Pearl (5 page)
‘‘Father sees Mr. Longstreet as a suitable marriage partner for me, doesn’t he?’’
‘‘You came to that conclusion with remarkable astuteness.’’
‘‘That is neither a yes nor a no.’’
Amalia set her cup in its saucer and placed them on the marble-topped table in front of the wicker sofa they shared. She stared out the wide window to the walled garden where daffodils were just showing their golden trumpets.
Pearl waited, carefully disguising her impatience by sipping her tea.
‘‘Your father has pretty much left you to your own whims in the past, providing all the schooling you desired, tolerating your antipathy to society, allowing you to teach at the settlement house.’’
Pearl looked over her teacup. ‘‘I have been useful.’’
‘‘Yes, and a model of decorum, on the outside at least. I think if you were not devoting yourself to those poor children, you would be most unhappy.’’
‘‘So very true. But the fact that I love those children does not mean I would be content rearing Mr. Longstreet’s five. He and I have absolutely nothing in common. Art, literature, music—he has no interest in those. What interests he has other than working for my father, I have no idea.’’ Pearl leaned forward. ‘‘Dull is the only word that fits the man. He might have a mind for numbers. He must have, or he would not last in his employment, but . . .’’ Pearl closed her eyes. ‘‘What would we talk about?’’
‘‘You would most likely be so busy caring for house and children, you would not have time or energy for evening discussions.’’ ‘‘Are you saying there would be no servants?’’
‘‘No, I’m sure your allowance would cover at least one or two. I believe your father will provide a suitable house for you.’’
‘‘So I’m to be sold off with house and help?’’
Amalia turned and took Pearl’s hands. ‘‘It would not be so bad. Many a young woman has married with and for a lot less.’’
‘‘But what about affection? Caring? Is that not important?’’
‘‘That can come.’’
Pearl tipped her head back and stared at the ceiling. ‘‘And you agree with this?’’
‘‘There have been no other suitors.’’
‘‘I know. Did I frighten them away by my tongue, or was it this?’’ She laid a finger against the scar.
‘‘If it were me, I would do as my father wished.’’
But you are not me, and besides, you did not answer my question.
‘‘I see. Is that what you did?’’
‘‘Remember, you will make of the marriage what you will.
Men are malleable. And some more so than others.’’
Pearl poured herself more tea, added two lumps and milk. At this moment, straight tea was more than she could abide.
Silence reigned while they sipped.
Pearl gathered her courage, cloaked in years of hurt. She touched her scar. ‘‘I think Far stopped loving me because of this.’’
Amalia took in a deep breath and released it on a sigh. ‘‘Although he seems more formal with you, it is not for lack of love. It’s just that he is a man who finds it easier to show affection to young children than to a grown daughter.’’
Pearl thought on Amalia’s words. Somehow she had a hard time believing them.
Little Missouri, mid-March 1883
No wonder the Bible said to look forward and not back.
Ruby Torvald imagined herself falling facedown in the dirt, with everyone standing around laughing at her. That’s the way she felt much of the time, as though she were on the verge of tripping and the fall would not be lovely.
‘‘Ruby?’’ Opal, her ten-year-old sister, called from the kitchen.
Ruby rubbed her forehead. Sometimes she wished she could just change her name. Ruby here and Ruby there and, Ruby, I need you to . . . and, Ruby, do you know where . . . If she could only have a few minutes to herself before she was so tired the words or numbers blurred on the page before her. Why were things in such a muddle—no matter how hard she tried? Take Rand Harrison, for instance. She wished someone would take Mr. Harrison and haul him far away. Every time he came to town, something went wrong. That man got far too much pleasure out of laughing, and always at her expense. On top of that, Captain McHenry hadn’t written for months. Had something happened to him down in Indian country? Face it, life in Little Missouri, Dakotah Territory, was not what she’d hoped it would be.
‘‘Ruby?’’ The cry grew more plaintive.
‘‘Why can’t you come here,’’ Ruby muttered as she pushed her chair back from the table in the dining room where she’d been working on the ledger that always seemed to get further behind rather than caught up. Shouting at Opal would be entirely unladylike. Sometimes she wished ladylike behavior had not been drilled into her ever since she could walk, even before then, most likely. She straight-armed the swinging door into the kitchen of Dove House, the hotel deeded to her by her deceased father, ready to speak more than gently to her young sister, Opal.
