Afternoons with Emily (3 page)

“And have you?”

“Not yet.” And I would search her face for a clue as to whether this was the right or the wrong answer. There seemed to be
an expectancy surrounding this question. I answered truthfully, and there did seem relief in my response, but the very routine
nature of the questioning reinforced the idea that coughing up blood was inevitable. My difference, my unique unhealthy condition,
was a fact, a given — like the Lowell cousins’ freckles. Being “not well” was as much a part of me as my fair braids or the
little hidden mole behind my left ear — or the secret that I did not really have a mother.

It was the task of one of the servants to take me for walks twice a day around the streets of Beacon Hill. Whenever I met
relatives, they would always ask about my health. Again I was reminded that I was frail and sickly — and I accepted this,
as children will. I had no basis of comparisons; I had never lived any other way.

Cousin Daisy was also the keeper of the web, the weaver of stray threads and loose people into the family tapestry. And in
my case, she assumed many of the duties ordinarily handled by a mother. She took obvious pleasure in overseeing my wardrobe.
Every fall and spring, she climbed to my nursery with little floppy books of cloth, accompanied by a sad, silent woman who
measured me. Usually we copied the styles of dresses I already had, but I was allowed to choose the colors and materials.
This selection was important to me; it was the only part of my life where I had any authority. I always looked for stripes,
which delighted me; they still do.

Despite the family taint, we were always included in the great family occasions: weddings and funerals, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
To do less would have been far more scandalous than the danger implied by the threat of consumption. I could also count on
seeing all the Lathams collected every New Year’s Day, when one of the linked families (never ours) took its turn giving a
reception.

The loud, crowded house would be alight with candles and crystals, fragrant with evergreen decorations. One of the half-grown
sons would stand importantly beside the candle-laden tree with a bucket of water at hand in case of fire. Every table carried
silver bowls of eggnog and salvers of sliced fruitcake. Jolly strangers who all knew my name shook my hand and wished me better
health in the New Year. They were always careful not to kiss me.

Mostly I would stand in my black velvet dress, watching the other children. I was amazed that my cousins seemed to know every
detail of one another’s daily lives. I wondered at their inscrutable jokes, their holiday events, their complicated interlocking
plans. They seemed to me like one solid block of rosy energy and action.

“Did the sweater fit?” “She gave us all hymnals!” “O come, all ye faithful . . .” “We’ll come sledding tomorrow after the
service.” “Jane got a pony!” “There’s another ham in the dining room!”

I always noticed how a mother would straighten her daughter’s ribbons; a father would smooth his excited son’s unruly hair.
They all seemed to touch one another easily and often. I was fascinated. My parents very rarely touched me; I don’t recall
seeing them ever touch each other.

Every year, going home with my parents, I took a piece of fruitcake in a little foil box, with the new date embossed on the
cover. I always believed I had been part of the event. I never knew I should have been with my cousins for days beforehand,
racing up and down the stairs, decorating the house, and wrapping the presents. I should have been asked to stay on for supper
after the party, to finish the hams and the eggnog, and to sing our New Year’s song one last time.

Still, I did not feel neglected. Since I had never had either companionship or parental concern, I did not know I was living
without them. It was as if I had been born deaf and never missed music. I had a cramped, chilly nursery on the fifth floor,
with three peaked dormer windows looking over the roofs and gardens and mews behind Mount Vernon Street. Here under the roof
I had a scruffy parakeet and a jointed wooden doll named Lady Jane Grey — I forget why. Here were my paints and my scissors,
my weaving and my beadwork. Above all else, here were a hundred books read to me by my nursemaids. What else could I possibly
need? If a passing genie had offered to grant me three wishes, I would have asked him for a better lamp, a stove that didn’t
smoke — and a hundred more books.

Several of these nursemaids came and went; I have forgotten their names. One taught me a card game; another stole my clothes,
one dress at a time. All of them took me for walks twice a day. Then when I was nearly five, I acquired a proper English governess:
Miss Mabel Ellison. She was enormous, with hard red flesh and stiff black hair. She had a faint mustache and separate bristles
coming out of round lumps on her jaw. Her huge arms and legs were hairy too, as were the backs of her thick hands. Her fingers
were like stiff, strong sausages.

