* * *
“Emma, sit up straight. Pay attention to your posture. It’s not attractive for a young woman to slouch.”
Emma picked at the peas on her plate with her fork. Sunday lunches—the large meal of the day after church—could be torture. “I’m not slouching, Mother. I simply bent over to get to my peas.”
“Your mother is right, Emma,” her father said. “Posture is everything . . . appearance and presentation, my dear.”
It had been two months since she’d met Kurt in Vermont, and she could think of nothing else but the lean young man who occupied her dreams. School’s coming, the end of the New England summer, Sunday mornings at the red sandstone Episcopal Church, meant nothing to her, as did the few other boys who filled her days.
Her father had purchased the farm near Lee, south of Pittsfield, when Emma was five. A neighbor in Boston had teased her about the move to the country, saying, “The Indians will get you if you don’t watch out,” and for weeks she feared being alone in the vast, empty yard, or sleeping with the windows open in her second-floor bedroom.
Her mother, Helen, ate her lunch in mannered movements while stretching as little as possible, arms moving like a mechanized toy. She hadn’t changed after church, still wearing the somber black dress accented by a high satin neck that wrapped almost to her chin. The only accessories she allowed herself were a gray sash that fell from her waist along the length of the gown to her calves and a diamond-cluster stickpin attached to the bodice for the utilitarian use of holding down her hat.
Her father, George, ate in a more relaxed manner in his brown suit, shirt with rounded collars, and striped bow tie; but, much to Emma’s irritation, he bowed to Helen’s wishes and parroted her feelings except, it seemed, in one past instance: the decision to move from Boston to the fifty-year-old farmhouse near Lee. That came about from the sale of the Lewis Tea Company, which he had inherited fifteen years earlier from his father. When it came to buying the property he had not succumbed to his wife’s pleas or tears. “I’m finished with Boston,” he told her. “I want to raise horses and live a life unfettered by crowds and worries. In Lee, we can think—we can be ourselves.”
Helen rang the small silver bell beside her. Matilda, a middle-aged domestic from Lee who cooked and cleaned for the family on weekends, hurried to the table. In the still spry but prematurely gray-haired Matilda, Emma found an ally—a woman, it seemed, who appreciated mistakes, the follies, joys, and fullness of life.
“Please clear the table, Matilda,” her mother ordered. “We have an appointment this afternoon we must meet.”
“I’m not through with my dessert,” her father said with a bite of wild-blueberry pie rolling in his mouth.
Helen shook her head. “You know better than to talk with your mouth full. Hurry up . . . we mustn’t keep Mr. French waiting.”
Emma placed her fork on her plate and looked toward the open dining room window. The day, even though it was late August, had the look of fall. A dense overcast had rolled in from the west, covering the hilltops and coating the still-green grass with a layer of mist. The early morning breeze had dissipated, and the curtains lay limp with humidity against the white window frames. Charis, the Lewises’ tabby cat, had squeezed between the sheers and the screen, appearing as a diaphanous shadow as he surveyed the side yard for mice and squirrels.
Emma was in no mood for an afternoon trip, or company, especially a visit to Mr. French, a man she didn’t know. “Must I go? I have reading to do for the upcoming year.” She had no intention of studying; in fact, she was screwing up her courage to write a letter to Kurt after receiving his address from Charlene.
“Of course, you must go.” Her mother placed her folded hands on the table and stiffened her back. “One does not refuse an offer from Mr. Daniel Chester French, the great sculptor.”
“Who?” Emma asked.
Matilda winked at her from the other side of the table and nodded as if to say, pay attention to your mother.
“The world-renowned sculptor of the American patriot of Concord, the man who honored John Harvard at his own college, the artist who has brought so many famous faces of the past to life.”
“What an honor,” Matilda said, continuing her almost private discourse with Emma. “I think a young lady would be thrilled to meet such a famous man.”
Helen sniffed and said, “Quite right, Matilda. You do have a good head on your shoulders.”
George finished his pie and set the plate aside so Matilda could take it away. “Allow me to attend to myself and the carriage horses.”
Following Helen’s lead, they all rose from the table.
As Emma started for the stairs to get her hat, Matilda whispered, “Mr. French’s a famous man, known about these parts for years. Maybe you’ll learn something.”
“What can I learn?” Emma replied. “I’d rather stay home. Mother’s always been attracted to money and fame.”
“Shoo. It’ll be good for you to get out of the house and stop pining over that boy. It’s not healthy . . . you’ll find out when you get older.”
“All right,” she said, ascending the stairs, but her mind was far away from Mr. Daniel Chester French.
* * *
Secretly, her father had encouraged Emma to draw when she had displayed an early interest; not so her mother, who found a woman’s artistic desires to be distasteful. “One can never attract a worthwhile husband through such pursuits,” she had admonished George one time
