7:45 AM Mon 20 Sept 76
R’s latest accusation is that I fell in love first!! So weird.
Reminiscent of ex-husband. Some version of gaslighting? It’s a definite power grab. He said he was “embarrassed” by my emotional intensity! I have a feeling he’s trying to cobble together a story he can tell other people. As for me, I’m trying to figure out what really happened. Used to think R’s lack of experience wouldn’t affect us but I can see it really has. Got my hair cut; of course I think it’s too short. Dreading what Genevieve will say.
10:40 AM Wed 22 Sept. 76
Woke up after horrible nightmare in which Jacqueline
Susann showed me her cancer to have R drive me to the station. We’re in a financial nightmare – A’s rent check bounced twice so expenses going up. R says I have to start an exercise plan – since I can’t dance. He’s hilarious! Lunch with Ruby and my agent. Agent (Ruth) was euphoric. Starting to feel the book was written by a stranger. I tried so hard to make it English and Victorian – I NEVER want to do that again. Can’t say THAT, obviously, especially after Ruby remarked I was “so good looking we should make it a series.” Devlyn’s best gothic they’ve ever read! They both drank heavily while disagreeing with virtually everything I had to say about poetry and literature. Their recommendation: write a love story. Pity we don’t know what love is, isn’t it? I MIGHT be able to manage a sex story. Oh well. Genevieve full of secret divorce-and-getting-together-with-hush-hush-sweetie plans. Don’t tell Kent anything. He asks me what’s going on – I play dumb but not too well. He must know something’s up. Awkward! Walk to library and back thinking about St. Secaire. How make that a love story? Everyone’s a predator or an idiot.
Fri. 24 Sept 76
Checked my acct - $54!! Don’t know where it came from
but I will spend it. Sent poems to Chloe Aparo, borrow bike from Shoulders. Ryder wants to go horseback riding, we went to see The Tenant instead. (Cheaper). R managed to discuss it intelligently. Trying to research the occult for Secaire. Reading bad suspense novel – Geoffrey Turtons Devil’s Churchyard. I liked all his other books. Dump it for Aleister Crowley’s Diary of a Drug Fiend. $10 to live on for 2 weeks. Mom & Dad sent emergency check.
6:25 PM – Sun 3 Oct 76
Fabulous dinner party last night. Steak tartare, crab
and cheese casserole, lots of wine. R and I fall asleep in each other’s arms. We have more sex “broken up” than when we were dating. Got offered $3.50 an hour for 4 hr a day legal secretary!!! Out of their minds. Trying to sell my wedding dress for $150 – got one porno call.
Tues 5 Oct 76
4pm appt with Environmental Defense Fund. Howard
Nemerov such a relief after Auden.
Thurs 11:30 PM 7 Oct 76
Typical Tyler St evening. Lying in bed (alone) powdered
and polished from bath. Maeve and Avril out on dates. R is working, I’m reading Quest for Theseus. Got too depressed reading Shirley Jackson. Her life solutions: food and cigarettes – plenty of both. Lost EDF job – as soon as they turned me down I decide I want it! To WTTG to apply for “production asst” job – 200 people spilling into street! Didn’t bother. How write about love if it’s impossible? I owe Maeve money – she doesn’t like it and I don’t like it. Tension almost unbearable waiting for my check. R offered jobs in Pittsburgh & Detroit. (He says he doesn’t ever want to leave though it’s the only way to make more $$.)
12:55 PM Wed 13 1976 These are the times that try
women’s souls. Desperately accepted switchboard job at Broadcasters Agency because it looks easy and I can think my own thoughts. Replacing a girl going on maternity leave so I’m not stuck if I don’t like it. Agent sent check told me not to cash it for a week!!! Thinking they’re all scam artists. Reading Diane Johnson’s brilliant Lesser Lives. Avril depressed over Mason. Maeve depressed over George. I am buying diet pills because of sedentary job.
Switchboard Broadcast Agency 9:15 AM – Fr. 18 Feb 77
New notebooks such a thrill. Always a fresh start:
I could almost become anyone. Worked 3 full days this week – more $$ in the coffers. Avril coming in to Broadcasters Agency to apply for Zelma’s old job – $8500/yr for 7 hr day. Hope she gets it. Brought in The Voyage Out today – I WILL finish it – bring it to its knees. Perfect example of everything usually wrong with first novels. Don’t like her novels as much as letters and diaries. Talk about peering through a glass darkly. Oh well. Still drinking coffee and picking the fuzz out of my eyes. Period’s arrived with its usual exquisite timing. Once I’ve finished Secaire (needs a final burst) can rewrite Find Courtney. Sort of a love story there.
11:00 AM – Tues 24 Aug 76
Lying in the same bed where R and I made love five
hours ago – just finished Tyler’s Clockwinder. Puzzled by the lack of passion in her strange, sad, minor novels. Tonight R is picking me up and taking me “someplace” – I have my eye on a little restaurant – where we can talk it out. I hope he’s paying because I have exactly $177 to live on till Sept 7 and $125 of that is rent. I’m trying to look at the future calmly – I love him, he loves me – who knows what may happen? 2:40 PM Was feeling so much better I was going to work on sending out poems until I looked around at this place. A and I desperately need Maeve to live here to help out with expenses and she is not the tidiest person. A says she never cleaned her other place after the party and it smells like a dead body. I cleaned and now I feel better but not in the mood for literature – more in the mood to take my dishpan hands to the mall. However I won’t because it would just result in expenditures. 3:40 PM Obviously R doesn’t really respect me. Otherwise he wouldn’t manipulate me like this. I don’t think he cares about me being a writer at all. He would actually like it better if he could introduce me to people as “my girlfriend the insurance agent.” That makes sense in his little world. I could break up with him but I’d have to find another place to work anyway – he’s ruined Shalimar for me. One can understand and deplore and get mad, but the alternative is loneliness. All I want is to go out and have fun, have someone to play and smooch with. Finding and then cultivating such a person is incredibly exhausting – and aren’t 99% of them only going to have the same (or worse) reactions he’s having anyway?
10:40 AM Thurs 26 Aug –76 – Club Shalimar Yesterday morning Maeve and I lingering over coffee and chat – no one wanting to return to their life – and the phone rang. It was editor Ruby Jenkins at Pyramid wanting to make an offer on my book. She says it has a lot of wit and depth and is really extraordinary and if they don’t take it someone else will. Two editors on my side. Asked all about me – so I told what I was doing, schools, what I’d had published – that Harcourt just turned down Find Courtney. She’d called Maine because she couldn’t get in touch with my agent but left a message. I just put the phone down and screamed for 20 solid minutes. Then went to Shalimar and quit – gave them a week’s notice. Didn’t tell them about book – Carmen guessed about Ryder – narrowed her eyes into slits and tried to tell me a lot of terrible stuff about him, about how he always pursued dancers – although she admits, after me, not any more. She said if I ever need the job again, they’d give it to me. That was nice. Randy the bouncer had tears in his eyes because he says I’m so amusing and no one else can make him laugh. R’s “celebration” was to take me to Garfinckel’s at the Montgomery Mall to buy me underwear. He takes it strangely personally that I don’t wear a bra or underpants half the time. This could have been a fun, even erotic experience but he was so weird I almost had a nervous breakdown – so bizarrely controlling like he doesn’t know what presents are. The missionary purchasing fig leaves for the natives! Felt offensively “managed”. If he had bought me lingerie and given it to me that would have been one thing. I could take them back if I didn’t like them. This was if he were my parent or something – I really can’t explain why it was so insulting. I let him buy me a pink silk robe, which I refused to try on – of course it will fit. Duh. We should have been celebrating. Not only can I quit dancing but they’ve put him on the eleven pm news and now we could have mornings together. But at the Japanese steakhouse he really acted wooden headed. I think it’s some sort of a gender problem – men understand that their self-respect is tied up with autonomy but they seem to think the opposite must be true about women. I’m trying too hard not to despise him. Anything I could say sounds hurtful. At the very same time he’s trying to “tether” me he’s trying to free himself. He said, what if I want to take another girl out? And I said, well you can but you have to tell me about it before hand. He said, I know how I’d feel if you said that to me. I told him he probably doesn’t have to worry – I can’t imagine wanting another man. Now he’s “scared” I’m going to become a famous writer! So we went back to my place and made love for three hours and it was very satisfying. He was all over me and it felt like the last time in some critical way. To me he seems less like a man getting out of a marriage than some kind of shipwreck victim who has never seen or imagined our society and is becoming increasingly excited about the sexually liberated possibilities. How can we avoid breaking up over this? Can’t I just get a fat check from my book and be a young writer about town? I sincerely hope that’s the way it will go. Reading Rose, my years in Service about Lady Astor’s maid.
Sat 28 Aug 76 Shalimar
Ryder tried to pressure me not to go to work by
saying “we shouldn’t be seeing each other”. I remind him we have a dinner party coming up and a vacation in Maine! Why the hysteria? Reading Henri Peyre’s The Failures of Criticism. Last set.
3PM Mon 30 Aug 76
Wakened by air-conditioner going on – Ryder
climbing in bed with me fully clothed so there would be “no sex” – of course that didn’t work. He is very upset about my sense of physical freedom – said wouldn’t “let” me be painted in the nude by Andrew Wyeth! I pointed out that his wife was his ideal woman – totally restrained and untrained and ignorant and unavailable in every way he wanted – and he hated it. Can’t understand why he has to be such a jackass when all his dreams are coming true.
