Hers the Kingdom (12 page)

     I doubted she would talk quite so plainly to Owen. He had, in fact, been drawn to the area for his own health. Often he would add a few lines to Willa's letters, always extolling the climate and how well it made him feel.

     They did not stay long in Los Angeles, which was then in the midst of a land boom. Speculators bought and sold and even put up whole new cities out in the desert land, only to see them sifted over with sand when the great boom burst.

     Real estate schemes did not interest Owen. Charles Emory, naturally enough, was caught up in the speculation. He seemed to have an uncanny ability to remove his profits only instants before the bubble would burst. In October a letter arrived with the return listed as "Shaff's Boarding House, Santa Monica, California." Willa wrote:

     "Eureka! We have found it! That is what the gold miners are supposed to have exclaimed when they discovered gold—or perhaps when they discovered California, I am not sure which. I am also not sure why people shout 'Eureka!' but it expresses Owen's feelings exactly on this little seaside village, which is no more, really, than a resort town some seventeen miles to the west of Los Angeles.

     "I cannot compare it to any of the villages at home—first, because it is on the very shore of the Pacific, and second because
quite a number of rather wealthy people have commenced a building bonanza which is to turn the ocean front roads into elegant drives. All this, I should add, is on a bluff high above the shoreline; to reach the sandy beach one must descend ninety-nine steps—it is the fashion to count them.

     "And my dear, do not doubt that the Reade house will be any the less elegant. Imagine me the mistress of an enormous house awash with cupolas and turrets and all the rest of the elaborations. Construction is under way; it is to cost twelve thousand dollars. Can you imagine? Neither could I, until I learned the extent of Owen's fortunes. I find it difficult to think of myself as the wife of such a wealthy man. I should tell you, here and now, that Owen does not want it known that he is quite so well-to-do, and I must respect that wish, even with the one I have until now told everything. I am certain that Owen would be chagrined to discover the extent of my confidences, and I am just as certain that he need never know.

     "When I suggested to Owen that I admired the low, adobe Spanish-style houses of the Californios, he was taken aback. There is within Owen a kernel of pure New England proper. Nothing would do but we have a wooden house here, which Owen says will be one of the showplaces of Santa Monica. Owen has a theory: A large, ornate house convinces the community that you are a man of substance, to be trusted. It is not the house so much as the impression it makes. I rather think he believes an adobe house would convince people we are lazy, as Owen believes the Spanish to be.

     "We are staying, now, at a boarding house not far from our new home. But then, everything in Santa Monica is close by everything else. The chaparral crowds close to the streets.

     "The chatelaine of this establishment, Mrs. Shaff, chatters all the day long and says nothing. She is some fussy little bird who enjoys hearing her own noise. She is also, naturally, wild for Owen, lying in wait for him in the hallways. She chatters him all the way out to the street. I do believe that Mrs. Shaff may finally cure Owen of his chronic tolerance.

     "Though there are times when I am not sure if what I have chosen to call tolerance is, in fact, not instead a method of holding others at arm's length. If you listen to others well, they do not probe. There are a few people who are exceptions to this rule. I think of you, I think of Sara. And, surprisingly—a new friend I have just met whose name is Arcadia Scott. I say 'surprising' because, unlike you and Sara, Arcadia does chatter on. And yet, she listens too—and carefully. And she questions, not prying but interested, concerned. And though it is too early yet to tell, I do believe that she is not likely to gossip, that her interest is genuine.

     "But I was speaking of Owen. I think, at times, that I understand him, and then he confounds me. He suffers bores so readily, and yet he often refuses to go through the simplest formalities, should they impinge on time he has allotted otherwise. No long, lazy mornings in bed for my dear husband. (Ah, I see you smile. You think I consider long, lazy mornings in bed among the simplest formalities, do you?) All I can say is, Owen reserves special time for everything, even connubial duties. I am, however, consulted, for which I am grateful."

