The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [33]
The “cottage” turned out to be a large Victorian home with a picket fence and bare elm branches framing the charming white house. “It’s the president-elect’s home,” Mama said.
“President McKinley?”
“Don’t look so surprised. Surely you didn’t think I’d pass up an attempt to let you meet your hero.”
“And get that one last famous signature.”
“It will add to the story,” she said, bumping my hip.
“You can’t just walk up to the door and knock. Maybe he won’t be here,” I said. I hoped he wouldn’t be. My hair looked a fright. And yet when William McKinley came to the door and Mama introduced me and herself, I could barely say his name. Mama congratulated him, said she hoped he’d remember the women’s vote one day, and then showed him our picture and a newspaper article we’d brought with us, the most recent one from the Ohio State Journal of November 24. “I’d like your signature, for the sponsors,” Mama said.
“Certainly. Come in,” he said. “If you’ll wait in the parlor.” He pointed after he signed Mama’s book. “I’ll wheel my wife in to join us and ask Lotty to set up for tea.”
A satin flowered settee, the pictures of a young girl and an infant, frames with gold flourishes, mirrors (which revealed the decrepit state of my hair), a coal stove, and a grand piano marked the parlor of a home both modest yet elegant. Distinguished, orderly, not too opulent, and pleasant—the way life ought to be, I thought, just the way McKinley had campaigned.
“Mrs. McKinley has fainting spells,” Mama whispered. She fingered the fringe on the lamp. “They’re devoted to each other. That’s why he didn’t campaign away from home very much and answers his own door. Both of their children died; so tragic. The story is that they met when Mrs. McKinley worked as a financial manager and ran the bank when her father traveled. The president-elect had his accounts there.”
The mention of banks made me think of Forest. I wondered what he was doing now. Might I one day live in such an elegant home, loved by a devoted husband like Forest?
“A woman as a financial manager? You mean like a banker?” I said.
“Like a banker.”
“Who would never be caught less than three weeks away from a deadline that’s nearly five hundred miles ahead.”
“Clara,” Mama sighed. “It’s your birthday present, meeting him. You’ll please me if you simply accept it.”
My birthday. I’d forgotten. I’d lost a year of my life on this trip. I thought I’d be turning nineteen, but instead I’d be turning twenty, with my mother giving me the only birthday present I could remember that she hadn’t sewn herself, at least not with thread.
Thirty-five miles a day, walking to make up time, legs aching, feet wet and cold. Chapped cheeks, no fur mufflers to keep my neck warm, though we’d bought warm hats after Chicago. No fat on our bones, so the wind played against our narrow backs as though we were xylophones. Through Pennsylvania we accepted warm meals from the Amish, whom Mama described as the true heart of America. I could have bunked with them for the winter, they acted so welcoming.
Energized, we made forty miles one day. In Pittsburgh we rode a trolley, acceptable because it was a free ride, Mama said, apparently no longer worried over spies turning us in as contract breakers. Maybe because there wasn’t any way we’d fulfill the contract. But like a child who hopes for dessert even when the plate is empty, I prayed we would prevail. Maybe it was Jonah and the whale that inspired, despite the narrowness of that whale’s throat.
News of our arrival now preceded us with greater interest, so in Reading, when we stayed at a hotel, we had requests from visitors who’d read the news reports of our trek. Mama entertained the reporters and society people with her stories. I even joined in at one point by saying, “McKinley