And We Stay Read online

  Emily wasn’t sure what E.D. wrote with, so she tried to look it up in her book. It wasn’t in there, so she walked over to the library and looked it up in another book. Emily Dickinson wrote with both pen (it didn’t say what kind) and pencil and had a large pocket sewn into her favorite white dress for keeping stubs of lead and scraps of paper. The book showed a photograph of the dress displayed on a mannequin. As Emily Beam puts the gold tip of the pen (add that to the list!) to paper, she tastes apples, golden apples, though the words flowing out in black ink are bitter and musty.

  Seed

  The boy I loved

  had the veins of the ancient.

  He was eighteen, but also

  a hundred and eighty,

  Biblical and stubborn

  as stone lodged

  in the earth.

  When the seed

  spit its way to my womb,

  I wanted to farm it,

  watch over its growth,

  and I was the mother,

  my body the soil,

  and so it was my

  soil to keep.

  My soil to keep.

  And I would tend it

  myself, root out

  the weeds, rake

  the dirt back

  and forth, smooth

  the soil over and

  over and over and over

  with my two bare hands.

  Emily Beam, February 18, 1995

  A girl has only one life, not two. But when Emily Beam wakes on Sunday at one o’clock in the afternoon, which is later than she has ever slept, she swears to K.T. that she has been reincarnated.

  “Do you think I’m crazy?” Emily asks.

  “You haven’t even had your coffee yet, and you’ve lived two lives already?”

  “Okay, look,” Emily says, sitting back down on her bed. “I went for a walk last night, and something happened. Something really strange. Have you ever had déjà vu?”

  “Yeah, a lot, but then we found out that they were actually epileptic seizures. You know those pills I have to take every morning? That’s why I have to take them.”

  A voice on the other side of the door, Annabelle’s, calls out: “Emily Beam? Phone call.”

  “Shit,” Emily says, hopping up and grabbing her Harvard sweatshirt. “What if it’s my mom and she told Annabelle who she was?”

  “She’s not really your mom, remember? She’s your ‘pretend mom.’ ”

  “K.T., I swear you’re on crack.”

  From down the hall, Emily sees the receiver dangling by its twisted cord. “Annabelle?” she calls out. But Annabelle is gone. Pulling her sweatshirt over the T-shirt she slept in, Emily hurries to the phone and places the receiver to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  A girl’s voice she doesn’t recognize says her name.

  “This is she,” says Emily.

  “It’s Carey. Carey Wagoner.”

  Emily catches her breath.

  “Your mom gave me your number.”

  “Carey. Oh, my God.”

  “I’ve been thinking about you. I hope it’s okay that I called.”

  Emily hugs the receiver as close to her ear as she can. “Sure,” she tells Carey.

  “We didn’t get a chance to talk after …”

  Emily lets what doesn’t need to be said hang itself on an invisible wire. In the silence, she hears the creak of a door. Annabelle steps out of her room and gives Emily a little wave.

  “So how’s your new school?” Carey asks.

  “So far, so good. I’ve only been here for a month or so—”

  “Same here. I went back to school after Christmas break.”

  “Me too,” Emily says, watching Annabelle disappear into the bathroom.

  “Everybody’s being super nice to me,” says Carey. “It’s weird.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Even people who never spoke to me before.”

  “Well,” Emily says, “people can be that way.”

  “Do you like your roommate?”

  “Yeah, I really do. I got lucky for once.”

  “That’s good. You deserve it,” says Carey. “We don’t blame you, Emily. That’s why I called. Me and my mom and dad. We just started family therapy, and our homework is to tell somebody we know that we don’t blame them for what happened to Paul.”

  “And you picked me,” Emily says.

  “Is that all right?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Annabelle sweeps out of the bathroom, giving Emily a pat on the back as she passes. When the door to Room 12 opens, Emily hears a snatch of a song by Madonna.

  “My mom and dad picked Gigi, in case you were wondering,” Carey says.

  “Oh,” says Emily. “Okay.”

  “I was scared to call you,” says Carey.

  “You shouldn’t have been.”

  “I’d like to talk. If you have a minute.”

  Emily looks around the empty hall. Annabelle’s door is closed—all the doors are closed.

  “Hey, look, Carey. Let me call you back when I have some privacy.”

  “Sure. I guess you’ve still got the number.”

  “Yeah,” Emily says, “I’ve got it.”

  “I’ll be home for the rest of the day. I’m playing softball now, but we don’t practice on Sundays.”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, thanks,” Carey says.

  Emily sets the receiver quietly back onto its cradle without saying goodbye.

  During basketball season, which started in early November, Emily had cheered for both the boys’ and the girls’ home games. Carey was the only freshman starter on the varsity team, and because she and Emily were kind of, in a roundabout way, connected, during the first couple of home games, Emily cheered longer and louder when Carey made a basket. Paul thought it was sweet. He told Emily she’d make a great mother someday. And then, lo and behold, she was pregnant.