3 Sept 76
Just back from the worst vacation of my life. Both
Avril and I took completely unacceptable men to our parents’ island – alas, my man was the most unacceptable – doing nothing but fighting and sulking. He finally said such unforgiveable things I had to drive him to the ferry and push him off into space. His last words were “I love you.” Day late and a dollar short. The worst things he said were that I dress like a slut, anyone looking at me would instantly assume I was a prostitute. This was said to me while I was wearing my gorgeous emerald scarf tied around my breasts and my long denim skirt and Nefertiti necklace and looking like a goddess for parents’ dinner party. He said if I don’t start wearing a bra my breasts will be “ruined” and he doesn’t want to wake up age 35 married to only a “mind”. (The mind is in fact quite unimportant in his world.) His wife, he assured me, always dressed most tastefully – nobody desiring her ever. Didn’t cross his mind that the fact that she was dead-on-arrival in the sack and her inability to enjoy and celebrate her own body could be in any way connected. He told me my poems are awful and self-indulgent and I live entirely in my own head. I was finally forced to tell him that what with his long hair, leisure suits, stacked heels and man-purse most people just assume he’s gay. But who cares what “most people” think – and would we even know? He really got on my bad side seemingly justifying rape – women “ask for it” with their clothing, male self control not an issue. I said if a crazy girl escaped from an institution and ran down the street naked would men be “ justified” raping her? He said yes so obviously it was over between us from that moment. The truth, of course, is that he was overwhelmingly jealous from the moment he arrived on the island – possibly earlier – by the fact that I am a separate human being, who has ever existed out of his sight.
17 Sept 76
It really is over with R. My fault for going so fast.
R leaving messages on my answering machine every day, trying to make me jealous with “don’t call back tonight I won’t be in”. Finally decided I owe it to him to tell him where I’m working – I know he thinks I returned to dancing – the scum. Sent him a card saying we should meet for dinner in a couple of months. Appt. with Georgetown Employment Agency 10;30 AM tomorrow. 12;25 PM Ryder came by to pick up his jackets. He said, “You’re the most valuable person in the world to me.” Trying not to goad him into pyrotechnics, so, showed nothing. He was calm, played with the dog, kissed me on the cheek and said “I love you” and left. He is worthy of a hefty Freudian tome all to himself. I want to send him a copy of The Intimate Enemy but he wouldn’t (couldn’t) read it. He’s totally about not wanting what he has, having what he doesn’t want, wanting something else and hating himself into the bargain. I pity anyone involved with him – mainly I pity me – still fixated on his worthlessness apparently. Washing the dishes in floods of tears. I bragged to him that I didn’t want to change him – that isn’t true. I don’t feel I have the right to change people while he wants to specify every detail about me. The worst is I know how he would exult in his power over me. Still wearing his black coral diver’s cross as a charm. When R says dismissively “Be free” he means “Be alone”.
Sun. 12 Sept 76 – 12:05 PM
Yesterday turned down job at art gallery that would
have been wonderful but paid dirt. They say I “might” get commissions on sales. Have a feeling Mom and Dad would push for it – it was very upscale – just didn’t feel right to me. FINALLY letter from agent; Pyramid offering $2500 advance, 6% to 150,000 copies, 8% thereafter, a few minor revisions. Always less than you think but not as bad as the gallery – I say hells yes. Still have to find job; something that lets me write. I called Ryder with info, left message. Have to go to NY to sign contract so job hunt suspended for now.
Mon 13 Sept 76
Avril and Mike met me and Ryder at The Royal
Warrant for drinks to celebrate my book. I wore long sexy purple lace-up dress – nothing he’d object to however. (Royal Warrant because their drinks are huge.) Wore sandals with kitten heels and I was still taller than him. I wonder if that’s what this is about. I invited him home after and he accepted. He concentrated on making me come. Said he can’t consider dating a girl who doesn’t wear a bra. I said I might wear one in my first pregnancy. Gave him my copy of Intimate Enemy when he left. Reading Brownmiller’s excellent Against our Will.
11:45 AM 14 Sept 76 – Tues. Boiling hot. I need a full-time psychiatric nurse, vicious guard dog and a secretary. Phone ringing off the hook. Agent called reversing charges. Ryder wants to celebrate his salary bump. How can two people who despise each other as much as we do want to have sex all the time? Beats me. Ryder’s latest charge is that I wrote a novel for money. Get it? I’m a prostitute! Then he marches off to his yessir, nosir job whistling. You can’t win with him. Cheered myself up reading old diaries about my marriage. At least it’s not as bad as that. I used to lock myself in the bathroom to howl. Reading Simenon’s Venice Train. He is too mannered. Ryder forced me to look at his island pictures – I am the ugliest beautiful woman in the world. He tries to use this against me but of course we were fighting the whole time. No one can be lovely under such conditions. Does “love” entail not just “sacrifice” but loss of identity? Went out and bought a pair of six inch heels. When I am with Ryder, I love him but when I’m away, the cloud lifts. Attempting to seduce Devon by sending him a copy of the poem Cedarwood Chest.
Cedarwood Chest
Grandpa died young that’s why Grandma never opened The Cedarwood chest Till my twelve years unlocked The scent of dreams preserved Like mullet in red wine.
Never used the wilting nightgowns Featherstitched sheets Between whose coffee-colored creases Bay leaves crumbled (Like my reserve when you laid hands Upon it) how it Comes back that mossy sad Perfume! I want to lay You away in darkness and tissue but I can’t I must use you and risk Your wearing out
God knows what he’ll think but I know he’ll give a better
reaction than R. Lunch in NY 12:30 Tues – have to take the 7 AM
20 Aug 76 – 11 AM – Inside I start my psycho-thrillerThe Mass at St Secaire for the thousandth
time with one good idea: Manage transitions by IGNORING them.
Just start abruptly somewhere else and worry about it later! Outside
R sits in a lawn chair playing the guitar. When he falls silent he’s writing
down notes. He says I have a good effect on him, getting him writing again.
In the meantime, I made a list of literary essays I want to
write and to my surprise there were more than 20. When I get back I
will make a folder for each one and start collecting notes and ideas,
beginning when I feel I have enough. How to finish a book of poems,
finish and send out a novel, write 20 literary essays while working a
45 hr week? My heart quavers. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get a job
that isn’t straight typing – then I have to type when I come home.
Balzac could have done it. Trollope could have done it – I don’t
think I can do it. But I certainly don’t want to lose R – he is a rare
being. I need a deus ex machina of some kind. Maybe my gothic
will sell.
So glad this is our last day. Couldn’t say that to R –
he would think I hadn’t enjoyed myself. Last night he stretched
me out naked on his lap and played me like a guitar – most
delicious thing. Waves of ecstasy bulging, rolling and crashing
inside me. He says I’m so fun to please. Talks about how he
would like to adopt deaf children. This means I would have to
learn sign. Sounds good but I feel lazy and stubborn. Feel like
a fledgling – flight pattern undetermined.
R. wrote a song called Blue Lake Blues. Bad. I wrote a
poem called Diaries. Don’t know what I think of it.
Diaries
I don’t remember anything – I’m an amnesiac so I write everything down Stuffed in my closet Beneath discarded ball gowns utterly useless but too beautiful to throw away. Recollect & treasure Acts of writing An up and over downtime scrawl; Recall a surgeon Cutting flesh Tugging, swearing, splitting ,sweating peeling waste & want. Fierce liftoff – Airborne I’m granted Hawk’s-eye vision Backwards , forwards Past & future. Too much dig is spoilage- Freedom mined Invaluable.
Club Shalimar, Mon 23 Aug 76
Should be glad to be back but I’m so depressed.
Everything so mixed up. Promised R I’d get another job so
now I have to look for one, which won’t be pleasant. God
knows what I’ll have to say I was doing. Once when I was
married I tried to get a loan and of course they wouldn’t give me
one without “collateral” – something of which I’d never heard.
Dad told me to tell them I had a basement filled with gold bullion.
I guess I could just tell employers the bullion ran out.
Then I walk up to the club and whose car should be
there – but R’s. He had told me he wouldn’t come in as long as
I was working there. He said he just needed to talk to Rick because
Rick is helping him feel better.
I think what will happen is that I won’t work there any
more but R will drop in when he feels like it. I want to “ban” him
but I even more don’t want to be having these conversations.
He says I just do it for the money and because it’s easy and of
course that’s perfectly true. If I got $500 a week from writing I
probably wouldn’t dance.
The fact that something feels natural and pleasurable
and doesn’t leave you feeling depleted at the end of each day
isn’t a point against it to my way of thinking. He’s just an old
fashioned sexist pig. On the other hand he is a special person
and I definitely don’t want to dance forever.
Sometimes I think the whole problem is that he’s
getting a divorce and he’s so unready for a relationship he’s
giving me hoops to jump through. But even if we got married
I’d have to be at financially independent – he’s just too different
from me for me to trust that he will agree with me about what’s
right for me. My theory is it doesn’t hurt to look for a job. Maybe
I’ll find something special or interesting.
11:20 PM – A called – R staggered in dead drunk,
said “Call Alysse and tell her I’m here and set the alarm for 5:30”
and then passed out on the sofa. I told them to hide his car keys
in case he wakes up and tries to go someplace. I’m glad he’s safe,
on the other hand I’m annoyed that he’s been touring the bars.
