The Daughter's Walk (48 page)

“I'll need to sell the car.”

“If you wish. But we can still work. We're not so old. Louise is right. You've taught us that. We're a family of new beginners.” She patted my hand. “Clara, the best is yet to be.”

“Is it?” Louise asked. “It's unclear.”

But it wasn't.

“You'll come back,” Louise said as I boarded the train in June 1915. I knew she wasn't talking about my business acumen. Here I was: nearly as penniless as my parents had been when the farm foreclosed. The pharmacist purchased my car for nearly what I'd paid for it, so we had a little cash, and the women insisted I keep Franklin's ring “until we're desperate.”

“Yes,” I said. “As soon as I have employment, I'll come back. We'll move, and things will get better.”

As the train rumbled across the tracks, I thought of how I'd gotten here, my risk taken. I'd tried to control everything, but of course, no humans control the weather or “acts of war” or, I was learning, much of anything else. I leaned back on the seat, closed my eyes, tried to hear the Voice I hadn't heard for so long whispering to me,
This is the way, walk ye in it
.

At the newspaper office in Spokane, I searched the help-wanted ads. No openings were posted for any accounting work, furrier work, or even ranch management. I chose a job waiting tables at the Davenport Hotel, a grand facility that had opened the year before. I'd apply and see if my previous years of domestic service would meet requirements. Of course, they might want younger people now, but a mature woman could be an advantage in handling disgruntled customers.

The city directory lay next to the
Spokane Daily Chronicle
. Because I couldn't resist, I found the Estby page.
Helga, Arthur, Agnes, William, Ida, Lillian
. All still lived on Mallon Avenue. I wondered who Agnes was. Maybe Arthur or Billy had married.

Spokane felt like an eastern city to me as I walked toward the Davenport Hotel. New construction promised prosperity. Washington women had earned the right to vote in 1910, and there were parks with
benches to sit on that I attributed to their influence. The Huttons had poured much of their $150 million silver, lead, and zinc strike into Spokane, especially helping with orphaned children. The Colville and Spokane Indians I met walking on the street stood taller. Fewer leaves gathered in the door wells, and the streets looked cleaner to me than I remembered. The Church of St. Joseph, grown from a carpenter's shop and a brick structure when I'd left, had become the Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral, a building as imposing and intricate as any I'd seen in Europe.

I passed a furrier. I'd need to bring my motor coat here not for summer storage, but to sell.

The Davenport Hotel rose up several stories between Sprague and First Street, and the elegant lobby was as astonishing as the Waldorf-Astoria's, though much newer. I didn't swirl around like a country bumpkin beneath the domed ceiling nor stare too long at the intricate wrought-iron railings that defined the balcony, but I considered it. The thick Persian carpets, large potted plants, and English furniture softened the noise of a very busy place. Men and women in fine fashion, many wearing furs, sauntered after bellboys carrying stacks of luggage like layered cakes. The men behind the desk wore ties and vests and boutonnieres, while the scent of fresh croissants floated like a melody from the kitchen.

This is what my life had come to.

I turned around, entered the more appropriate service entrance.

I found a house for us to rent on Fairview, the same street Olea's home had been on, just down the block. She'd sold it to enter our adventure with my designs. From that quiet street I walked to the streetcar stop
and began my life as a waitress at the Davenport Hotel. After three months, both Louise and Olea were hired as domestics at a smaller hotel down the street, changing sheets and washing towels. It troubled me to see them working so hard, but unexpectedly, Louise perked up with steady, routine tasks. Olea could encourage her and urged her to rest at various times through the day. It kept Louise from thinking about the garden she no longer tended.

On the streetcar, we made a game of looking at the people, guessing where they hurried to or what happened in their day to make them laugh or scowl. When I ate my lunch outside, the sun warm on my face, I wondered what I'd do if I saw Arthur or Billy or Lillian, or if I'd even recognize them. Lillian had been twelve, writing in a diary, when I'd seen her last. Maybe I'd find out where Lillian worked and take an order to her, have a dress made for Louise when I had enough saved up.

While elegant, the Davenport didn't pay waitresses all that well. But a meal was included, and I liked working among the other servers. I enjoyed the finery of the hotel and its well-portioned guests. The kitchen help told jokes, and I often took my lunch with them, remembering the hotel in Minneapolis where the reporter had found us laughing in the kitchen. Even the Deer Park Egg Farm delivery man sometimes sat down for coffee with us. His presence made me briefly long for my idea of the fur ranch. Eggs would be good food for captive animals, a fine source of protein.

