Faithful (18 page)

“Why, Caleb. I’m correct, am I not? It’s Caleb?” I smoothed my skirt and gave the familiar soldier my prettiest smile. “What can I do for you today?”

“Can’t go alone into the woods, missy.” He marched up and planted himself between me and the woods above.

My smile became fixed. “Why not?”

Caleb drew himself up. He was a self-important little man. I’d had enough of self-important little men. “It’s very dangerous to be on your own in the woods.”

“Is it a rule?” I asked, all sweetness.

“Hey?” He seemed surprised.

“A rule. You know, like running near the springs.”

He seemed put out. “Not precisely.”

“Well, then.” I tugged the shawl tight about my shoulders and pushed past him and continued up the path. My words came out staccato. “I’ll go where I please.” Fearful woods and wildlife or not, I was sick and tired of being ordered about. Papa, Graybull, Grandpapa—they kept secrets from me, treated me like property, made all the decisions in my life, and I’d had enough.

His call from behind me reeked of frustration. “Missy, I cain’t be responsible.”

I kept walking. “Then don’t be,” I stopped and looked back at him. “Oh!” I pointed over his shoulder at a group of tourists. “Are they defacing the rocks?” They weren’t, of course, but I suspected he would follow me and I wanted rid of him.

He turned, confused. “Hey!” he called down to them. Defacing rocks needed his attention more than the prospect of a girl walking alone. He twisted back to me, “Don’t you go off, missy!” he yelled, then he turned and ran down the hill shouting after the tourists, “Hey! Hey!”

I swept on, more determined to assert my independence than to avoid an unnamed threat.

The day was clear following a cool night. I climbed higher up the hill, into the trees. The path skirted the edges of the springs and I glimpsed the hot-spring terraces through the pines as I walked. Even in the trees the ground was white with sinter; there were abandoned and lesser springs everywhere. The smell of pine mingled with the smell of sulphur and the whole of it was quiet.

I came out on an overlook suddenly, and immediately stepped back, my stomach lurching with the vertigo. I touched the trunk of a nearby pine to steady myself as I looked across the view and not down. Anything but down. I kept a safe distance from the edge and kept my hand on the tree, my fingers on the rough, solid bark.

The sky went on forever, over the peaks, over the distant snowcaps, and it rolled up and over me into a sharp robin’s-egg blue hung with clouds like piled foam. I’d been so tied up in the cottage that this was the first expedition walk I’d taken in Yellowstone alone in the two weeks we’d been here. I took a deep breath and it was like inhaling that blue, the air was so clean, the pine smell pungent and tarry.

I took Mama’s letter from my pocket. I didn’t need to open it. I knew it by heart.

I stuffed the letter back into my pocket, buried it deep. I believed Mama was alive. She’d been searching for someone, and when she came up empty in Newport, she had set off to find them. Papa had known of her search; he had this information about Mama, and had lied to me. Papa had lied to me so many times in the past year that his lies were a web of confusion.

“Don’t let go . . . nothing is more powerful than love.” Tom roared back into my mind and I gripped the trunk of the pine tighter. Thank you, Mama, for that sage advice. I’d try to follow it the next time I met someone I liked, since I’d so utterly mucked up this one.

A twig snapped and I heard something grunt behind me. I froze. Fear sucked the strength from me. All other thoughts vanished and were replaced by the memory of the bear swinging its head back and forth, back and forth. I turned in barely perceptible movements, my throat tight, not daring to breathe. I was ready to fall to the ground and lie there as still as death.

It was a doe, a tiny fawn at her side, two sets of brown eyes huge with fear, mirroring mine.

Eyes of a doe, in the strangled moment of death, in a painting hanging on the wall of a house on the other side of the continent, a painting that hung above my desperate mother while she bled onto white silk.

I cried out, and at the sound of my cry the doe coughed, then turned and leapt across the clearing behind, to the edge of a small hot spring that bubbled a sickly yellow, the sinter around it fragile like ice in a melting pond. And before I could breathe, the doe stumbled onto the sinter, which cracked and gaped, and she dropped into the boiling water like a rock, dying before she could finish her scream of pain.

Both the fawn and I watched this happen, frozen, panting. The fawn bleated once, then turned and leapt into the woods.

I turned and vomited into the leaves.

My fault. All my fault.

I vomited again, trying not to look at what remained of the doe. I heard the fawn bleating from somewhere in the woods. Both of us were lost, alone and bewildered.

July 5, 1904

“MARGARET?”

My heart was cracked open as I entered the hall, the horror of the doe and the memory of Mama looming fresh in my mind. Papa was standing by the dining table.

“Come in here, please.” His voice was tense and tight, his eyes hard.

The papers. I’d left them scattered all over my room. “Have you been . . .” He stopped and peered at me, concern crossing his face. “What happened? You look terrible.”

He seemed to care. I couldn’t remember when Papa had last seemed to care about me. But the impact of his concern faded against my fevered misery and guilt. I’d killed the doe as surely as if I’d shot it. I waved my hand. “I’m feeling ill. May I be excused?” I swayed.

His face softened. “Of course. We’ll talk later.” I climbed the stairs with lead feet and I could hear him shuffling the papers, no doubt looking for something that was in fact on my bedroom floor.

I locked my door and collapsed onto the floor, dragging the papers toward me. I tidied them as best I could; I lifted my mattress and slid the stack underneath. I’d have to sneak them back downstairs later.

I rinsed my face in the washbowl and lay across my bed, trying to keep the nausea from rising up again, trying to gather my thoughts. They spun in dizzying circles like a game’s teetotum, pointing this way and then that.

