregrine fruit, Sue? Something meaty but sweetly exotic?” Sue nods uncertainly. “Ada talks about Mother as if I were not related to her and then hastily excuses herself. But she means every word she says. There is something of the scamp about her.”

“Is it wise to engage so? Certainly do not encourage her to have a loose tongue, Emily. It may deliver trouble to your door.”

Sue settles back into the chair and folds her hands across her high belly; she sighs and retreats into that space expectant women go to—a covert, mystical place of the mind with room for only one: the soon-to-be mother.

“Father was speechifying yesterday, Sue.”

“Oh, yes? I do love when he sits atop his highest horse. What was his subject, Emily?”

“The usual: ‘Intellectual eminence should not be woman's goal. Do not read too much, Emily.' And then he handed me a parcel of new books, though he fears they ‘joggle the mind.' ”

“Books are always welcome indeed. Was the latest Dostoyevsky among them?” I shake my head. “You must read it, my dear. It is about brilliance and murder—you will love its pathos.”

“But is it
dignified,
Susan?” I say, imitating Father's sternest voice. “We must read only what is
dignified
!”

Sue laughs and tells me more about
Crime and Punishment,
about its treatise on intellectualism and its fluid, squalid nature. “Dostoyevsky seems almost casual about death, Emily. It is shocking. Wonderfully so.”

“Just yesterday Ada found a hole in a loaf of bread she had baked. She held it up to me in dismay. I assured her it was all right and that a hole did not make the bread inedible. ‘You don't understand, miss,' she said. ‘It's a coffin. It means a death before long.' And she was so crushed by the idea that I had to go along with it and console her for a demise that has not yet taken place!”

“Oh, the Irish,” Sue says. “Everything is low and sad with them. Those Pocumtuc girls make adequate domestics, and they don't talk much. And certainly not out of turn. You should hire one of them instead.”

“I like Ada. She brings spirit with her. She enlivens me. And the entire house.”

Sue waves her hand. “Emily, you want for company—that is why this girl amuses you. You must go forth from this house on occasion. Come to me, to one of my soirées.”

I see a crowded room in my mind, and I feel dizzy. “I think not.”

“People ask after you all the time.” She whisks her hand over her hair. “And it injures me a little, Emily, that you do not come anymore.”

I do not wish to wound Susan, but one as sociable as she perhaps cannot fully understand why strangers discombobulate me so much. I simply do not feel comfortable in a throng; my head gets addled, and I long for peace. And Sue may not comprehend either the writer's absolute need for quiet and retreat, the solace of it. I am so entirely happy in my own company that I rarely feel the need for anyone else, and when I do, I like to choose my companions wisely.

Sue looks at me, expecting a response. Though her face is the gentle one I love, there is a firmness to her, too, an insistence.

“You know that I quake before prying, inquiring eyes,” I say. “It has always been so. Even when I seemed gay and giddy as a girl, I was uncomfortable. Deeply.”

Sue softens. “People are not necessarily prying when they look at you, dear Emily. The average man is interested in his fellow man and in conversation, nothing more.”

I slip from my chair and kneel before her. “When I talk too much, everything I think and feel is wrung from me. I have nothing to write about when all is spent. It takes me so long to restore myself. It is as if I must heal a wound after each party where all is chitchat and glances and
fun.
”

“I do not wish you to be upset, Emily. I merely want to introduce you to people. I would like my guests to experience
you,
not only the poems of yours I share with them.”

“I know you mean your invitation kindly, Dollie. But we are
here together now.” I put my lips to her cheek and tell the curl of her ear, “I prefer to have you alone. That way you are all mine.”

Sue dips her head to my breast, and I place my hand to the back of her sweet neck. I study the chevrons of tiny hairs that grow there, pointing their way down into her bodice.

Miss Ada Is Upset by a Visitor to the Homestead

T
HE
D
ICKINSON KITCHEN IS PAINTED GREEN AND YELLOW.
E
VERY
time I walk into it, I think of apples and daffodils. It is bright and calm, the very opposite of the soot-blackened clutter that makes up my mammy's fireplace and table at home in Tigoora. And here the entire house is mine: I am cook and housekeeper and lady's maid, all in one. If Mrs. Rathcliffe could see me!

Yesterday Mrs. Dickinson came in and asked if I was able to read and then seemed affronted when I said I was. She handed me a neat, whey-colored book.

“Think of this as your second Bible,” she said.

I looked at the cover:
The Frugal Housewife
by Mrs. Child. I opened it and recited, “ ‘Dedicated to those who are not ashamed of economy.' I will read it, ma'am.”

Mrs. Dickinson looked at me solemnly. “Mrs. Child urges prudence at all times and for every person.” The twin sets of sausage curls below her ears jigged up and down as she spoke. I wanted to slip my finger into one of her shiny ringlets, to see what it would feel like. “Economy, Ada,” she said, nodded and went away.