He plainly didn’t go to his apartment, drink and then go to my
house. My guess is total strangers up and down Wisconsin
Avenue have been hearing his heartrending saga of the misery of
(The 1930’s. HOMESTEAD to the left, EVERGREENS still to the right but the DELL in between has vanished. Both houses look the worse for wear; HOMESTEAD sports a “For Sale” sign. Arms crossed, two young women in thirties clothing study one another. They are the actresses who played SUE and MABEL restored to youth…as their daughters, MATTIE and MILLICENT. MATTIE stands proudly on the EVERGREENS porch, surveying MILLICENT who tows a wheeled trunk plastered with travel and Ivy League stickers. EMILY tries to stick collapsed shingles back on the HOMESTEAD; they fall off of course)
EMILY Sue! Sue! I meant to find her when I came Death had the same design. The success was his it seems The surrender, mine. I knew I lost her when remoteness traveled to her face and tongue.
(Grabs a broom)
The thrill came slowly – centuries delayed Life is shorter than summer Seventy years is spent. Sorrow is polite and stays. We must be sweeping up the heart and putting love away. We shall not want to use it until eternity. Pain’s element of blank can’t recollect when it were not. It has no future but itself; infinity contain.
MATTIE (Mockingly)
Leaving so soon, Mrs. Bingham?
MILLICENT Goodbye, Mrs. Bianchi.
(Stresses the title.)
EMILY (Sighs dispiritedly)
It is the Children’s Hour. Love that was meets love too best to be. Their junction is … eternity. Even a prison gets to be a friend.
MATTIE I’m sorry you’ll miss the grand gala celebrating the publication of my book – Mama’s and mine. The Single Hound – Poems of a Lifetime.
(Sighs ecstatically)
EMILY Did you ever read poems backwards, because the plunge at the front overturned you?
MILLICENT You are obnoxious to the last degree, like all your family. Deliver me from “push”.
EMILY Love is a loaded gun that grants the power to kill without the power to die. Girls, girls! Shall we laugh at this catastrophe?
MATTIE Your history – insofar as you have one – is scandal, convictions and homelessness. You wouldn’t understand.
EMILY Mattie, were revenge accessible, I would surely wreak it. Trust me. Revenge is an apparition. More prudent to assault the dawn.
MILLICENT I understand that when one conveys the impression that the work one did is one’s own work when it is actually appropriated, one commits an act of piracy. When there is misrepresentation of facts it is falsehood, deception, perjury, fraud, deceit, sham, pretence, perfidy, distortion, invention, dishonesty, treachery, counterfeit, fiction, myth, humbug, hyperbole and swindle!
MATTIE Your mother was no better than a common whore!
EMILY Mattie, Mattie, you are royal! As there are apartments in our minds we never enter so we should respect the seals of others. Spirits rising too high inflate and feed on awe. You will never merit the ethereal scorn she evanesced.
MILLICENT And what was your mother? I know all about her affair with Mr. Bowles, all the while she behaved so high and mighty! She was a vindictive –
(MATTIE Slams the door to avoid another recitation. A shingle falls off The EVERGREENS and its lights fade. MILLICENT drags her trunk a short distance, then opens it and sets up camp – a cabana-tent, folding table, campstool, etc. Ties a pennant reading “Purity & Wisdom” to the top of the cabana.)
MILLICENT (Shouting in the direction of the EVERGREENS)
Vassar’s song was written by Edna St. Vincent Millay!
(Shouts the words)
Offended God of love and kindness We have denied, forgotten thee, Twisted, unlovely and obscure Gifts we – er- hum-tum.
(Realizes the song is depressing and badly written plus she doesn’t remember it. Mutters sheepishly to herself)
Unfortunately Edna was expelled.
EMILY (Stroking her hair)
Love’s transmigration becomes idolatry of family. This silence is infinity – it has no face. Absence disembodies just like death. Poor child.
MILLICENT (Collapses on campstool, shoulders bowed, head down. Opens a notebook:)
Principles of Human Geography by Millicent Todd Bingham!
(Begins scribbling feverishly.)
EMILY Oh, Child! We have at least a pair of lives. With tomorrow in the cupboard, who can hunger? We do not play on graves because there isn’t room! People come – they hang their faces so we’re fearing that their hearts will drop and crush our pretty play. And so we move as far as enemies away.
(Spotlight on MATTIE at her much more elaborate desk)
MATTIE Dear Houghton Mifflin, As the sole heir of the Dickinson family in Amherst and holder of the Dickinson copyrights, I am preparing a volume of recently discovered poems by my aunt Emily Dickinson that were withheld from publication by her sister Lavinia …
EMILY (Peering in the window)
Each age is a lens. Poets light a lamp; themselves go out. Light, Mattie. Light!
MILLICENT (Writing a letter of her own)
Dear Houghton Mifflin, my mother Mabel Loomis Todd, editor of the four original volumes of poetry and letters of Emily Dickinson, is interested in publishing a further volume based on papers left her by Lavinia Dickinson in a will which has mysteriously disappeared… Fortunately mother is in possession of an original contract granting her half ownership of the published volumes –
(Gouges the paper so angrily it rips. Says in frustration)
MILLICENT I feel I exist to do this. I am involved without question and I am glad to be.
EMILY (Wandering sadly between the two of them)
Finding is the first act; the second is – loss. Absence of the witch does not invalidate the spell.
(Feigning an argument)
There is a megatherium among the strawberries! Your nettle stung my rose!
MATTIE To the Trustees of Harvard College: I would be willing to meet with your literary curators who are interested in discussing the ultimate disposition of papers pertaining to my late, much revered aunt, the poet Emily Dickinson –
MILLICENT To the Trustees of Amherst College: I would be very interested in discussing with you the acquisition and protection of my mother Mabel Loomis Todd’s papers. As you know she was a friend of the American poet Emily Dickinson as well as her first editor –
MATTIE Mrs. Todd’s so-called “contract” is a draft copy prepared by herself. My aunt Lavinia’s papers makes no mention of Mrs. Todd’s contribution whatever and her contract states unequivocally that copyright resides solely in the Dickinson family…Patrimony! Patrimony, patrimony, patrimony!
EMILY What about matrimony, bridalled and shrouded in a day? Longing is a seed that wrestles with the ground.
MILLICENT (Addressing the audience)
Real hate is focused, waiting for vengeance. The emotion of hatred keeps the hater alive and vigorous. Hatred cannot continue unless the souls are kindred and the closer the likeness the more virulent the hatred.
EMILY (Sighs)
I hope heaven is warm. There are so many barefoot ones. If a flower keeps its appointments, why should the heart be so tardy?
MATTIE (Still writing – recites in a throbbingly romantic, thrilling voice)
In the witchery of an undreamed Southern spring Emily was overtaken – doomed forever by her own heart. It was instantaneous, overwhelming and impossible. Two predestined souls were only kept apart by her sense of the duty to preserve love untarnished by the destruction of another woman’s life…
(Throat catches on a sob)
EMILY (Embattled)
Biography first convinces us of the fleeing of the biographed. She mistook a winged spark for lightning! Consummation is the hurry of fools; expectation the elixir of the Gods. Go slow my soul to feed itself! Love deferred will fade like … ice cream. Redemption – for a kiss!
MILLICENT (Shouting in MATTIE’s direction)
The enclosed volume, Bolts of Melody, contains more than six hundred previously unknown poems by Emily Dickinson from my mother’s extensive private collection…
EMILY Poor fatherless serpent!
MATTIE Dear Houghton Mifflin, if you publish any volume of poems to which I hold the copyright I will sue!
EMILY Here’s a pretty lawsuit! It is essential to the sanity of mankind that each should think the other crazy. Thus does spirit dialog with dust.
(MILLICENT and MATTIE speak at once)
MILLICENT Dear Amherst College, In securing my treasure trove of Dickinson papers I seek an institution that will –
MATTIE Dear Harvard College, In preventing further interference with the Dickinson copyrights I seek to leave them to an institution that will –
(They stop and glare at each other. EMILY throws up her hands)
EMILY Heaven or hell? Think, Mattie! Character determines whether eternity be velocity or pause! Fundamental signals come from fundamental laws. The way is closed from where they came. The seconds pursue the centuries, the centuries pursue – eternity. A plank of balm is swallowed by the escapeless sea. My little force explodes and leaves me bare and charred.
(The two girls speak at the same time)
MILLICENT Dear Harvard College – It is my intention to sue –
MATTIE Dear Amherst College – It is my intention to sue –
EMILY Only love can wound and only love can heal the wound. To have lost an enemy is almost more memorable than to find a friend.
MILLICENT Ignoramus!
MATTIE Upstart!
(They both clutch their chests and, miming heart attacks, sink floorward like marionettes. Emily tries to rouse them)
EMILY Inter the docile ones – we will dare to live!
(It doesn’t work. Lights out on the girls. Alone, EMILY comes to sit at the edge of the stage)
EMILY Can human nature survive without a listener? Life is but Life! And Death but Death! And Bliss is Bliss! And breath is breath! Death’s waylaying’s not the sharpest tool of time. There marauds a sorer robber – Silence is his name. The éclat of death is unknown renown. I don’t like paradise. I am not used to hope – I’d perish of delight. I never felt at home below, in the handsome skies I shall not feel at home, I know. I stand witness to the certainty of immortality – but – departing grace afflicts me with a double loss. Is heaven a place – or sky or tree? The dead have no geography Abdication of belief makes behavior small. Hope’s a subtle glutton! Love is resurrection Scooping up the dust and chanting, Live! Take all away from me but leave me ecstasy!
