The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [156]
We knitted.
After we talked about the weather and the British and the Missourians, she said, "Please don’t misunderstand me, Lydia, but I would like to know how much money you have. I want to know as one who will always be your friend and only wants the best for you."
As it happened, I had just been counting my money that afternoon, and so I came right out with it. "I have fifteen dollars."
She shook her head. This was clearly worse than she had thought. She said, "Oh, my dear. And K.T. is such a costly place."
"Mr. Bush said he would pay me for my crop in August."
She nodded and turned her work, then said, "You know, Lydia, although I am only a few years older than you, very few, I do feel that I must take you in hand just now. How well I know what is the customary duty of the wife to the memory of her husband back in the States, and it was certainly a source of grievous pain to me that I could not give Mr. Wheelwright his due upon his unfortunate passing. Everything taken all in all, Mr. Wheelwright was a good man and as kind to me in every way as a man of his temperament was capable of being. If he was a little curt, at times, and invariably taciturn, and remarkably unsociable, then these things were not of his own making, and it was up to me as his wife to accept them, which I did, and Charles and I have agreed to give our son his name as a second name, to honor him."
"You have?"
"Why, yes. Isaac Ruben Bisket." She smiled fondly. "Elizabeth Rubena Bisket, if a girl. But I’m wandering off the track. You should keep me to the subject, my dear, which is you, not me."
"I don’t want to talk about me, Louisa."
"Now, that is very feckless of you, Lydia. You simply cannot be feckless in K.T. and expect even to live! K.T. demands boldness and energy. We have chosen an unforgiving home."
"Well, Louisa, I don’t know what to do, and I don’t have the money to do it."
"Charles owed Thomas some money when he—when he was murdered by those criminal slavocrats."
"He did?"
"Yes. A hundred and twenty-five dollars."
I stared at her, then said, "Louisa, I just do not believe you. Thomas hadn’t worked for Charles in a month by then, and he never said a word about it to me, all the time we were worrying about the summer."
"Well, it’s true."
"It’s not true. Look at me."
She looked at me. It wasn’t true. My heart sank, and I hadn’t even felt it lift. After a moment, she turned her work again (she had been knitting quickly this whole time) and said, "Lydia, my dear, I have the money. It’s no loss to me to loan it to you, or give it to you, or buy your claim with it."
"Then what? I can’t stay in K.T."
"Oh, my dear, you can’t backtrack! You won’t be able to live back there after here! In my estimation, even with the dangers, K.T. is the only place for a woman, especially a woman of verve and imagination."
"Louisa, I don’t think I am a woman of verve and imagination. Thomas had the verve and imagination. I was just curious."
"Now, my dear, we all become disconsolate; you’d have a heart the size of a walnut if you didn’t feel these sorts of things—"
"I want to go back."
But I didn’t, really. There was nothing in the States for me. I did feel, though, that if I could get over to Missouri, to Westport or Lexington, I could find that boy who had shot my horse, whose friends had shot my husband. All the same, I wasn’t being entirely deceptive with Louisa. I was simply believing two contradictory things to be true at the same time, a fine K.T. tradition.
"To Quincy?"
"Maybe, or even to Medford."
"I know Helen Bush has been talking to you, Lydia, but you mustn’t listen to her. Once you’ve been to K.T., my dear, then you are simply the wrong size for the Bay State box. I lived there all my life; I know what I am talking about. You would feel things very tight there, and very small. We’re western women now."
"But I’ve never been there at all, Louisa." I