Miss Emily (2 page)

“Once more you stink of the Liffey, Ada.” Mrs. Rathcliffe, the housekeeper, watches while I put on my apron. “And your hair is a shambles. I told your father to warn you not to arrive in that state to this house. Did he speak to you?”

“He did, ma'am.”

“And?”

“And I won't do it again, ma'am.”

“I cannot have you traipsing through the place like a muddy rat.”

Cook joins us in the stillroom. “Lady Elizabeth is coming down this morning to do the menus. You'll need to get
her
out of here.” Cook tosses her head in my direction.

Mrs. Rathcliffe looks at me, and I am chastened by her stern face. “Ada, from today you will join your sister in the scullery.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And you will not converse with each other. If I hear one speck of chatter or, God forbid, laughter from the scullery, I will be very, very cross. There will be consequences. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

I leave the stillroom and stand in the passageway. The scullery, I think. I have had my warnings, but I am taken aback. I am diligent in my duties in this house, and the scullery is a step down.
They mean me to go backward through this life, it seems. What will the other girls say? And Mammy? Cook and Mrs. Rathcliffe continue to speak, thinking, I suppose, that I am already ensconced with Rose.

“That Ada Concannon is a peculiarly restless girl,” Cook says.

“Her father might do better finding her a husband.”

“I'll hand over a golden guinea to Concannon if he can find a husband for any of his girls. The men are all dead of the Hunger or gone on the boat. Good luck to him nabbing one man between the eight of them.”

I hear the rustle of Mrs. Rathcliffe's skirts, and I run along the passageway. Rose smiles when I enter the scullery, her cheeks already glistening from the steam. The room is small, and though Rose is, too, she seems to fill it. I put my finger to my lips.

“I'm to work here with you,” I whisper. “We're not allowed talk.”

Rose grins. “That will hardly suit you, Ada.” She takes a dolly tub from its rack and readies it for soaking clothes.

“What will I do, Rose?”

She points to a hare that is stretched out in the cold-water sink. “That needs skinning.”

I grab the hare by the ears and lay it out on a board. Using a small knife, I slit the animal behind the ear and stick my finger inside; I pull the fur off its back and go at the legs.

“I'd rather be laying out the morning tea in the servants' hall or blacking the grate in Lady Elizabeth's parlor than doing this.”

“Of course you would, Ada. But Daddy did warn you. You wouldn't be told.”

I throw the hare onto its belly and fillet the back, my knife skimming its backbone as I cut. “God Almighty, will I be stuck here forever?”

“I'm stuck here. It does me no harm.”

“But you're content in yourself, Rose. You know what I'm like—restless as a pup.”

“What's Daddy going to say to you, Ada? And Mammy?” She puts a bundle of chemises into the tub. “Will you be paid the same as me now?”

I shrug, but I wonder if that is what will happen; the thought of it shames me. I would be better off finding a new position elsewhere if they mean to make an example of me altogether. I curse Mrs. Rathcliffe. I curse myself for my morning dip in the river.

“I don't know what's next for me, Rose. I don't know at all.”

I cut in under the hare's ribs, then drag the rest of the meat off with my hands, enjoying the sinewy rip of it. Each pull of the flesh tugs a fierce grunt from my throat. I glance up to see my sister watching me, and though I smile at her, her look in return is doubtful.
I'll show them,
I think—Cook and Mrs. Rathcliffe and Daddy and them all. They'll see that I was made for more than the scullery. I'll do something that will shake the lot of them, and though I have no idea yet what it might be, it will be big.

Miss Emily Surveys Amherst

T
HE
J
ULY AIR IN
A
MHERST ALWAYS HUMS WITH HEAT AND
promise. The conservatory is too greenly stuffy today, so I climb up and up through the house to the cupola. It is warm too and smells of the camphor gum I scatter to deter moths; I like this place to be truly my own—not even insects are welcome. It is my lamp atop the house, my spy hole.

I peer down onto Main Street, hoping to see Susan walking out from the Evergreens with little Ned, thinking she might pass on her way to the Hills' house. Alas, she is not abroad. Looking down into the garden, I see that the top of Austin's
Quercus alba
is rich with foliage; how proud he is of that oak. Across the meadow the factory churns out the palm hats that adorn heads from Maine to Oregon. And far off, the Pelham Hills are a lilac shimmer under the haze. I wonder what it would be like to be up on the hills now, looking back at Amherst, all snug and industrious in the summer heat.

I think of yesterday and the sweet afternoon I spent with Susan in the garden of the Evergreens.

“Do you realize, Sue,” I said, “that we know each other twenty years this summer?”

“Truly, Emily? Can it be that we first met in '46? Why, yes, it
must be so.” She smiled one of her glorious smiles, and the lamb hairpin that Austin gifted her on their marriage seemed to smile along with her. “How wonderful to have remained such steadfast friends through all of life's ripples.” She took my hand in hers and pumped it; we both laughed.

Dear, radiant Sue. Whatever would I do without her? She has a patient, committed ear. She is the only audience my heart trusts, and to her alone I gift my deepest thoughts, my most profound self. For sure we have had our bumps; she is somewhat unknowable and changeable, and I am perhaps a little too needy for her at times. And when she and Austin kept their engagement secret—and for so many months—I was undone. But we jog along, and all those years ago I soon realized that her being wedded to Austin was an opportunity. What better way to retain a loved friend than through matrimony with one's own brother? Ten years on from their marriage, it is one of my greatest blessings to have her next door.

