What a House Can Hold by Laura Gill

People go to Emily Dickinson’s house for all kinds of reasons, most of which include a desire to see the room where she famously wrote poems one might want to write someday. Other people go because they are tourists, driving around Massachusetts, and looking for a place to spend the afternoon. Others might happen upon it, not expecting much and quite possibly forgetting who Emily Dickinson was, save for the few facts from high school; they walk in, and they then leave with a magnet with Dickinson’s face on it.

When I went, I was going to see B. 

A visit to Emily Dickinson’s house is not romantic, relaxing, or private, but that’s how we liked our encounters to be; neither of us was interested in the illicit components of our affair, and even the word “affair” felt disconnected from what was happening. We had been close friends and were still. And yet: we were married to other people when we met at the Dickinson house. And we were married to other people as we spent every day emailing one another. And we were married to other people when we kissed the first time, standing in a parking lot in the woods. And so, we were engaging in an affair when we pulled open the screen door and entered Emily Dickinson’s house together.

Immediately upon entering, a woman asked us just what exactly we were doing there. We thought it was obvious, we wanted a tour, but quickly it became clear that we’d done something wrong: did she know about us? Her questions kept coming: how much time did we have? Were we planning on the twelve o’clock tour? She continued to talk. She didn’t know if there would be enough time to get us through the line for the tour going out at noon. There were maybe five people in line, but we acquiesced. We said it was no problem, we’d come back in an hour. Our laissez-faire attitude didn’t seem to help the matter; instead, it seemed to make her upset. She looked at us. She looked at the line. She said, “that should do.” 

We used the hour to walk to Dickinson’s grave. It was a warm, humid day, with bits of sun and dark clouds. The graveyard was across from a small shut-down strip mall, and it wasn’t well-kept; the grass was overgrown and the headstones were covered in mold. 

We did not immediately spot Dickinson’s grave. It started to rain, and we walked back toward a huge tree. Then, one of us spotted the site—a grave covered in items: pens, paper, hair elastics, flowers, and a lemon. It seemed ridiculous we hadn’t seen it when we’d passed it: it was so obvious. 

I placed a pencil on top, and took as many photographs as I could of the rain-soaked items. In my favorite photo, the lemon is glistening above the grave. What you can’t see is bugs grabbing my ankles. B.’s hand on my back. The sun piercing through the clouds. 

The rain stuck to our clothes which stuck to our skin, and it started to become warm. We left the graveyard and made our way back when we were stopped in our tracks. A huge vulture was perched on the roof of a house. I swore it was fake, but as we got closer, I saw its head move. We nearly shuddered. It wasn’t simply the largess of the bird but its contrast with the house. It might have made sense to see such a bird on an abandoned castle or a cathedral, but on a one story white house with yellow trim, it seemed out of place. It was a stranger. It was incoherent. It was not home. 

***

Later that night, B. would look up what vultures symbolize: rebirth, new beginnings, and  resourcefulness. The vulture has an uncanny ability to locate death and feed itself with it. They ask you to rid yourself of what’s not giving you life, to eat what is eating away at you. 

***

We made our way back to Emily Dickinson’s house, where we met Steve, our serious and sentimental tour guide. His mouth quivered with every sentence, and he spoke of Dickinson as a long lost friend rather than a famous poet he’d never met. We learned quickly from Steve what we were not allowed do, and if Emily Dickinson’s house is full anything, it is full of information about what you cannot do. You cannot take photographs inside; you cannot touch any furniture; you cannot wander on your own; when you enter the library, you can hold what might have been her pressed flowers, but you cannot really see the flowers because they are pressed between plastic and therefore feel like menus and so their fragility is lost—their beauty is encased in a way you cannot access; you cannot go into her room, the famous room where she was said to stay for days, writing letters and poetry—you cannot walk on its floorboards; you cannot get close enough to her dress to make out the threads holding it together, and you cannot see a single speck of dust or a handprint. You cannot. 

***

People learn about Dickinson’s poetry, and then they learn about what Dickinson did not do—socialize often, have children, or get married. The lore that surrounds Dickinson mostly encompasses her increased anxiety and depression in her later years. Many want to know why: why did she turn away not just from society, but even her own family? She was not a woman who never had connection, after all—she had friends, love interests, acquaintances, and family who she deeply loved. Why did she choose to hide away from them in the room at the top of the stairs? Couldn’t she have tried harder to connect? 

Most of the theories surround various deaths in Dickinson’s life—her nephew’s, her father’s, her mother’s—and if not deaths, departures—friends and love interests both. Others point to mental illness—a depression she didn’t have the tools to combat. 

I wonder if part of what stuns people is the fact that she did not actually depart. She did not walk away. She did not escape. She hunkered down in her house. She took to her room with a fierce devotion; she protected it like a child. She encased herself in her space; she protected herself with herself. 

When Dickinson died, her sister-in-law and friend, Susan Gilbert, wrote about two kinds of mourning. She not only mourned her death, but also mourned “afresh the fact that she screen(ed) herself from close acquaintance.” And isn’t that always the way when one chooses to depart: we can’t help but wonder why they went if they were so loved and loved, too: why couldn’t they bear a certain closeness? 