Like her husband, the missus is an austere bird; I don't think
a smile would ever crack her lips. But Miss Emily is spry as a colt for someone more than twice my age, and she has a mouth full of words to match. From time to time, she appears like a ghost behind me in the kitchen, knocking the heart crosswise in me. Her manners are contained at first, but soon she starts to joke and jest. She certainly loves to put things in the oven and coodle over them when she takes them out. Then she gives them away: Federal Cake to this one, rye bread to that one, gingerbread to the local children. Miss Vinnie said the other day that Miss Emily single-handedly fattens up the Sweetser family every winter.

I stoke the stove to heat the hob for the potato scones I have ready. Grabbing a knob of butter, I rub it all around the pan with my fingers, enjoying its milky squelch. The door opens, and Miss Emily comes in.

“Ada,” she says, “please put wine in the decanter.” Her hands flutter to her face like stray moths. “I will need two glasses.”

“Only this morning I dropped a spoon first and soon after a knife, so I knew that a visitor would be calling before the day was out.”

“Is that so?” she says. “The rose decanter, Ada.”

I hold up my buttery fingers so that she sees it will take a few minutes.

I have never known such a house for comings and goings. If it is not the letter carrier, it's Governor Banks, and if it's not him, or some person from the college, it is the sister-in-law from next door.

“Two glasses,” Miss Emily says again. “Serve some of Mother's sweet malmsey wine.” She seems ruffled, and I wonder if the wine is a balm meant to soothe her.

I go to the wine cellar and fetch a bottle. I hold a hot, wet cloth around the decanter stopper to loosen it up; I pull firmly, but the thing won't budge. All this time I know that Miss Emily is waiting.
Finally the stopper eases out, and I fill the decanter and place the lid back in the neck. The wine is brandy-colored, and it smells rich like chocolate. I take the tray carefully to the parlor, and I am surprised to find its red velvet sofa empty. I stand for a few moments, tray aloft, and hear voices drift down the hall. They are in the library. When I enter the room, I am further surprised to find that Miss Emily's guest is not her brother's wife, or a man from the college, but Mr. Austin. He is a bit of a harridan, if you can say that of a man; he goes around with a cocky set to his face. He frightens me a little, truth be told. It is only a blessing that his sisters are so warm.

“This is our new girl, Austin: Miss Ada Concannon. She's from Dublin, Ireland. Isn't that right, Ada?”

“It is,” I say, setting the tray on the table by the fire. I stand back and let my eyes wander to the spines of the Ticknor and Fields books, rows of them in blue, brown and green jackets.

Mr. Austin steps near to me. “We met already, in Miss Con-cannon's uncle's house.” He turns away and unstoppers the decanter. “Dublin. Home of Swift the satirist. Though I do believe he despised the place.”

“Ada is preparing to instruct me on the making of soda bread and currant cake and other things. Are you not?”

“I am, miss.”

“What shall we make first?”

I would like to leave the room, but Miss Emily seems determined to rope me to her. “Well, I'm fashioning potato scones today, miss.”

“Potatoes?” Mr. Austin says. “Didn't the Irish all but extinguish themselves over the potato? I am surprised you can look at the things.”

“We have had two great famines, sir. The country was devastated by them.”

“So you are a famine survivor, Miss Concannon. Well done! Well done indeed.” He sips the wine, and I stand there and resent his fingers cradling Mrs. Dickinson's lovely rose glass.

“I will come to you in the kitchen by and by, Ada,” Miss Emily says, and I take my leave.

Something makes me linger outside the library door, and I hear Mr. Austin say, in his booming, scratchy voice, “We do not see enough of you, Emily. Susan wishes you to come to our house more often. We both feel it would enliven you to leave the Homestead.”

“Dear Austin, you know that Sue and I have had this conversation. Many times. Are you her emissary sent to force me out the door?”

“I care little for Susan's soirées, Emily. I am merely performing a husbandly obligation. Come, let us talk of other things. I shall amuse you with the tale of the Northampton man who was trampled by a wild bull. You will laugh, Emily.”

I turn away from the door and go back to the kitchen.

“Famine survivor! What does he know about famine?” I thump the broom around Auntie Mary's floor, and she yelps when I catch her ankle.

“Pay him no mind, Ada. You're only annoying yourself.” She sits at the table and holds her head, then shakes it.

“It's an insult to those who did not come through the famine. Who
could
not.”

“I'm sure Mr. Austin didn't mean it like that,
a leana
. More than likely he was trying to be kind.”

I go and stand by her. “Granny Dunn made sure our family survived, didn't she? Mammy always said so.”

“She did. My mother never went begging to any man. She kept a crop of turnips safe and barley besides, and she got us all through. And weren't there fat trout in the Clashawley?” Mary takes my hands in hers. “Now, Ada. These people don't even need to look at you, never mind talk to you. You're lucky with the Dickinsons, they're gentlefolk. Margaret O'Brien always speaks very highly of them. But watch your step. Be mindful. Now, why don't you go for a walk along Main Street and up to the common? Clear the cobwebs from your mind. Go and take a look around. See if you can make a friend.”