And We Stay (18 page)

It was snowing harder when Emily and her mother emerged from the doctor’s office. The snowflakes were so large they looked fake. Aunt Cindy was waiting for them two blocks away in a coffee shop. As they walked along the nearly deserted sidewalk, Emily’s mother reached more than once for Emily’s hand, but the last thing Emily wanted to feel was a connection to her mother, so she stuffed her mittened hands inside the pockets of her coat.

Aunt Cindy was sitting at a table reading the newspaper and drinking coffee.

“See if there’s something you’d like to drink,” Aunt Cindy told Emily. “I wasn’t sure what you’d want.”

Emily turned and looked toward the counter. Beyond it, at the end of a narrow hall, was a door to the outside. Through its small window, Emily could see snow drifting down like a lacy veil.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

“How are you feeling now, honey?” her mother asked.

“Oh, fine,” said Emily. “A little groggy but fine.”

“It doesn’t hurt?” Aunt Cindy said.

“Not yet,” Emily said.

“It won’t start hurting until all the anesthesia wears off,” Emily’s mother explained.

“Here’s some money,” said Aunt Cindy, holding out a bill. “Get your mom a cup of coffee, and get yourself something, too, okay? Whatever looks good to you.”

“Thanks,” said Emily. She walked past the counter and down the hall. At the door of the bathroom, she turned and looked back at the two women at the table, their heads leaning into one another’s. In one swift move, Emily sidestepped out the back door of the shop and into the falling snow. Across the street was a stop for the T. She hurried over. With the five dollars Aunt Cindy had given her, she bought a ticket and took the red-line train to Harvard because it was the only name on the map inside the station that she recognized.

Emily had no idea what to do once she got there, and she didn’t care. She was living in the moment—not in the past, not in the future. How or when she would get back to Aunt Cindy’s house didn’t matter because what mattered was now, right now, and right now, Emily wanted to be someone else.

When she emerged from underground, she walked through the Harvard campus in the falling snow, pretending
to be a student, although there weren’t many of them around. Because the sanitary pad was bulky and her stomach was starting to cramp, Emily stopped into a deli near campus and sat down at a table by the window. When, after ten minutes, no one came to take her order, she realized she was supposed to tell the man at the counter what she wanted. She walked up and ordered a bagel with butter and a cup of coffee. “Pretty lady, numbah fifty-two,” the man said in his rich Boston accent. Even though her stomach hurt, she smiled. It felt exquisite, being anonymous. Fifty-two would be her lucky number forever. It was her first cup of coffee, and though she took only two bites of the bagel, it was the best meal she’d eaten in her life.

The coffee and bagel she has for breakfast this morning at ASG are good, too, but they can’t compete. Emily Beam is known here. She has a past, but she also has a future, dangling like a carrot on the end of a string. If she ever reaches it, if she ever gets to take a bite, then it will no longer be the future. In the moment of tasting, it becomes the present, and in the time that it takes to swallow, it is past. Time, both friend and enemy, confounds her.

As she rises to leave the dining room, Amber Atkins approaches.

“Hey, Emily. You want to study for the French test with me?”

“Maybe tonight after dinner.”

“Okay,” says Amber, “but I kind of need to tell you something now.”

“Then tell me.”

“I need to tell you in private.”

Emily looks around. No one is listening. No one is even watching. All over the dining room, girls are in the middle of living.

Amber whispers, “I took something.”

“Let me guess. A lipstick.”

“No, not lipstick. Something else. Something bigger.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“Because you were there,” says Amber.

“Where?”

“At Emily Dickinson’s house.”

“Oh. So you were the one who put the crocus in my carrel.”

Amber winks.

“Look, Amber, I don’t think stealing a flower is a big deal. Plus, that was, like, a month ago.”

“I’m not talking about the crocus. Follow me.” Amber leads Emily out onto the quad and across to the lieberry, where Amber makes a beeline for the bathroom.

“Hello?” she calls. “Anyone here?” She checks under the stalls and opens one of the doors. “Get in,” she tells Emily.

“What?”

“No one can see this.”

“You’re freaking me out, Amber.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Amber swings the stall door closed and slides the lock into place before she unzips her backpack and pulls out a long white dress.

“Holy shit,” Emily says.

“I found it last night. Behind the house.”

“You stole it.”

“I swear I didn’t. I was just out walking, you know, like we do sometimes, and I found it in the garden.”

“Do you know whose dress that is?”

“I do now,” says Amber.

Emily reaches out to brush her hand over the pocket.

“Can I touch it?”

“Sure.”

