In Need of a Good Wife (22 page)

Now she set Mr. Schreier’s dinner down in front of him at the table and he nodded his thanks, then bowed his head on his knuckles. He didn’t invite her to sit down, and so she stayed over by the cutting board next to the sink and busied herself kneading dough and peeling potatoes for starch. Anything to keep in motion so that he did not have to feel the burden of her.

There were so many things she wanted to ask him. If she needed something from the grocer or Baumann’s store, would he take her there in his wagon? Or should she walk over on her own? It was about two miles into town. Elsa didn’t mind walking, but she fretted over her slow gait, the hours of work she would miss. And how was she to pay for things? The thought of asking Mr. Schreier for household money filled her with dread.

And then there was the matter of Sunday meeting. She didn’t know what she would do if he didn’t attend or tried to prevent her from going. He had professed faith of a sort in his letter, but he seemed not to like the reverend. So much of her fate was in this man’s hands, and he was an utter stranger to her.

That night, as she pulled the quilt up to her chest—a quilt surely assembled by the loving hands of the late Mrs. Schreier when this home was new and her husband was a younger man—Elsa thought about the shape her life had taken. The robust beginning, in the sweet cocoon of her family; the pinched everlasting middle spent alone in a city completely indifferent to her existence. And now this. What would she be here? What would she do? She had known every shade of loneliness in this world and, yet, the Lord was always nearby, speaking softly in her secret heart. Was he there now? Elsa tried to listen for the murmur but sleep answered first, sweeping over her like a spell.

The rented room above Mrs. Healy’s tavern was not just as bad as the room at Mrs. Ferguson’s—it was worse. In New York, Clara had lived three floors above the men who shuffled in and out of Mr. Rathbone’s; here she slept in one of four small rooms directly above the saloon. The cigar smoke wafted up through the floorboards and clouded her tiny window, and each time a man won a game of poker, the bootstomping was loud enough to fool her into thinking they were playing at her bedside.

For her weekly rent she got the mattress, a table and chair, and a heavy iron pot for boiling water on her flimsy stove. A parade of drifters occupied the room next to hers, each one “just passing though” town, usually on foot or horseback because a train ticket was too dear. Passing from where? Clara thought. Passing
to
where? Where was there to go? More than once she met these men in the hallway or on the stairs, accompanied by a busty woman with a smear of rouge on her cheeks. Reliably, each man introduced the woman as his “cousin from Omaha.”

These cousins, Clara knew, lived all together in the long log house at the western edge of town. That first week, for a lark, they went as a group to Cheyenne for a few days to get a relief from Destination’s dullness. Clara could tell the cousins had cleared out because the tavern filled to bursting that night and a fight erupted over nothing more than a bit of ale sloshed out of someone’s glass. When the cousins returned, they got off the train wearing the same clothes they had been wearing when they left, now filthy, the paint gone from their faces and replaced by the sallow complexion of the ailing. More than one had a fresh purple ring around an eye, a black gap where a tooth used to be. But at least once they were back, things settled down significantly in the tavern for a while.

On the first Monday in June, Clara sat in her chair writing out a list of things Mrs. Healy had asked her to pick up from the store for the tavern kitchen. Clara had explained her situation, how she had to find a way to earn back the money she owed the men, and Mrs. Healy agreed to let her work in the tavern in exchange for room and board and a small wage. She heard a soft knock and opened the door to find Deborah Peale, now Mrs. Stuart Moran, clutching a sodden handkerchief in her fist.

“Deborah,” Clara cried. “What’s the matter?”

“Miss Bixby, you have to help me.” Deborah’s hair was parted severely down the middle and pinned behind her ears. Dark half-moons hung beneath her eyes; she seemed to have aged years in the eight days since their arrival.

Clara glanced behind the girl out into the deserted hallway. “Well, of course, I’ll try. Come inside.”

She settled the trembling woman in the chair, then sat down across from her on the edge of the bed. Clara patted Deborah’s knee. “Now, tell me.”

“Miss Bixby, this man’s household has nothing in it,” Deborah said, her voice wavering. “No kettle, no linens, no soap. Not a single book! Only one lamp, which he refuses to light. No food put up in his pantry. We might as well be living in the woods like Adam and Eve.”

