The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [57]
Through the summer of 1900, they taught me about the fur clothing business. Their agent, Franklin Doré, purchased pelts at auctions, then sent them for tanning and dressing in either Montreal or Europe. After the skins were prepared, they were sent to manufacturers. The best were in France and Italy, Olea insisted. Louise said New York was gaining fast. Finished coats and ermine capes or jackets with skunk-trimmed collars were then shipped to New York on Twenty-eighth Street. In the women’s younger years, they often traveled to Europe, China, Russia, and the leather markets of Turkey and Greece. “But our agent does most of the traveling now. We leased our furrier shop in the city earlier this year, when we came here. But we’re still active in the trade,” Olea said, “taking on specific clients who want certain garments.”
“Trends are important,” Louise said as I rubbed my eyes from the hours of looking over the ledgers as the women explained them. “People are fickle about fashion. Sometimes they want silver fox, and sometimes they ‘simply must have sable.’ ”
“Louise is partial to mink,” Olea said and she smiled.
Louise noticed my impolite yawn, and she picked up the large ledger books I’d been looking at. “That’s enough lessons for one night. It’s your bedtime, Clara. We don’t want to work you to death. It seems to me you do little but study and labor.”
Working me to death. I smiled at that. I occupied my own bed in my own room. My labor brought no ache to my back, wasn’t needed to keep cows from sliding on my instep while I milked. No feathers took me to a fit of sneezing while butchering chickens for a Fourth of July picnic. Once, when I had a sore throat, Louise treated it with mustard packs, as Mama would have. When my foot swelled, Louise put ice chips on it. What these women offered me in comfort was as warm as a winter quilt and as far from working me to death as a turkey feather was from sable.
Their kindness extended to more than just me. They gave contributions to the Lutheran church we attended in Spokane. They supported the Sons of Norway and the Norwegian Independence Day and insisted that I take time off May 17 to celebrate. Louise had a place in her heart for orphans; Olea gave to the carpenters’ trade union, the fund that helped Mama when my stepfather was first hurt. Their generosity to that organization brought me even greater trust in these women.
I didn’t go home for Christmas that year. We had heavy snows. Both Olea and Louise assured me I wasn’t a bad daughter by not risking the possible delays and avoiding the drifts. “One day I might own an automobile,” I told them. “It would make life so much easier.” That holiday I ate Louise’s julekaga with the white frosting swirled this way and that across the top of the heavy bread, attended Christmas Eve services with my two friends, and sent the gifts for my family by post on Thursday, the day after Christmas.
We three exchanged gifts. Louise and Olea gave me a jacket made of a Canada lynx’s spotted belly fur. “It’s very desirable,” Louise told me.
I couldn’t stop running my hands over its softness, its elegance, brown spots against the white fur. “It’s too much,” I said. I’d given them each a set of pillowcases I’d embroidered. They were paltry by comparison. “I only gave you—”
“What you had to give,” Olea corrected me. “As did we, ‘every man according to his ability.’ ”
“From the book of Acts,” Louise said. “About people taking care of each other.”
“I’m sure she knows,” Olea said.
I might have, but I’d forgotten until Louise reminded me.
Queen Victoria’s funeral took place in February. Louise, surprisingly, seemed saddened by this event so far away. “The death of someone famous always makes me think of other deaths,” Louise said. “It always does.”
“I’m not sure it needs to be a famous person’s death,” I said. My mind went to Henry and Bertha