Sue lifted her face to me. “I really liked the poem you sent me yesterday, Emily. There is such joy in it. I could not say I understood it all, but the image of the bee was rather beautiful. You find poetry everywhere, my dear.”

I can send Sue a note or poem on any old scrap—she does not expect gilt-edged formality. She is as hungry to read my words as I am to write them. It is our small conspiracy: I show all my writings to Sue, and she makes remarks that I mull over and accept or reject. Her wish is to help me to accomplish the best possible poem, not mold my words to her desire, which is what I fear from others.

Several women pass on the street below the house, parasols shielding their faces from the sun. I think to let out a cry or make a birdcall, but they might look up to the cupola and see me, catch me in my silliness. It would achieve nothing but to give them
fodder with which to discuss me. Austin says I am much gossiped about already, and clearly it displeases him. But what is there for me to do about it? I have my own ways. I opt not to whistle or startle the parasol women, and they walk on unawares, leaving me free of their glances, their disapproval. But I still ponder that of my brother. He has become stern over the years; he was such a blithe boy. The demands of marriage and upright citizenship have stiffened him somewhat, but surely not completely? He won the prize—Susan! Perhaps he tries too hard to be manly, to be more like Father, and, in trying, he chooses Father's worst traits to emulate. I know not. I only see that the soft brother of our youth hides himself well now.

It is stifling in the cupola, though the full views of Amherst please me; I am an eagless in her eyrie. I look across at the tower atop Austin and Sue's house and wonder if we will talk again soon, if she will come to me, to sit awhile and tell me of new books she has read or people she has recently met. When we sat together yesterday, we hardly spoke of now; we let ourselves linger in our younger days, recalling hours spent at her sister's house when they first moved to Amherst.

I am eager to let Sue know that we will shortly have a new maid and therefore I shall be able to spend more time composing notes and poems to her and maybe, if I am up to it, sitting in her company. Sue's face is rounded out these days because of the baby that makes a small mountain of her front. The extra flesh on her cheeks suits her, as everything does. Sweet Sue, my own Dollie, my nearly-sister. She is as good as any true sister and more besides.

I take one last look from each of the four windows and descend to my room. My desk sits forlorn by the window; a swath of peach light crosses its cherrywood like an invitation. I look at Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot in their frames on
the wall and know that they understand my distress at my enforced absence from words.

At night, when I am not too bone weary, I dream. I would love to live in the softer planet of dreams. But if I cannot live in dreamworlds—those palpable fantasies that are conjured from fancy, as much as from the stuff of life—then I am content to invent parallel worlds. Places of the imagination that I alone can inhabit. And these destinations are made of words.

“Emily! Emily, come now.”

It is Vinnie calling, and I go down to her in the kitchen. She is sweating over a mound of crockery, and it is my duty to help, it seems. One of her menagerie strolls along the table toward the butter dish, tail cocked like a lord.

“See how Mr. Puss preens,” I say to Vinnie, who smiles the indulgent, motherly smile reserved for her charges.

I grab a cloth and begin to dry and stack the dishes. I lean into Vinnie's side and chant into her ear:

“—His porcelain—

Like a Cup—

Discarded of the Housewife—

Quaint— or Broke—

A newer Sèvres pleases—

Old Ones crack.”

“Less poetry, more drudgery, please, Emily.” She flicks water droplets at my face, and I muss her curls, then pick up another plate to dry it.

“The opposite is my life's hopeful refrain these days, Vinnie. ‘More poetry, less drudgery.' Perhaps I could compose a verse on that.”

Miss Ada Leaves Ireland for the New World

I
T IS THE NIGHT BEFORE
I
AM TO GO, AND
M
AMMY SAYS TO ME
, “Ada, this is the last time we will speak. A girl like you won't have any wish to come back to a place like this.”

“Ah, Mam,” I say, taking her hands in mine, but we both know the truth of it. Once I close the door on our house in Tigoora, I will be gone for good and all. No one comes home from the New World once they go to it.

Mammy thinks it is just a figairy I took, to leave my Dublin home and my position with the baronet and sail for America; she says I have too many notions. But ever since my Auntie Mary Maher and her family left Tipperary to go across the sea, I have thought about going myself. My Auntie Mary's letters spill with Massachusetts, Washington and Connecticut, and the names of these places have always been like songs in my ear. At night, I whisper to myself the spots she mentions; they are lullabies to help me toward sleep: the District of Columbia, Hartford, Amherst.

“Massa
chu
setts,” I often say to Rose. “
Mass
achusetts. What do you suppose a name like that means?”

Today I am up before everyone else. I sit at the table alone and
spoon cold stirabout into my mouth—Mammy left a bowl out for me. She never likes a lingering good-bye, so I bade farewell to her before we turned in. Rose lay deep into my side in our shared bed, sobbing for hours until she drifted off. I was awake most of the night listening to the sleep sounds of my sisters and wondering what might lie ahead.

Daddy comes into the kitchen, stands by the stove and sighs. “You're off so,” he says.