In Need of a Good Wife (31 page)

Rowena turned the message over.

JUNE 17

SORRY TO REPORT DEATH OF RANDOLPH BLAIR AT 3 a.m. TODAY. PASSING WAS PEACEFUL. REPLY WITH BURIAL ARRANGEMENTS. MR. HARRISON, WARDS ISLAND ASYLUM, MANHATTAN CITY.

She stared at the words, stunned, then worked her tongue around the inside of her mouth in two circles, first in one direction, then another, across the tiles of her teeth.

Panic seized her chest and she gasped for breath but none would come.
I made this happen
, she thought.
And I deserve this
pain.
Her sweet, addled father, who had done nothing but love her since before she knew the word
love
, since before she could stretch her lips over the sounds its letters made, was gone. She had spoiled the only good thing she had ever tried to do, taking care of him; she had wrecked it.

And yet, that serpentine shade of herself, that tricky little voice that urged her toward all her lies, spoke now in a soothing tone and tried to calm her fears. How foolish it was to be surprised by this news! Her father was an old man, and ailing. This day had been nigh for a long while. Rowena couldn’t be responsible for the death of a man so many hundreds of miles away. What would she do now? That was the question that mattered, the scheming voice said. Her whole purpose for coming to Destination, for agreeing to masquerade in what felt now like the desert as a stranger’s wife, was to do right by her father, to ensure his continued care.

Of course, Rowena battled with herself, she could have come about the money she needed in any number of ways in Manhattan. It was ridiculous to maintain that coming all the way to this nowhere town had been her only option. That simply wasn’t true. It was her pride, her haughty refusal to let the Eliza Rourkes of the world see her laid low. And, to be sure, the promise of escape had thrilled her. She had thought that in leaving Manhattan she could also leave behind widowhood, the responsibilities of taking care of her father, could leave behind her awful self. But all of it had traveled west right along with her, a trunk full of misery she dragged at her heels.

“Ah, me,” she heard herself say. And suddenly, she thought, those were the words Tomas would breathe when she told him about her father, though she had no notion of whether she would see the carpenter again. The work on the chicken house was finished. She had no idea whether he lived in town or somewhere else on the trackless prairie, or in a shack on the edge of the ever-shrinking Platte River, beneath a wasting cottonwood tree. He had told her he planned to leave this place. Perhaps he planned to go soon; perhaps he had gone already.

She couldn’t give in. That was the main thing. There was, always, a way around, a solution that would allow her to skirt the consequences of what she had done to Clara, to Daniel. Rowena stepped back inside the depot and plucked the letter containing the postal order from the mail basket.

“Mr. Moran, may I reverse this order?” she asked, handing the postal form back. “I made a mistake.”

He gave her a curious look, then nodded. He counted the banknotes out and slid them across the counter to her, then tore the form in half.

Rowena marched back to the empty soddy, full of purpose. She stoked the fire in the stove. She set the telegram, along with the letter she had nearly sent to Wards Island, on top of the flames. She folded the banknotes into a neat rectangle and slipped them down into the side of her corset.

Rowena went out the kitchen door and down the narrow steps to the storage shed, where Daniel kept his tools in a wooden crate. She felt in the dark for the cool iron and hooked end of the crowbar. Back outside she glanced in both directions to be sure the neighbors weren’t watching. The midday heat had driven every single rational soul inside somewhere. Already, Rowena knew, she would have sunburn on her cheeks, and once that faded, the vulgar freckles her mother had always disdained in common girls. She stepped inside the chicken house, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the sudden shade. Then she pulled out every nail in the south-facing wall and kicked it hard with the sole of her boot. It creaked and teetered, then fell over into the dust.

Elsa rose late, well after six, and she knew this meant Mr. Schreier had had to fix his own coffee and breakfast once again. What kind of a housekeeper slept in longer than the man who employed her? She would find herself on the train back to New York in no time.

What was it about this place? She slept so deeply here it was unsettling. Back in the maid’s quarters at the Channings’, she heard all through the night the sounds of the big old house and people moving within it. There was the occasional bell, one of the children sick in the night or Mrs. Channing awake and wanting a cup of tea. People passed in the hall, talking. Even as she slept, the sounds kept her tethered to the waking world. It wasn’t a satisfying kind of sleep, but it was all Elsa had known for a very long time.

