After purchasing aJane Eyreumbrella in the museum shop, I meander through the graveyard paths. The lichen-covered gravestones are long, some standing upright, some leaning or toppled along the ground. But all are uneven, many sunken in the rows framed by winding dirt paths. I’ve heard there are between twenty and sixty thousand bodies in the grounds. With that many, the headstone can’t be guaranteed to label the body underneath. I’m humbled, wrapping my mind around all these buried bodies. After death, each Brontë was carried through here to the St. Michael’s Church crypt. A stone marks the graveyard gate through which they passed.
Rain falls lightly on the stones around me, and as I sit on a damp, rough stone bench, I think about all the nineteenth-century widows like me visiting their husbands’ graves here.They would have worn black, a jet necklace protecting a lock of his hair if they could afford it. Of course, these women would all be dead now, lost in the crowd of bones under my feet. In my imagination, I tip my hat to them all.
After visiting the monument in the church over the Brontë family crypt, I walk back through the village to the Black Bull. It’s late afternoon, and I order a kidney pie, laden with gravy and rosemary and covered in a buttery potato crust. When I was expecting Heathcliff, I could eat an entire pie. I do so now without the pregnancy heartburn, fueling up for the long hike I have tomorrow.
27
After breakfast, I stock my backpack with a sandwich, snacks, and water. I don black leggings, sturdy hiking boots, and a few layers, including a jacket for the moor winds. I still wear my fingerprint and jet necklaces. I carry the bird urn in my bag.
As I set out from Haworth for the trail, I think of the Brontë sisters themselves and how many times they walked these paths for peace, exercise, or to visit a neighbor. A woman’s love of solitary walking could be controversial in the nineteenth century. Hetty Sorrel and Tess d’Urberville bumped into their seducers while strolling about alone. Lizzie Bennet’s walking habits sparked Caroline Bingley’s snark. Why did I never take up the scandalous practice of walking solo? Philip and I used to like to run outside or hike upstate during the peak of autumn. But I never actually explored extensively on my own.
I pass the Parsonage Museum, move through the graveyard and a kissing gate, and head for the trail to Top Withens. I feel a strong pull for solitude. Noise and parenting and texts, evengood conversation, have made it impossible for me to hear my own heart’s needs. If I’d been widowed in the nineteenth century, without sympathy texts from friends and Grubhub deliveries and online widow blogs, I know I would have done a lot of pie baking and walking to get through the day. As I stride briskly, mindful of the path, I’m grateful I can wear leggings and hiking boots rather than stockings and layers of petticoat and lung-crunching corsets.
Before long, I reach the Penistone Hill marker. The midmorning sun breaks through the clouds, and in spite of the wind, I’m sweating by the time I make it down the soft, grassy paths, then onto rougher ones to the Brontë waterfall. There are only a few people out here, and I sit on a rock to eat a protein bar and drink from my water thermos. I thought the trek would be peaceful, but something strums uncomfortably inside me. Part of me wants to turn back—I mean, Heathcliff might need me. I should have called Ms. Fernsby this morning. He could have taken a Batman leap off the second-floor window.
I inhale, then let out my breath slowly.
I’m resisting.
I watch the water spilling over the wide, steplike rocks; the rising sun hits the surface in gold glints. Charlotte wrote about walking around these falls with her Irish curate husband. We know she felt deeply. Her letters to Héger reveal her inner passionate nature. In her brief remaining life after losing her siblings, I wonder if she felt fear. That swallowing grief-fear that never goes away, but only ebbs and flows, unpredictable and unchecked.
Chloe told me once that fear should be one of the seven deadly sins. I’m scared to be alone with my grief in this place. I want to walk back to the village and sit in one of those cozy tearooms listening to conversations around me as I sip a steaming chamomile. Or I could go to the Black Bull pub, sip a glassof wine, and continue readingWuthering Heights; I can call to check in on Heathcliff. In fact, I should check on him. All these options would qualify as self-care and good parenting.
But I know that’s all giving in to my fear.
I keep going.
