Miss Emily (24 page)

I sit in the church in Chicopee and toss around the words “the clap” in my mind and think of the way Mr. Austin spit them. To clap is normally a nice thing, something good at the end of a performance. Why is it used for this? The other way of saying it is worse. Gonorrhea. It sounds like a lumbering thing, a thing that would crush and kill you. Though the doctor in Boston said it was not a death sentence; he said it clearly. I cannot decide which way to tell it to the priest in the confessional. I don't think that telling him I have “a bad disease” will be enough. And what type of sin
am I guilty of anyway? Venial? Mortal? Have I sinned against the Sixth Commandment even though myself and Daniel are not married? Am I really an adulterer? The word is horrible to me.

Uncle Michael waits outside the church, taking a bit of sunshine on his face. I sit in the pew and slip off my gloves. I examine my hands in the gloom, and they look a little better, I think. I am missing a day's pay to be here; Mrs. Dickinson was outraged that I wanted another day off. I told her I had to bring Uncle Michael to Chicopee, but I left her to guess the nature of the trip. She shook her head until it looked as if her curls would collapse and at last said I could have the day, but she was not one bit happy about it.

“Mind you catch up properly with all that you neglect,” she said, and I answered that of course I would.

The church smells like the church in Tigoora, of varnish and censer smoke. It is vast, though, as big as a barn. The Stations of the Cross are carved from marble, which makes them less brutal than the painted ones at home. The wounds on Christ's skin don't look so angry; they are white bulges instead of bloody sores. I put my gloves back on and mumble the words of a hymn to keep myself occupied:
“Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.”
I know it means “Where charity and love are, God is there” because my last schoolteacher said so. The hymn comforts me now—the thought that God is more than likely charitable to women such as me.

The priest comes at a clip down the aisle and disappears into the confessional in a flurry of skirts. I wait a moment, then enter the box and am immediately fearful of the pounding of my own breath and of what I will say. The confession box is airless and smells of melted wax. I wonder if this is what a coffin feels like, the tight, wooden stuffiness of it; the thought makes panic rush up
into my throat. The priest slides back the door and waves his hand in blessing. I feel dismayed and wonder if his
Manual of Confessors
will list such a thing as the clap, or if I am the first person ever to come before him with it.

The priest mutters his opening prayer and then is silent. I shift on my knees; the prie-dieu I am kneeling on is hard, and I wait for him to continue, but he appears to be waiting for me.

“Confess,” he says, and I see the side of his face in the flicker from his candle.

“I . . . I . . . I have been fornicated against, Father,” I say, and I have no idea where the words spring from.

“By whom?”

“A man.” He tuts loudly, and I swallow. “A man who works for the house I work for, Father.”

“Did it occasion the loss of virginity?”

“It did, Father.”

“Will a child be the result?”

“No, Father.”

The priest sighs and puts his hand to his forehead. “Henceforth protect your chastity strongly. Say the rosary each morning and night for a year.
In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
” His hand flutters again, and he bangs shut the small door between us. I stay where I am for a moment, then steal from the box and out of the church.

After all the fuss and palaver of Boston—its clanging bustle— Chicopee is a mercifully quiet place. And it has gentled Uncle Michael, coaxed him back to some sort of joy. He smiles hugely when I walk toward him, and I feel doubly blessed: to have the priest's absolution and to have my uncle's company. He holds his
hand out to me and says we must do something while we are here. I perch on the wall beside him.

“Do something? Like what?”

“Whatever it is people do on a day out, Ada. We'll look at buildings. We'll eat large and walk long. See what's to be seen.”

He is a little giddy, more himself than he has been in the six months or so since Auntie Mary died. I look at the sun stippling the path through the branches of the trees. I treasure the silence of the street we are on; it has a lackadaisical air despite all that takes place in the nearby textile mills and iron foundry and along the busy canal.

“They call Chicopee ‘the crossroads of New England.' ”

“Do they indeed?” he says. “How do you know that?”

“Miss Dickinson told me. Miss Emily. She has a headful of knowledge.”

“Tell me, now, is she always gliding about? They say she walks the house at night like a púca.”

“Not at all, Uncle. She's no ghost. She is in the kitchen with me as often as not and is as good at baking bread as any cook. And her sister sweeps the stairs morning, noon and night and manages much else besides. Their mother doesn't tolerate idleness.”

“Oh,” he says, sounding disappointed.

“But she's always writing things,” I tell him. “Even while she bakes, she can be composing a verse. And she writes into the night in her bedroom.”

This seems to please him, and he nods. “Why does she hermit herself away, do you think? She used to stroll the streets the same as Miss Lavinia. She was always visiting, they say.”

“She prefers her own company, that's all. And the writing takes up her time. She goes out to the garden and conservatory. She's mad for growing things—flowers and all that.”

“She was well liked always. People took to her.”

“Miss Emily's not gone anywhere, Uncle. She's right there in the Homestead, the same as she ever was.”

“But, hiding behind windows and lowering baskets of cake from them is not right. She should be out gallivanting with her kind. With men!” He lets out a strange giggle that ends in a gasp.

“It would do her no good,” I snap. “Men are never what they appear to be.”

