Afternoons with Emily (11 page)

“Nonsense, Jos, we —”

Father raised his hand. “No, Addy. It is time for me to get back to work and to take Miranda home. To see she gets her chances.
We want our own house, probably in a small town, preferably somewhere near my sister, Helen.”

I longed to hear where this was leading, but Lettie arrived to remind me about bedtime. As we went down the sweeping stairs,
I was very thoughtful. Until this evening, I had never imagined beyond Barbados. Everything that had happened to me in the
past seemed to be in preparation for coming here. Now I saw that York Stairs too was a passage in time, leading on, leading
elsewhere. I wondered when they would tell me what would come next.

Spring in Barbados was a bouquet. There were new flowers budding, old flowers returning; there were blossoming bushes, blooming
trees. The delighted eye drifted like a butterfly, flitting from one pleasure to another, hardly knowing where to light.

One March morning, working with Miss Adelaide, I arranged some gardenias in an antique gilt tureen and wove the stiff glossy
leaves into a garland around the container. Miss Adelaide made my arrangement the centerpiece on the dining table. Just as
she promised me, I knew when it was finished; I knew when it was right. The flowers told me. For the first time in my life,
I experienced the satisfaction of a successful creation. No one else in the world could have made exactly this; it was entirely
my doing.

A few days later, I returned from a morning walk on the beach to find that everyone seemed to be waiting for me on the gallery.
Though it was only noon, there was a mysterious excitement: a silver tray with champagne flutes, and smiles all about.

“Here she is!” Father cried. “Miranda, take your glass. We’re toasting the future!”

“Whose future?” I inquired. I was given a glass of prickly golden wine and a kiss from everyone.

“Yours and mine, Miranda — yours and mine!” Father exulted.

I turned to Dr. Hugh, who was smiling broadly. “Please, will someone just tell me what has happened?”

“You know your father has been busy for months, choosing a college where he would like to teach and you both would like to
live.”

My pulse began to race. There was now actual shape and substance to Father’s “plan.”

“The excellent news is that two colleges wanted me.” Father picked up the narrative here. “Both in small New England country
towns — and both close to your aunt Helen Sloan.

“Then Dr. Hugh was inspired! He said we should write Mr. Harnett and ask about schools for you — and we just heard from him
today.” He waved the letter. “Mr. Harnett has written that one of the best schools in the whole country is right there in
the village. How about that?”

“But where, Father? What village? Where are we going to live?”

“Why, Miranda” — he laughed and drained his glass — “I’m going to be head of classics at Amherst College, right near where
I grew up. You and I are going to live in Amherst, Massachusetts! Now I’d better write and tell them so.”

Father waved and went inside, as joyful as I’d ever seen him.

So now my future had a name and a setting, and I began to dread it. Boston was easy because nothing whatsoever was asked of
me. Barbados was easy because I knew all that was required, and I enjoyed every aspect of my life there. Also, several people
loved me, and I loved them back, which was most important.

But Amherst, Massachusetts? What will they want of me there? What about school? This was a great mystery. I had never actually
been to school. I had had only four friends in my life: Mr. Harnett and Lettie, Miss Adelaide and Dr. Hugh, all grown-ups.
I wasn’t sure how to behave with other children. I remembered my awkwardness with my own cousins. Would I ever have a young
friend who would forgive my being different and perhaps even value my bookish nature?

But I liked the idea of Amherst the village. Father told me a great deal about the place. I could picture myself walking about,
along leafy streets and past painted wooden houses. I would know the names of all the families. I could even imagine having
a friend in one of those houses. She might have read a lot; she would want to talk about books. She might think I was an addition
to her life; she might have been lonely too.

As the days passed, I became more confident. I could see ahead to our last weeks here, to packing up and saying good-bye —
and I went on imagining the friend who might be waiting for me in Amherst. Perhaps she’ll have a garden behind her house,
and I will show her how to arrange flowers. I will tell her about York Stairs, and then we’ll lend each other books.

Father had decided to complete our full year in Barbados. He preferred to finish his book on Pericles in the peace of York
Stairs, without the distraction of a new house and a new position. Since I did not yet belong to any school, there was no
concern about my falling behind in my schoolwork. So we would stay until June, when passage would be easiest.

Miss Adelaide never once entreated us to stay on at York Stairs. This was an open invitation, unspoken but understood. But
I realized that Barbados, however delightful, was a very small and limited world. All my reading had given me intimations
of a larger one.

“You’re right to go back,” Miss Adelaide assured me as we sat on the gallery one April afternoon. “You’re an American, you
belong in the United States. Barbados is England, really — England with dolphins.”

When we sat like this in the afternoon, we often played the
Hamlet
game: finding images and faces in the cloud shapes over the sea. I did this now to change the subject.

“Look, Miss Adelaide, to the left of the last cedar — a turtle dancing!” And then together we said the proper
Hamlet
response:
“ ‘Very like a whale!’ ”

In a strange way, Lettie left me before I could leave her. She was present during our time together, but her mind was elsewhere.
She stopped going into the water with me and instead waited on the beach. She stopped my diving lessons too and never even
touched our picnics. She lost interest in my myth people.

Lettie refused my earnest assurance of our return in two years and ignored my promise that Miss Adelaide would read her all
my letters. Her lovely delicate face turned puffy, and she had a new sharp laugh. We were not in harmony. For the first time,
I felt her hours with me were bought and paid for.

“This is a bad time for Lettie,” Miss Adelaide explained when I consulted her. “She never meant to become so attached to you.
You were just a job at first. Losing you is terrible for her, and her sweetheart, Elijah, has found another interest. I’m
afraid, though, that it’s already too late for Lettie.” This was unclear, but I chose not to ask any further.

Suddenly our York Stairs life had a boundary; we heard ourselves saying, “Before I leave,” and “After you’ve gone.” The mail
came and went like flights of paper gulls. Father’s publisher accepted
Pericles,
and Amherst Academy accepted me. Mr. Harnett enthused over this school, “a beacon of learning.”

Uncle Thomas Bulfinch reserved some hotel rooms in Boston for the week after our return. Cousin Ellen Curtis had been designated
to help me buy clothes, as Cousin Daisy was abroad. Then Aunt Helen Sloan invited Father and me to Springfield for the rest
of the summer, and my cousin Kate Sloan wrote me a shy welcome. I was impressed with Father’s planning.

When we packed my trunk, it was almost empty; all my chitons and supper dresses were too small now. Lettie would use them
for her niece Granada, who was the size I used to be.

“You’re just like a little snake, Miranda! You’ve outgrown your old Barbados skin,” Miss Adelaide told me. So we went to Bridgetown
together and found me a dark traveling dress. It felt hard and strange; I had not worn sleeves and petticoats and buttons
for a year.

Sad Lettie helped me wrap my shell collection and its precious cabinet. Dr. Hugh gave me his very best shell book — the French
one with tissue paper over each delicate engraving.

“You can study these to know what to look for when you come back to York Stairs,” he told me. “I don’t want you to lose that
sharp sheller’s eye!”

When we sailed the first day of June, it was a festival. There were all our neighbor friends from the Shakespeare evenings,
with books and little gifts for traveling. There was a wagonful of excited people from York Stairs with flowers and cakes,
calling and waving.

“A lot of folks seem to like you,” Captain Childrey remarked. Poseidon did too: we glided north with our own private trade
wind. I was never seasick, not for an hour. I read on deck and watched for whales and remembered York Stairs. The smiling
dolphins rode our bow wave. Day by day, the sea changed from beloved Barbados ultramarine to New England slate blue, where
the last dolphins left us.

AMHERST

1857

I
was dizzy from changes. Every day was a jack-in-the-box; new places and new people came leaping up at me. In a month, I had
gone from Barbados to Boston to Springfield, poised between the past of Mount Vernon Street and the future in Amherst.

In Boston, we stayed in a very grand hotel with chandeliers as tall and glittering as ocean waves. Here Cousin Ellen Curtis
met us — now Cousin Ellen Curtis Lyall, a lovely laughing bride. She always seemed to me the gayest of the Lathams. Mr. Harnett,
who met her once, said she had joie de vivre.

She and I went shopping for wonderful dresses in styles and colors I never would have chosen. She said everything I wore must
suit my eyes, my best feature, so dark green and brown were wrong; gray, azure, dark blue, and violet were right. As Cousin
Daisy was still abroad, Cousin Ellen had picked up her mantle and was now the only Latham relative who seemed to truly like
my short curls. I wondered what they would have thought of my radical Greek chitons. Though I tried, it was hard to warm to
those relations whose tastes and inclinations were so conventional.

We went from Boston to Springfield on a train, which was loud and dirty and thrilling. (One called this “taking the cars.”)
There the Sloans, my aunt Helen and my cousin Kate, met us. Aunt Helen was as kind as I remembered. She radiated good sense
and goodwill; there was no malice in her. I felt she and Miss Adelaide were kindred spirits.

And Kate Chase Sloan — however did I manage so long without her? She was three years older than I; she was calm and gentle
and witty. She either didn’t know or didn’t care that she was a beauty-in-waiting, but I could hardly look away from her.
Kate was slender, long-boned, and graceful, with pale olive skin that flushed apricot over her cheekbones. Her face was shaped
like a valentine heart. Her hair was cloudy and dark, pulled back with a ribbon. Her eyes were hazel, green and gold like
an iridescent hummingbird — but none of her beauty mattered compared to her generosity, her concern for others.

She had such a soft voice that I had to lean in to hear her — but whatever she was saying, it was sure to be wise and funny.
I felt as if I had known her and loved her always. Like me, Kate was happiest with a book. She had not been able to do as
much reading as I had, though, because she sang — oh, how she sang! When my father heard her on our first evening in Springfield,
he was beyond social compliments. He became deeply serious.

“Why, Helen, I had no idea. You’re really going to have to think about this, aren’t you? We’ll have to make some plans, I
think.”

So Kate’s voice, as much as anything, led to combining our families and households in Amherst. Aunt Helen would rent her Springfield
house and run Father’s Amherst home for him. Kate would attend Amherst Academy with me and take voice lessons at the college.
I would have the use of a mother and a sister, and Father, the paterfamilias-come-lately, was going to happily pay the bills
for us all. Each one of us was delighted with Father’s decisions and with the shape of our new family.

Once this was settled, Father moved to the village inn, and began his house hunt. There was not much selection in a town of
less than three thousand, but he was fortunate to find a small house on Amity Street that could be extended into the Greek
Revival design of his dreams.

We took the cars back and forth between Springfield and Amherst. Springfield was a small manufacturing city, and Amherst was
a village in the woods. The two towns, and a dozen others, had grown up along the banks of the great, slow Connecticut River.
This valley was like a medieval tapestry of woods and farms and settlements, with interlocking roads and now railways. It
was a self-contained little kingdom, river-centered, hill-enclosed — very beautiful, and entirely unlike Boston.

When September came, we moved from Springfield to Amherst. We rented a German professor’s house while the additions were being
made to our own. Our temporary home was crowded and dark, with three or four sets of curtains at each window and heavy bowlegged
furniture. So different from light and airy York Stairs! There were huge, aggressive ferns in every corner, so we called our
house the “plush jungle.” We found few books, but we were given permission to use the college library.

As I walked about, I liked the tidy look of Amherst Village. There was a central block of brick stores and offices with brick
sidewalks; this was called “downtown.” A hardware store, a dry goods’, a printer, and a post office were all on the main street.
The doctors’ and lawyers’ offices were over them, on the second story. There was a fine bookstore, which the college required;
Father said I might choose and send a book for Miss Adelaide every month. For she wrote to me:

I will always think of you as my daughter. No mother could miss her child more than I do you — or hold more tender hopes for
the years ahead. I want you to tell me all your days, your triumphs and disappointments. Everything about your life is my
dear concern. Your words will reach me in less than a fortnight!