The Daughter's Walk (37 page)

My hair still had no body, lay weak and limp. And I'd just spent as much as a fur muff on a style that outmoded my hat. I stopped at Crescent's to buy a new hat and bought one each for Olea and Louise. They met me at the front door of the house.

“Why Clara, you've …”

“Colored your hair,” Olea finished for Louise. “It certainly is … yellow.”

“But it's so … big,” Louise said, gazing up. “That pompadour.”

“It is too big, isn't it?” I had to duck to get through the door with the hat on. “I don't know what I was thinking.” The flurry of hair activity had made me feel better, and I didn't need to tell my friends about the goings-on on Mallon Avenue or that I couldn't plug the hole I felt in my heart.

“It must weigh as much as Lucy,” Louise said.

“The cat might have added more style,” I said, and they both giggled. I did too, the three of us removing the hat and the frame, laughing at the idea of the cat, all balm to my aching heart. This was what friends were for.

The message at the First Presbyterian Church in Coulee City that next Sunday morning spoke of exile. “Being banished, expelled, sent out, is one of the deepest kinds of human suffering,” the pastor noted. “Imagine the Israelites wandering in the desert. It is not of our doing that we are freed from such bondage. God gives ‘the desolate a home to dwell in.' ” He quoted a Psalm.

Olea leaned over and said, “In Hebrew the verse is translated, ‘God sets the lonely in families.' ”

“What an odd verse,” I said. I wondered how she knew the Hebrew version, but Olea rarely shared her history. She was who she was now, a semiretired furrier, a woman interested in European furniture and birds, and apparently a student in Hebrew.

Olea shrugged and whispered, “In Exodus, when the midwives disobeyed the pharaoh, faced their fears, and did what God commanded, it says God gave them ‘families of their own.' Family is apparently pretty important to the health of the soul.”

I looked at her, wondered if she knew she spoke wisdom as though it were a morning greeting, gracious and simple and deep. She'd already turned back, paying attention to the pastor.

I thought of my mother being expelled from the farm through an unnecessary foreclosure, how lonely she looked the day I left, even surrounded by her children. I thought of her family not letting her speak
of one of her greatest accomplishments, how they were held captive by the past, how she was exiled from herself in that way.

Maybe I was as well.

Our lives took on a languid pace, no real ups or downs. Boarders came and went. We hardly noticed them with the separate outside entrance. Most worked for the railroad and were gone for several days at a time. Louise collected the rent from our boarders, who took the rooms and ate one meal with us. Louise complained about her bunions, so took fewer walks with Lucky. I noticed she'd make trips to her room, come out and say, “Now what did I go in there for?” then return. She might do it two or three times before remembering. Maybe she'd always been that way and I only noticed because I was around her more now, listening harder, because that's what families did for each other.

Olea had her eyes checked and got spectacles. She said I should get my eyes checked too, that I might need glasses. I didn't like the tiny lenses. They looked … froglike. “You'd squint less if you had them,” she told me.

“I don't need them yet,” I said and found a magnifying glass I pulled out whenever Franklin's letters arrived. Franklin and I corresponded with no declarations of anything but
Affectionately yours
.

These were days of servicing, I called it, doing menial things to keep the system running, like oiling the plow each fall to deter rust. I lived a life without drama or trial and should have been gleeful.

The
New York Times
arrived weekly and gave us things to discuss through the week. When I saw the article about experiments in Finland, my malaise took a name. I showed it to Olea.

She scoffed. “I thought you'd put that idea out of your mind,” she said. “You haven't spoken to the Warrens about livetrapping. You haven't arranged to travel to see things first hand.”

“I've been waiting for the right time. The Warrens haven't been too encouraging about livetrapping for me. I either have to get someone else or try it myself. Look, it says in the
Times
that it's working.”

Olea looked over my shoulder.

“With foxes maybe. You ought to pay attention to Franklin's wish for you to design.”

Had she been reading my mail?

“What if it was a dream I had,” I told her, “to do something new and innovative?” I thought about Olaf reminding me that I hadn't pursued any of my dreams. But I had. I owned property. I hired seasonal workers to harvest my fruit. We farmed wheat on shares, took chickens to markets that included Spokane restaurants. By all measures I was successful. So what was this longing that made me hungry even after one of Louise's big meals if not the desire to do something more, something bold, the way my mother and I had walked across the country?