Uncle Michael turns to look at me. He puts his hand on mine. “Have yourself and young Byrne had a falling-out?”

“No.” I snatch my hand from his.

“He's a solid young fella, that Daniel Byrne. Every girl in Amherst had her cap set at him, you know. Then you waltzed into town. Hang on tight to him, Ada. He's a good one.”

“What are we doing sitting here? We need to go and find an inn where we can eat.”

I get up and start to march ahead of him down the road that leads to the river. I don't want to hear about how good Daniel is; don't I know it already? Amn't I in pain with the thoughts of his goodness? All I want of a sudden is to stand and look into the river. I miss the Liffey that passed so near my home in Dublin. I miss its swirling, secretive hurry as it rushed on to get to the sea. I miss the weed stink that wrapped itself around me. I come to the covered bridge that connects both sides of the Chicopee River and I stand at the fence looking down into the water, waiting for my uncle to catch up. The river doesn't have the clay smell of the Liffey, but its brown, busy movement comforts me nonetheless. The sun warms my back. I watch ducks paddle furiously against the current, then let themselves drift. Paddle, drift, paddle, drift. Is it a game, or are they really trying to get somewhere? Back to their nests, perhaps, where eggs or chicks wait for care.

Uncle Michael slides up beside me, puffing gently from the walk. He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Don't let any man ever take anything that's yours, Ada,” he says.

I nod; I think of telling him it is already too late for that, but I don't wish to vex him. “I won't, Uncle Michael,” I say. “Let's go. The sun is turning me to butter.”

“Lead on,” he says, holding out an arm toward the bridge, and we walk it together, our boots making a pleasing, rhythmic echo through the bridge's high chamber.

Miss Emily Grieves Her Brother

F
ATHER WORKS.
M
OTHER SLEEPS.
A
DA TOILS.
V
INNIE TALKS TO
her cats. The mice keep up their clicking dance in rooms where no puss is present, but they will not last long. Across the garden Susan tends to my brother and his children; she entertains guests. Amherst burbles on. And I sit here with my little halter, trying to secure time and lead it along. It is not that I have nothing to do—there is a myriad of tasks that call to me urgently—but I am on a slow day and I cannot seem to lift my hands to anything. I think of Longfellow, who says that there are days where darkness and dreariness must reign. But he also says the sun shines behind the clouds; that makes me applaud his poetic optimism.

I rise from my desk and open my bedroom door; I leave it ajar to hear the sounds of the house. Ada recites her prayers and sings hymns as she works—her new custom. The beat of the song she chants today sets off a rhythm in my chest: ba-
ba
-ba-
ba
-ba,
de
-de-
de
-de-
de.
Vinnie is reading aloud a letter from our Norcross cousins: no doubt the cats purr, lick their coats and ignore her while she does so, but they are audience enough for my sister. Mother coughs in her sleep, though perhaps she is awake? I am selfish in my aloneness and choose not to go to her, but she hacks once more and I am roused enough to flitter down the corridor and
open her door. Her breathing is steady, and I leave again. Her bouts of repressed spirits and illness worry us all.

There is a certain guilt that wraps itself into me because I choose to travel my own road. My travels, of course, do not take me far, but I know that I grieve Mother, Vinnie and, especially, Austin. Even Father, my great ally, looks at me sometimes with uncomprehending eyes. But it is Austin who finds me the most alarming. Dear Austin; when we were children, how close we were. Anytime I was allowed to school—Father often considered me too delicate to go—I would write to Austin. From Mount Holyoke my letters buzzed like honey-heavy bees, full of youthful skittishness, which he returned in his own missives. He wrote to me from Easthampton, and we would poke fun at everything from Father's gravity to Moody Cook's plainness to whatever slattern Mother had hired to help with the washing. And I begged Austin often to give up his schooling and come home to me; I was lonely, and Father hovered over my health like a nervy physician, making me timorous in return. I was often housebound, receiving Dr. Brewster regularly and being condoled with by all the elderly spinsters in Amherst. When Austin did come home, Mother and I made special pies in his honor—ones heaving with apples and plums—and all was light in the house. Father loved to see him about the Homestead. He would look at Austin with relief and satisfaction and make singular pronouncements.

“You are a trout rescued from the Sahara's heat,” Father said on one occasion, setting Austin, Vinnie and me off into giggles over Father's gravity, his ticklish analogies, his constant worrying as to our well-being and our whereabouts besides.

But since Harvard, and since Sue and the babies, Austin has hardened; levity has been leached from his very blood, it seems. We rarely banter anymore, for my brother takes the world very
seriously now. Being in his company sobers me. Still, I love him with all my heart, but I know, too, that I vex him keenly.

Just yesterday he sought me out to speak with me about Ada. He came upon me in the library, where I had gone to choose a literary companion for the afternoon. Austin stood by the window and addressed it instead of me.

“Are you aware of Miss Concannon's ailment?” he said.

“I am aware that Patrick Crohan hurt her.”

“Yes, but do you know what this might mean?”

I looked at Austin, waiting for him to tell me. “Is she ill?”

My brother turned to me and clicked his fingers like a man taming a dog. “You exasperate me, Emily,” he said. “Can you be so
not
of this world that you fail to grasp my meaning?”