‘‘What in the world happened to you?’’ Ruby clapped both hands over her mouth to stifle the scream or the giggles—she wasn’t sure which.
‘‘Cat was chasing a mouse and they surprised me and I dropped the egg basket and then Cat caught the mouse and I tried to catch her to put both of them outside and I slipped in the eggs and banged the table and the flour tipped over and fell on me and—Can you please help me? Every time I move, I spread the mess out farther.’’
Ruby did her best to hide her laughter. She got a pan and dipped warm water out of the reservoir for washing, took a rag from the rod behind the cast-iron cookstove, and stared at the girl in front of her. A smear of egg on her face, egg and flour streaked her apron and congealed on her shoes. Flour turned her strawberry braids to pink and her dark skirt to gray in places.
‘‘I’m sorry.’’
‘‘Opal, this is not your fault. Blame Cat.
Uff da,
what a mess.’’ Ruby patted her sister’s shoulder and then dusted off her hands. ‘‘You know, the best thing might be to take your clothes off right here and wash up in the pantry. I’m afraid we are going to have to wash your hair too.’’
‘‘Can’t we just brush it out? I hate to wash my hair.’’
‘‘But egg yolk is good for making beautiful hair.’’
‘‘With flour?’’
Ruby rolled her lips together and shook her head. Talk about pathetic.
‘‘My land, Opal, what happened to you?’’ Milly, the youngest of the hotel maids, stopped in the doorway from the second floor where she’d been cleaning rooms. Her mouth and eyes were matching O’s, her head continuing to wag as she came closer.
Ruby took the wrung-out rag and dusted off the worst of the mess. ‘‘Milly, please get the broom to sweep this up while Opal washes off in the pantry. We’ll pour the water in the hip bath, so we can wash her hair too.’’
Opal groaned but walked gingerly so as not to dislodge any more flour goop.
An insistent meow came from the door to the storeroom.
‘‘You can just stay there. This is all your fault.’’ Opal stopped at the pantry door and glanced back at Ruby, who was filling a bucket with water from the boiler simmering on the back of the stove.
As Opal moved into the pantry, Ruby turned to Milly. ‘‘Before you finish sweeping, would you please drag in the hip bath? I should have done that first.’’
‘‘Sure.’’ Milly propped the broom against the table. ‘‘What a mess. I bet there’s a good story here.’’ She glanced at Opal for confirmation. Opal was known to take something that happened and turn it into knee-slapping laughter when she told it later to her friends. Ruby knew her little sister would do the same with this episode after she recovered from embarrassment and from the misery of having her hair washed.
As soon as the hip bath was in place, Ruby poured the buckets of water into the tin tub. ‘‘As I mentioned, egg is really good for washing hair.’’
Opal kept her eyes down as she checked the temperature of the water. ‘‘Could use some cold.’’
‘‘Think I’ll scrape some of that yolk off the floor and—’’ ‘‘Ruby, you’re not funny.’’
‘‘Come on, this isn’t the end of the world, you know.’’
Opal grumbled something as she pulled her waist over her head, sneezing from the flour.
Ruby brought in more water, keeping one bucket back to rinse with. ‘‘I brought some of the rose soap that Cimarron made last summer.’’ She handed the bar to Opal, along with a cloth for washing. ‘‘You want me to do your hair?’’
‘‘Please.’’ Opal untied the bows and grimaced at the egg dripping from the ribbon. ‘‘Ugh.’’
‘‘Drop it in the tub.’’ After running her fingers through the strands to loosen the braids, Ruby filled a dipper with warm water and sluiced it over Opal’s head. ‘‘Come on, work it through.’’ After soaping and rinsing again, Ruby searched the strands for any remaining batter and worked a chunk of flour loose from one side. She rinsed the section again. ‘‘There, I think we got it all.’’
They could hear Cat yowling in the storeroom now. While she had started out wild as the bobcat they’d caught trying to get into the chicken house, Cat now figured that a lap was the best place to nap and tidbits should be forthcoming whenever anyone cooked.
