The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [77]
“No,” I said. “I’m from Spokane, Washington.”
“Spokane. Well, you look familiar. Must have one of those faces like a rubber ball, shaping as it goes.”
“I guess I must,” I said.
“I don’t envy you your meeting time.” She fussed with papers on her desk. “I doubt Mr. Doré will be in a good mood when he returns, just so you know. He finds the union taxing. You might want to come back another day so you won’t have double stitches to unknot in him. He doesn’t often meet with females.”
“I’m only in town for a short time,” I said taking a seat.
“These unions are a stick in Mr. Doré’s eye.”
I knew the shingle-weavers’ union was one of the oldest in the country. My mother had talked of it as we walked the rails. Boys and girls worked side by side in the lumber mills, sorting the shingles as they came from the sawyer, bundling the roofing material so the roofers could lift them easily and place them wide end over narrow end as they worked to keep rainwater from seeping through roofs. Children worked twelve-and-a-half hours a day, until the union changed this in Muskegon in 1886.
Would my stepfather have been in a union here? Unions were never happily accepted by management, or so my mother reminded me as she cheered on William Jennings Bryan. John Doré would have likely voted with McKinley. If I could have voted, so would I, though for different reasons. I liked the unions that had rescued us when my father was injured.
The woman behind the wide counter offered me tea, which I took. I blew on it to cool it, my breath lifting the feather in my hat, the ends of the fur. My hands shook. I ought to have rehearsed more, arrived with a better sense of what I wanted. Otherwise, he’d control the interview. Maybe his secretary was right and I ought to come back later.
I stood. “I think maybe—”
A man I knew was my father opened the door. He rushed through, shouting an order at his secretary as he passed by me. My heart pounded like a woodpecker marking its territory on a tree. I was meeting him. A landowner, a corporate giant, my father.
“Your appointment, Mr. Doré,” his secretary said, partially standing. “Mrs. Gubner.”
“What?” He turned, glared.
He stood tall, over six feet. Where I get my height from. He had brown hair, blue eyes. His eyebrows, like mine, arched gracefully over the iris and narrowed toward his temple. His wide face—again like mine—wore a look of annoyance. His hair lay limp against his head. He pursed his full lips.
“Is your husband with you?” He looked beyond me.
“There is no Mr. Gubner,” I said.
He frowned. “Well, let’s get this over with. I’m a busy man.”
I followed him into his office while his secretary pulled the door closed behind me whispering, “Good luck.”
He took his place behind an oak desk, wider than the Mississippi. Paintings of landscapes and seascapes hung on the walls. His bookshelves were piled so full he’d begun placing tomes, spines out, in stacks in front of the shelved titles. Engineering books. One on architecture. The Red Badge of Courage, a novel. A Tiffany lamp with stained glass graced the desk to his side.
“Are the paintings yours?” I asked.
He looked where I stood before a painting, surprised at my interest. “That one of the lighthouse. That’s mine.”
“It’s very nice. It’s good you sign them.”
“Yes, well, I have so little time, Mrs.—”
“Do you know a Franklin Doré?” I asked as I faced him.
“Franklin Doré? No. Should I?”
“Not necessarily. I thought that with the name—”
“There are lots of Dorés around,” he said. “As common as flies. But there’s no Franklin in my family line that I’m aware of. Now, what can I do for you, Mrs. Gubner?” He motioned for me to sit.
“Actually, my name isn’t Mrs. Gubner. It’s Doré. Clara Doré.” Blood throbbed at my temples. I hadn’t asked him about his timber holdings, hadn’t eased into this conversation at all.
“My mother’s name,” he said. “She passed on some years ago. But you said