The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [68]
“Not want you?” Olea asked. “Surely that can’t be right.”
“I’m not an Estby anymore,” I said.
My teeth chattered from the cold train ride back to Spokane. Or maybe from the possibilities that now lay before me with no one but myself to stand in my way.
I caught a cold. Its sneezing and sore throat kept me down for a week. I coughed and ran a fever and heard Louise say the word diphtheria followed by Olea’s reassuring scoff. But as Mama had once tended me through food poisoning and my sprained ankle, so these two women looked after me, reassuring me that I’d be better soon with Louise’s concoctions, prepared with what the doctor recommended.
Whatever it was the doctor had ordered to stop my cough put me to dreamless sleep, so I didn’t feel up to taking the train back to Mica Creek on the day of the auction. Going would have been self-punishment. Even Louise didn’t suggest it again after that first night.
I didn’t know what I did want to do once I finished my classes at Blair College in a month, except for one thing.
“I’ve decided to change my name officially to Clara Ann Doré,” I told Olea one morning close to my graduation.
“Doré? How odd. That’s Franklin’s name,” Olea noted. “Our agent.”
“I remember you told me that. I’m choosing it because one thing I did learn when I visited my family was who my father was. John Doré. Apparently his mother’s name was Clara, and Mama named me for her.”
“Indeed,” Olea said.
“Maybe your mother wanted to maintain connection to him and chose his mother’s name to honor him,” Louise said. She put milk in a bowl for Lucy, who had now become an inside cat all the time, not just during cold winter nights.
I wondered if Mama might have named me as an act of defiance, the only action left to her with everyone else making the decisions that defined her life—leaving Michigan and arriving in Yellow Medicine, Minnesota, where no one knew her secret shame.
No one defined my life now.
“There’s little use to speculate,” Olea said.
“No, I suppose not,” Louise said.
“Will I have to find a lawyer to change my name?”
“Oh, goodness no,” Louise said. “I changed my name back in 1897 in New York. You go to the courthouse and fill out forms and stand before a judge. Like when you get married. I used to be Gulbrandson instead of Gubner. Gubner is so much easier to spell.”
“You changed it because of the spelling?” I asked.
“As good a reason as any.”
“We can get that started for you,” Olea said. “I’ll pick up forms when I’m at the courthouse later this week. So you’re to be Clara Doré. And what will Clara Doré be doing with her time, once she’s well, of course?”
“Do I still have a job?” I asked.
“Of course,” they both said in unison.
“Then for now, I’ll put the money in the bank.”
“A wise choice,” Olea said. “In the long run, I wouldn’t invest in anything that doesn’t stir your passions.”
“Passions?” I said. What did passion have to do with money?
“Well, yes. Otherwise the work involved becomes a drudgery, something you’re required to do each day to pay the bills. Meeting obligations is required, of course, but you don’t want it to consume you. Our fur business has had good years and bad, but we’ve always loved the fashion part, the shows where new items are modeled, seeing happy looks on people’s faces when they don those coats. Passion allows you to see through the mists of disappointment or failures. Earn a little less but have work you enjoy. That’s my motto. Money isn’t the most fulfilling thing one can work for, Clara.”
“Having money isn’t the most fulfilling thing at all,” Louise said. “But you’ll discover that in time, now that you have it.”
I let a few weeks pass before making a trip to the farm where Olaf worked. I was taking a chance, I knew. I didn’t want to put Olaf in a difficult position, but I thought he might understand why I’d chosen to stay and work for the women rather than move with the family to Aunt Hannah’s in Spokane. Maybe he’d understand that I owed the women, for putting me through school. He might accept the money and go to school himself. That was