  On Thanksgiving morning, as Emily was putting on her bra, her breasts hurt. The bra seemed tighter, and the smell of pumpkin pie coming up from the kitchen, a smell Emily always looked forward to, made her nauseated. Before she could finish dressing, she threw up. During dinner at her grandparents’ house, Emily stuffed herself with mashed potatoes and gravy, the only things that tasted right. Her mother looked at her sideways when Emily refused a slice of pie.

  Emily’s period was three weeks late, a fact she kept to herself for another two weeks until Thursday, December 8, when she was too tired to go to cheerleading practice and asked Paul to take her home. Instead of taking her home, Paul drove Emily to a drugstore in the next county over to buy a home pregnancy test. She made Paul go in while she waited in the truck. When he came back, he had two.

  “We might as well make sure,” he said. He handed her the bag. Clearblue Easy and BabyConfirm.

  “They mash the words together,” Emily said. “Why?”

  “It sounds less serious that way.”

  “Less serious how?”

  “It’s like it’s saying, ‘Oh, goody! Having a baby’s going to make life so fun!’ ”

  Emily looked out the window.

  “Listen, Em, if it’s positive—”

  “It won’t be—”

  “But if it is—”

  “Paul, don’t worry.”

  “Do you love me?” he asked.

  Emily smiled. “Yes.”

  “Well, I love you, too,” Paul said.

  It was the first time he’d said it, the first time either one of them had. And it was true, wasn’t it? They did love each other. The four months they’d been together had been uncharted frontier. Emily had never felt for another human being what she felt for Paul. The two of them had so much in common. They thought the same wa
y about so many things.

  They had the same favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz. Paul liked the scarecrow and knew his song by heart, and for the whole of second grade, Emily had made her mother braid her hair like Dorothy’s. They were amazed to discover in each other a dislike for kids at school who played the victim, who blamed their screwups on other people or other things. Emily and Paul believed that there was a lot that was sad in the world, like how some boys had to join the army because they couldn’t afford to go to college. Neither one of them could get over the fact that if either of their families had settled in a different town or a different country, they would never have met each other. It was frightening, the fact that life was that random.

  “Say it again,” said Paul.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “I need to go home,” said Emily, staring out at the road in front of them, “so can we get this over with?”

  Paul nodded and turned the key in the ignition switch. He said, “McDonald’s is the closest bathroom, I guess.”

  “McDonald’s it is,” said Emily.

  They went in together, and Paul waited at a table in the corner. When Emily came out of the women’s room and told him, Paul blinked and swallowed.

  “What do you want?” Paul asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Emily. “Not a baby.”

  He smiled. “You’re joking.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Emily.

  “It’s not right, what you’re thinking.”

  “Who says?”

  “A lot of people. God.”

  “But you don’t believe in God anymore.”

  Paul looked stunned. “I never said that. When did I ever say that?”

  “You haven’t been to church in weeks.”

  “Because there’s some stuff I need to work through. On my own. Sunday mornings are, like, the only time when my family’s not around.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this here,” said Emily.

  “Okay, fine,” said Paul. “We’ll talk in the truck.” He pointed at Emily’s stomach. “Do you want anything to eat? You’re eating for two now.”

  Emily fake-laughed. The news made her want to vomit. “God, no,” she said. After Paul started to walk to the counter, she called him back. “Hey, Paul?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t tell anybody.”

  He stared at her.

  “Promise,” Emily said.

  “I promise,” he said. “Cross my heart and hope to die—”

  “Stick a needle in your eye,” said Emily, reaching out and touching his shoulder.

  Emily had decided even before the tiny blue line revealed itself that she would include her parents on any decision she might need to make. Whatever the outcome, she was going to go about this in the most responsible and right way she could—she was going to be a grown-up even though she felt like a child. Growing up, her grandmother had told her, was one step forward, two steps back, and there was nothing her grandmother had ever said to Emily that wasn’t true. Emily would tell her mother first, and let her mother tell her father, and she would brace herself for the wrath.

  The sun was setting when they left McDonald’s. Emily glanced at Paul, who was sucking on the straw from his milk shake. It almost made her sick, watching him. She knew then that they wouldn’t be together forever, though she could tell what he’d look like at age forty. His brown hair would be mostly gone. He’d be fuller in the face, his cheekbones less prominent. His ears would be big like an old man’s, and he’d probably wear glasses with little round wire rims.

  Paul had brought her back a cup of ice water, which Emily tapped against the window in time to a song on the radio. Maybe she and Paul were in a commercial or a movie. They were driving toward a gold sun and pink sky, driving into a painting. That was it—they were models for an artist they just couldn’t see.

  “So was it your mom?” K.T. asks Emily when she gets back to the room.

  Emily shakes her head. “A friend from home.”

  “You didn’t talk very long.”

  “She had to go.”

  “You want some coffee? I was just about to make some.”

  “That’d be great,” Emily says. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  K.T. nods. “But you have to tell me about your reincarnation. We’ll talk over coffee, okay?”

