The Daughter's Walk (25 page)

“And you want to give me their money.”

“Give to the family some of
my
money,” I said. My heart pounded. “It's mama's money too. A portion of what we were to earn by making our walk to New York.”

“
Fandem!
Those women are—”

“Not of the devil,” I said. “They're good people, and they know we deserve payment for our incredible journey.”

He leaned out around Mama, who sat between us. He lifted his hand as though to strike me, his eyes wild with outrage. I shrank back, held gloved fingers to my face. He had never struck me, nor anyone in the family that I knew of.

“Ole,” Mama said. She tugged on his arm, pulled it down. “Let her talk.”

“That … walk, that walk is not a subject allowed in my presence,” he shouted at her.

“But I am in your presence, and it is my right to speak what matters to me,” I said. “I offer you a way out, a way to save your family from the humiliation of foreclosure, from financial ruin. Money rightfully earned! Accept it. Don't let your pride keep you from doing what is right for your family, for your wife. Let her speak of an accomplishment. Let her know she helped keep the farm you both worked so hard for, we all worked so hard for.”

“What do you know of swallowing pride?” His eyes glared at me, my mother between us. The horses stomped, aware of his intensity. His hands were in fists. I thought he might snap the reins and jolt them forward just to keep me silent. “Years ago I swallow my pride for your mother, for what John Doré did to her, tossing her aside. How does she repay me? She names you for his mother! I do nothing about this. I accept. I let her go, with you, on that stupid walk.”

John Doré? This is my father?

“Ole, please. She didn't know—”

“I do for her because I … love her.” He choked, didn't say Mama's name. “I … accept because I care for her. New York.” He spit the words. “I allow her to come back after she disobeys me, has left behind me and her children. She takes John Doré's child with her. I let this happen because I love her. But no more!”

“You don't love my mother anymore?” I shook. “After all she's done for you?”

“No more doing what she wants!”

Grief like a train whistle coursed through his voice.

“No more going back on what I say. No one talks about that. walk. No one who wants to be in this family takes money related to it. No one. I have spoken. That is enough.”

“But the farm?” Mama said. She grabbed his sleeve. “We could save the farm.”

“I do not want your dirty money.” He seethed. “I do not want people with dirty money to have any say in my life. No more. None.”

“And me either, I guess?” I said.

“You either if it is through that dirty money.”

“Ole, please.” He shook off her hand.

“I will provide for my family. Not those women, not you, Clara, nor you, my wife. It is over.”

“Mama—”

“It. Is. Finished.” Spittle had gathered around the corners of his mouth. His eyes blazed like a minister preaching that hellfire was imminent.

I looked at my mother, caught between us. “It's the one thing I can do for you,” I said. “The one thing that would make it all worthwhile. Take it.” I shoved the purse toward her. “Take the money. We earned it, you and me.”

But my mother wasn't the woman who had defied her husband to walk across the country. She wasn't that woman. She shook her head, no.

“I'll pay the mortgage myself, then. Pay it for you,” I said. “Mama doesn't have to be able to talk about the walk, but you could stay here, on this land you both love. It's a business decision, nothing more. Turning down money …”

“Don't you listen?” He shook his finger in my face, eyes narrowed in fury. “You do not pay our bills with dirty money. You hear me? If you even speak of this to any of our family, I will send your mother out. She
will no longer be under my roof. You have made your choice, but you will not sour the rest of my family. If you were an Estby, you would give the money back. You would not work with those women who caused your brother and sister to die.”

“It was a tragedy! Even if Mama had been here, she likely wouldn't have done any better than you did.”

How can he say this in front of Mama, who already bears the weight of their deaths?

“You are nothing but a girl. How can you know the way of things? A daughter of mine would never touch such money.”

“I'm not a daughter of yours.”

“Never were. We are foreclosed. The auction is set. That is God's will.” He snapped the reins, jerking me backward, forcing me to grab at the seat as we headed toward the house.

Bare trees without leaves blurred through my tears. The purse warmed my belly. I held a pocketful of money I couldn't use to save my family, while my mother … my mother sat broken in silence, tears streaming down her face.

W
ell, aren't you the fancy one?” Ida said. We stood in the kitchen. I reached to give her a hug, and she accepted it. I took Mama's coat, hung it. She stood, uncertain, it seemed to me. She moved to the cupboard, opened the door, closed it, went to the icebox. Ida shooed her away. “I'll take care of that, Mama,” she said. “You set the table.”

Through the window, I watched as Arthur and Billy helped my stepfather unload the wagon, then bring my bag toward the house. I took off my fur jacket, removed my hat, and Ida said, “Lovely work,” then set the hat on the table, tested the felt's thickness. “Those women must pay you well.”

“I work for it, but they're very kind. The purse was part of their inventory when they leased their furrier shop.” I didn't add where. “The coat was a Christmas present.”

Ida raised an eyebrow.

“Are those blue things beads?” Seven-year-old Lillian pointed at the purse.

“They are. Imported from Spain.” I tried to keep my voice steady and light while my heart ached for Mama. I could rescue them all; I couldn't. I wanted to be away, not watch this scene play out, but I didn't want to desert them.

“I'd like to work in a millinery that sells that kind of quality,” Ida said.

“You should then.”

“Not while I'm needed here.”

“Working in a millinery would be a good job once you're in Spokane,” I said. “Crescent's department store employs several.”