***

During that summer, I was having a harder and harder time bearing closeness from anyone but B. Friends—both those who knew what I was going through and those who did not—tried to reach out and often, I deflected. I didn’t want to talk to them about it because when I did, a feeling would surface in my chest, one I could neither breathe through nor get rid of—I felt I was carrying a ghost inside me. It lurked in between my belly button and my chest. When asked, “but what are you going to do?” it would grow. When I said, “I don’t know,” it would hold its own breath, thereby constricting mine. “I can’t talk about it.” “I don’t want to talk about it.” These were the words I used, but they did not do justice to the ghost. Perhaps I should have been more clear that the body I was carrying was no longer my own—the me that had once had my hair, my legs, my teeth, and my toes was not the same me any longer.  

***

Usually when you see a vulture, it is eating carrion in middle of the road. Often, it does not seem phased by the cars passing by. It takes its time to grab the sinew, guts, and muscles. It eats its way to the bone. 

***

Throughout the tour, B. and I tried hard not to laugh. At points, Steve’s intensity was hard to take seriously. When we got to the part where Dickinson’s poetry was being dissected using wooden blocks, it was particularly hard not to smile towards one another. Here was one of the greatest poet’s work being played with. It felt like a joke falling flat, except that it was of course not a joke but an earnest attempt to engage tourists. One can’t blame them for trying, but one can’t help but feeling sad, not simply for Dickinson but for those whose only introduction to her work will be this: a mostly untouchable house, with one playroom full of em-dashes. 

Perhaps we didn’t simply laugh because it was funny but because we were uncomfortable. To that point, we hadn’t spent ample amounts of time in one another’s presence, at least not out in “the real world.” We’d met at a low-residency graduate program, which was a bit like camp, and in retrospect, even then, we didn’t identify our feelings for one another until we’d almost graduated, so there wasn’t much of “the real world” to navigate. After that, most of our interactions were on email or the phone, and so this type of escape was somewhat new to us, and likely to most people: who goes to an author’s house for a rendezvous? 

Often, when we did speak, we used our time to belabor our situation: ever changing and ever the same. We couldn’t stop being in one another’s lives, hard as we tried, and yet we were attached to the lives we had still, and so we were stuck, or so we believed ourselves to be, encased a new house of our own making, full of things we could not do. 

***

The tour concluded with a second house tour. At the end of our time in Dickinson’s house, we were lead to Dickinson’s brother Austin’s house, The Evergreens, and it was there that we learned about the years’ long affair Austin had with Mabel Loomis Todd, who would go on to make Dickinson famous, likely to Dickinson’s dismay—not simply because Dickinson did not choose to publish much of her work but also because the affair disgusted her. Austin’s wife, Susan Gilbert, was a dear friend of hers, and she was so disturbed by Austin’s actions that she stopped going over to The Evergreens to visit her brother or Susan Gilbert, lest it appear that she was supporting the affair. 

Austin’s house was messier. Darker. One or two paintings were on the floor resting against the wall. The thread was giving way on the couches, and there was ballooning paint in the ceilings. One could imagine feet on the floorboards, and wine spilled on the carpet. One could see children with cookie crumbs falling out of their mouths and perhaps a dog or two running up and down the stairs. It felt like a place that had accepted its decay while just yards away, Dickinson’s house was seeped in preservation, not necessarily of her work but of her desire to close herself off. I felt myself in both states at once: accepting of the inevitability of loss and full of a desire to ward it off.  

***

The vulture does not pause before its food, considering whether or not to eat. 

***

When the tour was over, we went for lunch. Our clothes were still wet from the rain, and the bar’s AC was turned high. Shivering, we joked about Steve and his stiffness. We talked about the vulture. Like two people who had just shared a long trip together, we went back through the entire thing, reminiscing on the experience. 

By the time we went back towards the house, the sky was turning dark, and we made our way into B,’s car. Behind us, Dickinson’s house stood tall. I could see it in the rearview mirror as his hands made their way to my thighs and chest, and I grabbed a hold of the back of his head. We held one another’s bodies over the console and rain hit the windshield. 

In my car, a few feet ahead, there was a mouse avoiding a mousetrap. I’d seen the mouse a few days earlier. It had popped up on the floor below the passenger seat. I thought I’d seen something out of the corner of my eye a few days prior, so when it appeared, I was somewhat relieved, if also terrified. I slammed on the brakes and pulled over on the side of the road. I got out of the car, and opened all the doors. I turned the radio up, figuring it would be scared and run out of the car and into the woods. I said to myself that it was more afraid of me than I was of it, but I didn’t really believe it. 

After that, I put traps all around the car, but the mouse avoided them. When I drove up to Dickinson’s house, the mouse reappeared. This time, it was more bold. It crawled up and onto the seat. To stay calm, I told myself it wouldn’t crawl over and onto me. Eventually, it went away. 

When I got to Dickinson’s house, B. and I put a mousetrap in the bag with scone crumbs. I didn’t want to kill the mouse, but I also never wanted to see it again. Before I left to drive home, I checked the bag with the trap, and it was empty. I decided to drive a different way. I followed back roads that led me past farms and barns. Twenty minutes in, I checked my rearview mirror, and the mouse was there: hopping over the seats in the back, mocking me with its real, boundless life. 

Laura Gill is a writer, photographer, and editor. Her essays have appeared in Agni, Electric Literature, The Carolina Quarterly, and Entropy, amongst others. She edits nonfiction for Hobart.