The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [136]
Clara remembered Helga’s words about her writing the story down. They’d talked about it now and then when they had lunch together and once when Clara joined her at the Mica Creek cemetery on the anniversary of Ole’s death. Helga had continued to write, though she told no one.
Clara was glad she came to the cemetery to honor Ole. He’d been there for her mother in the beginning and cared for her through the years, not in ways Clara wanted for her, but it was really not her business how others worked out their affairs. John Doré gave Clara life, but it was Ole and her mother who gave her the family of her youth; and now, as she grew older.
After Lillian gave birth to her daughter, Norma Fay, Helga and her daughters would often get together at Lillian’s house on Shannon Avenue so Lillian wouldn’t have to take the streetcar with the child. Clara would pick up pastries with maraschino cherries on top and ride with them on a cardboard tray on her lap to where Lillian lived. Clara took a special liking to her nieces and nephew—and even great-nieces, after Thelma married. In later years, Clara discovered she had a creative bent in poetry and sent Norma Fay little poems. When she forgot Norma Fay’s birthday one year she penned:
I bethought me of my promise
To teach our Norma Fay
That nickels make the dollars,
As she trudges down life’s way.
So here you’ll find another—
I have sent one on before—
And I must wait for orders,
Ere I can send you more.
And lest I should forget,
When I’m told another time, I send along as penance,
This little, shiny dime.
She signed it “With Love from Clara to Norma Fay” and always included a coin or two or a colorful stamp. Norma Fay liked to hear the stories of the countries the stamps came from. Clara hoped the poems spoke of frugality and put personal responsibility at the forefront of any young person’s mind. Her work at Merchants reminded Clara of what can happen when people overextend themselves or neglect their bills. Sadly, the collection agency thrived because of people who never learned that important lesson.
Before her mother’s death, Clara had been preparing to join Franklin on a trip to Europe, as they’d done so many times since Clara had reconciled with her family and since Sharon’s surprising death in 1929. That’s what Clara called her slow weaving of threads back into her family quilt: reconciliation. “To reestablish friendship,” her dictionary read.
Bill made little comments about her “traveling” with a man when she packed her trunks and headed east. She supposed he thought she was a courtesan, but she and Franklin were good friends who grieved Sharon’s death together and enjoyed sitting by the Aegean, watching feral cats and fishermen at their trade.
That morning in April, however, Clara canceled her plans with Franklin and made the sad journey by streetcar to the house on Mallon to help sort through her mother’s things. Clara hoped to take her mother’s manuscript for safekeeping. Maybe after Ida and Bill passed away, it could be published. Surely her sisters wouldn’t want it if they even knew of its existence. Clara didn’t know how her mother’s personal effects would be divided, but she’d ask for the scrapbook too and maybe one of her mother’s Hardanger lace tablecloths and a quilt or a painting. She’d loved how her mother used color in her floral paintings.
When she arrived on Mallon Avenue, a presentiment silence greeted Clara. She went up to her mother’s room, but her sisters weren’t there. The trunk was gone. She heard voices in the backyard and looked out through the upstairs window, pulling the lace curtain back. She smelled smoke. They were likely burning trash to clean things up before people visited after the service later in the week. Margaret, Bill’s wife, stood off to the side and looked on while Ida and Lillian leaned over a smoky barrel. Bill wasn’t there.
Clara saw her mother’s trunk beside the barrel.
The manuscript! Her heart pounded. She ran down the