“Can you whip the cream?” Ida asked me then. Mama had taken down the creamery bowl but seemed lost at what to do next.

I crossed the room to stand beside her, touched her slender back.
She is so thin
.

I removed the pitcher from the icebox and began to whip, turning my frustration and disappointment into spiky peaks of cream.

“You must take whatever you left here, Clara,” Mama said then. “We can't move everything to Aunt Hannah's.”

“It looks like you've already sold some things,” I said.

“Papa's furniture gets a good price,” Ida said. “He's very talented.”

“I think the buyers purchase out of pity for us.” Mama shook her head in shame. “I have my red slippers, the ones I brought from Norway when I was a little girl. I'll take those with me.”

“Of course you will, Mama.”
She sounds like a little girl
.

It makes no sense, their refusal of my help
.

What would I want to take with me?
The packet!
I'd nearly forgotten it. Fortunately they hadn't sold the kitchen flour cupboard that hid it.

Ida motioned with her eyes and whispered. “Did you get my letter?”

Lillian dropped the hat at that moment and picked up the ermine purse with the black zipper ring.

“Will you stay in Spokane?” I said to Mama, ignoring Ida's question.

“Papa's trying to get back with the union for carpentry work,” Ida said. Her eyes snapped at me. “He's been fixing things around here. It helps him not feel so bad about losing the farm. All he's worked for all these years.”

“And all you've worked for. All of us,” I said.

“If only you and I had been successful in New—”

“Mama. No,” Ida said. She spoke as sternly as a mother telling her child to not even think about picking up that awful, dangerous black widow spider she stared at.

“
Ja
, I know.” Mama sighed. She acted as though her tongue had outwitted her mind in letting her speak of such terrible truths. “So what kind of work do they have you doing, these women? What are their names again?” Mama asked. It was as though she pulled her interest out of a deep sack, the words flat and dusty.

I could hear the zipper pushed back and forth on my purse.

“Be careful now, Lillian. That's your sister's,” Ida said.

“I'm being good,” Lillian said as she moved the zipper.

The money the sponsors gave me is in there
. Maybe if Ida knows, she'll convince Mama and Papa to take it.

I told them the women's names and described how kind they'd been, how interesting the fur industry was, how they got to travel but because they were women working in a man's world they had a man who actually signed their contracts. “I haven't met him, but his name is.” I stopped myself.

“What's his name?” Ida asked.

“His name is Franklin Doré.”

Mama dropped the spoons she had in her hand. Her back stiffened and she turned, shook her head at me, her eyes wild with concern.
Speaking of a Doré doesn't violate a rule, does it?

My stepfather had said my father's name was John Doré and his mother's name was Clara. I'd been so intimidated by his outrage that I hadn't realized I'd heard that last name before.
Doré
.

“What kind of fur is this?” Lillian said. She rubbed the gold-cast pelt of the purse, then put it to her face. “So soft.” She ran the zipper back and forth again.

“It's ermine, from Russia. Maybe you should put that down and let's set the table,” I said now that the cream stood stiff as frozen snow.

Ida said, “Clara, about my letter—”

Commotion followed the men and boys' arrival inside. Billy teased me about the mud on my shoes. The men sat down, and when they heard Sailor bark his old dog bark, Mama looked out the window and announced that Olaf was coming too. “Now I'll have all my children here. What could be better?” She sighed.

You could have the farm
. Couldn't she see? Where was that independent spirit that had shot a tramp, walked right up to the president-elect's house, worked her way across the continent, keeping us safe, hoping to rescue this farm?

Olaf stepped inside then and hugged Mama, Ida, and me, tugged on Lillian's braid. He plopped his newspaper on the table. “Only two weeks old, this one,” he said. Mama picked it up, set it aside. She thanked him for remembering. So news still kept her interest. Ida put plates on the table while I moved my hat to the daybed. Lillian set a plate or two, picked the purse back up.

“Arthur, put that umbrella away. Don't you know that opening an umbrella inside is bad luck?” Ida told him.

“Who believes in superstitions like that?” he said.

The pie was served then with dollops of whipped cream on top. I didn't look at my stepfather as he sat at the head of the table. For a moment, as people ate, the silence seemed normal, what it should be while hungry people received sustenance prepared by loving hands. I memorized the scene. It would be the last time I'd see my family in this kitchen, where so many sunrises had freshened the morning, so many conversations helped the evening wane. The farm would be gone. The sale would pierce my mother's heart yet again. How many more wounds could she accept without disappearing? How many little pieces of a lace heart could she leave behind? She had suffered enough.

There was nothing I could do about it.

I captured the faces of my family. Even in my stepfather's eyes I saw true sadness. He'd said I wasn't an Estby if I kept the dirty money, as he called it. But even before I'd received the money, I wasn't an Estby. That was the truth. Maybe that's why I could see the money objectively, as a means to an end, while my stepfather and mother gave it evil intent.

Life would change for all of them after today, me most of all.

I shook my head, remembering my brother's sage vision once shared in secret that the foreclosure would at last free them from a terrible debt that sucked them all dry. The thought gave me hope that maybe it would be all right for Mama without the farm. This amputation from the land might in time allow true healing to take place without the daily reminder of the losses suffered here.

“Do you want to go upstairs and see what's yours to take with you?” Mama said as we finished up.

“I think mostly I'd like …” I rose to the cabinet and pulled it out from the wall. The packet was still there tied with a dusty ribbon.