  Emily waits until K.T. walks down the hall to get water before she grabs her pillow and screams, Edvard Munch–style, into it. She then grabs her book bag and because her boots take too long to lace, she slips her feet into K.T.’s clogs and rushes downstairs and out the front door. On the quad, girls are coming and going like nuns to and from vespers, and, as she makes her way to the lieberry, she becomes one of them, strange prayers whispering to her from the hedges.

  The Bears put on their dancing shoes—

  The Monkeys bow and grin—

  The Tigers growl—the Lions prowl—

  And I sit with my pen.

  At the window of my mind—

  I see it clear as day—

  The girls aflutter in the streets—

  Petticoats astray.

  The charmers with their eely Snakes—

  Tongues flickering like fire—

  Make one girl scream—another faint—

  And me burn with desire

  For languages I do not speak—

  And landscapes of the heart—

  For boys with Secrets in their smiles—

  Their lips like works of Art.

  At her carrel by a window on the third floor, Emily records the poem that followed her to the lieberry, but she can’t decide what to title it. “Circus”? “Desire”? “The Traveling Show”? Maybe she should just give it a number. Numbers, numbers. Like words, they have so many uses. Emily tries to forget Paul’s phone number. She writes it over again and again, mixing the numbers up, replacing them with new ones. From her book bag she pulls out the poems of Emily Dickinson and opens to one of her favorites, Poem 185, which is short and sweet.

  “Faith” is a fine invention

  When Gentlemen can see—

  But Microscopes are prudent

  In an Emergency.

  So Dickinson had it figured out in 1860, 135 years ago. Religion was made up by humans to justify why bad things happened to good people. If God had given Emily Beam a sign that He was on her side, she would have believed in Him. But God didn’t go around tossing out clues like parade candy. Emily had had to turn instead to the likes of Clearblue Easy.

  After Paul dropped her off at home that Thursday evening, Emily skipped dinner. She was queasy from the smell of McDonald’s, and she wanted to get her thoughts together before she told her mother. She lay on her bed for over an hour, staring at the ceiling. When she came downstairs, Emily’s mother was in the laundry room alone.

  Emily walked straight in. “You’re going to be mad at me,” she said.

  “How mad?” her mother asked.

  “Very, very mad.”

  Her mother closed the lid of the washing machine and took a deep breath.

  “You’re pregnant.”

  Emily nodded.

  “Tell me it wasn’t under our watch.”

  “No, Mom. It happened at a party.”

  “Well, thank God for that, at least.”

  Emily rolled her eyes.

  “How long have you and Paul been having sex?”

  “It was the first time,” Emily lied.

  “Happy seventeenth birthday, my dear.”

  Emily looked down at her Mary Janes.

  “After your father and I figure out how to deal with this,” said Mrs. Beam, “you’re grounded for life.”

  How right her mother had been: She is grounded for life. Groun
ded to her past, her doubt, her desk. It is hard to explore dark feelings in the light of day. How many poems did the other Emily write by candlelight after everyone else had gone to bed? In 1860, darkness had its place and its purpose. But with darkness, there is light; otherwise, how would you know where the darkness begins? Way back, before electricity was ever invented, people worked in the daytime and rested at night, but in the modern world, things are so upside-down. People work during the night and sleep through the afternoon. They work two or three jobs to keep their families fed, or work eighteen-hour shifts to keep the demons at bay, work and work and work because the sun hurts their hearts. And for them, the darkness is just like the light—indistinguishable.

  Paul had not wanted to die. Emily will never understand it. She doesn’t have enough imagination; she doesn’t have enough ink. Darkness is patient. It lies in wait. It waited for Emily Dickinson, it waited for Paul Wagoner, and it will wait, too, for Emily Beam.

  With her trigonometry book spread open in the study carrel, Emily gazes down onto the quad. One Emily wishes K.T. would come find her; the other Emily wishes she wouldn’t. The lack of caffeine is giving her a headache. On a typical day, she’d have had at least four cups by now. Emily stands and stretches and wanders downstairs to find the water fountain.

  On another atypical day, a different library in a faraway state was the center of the national news. In the week that followed, the press roamed the halls of the school in search of commentary, in search of the definitive reason why Paul Wagoner did what he did. Stories about Paul were told and then printed. Stories of Emily Beam, too, found their way into the reports. A football mom had enjoyed watching her do back handsprings during games; someone else remembered that when Emily was seven, she had played the youngest von Trapp child in The Sound of Music back before the Grenfell County school system cut out its theater program.

  And then there was the Emily Beam of December 12.

  The papers reported that Emily’s AP English teacher had felt a chill on the back of her neck when she glanced over at the table and saw an empty place where Emily had been sitting. So Ms. Albright went looking. She came upon Emily and Paul in an eerie pocket of silence. Emily was on her knees. “He’s got a gun,” she told Ms. Albright in a croaky voice.