Three Rivers Rising (4 page)

I draw back
and feel my stomach clutch.
Did he say
splendid
?

“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Hunting. Of course.”
“I suppose it would be rude to inquire
as to the whereabouts of your gun.”
“Ah, yes, my gun. Where did I leave it?” He smirks
and pats his pockets.

“Where are you off to?” Grayson extends his arm. “Who knows,
perhaps we shall discover my rifle.”
“It is my intention to swim.
As a gentleman,
you will understand
my insistence on privacy,” I say,
though I know
he is
not
a gentleman.
He reaches for my hand and bows. “As you wish.”
He
knows he is not a gentleman.

I snatch my hand away and hasten toward Peter.
I refuse to look back
but I hold my breath until I hear
Grayson’s irritating trilling tuneless whistle
descend in the distance.

How ever did Estrella get past this man
and still remain in good humor?

Pennsylvania Railroad

Kate

Destination, nursing school.
Standing on the platform at the station.
My mind reviews its list
again
and again:
    arrangements in place,
    the tiny sum of unused wedding money
    wired to the head nurse,
    thick coat,
    warm hat,
    gloves with no holes,
    which should get any girl through a year of study,
    though they barely reach the wristbones,
    and, of course, a complete meal and two snacks:
        hard-boiled eggs, a hunk of cheese, two heels of bread,
        a bit of ham, and a jar of milk.
        Someone snuck in a wedge of last night’s pie.
        Leave it on the bench.
        Pie is not what makes the body go.

No time for mooning and sulking
over what happened to Early
and what’s become of me since,
how stiff and aged.
Prepare for the work
and the cold
and the homesickness, should it come—
pride and frailty,
nonsense.

Bring the return ticket
Daddy bought
to the caged window
for a refund.
The cashier pushes the fare
through the glass
without a word.
Home?
Loved it once
but won’t be coming back.

South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club

Lake Conemaugh

Celestia

Mother wrings her hands,
paces the drawing room.
“You have always been such a good girl—
perhaps too much at your books,
but still, sensible….”
“What is it, Mother?” I take a step toward her.

“We’ve provided every opportunity
for you as a young woman,
your schooling, your social activities,
your coming-out cotillion next year,
the right kind of people….”
I sigh.
“What is this about, Mother?”
I perch on the arm of a chair,
prepared to wait out the lecture.

“Louise Godwin saw you …”
“That old busybody.”
“… with him.” Mother pulls her mouth tight
and looks down at me.
I straighten up. “Where?”
“In the lake.”
“Oh”—I wave a hand, making light—“swimming.
Am I not permitted to swim?”
“Alone?
With some boy?
You know better!”
“He is not ‘some boy.’
He has a name.”
“He is not like us, Celestia darling.”
“Correct. He earns his keep.” I speak through clenched teeth.
Mother arranges her face into a stern look.
“Your father works very hard.”

“We all agree that Father works hard.
When
is
he due back from Pittsburgh?”
“About eight, unless he gets a late start—
do not change the subject!
Your father will take this up with you when he returns.”

“Father? But how would
he
know?”
“Circumstances forced me to tell him.”
“What circumstances?” I search my mother’s face,
but it is twisting up with emotion.

Mother drops to her knees,
grabs my shoulders. “
Listen
to him, Celestia.
I beg you.
You have not yet seen the world
the way we have.
Your actions could not only tear us
from our place in society
but rip this family apart,
person from person.” Mother throws herself across me
as if I were leaving. “Do not take yourself from me, Celestia,
my precious baby.”

I circle my arms round her narrow shoulders,
now heaving as she sobs.
As always, with Mother, I am torn
between protectiveness and impatience.
Her love is a certainty
but her perspective is skewed.
Times have changed since she was a girl.

I enter the front room
where my father attends to business
when he’s here.
Darkness.
My eyes adjust.
In the low lamplight,
Father looks tired from his journey.

Before I sit, I hear laughter out on the lake.
A ladylike laugh.
I’m drawn to the window
to peer into the dark.
A couple drifts in a rowboat
strung with glowing lanterns.
Time has stopped for them.
A little island
beyond scrutiny.
The graceful stretch of her arm,
the low timbre of voice …
could it be Estrella floating outside of time
with an admirer?

Estrella singing.
To…whom?
To handsome Frederick,
with his mop of golden hair
and his affable smile?
Cannot make him out.
Cannot quite catch the tune.

Father rubs his face
and combs the strands of hair over his forehead
with his fingers.
I feel pity for him in the brief moment
before he runs me like his business.

“This nonsense must stop.”
Father stares out the window,
hands behind his back.
“You are from a decent family….”
I glance from him to the rowboat.
Is he addressing me or Estrella?

