The Daughter's Walk (30 page)

Once in Minneapolis, when Louise touched her fingers gently to my scalp, she said, “Oh, honey, you have the softest locks, like rabbit down.” She kissed my temple as though I were a child, as my mother had, the memory so vivid that my eyes watered. Later that same day, Louise introduced me to hairpieces that gave lift and marked the styles of 1902. Extensions, she called them, though I think they had a more formal name. Imagine, wearing hair someone else grew then sold! But I still had to curl my own hair in order to wrap it into the extensions and look civilized. A daughter ought to look her best when meeting her father for the first time.

Through the Ramsdell Hotel window, I watched as the eastern sun slanted against the shingled roof of the North Pierhead Lighthouse on
the Manistee River. If Olea and Louise had come with me, they'd have said the hotel could have been transported from London, with its carved stonework and Victorian design.

I made up the bed and imagined my mother working in this hotel before she went to work for the Doré family. I didn't know if she ever had, but it was possible. I could see her mending torn sheets or adding lace to the edges with her fine stitching skills, maybe laughing with other domestics, speaking Norwegian when they were alone and good English when addressing the American guests coming to broker lumber in this town. My mother was fifteen. What passion must have roiled inside her and how frightened she must have been to discover herself with child. Her own mother would have been devastated, having prepared for her a more sophisticated life only to have shame scrape away the luster of a hopeful future.

What might my mother's life have been like if she had not allowed this man to take advantage of her? Was she letting Ole take advantage of her now, silencing her?

For a moment I thought my search was foolish, not well thought out, with more potentially negative outcomes than positive ones. John Doré might have moved, left the name of his company behind. He might refuse to see me. It was a fluke I'd even learned his name, spoken in anger. And yet I wanted to see where I'd come from, to imagine what he might have given me that made me so different from my brothers and sisters, made me more Doré than Estby.

I finished with the curling iron, dressed, then slipped out of the suite, my gloved hand running smoothly over the glass doorknob. I walked down toward the shoreline where the Manistee River ran into the lake. The lighthouse sat on the north side of the river, and as I stood on the opposite shore, I thought of my mother waiting for me across the
Dale Creek trestle. I always seemed to be on the opposite shore waiting for someone to call me to them. I listened for an inner voice, heard nothing, so moved forward on my own.

John Doré's office nestled among trees, which struck me as fitting. Only one small window opened toward the street. Modest and quiet. I smoothed my skirt, pulled at threads, adjusted the collar of my linen jacket. For this occasion I'd worn my finest suit trimmed with female mink—light and soft pelts perfect for a spring morning in Michigan. Dignified, that's the impression I wanted to leave with this man. Dignified and sufficient unto myself. Well, almost all of myself. I wore those hair extensions.

I stood for a time as the cab pulled away. I'd rehearsed various phrases. “I'm your daughter.” Much too direct, and yet that's the line that came to my head first, followed by, “Why did you abandon my mother?” But I also wanted to see what my mother might have seen in him. Was he a vain man and she'd overlooked it? Was he a charlatan who fooled her into thinking that he loved her? Was he even aware of her circumstance? Would he deny any involvement at all? My throat felt sore.

I planned to ask about the timber holdings, make it sound like I was interested in investing in a business rather than in history that could transform my future.

I opened a door made of clear cedar, not a knothole in sight.

“May I help you?” A young woman's voice came from behind a high desk. When she stood, I could see her head and bodice, but the wide plank counter still dwarfed her.

“I called earlier, to make an appointment to speak with Mr. John Doré,” I said.

She looked at her appointment book. “Gubner. I have it written here. You called for a Mr. Gubner.”

I'd borrowed Louise's name, thinking not to put Mr. Doré off by seeing the name Clara Doré.

“I must not have been clear,” I said. “The appointment is for me.”

“Oh well.” She looked over her glasses at me. “Mr. Doré will be back shortly. He's having a meeting with the shingle-weavers' union.” She gazed at me, her brow furrowed in puzzlement. “Do I know you?”

“No,” I said. “I'm from Spokane, Washington.”

“Spokane. Well, you look familiar. Must have one of those faces like a rubber ball, shaping as it goes.”

“I guess I must,” I said.

“I don't envy you your meeting time.” She fussed with papers on her desk. “I doubt Mr. Doré will be in a good mood when he returns, just so you know. He finds the union taxing. You might want to come back another day so you won't have double stitches to unknot in him. He doesn't often meet with females.”

“I'm only in town for a short time,” I said taking a seat.

“These unions are a stick in Mr. Doré's eye.”

I knew the shingle-weavers' union was one of the oldest in the country. My mother had talked of it as we walked the rails. Boys and girls worked side by side in the lumber mills, sorting the shingles as they came from the sawyer, bundling the roofing material so the roofers could lift them easily and place them wide end over narrow end as they worked to keep rainwater from seeping through roofs. Children worked twelve-and-a-half hours a day, until the union changed this in Muskegon in 1886.

Would my stepfather have been in a union here? Unions were never happily accepted by management, or so my mother reminded me as she cheered on William Jennings Bryan. John Doré would have likely voted with McKinley. If I could have voted, so would I, though for different
reasons. I liked the unions that had rescued us when my father was injured.

The woman behind the wide counter offered me tea, which I took. I blew on it to cool it, my breath lifting the feather in my hat, the ends of the fur. My hands shook. I ought to have rehearsed more, arrived with a better sense of what I wanted. Otherwise, he'd control the interview. Maybe his secretary was right and I ought to come back later.

I stood. “I think maybe—”

A man I knew was my father opened the door. He rushed through, shouting an order at his secretary as he passed by me. My heart pounded like a woodpecker marking its territory on a tree. I was meeting him. A landowner, a corporate giant, my father.

“Your appointment, Mr. Doré,” his secretary said, partially standing. “Mrs. Gubner.”

“What?” He turned, glared.

He stood tall, over six feet.
Where I get my height from
. He had brown hair, blue eyes. His eyebrows, like mine, arched gracefully over the iris and narrowed toward his temple. His wide face—again like mine—wore a look of annoyance. His hair lay limp against his head. He pursed his full lips.

“Is your husband with you?” He looked beyond me.

“There is no Mr. Gubner,” I said.

He frowned. “Well, let's get this over with. I'm a busy man.”

I followed him into his office while his secretary pulled the door closed behind me whispering, “Good luck.”

He took his place behind an oak desk, wider than the Mississippi. Paintings of landscapes and seascapes hung on the walls. His bookshelves were piled so full he'd begun placing tomes, spines out, in stacks in front of the shelved titles. Engineering books. One on architecture.
The Red Badge of Courage
, a novel. A Tiffany lamp with stained glass graced the desk to his side.

“Are the paintings yours?” I asked.

He looked where I stood before a painting, surprised at my interest. “That one of the lighthouse. That's mine.”

“It's very nice. It's good you sign them.”

“Yes, well, I have so little time, Mrs.—”

“Do you know a Franklin Doré?” I asked as I faced him.

“Franklin Doré? No. Should I?”

“Not necessarily. I thought that with the name—”

“There are lots of Dorés around,” he said. “As common as flies. But there's no Franklin in my family line that I'm aware of. Now, what can I do for you, Mrs. Gubner?” He motioned for me to sit.

“Actually, my name isn't Mrs. Gubner. It's Doré. Clara Doré.” Blood throbbed at my temples. I hadn't asked him about his timber holdings, hadn't eased into this conversation at all.

“My mother's name,” he said. “She passed on some years ago. But you said your name was—”

“And your son as well,” I said. “He's passed too. I'm sorry for your loss. I read of it in the paper.”

He squinted his eyes. “I thought you said your name was Gubner. Now you say it's Doré? Clara Doré?”

“My people came from here, well, after arriving from Norway,” I said. “My grandparents were the Bings.” I looked for recognition on his face, some reaction. “They lived here in '76, until moving to Yellow Medicine, Minnesota. My mother is Helga Bing.”

A slight narrowing of his eyes was the only change in his facial expression. He would have talked with my grandfather and grandmother, wouldn't he? Maybe my mother never told him about me. Maybe her
parents worked out the agreement to move to Yellow Medicine after I was born without ever giving him the chance to do right by my mother. Or perhaps his own parents intervened on his behalf. He looked to be about my mother's age. No, older. He would have been old enough to be responsible, to do the right thing. Would his family have offered her money? Would they have taken it?
Dirty money
. Did Ole take such funds?

His face paled. “Why have you used false pretenses to see me?” he said. His arms crossed over his chest. “Using the name of my deceased mother.” The side of his lip quivered.

“I didn't think you'd see me if I used my real name, which
is
Clara Doré. Helga Bing isn't familiar?” I asked. “She might have gone by Helga Hauge. Bing was her stepfather's name. She was pretty, slender, a narrow face, strong hands. A woman of high spirit.” My heart pounded like a farrier firming up a horseshoe nail, a hard yet steady throb. “What about Estby?” I asked. “Ole Estby. Surely that name is familiar. He rescued you.”

“Rescued me? Hundreds of people work for me. What's this about?” He set his jaw and his face regained color. It turned red. “What do you want?”

I wasn't sure where my clipped words were coming from. My stomach swirled. I took a deep breath. I suppose it wasn't fair to spring this on him, but I'd committed to it now. “Ole Estby is my stepfather. He married my mother when she was quite young. My mother was fifteen. She was … with child.”

“What's this got to do with me?”

“I'm Clara Doré,” I repeated. “She named me for your mother.”

He stared at me as though seeing me for the first time. “What did you say your mother's name was?”

“Helga,” I said.

He sank into his high-back chair, his hands on the desk, knuckles white. “My family employed many domestics, you must understand.”

“This domestic, you … bedded,” I said. “And I'm the result.”

I could tell by the look on his face that he accepted the possibility of it, but he said, “You've read of my son's death and you've come to what, make a claim on my family? You have no claim on Doré Lumber, no claim on me. I'll have the sheriff arrest you for … extortion.”

“There is nothing you have that I want except your time,” I said. “And you've already given that. I only wanted to meet the man who changed my mother's life and to see what I might have carried in my blood from him.”

“I think you'd better go.”

He moved around to the side of the desk, his hands rubbing at his chin. Being flummoxed must have been new for him.

I stood. Surely my mother was a better judge of character than to believe whatever this man might have promised her. Maybe we are all of us gullible at times. I would have to guard against it. “You don't remember her at all? Were there so many?”

A flicker of pain moved across his face.

I wanted my mother to be distinctive to this man, to feel there'd been something more than opportunity that passed between them, giving me my life.

“I really have nothing to tell you.” His words came out softer, and he looked at me with greater intensity, as though seeing himself mirrored in my face or frame. “I'm sorry for any confusion you may have about your parentage,” he added. “There are many Dorés, as I mentioned before.”

“Only one in Manistee, Michigan, however,” I said.

“I'll see you out,” he said. At the door I hesitated, wanting to look once more straight into his eyes to see what I could see of myself reflected there, to imagine what my mother might have seen that drew her to him. He didn't look angry now, more preoccupied, as though remembering.

He said to his secretary, “Give her one of our … brochures. Have her leave her card. I'm sorry,” he said. “I never …” The last thing I saw was the confused eyes of his secretary and the back of my father as he closed his office door in my face.

How would he have finished that sentence? I never knew of her plight? I never meant to hurt her? I never would have abandoned her had I known? Or maybe, I never wish to hear from you again.