The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [118]
That surprised me. “Surely we’ve found more civilized ways to deal with conflict,” I said. We sat thoughtful. Franklin had a better command of European issues.
“Even so, we can contract with Lloyd’s to insure the shipments,” he said. “That way we won’t be out anything if something should happen.”
Lucky meandered into the kitchen, shook himself all over. The gray around his muzzle was a sign that all of us were aging.
“Clara has a surprise for you,” Olea said. “Go ahead, show him.”
This was the real risk, to put out my own work. “I have a few creations,” I said. I went to the room where I kept my folder of precious things: the sketches I’d drawn on the walk, the album of stamps I’d collected. The signature page of the distinguished people, including McKinley’s, fell out. I laid it aside. He was gone now, assassinated by an anarchist way back in ’02, the same year as Olaf’s death. I lifted the thin drawing sheets I’d worked on while Louise snored in her chair. Olea showed Franklin her side cabinets, her new interest now with bedside tables over birds.
But they all hovered when I pulled out the first designs, an ermine stole and muff. “I see it over a red broadcloth coat with black velvet lining and a black beaver hat with a veil. This one would be black fox, the scarf and muff with tails.” He lifted up two or three others. Ermine caps, “near seal,” a man’s black sealskin collar on an overcoat. “He’d wear gaiters over black oxfords,” I pointed. “And this is my personal favorite, a black velvet mantle edged with white fox.” I’d drawn a lattice embroidery of pearl beads and drops to crisscross the cape’s back. “The silver tissue turban would have a paradise.” I pointed to the feather I’d drawn coming off the model’s turban, but Franklin’s eyes were on the magnificent cape.
“Do you have more?”
“A few,” I said. I felt like I was undressing in front of a window at night with the lights on.
“How much are you willing to invest to have these made up?”
I told him. He whistled. “It should return us triple that.”
“Yes. It should.”
“I don’t have those kinds of funds to match your investments,” he said. “I can’t even contribute a quarter of that cash.”
“You’ll be contributing your expertise, the contacts, setting everything up,” Olea told him, “making the best deals you can, marketing what we expect will be one of the finest outlays of fur fashion customers have seen since the turn of the century. We’ve formed a company. Deluxe DDOL Furs, with two Ds for two Dorés and one Olea and Louise. You’ll have to escort the finished product back. That will make up your contribution.”
“I know exactly who should work on these,” he said. “They’re stunning, Clara. You could find yourself in demand as a designer. Maybe I should simply take these and sell them. You wouldn’t risk so much that way.”
“No. We’re going all the way. I’m willing to invest ten thousand dollars for our future.”
The same as what my mother and I had been promised when we started our walk across the country.
Franklin wrote of his progress. I read his letters while Olea sanded a table in the shed. He’d bought fine pelts; he’d chosen the tanners and dressers and shown my designs to furriers in Paris, whom he said raised their eyebrows at their elegance. “Especially the beaded cape,” he wrote. “It will be a smash in Paris and New York.”
I worked on others with Olea leaning over my shoulder, commenting now and then. I soon forgot that I didn’t know what had caused our rift. Families had their ebb and flow, I decided, not unlike a river. There could be dry periods and floods. What mattered was keeping on the river, not letting old snags pull one under or diverting us to streams that simply dried up and disappeared. That’s what had happened with my family: we moved on different rivers. I didn’t see how those streams would ever intersect again.
As I walked the fields that summer under blue skies without a hint of rain, I prayed that it wouldn’t be another year of wanting. I did miss the green of the Palouse