The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [127]
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.”
I rolled the Reverend’s words over in my mind as I took the streetcar home. I’d accepted Ida’s version of my mother, but I hadn’t seen her for myself for nearly twenty years. As an opening perhaps I’d take to my mother my packet with the newspaper clippings, the signatures, those few sketches I’d made. Maybe seeing the old articles would encourage her to write the story down in secret if she hadn’t already; maybe it would let her see how important the walk had been for me and for her and for other women too.
Or maybe the articles would open old wounds, as Ida suggested, where flesh had already grown over and was best left alone.
We’d lived on Fairview over a year when I learned of an opening for a clerk at a finance company, the Merchants Rating & Adjustment firm located in the realty building near Riverside and Main. I applied, and though I was a little disconcerted by the work they did—collecting from people who could not pay their debts—it paid so much better than the serving job, and physically, it wouldn’t drain me. At least I hoped it wouldn’t.
“You won’t be asked to make collections,” Mr. Oehler, the manager told me. “That task is reserved for men. It’s not the sort of thing a woman could handle. But I need a clerk, a good stenographer, and you’ve had classes at Blair Business College, I see.”
“Some years ago, but yes.”
“And what have you been doing since then?”
I cleared my throat. If I tell him I’ve been destitute, will that disqualify me? “Working in the furrier industry,” I said. “Assisting businesswomen from New York who moved here. I kept their accounts for many years.”
“That’s good. You have business experience. You’ve never been sent to collections?” I shook my head. “No foreclosures in your past?”
“Not in my past, no,” I said.
“And right now you’re …?”
“A waitress at the Davenport.” He frowned. “To supplement my other work,” I explained. “I like to pay cash for everything.”
“That’s good. You have a family?”
“I’m not married.”
“Well, I know that. I wouldn’t interview a married woman. Married women belong in the home. I meant, will anyone be distressed if you’re asked to work late?”
“I live with two friends,” I said. “If I’m needed to work late, I can arrange that.” It was good to consider that I had others who might “be distressed” over me.
“Very well. I think you’ll find our industry quite intriguing, Miss Doré. We’re good for this country. We help people be accountable