Once I even brought water to the table of a man who looked familiar, and I startled when I realized it was Forest Stapleton seated next to a woman I assumed to be his wife. He was dressed as a fine businessman, but the cuffs of his coat looked frayed. He wore a puzzled expression when I said, “Good afternoon.” He stared at my face and didn't answer when I asked what beverage he might like. His wife poked his
side and said more loudly than necessary, “It's not polite to stare, especially at the waitresses.”

“Yes. Coffee. With cream and sugar. Don't I know you?” He stared again as he handed me the menu.

“How could you, Forest? Goodness. She's the help!” his wife said, grinding out the word
help
.

“You're right, my dear.” I knew he recognized me. “How ever would I know a serving girl, not even from my youth?” He looked away.

I took her order, curtsied, and left, expressing silent thanks to my mother that she had offered me a different path from where my fantasy of life with Forest Stapleton might have taken me.

I put aside a little money each month in the precious packet that held the news clippings of the walk. The hotel work proved tiring, and I slept well but had little time for card playing, stamp collecting, or even trying my hand again at designing. Walks brought me by the Spokane River and the falls, and the views of the Twin Sisters mountains in the distance gave me riches.

Olea said I became more and more frugal. I'd be alone before long. My two friends were in their sixties and I'd likely outlive them, so I needed to prepare for what lay ahead. I found it difficult to accept Olea's contributions to the household rent, but each of us contributed. That's what family did.

Franklin continued to write to us all. I read the letters out loud. He and Sharon had settled in Montreal, and he'd acquired new work in the furrier field that still required him to travel. He encouraged me to offer up new designs. He sold the ones that had been made up as garments before and made certain I received the proceeds.
If you come to Montreal, you could see them on the models at the fair next spring. The seamstresses in Paris plan to replicate the latticework cape. Bring more
designs with you. You could keep a little finger in the business without any risk at all, except perhaps becoming known as a fine designer
.

I had no money to go to Montreal, barely enough to take the streetcar across town.

Sharon always added a message or two in her tiny script. This time she told of the weather and the beauty of the city. “You must come visit,” she wrote. “Franklin says you are destined to travel.”

“She's so much like you,” Olea said after we read the last letter aloud. “You could be sisters.”

“Clara has a sister?” Louise asked.

“We have the same name.”

“Your name is Sharon?”

“Her last name, Louise,” Olea said. “Doré. I didn't say Clara has a sister, though she does. I said Sharon and Clara were so much alike they could be sisters. That tiny script, the same tall stature, that baby-fine hair.”

“And they both love Franklin,” Louise said.

“But in different ways,” I told her. “My hair has a bit of gray in it,” I said. I'd long ago let the blond grow out. “Sharon's is black as mink.”

“What about your other sisters?” Louise asked. “What color is their hair?”

“They're blondes,” I said. “They're too young yet to have gray twining through their chignons.”

“Maybe you ought to see for sure,” Olea said.

O
lea discovered the Unity Church of Truth on Sixth and Jefferson with an assistant pastor named Emma Wells. “The first woman pastor in Spokane,” Olea said. “It's good to know the faith is expanding to allow women to be of greater service.” Though Emma Wells did not preach, she taught, and there was a calm about her as she did. She was gentle with Louise, so interested in what anyone had to say that I found hopefulness in her presence.

On Mother's Day I thought of contacting my mother. It was her birthday month as well. Now that I had no “dirty money” behind me, perhaps I'd be seen as one of them again.

I talked with Reverend Wells about it, and she asked me one day if money was really what the separation had been about. “The real story is rarely about what the story is about,” she said. “There's always some underlying theme, with guilt and the lack of grace the main characters.” I'd made an appointment to talk with her following a service when I couldn't hold back the tears. The sermon had been about the Prodigal Son.

“Louise said this curious thing one time,” I said, “about how I act as though I don't deserve a full plate. Something about how I leave no time for real nourishment. I'm always busy working, looking at my schedule, keeping tidy ledger notes,” I said. “Silly, don't you think?”

“It doesn't matter what I think,” Reverend Wells said.

“But could that be? Could my desire to do things my own way be what I feed on?”

“It could. Or it could be what keeps you from a nourished spirit. Many of us don't think we deserve the goodness of life. We think suffering is our lot. We forget that like the Prodigal Son we are always welcomed back by God.
Prodigal
even means ‘given in abundance.' Did you know that?”

“No,” I said. “I thought it meant ‘wayward' and ‘wasteful.' ”

“You're focused on how the boy behaved, not on how the father loved him.”

“I attempted to reconcile,” I defended. “I visited my sister.”

“And you've forgiven your mother? Your sister? Forgiveness is a choice, Clara. We're commanded to forgive.” I wondered if Louise's corollary about commands as promises fit with forgiveness. “It's for our own good,” Reverend Wells added. “Not just for the one who is separated from us.”