The Daughter's Walk (29 page)

“I wasn't proposing that things had to go my way,” I said. “I.” I didn't confront people well, didn't have words to express how I felt. I rarely heard anyone in our family express disagreement with words that didn't hurt. Upset was often a stony silence, and I did feel upset by what she'd said.

“Sit down.” Olea lowered the binoculars. “My sister included you when I told her we'd be traveling with our assistant. I wrote even before we left.”

I sank onto the chair, brushed lint from my linen skirt.

Olea patted my gloved hand. “A little give-and-take never hurt anyone,” she said, “and it promises that each of us can have a little, if not all of what we'd like. I think that's what life is all about.”

I was about to find out.

F
EBRUARY 1902

P
riscilla Bakke and her husband, Inger, had two children ages thirteen and fifteen, and they all lived in a large house in St. Paul. Servants were housed on the top floor, bedrooms on the second, and a large living room, parlor, and dining room on the first floor. The kitchen was in the basement. I was given my own room in the family wing rather than in the guest quarters. Inger was a banker, and I eavesdropped shamelessly as he and Olea discussed finance, taxes, and law.

Peder, the son, was treated like royalty, it seemed to me. He went ice-skating with his friends, set his own bedtime, ate what he wanted, and was rude to the serving staff, at least in my opinion.

Clarissa had more restrictions. She was the same age as Bertha had been when she died (and who had already been working as a servant for two years). Clarissa at least made her own bed. Peder did not.

I watched as Olea made suggestions to her niece that the child
accepted, though the very same words spoken by her mother resulted in a haughty exit from the room. Her words did border on the edge of sass. She was the child in this family who, like me, didn't fit. I wondered if all families had one.

“You're like your grandmother,” her mother told Clarissa when she crossed her arms and dropped onto the divan after being told, no, she could not go to the hayride with her friends because boys would be there. We women all sat in the living room, Louise and our hostess doing needlework, Hardanger lace like my mother's. Olea turned the pages of a colored bird book while I read Kipling's novel
Kim
about an East Indian orphan, my mind more tuned in to what these family members were saying than to anything in my book.

“Aunt Olea, you went on hayrides, didn't you? Tell Mama it's all right.”

“I did,” Olea said. “But my parents went with me. Chaperoned the ride.”

“We could do that,” Priscilla offered. She smiled at her daughter. “Would you like that, dear?”

“No. I wouldn't,” Clarissa said and stomped out.

“Our parents never chaperoned a hayride,” Priscilla told Olea. “You made that up.”

“Maybe not one of yours, but they did mine.”

“Mama was much stricter with me,” Priscilla said. “I never even got to go on such events. You, she indulged.”

“Every child suffers differently,” Olea said. Her sister scoffed and returned to her needlework.

Through that winter, I spent long hours in my room reading the financial section of the
Minneapolis Tribune
and novels while thinking of what I wanted to do now. I was letting the women lead me, and I could feel their will sucking me under as if I were boots in a bog.

“So,” Inger said to me one evening over dinner, “Olea tells me you're interested in investing in an up-and-coming industry. Do you have one in mind?”

I shook my head. “I've considered a number of things.”

“I tell her she should find a suitable husband, invest in that,” Louise told him.

“Well, you are of an age,” he said, too polite to ask for specifics. “What do your parents do?”

“My stepfather felled trees in Michigan, then came here to Minnesota, near Canby, where they farmed before moving to Spokane. Now he's a carpenter.”

“Ah, the trades,” he said as though he'd eaten a pickle. “The bank is always the safest place to invest,” he said.

“Spoken like a true banker,” his wife chided.

“They pay so little interest,” I said.

He grunted. “What sort of return are you expecting?”

“I want to be able to provide for myself. Perhaps make enough to assist my family, send my younger brothers and sisters on to school.” I had only recently come to that thought, but in the face of Olaf's refusal to go, it seemed a wise one. Mama had insisted we all learn English as children, had even prohibited us from speaking Norwegian so my stepfather would learn English more quickly once we moved to Spokane. If I offered her money for Arthur and Billy and Lillian for schooling, would she refuse it because it came from me?

“Have you considered importing European furniture?” Priscilla asked.

Again her husband grunted. “It can be quite a lucrative business if the cost of furnishing this house is any indication.”

“You'd get to travel,” Louise piped up.

“Not a very tried-and-true business though,” Inger said. “Too many unknowns. I'd suggest railroad shares. Transportation will grow mightily in the years ahead. Thank you, Else,” he told the servant girl, who replaced his soup bowl with a clean plate and set the platter of meat in front of him. “Timber is still huge. And of course wheat. The Cargill Brothers built one of the world's largest grain-storage facilities right here in Minneapolis ten years ago, and the business has done nothing but grow. The hold stores grain from the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa. I suspect the plains states will ship here as well if the cooperatives will stay out of it. Railroads are attached to that industry. Great potential.”

“What have you invested in?” I asked.

He sat a little straighter. Whether flattered or offended, I couldn't tell. He cleared his throat. “I'm diversified,” he said. He took a bite of beef. He chewed. “But coal is my main interest. I expect the demand to grow, and there's an unlimited supply. I'm certain there are mines in your region of the country, assuming you want to return there, of course. I hear you're headed to New York next? Be sure to visit the investment houses there,” he said. “They'll have quite a number of options for you.”

“New York?” I said. Olea combed her long blond hair with highlights of gray, the braids making kinky waves that flashed like gold in the gaslights of her room. I stood behind her, watching in the mirror. We wore wrappers, waiting to finish our undressing and put on nightclothes after the light was out. She had perfect skin, pale as milk, the spoils of a life of leisure.

“We're halfway to New York,” she said. “It would be an opportunity
for you to see the city in a different light than when you were there last. Louise and I can check on our interests, and we need to confer with Franklin as well.”

“But we've already been gone nearly six months.”

She shrugged. “What would you have done if you'd been in Spokane all this time?”

I'd have been Olea and Louise's secretary, which I continued to be; I'd have worried about encountering my family, half hoping I'd see them, half afraid I might not. I might have visited with Olaf again.

“I suppose I'd have spent time at the library or talked with my professors about what they thought would be a good investment for a young woman. Maybe I'd have gotten to know my banker better.”

“So come with us to New York. See how the fur fashion industry really works. Personally, I think it has a better future than coal or railroads. People have to dress, and they have to stay warm all around the world, and fur provides for that. Designs change, so there's natural challenge but also the excitement of new seasons with young designers. As Louise would say, fur fashion is much more romantic than hard coal. Deal with soft, beautiful pelts, coats and muffs. There's your investment.”

These women supported themselves well with fur and could afford to pay me and their agent, and live a good yet simple life.

“All right,” I said. “Let's head to New York.” And then I decided to exert a little independence. “But we'll make a side trip first to Michigan.”

“Whatever for?”

“It's where my father's from. I want to see if I can find him.”

I
began my investigation the afternoon I arrived in Manistee, Michigan, a small city on the state's western coast. I presented myself at the newspaper office as a woman of means researching a business connection rather than anything personal.

“What're you looking for? Maybe I can help,” the editor said as he chewed on an unlit cigar.

“I'd like information about the Doré Lumber Company.” I'd seen the sign with the announcement “position available” when I came into the town.

“Looking for work, are you?”

“To invest,” I said. He smiled and shook his head as though such a thing would be impossible for a woman.

“Where are you from?” He cocked his head in curiosity.

“Spokane, Washington,” I told him.

“Oh, well, that's big timber country. It'll be years before we harvest the replant here. It's been over thirty years since the big fire. Stick
with the West,” he said. “That's my advice. Don't waste your money here.”

“I'll keep that in mind,” I said, “though I suspect your local boosters wouldn't like to hear you say it.” I turned to the newspaper piles he'd laid out for me, removing my white gloves so as not to rub the ink onto their tips.

I left two hours later with tired eyes, an address, and an obituary. The next morning, I'd make my move.

I was alone in the hotel in Manistee. The curling iron didn't sizzle. Not hot enough. Each time I waited for it to heat on the kitchen Monarch or over the small burners in the marbled train stations of the larger cities we'd traveled to, I thought of my mother. I recalled how she heated a curling iron in Idaho or Nebraska and even Pennsylvania, heated it over the lantern, then lifted a width of hair no wider than Lillian's palm and rolled the strands around the curling rod. She was ever careful not to burn my scalp, holding the iron and hair until she could feel the heat against her palm. Then she'd ease the strands free.