But here in the attic of Mr. Schreier’s house, Elsa fell into the kind of sleep she enjoyed as a child. She remembered how she felt in the muscles at the back of her knees and in her shoulders, even then soft with pudge, the yearning to run as fast as she could, to feel her ribbon-tied braids undulating behind her. She ran through the wood beside her grandfather’s cottage, her shoes thudding against the mossy ground. She ran until someone called her in for the night, and before her head settled against the pillow she had dropped into the inky black cavern of sleep, soundless and still. Elsa had forgotten the sensation until now, for it had come back to her again. Perhaps it was the fresh air here, or the work, or the great quantities of butter and sugar she and Ully had consumed together, but her sleep was like a death—absolute stillness.

Elsa dressed and descended the stairs. She opened the door to the sitting room and hit something she heard swish across the floor. Elsa craned her neck around to see a package wrapped clumsily in brown paper with twine tied in a bow. A scrap of paper tucked under the twine said, “To Elsa” in a shaky hand.

“Now, what’s this?” she said to no one.

She sat down in Mr. Schreier’s armchair with the package on her lap. Today was indeed her birthday, though she couldn’t imagine how anyone—and then she remembered that she and Ully had exchanged this information about each other. The girl’s birthday was, fittingly, in the middle of February, when the entire town was encased in ice and the most fun she could have was tormenting her brothers with impunity. Elsa had laughed and confessed that she was luckier; she was born in June, when the fields were thick with edelweiss. Ully had looked wonderstruck by that, but they hadn’t talked of it again.

Still Elsa had noticed that the girl had these moments, now, of kindness, of thought for others. Elsa didn’t want to take any credit for that, for the urge was always in the girl. Ully was a kind child, really. Elsa was just coaxing her out, like the sprout tucked up inside the acorn. And this thought made her laugh for the seeming lack of trees in the entire state of Nebraska.

Elsa pulled on the twine and opened the paper and her pride in Ully withered. The gift was a silver hairbrush and mirror, decorated with repoussé climbing vines. Elsa passed the bristles of the brush across her palm. The silver was real—Mrs. Channing had had a dozen brushes like this. The child must have stolen the set from Mrs. Gibson, or stolen the money to buy them out of the case at Baumann’s store. It wouldn’t do to be charmed by the good intentions of this gesture, Elsa knew. Yes, the girl meant well; yes, the girl was trying to repay her for the kindness she had shown. (And how nice it was to be remembered on her birthday—how long it had been since anyone had!) But it wouldn’t do. The girl did not fear God the way she should. Or, at the very least, she did not fear the law.

But Ully’s newfound trust that perhaps the world contained one or two good things was so new, so fragile. Elsa knew she would have to be careful not to come down too hard on her. She wrapped the set back up in the paper and took it upstairs, pushing it under the head of her bed. When she found out where it came from, she would give it back.

Elsa tried to put the worries about Ully’s conscience aside and get started on her work. By ten in the morning it was so hot, she felt sick to her stomach. She hadn’t dared to light a fire in the stove. Dinner would be sausage and hard cheese from the cellar on thick slices of bread, though she couldn’t imagine how anyone could eat. While she moved around the kitchen she kept a damp cloth on the back of her neck, but the water in the basin was eighty degrees at least and not a bit refreshing. She went out to the pump to fill it—the water in the well had to be cooler—but when she touched the handle with her fingertips she snatched her hand back. The metal was scalding hot.

Elsa went into the dark sitting room to get out of the kitchen for a few moments and cool off. She fluffed the sofa pillow, then straightened Mr. Schreier’s slippers under his armchair. On the table beside the chair was a framed portrait of the late Mrs. Schreier. Elsa picked up the bronze frame. The image was cloudy, the features of her face ethereal, in motion. Almost as if, even in life, she had been a ghost. Elsa felt something rough on the back of the frame with her finger. She turned it over to see the edge of a scrap of newsprint sticking out from behind the matting. Elsa slid it out and opened it. It was a clipping from an Omaha newspaper.