“Well, weren’t they perfectly happy until they got themselves into trouble?”

Deborah’s meek expression turned angry. “This isn’t a laughing matter. I can’t cook! I can’t clean! I’m going to lose my mind.”

Clara sighed, weary with her own worries. “I wish I could help you, Deborah.”

She shook her head. “He said this would happen, that I was wasting my time running to you. I heard some of the men are trying to have you arrested for swindling them—is that true?”

“Deborah.” Clara pressed her lips together. “Do you think you could ask Mr. Moran for a little bit of household money? Just a small amount, to get yourself set up? If you asked very sweetly, I suspect he would find a way.”

Deborah sniffed, then shook her head. “I tried. But he says he needs to learn whether he can trust me first.”

“Well,” Clara thought for a moment. “I was just about to go over to Mr. Baumann’s store and buy a few things for the kitchen downstairs. I’ll be sure to tell him about the kinds of things some of you may be needing soon: kettles, fabric, needles and thread. And I’ll see that he mentions the supplies to your husbands. Perhaps Mr. Moran will be more likely to agree if he hears about it from Mr. Baumann. All right?”

Deborah nodded and wiped her nose, but she didn’t get up from the chair. “I miss Molly.”

Clara shook her head. “Oh, my dear,” she said. “I know it. It’s just terrible what happened. If I could go back to that day we left New York, keep her from getting on the train, you
know
I would. But Molly would want us to do the best we can here. Make the best of things.”

“It’s true,” Deborah said. “She would tell me not to worry. Except … there’s … there’s something else.”

“What is it?”

Deborah wailed into her handkerchief. “It’s too awful. Not even Molly would know what to say about this, I don’t think.”

“Just tell me,” Clara said. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”

“I believe Mr. Moran is a … a deviant.”

Clara’s eyes widened. “What makes you say
that
?”

“Well, he wants me to …” Deborah leaned over and whispered something to Clara, then sat back in the chair and waited for the shock to set in.

But Clara only nodded. “Yes, that sounds about right.” She looked the new wife in the eye. “Deborah, how old are you—really? And don’t lie to me this time.”

She looked at her lap. “Seventeen.”

“And your mother? She never talked to you about—”

“She died when I was seven.”

Clara bit her lip. “And you haven’t any sisters? Aunts? You and Molly never talked this over?”

“Well, yes, but … I suppose it was the blind leading the blind.”

Clara thought back on the New York doctor’s assurance that all the brides were virgins—she had hardly believed it could be true. And now here she was faced with a married woman who didn’t know the first thing about what she was in for.

“Deborah,” Clara said, patting the girl’s knee, “I believe I will make us a pot of tea. We have a few things to discuss.”

Three days later Clara walked to the depot to post a letter and as she came back outside she saw a man walking toward her. She pressed her lips into a line; she would have known that gait anywhere.

“Good morning, my darling!”

Clara gave him a wary glance. “Hello, George.”

He opened his arms to embrace her, but she stayed put. “Aren’t you surprised to see me?”

“I’m only surprised it took you so long.” Clara smirked at him. “Why, I’ve been here nearly two weeks.”

“That was an awfully cruel thing you did, Clara, slipping out of town without telling me,” he said. “I had to find out where you went from Mrs. Ferguson. It was embarrassing.”

“Did you ever think maybe I didn’t
want
you to find me?”

He ignored this. “I certainly wouldn’t have chosen Nebraska, of all the godforsaken places in this world, but, well, here I am. I suppose it doesn’t matter where we are as long as we’re together.”

“Well, you’ve come a long way for nothing.”

“Don’t be silly, Clara.”

She sighed. “There isn’t any money, George. Not a penny. I’m working at the tavern and everything I make goes to room and board and paying off this trio of dissatisfied bachelors. I’m in a bad way out here. You don’t want any part of it.”

George’s winning smile dropped from his face and he was quiet for a moment. He took Clara’s hand and pressed it against his lapel. “Do you really think I would travel this far just to get my hands on some money I
thought
you might have?”