(Coming close, peering into audience)
O, Master, master, is it you? Have you come to keep your promise to the sparrows who know how to starve or to shatter me with Dawn?
(Attempts to dismiss us)
Art thou the thing I wanted? Begone – my tooth has grown Supply a minor palate that has not starved so long. I tell thee while I waited the mystery of food Increased till I abjured it and dine without – like God.
(Looks uneasily into the utter darkness behind her. There is nowhere to go. She is alone.)
What is earth but a nest from whose rim we are falling? I had a terror I could tell to none. Who knows how deep the heart is or how much it holds? Perhaps the balm seemed better because you bled me first. When did the dark happen? I thought I could play where sundown couldn’t find me. It would be comfort forever to look into your face and have you look in mine. Did you bring the little chest to keep the “alive” in? Heaven is so cold! It will never look kind to me if God, who causes all, denies such little wishes. Fabulous is the revelation that we shall hunger no more!
(Holds out her arms)
Life is the finest secret. So long as that remains, we must whisper.
(Whispers)
The only thing worth larceny is immortality.
(Closes her eyes to feel the darkness)
A love so big it scares me rushes in my breast. Master, open wide your life, and take me in forever! Sinew and snow in one, an avalanche of sun!
(Closer and closer to audience)
“It is finished” can never be said of us! Creator! May I bloom?
(Curtain rises on a Massachusetts courtroom in the 1890’s. Judge seated at center; witness box directly beneath his high lectern, bleachers to left and right. Buzzing noises of excited crowd)
JUDGE (Banging gavel)
We will have order in this court! Mr. Hammond, call your witness!
EMILY (Pretends to bang the gavel too)
The Unknown is the largest need of the Intellect!
(Ruffling the JUDGE’s hair)
He fought like those who’ve naught to lose But death was coy of him. He was left alive because Of greediness to die!
(Purses his chubby cheeks as if he’s an infant. Of course he ignores her)
A little madness in the spring is wholesome even for the king!
HAMMOND I call Miss Lavinia Dickinson to the stand.
(EMILY bangs the gavel)
EMILY Grief is a mouse! Grief is a thief!
(VINNIE makes her way slowly to stage center. She is wearing a ridiculous hat trimmed with ridiculous homemade, home picked flowers.)
HAMMOND State your name for the record.
(EMILY bangs the gavel)
EMILY Grief is a juggler! Grief is a gourmand!
(Loud whispered aside to judge)
Anger soon as fed is dead. T’is starving makes it fat.
VINNIE I am Miss Lavinia Dickinson of Amherst. I have always been Miss Lavinia Dickinson and I have always lived at the Dickinson Homestead in Amherst.
HAMMOND Except when you lived at the Dickinson Mansion.
(EMILY bangs the gavel)
EMILY There will be mourning, mourning, mourning at the judgment seat. The dangerous moment is when the meaning goes out of things.
VINNIE Eh?
HAMMOND Where you were born.
VINNIE Well of course I was born!
EMILY Tell the truth but tell it slant, little sister. The truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind.
HAMMOND Raise your right hand, Miss Dickinson. Clerk, Bible!
EMILY Can dumb define divine?
VINNIE Well naturally I keep my own Bible.
(Feels in her apparently endless bag)
It was Emily’s Bible, too.
(Excited sighs of crowd. VINNIE opens the Bible, and then bats at her face.)
EMILY Laid away, I’d hoped, where moth cannot corrupt. It was a subtle moth, in its mothy way.
HAMMOND Do you solemnly swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
VINNIE (Triumphantly shaking the Bible)
I do indeed!
(Holds it to her chest)
EMILY Truth is old as God; his twin identity. Excess of Monkey, Vinnie! As Father used to say!
HAMMOND Now Miss Dickinson, are you accustomed to business and taking care of your own property?
VINNIE Not in the slightest. Mr. Hills always acts for me.
HAMMOND Miss Dickinson; is this your signature on this document?
VINNIE No.
(Sensation.)
VINNIE That is to say, it’s my autograph.
EMILY Vinnie, Vinnie! Up from the pit you spoke!
HAMMOND Do you recall the occasion of giving this autograph?
VINNIE I have been very painfully reminded.
EMILY Whether she has forgotten or is forgetting now or never remembered it is safer not to know. Miseries of conjecture are a softer woe than is a fact of iron!
HAMMOND You invited Mrs. Todd to the house?
VINNIE (sniffs)
I never invited her. She was in the habit of coming to copy my sister’s poems. They needed to be copied. My sister’s is a very difficult hand.
HAMMOND But on this occasion of which we speak did she bring with her a gentleman?
VINNIE Between seven and eight in the evening. She brought a friend to hear about my late sister. He so cherished her memory.
EMILY What a prank of the heart! We met as sparks – diverging flints subsisting on the light we bore before we felt the dark!
HAMMOND Did you give him an autograph?
VINNIE She asked me to sign a paper. I do not recall Mr. Spaulding speaking to me on the subject. He did not point to the seal where I should sign; Mrs. Todd pointed to it, and I signed. That is all that I remember about it.
HAMMOND (Triumphantly)
Witness is dismissed!
HAMLIN (Defense Attorney steps forward)
One moment. Miss Dickinson. A few more questions if you please.
(VINNIE subsides back into her seat.)
Mrs. Todd frequented your house, did she not, to assist you with your late sister’s papers?
VINNIE She asked for the privilege of doing it.
EMILY (Shivering at his silky voice)
Zero at the bone! It must be cold because the trees shiver. The leaves are gay, but elderly. Nature gives us all her love – but science will not trust us with another world.
HAMLIN Wasn’t the transfer of this tiny – this disputed strip of land – a strip directly fronting Mrs. Todd’s residence – understood to be her recompense for the arduous labors of preparing your sister’s books for the press?
VINNIE No.
HAMLIN No?
VINNIE Isn’t that business? Mr. Hills takes care of all my business. That’s settled and gone.
(Washes her hands)
EMILY A word is dead when said some say. I say it just began to live that day. An unsifted girl, I thought that words were cheap and weak. Now I can’t conceive of anything so mighty. They glow like sapphires.
JUDGE Excuse me, Mr. Hamlin, but the Defendant responded in her Defendant’s answer that Mr. Austin Dickinson wished her to be compensated, not Miss Dickinson. Therefore the issue of compensation is quite irrelevant to this case.
He that is robbed and smiles, steals from the thief.
HAMLIN Call Mrs. Todd as a witness!
(VINNIE bustles away, clutching her Bible. MABEL is elegantly, fashionably, glamorously dressed, a ship under full sail. Mr. HAMLIN proffers her a Bible)
HAMLIN Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?
MABEL Naturally.
(Settles into her seat like a burrowing dove with gloves, veil, the whole bit)
JUDGE Speak up, Mrs. Todd!
EMILY It’s a rare ear that’s not too dull to hear. Your judgeship, this woman’s constitution requires stolen fruit. Perfidy were more genuine.
HAMLIN You considered yourself a friend to the Dickinson sisters?
MABEL I did. They were sadly housebound – Miss Emily entirely so. I offered myself up unto their service.
HAMMOND (Rising up and chiming dangerously in)
You knew Miss Emily?
EMILY Not precisely knowing and not precisely knowing not. We talked about each other though neither of us spoke.
MABEL (An uneasy laugh – sounds like she’s lying)
I saw her flitting. I heard her. She was a recluse, as you know.
(Gathering confidence, trying to work the crowd)
She was never seen in church.
EMILY Divulging why I shunned them would rest my heart but ravage theirs. Doesn’t anybody notice how wide and broad these church aisles are? It took hours afterwards to catch my breath. A lonesome glee will sanctify the mind. The cricket is earth’s utmost elegy to me.
HAMMOND You spoke to her?
MABEL We corresponded. She spoke to me.
HAMMOND You spoke to her?
MABEL Words! I never spoke to her.
(HAMMOND turns away satisfied)
EMILY The only commandment I ever obeyed is “consider the lilies.” I could not bear to live aloud! It may puzzle the public exceedingly but my hard-heartedness gets me many prayers.
EMILY “Forever” is deciduous except to those who die. Sir, I have been introducing myself to planets.
HAMLIN And following Emily’s death you received property from the Dickinsons? Property on which to build your house?
MABEL Right next door to the Homestead! Within hail of the Evergreens! Naturally.
EMILY (Mockingly)
Ah, the hollow awfulness of the world! Nothing’s so stale as yesterday’s surprise!
HAMMOND (Interrupting – attacking)
And what did you pay for this property?
MABEL (Produces a lace handkerchief – works it)
Oh, I don’t recall.
EMILY We’d flee from memory – if we had wings.
MABEL It was all arranged between my husband and Mr. Dickinson.
HAMMOND Isn’t the deed in your name?
EMILY Ah! Revelation is the seed of romance! How luscious is the dripping of February! It makes our thinking pink. I’m amazed that the fascination of our predicament does not entice us more.
MABEL Everything is as Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Todd wished.
EMILY Modesty befits the soul that wears another’s name.
HAMMOND So it is fair to say no cash money exchanged hands?
MABEL Of course no money changed hands! I was helpful – merely.
HAMLIN (Attempting to resume control)
As would a generous lady act.
MABEL A generous, generous lady. Quite.
HAMMOND Offering what services in specific, if I may inquire?
