The Daughter's Walk (23 page)

Once or twice the conversation turned to lost loves, men who had come into the women's lives and then departed. Olea had watched her future husband go off to the North Sea fishing and not return. Louise's love interest had married another.

“My only attraction was to the son of my employer,” I said. “And my mother made sure by taking me on the walk to New York that I didn't violate any employer-employee rules.”

“Did you meet any interesting young men on your trip?” Louise asked.

“She's a romantic,” Olea explained.

“No. No one.”

“Well, one day,” Louise said. “You're a lovely young woman. A nice man to take care of you will be good.”

“A woman ought to be able to take care of herself. I want to be financially independent one day.” I didn't want to violate that employee barrier, but I added, “The two of you have done well without a man to take care of you.”

“Yes. That's true,” Olea said. “But one mustn't ignore the treasures God provides in companionship. We all need companionship,” she said.

“An independent woman can push men away,” Louise said. “Olea finds that true, don't you? She can be intimidating if you don't know
her. Smart women have to think of that. And frankly, two independent women living together makes some men only worry they might have to support two women rather than just one.” Her eyes blinked rapidly.

“Then three of us must scare them terribly,” I said before I realized how the words might be interpreted, as though we were a set of three and not the two of them with me, an employee, sipping coffee with them at their pleasure. “Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to suggest—”

“We know what you meant.” Olea patted my hand. “Since you've joined us, we do think of us as three women making our way together. There's nothing wrong with that.”

Olea's words warmed. Perhaps I could alter the employee-employer relationship in the same way that my mother altered dresses that no longer fit. These women were the sturdy dock I needed as I set sail on an unknown sea.

Through the summer of 1900, they taught me about the fur clothing business. Their agent, Franklin Doré, purchased pelts at auctions, then sent them for tanning and dressing in either Montreal or Europe. After the skins were prepared, they were sent to manufacturers. The best were in France and Italy, Olea insisted. Louise said New York was gaining fast. Finished coats and ermine capes or jackets with skunk-trimmed collars were then shipped to New York on Twenty-eighth Street. In the women's younger years, they often traveled to Europe, China, Russia, and the leather markets of Turkey and Greece. “But our agent does most of the traveling now. We leased our furrier shop in the city earlier this year, when we came here. But we're still active in the trade,” Olea said, “taking on specific clients who want certain garments.”

“Trends are important,” Louise said as I rubbed my eyes from the
hours of looking over the ledgers as the women explained them. “People are fickle about fashion. Sometimes they want silver fox, and sometimes they ‘simply must have sable.' ”

“Louise is partial to mink,” Olea said and she smiled.

Louise noticed my impolite yawn, and she picked up the large ledger books I'd been looking at. “That's enough lessons for one night. It's your bedtime, Clara. We don't want to work you to death. It seems to me you do little but study and labor.”

Working me to death
. I smiled at that. I occupied my own bed in my own room. My labor brought no ache to my back, wasn't needed to keep cows from sliding on my instep while I milked. No feathers took me to a fit of sneezing while butchering chickens for a Fourth of July picnic. Once, when I had a sore throat, Louise treated it with mustard packs, as Mama would have. When my foot swelled, Louise put ice chips on it. What these women offered me in comfort was as warm as a winter quilt and as far from working me to death as a turkey feather was from sable.

Their kindness extended to more than just me. They gave contributions to the Lutheran church we attended in Spokane. They supported the Sons of Norway and the Norwegian Independence Day and insisted that I take time off May 17 to celebrate. Louise had a place in her heart for orphans; Olea gave to the carpenters' trade union, the fund that helped Mama when my stepfather was first hurt. Their generosity to that organization brought me even greater trust in these women.

I didn't go home for Christmas that year. We had heavy snows. Both Olea and Louise assured me I wasn't a bad daughter by not risking the possible delays and avoiding the drifts. “One day I might own an automobile,” I told them. “It would make life so much easier.” That holiday I ate Louise's
julekaga
with the white frosting swirled this way and that across the top of the heavy bread, attended Christmas Eve
services with my two friends, and sent the gifts for my family by post on Thursday, the day after Christmas.

We three exchanged gifts. Louise and Olea gave me a jacket made of a Canada lynx's spotted belly fur. “It's very desirable,” Louise told me.

I couldn't stop running my hands over its softness, its elegance, brown spots against the white fur. “It's too much,” I said. I'd given them each a set of pillowcases I'd embroidered. They were paltry by comparison. “I only gave you—”

“What you had to give,” Olea corrected me. “As did we, ‘every man according to his ability.' ”

“From the book of Acts,” Louise said. “About people taking care of each other.”