My mind turned from the doe’s eyes to Mama’s eyes, and at last to my memory of her on the last day I saw her, after she’d left my bedroom. After my last words to her: “I don’t care if I never see you again.” It was my fault, as surely as if I’d pushed the doe into the hot spring. It was my fault, as surely as if I’d pushed Mama off the Cliff Walk and into the raging sea.

I had wanted to stop her from leaving, but I didn’t. She left my room that last day and I lay in my bed in misery, hoping she’d come back. Finally, I threw off the pillow and crept as close as I dared to my tower window. Beyond the sea grass and rocks, the waves frothed high, as high as I’d ever seen them. I looked out for her, and there she was—walking away from me. She walked away from the house, robe billowing, her black hair streaming. As she reached the edge of the cliff, that fearful cliff of my nightmares, where the walk passed through the hedgerow, she turned. Even from the distance safe away from my window’s edge, I could see her expression, the slight parting of her lips.

I reached my arm toward the window. I tried to edge closer but couldn’t. The fall was too great, the edge, the empty space. My stomach dropped and then my arm. I called out to her, but it was too far. She could not hear me over the thunderous sea. She turned away and disappeared over the rocky ledge and I drew back deep inside my room. I didn’t run to her; I didn’t stop her; I sent her away with a curse. It was my fault.

Now, nearly a year later, I lay on a different bed in a far different room with the turmoil of guilt raging through me, struggling with my spinning thoughts. Mama had been in Yellowstone. She’d been obsessed with Yellowstone, in fact, abandoning her tranquil landscapes as her pain grew, choosing to paint the most tormented views of Yellowstone hour upon hour. The letters said that she’d left someone behind, tried to find them. Could it have been a lover? Sadness shot through me as I thought how Papa might feel if that were true. Did she not love him? Did he not love her?

I stared at the ceiling and my thoughts spun faster. Tom. I’d disappointed him. I felt my cheeks flush with shame. I wanted to see him again and explain myself. I wanted to touch him, to brush back that silly lock of hair that fell across his forehead, I wanted him to touch me. I clutched the coverlet in both fists, holding tight.

I could not escape the question of what would become of me.

In one direction my future was wide open. A great gaping hole waited there with nothing to hold me up. I imagined I was standing at my window at home, right at the sill, or on the cliff facing the sea. What would it be like to leap, to let go and fall?

In the other direction, everything was predictable and I wouldn’t need to worry, to be in control. My mind drifted to George Graybull, whose attentions were unpleasantly focused on me. Papa envisioned our salvation through Graybull. Me marrying Graybull. That was a sickening thought. I could see it rationally: my prospects would be settled, in a manner appropriate to our station. To our former station. And wasn’t that what I had wanted, even demanded? To return to Newport, to pick up my former life, to be accepted in society and take my place beside Kitty and the others? But Graybull . . . oh, heavens. His face appeared in my mind’s eye, his leering smile and that dreadful gesture with his tongue. The way he looked at me as if I were his prey . . .

I shifted onto my side and tried to focus on something else, anything else.

A photograph hung on the wall above the bed, a picture of a spray of water arcing into the air. OLD FAITHFUL GEYSER was inscribed across the bottom. I pulled myself up onto my elbows and stared at it, shoving Graybull firmly out of my mind.

I imagined seeing the image of the geyser through the lens of a camera. I focused my eyes on the photograph, almost able to see every droplet of water, looking at line and shape and not at water as substance. Art as movement; art as expression. Art the way Mama had taught me to see it. The art of making pictures.

Making art and real, solid, concrete magic. Mrs. Gale did that, here in Yellowstone. Every day she made her own magic in her art and in her life. She was not subject to the rules of men. She was not beholden to Newport society. In my experience only girls like Kula worked, not girls like Kitty—or me. But Mrs. Gale dressed well and lived well, working at something she was passionate about. I had not ever considered this as an option for me. It had never been one before. Could it be now? I stared at the photograph thinking about how, if I held a camera, I might frame that same shot and feel that same passion.

And as I lay on the bed and wrapped my thoughts in and out and around the twining vines of my future and Papa’s secrets and Mama’s secrets and Uncle John’s letters, the answer came to me. I sat up and tossed my hair back over my shoulders. It was so obvious, so easy. I had to speak to Uncle John.

My uncle would have the answers I sought; he could help me fit the pieces of the puzzle into place. He’d returned to his work at the Lake Hotel on the other side of the Park. I could try to send him a telegram; but it would be tricky to manage Papa, and I couldn’t expect a clear answer. Or any answer, if my experience with my grandfather was any indication. I could telephone if I could find one—they were rare enough in Newport, never mind Yellowstone. Trickier still. I needed to see Uncle John face-to-face. I had to convince Papa to send me to the Lake Hotel.

I stood up and paced, gathering my hair into a single braid as I wrestled with this idea.

The Tour.

Of course. Tom had mentioned it, and then Papa had said something about sending me to see the rest of the Park. Tom had said that I should go, and now I had a reason to. Papa would never suspect my reason.

I stayed in my room for the rest of the day, weaving my plan together and firming my resolve, avoiding memories of the doe and her orphaned fawn and of my mama’s eyes the last time I saw her.

July 6, 1904

THE FOLLOWING MORNING THE SAME SURLY CLERK I’D encountered at the telegram office delivered a telegram and a letter addressed only to me. I was glad Papa wasn’t at home to question their contents. First was this telegram:

And then this letter from Kitty: