The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [64]
Ida motioned with her eyes and whispered. “Did you get my letter?”
Lillian dropped the hat at that moment and picked up the ermine purse with the black zipper ring.
“Will you stay in Spokane?” I said to Mama, ignoring Ida’s question.
“Papa’s trying to get back with the union for carpentry work,” Ida said. Her eyes snapped at me. “He’s been fixing things around here. It helps him not feel so bad about losing the farm. All he’s worked for all these years.”
“And all you’ve worked for. All of us,” I said.
“If only you and I had been successful in New—”
“Mama. No,” Ida said. She spoke as sternly as a mother telling her child to not even think about picking up that awful, dangerous black widow spider she stared at.
“Ja, I know.” Mama sighed. She acted as though her tongue had outwitted her mind in letting her speak of such terrible truths. “So what kind of work do they have you doing, these women? What are their names again?” Mama asked. It was as though she pulled her interest out of a deep sack, the words flat and dusty.
I could hear the zipper pushed back and forth on my purse.
“Be careful now, Lillian. That’s your sister’s,” Ida said.
“I’m being good,” Lillian said as she moved the zipper.
The money the sponsors gave me is in there. Maybe if Ida knows, she’ll convince Mama and Papa to take it.
I told them the women’s names and described how kind they’d been, how interesting the fur industry was, how they got to travel but because they were women working in a man’s world they had a man who actually signed their contracts. “I haven’t met him, but his name is.” I stopped myself.
“What’s his name?” Ida asked.
“His name is Franklin Doré.”
Mama dropped the spoons she had in her hand. Her back stiffened and she turned, shook her head at me, her eyes wild with concern. Speaking of a Doré doesn’t violate a rule, does it?
My stepfather had said my father’s name was John Doré and his mother’s name was Clara. I’d been so intimidated by his outrage that I hadn’t realized I’d heard that last name before. Doré.
“What kind of fur is this?” Lillian said. She rubbed the gold-cast pelt of the purse, then put it to her face. “So soft.” She ran the zipper back and forth again.
“It’s ermine, from Russia. Maybe you should put that down and let’s set the table,” I said now that the cream stood stiff as frozen snow.
Ida said, “Clara, about my letter—”
Commotion followed the men and boys’ arrival inside. Billy teased me about the mud on my shoes. The men sat down, and when they heard Sailor bark his old dog bark, Mama looked out the window and announced that Olaf was coming too. “Now I’ll have all my children here. What could be better?” She sighed.
You could have the farm. Couldn’t she see? Where was that independent spirit that had shot a tramp, walked right up to the president-elect’s house, worked her way across the continent, keeping us safe, hoping to rescue this farm?
Olaf stepped inside then and hugged Mama, Ida, and me, tugged on Lillian’s braid. He plopped his newspaper on the table. “Only two weeks old, this one,” he said. Mama picked it up, set it aside. She thanked him for remembering. So news still kept her interest. Ida put plates on the table while I moved my hat to the daybed. Lillian set a plate or two, picked the purse back up.
“Arthur, put that umbrella away. Don’t you know that opening an umbrella inside is bad luck?” Ida told him.
“Who believes in superstitions like that?” he said.
The pie was served then with dollops of whipped cream on top. I didn’t look at my stepfather as he sat at the head of the table. For a moment, as people ate, the silence seemed normal, what it should be while hungry people received sustenance prepared by loving hands. I memorized the scene. It would be the last time I’d see my family in this kitchen, where so many sunrises had freshened the morning, so many conversations helped the evening wane. The farm would be gone. The sale would pierce my mother’s heart yet again. How many more wounds could she accept without disappearing? How many little pieces of a lace heart