“Without a doubt, I do.”

“Leave off the kidding a minute, Clara. I mean it.” George set his jaw. “I
know
I haven’t been the sort of man I should be. I know I’ve let you down.”

Clara closed her eyes to break from his unbearable gaze. She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up, as if she were a deer sensing danger in the crack of a twig a mile away.

She tried to pull her hand away but he clutched it tight. When he spoke again, his voice was thick. “I didn’t know what to do, Clara. I couldn’t face what happened, couldn’t face you, when M—”

A small moan escaped from Clara’s lungs and she shook her head hard. “
No.
Please don’t say his name.”

“Please,” George said. She could see his eyes filling. “We can’t pretend this didn’t happen.”

Clara took a breath. Her lungs felt full of broken glass.

“The only way I can live from one hour to the next is to tell myself that it didn’t happen. It was a nightmare from which we’ve both awoken and now we must go on.”

George touched her cheek and she ground her molars down on the pain that surged in her chest, bloomed in her skull like a choking, poisonous weed.

“Oh, Clara,” he sighed.

“I mean it, George. Have mercy on me. Or I’m likely to hit you.
Hard.
”

“Fine,” he said softly. “We don’t have to talk about it. But you have to believe me: I didn’t come here for money.”

“With all the practice you’ve had, I should think by now you would be a better liar.”

He held up his hand. “All right. I did come hoping you would have
some
money. All my prospects in New York have dried up. But even though I know now that you’ve fallen on hard times, I’m not going anywhere. I love you, Clara. We should be together.
Please.
”

Clara felt a weariness that threatened to bring her to her knees. How long had it been since a day passed without some crisis or another, without some anguish? How much should one woman have to endure alone? She winced.

“Is it the headaches again?” George asked. “Let me take care of you. Let me make up for what I’ve done.”

She tried to call up her resistance but her body felt as broken as her heart. George put out his elbow and looked expectantly at her, his dark brows raised, his cheeks pink and sure. Clara put her fingertips on his forearm, as if to test it, and it felt as sturdy as a wood beam fixed in place. They shared a secret sorrow and it bound them together. What they had endured was stronger than anything—stronger than love or hate or disappointment or anger—and no matter how she tried to escape, to begin again, the sorrow pulled her back in like a tide.

She leaned against George and he slipped his arm across the small of her back, then helped her across the road and up the stairs to their room.

Clara fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. When she woke, she noticed before opening her eyes that the right side of her body felt hot. She turned her cheek on the pillow and looked out at the room. Inside the stove a low fire glowed. A basket of coal sat beside it on the floor. On the small corner table was a tray with a clay teapot, and steam poured from its spout; beside it was a plate of toasted bread and jam. Clara’s gaze turned to the foot of the mattress, covered in a wool blanket she hadn’t seen before. George sat in the chair, reading a newspaper. She closed her eyes and opened them once more, certain her dreams had turned to happier but nonetheless fictional matters.

“Rise and shine,” George said softly. “How are you feeling?”

“Hot,” Clara said, lifting her loose hair off the back of her neck. “It’s too warm for a fire, George.”

“I know,” he said. “But I wanted to make you tea.”

She stared at him a moment, then shook her head. “I have been so very tired.”

“Well, rest all you like. I’ve talked to Mrs. Healy and you need not come down today.”

“What do you mean, you talked to her?”

“I explained that I’ve joined you here, that we’ll be sharing the burden of the cost for the room between the two of us. In addition to your work downstairs, I’ve agreed to light all the fires first thing and bring the kegs over from the brewery. That privy out back is likely to fall over any day. I told her I’d build her a new one. Anyway, she won’t hear of your coming down until tomorrow. She sends you her best wishes for good health.”

Clara eyed him. “She does?” He nodded as he poured her tea into a cup. “George, you should have let
me
tell her about you.”

He waved this away. “Nonsense. She didn’t mind at all. I believe she’s glad to have a little more help.”

“Well.” Clara shook her head. This was certainly new. She wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“Now, I want you to have a little bit of bread to eat, and then it’s straight back to sleep.”