     I read those lines twice; in spite of the light tone, I found them troublesome. It was not like Willa to complain. Neither was it like her to spend long, lazy mornings in bed. The Willa I had always known was, more often than not, up before daybreak and off, absorbed in some carefully laid plan.

     Even so, the letters that arrived from Santa Monica were cheerful. The ocean agreed with her, she said. She had begun to catalogue the seabirds and even to sketch them. "Sandpipers are the most wonderful, skimming up and down on the sand at the tideline, searching for food, their spindly legs skittering over the film of water left by the breaking wave. And the pelicans fishing in a long, single line, now low over a wave and then rising—like a ribbon blown in the breeze—only to plunge, one of them, headfirst into the sea to catch a fish."

     Late that month, she wrote: "Owen popped into my bedroom this morning (I was lounging still, disgracefully, I know) to kiss me goodbye and he said, 'Don't I wish Lena were here to keep my girl company.' I wished so, too, but since you are not here I did the next best thing and sat down to write this letter."

     Between the lines of her letters I began to sense that Willa was suffering from a peculiar type of homesickness. Owen was often away. Willa had known that was to happen, and she had been prepared for it, or thought she was. She was not a clinging woman. In fact, she had always envisioned herself as a pioneer wife, taming the wilderness. And yet she wrote: "It frightens me, how much I love being in my husband's presence. My candle flickers miserably when he is away, and burns brightly only when he is with me."

     Had she been there, I would have asked if that is the dilemma love poses: When the love is total, one is diminished when the other is away. Is that it? And yet Willa had told me that Owen is happiest when he is on his way, that he is excited by the prospects of whatever business he is about.

     The first snow in Illinois fell in November that year. The early winter ended my daily walks to the post box, which meant that Willa had need to be much more circumspect in her writings to me. The walking had been good for me; my face had color to it, my body felt stronger and more pliable than it ever had. There were days, when I could pretend, and almost make myself believe, that I could do my little side step gracefully.

     But the snow ended my walking. Confined to the house, my body began to feel stiff and unwieldy, my movements became brittle. California began to slip away. It became more and more difficult to imagine the warm breeze off the ocean, or palm trees blowing in the bluffs overlooking the ocean, as Willa had described them. When the moaning winter wind wrapped around the farmhouse and the boys came in at night stamping and complaining of the cold, I could not conjure up the image of purple bougainvillea climbing a whitewashed wall.

     Throughout that long, cold winter the letters continued, but they seemed to be coming from farther and farther away. I read and reread them, with interest but without intimacy. Sometimes I would find myself sitting by the fire, hugging my arms about me, and I would feel as if I were getting physically smaller, as if I was being wound tighter and tighter.

     Mama and I perfected our routine. We cooked and sewed and saw to the cleaning of the house, with the help of the hired girls. Women in a household of men, we were always busy. Our days were as unvarying as the prairie, flat and even, one so much like another that I could never be sure of the date, and after a time it didn't matter.

     One evening we sat darning in the last of the dimming light, Mama and I, holding on as long as the deepening gray would let us, until we reached that shade where we could no longer distinguish the darning thread from the material being darned. My head was as empty as the late daylight when Mama said, "Do you remember the time when we went to Chicago, just us, when your grandmother died?"

     I tried to see her face, but the shadows were too deep. I could only see that she held her hands to the window, to the last light, and that the needle moved through the shirt, though I could not be sure she could actually see what she was doing.

     "Yes," I answered, and waited for her to say more, but she said nothing at all.

     Did I remember? I was eleven, and I went to Chicago because Willa was away at school, at Wellesley where she hadn't wanted to go but had gone, because Grandmother had insisted, because Grandmother had said she must, and Mama and Pa had said she must
because Grandmother owns the farm, Willa.
Oh, yes, the memory is there, like old scar tissue. The night before we were to leave Pa had said there was a doctor in Chicago who might be able to help me. He told Mama that she was to be sure to take me, that the doctor would be expecting to see me. Pa had written, and our
doctor in town had written, and the specialist wanted to see me. Pa said to Mama, "It's done."

     It was done, he had said. Nothing Mama might say could change his mind. I was frightened, but I also felt a wild thrill. I was young enough to dream of miracles, young enough to think that one morning I might just wake up and find my back straight, that I could run down the lane and see the poplars flash sunlight as I ran past them, my feet scarcely touching the ground. The way Willa could run, the way my brothers could run, the way I dreamed of running.

     Pa took us into town and put us on the train. Mama said nothing all the way into Springfield, but just looked straight ahead, her lips pressed tight together as if concentrating. There were beads of sweat above her lip; she looked pale and sick, but when Pa asked if she wanted to turn back she hissed at him breathlessly, "No. She wants to see me. I have no choice." I could feel her panic and it terrified me. But I had no choice, either; I was going to see the doctor who might make me whole . . .

     When it was time for Pa to leave he touched my arm, which was the most he was ever able to do, and I smiled and tried to swallow and whispered, "Goodbye." He patted Mama's arm, too, and she looked at him with terror in her eyes, so she closed them tight and told him, "Go."

     I have often wondered how he could have left us like that, but he did. Mama clutched my hand until I thought all the little bones would snap. She sat, stiff and sweating, all the way to Chicago, breathing through her mouth, never saying a word.

     Our two cousins, two stout men who had married Grandmother's nieces, met us at the train with the news that we were too late, that Grandmother had died the night before. I remember thinking that two of them had come in case Mama should faint, so they could carry her to the buggy.

     But Mama blinked at the men and said nothing. They attributed her strange behavior, I believe, to grief, and excused it.
We rode in a closed carriage to the big house on Wabash Avenue. There was a wreath on the front door, with a huge black ribbon. I wanted to ask Mama about the wreath, but it didn't seem right to break the silence.

     Two women of indeterminate age, the nieces I guessed, met us and led us, with tiny whimpering noises, to an upstairs bedroom where Grandmother lay propped against the pillows. One edge of her mouth sagged, and she seemed to be leaning somewhat to that side. I did not want to look at her face so I looked, instead, at the hands which lay on the counterpane, and which grasped at nothing. For months, whenever I closed my eyes I would see those hands, gnarled and grasping.

     Mama pressed hard against me. I felt her shudder, heard her swallow. I wanted to comfort my mother, but I did not know how. I wanted to shield her from these strangers' staring eyes, but I could not think of a way.

     She stood looking at the woman who had been her mother. She said nothing, her eyes did not leave my grandmother's face. After a time the nieces began to murmur and shift uncomfortably. Mama did not notice. Then, without saying a word, she turned and left the room, pulling me after her.

     "I will see my mother's solicitor now," she announced as we descended the stairs. When one of the nephews suggested that legal matters might be left until after the funeral, she looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign tongue.

     Within a few minutes a carriage was brought around and we made our way to State Street. There in the offices of Langford, Johnston, Winthrop, and Winters a tall man with silver hair assured Mama that Porter Farm was hers, free and clear.

     For the first time since we left Springfield, I saw a glimmer in my mother's eyes that was neither fear nor sorrow. For the first time, I understood how monumentally important the farm was to her.

     We went from the solicitor's office directly to the train station where we waited six long hours for the next train back to
Springfield. The appointment with the doctor was not mentioned.

     Mama did not attend the funeral services that were to be held at the First Street Episcopal Church the following day, an act of omission which was to cause all ties to the Randolphs of Virginia to be severed.

     Grandmother's death released Mama from her fears of losing the farm. It also released Willa from Wellesley College, though she would wait until the end of the term to come home.

     Pa did not speak to me about the doctor in Chicago after that. I tried to put it out of my mind, but at age eleven hope is not easily shattered. I had been so close, I was sure. I could not stop thinking about it. For a reason I could not then fathom, I blamed Pa more than Mama. I could not look at him without feeling my face flame, so I did not look at him at all, though I felt his eyes on me, watching . . . pleading, perhaps.