‘‘She probably thinks someone is mixing cake or something.’’ Opal soaped her washcloth. ‘‘Silly cat. Why does she have to play with a mouse like that?’’
‘‘You used to play with your food.’’
‘‘Ru-by.’’
Ruby leaned against the counter and tucked a strand of golden hair back in the crocheted snood she’d bundled her hair into that morning. While she’d planned to braid the mass later, she hadn’t found the time, not an unusual situation for the owner of Dove House, a three-story hotel located in Little Missouri and the inheritance the two sisters had received from their father, Per Torvald. Once known for its saloon and the girls who entertained there, Dove House now served meals and rented rooms for longer than a night. Within the last few months more hunters and cattlemen used the so-called town for a camp base, and Dove House had gone from a fingernail operation to having a full storeroom and bedrooms occupied more often than not.
‘‘Ruby.’’
‘‘I’ll bring you a towel.’’ Ruby opened the door. ‘‘And clean clothes.’’
Opal blew a mound of bubbles off the palm of her hand. No matter how hard she fought against a bath and hair wash, as usual, she stayed in as long as possible.
‘‘Two.’’
‘‘Two?’’
‘‘Two towels.’’
Ruby rolled her eyes. ‘‘We’ll see.’’ Since laundry had to be hung on the lines outside till frozen and then brought in board stiff to thaw and finish drying on the lines in the storeroom, keeping clean clothes and napkins on the tables took far more time and effort than in the warmer months. While Ruby was tempted to let up on her standards, so far she’d withstood, even though it required one of the girls to do laundry and ironing full time.
Daisy Whitaker, another of the girls—once called soiled doves—who Ruby had promised her father to take care of, returned the cooling flatiron to the stove and attached the handle to the next one. ‘‘I’ll be glad when we find someone else to do this. Never thought I’d be saying I’d rather clean.’’
‘‘I know what you mean.’’ Ruby shook her head. ‘‘Estelle sure didn’t last long, did she?’’
‘‘She was a good worker, though, for the time she was here.’’ Daisy kneaded the small of her back and rotated her shoulders. ‘‘Did Charlie get back yet?’’
‘‘Haven’t seen him.’’
Milly looked up from where she was scrubbing egg and flour from the painted floor. ‘‘He was out skinning that deer, last I saw him.’’
I wish Charlie would recognize love when he saw it
. Ruby had realized months ago that Daisy was sweet on Charlie, former bartender and now man-of-everything, but since his eye seemed to be on Cimarron, another of the doves, there was a stalemate all around. Sometimes she feared anarchy would break out.
‘‘You going to look for more help?’’ Daisy asked.
‘‘I have an ad in the Dickinson paper and a note posted in each of the rooms here. Do you have any other suggestions?’’
Both Milly and Daisy shrugged and shook their heads before returning to their duties.
Cat yowled again, more insistently, so Ruby crossed to open the door. ‘‘Serves you right, making a mess like that.’’ Cat, tail stick-straight in the air but for a crook at the end, stalked in with nary a glance in her direction.
Daisy chuckled her way back to the ironing board in the storage room. Milly wrung her rag out in the bucket of water and went back to mopping up the mess.
Ruby took the towels back to the pantry. ‘‘Here, one for your hair and one for the rest of you. Make sure you hang them up behind the stove to dry.’’
‘‘Put on my same undergarments?’’
‘‘No, I’ll go get you clean clothes.’’
Why didn’t I ask one of the
others to do that? At this rate, I’ll never get the bookwork caught up
. She mounted the stairs as quickly as she could and still remain ladylike, no leaping three at a time like Opal still did in spite of repeated admonitions. The higher she climbed, the colder the air became. Since they kept the door closed to the third floor stairway, the bedrooms of the help frequently had frost on the inside of the windows. While she gathered up clothing for her little sister, Ruby realized anew how much Opal had grown since they came to Little Missouri a little less than a year ago. The clothes the Brandons, the family she worked for in New York, had sent with them when they came to Dakotah Territory were either too short, too tight, or too worn. Hems had been let down and then faced, seams let out, and even gussets added in the sides, all thanks to Cimarron’s nimble fingers with a needle.