MABEL I was the only one to comprehend dear Emily’s uniquely gnomic poesies.
HAMMOND Gnomic?
EMILY (Crossing her arms)
Resurrection had to wait until they moved a stone
MABEL Mystic. It was left up to me to explain her to the world from which she shut herself off.
EMILY Believing what we don’t believe does not exhilarate. I dwell in possibility –a fairer house than prose. Gathering paradise in my narrow hands.
(Attempts to dance with Mr. Hammond)
Mortality is fatal; gentility is fine, rascality heroic, Insolvency, sublime!
MABEL (Modestly)
It was I who saw every one of Emily’s books through the press!
HAMMOND Wasn’t that after Mr. Austin Dickinson died? But while Mr. Dickinson lived –
EMILY Wild nights! Wild nights! Republic of delight!
(MABEL breaks out in noisy sobbing)
EMILY I like a look of agony because I know its true.
HAMMOND (Pressing)
Did Miss Dickinson tell you she has a man of business?
MABEL Well of course I know Mr. Hills! I dine with Mr. Hills regularly! And his mother! A true lady! The sweetest –
EMILY The sincere spite of the woman, rocking truth to sleep!
HAMMOND Why did you bring your own man of business to a business meeting when Mr. Hills was absent?
MABEL Mr. Spaulding is not my man of business!
HAMMOND Then who is he?
MABEL (Feeling in her purse for a document)
Mr. Spaulding is a Northampton attorney who was recommended to me as a witness for a very minor transfer of land.
(Produces document with great relief.)
I have his deposition here.
HAMMOND And I have the disputed document here. It’s in your handwriting I see.
MABEL It’s just a tiny strip of land! Six hundred feet by –
HAMMOND Did Miss Dickinson inspect the property?
MABEL (Nonplussed) Inspect it! Emily’s meadow? On a freezing night!
HAMMOND How was Mr. Spaulding compensated?
MABEL Mr. Spaulding? Er – it was a gentleman’s favor.
HAMMOND A gentleman’s favor?
MABEL (Confused. Looks to HAMLIN for assistance.)
A lady’s favor.
EMILY Now, that’s a bundle of nonsense!
HAMMOND Had you ever met Mr. Spaulding before?
MABEL He wished to see the poet’s house!
EMILY Ah, the enchantless Pod! The suburbs of a secret a strategist should keep. Better on a dream intrude than scrutinize the sleep.
HAMMOND And that favor was within your gift?
MABEL Within my gift? No. But I was so often in attendance on dear Miss Vinnie.
HAMMOND On Miss Lavinia Dickinson?
MABEL Exactly. We were such great friends.
EMILY My only friend was my lexicon.
HAMMOND Wasn’t it Mr. Dickinson on whom you danced attendance?
EMILY Sir! You are shallow intentionally and profound by accident!
HAMMOND (MABEL’s mouth drops open.) Call Maggie Maher to the stand.
EMILY Ah, Maggie! Maggie is a warm name, as home is the definition of God.
(MABEL rushes away sobbing, seats herself unobtrusively in the audience. Garbed in a simple shawl MAGGIE steps up holding her out Bible.)
HAMMOND Do you swear –?
MAGGIE I swear no oaths. I’ve never lied in my life. I’ve got my own Bible here – a present from the Dickinson sisters.
HAMMOND You are maid of all work for Miss Lavinia Dickinson at the Homestead?
MAGGIE So I am.
HAMMOND You know Mrs. Todd?
MAGGIE (A world of disapproval)
I do.
HAMMOND You admitted her to the house?
MAGGIE Mr. Dickinson admitted her. Mr. Austin Dickinson. After that she let her own self in. Sometimes they would take a whole day out in the carriage and ask me to put up a lunch. I always put one up. He sent her messages at any hour of the day or night, and I had to carry them.
(Sensation)
EMILY Oh, Maggie! Remorse is memory awake! Departed acts are a cureless disease!
HAMMOND Did Mrs. Todd give you a reply?
MAGGIE Only to say, “Tell the Master I am always ready.”
(Wild buzzing of crowd. JUDGE stirs uneasily.)
HAMMOND Did Mrs. Todd discuss any business arrangements of compensation for editorial work in your hearing?
MAGGIE She talked about it all the time. She called it a “labor of love”.
HAMMOND You knew Mrs. Todd had received a piece of land to build her house?
MAGGIE (Crossing her arms disapprovingly)
I did. Mr. Dickinson arranged that in spite of everyone. Mrs. Dickinson was ever so grieved.
EMILY Oh, Maggie, Maggie! You had better starch the geraniums!
HAMMOND Did you see Mr. Dickinson and Mrs. Todd together?
MAGGIE She embraced him. She called him “my King” and “you dear old man.”
(Sniffs)
But they were together alone behind closed doors most of the time. While poor Mrs. Dickinson was closed up in mourning for her son.
EMILY I watched her face to see which way She took the awful news. Whether she died before she heard Or in a protracted bruise.
HAMMOND (Bringing us back on track – speaks to the audience with satisfaction)
While Mrs. Todd and Mr. Dickinson were alone together behind closed doors at the Homestead?
(Crowd gasps. Lynch mob noises. MAGGIE nods.)
MAGGIE Hours at a time. That’s what their consciences allowed them.
EMILY Ah, the smitings of conscience! If there’s one thing to be grateful for, it’s that one is oneself and not somebody else. Faithful to mystery. The rest is perjury!
JUDGE (Banging gavel)
I am ready to rule!
HAMLIN But your honor –
EMILY Bring out the stocks and the long-lashed whip! If your nerve denies you, go above your nerve! Can there more than love and death? Tell me its name!
JUDGE I am ready to rule! Where testimonies are irreconcilable, one must look at habits of life. Miss Dickinson, a gentlewoman of sixty years, lives alone with her maid in the house her grandfather built, and was very quiet, and of a retiring disposition. She knows nothing of the world or of business and her testimony gives a sufficiently clear picture of the refinement of her life and the urgency, secrecy and misrepresentation of the defendant.
MABEL (Rising)
Oh!
JUDGE On the other hand the defendant is very much a woman of the world. She has not spent her life in seclusion in this little town of Amherst. She has the business experience of extensive travel as a public lecturer.
MABEL Oh!
EMILY Two swimmers wrestled on a spar Until the morning sun When one turned smiling to the land – Oh God! The other one!
JUDGE Clear case of fraud and so I rule! Deed is voided, land is returned, Defendant to pay costs. Court dismissed!
EMILY Eyes in death still begging – raised And hands beseeching, thrown!
(A path in town a few weeks later. On the stage apron, before the closed curtain- VINNIE, rushing past with a basket, is stopped by a heavily veiled SUE. EMILY chases ineffectually after.)
SUE (Shakes a newspaper at her)
What is this about giving Mrs. Todd our property? The patrimony of the children’s generation?
EMILY Sue, Sue, if we met with our deserts we would receive nothing. It’s avarice to hoard. You are past correction, Vinnie.
VINNIE (Desperate, guilty, looks around for help – there’s none)
I’m sure that’s impossible!
(SUE puts the paper in front of her nose)
SUE It says so right here under “Property Transfers”. Property transfers have to be publicized, Vinnie.
VINNIE (Helplessly)
But it can’t be. Mrs. Todd said – she lied to me.
EMILY She dropped so low in my regard I heard her hit the ground. Accused thou wert! Partake the infamy!
SUE She lied to you? Well of course she lied to you, Vinnie! That woman’s black with sin! She’s brought a sword into this family!
EMILY Poverty be justifying for so foul a thing. I can defeat the rest but you defeat me, Susan.
VINNIE I thought – not a transfer exactly – just we can’t have any building.
(More firmly, knowing she’ll be agreed with)
No building on the meadow.
SUE (Very satisfied)
I thought Mr. Hills was handling your business, Vinnie. I thought you agreed you needed Mr. Hills.
EMILY Oh, Susie, this is dangerous! Think flowers cry for dew? No, they cry for sunlight, though it scorches them, scathes them! They are through with peace!
VINNIE (Very meek)
None of us want building. I thought we were all agreed.
SUE And of course you can’t read documents without your glasses. A clever hussy could get you to sign anything.
EMILY Oh, Sue, Sue! For a beam from your brown eyes I would give a pearl. We’re of injury too innocent to know when it is passed.
VINNIE (Sniffily)
I don’t have glasses. My health has always been perfect.
SUE Why then it’s a case of fraud. It’s a case for the police. We’re going straight to Mr. Hills!
(Commandeers VINNIE)
EMILY I’m nothing but a hard heart of stone, Susie, and if mine is stony, yours is stone upon stone for you never yield. Are we going to ossify, Susie? Then how will it be? A lie is vocal when we die.
(SUE sweeps unseeing past her, puts her arm through VINNIE’ s and bears her away.)
(MABEL and VINNIE, both black-clothed, taking tea in the Homestead parlor. EMILY cavorts, playing hopscotch games they cannot see.)
EMILY If recollecting were forgetting Then I remember not. If forgetting, recollecting How near I had forgot. Heart! We will forget him! You and I, tonight! You may forget the warmth he gave I will forget the light.
(Mimes rolling dice)
We lose because we win – gamblers toss your dice again!
VINNIE Mabel, I do wish – we all wish –
(Gasp of distaste)
That you not wear black. It’s so undignified, don’t you see? Don’t you see it opens the family up to talk and scandal?
EMILY Oh Vinnie, never improve! You are so perfect now!
