The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [115]
Instead, Ida opened the door.
“Clara? Why, Clara, what are you doing here?” Little lines around her eyes suggested she’d aged beyond her years, but she still stood board-straight tall, her embroidered apron colored with stylized Norwegian birds and flowers at the bodice and the hemline.
“I’m fine. I … didn’t know about Papa. I just learned. I’m sorry for you all.”
A flash of irritation crossed her eyes. “Are you?”
“Yes. I mean I was angry when he sent me away but—”
“He didn’t send you away, Clara. You chose to go away … with your dirty money and those women. You abandoned us.”
I blinked. That wasn’t at all how I’d seen it. Papa said I wasn’t an Estby, as no Estby would take the money offered. Mama let him. My family practically applauded! They sent me away. How could she not see that?
My throat felt tight, but I spoke. “Taking the money wasn’t meant to discount your suffering, Ida,” I said. “I know that time in the hog shed must have been horrible.”
“It’s not about that.” She looked away.
“We suffered too, Mama and me while in New York. Everyone suffers. We make do the best we can.”
“You did well with your money.”
“That money belonged to us,” I said, keeping my voice calm, though my hands felt damp and my chest ached. “Mama and I earned it.”
She shook her head. She did not invite me in but came out to the porch instead. Wicker rockers sat waiting, but we both stood. I’m not allowed inside.
“Papa was right. He got better; he worked until his accident. We’re doing fine. We all support each other, Arthur and Billy and now Lillian too. We take care of Mama. The union gave a small life insurance payment. God provides, Clara, without taking dirty money.”
A rush of emotion surged up my neck and flushed my face, but I kept my tongue. There was no need to argue. Her wounds ran deep and defined her life even after all these years.
“I just stopped to see how you’re doing.” I should have kept quiet then, but I added, “I thought with Papa gone Mama might speak again of our walk and—”
“No!” She raised her hand. “It is not talked about. That’s what Papa wanted, and that’s what we all want too. You’re the only one who has trouble with it. We didn’t appreciate your postcard from Finland about suffrage. Mama has no more interest in that. I don’t think she even signed up to vote last year. They ask for our birth dates; how disgusting.” She shivered as though she’d eaten raw liver. “She paints now. It’s good for her. Talk of that walk, never.”
“Ida,” I said, tears brimming in my eyes. “I’m not a terrible person. I only wanted to make my way. I would have helped you, but you wouldn’t accept—”
“You could come home now, Clara. We’d welcome you. Take your name back. Doré. That’s so … affected, really, isn’t it? Let those women make their own way. You’ve done enough for them. Leave them and their money behind and start over with us. You could get a job here. You could serve your family. We don’t mind if you’re poor.”
“Turn my back on my friends?” Live with rules of what can be said as though Papa were still alive?
“It’s a small sacrifice to pay for your family.”
“I can’t leave them, Ida. They gave me a job when I needed one, paid for my schooling, taught me a trade. They nursed me when I was ill. I’m in the furrier business with them. I ranch, own properties. They—”
“No talk of them,” she said. “Come home.” She reached for my hand.
This was what I’d been waiting for all along, to be invited back. Yet the joy of it escaped me riding on Ida’s conditions. This wasn’t how the Israelites were called out of exile, was it? They weren’t asked to deny the stories of where they’d been and what God had done in their lives. Why,