Soon I’m on a narrow path in the moors. I hiked this with Samantha (before the pantry incident), but never alone. Gorgeous pink foxglove blooms everywhere, near every craggy rock, fence, and stone enclosure wall. I’ve heard somewhere that this path was once a packhorse trail for taking supplies to these hard-to-reach homes. The landscape is beautiful but isolated, thick with mud and slippery rock edges, good for twisting ankles. The climb is arduous, nearly entirely uphill and steep, and I’m out of breath as I continue up the approximate mile between Brontë Falls and Top Withens. Because I was pregnant during my last trip here, I haven’t hiked this trail in almost twenty years. It’s a little more rugged than I remember. (Thank you, middle age.)
As crumbling Top Withens comes into view, I stop, fear strumming through my chest. I remember following Philip here in my dream. I feel fresh that pain of separation, where he’s just beyond my fingertips.
I buckle over, my hands heavy on my knees. I can’t stand this—where one stupid, superstitious part of me thinks I can reach him. It’s why I wanted something from that boozy séance. But it’s all a delusion. At the end of every day for the rest of my life, I’ll be alone, and I must—Ihaveto accept that.
I straighten, breathe deeply, and step forward.
This is my labyrinth, and I’ll keep walking.
I approach the house, reading The Brontë Society plaque bolted on the stone wall in 1964. Although no one knows for certain this was the farmhouse Emily had in mind for Wuthering Heights, Charlotte’s lifelong friend Ellen Nussey surmised that it was. Many scholars agree on the possibility. But theconnections are inconsistent and slippery. Top Withens certainly doesn’t match all of Emily’s Wuthering Heights architectural descriptions. For me, though, now, it works, and I choose to see this place as the scene of destabilizing heartbreak.
I wander around the towering stone wall to the crumbling west foundations. I step through one of the old stone windows and make my way into the roofless, grassy interior. There are the ruins of the old stone fireplaces, the space for the vaulted cellar. I imagine families living here over the centuries—fires roaring in the hearth; potatoes, parsnips, and turnips stored in the cellar. Now the harsh moor winds blow through the open spaces, and I search to find a sheltered spot. I sit on a stony piece jutting out from a wall and remain entirely still.
I close my eyes, inhaling, listening to nothing but the wind. I know how the sisters imagined remarkable things in these moors. Through the wind, Jane heard Mr. Rochester calling for her. Catherine, child of the moors, transferred her oneness with the landscape to her lover: “IamHeathcliff.” And she dreamed if she died, she’d be cast out of heaven and tossed back to this place she so ardently longed for.
I sit still, and I breathe.
Lizzie, we need to talk.
We had needed to talk. He wanted to talk about Mirabel and her secret. She dreaded the world knowing she wasn’t perfect. Philip wouldn’t have minded her peccadillo. But I know he hurt knowing she never told him who his actual father was. He had wanted me to help him walk forward with this new information. I would have held his hand, and I would have helped him help his mother.
Suddenly, I sense Philip, not supernaturally, but as a part of me I still carry. We do need to talk. Silently, I tell him about the grief, how sometimes it feels like a cancer eating away at me inside. How Heathcliff and my coffee and Ms. Fernsby’sscones and crepes are the only things getting me out of bed in the morning. How my colleagues bicker like they’re never going to die, but they will, and their nemesis from another department will dance on their grave. I tell him the decades ahead seem bleak, that I want to love, but I feel like I’m betraying him. That I wear black clothes and pieces of his hair around my neck and carry his urn because Mom isn’t here to help me forward. That I’m worried that if I don’t do these things, my grief isn’t real and our love will fade away. Or it will overwhelm me altogether.
I sit in the silence. The wind blows cold on my tears.
I know his reply.
Lizzie, we need to talk.
He’s proud of me beyond words. Just getting out of bed at all is a victory. He tells me there’s no cancer; it’s festering grief and gradually, day by day, I’ll feel more joy and the sting won’t be so sharp. He doesn’t want my decades to be bleak, and even though remarkable Nora isn’t here anymore, I have her strength and can carry on with her steel and grit. He wants me to channel my pluck, to stay determined to move forward and not back. He wants me to ease away from the black clothes unless I genuinely like them as a glam Audrey Hepburn style. He lets me know he’ll be just fine if I leave his ashes and hair in my jewelry box because it won’t mean I love him any less. He tells me my colleagues are jackasses and to use their pettiness and his death to learn how to live a better life. He tells me all these things and ends with a sincere wish that I try to love again and it’s okay if it’s Henry. He tells me I can love anyone who makes me happy because if I’m happy then he’s at peace.