Amber passes her the dress, which Emily holds up in front of her. It’s thin, cotton, long-sleeved, with a neat collar and delicate mother-of-pearl buttons down the front all the way past the knee. At the right hip, there is an oversized, hand-stitched pocket.

“What are you going to do with the dress?”

“Take it back, of course!”

“How did it end up in the yard?”

“How the hell should I know? I was just walking by and—voila!—there it was.”

“It should be in the house,” says Emily.

“I know that,” says Amber.

“They keep it on display in her room.”

“I know!”

“So how are you going to get it back there?” Emily asks.

“Because if you don’t, guess what?”

“It’ll look like I took it.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s why I came to you,” says Amber. “You’re the poet around here. Couldn’t you, like, sweet-talk your way in and put it back?”

“Are you crazy?”

“Yeah, probably. My mom thinks so.”

Emily pictures the sign by the front gate of the house:
Open Saturdays & Sundays 12–5
. “The house is going to open back up again in two days.”

“That’s why I need you to sweet-talk your way in there before then.”

“Not gonna happen,” says Emily. “The last thing I need right now is to get into more trouble.”

“What kind of trouble are you in?”

“Never mind.”

“It can’t be as much trouble as I’m in,” says Amber. “I’ve got, like, fifty Hashes. I, like,
live
in Detention Hall.”

“Well, I’m campused.”

“Till when?”

“Next Wednesday,” Emily says. “And I am not leaving campus till then.”

Gently, Emily reaches her hand inside the dress and lifts out a scrap of paper, brittle and yellow and torn.

“Did you put this in here?” she asks Amber.

“No.”

“Swear it,” says Emily.

“Don’t you believe anything?”

“Not anything
you
say.”

Amber sighs. “I swear on my mother’s fat ass—sorry, Mom, but it’s true—that I did not put that piece of paper in that pocket.” When she leans in to see what it says, Emily jerks her hand away.

“What does the piece of paper say?”

“Nope,” says Emily, “not until you promise to leave me alone about all this. I don’t want to get kicked out. I like it here.”

“But Madame Colche says you’re a genius. And geniuses can figure things out, like how to get missing dresses back inside locked houses.”

“You’re a genius, too.”

“Yeah,” Amber says, “but I’m on Strike Three Probation.”

“For what?”

“What do you think?”

Emily rolls her eyes.

“I didn’t steal the dress, Emily! It was just, like, lying there on the grass in the moonlight. I thought it was a dead person. It scared the crap out of me.”

“Then put it back in the yard where you found it. If you didn’t take it, then no big deal, right?”

Amber shakes her head.

“So what did you steal? At school, I mean.”

“Somebody’s Diet Coke out of the fridge and a couple of cookies from my roommate’s care package.” Amber shrugs. “I couldn’t help it. I missed dinner that night, and I was starving.”

Emily unlocks the stall door. “I’ve got to go to class.”

“Don’t tell anybody,” Amber says.

“I’m not stupid.”

“That’s right. You’re a genius. Please, Emily. Please? I’m terrified of naked mannequins, especially that one.”

“Aha! So you
were
in that room! How else would you know about the mannequin, huh, Amber? Not to mention the fact that the naked part was all your doing. Stop lying. Just stop.”

“All right, yeah, I was there.” Amber pointed at the scrap of paper. “Aren’t you going to give that back?”

“Nope.”

Emily walks to English pressing the scrap of paper flat to her palm.
An unexpected Maid
, it reads in faded black ink. All through English, while she is supposed to be revising an essay on “The Road Not Taken,” Emily scans the collection of Dickinson poems, looking for the line and the poem it belongs to.

All through Chemistry, while she is supposed to be solving problems of spontaneous reactions, Emily searches. She finds the line at the beginning of the book in a poem she missed the first time through. Emily makes it appear that she’s really into the endothermic and exothermic properties of chemical reactions, but she’s not—she’s contemplating Poem 17.

Who is the maid? A particularly beautiful flower? Springtime? But what is embarrassing about the spring? If the maid is a person, she is not a servant-maid. She is not a virgin overtaken by a man. No, this maid has the power.

At lunch, Emily goes back to her room, writes two poems, and sleeps until French, where she ignores Amber Atkins and pays attention to Madame Colche, wholly and devoutly, like she’s supposed to.

Emily Beam,
March 16, 1995

Emily Beam,
March 16, 1995

SOMETIMES, LIKE NOW, AS SHE’S RUNNING AROUND THE DIRT TRACK
during Fitness for Fun, the sound of a thousand bells—doorbells, alarm bells, school bells, church bells, sleigh bells—rings in Emily’s ears. She can make them play symphonies; she can make them play hymns: “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” She can make the bells peal out short little poems, the downbeats in sync with her footfalls: