The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [80]
I’m ashamed to say that I did once wonder if Louise and Olea were the kind of women whose companionship was questionable, women my mother pointed out to me at her presentations in New York, women more attached to each other than to men. The concept had left my mouth open in astonishment. Once, outside a lyceum presentation in Ohio, my mother and I had even been cursed as such, though my mother always introduced me as her daughter Clara, perhaps to make our relationship clear. People often thought we were of the same age, my mother looked so young and fit on that trip. We were women not afraid to live contrary to the dictates of custom, politics, or fashion, and that threatened. So I had wondered about these two women since I had come to care about them as more than my employers.
But though I looked for signs, nothing sensual ever passed between them, no lingering fingertips on fingertips, no eyes that invited falling into. I saw kindness blended with occasional irritation, the fitting of sisters—if not the cousins they were. I envied their shared history. It made me miss Bertha’s laughter even more; long for days when Ida and I had walked barefoot, arms around each other’s waists, to school or whispered during recess about whatever boy had caught our fancy even though they hid behind the outhouse and shouted “snake” as we entered.
This was family: people who shared griefs and joys and didn’t let the love of money set the tone, people who accommodated each other, stepped aside at times without saying, “It’s my way or no way at all.” I didn’t have a family now. John Doré promised nothing. I was at the end of that investigation. I looked across the table at these two women. I vowed to be myself but do what I must to limit any discord with them. I needed no more painful separations or rejections. I’d had enough of both.
That summer of 1902, Olea and Louise introduced me to the New York end of the furrier trade. I visited their leased shop. I stepped into the large cooler where people brought their furs during the hot months to be cleaned and stored. During winter months, the store window showcased brocaded gowns with fur trim, beaver hats and sable muffs, mink and ermine coats. We visited designers with drawings of future fashion clamped to boards that lined the walls.
“We can’t take you to the dressers,” Olea said.
“They keep the formula and procedures under lock and key,” Louise whispered to me. “Much of the work is done in Europe. America is only now developing.”
At the manufacturers’, I recognized unique handwork as men cut through the buttery soft leather backs of the pelts to make strips, then sewed them back together, forcing the pelt to lie flat like fabric. Then they joined the pieces according to form and lined the garments with silk and satin, all stitched with flawless seams to make the finished work drape with perfection around elegant shoulders. I felt myself attentive to the smells and sounds and sights in new ways.
At the library I read about the fur business, ideas forming in my head.
The women provided more detail about Franklin Doré’s role, about his lifting his tall hat at the fur auctions in Montreal or Copenhagen to indicate his bid, his exquisite evaluation of pelts that would one day warm the bodies of society men and women. He was nearly as good as the auction house graders, Olea announced. “If he buys a lot, we know we’ll be getting the perfect pelts for that stole or that coat we have orders for. He always goes days early so he can check the pieces over at his own pace.”
The women reminded me of his need to travel abroad to visit leather markets in Turkey, Italy, and Greece, furriers in Russia and China. More than once, he’d traveled with otter skins used for the oriental rituals that marked transitions into adulthood.
“People have to be warm,” Louise