I knew that she thought much less of me than I thought of her. Emily felt better sitting in front of her typewriter than in that bar, and plunged into her paper on Puritanism. The Puritans were dissatisfied in England and the English Church was dissatisfied with them. America was to be their Holy Kingdom. But because of the schizophrenic quality of their tenets, the Puritans worked feverishly without hope. (Or should that be doubled-edged quality? and worked fervently?) Hopelessness, the riverbed of the American drive for material wealth. Hopelessness was at the bottom of everything. Sin was inevitable. No one ever knew if they were of the elect. In a new world, one without tradition or order, the Puritan work ethic could be the driving force for the new settlers, throwing them into a frenzy. How to show their goodness, their saintliness? It follows that paranoia and materialism walk hand in hand (does that really follow?). And fame will become the visible proof of God’s love or approval.
Professor Wilson would want her to back up these statements with proof. Can anything be proved? Maybe all you can do is pretend you don’t have to. Emily Dickinson turned away from that society, shut herself off from it. She wasn’t trying to be seen to be doing good. She was either a lesbian or in love with a married man. And then she retired. Dickinson used that word somewhere. “Retire…to withdraw from action or danger.” I wish I’d been a transcendentalist. She pictured a cottage in the country. Behind it was a forest, a small animal darting around the trees. This kind of image requires sun, and it was sunny where the giant trees weren’t blocking it. There was a stream too, and sometimes she’d see herself in a large flowered bonnet, wading in the water. There’d be a gruff voice or two in the background. She wouldn’t be entirely alone. Keith rang the buzzer; it was midnight. He was wearing black shades and a leather band around his wrist. Emily threw on her army pants and fervently hoped that the patch wouldn’t descend during the night. They went out. What have you been doing? Why are you in such a crummy mood? Do you want to have a meal or not? Let’s go back to your place. I like it here. I don’t know. I think it’s kind of weird this way. We’re a hodge-podge. Oh, Emily, he whispered into her ear, we’re both too weird, that’s all. He bit her on the neck, and the cabdriver took them back to her place. He wouldn’t tell her if he was in love with anyone else, and besides, he said, why should it matter. He told her she had beautiful breasts and fell asleep.
A naive young girl is caught by the gleam of virility; what she always wants is for her lover to represent the essence of manhood.
She is at a party and she is the only girl. She assumes there are other girls somewhere, but she cannot see them. There are birthday decorations on the ceiling and walls; she is fourteen. The boys call her by another name. She is not Emily. They ask her if she wants to do it and she says yes. They tie her hands behind her, just in case, one says, and in the corner of this basement, each boy fucks her.
She slept and felt she hadn’t, woke, saw Keith on the floor, feel back to sleep as if it were her lover. When they did wake up he played another tape for her and asked her what she thought. She didn’t know. It was all right. His eyes were big and black, his lower lip fuller than his upper lip. It’s okay, she said again. He stood and walked to the bathroom at the edge of her small room and stretched. For a moment she thought he did that deliberately, to entice her. But she wasn’t, and whatever she did feel for him wasn’t what he or Christine thought. She had no desire for him. The idea itself infuriated her and she hated Christine for thinking it. He pulled his T-shirt down, over his head, and with his head covered she stared at his nipples, which were brown and wide with a few black hairs growing from them. His strong arms didn’t fit his image of waste, decay, and his skin was so pale, she thought of Hilda. So pale and unblemished it appeared indifferent to pain, unused to needles. The other guy was getting more attention than he was. It’s the singer-not-the-song kind of discussion. Emily sat coiled up on her skinny bed, her arms wrapped around her, then he left.
This morbid daydreaming was of a kind to assuage the narcissism of the young girl who feels life inadequate and fears to face the realities of existence.
Christine decided that if Emily escaped less into dreams, into literature, and even history, she might have a more active and glamorous life. Christine had pored over the pages of Vogue well enough to know what was right and wrong with her own face. And she had fashioned herself, had even, since a child, planned her dreams so as not to be disappointed. I was always efficient, she thought. The water was boiling for tea and she thought about Emily and why Emily hadn’t called yesterday and it was almost noon and still no call today. She phoned her. Emily was asleep but said she wasn’t. She said she was only thinking. Emily didn’t like to be caught in the act. Christine pulled her robe to her, put an egg up to boil, opened a book. Merleau-Ponty: “Consciousness always exists in a situation.” It took a lot of effort not to think about Emily and what Emily might be thinking about her. They were so different from each other.
Christine threw aside bad thoughts and imagined herself in a neutral space where she was safe. Her long thin body needed a lot of space, a design of her own. She knew how to take care of herself. Her mother had insisted she learn all the womanly skills, had taught her them in fact with an urgency that Christine still felt. She would always be able to support herself, she told herself. If a man wouldn’t marry her. This last thought was not enunciated, it was a breath that was not breathed. She remembered watching Queen for a Day and, feeling embarrassed for the women, crying when the one she thought should win didn’t. Often they were married women with disabled husbands, otherwise they wouldn’t have been on the show. Emily still hadn’t called her back. Maybe she was angry at her about what she said about Keith. Emily didn’t know anything about men. On the other hand she said she didn’t care. Christine didn’t want to have another fight with Emily, after which she withdrew and Christine felt as rejected as she did now. The egg was too soft; she liked her eggs just right and didn’t time them. Christine stared at the book, then the phone. It might become animated through her need. She wished she could ask Emily if she thought there was a difference between need and desire, but maybe later. Christine threw down the philosophy book and picked up Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, which, at any point, could bring her to tears.
That was what was wrong; I needed Zaza.
Now Emily hated her paper, her poems. She could hear Edith outside the door, there was a sound in those movements that meant she might want company, but Emily couldn’t provide it. If she could rouse herself she’d go see a double feature, anything. Suddenly she jumped off the bed and resolutely moved to her typewriter, the one that her mother had given her when she was thirteen. You’re the one with talent, her mother had said, handing over the machine she had hoped to write her own novel on. Yet Emily had never been eager to show her mother what she came up with on that machine and Emily’s mother felt overlooked, slighted. Emily started writing a story in the first person. I am almost as angry with my girlfriend as I am with my boyfriend and I don’t know why. I don’t know why I like Keith when he doesn’t like me. She crossed that out. He doesn’t say he likes me but seems to like me. I want this story to be about independence and dependence. Keith and Christine will be the central characters and the story will revolve around their demands on me, Emily, and how Emily thinks she doesn’t need or want them, but somehow is completely entangled with them. Against my will, she wrote. She thought she’d have to disguise the characters completely so that Keith and Christine wouldn’t recognize themselves, but the story would be mangled if she did, and then what was the point. It seemed like another demand they were making of her.