Whenever Miss Ellison handled me — a dress over my head, a hand on my shoulder crossing the street — she managed to make the
contact rough and painful. I felt anger in the tips of her fingers, frustration on the callous palms of her hands. My dresses
seemed to infuriate her — she’d yank them from the wardrobe, muttering, “Why should you have so much when my own darling suffers?”
I would catch her glare, as if my existence were a blight, and if I misbehaved (and often I knew not the nature of my crime,
just that I was being punished) the lecture included references to her perfect daughter back in England, whose childhood was
one of deprivation.

On my fifth birthday, my father visited the nursery. When he entered, he found me crying. Miss Ellison was pulling my hair,
completing the daily ordeal of my braids. She always told me this was extra difficult because my fair hair curled.

“Did Ara disobey you?” my father asked.

“No, Professor Chase, she carries on like this every blessed morning. She’s just a great big crybaby about her braids.”

“Is she indeed? Ara, please come with me to the library. I have a birthday present for you.”

Something in his voice gave me hope that he would listen to me about Miss Ellison. If I could only tell him what she was like,
then perhaps he would make her a little kinder. He might even send her away.

“Ara, talk to me about Miss Ellison. Why don’t you like her?”

“Because she hates me.”

“Why should she hate you? Are you rude or disobedient? Nobody likes a child like that.”

“I’m not, I’m not! She hates me so she can hurt me. She likes hurting me.” I was desperate to explain that Miss Ellison had
a child of her own in England who was poor. She hated me because I was not that child. Squeezing and pinching and pushing
me made her feel better. I knew all this was true, though it made no real sense to me. I did not have the right words that
would make Father believe me.

“All English people are strict, you know,” he told me. “You’ll learn good manners that way. The English manners are still
the best.”

There went my chance; he had stopped listening. My father handed me my present, and I knew that the subject of Miss Ellison
was now closed. There was no use talking about this to my mother; her burden of ill health was as much as she could bear.
My jaw tightened as I fought back tears of frustration. Miss Ellison would stay.

I gripped the gift and realized my father was waiting for me to thank him. I stared at the leather sack in my hand. Curious,
I opened it to discover hundreds of little ivory tablets, each with an alphabet letter. My father took a book from his shelf
— I don’t remember what it was — and showed me how to arrange the tablets to match words on the page, and then he read me
the word. We played this game for a few minutes before he sent me back to Miss Ellison.

Then it was Christmas, then New Year’s Day, and time to dress for another Latham eggnog party. I had some bronze kid slippers
with a pearl button at the ankle; I had loved them when Cousin Daisy bought them for me the previous year. When Miss Ellison
had trouble fastening them, I reminded her I had been saying they squeezed my feet.

“You wouldn’t complain if they were the only shoes you owned,” she snapped, yanking the buttonhook.

So I walked to Cedar Street with my parents, between the tall houses with their wreaths and candles, and then after the New
Year’s party I walked painfully home. By the next morning, my left heel was sore and red where the skin had rubbed off. I
told Miss Ellison about this, because she was a grown-up and would know what to do. She was not interested.

“You just want new shoes, don’t you?” she accused me. That ended the discussion.

There had been a heavy snow in the night, and the steep streets were difficult. We could not take our usual dreary walk, so
I wore my soft knit slippers in the house for several days. I did not speak about my heel again.

Days later, my whole foot was red; it stopped hurting and began to beat like a little drum. There was a purple hole, with
raised yellow edges, on the back of my heel. I wondered what would happen next.

I realized I had a secret, my first. I made excuses to take my bath alone; I managed not to limp in the nursery. Somehow I
knew I was taking action against Miss Ellison; somehow my foot would be the end of her. I waited.

One morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. Miss Ellison yanked off my covers and saw my foot, which seemed to have burst during
the night. Her scream was all I could have hoped for. Dr. Jackson must have been in the house already, visiting my mother,
for he was there at once — and my father too. Then everyone left the room, and I never saw Miss Ellison again.