He rocks on his heels. “People have begun to talk.”
I settle on the arm of a chair
and pick a briar from my sleeve. “Gossips and windbags.”
“These are people whose good opinion we hold in esteem.
Polite society.
Business contacts.” Father taps the mahogany desk for emphasis.
I recoil. “I assure you I have done nothing
to besmirch the good name of our family.”

Father stops and glares.
His eyes are burning ingots.
“I want you to stay away from the hired boy.”
“Why?” My back straightens and I raise my chin.
“I am your father.
I don’t have to explain.” Father tucks papers into a ledger,
signaling the end of discussion. “It has been arranged for you
to accompany your aunt Mimsy abroad.

You will be her traveling companion
until you begin finishing school in Switzerland.”
Indignation rushes heat
through my entire body.
“I will not go!” I am on my feet.
“And I will not stop being friends with Peter.”

Father slaps the ledger on the desk.

“I have not worked myself blind all these years
so you can shame me
and live in a dirt-floor shack
in the valley!” Father leans across the desk,
red-faced,
cords standing out on his neck.
“Do you even know what one looks like?
I
do. I came from one.
And I turned a pile of nothing into a fortune.
How easy for you to take it for granted!
I suggest you go with your aunt and grow up.”

“You cannot fire me like one of your employees!” My voice is shrill.

His face says otherwise. “If you choose the boy,
then you are no longer my daughter.”

The clock strikes many times throughout my packing.
Each item my hands light upon
gives me pause:
Would I take this to Europe with Aunt Mimsy?
Would it comfort me
through the empty affectations of school abroad?
Each book a lifeline,
a certainty that my own blood courses through me
and me alone …
Or:
Would I take this to the valley
to live with Peter and his father
and leave behind the only life I know?
Perhaps the brush and mirror with inlaid mother-of-pearl
would not serve me there,
though I know it to be a proper wooden house,
not the dirt-floor shack Father suggests.
I could leave behind the trinkets with ease—
but to leave behind my gentle guileless mother?
My hardworking earnest father?
And, most of all, Estrella
with her tinkling bracelets,
her warm voice,
the way she holds my face in her hands
and looks into my eyes—
she is the only one who ever tried to know me,
the dearest friend of my life
before Peter.

Mimsy arrives just after dinner.
She is resplendent in her picture hat and furs.
Little dogs patter on either side
and an entourage of people and luggage and commotion
follows in her wake,
though she is serene as the lake without wind.

Mimsy bats her eyes at me and demands a kiss.
I smile—it is impossible not to smile in her presence—
and rush into her arms.
Her embrace is long and sweet.
She smells of lemongrass.

I can feel my forgiveness.
No, Mimsy is not to blame.
She is merely the vehicle
through which my parents have planned my removal.
She is a delightful consolation. If only
I did not have to remind myself
that I am not choosing Peter.

Peter

Her aunt’s coming for her.
Nothing to be done.
The summer days that stretched out before us
snapped back
and slapped our wrists.
Nothing to be done.

She gives me little things to keep,
to remember her by—
glass,
porcelain—
“breakables,” she calls them.
“What do people do with them?”
“Nothing, just show how fancy they are
that they can keep them from breaking, I guess.”
I’ll put one in each pocket,
so they don’t smash each other.
Fancy
.

I give her my favorite river rocks,
the ones she found for me:
striped,
green,
oxblood,
speckled.

We hold them up next to each other—
the breakables and the rocks.
“The finest faceted crystal comes from sand,” she says.
I don’t know why we’re talking about this
in our last moments,
we just can’t make ourselves say goodbye.
“The sheerest porcelain
you can see light through
comes from clay,” she says,
“and the purest diamond comes from coal.”
I pull her closer. “Everything comes from something.”
“Exactly”—she touches my cheek—
“the distance between them …
is time.”
“Or alchemy.” I tear my eyes away from her face
to look off down the valley.

The sunset competes with the red glow over Johnstown.
And I know,
at any given moment,
metal is liquid fire
lighting the night sky,
becoming steel
that will build tracks
to anywhere she might be.
It will build bridges between the glittering stars
and the likes of me.

Celestia

The next day brings a fresh thought:
Estrella
will understand.
I will tell her what Father said
and she will explain it all away
with her easy laugh and a toss of her head,
pearl bobs dancing at her ears.
I will tell her that I can do without
luxuries and leisure
but I cannot choose to be shunned,
cut off from her,
no longer a member of this family.

People are born with different kinds of courage—
mine is not the courage to be disowned.

Even so, I must say goodbye for now
and on to Europe.
I will entreat her to write every day
with details of the wedding preparations.
Charles is set to arrive tonight for a visit.
I will be on my way to the harbor by then.