The Daughter's Walk (15 page)

“Stop! Stop that man!” I shouted while I tried to lift her up.

“Go after him, Clara!”

“I can't leave you.”

“I'm fine. Just go!”

I pushed my way through the throngs of people dressed in their furs and finery, my heart pounding. He carried away everything we owned: the letters to Forest, our clippings, my sketches, our story, even what money we had left! I brushed people aside, bumping, shouting, “Stop! Stop him!”

But people opened for him, then turned to look at him run, closing behind him, making me throw them aside. Off balance now, my ankle throbbing, all taking time—no time, we were out of time.

He dipped past buildings and people and corners and the cars he ran in front of. I couldn't gain on him. He disappeared the way a rock sinks to the bottom in a murky pond; one can't see it even though it's there. I bent over, hands on knees, gasping for breath. It was over. All of it. People nudged past me. No one stopped to ask why I cried. Everyone had a place to be. I guess I did too: back to my mother's side.

“Did you find him?” Mama had a gash on her head, but someone had placed a handkerchief against it. Two women knelt beside her and helped her lean against the brick building. They moved away as I approached, and Mama thanked them. Dizzily, she reached for my hands. “Did you find him?” Her eyes searched mine like a lost child's looking for hope.

Couldn't she see? My hands were empty.

“I didn't, Mama. He. The crowd closed around him. I did the best I could.”

“Of course you did. Of course.” She dropped my hands. “What will we do?”

“Go to the charity house and ask for fare home, Mama. We have to go home.”

“We'll run a story of the robbery,” the editor of the
World
said when we arrived and Mama hurried out the story about the robbery. She held the handkerchief to her forehead. It had a good effect, though I knew that wasn't why she did it. “Maybe the thief will take the money and dump your diary and personal things. Perhaps a good New Yorker will turn them in.”

“Tell them to keep the money. It's the notes in my pocketbook that I need.”

“Mama.”

“Well, it is.” She turned to me. “We'll have the sponsors' award soon, but those notes, the clippings, your sketches. They're all gone.”

The editor frowned. He had a face like a ferret, I noticed now: lean, eyes narrow and hard. “I wish you well with your search for the lost items,” he said, then saw us to the door.

We visited other newspaper offices to tell them our story, and the
Herald
editor said they'd run a sketch of the criminal as well. “Someone might have seen you and this robber on the street.” He waved for a young man to join us. The artist worked quickly, making us out to be caricatures of strong western women. He put a gun in my hand and knife in my mother's, making myth of our effort. “We didn't carry a knife,” I pointed out.

“It's part of the romance,” Mama whispered.

“Life isn't about romance,” I said when we got outside. The cold wind snapped at our cheeks as we hurried back to our room. “It's about making good decisions based on facts, not fantasy.”

“Not always,” Mama said. “You have to have things to dream about.”

“This dream is a nightmare.”

We'd paid in advance for a week at No. 6 Rivington Street, Manhattan, so we had a bed to sleep in for a few nights while we tried to figure out what to do. The futility of the last months weighed like a stone on my chest as I stared at the water stains on the ceiling. My life had been defined by money: working for enough of it, saving for college, then using it instead for family needs. Neither Olaf nor I would be able to go on to the new state university at Pullman. The last months of my life on this trip, we'd earned money for the next pair of shoes, a warmer hat. Money. One night I even dreamed about it, old coins rolling away through the grates that covered holes in the streets of New York. Then I tumbled into one myself.

“We need to go to the charity house and request money for the train ticket,” I repeated to Mama the next evening. We'd washed dishes in a sweaty restaurant and earned enough for a meal. We'd taken the tea leaves with us, reusing them for the cups that now steamed in our hands.

“I know I could convince the sponsors to make at least a partial payment. I've conversed with the president-elect, yet I can't talk to the sponsors? If only I could meet them.”

“We simply need enough to get us home.”

“We'll look for cleaning work, or laundry or sewing.” She brightened. “I'll write articles. Perhaps one of the reporters knows of a publisher who might be interested in portions of our story.” She set the cup
down. “Clara, that's it! We'll write a book about the journey. I've sent hundreds of pages home to your father, and we can add to it from memory.”

“He's not my father,” I said, not sure why I needed to make the distinction. Maybe I wanted Mama to start living the truth of everything, including who I really was. “Did you ask him to keep what you sent?” I added before she could protest what I'd said about Papa.

“Of course he's kept them. We'll go back to the sponsors and ask if the money might still be available if I write a book. We could share proceeds from the sales. That should sweeten the pot for them.”

“They'll want you to pay them,” I said. “Writing a book for money is just like the scheme that got us here in the first place. It's almost as risky a wager as what we already made.”

Mama raised one eyebrow in protest. “At least writing won't require a new pair of shoes.” She sat beside me on the bed. “I know you're discouraged, Clara, but things could be worse. We mustn't let the darkness overwhelm us. Think of Jonah's whale. Think of that sunflower. Keep your eyes toward light.” She spread her hand across the air as though declaiming.
She's making a presentation
. “There's no sense in dwelling on the negative. Our minds have to think of something; it may as well be something good. ‘Occupy,' Scripture tells us. Multiply what God gives you. That's what we'll do.”

“I guess I could try to sketch a few places. The trestle. That will be memorable … for what happened afterward.”

“That your fears didn't materialize?”

“It's when I learned about my. That I'm not an Estby,” I said. “How could you forget that?” I chewed at my nails.

“I would have thought the lava rocks were more memorable. We nearly died there,” Mama said. She stood up. “You can draw whatever
you like, Clara. We'll get the sponsors to bring you back by train so you can carry the manuscript to New York. It'll be grand. You'll continue the adventure. Later this summer. It'll work, it will! We just have to convince them! You can start now.”

“I don't have any paper.”

“Clara. There will always be obstacles. It's your duty to overcome them in service to another. Go to the market; ask for a sheet of butcher paper. Draw on that. We'll take it as a sample for the editor. We'll do this, Clara. First thing tomorrow.”

I let her hope fill my empty stomach.

“Remember when I read to you?”

It was the middle of the night, but neither of us slept well in the narrow bed. The sounds of mice or rats scratched in the walls. A cold wind rattled the window.

“Yes, Mama,” I said.

“I read
The Lamplighter
, maybe
Uncle Tom's Cabin
. I loved that book.”

“Our stomachs would be full, and you'd bring dried apples out to make up a perfect pie and whipped cream for the topping.”

“Yes, yes.” She silenced my talk of food. “Those stories, they were about persevering, Clara. Keeping on despite the sorrow. Justice. Family. It's all about doing what we must for family.”

“Yes, Mama, I know.”

She stroked my arm. I pulled away.

The
World
editor agreed to confer with the sponsors in New York about our latest idea, and while we waited on their reply, we worked. At night, Mama wrote an article. It was in response to a letter to the editor in the
New York Times
about labor issues and mining. “It'll show that I can write,” she told me when I raised an eyebrow at how she spent her time. “I might get invitations to speak,” she pointed out. “Raise our own funds. Maybe they'll pay me.”

Another of her fantasies
.

The
Times
didn't use her piece, but it appeared instead in a Norwegian paper. There was no payment and we received no invitations. Then Mama sent a letter (she had to ask a stranger for a stamp) to the woman in Spokane who had helped initially make contact with the sponsors. Mama asked if she could intervene on our behalf, especially since we'd been robbed and now had no money to return home, though we'd accomplished all that had been asked. “I told her but for the sprained ankle, we'd have made it and that we hoped to write a book now.”