Read Online Miss Emily by Nuala O'Connor - Free Book Online Page A

Emily is showing me how to make quince jelly, and the apple perfume of the fruit fills the air until I feel I might swoon. “I’ve only met Maggie Maher once,” Miss Emily says. “I thought her ferocious and mighty.”
    â€œHuh. Maggie would love that. Every evening she sits around the place, bawling over Auntie Mary. She keens like a crone when she’d be better off staying quiet. Even Uncle Michael is fed up with her carrying on. She ruins every meal he tries to take, with her histrionics.”
    Miss Emily begins to mash the fruit. “I could write to Mrs.Boltwood and ask her to summon your cousin back to Connecticut.”
    â€œOh.” I look at her. “Would that be fair, miss? She’s mourning the same as myself. More so. She has no mother now.”
    â€œA little sparrow tells me she is needed. We will say nothing more of it.”
    Her decision quietens me. I wonder if it is fair on Uncle for Maggie to be sent back to Connecticut. But surely he would not mind so much? Maggie upsets the house, from dawn till dusk. It would most likely be a relief to him to have some peace. Miss Emily hands me the cheesecloth to flatten out and gives me a conspiratorial smile. Together we place two layers of the cloth over a pot and pour the fruit onto them. The way she takes the jelly making in hand reminds me of Mammy. I the pupil, she the teacher.
    â€œI’ve had no mother to speak a word to this three months, miss. I’m only realizing that Auntie Mary was as good as a mother to me, now that she’s gone.”
    â€œYes, a mother is one to whom you go when you have troubles, I suppose, to get them smoothed over. I rarely run to mine.” She wipes her hands briskly. “But I am here for you, Ada. You may speak all your sorrows to me.” I don’t know what to say to this; I am grateful for her care, but does she mean she never talks to her own mother? I have nothing to say, so I say nothing.

    The last golden leaf of autumn is hanging from a spider’s thread at my bedroom window. I sit on my bed and watch it reel and twirl, as surely as if there is life inside it. I am so entranced by the leaf ’s mad dance that I am startled to realize there is somebody standing in the room. I turn to see my cousin peering down at me.
    â€œMaggie! There you are—I didn’t hear you knock.”
    â€œThat’s because I didn’t knock,” she says. “This is my father’s house. My house. I don’t have to knock.” She gives me her bossiest look. “I’m going back to Connecticut. But before I leave, you’ll have to find somewhere else to live.”
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    â€œYou heard me, Ada. Daddy is a widower now, and I can’t have the two of you alone here together. It’s not right. Father Sullivan raised the matter with me after the funeral.”
    Maggie is not looking at me; rather she glares over my head and out the window. She wears a Florence bonnet trimmed with electric blue ribbon that surely once belonged to Mrs. Boltwood and a smart wool cape. It’s far from Slievenamon she is in her rigout; imagine her tripping down the mountain to Fethard with those ribbons flying.
    I stand up to face her. “Your mother would have wanted me to stay and take care of Uncle Michael.”
    She snorts. “Take care of him? And you kowtowing to that Emily Dickinson with every hour that God sends.”
    â€œI work for the Dickinsons, Maggie, the same as you work for the Boltwoods. And I do my bit here.”
    â€œThat pair of auld ghouls. And their two daughters, with neither chick nor child between them and not a hope of it either.”
    I don’t bother to point out that she is a spinster the same as the Misses Dickinson.
    I feel homesick; I want Mammy and the sweet repose of home. I look straight at Maggie. “Where will I go?” I ask.
    â€œHow am I to know? You’ll not stay under this