It is our painful duty to report the death of Birgit Lundstrom Schreier, wife of farmer Leopold Schreier, on September 17, 1862, after a long illness, at her residence in the homesteading outpost of Destination, Nebraska. The deceased was born in Munich May 4, 1806, and was married in New York City to Mr. Schreier in 1828. From there the couple established a farm in western New York, and then, years later, in the Nebraska territory. Mrs. Schreier has ever been a faithful Christian and a constant wife, who nobly bore the privations incident to a frontier life. It is reported that Mr. Schreier sat at his wife’s bedside in her final hours and told her that when the angels finally came to take her, he understood that she had to go. A service will be held in Destination this Saturday.

September 17, 1862.
Elsa stared at the date a moment, wondering. She folded the notice back up and slipped it into the frame, then walked back into the kitchen. Hoisting herself up on one of the kitchen chairs, she lifted down Mr. Schreier’s box of old newspapers. It had been a while since she had seen him reading them. Each one—the papers from Chicago and Detroit, Albany and Pittsburgh, and one all the way from New Orleans—was dated the same: September 17, 1862.

Honey roved the pasture looking for a bite of green grass, but there wasn’t a blade to be found. She lowed all morning. She too seemed to be going mad from the heat, and Nit and Mr. Schreier ushered her back into the barn before nine. Elsa had been charged with the task of using her milk as soon as they brought the pails up to the house, for there was no way to keep it cool. She had made more puddings and quark cheese than they could possibly eat.

At the pump she wrapped the towel around the handle and filled her pail halfway. She glanced out at where Nit and Mr. Schreier stood on either side of the thresher, Nit with an oil can in his hand. Heat rose in waves from the tall brown grass and made it seem for a moment that they were teetering on their feet. Then Nit’s body steadied but Mr. Schreier continued to move, wavering, then sinking into the grass.

Elsa put the pail down and started in a hobbled run toward them. She felt the dry stalks crunching beneath her feet, swishing under her dress against her calves like the bristles of a broom. She seemed to be moving with unbearably slow speed. The sun was just west of the apex of the sky and its bright glare made her eyes water.

“Mr. LeBlanc,” Elsa cried, when she had nearly reached the place where the grass was matted beneath Mr. Schreier’s body. She gasped for breath. “What is it?”

Mr. Schreier’s head was wrenched to one side so that his cheek touched the ground. A yellow foam trailed down his lips and chin and his hat had fallen off, exposing the tender, spotted skin of his scalp. Elsa crouched between the sun and Mr. Schreier, casting her ample shadow across the top half of his body. As she settled onto her knees she heard the stitches breaking, one by one, along the seams of her shift.

Nit crouched at Elsa’s right elbow. “He said he felt dizzy. I asked him when was the last time he had something cool to drink and then he just went down.” Nit wore a handkerchief tied around his throat, the broad triangle of fabric protecting the back of his neck from sunburn. He untied it now and tipped water from his canteen onto the cotton, then handed it to Elsa.

Elsa’s hands shook as she pressed it to Mr. Schreier’s cheeks and brow. “No one should be out working in this heat. No one.” She felt a surging anger, though she knew it wasn’t Nit’s fault. Elsa hadn’t known Mr. Schreier long, but what she did know was that he would have it his way or nothing.

“I tried to tell him,” Nit said, his voice pleading. “But he is stubborn about the crops. You know he’s lost half the barley already.”

Elsa nodded. She glanced up at the dull, cornhusk yellow of the eastern sky with the question in her mind:
Why is this
happening?
But Elsa knew better than to succumb to the small-mindedness that was particular to the faithful, the mistake of putting herself at the pinprick center of the sphere of God’s creation, so that everything that happened, bad or good, could be explained by her actions alone. Perhaps the drought had something to do with her, perhaps it did not. She couldn’t ask God to change the world on her behalf—and anyway, he would do it or not do it for his own complex host of reasons.

Mr. Schreier’s eyes fluttered open. “What happened?” He wiped his sleeve across his mouth.

“Sunstroke,” Elsa said. “We need to get you inside.”

Nit helped him sit up, then got Mr. Schreier’s arm up over his shoulder so he could stand. “Where’s Honey? And the sheep?”