Olaf might not be interested in farming on shares, but maybe I could inspire him with my idea of fur ranching. We could do it on the acres near the Spokane River or on the wheat farm. Olea was right, I finally agreed. This separation between Olaf and me needed to be addressed. I took the train to Spokane and walked the four miles to the Elstad farm east of town.

“I'm a sister to a man I hope still works for you,” I told the woman who came to the farmhouse door. She was younger than I and wiped her hands on a yellow apron. “His name is Olaf Estby.”

She shook her head. Sheep bleated in the background, and I heard a dog bark behind the barn. A recent rain added freshness to the air. I looked around hoping to see Olaf come out from the field, but he didn't. I wasn't sure the woman spoke English, so I started to repeat my request in Norwegian when I heard a man call out, “Who is it?” He was inside the house. I hadn't been invited in.

I handed her my card and she called back, “Clara Doré.”

“I'm Olaf Estby's sister,” I said loud enough for him to hear, and shortly, as I'd hoped, Erik Elstad appeared.

“Miss Doré.” He grinned, looked at my card, dismissed the woman, and she disappeared. He stepped outside and directed me to a swing on the wide porch. “Would you like water? I can have Beatrice bring it.” I shook my head. “What brings you here?”

“I'm trying to track down my brother. He's a terrible letter writer.” I smiled.

He looked puzzled, and in the silence that followed, my heart began to pound. “You don't know,” he said at last.

“Don't know what? That he doesn't work here anymore?”

“No, no, he doesn't.” He looked away from me, stared out onto his fields.

The pounding in my chest grew louder as though my heart knew the danger before my ears could hear the words.

“He's. He died. I'm so sorry. Phthisis.”

“Tuberculosis? When?”

“I'd have to think,” he said. “Nineteen-ought-two. Yes. The year the irrigation Reclamation Act was signed. He resigned, said he'd help you farm. Got sick and went to Spokane. I assumed … to be with your family. I think he was in a hospital for a while. I hated to lose him. He was a good worker.” He politely didn't ask why I'd never been informed.

I hope I thanked him for his time. I don't remember. He offered me
water again, suggested he drive me to the train station when he realized I'd walked. “No, no, the walk will do me good,” I said.

My feet knew the way; my mind meandered. Olaf would have been twenty-three when he died. All that time I'd harbored irritation toward him, he was dead.

Waiting for his letters, watching as Louise brought in the packages and mail, had once offered a blend of hope mixed with ache, but now there'd be only ache. I should have tried to contact him sooner. Regret weighted each step I took. Sobs of sorrow made me stop, lean against the gate post. Too late; I was too late.

I'd lost five brothers and sisters to early deaths, all younger than twenty-five. I was living on borrowed time.

I didn't return to Coulee City that afternoon. Instead, I stayed at the Fairview house. I didn't sleep, couldn't concentrate. My eyes swelled with crying. Finally, at dawn I knew what I would do.

The first house I bought was occupied by renters in a growing section of Spokane. Their rents would make the payments. I purchased a second house in the new Alta Vista Estates strictly for investment. I used my Spokane River property as collateral. I'd hold it until the price rose, then sell for a small profit. I'd slowly gain and make money, add to my accounts, that's what I'd do. Build security. I ignored the silent voice reminding me of a different path. It felt right.

But by the next morning, it didn't. There was no need for me to go into debt. This wasn't what living an abundant life meant, was it? What had I been thinking?

“I've been impulsive,” I told the real estate agent, catching him before he left for the day. “I want to put both houses back on the market.”

“Now?” he said. I nodded. “But you'll lose earnest money. I'll have to charge fees.”

“I don't care. Sell them.”

“Give yourself time to think this over. You can't go wrong with property,” he assured me.

Of course one could. Mama had lost the farm.

“Just sell the rental then,” I said, “Even if it's at a loss.”

There was something different I needed to invest in as a memorial to my brother. He'd lived a safe and simple life. I needed to fully live my own.