The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson by Jerome Charyn

Author:Jerome Charyn
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2010-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

My Philadelphia

Emily had her own secret service. She couldn’t write directly to Rev. Wadsworth, have her letters delivered to the post office. It would have brought scandal right to the Squire—his old maid of a daughter scribbling “love letters” to a married man. So she folded each letter to Rev. Wadsworth into a letter to one of her confidantes, who lived in Springfield. And the minister’s rare letters to her would arrive from the same confidante. Thus Emily had established a private post office.

She had asked him to be her pastor, to counsel her from afar. His letters were formal but not unfriendly, though the minister couldn’t even spell her name. “My Dear Miss Dickenson,” he wrote, as if she were the son or daughter of Mr. Charles Dickens. He talked about the “affliction” that had befallen her, without realizing that he was her affliction. But it was her fault. How could she tell the minister of the Arch Street Church that she had fallen in love with him like a madwoman during the length of one sermon that he had delivered five years ago? And it was not the words themselves that had moved her, but the way he delivered them, as if he had a typhoon in his chest.

The Reverend Wadsworth was a Witch. She had always believed that men made the best witches, and he was the prime example, with his cream-colored hands and volcanic eyes that could reduce her to ashes. She had called him “My Philadelphia” in her little notebook, but she couldn’t even hint at love in her letters. And so like the feeblest of female witches, she went at him with little tricks. She deplored her own dishonesty. But she couldn’t let go of her affliction.

His mother had just died, and the minister wore black for an entire year, but that didn’t keep him from lecturing in New England. He spoke of stealing a visit on one of his tours, but Emily didn’t believe it. Her heart palpitated nonetheless. She was in constant readiness, like a live torpedo. She ordered a new housedress, and wouldn’t have Lavinia measured for it in her place; Emily saw the seamstress herself. She had become as volcanic as Sue. She could erupt at any minute. Lavinia had never seen her sister so full of conflicting moods. She would chatter and then shut up. She would laugh at some silliness and then start to cry.

“It’s her monthlies,” Lavinia said. “My poor sister is driven by the moon.”

Perhaps she was. But Emily was in despair. “Philadelphia” would never arrive at her father’s door. And then she heard the bell pull. And she panicked. She who never answered the door ran downstairs with tiny incautious hops, her heart in its own deep crisis.

And there he was, all dressed in black, as if he were mourning Emily’s own reckless love without even knowing it. He’d aged in five years. His mouth was pursed. His hair had gray patches and no longer covered his ears.

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