The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [73]
“We could come back in February,” Louise said, still with Olea’s earlier comment about missing the auction.
“Yes, we could do that,” Olea told her. “I suspect February here would be much milder than in Minnesota.”
“Who would want to spend the winter in Minnesota?” I said. “I spent a fair number of them there when I was little, and I still remember the cold.” I wiped my face with the linen napkin. The oyster soup was delicious. I hadn’t had a bowl for years. It was usually a dish my aunt Hannah made for New Year’s Eve.
“Well, I would,” Olea said. “My sister lives in St. Paul, and while we’re out and about with everything arranged at home, it’s a good time to be with them. She’s invited us all for the winter.”
I wasn’t tired of the travel, but neither was I looking forward to spending a winter in St. Paul. I would have said as much to Olea, but after all, I worked for them. They set the schedule. Still, I didn’t like the idea of spending months with total strangers or my reticence in speaking up.
“Perhaps it would be best if I returned to Spokane,” I said, building up my courage. “Let the two of you winter with family, where you’ll be comfortable and can do as you please without my interruption. I can find my own place if you’d like.” I pulled on my gloves and stood.
“Oh, Clara, don’t pout,” Olea said. She raised her binoculars to her eyes and pointed them toward a distant bird flying above the harbor. “Everything doesn’t have to always go your way, does it? You can afford to be a little more accommodating.”
“I wasn’t proposing that things had to go my way,” I said. “I.” I didn’t confront people well, didn’t have words to express how I felt. I rarely heard anyone in our family express disagreement with words that didn’t hurt. Upset was often a stony silence, and I did feel upset by what she’d said.
“Sit down.” Olea lowered the binoculars. “My sister included you when I told her we’d be traveling with our assistant. I wrote even before we left.”
I sank onto the chair, brushed lint from my linen skirt.
Olea patted my gloved hand. “A little give-and-take never hurt anyone,” she said, “and it promises that each of us can have a little, if not all of what we’d like. I think that’s what life is all about.”
I was about to find out.
THIRTY
Looking for Answers
FEBRUARY 1902
Priscilla Bakke and her husband, Inger, had two children ages thirteen and fifteen, and they all lived in a large house in St. Paul. Servants were housed on the top floor, bedrooms on the second, and a large living room, parlor, and dining room on the first floor. The kitchen was in the basement. I was given my own room in the family wing rather than in the guest quarters. Inger was a banker, and I eavesdropped shamelessly as he and Olea discussed finance, taxes, and law.
Peder, the son, was treated like royalty, it seemed to me. He went ice-skating with his friends, set his own bedtime, ate what he wanted, and was rude to the serving staff, at least in my opinion.
Clarissa had more restrictions. She was the same age as Bertha had been when she died (and who had already been working as a servant for two years). Clarissa at least made her own bed. Peder did not.
I watched as Olea made suggestions to her niece that the child accepted, though the very same words spoken by her mother resulted in a haughty exit from the room. Her words did border on the edge of sass. She was the child in this family who, like me, didn’t fit. I wondered if all families had one.
“You’re like your grandmother,” her mother told Clarissa when she crossed her arms and dropped onto the divan after being told, no, she could not go to the hayride with her friends because boys would be there. We women all sat in the living room, Louise and our hostess doing needlework, Hardanger lace like my mother’s. Olea turned the pages of a colored bird book while I read Kipling’s novel Kim about an East Indian orphan, my mind more tuned in