MABEL I do only what He wished. Don’t you see my life must be devoted to that now? To him, of course, and to Emily. If he lived we were to marry and go West – you see I wear his ring – but now I can only tend his grave. His grave, and his memory. And Emily’s memory, of course.
VINNIE (Tapping her foot helplessly)
But it’s undignified! What must people think!
EMILY How happy is the little stone That rambles in the road alone And doesn’t care about careers And exigencies never fears!
(Shakes her head)
The mind lives on the heart like any parasite, dear Vinnie!. If full of meat the mind is fat!
MABEL (Takes a paper from her purse)
And that’s not all he wished. Remember?
VINNIE (Shuddering with distaste)
I don’t know what you want me to remember. I don’t wish to read my brother’s private correspondence. After a death, dear Mabel, such things are to be burned.
(Will not touch the paper)
EMILY (Arms akimbo, head shaking)
Oh, Vinnie! Bats think foxes have no eyes.
MABEL But they do burn! His words burn in me and so should they in you! Don’t you remember what he said?
EMILY (All ears)
Momentousness ripens in a human soul impregnable as light! A single screw of flesh is all that pins the soul.
VINNIE Things are so changed, Mabel! Everything is changed! We are authoresses now, public persons, don’t you see, in this new world! Did you get the fresh poems I sent you? I found them in the linen closet! Who knows how many more there might not be in this big house? And –
(Awkward change of subject)
How is the new volume coming?
MABEL It’s difficult to concentrate on anything when I have so much sorrow!
(Gasps; threatens tears.)
When – my Master’s wishes go unfulfilled.
EMILY To die before one fears to die may be a boon. Folks knock at the grass and the grass lets them in. With ghosts so attentive, what cause have we to complain? Still, we are children, and children fear the dark.
VINNIE But Mr. Hills is my business manager and says I can do nothing without his oversight. Don’t you see, Mabel? When you have a position in the town you are not free.
EMILY (Miming)
I never hear of prisons but I tug childish at my bars only to fail again!
MABEL But a deed need not be recorded. It would be a secret, Vinnie, don’t you see? Then no one would know.
VINNIE (Stunned into giving her real objection)
It need not? Sue would be so angry if she found out–
EMILY Night is my favorite day. That’s why I love silence so. The infinite’s a sudden guest.
MABEL I know the rages of the Black Moghul! To think she still stalks the sod while my King molders beneath it, his wishes forgotten! How can one endure! No, no, Vinnie, the Black Moghul must never know.
(Leans closer confidingly)
It will be our little secret.
EMILY (Dancing)
Surgeons must be very careful When they take the knife Underneath their fine incisions Stirs the culprit – life!
VINNIE Well, it’s the patrimony – she’d find out. They all would know.
MABEL But what about that tiny strip of meadow just in front of my house? Merely a little strip, Vinnie! Fifty-three feet by six hundred! And landscaped already – planted already to my – and my Master’s – choice. Nothing would be different.
EMILY We are orchard sprung! I raised robins in that garden! If I helped one fainting robin I shall not have lived in vain. My flowers were disobedient. To be a flower is a profound responsibility.
(Sighs)
One clover, one bee and revery! Revery alone will do if bees are few.
VINNIE Nothing would be different?
EMILY Silver scruples! The grass does not appear afraid. Perhaps its well our senses aren’t at home. Vinnie, your riches taught me poverty. Earth is short and anguish absolute.
MABEL (She’s a hard worker)
Nothing! No money changes hands! Who would ever know?
EMILY Back your morals with a mastiff and manners may prevail! Suspense – the gnat that mangles men! Suspense is hostiler than death!
VINNIE You know I’d like to sign. Emily needs you to work on her book.
MABEL Oh, that’s a gift of love! An honor! A privilege to perform these little tasks for the sainted singer of Amherst! Would you care to walk the property before you sign?
VINNIE Oh, no. I walked there just last night. I often go when the moon is full.
(Hesitatingly, full of embarrassment)
I have faith that Emily is there.
EMILY Faith’s a fine invention when gentlemen can see. But microscopes are prudent – in an emergency.
MABEL (Uncomprehending)
Emily’s buried in the churchyard, Vinnie.
EMILY (Passes her hands frantically in front of their unseeing eyes)
There are no dead. The grave’s our moan for them! A soul escaped the house unseen! Hands the grave has grimed place in our own, denying they have died. It’s not that dying hurts us so but living hurts us more. Unable are the loved to die, for love is deity.
VINNIE Her spirit, Mabel. Of course that is what I mean. Oh, how she loved that meadow! She used to say the sunshine was a sacrament and the breeze communion wine!
EMILY (Crosses herself)
In the name of the Bee and the Butterfly and the Breeze – Amen!
(Clutches her chest)
What shall I do? It whimpers so, this hound within the heart! If sinew tore and soul seesaw, lift the flesh door and give the poltroon oxygen!
(Threatens) Vinnie, an imperial thunderbolt will scalp your naked soul!
MABEL Yes, certainly. We will treasure its honor intact – for her.
EMILY (Asking the audience) I lost a world the other day – has anybody found? You’ll know it by the row of stars around its forehead bound.
VINNIE (Postponing the fearsome moment)
I don’t have my spectacles.
EMILY We grow accustomed to the dark when light is put away. Spiders sew at night without a light and conscience reads without its glasses on revelations’ wall.
MABEL That’s fine, Vinnie. We will need a witness at any rate.
VINNIE A witness? Shall I call Maggie?
MABEL A lawyer of course, Miss Lavinia! What did you think?
EMILY A lawyer! To extricate suffering humanity from its hopeless ditch?
VINNIE But Mr. Hills –
MABEL (Finger to her lips, shakes her head complicitly)
Mr. Spaulding! Mr. Spaulding!
(A proper Victorian gentleman enters the room and doffs his hat)
MR. SPAULDING Oh, Miss Dickinson, it is such an honor to attend you!
MABEL Mr. Spaulding is from Northampton.
MR. SPAULDING Greetings to you, good ladies.
EMILY And marrow of the day to you. The sun took down his yellow whip and drove the fog away.
MR. SPAULDING (He looks around with relish)
To tread the selfsame boards of the Belle of Amherst is such a privilege, as God’s my witness!
EMILY If belles are kangaroos, good Sir! Charm invests a face imperfectly beheld.
VINNIE (Softening)
You’re an admirer, Sir?
MR. SPAULDING Yes, indeed. How I should like, how I would do my utmost in your service if I could discreetly touch any item, anything – on which she laid her hand.
EMILY Utmost is relative. None see God and live. Alas, my body’s as unnecessary to me now as boots to birds. My every scar’s a gem. Are you a gem collector, sir?
VINNIE This is her tea set here. She won prizes for her Indian bread – Father would eat no other. I wish Maggie could duplicate it.
MR. SPAULDING (Picks up a teacup -– studies it and is overcome)
Oh. Oh.
(He declaims)
Because I would not stop for death He kindly stopped for me. The carriage contained –
VINNIE But just ourselves
MABEL And immortality. Such delicate insights!
MR. SPAULDING Who could plumb the secrets of that heart?
EMILY Sir, thoughts we will not show are more intimate than persons that we know.
MABEL (She thrusts the paper at Mr. Spaulding.)
Miss Dickinson would like this deed of transfer properly witnessed.
EMILY Madness is divinest sense to the discerning eye. Much sense – Seems starkest madness. Assent and you are sane. Demur – You’re straightway dangerous and handled with a chain.
VINNIE (Panicked)
For just the meadow, now! The little strip of meadow!
MR.SPAULDING Six hundred by twenty-two hundred feet, is what it says here. A transfer of land you understand.
VINNIE (Ruffled)
Of course I understand! My signature goes where?
MR. SPAULDING (Produces a tablet and helps her with her signature.)
If you’ll just dot that there – there you go. Right as rain. Now if I may just peep into the Poet’s conservatory? Where she cherished her blooms in our cold hard winters!
EMILY We are a vivacious climate, kind sir. Curiosity is a Garden in the brain. The goodwill of a flower is minted holiness.
MR. SPAULDING (Looking thirstily about)
She loved too well, they say. And that was why she never left her home.
EMILY This dirty little heart inside its freckled shrine – not with a club was it broken but with a whip. So small you couldn’t see it.
VINNIE (Very excited)
We each bore up under terrible disappointment. We clung only each other. Such cold winters! So hard!
(She is getting worked up about MR SPAULDING)
The conservatory has fallen into sad disuse I’m sorry to admit. You see, neither Maggie nor I can spare the time –
MR. SPAULDING And we’re none of us getting younger, are we?
EMILY Vinnie runs all day with her tongue abroad, like a summer dog. She has always been the pert one, gifted with Poetry of Motion. Oh, Vinnie! I have a strong surmise that moments we have not known are tenderest to you!
(SPAULDING pockets tablet and paper and offers VINNIE an arm)
MR. SPAULDING I’m so fond of literary ghosts!
EMILY My art had patrons – once a queen and once a butterfly. My splendors will entertain the centuries when I am dishonored grass whom none but beetles know.
VINNIE This way, Mr. Spaulding.
MR. SPAULDING (His hand on hers along his arm)
Please call me Timothy. I’d like to think of us as friends.
MABEL (Watching them wryly)
Well, I’ve got a great deal to do if I’m to get the latest volume to the printers before I go to Japan. Mustn’t tarry.
(Bustles out. They all leave EMILY alone)
EMILY She speeds as petals of a rose offended by the wind. Frigid and sweet her parting face – frigid and fleet my feet. Penury and home – who was she to withhold from me?
(To the audience)
Endow the living with the tears you squander on the dead! Twice have I stood a beggar before the door of God! I stunned myself with bolts of melody. The rumor of delirium was a hope so juicy ripening I almost bathed my tongue, but… We outgrow love like other things and put it in the drawer. Eden’s not so lonesome as New England.
(Clutches her chest)
A pain so utter swallows memory up. They shut me in the cold and they themselves were warm. You forgot but I remembered – I recalled enough for two. We tell a hurt to cool it. It is good that we are dreaming – it would hurt awake. I dropped this world like a bundle.
(Declaims)
Softness suffuses the story Silences the teller’s eye The children have no further questions Only the sea reply. Dominion lasts until obtained – possession just as long. But everlasting are the lips known only to the dew These are the brides of permanence, supplanting me and you.
(A day later. Coffin laid out in the Evergreen library, mourners filing past. MABEL, dressed in black, peeking in the window, dodging out of sight when she thinks she might be seen. Cries bitterly. EMILY rears up out of the audience)
EMILY
The things that never can come back are these
(Counts them out on fingers)
Hope, childhood,
(Gasps)
And the dead… I heard a fly buzz when I died The stillness in the room Was like the stillness in the air Between the heaves of storm. With blue uncertain, stumbling buzz Between the light and me And then the windows failed and then I could not see to see!
(Mimes blindness, falling backward)
MABEL
O! To touch again the dear body which I know and love so utterly! Austin I pray you are out once more in the sweet, summer sunshine, light-hearted and blithe as a boy! The whole town weeps for you! Yet I am the only mourner.
EMILY
It’s a solemn thing within the soul to feel itself get ripe.
(To the audience)
I can wade grief Whole pools of it I’m used to that Power is only pain. Futile the winds to a heart in port Done with the compass Done with the chart Rowing in Eden Ah, the Sea! Might I moor tonight in thee!
(A brilliantly sunny day a few years later. A new house has been added between the two previous houses – back of the stage. We see only its porch where MABEL sits at an old-fashioned typewriter, wearing a green eyeshade, attended by DAVID. A couple sits in each of the houses – VINNIE and MAGGIE at the Homestead, AUSTIN and SUE at the Evergreens.MABEL and DAVID are reading letters. EMILY dances down the meadow)
DAVID
Here’s a letter from Emily to appeal to you, May-bill. “Dearest of all Uncles – would you like to try a duel? Or is that too quiet to suit you? At any rate I shall kill you – you can take chloroform if you like and I will put you beyond the reach of pain in a twinkling.”
MABEL
She was just nineteen when she wrote that!
DAVID
It’s as funny as Twain, so it is.
EMILY
Fame is a bee – it has a song – it has a sting – it has a wing!
(Pretends to fly away)
Butterflies’ aesthetics are far superior to mine.
MABEL
Emily had a seeker’s heart. She sees the other world somehow. Listen to this one – “Won’t you please state the name of the boy that turned the faintest – I’d like to get such facts to set down in my journal. I don’t think deaths or murders can ever come amiss in a young woman’s journal.”
(Peals of laughter)
DAVID
It is an extraordinary thing you have done to share this rare genius with the world, my sweet.
MABEL
I feel we have climbed to a cloud, pulled it away and revealed a new star!
(They clasp hands)
EMILY
Blame is just as dear as praise, and praise as mere as blame – as foreign from my thought as firmament from fin. Renown perceives itself and thus degrades the flower.
VINNIE
(reading the newspaper to MAGGIE)
Listen to this! It says Emily is at the forefront of American singers! It says – Can’t you stop cleaning for a moment?
MAGGIE
(Scrubbing the grate)
Miss Emily used to say she preferred a house of pestilence to a house of cleaning.
(They both laugh uproariously)
MAGGIE
(Wiping her eyes)
Oh, I miss her! So I do! I’d rather have her than a pile of books! But spring cleaning waits for none but Death.
(EMILY pats her head)
EMILY
Housekeeping is a prickly art when winter becomes an infinite “alas.” The moderate drinker of delight does not deserve the spring.
VINNIE
“The work of Emily Dickinson make a distinctive addition to the literature of the world.”
(MAGGIE leans back on her heels and sighs approvingly. Meanwhile, back at the Evergreens – )
AUSTIN
(Accepting a teacup)
I’d no idea she had so many poems in passably conventional form. “Poetry torn up by the roots,” said Mr. Higginson and Mr. Niles told us her defects “outshone” her abilities. He called her lacking in “poetical qualities”.
EMILY
Poets’ thought undressed needs no umbrella. If the top of my head is taken off, then I know it’s poetry.
SUE
(Swishing around the room in anger)
I should have been told! It’s so humiliating to be kept in the dark! Two volumes of poetry and a book of letters! Vinnie says I refused to arrange the poems! Emily knows it isn’t true!
AUSTIN
Vinnie did ask you first.
SUE
I thought I had more time! Everyone’s in such a rush!
(Sighs)
And I have so many obligations.
EMILY
(Ornamenting SUE with an invisible jewel)
I chose this star from out the night’s wide number, Sue! It’s all I have to bring today – this and my heart beside- and all the bees and all the fields and all the meadows wide! Be what you have ever been – infinity.
(Tries to grab her as she flashes past)
Oh, Sue, Sue, the realm of You!
(Her hands are empty)
Absence is condensed presence.
AUSTIN
If only Vinnie had taste! She paid for the publication. She rushes into print even items of small consequence with crudities of workmanship.
EMILY
(Tartly)
Publication is the auction of the mind of man! We do not call the surgeon to commend the bone, but to set it!
SUE
I always said Emily had a crystal soul. It’s just that I’ve been ill so much latterly. There has been sorrow and
(Meaningfully)
– our disgrace.
(AUSTIN shields himself with his newspaper)
EMILY
Dreams a subtle dower, make us rich an hour! Opinion is a flitting thing but Truth outlasts the sun. If we cannot own them both then possess the oldest one. Oh, Sue, I had rather be loved than be a king on earth or a lord in heaven!
SUE
When I sent one of Emily’s poems to the Springfield Republican, Lavinia told everyone I violated her copyright!
VINNIE
(Reading loudly)
“They are barbed things, these poems; they strike and remain, unlike snowball poems that break and melt and are gone, leaving you cold.”
EMILY
The incredible never surprises because it is the incredible.
VINNIE
(Reads)
“Illuminating Inner Life of a Recluse”
EMILY
No prison be when liberty’s locked in. The police cannot suppress the mob within the heart.
SUE
I have a chest of poems and letters that she gave me! I will publish my own reminiscences when I choose and in my time!
AUSTIN
(lowering his paper exasperatedly)
Dear, Emily sent you letters but that does not convey copyright, which belongs, by will, to her legal heir.
SUE
But an heir so foolish with her tempers and her vagaries! Vinnie isn’t sensible enough to “inherit” anything. She has as much knowledge of business as a Maltese pussycat.
EMILY
Constancy with proviso, constancy abhors!
AUSTIN
(He coughs)
Vinnie is whimsical, wayward and exasperating. Do write your memories, Susan, or what have we left? Those belong to you of course. Please do not mention –
Emily’s sickness.
(Increased coughing, grabbing at SUE’s sleeve)
People say Emily kept to her home because she was ill.
(He falls into a coughing fit. SUE turns away her head but EMILY is alarmed.)
EMILY Sue, Sue! Ward death away with your homeopathic glances!
SUE
Of course I shall! I shall write. I shall at least do that!
EMILY
Ah, well. Life’s the hinge of death. Fame is the one that does not stay. Its occupant must die – insolvent thing – a “lightning in the germ”. Electrical the embryo but we demand the flame.
(Clomps away, chanting)
Could live – did live Could die – did die.
(As she leaves, light follows her and darkens the Evergreens. EMILY wanders to the Homestead and peers in through the window.)
VINNIE
Mrs. Todd wants half my copyright but she shan’t have it.
MAGGIE
(Shaking a collection of papers)
She keeps sending contracts over here. All of them she writes herself.
VINNIE
And I keep burning them! Throw them on the fire, Maggie! Just because she straightened out the poems! Why, any clark could have done it! I’d have done it if I could have stayed in school!
(Rustles her shawl angrily)
But you knew Father. He couldn’t bear to have us gone.
MAGGIE
He would eat no bread but Emily’s.
EMILY
Father was quite a hand at giving medicine, especially if it was undesirable to the patient. He put the belt around my life – I heard the buckle snap.
(Confiding)
My parents addressed an Eclipse every morning and called it Father.
VINNIE
And then Mother – poor Mother –
MAGGIE
There, there, then, Miss Vinnie. Have yourself a nice cup of tea.
VINNIE
That hussy can’t take my property! Those poems and letters are mine! They don’t belong to Sue. They’re not Austin’s to give away – they’re not anybody’s but mine! Mr. Hills says every poem Emily sent belongs to me by law, even ones I’ve never seen. Mabel’s just making copies, anyone with an educated hand can do that!
(Troubled because she’s basically unfamiliar with the magnitude of her sister’s work but feels a paranoid fear of theft)
I don’t think she gives half of them back. Wanting money. Wanting everything not hers.
EMILY
My gifts were given me by the Gods when I was just a little girl. My difference made me bold.