When Dr. Jackson came back, he brought Teresa, a sweet, dark Italian girl who was learning to be a nurse in the big hospital
near us. She spoke like someone singing. She was there all day and all night, the first person in my life who handled me gently.

Teresa had to soak my foot in scalding water a dozen times a day; she never minded when I cried out from the pain. She always
touched me very lightly; sometimes she stroked my forehead with wonderful ice. One night because of my fever, she cut off
most of my braids and never once pulled me about as she did so.

I believe Teresa stayed a long while, but the days and weeks ran together. I was never sure if it was day or night, for I
slept in the daytime. Then the pain would wake me in the night, and whispering people would come in and out with lamps. I
dimly recall Cousin Daisy Powell conferring quietly with Father. Teresa said my mother came twice. This stunned me. I must
have been very ill indeed! It pleased and frightened me to have roused my mother from her room.

When I was well enough to sit up in bed, all the snow was gone. Teresa gave me my alphabet tablets, and I started arranging
them on a tray. My father had brought me a fine new book on whaling, and I asked Teresa to read it to me — but she had a better
idea.

“Let’s copy the first line with your letters,” she said — and we spelled out a dozen words on my tray.

“Now look at them as I read. ‘The square-rigged
Nancy O.
was a whaler out of Nantucket.’ ” She ran her finger slowly along the tablets as she spoke. “What do you see, Ara?”

“Words. Sounds, I think. Oh, do it again!”

“ ‘The square-rigged
Nancy O.
was a whaler out of Nantucket.’ Now you read it to me.”

I did, touching each letter as I said the sounds. I felt an entire world opening up — all those books that held my father’s
attention, I could find out what was in them. They would speak to me too!

“You’re safe now, Ara,” Dr. Jackson said one day. “You’re not going to lose that foot.” It was only then that I realized what
I might have caused to happen.

Soon I was back in my nursery routine of books and dolls and meals on trays. I cried when dear Teresa had to go back to her
hospital, but I was quite contented with my new nurse, elderly Nanny Drummond. She had been with several of the Latham families
for many years and had raised their children till they were school-age; Cousin Daisy had arranged everything.

I found Nanny Drummond to be the exact opposite of Miss Ellison. She was kindly instead of hostile, slow instead of jerky,
gentle instead of stern. She even felt different: slack and yielding and pillowy instead of hard as a cliff. Nothing in the
world bothered her except when I called her “Scotch” instead of “Scottish” — so I never repeated my mistake.

Our meals came up from the basement kitchen on the creaking rope device called a dumbwaiter. After we ate, Nanny Drummond
dozed in a rocking chair, and I began to slip downstairs to explore our beautiful silent house. I was quite familiar with
the front parlor, having spent hours staring out the windows. But I wanted to see more. Soon I discovered no one seemed to
care if I drifted about, looking and touching; only my mother’s room was closed to me. I never would have had such daring
with Miss Ellison about; when I was younger I suppose I had no interest, accepting my confinement under the eaves as another
given of my life.

Starting at the bottom, I found there were pantries and kitchens and storerooms, clanging and steaming and busy. The servants
there were always cheerful and welcoming. Mrs. Bullock, the round cook, ruled these quarters like an empress. I sensed the
other servants were her inferiors, yet she was always warm and kind to me. I am sure now that my mother never once gave her
orders; Mrs. Bullock wouldn’t have taken them.

Sometimes she gave me bowls to scrape and lick. Often she made me a midmorning treat: a gingerbread man, with raisin eyes
and a silly smile. Other days, Mrs. Bullock invited me to take my lunch in the stiff gold dining room on the floor above.
Acting as my gracious hostess, she would make me a doll-size cheese soufflé. I reveled in the special attention: I knew I
was being honored. She was not one to dole out false affections.

But once or twice I would overhear disconnected scraps of the servants’ talk coming up from the kitchen. When they lowered
their voices, I knew they were discussing my parents.