(Croons to the flowers)
Only a bee will miss it, only a butterfly. Only a bird will wonder, only a breeze will sigh. Ah little rose how easy for such as thee to die!
MAGGIE
And hasn’t she all the glory now, Her Busyness?
(Gestures to MABEL’s house)
That fine house and two men dancing attendance? I’d say she’s had reward enough.
VINNIE
It’s more men than that! Some say every man in town buzzes round her hive!
(They snigger. MABEL puts down her work, walks to the porch railing and starts to sing a florid version of, “Where the Bee Sucks, There Suck I”. DAVID listens reverentially. MAGGIE closes up the shutters)
MAGGIE
Miss Emily used to say if that woman didn’t stop singing, she’d start weeping!
EMILY
I said that about Vinnie!
(Shakes her head)
Hug her, Maggie! Hold her to your bosom!
(But MAGGIE clatters the tea tray, whisking crumbs. VINNIE tears paper into strips, officiously making spills. EMILY begins to dance)
EMILY
God is indeed a jealous God if He cannot bear to see that we had rather not with him but with each other play!
(Laughs.)
I convinced Vinnie her dying cat was immortal and would find heaven. Did that assist you, Vinnie?
(AUSTIN’s coughing heard, then SUE.)
SUE Help! Maggie! Ned, Mattie! Someone come quick!
(Excited, ineffective running about)
EMILY (Rushes to the Evergreens to cradle AUSTIN in her arms)
Death won’t hurt now Dollie’s here. A dimple in the tomb makes that ferocious room a home. My life closed twice before its close, but dying’s a wild night and a new road. Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell.
(She strokes his forehead)
Heaven – how dim it sounds! Perhaps you’re going too – who knows? I’d harass God to let you in.
(Whispers in AUSTIN’s ear)
T’is life’s award to die. A deathblow’s a lifeblow to some.
(AUSTIN in the Homestead parlor, nervously pacing, fire poking, wearing a mourning band. MABEL hurries in, attired in spring-like colors. Neither pays attention to EMILY, seated atop the bookcase)
AUSTIN You are a dazzling beacon of purity, my darling; so sick am I of mourning black!
MABEL
My King!
(They embrace.)
EMILY (pretends to pray)
Of God we ask one favor That we may be forgiven For the crime from us is hidden Within a magic prison. Reprimand us for the happiness That competes with heaven.
(AUSTIN attempts to undress MABEL but she pushes him back and slows him down by sitting on his lap.)
MABEL
Now that I have my little strip of land, my darling, I must have a house to hold up my head against your three evil wishers.
(Pulling at his tie)
I will need a bank loan, dearest.
AUSTIN
That can be arranged.
(He is not to be deterred. She is soon unclothed and he kisses her all over.)
MABEL
And did you write that wee, wee note I asked you to put in my box?
EMILY (Admiringly)
Great hungers feed themselves, while little hungers ail in vain.
AUSTIN (Exasperated)
I know I promised you a written history of my marriage to be your shield, my darling, but surely things are better as they are? I do not wish to involve others unpleasantly or risk the slightest injustice. Believe me. Believe me.
MABEL
I dodge heart-breaking discourtesies to come to you, but what of that? And what about your will, my darling? How protect my strip of meadow I have already planted?
EMILY (Mimes shooting MABEL)
Aim once, shoot once, kill once.
AUSTIN (MABEL has effectively shut him down)
Sweetest, I have writ my desire to leave my patrimony to you and placed it in Vinnie’s hands. She is pledged to surrender it to you. She has told me she will promise to your face if that’s what you require. Trust me, it is better so. You are my wife before God, and so I swear.
EMILY
Tasting the honey and the sting should have ceased with Eden. Pang is the past of peace. It’s not dying hurts us so but living hurts us more.
MABEL
Does God hear prayers, I wonder? He allows my enemies to flourish and so do you. You met Susan’s train, or so I heard.
EMILY (Puts up her dukes)
Fisticuffs at home create a climate of escape. Do men gather grapes of thorns? Sue’s a dream, dear lady. Losing her is sweeter than all other hearts to gain. Sue is – imagination.
(Her hands release an invisible dove)
AUSTIN
Darling, it couldn’t be avoided. I had the carriage.
EMILY
If one can’t have carriages, what’s patrimony for? This is a checkered life.
(Jumps down from the bookcase, waves her hands in front of their unseeing eyes; gives up her attempts to contact them. Discouraged.)
I didn’t bring my body so they don’t know that I’m here.
MABEL Oh, the carriage! And you shower those absurdly graceless children with favors.
AUSTIN (Rising angrily, dumps MABEL to the floor)
You’ve made a mistake.
It always seemed so strange to me that two such proud people, so stiff, so apt to be pert, could love so well.
EMILY
It seemed strange to everybody. Sweet the secret swamp – until we meet a snake.
MABEL
Could hate so well, you mean. She trapped you, don’t forget.
(Paces)
EMILY
Ah, Susie! Sue! The wife cannot be forgotten! I suppose “Enough” is so vast a sweetness it never occurs.
(She pulls on AUSTIN’s jacket – he ignores her.)
Icebergs italicize the sea.
MABEL (Embracing AUSTIN)
I feel in myself divine possibilities that can only be realized through you. It is in the great foundation of things that we should be mated.
AUSTIN
(Resumes his lovemaking)
We are mated!
EMILY
Oh, the Earth was made for lovers! The bride, the bridegroom, the two and then the one Adam and Eve, his consort, the moon and then the sun!
(Confides)
Each expiring secret leaves an heir.
MABEL (Unplacatable till she says what’s on her mind)
But still your Great Black Moghul parades her bigoted spite throughout the town! As if she owns the place! Much pain was unnecessarily given to me by your reluctance to step in and relieve it in the one place that caused it all! I have never admitted a thought that could be disloyal to my master, but oh, how gladly I will see you do what you can in this line!
EMILY (To the audience)
I had thought how dull my life must seem to the bride and the plighted maiden, whose days are fed with gold and who gather pearls each evening. But to the forgotten wife that life must seem dearer than all the others in the world. You rend me, Susie, even now, even now that I am yielded up.
AUSTIN
We have so much to be grateful for, my darling! With Susan gone to Boston we can meet without impediment.
MABEL
You rule and compel things, which I cannot. That makes your outward life so much more bearable than mine. You won’t feel it necessary to write to her, I hope?
AUSTIN
If there’s business to conduct. I don’t wish to offend or wound.
MABEL (Standing up angrily)
I am offended! I am wounded! I feel their hatred and persecution every moment, as well as the negative disgust. I feel it will ultimately be my death. Why doesn’t God punish her? I feel He has deserted me!
(Poses in her underwear. She feels her own irresistibility)
EMILY Gorgeous nothing! When I think of the hearts scuttled and sunk – is it safe to leave the Golden Rule out overnight? With burglary so frequent hereabouts?
AUSTIN (Embracing MABEL)
My angel wife! There’s nothing else. You transform, transmute, translate everything. You have made me yours. If you could only feel the overpowering, overmastering strength of my love. (He attempts a kiss)
MABEL
I feel her attacking me in Boston even now, right in the heart of the Ladies’ Clubs where I had hoped to speak.
AUSTIN
Why make yourself conspicuous? I thought you’d have plenty to occupy yourself with the new property.
EMILY
When a lover is an owner how different is he! Ah, the sweets of pillage! Love – thou art veiled – so few behold thee. Nicknamed by God; Eternity.
MABEL
I need a fortress, a stronghold against my hurts but I so loathe housekeeping! I have capabilities that can grow into accomplishment. I mean to do something worthwhile.
EMILY (Extravagantly gesturing)
Shame need not crouch in such an earth as ours. Shame, stand erect – the universe is yours.
(Our eye is caught by a figure on the other side of the door who seems to be listening to the pair. It is DAVID TODD.)
AUSTIN Vinnie requires assistance arranging Emily’s poems in a book, and Sue’s too busy. Her letters could elucidate as well. You’ve published things-
MABEL (Modestly)
I’ve been lucky.
EMILY Luck’s not chance – it’s toil. Fortune has an expensive smile. Austin used to be a believer but he mistook venoms for balms. We have all the witchcraft we need around us every day.
MABEL I should love to explicate Emily to others! Even though I saw your sister or the first time only in her casket I felt I understood her comets of thought.
EMILY Had I known the first was last I would have kept it longer Had I known the last was first I would have drunk it stronger!
AUSTIN That’s settled, then. Ask Maggie for the trunk of scribbled papers.
(MABEL finally surrenders. They kiss with increasing intensity)
MABEL (Breathily)
Would you like a witness? Just this once?
AUSTIN A witness?
MABEL David.
(He steps silently into the room and stands, arms behind him, observing.)
You say that he’s your dearest friend.
EMILY A committee? Lifetime is for two, never for committee.
AUSTIN Of course I love David.
(MABEL undresses AUSTIN. They fall together while DAVID watches aloofly.)
EMILY (Nosing past the lovers, intrigued)
How invaluable is ignorance! Such economical ecstasy! Ignorance our cuirass is. I declare it would have starved a gnat to live so small as I!
(Addresses the audience as lights go down on parlor)
I could suffice for him I knew He could suffice for me. We hesitating fractions Surveyed infinity. “Would I be whole” he sudden broached! Face to face with nature forced is Face to face with God. The moon herself adjusts her tides In answer to the sun. Could I do else with mine?
(Directly accusing the audience)
You left me boundaries of pain capacious as the sea!
Alysse Aallyn 