“I'm sure she knows,” Olea said.

I might have, but I'd forgotten until Louise reminded me.

Queen Victoria's funeral took place in February. Louise, surprisingly, seemed saddened by this event so far away. “The death of someone famous always makes me think of other deaths,” Louise said. “It always does.”

“I'm not sure it needs to be a famous person's death,” I said. My mind went to Henry and Bertha and Johnny and when I'd last seen them. I needed to make a trip to their graves. I wondered if those pieces of Mama's Hardanger lace heart had been buried with them.

“Did you ever meet her?” I asked.

“Oh, goodness no. We've met the Roosevelts, and of course there was that terrible loss he had in '84 with both his mother and wife dying on the same day. So tragic. But that's as close to fame as I've come.”

“I met President McKinley and his wife,” I ventured. I'd not talked
of the journey in the months I'd been with them. A twinge of guilt caused me to pause, but there was no reason not to speak of it to these women. Speaking of the story couldn't hurt Mama from here.

“Yes, and Mary Bryan, I believe. And the governors of Idaho and Ohio,” Louise said. “You met so many people on that trip.”

I frowned. Had all of those names been mentioned in the newspaper accounts, if she'd even read them? And would Louise have remembered that? It was so long ago.

“Louise,” Olea cautioned.

“Did I tell you that when we met on the train?” I asked Olea.

The two women were silent, looked at each other.

“It was in the papers,” Olea said.

“That's it. I read those names in the papers,” Louise agreed. She blinked rapidly, a habit I'd noticed came paired with some distress.

“But only the Minneapolis papers covered some signatures by name,” I said. Had they been in my room, looking at my packet? Impossible—the packet was still at the farm, hidden behind the flour mill cabinet in the kitchen. “I'm sure of it.”

“That must be where we saw it then, before we left for Spokane,” Louise said. “Would you like a cookie? I baked extra today.” She continued to blink as she handed me the Spode plate piled with sweets.

I took one, but it didn't answer what discomforted in the conversation.

I
da's letter arrived in March of 1901 saying our parents had received the final statement from the mortgage holder, and the loan had been called in. They either had to pay the full amount or our property would be foreclosed and sold. Mama and Ole planned to auction off as much as they could, hoping to keep the land and start again. I felt a clutch in my chest. After all this time, it was coming to pass. I didn't know whether to feel great sadness for Mama or to secretly share Olaf's sentiments about letting go of the cow's tail.

The auction was set for March 28. The sale of cattle and hogs might produce enough to meet the back taxes, but I couldn't imagine the family would have money left over to keep the land. Selling cows and horses meant even if Mama and Ole raised the payment, they'd have nothing left to farm with.

“If there is any way you could borrow the money from your rich employers, that would be a small thing you could do for this family after all that's happened,”
Ida wrote.
“We only need one thousand dollars.”
She didn't even tell me how everyone was.

Ask my employers for that kind of money? I didn't see how. Still, if I could pay off the mortgage, perhaps then my stepfather might let Mama at last write about the story, for herself if for no one else. I was sure the sponsors no longer looked for the manuscript. That bridge had been blown apart.

But I didn't want to jeopardize my relationship with my employers. Though I knew of their investments and bank accounts, I was not free to ask for money I knew they had. That would violate a rule that Blair Business College professors spoke of. “The relationship between employer and employee has barriers that must not be crossed.” I'd almost crossed it that one evening by suggesting we were three women living together like a family.

But I thought of Mama, how she had sacrificed for that farm, how much she'd risked. I had to risk too. I would ask for a loan to save the farm. I would find a way to keep it all strictly business.

“Of course we can talk,” Louise said. We'd been shopping—Louise loved that activity—and I wore new clothes that the women had insisted I let them buy for me, telling me that I represented them now and must look the part of a successful associate furrier. I hung the Canada lynx coat and put away my ermine purse with a large black ring on the zippered handle. Both Louise and Olea removed fur coats. I hung these in the closet, then stoked the wood stove. The women wore long skirts over their Gibson corsets and long-sleeved linen blouses with a dozen pleats down the front that I had personally pressed before putting the irons to my own.

“So what can we do for you?” Olea asked.

“I have a business proposition,” I said. Olea opened the windows, letting in the cold air. Louise shivered, causing Olea to think twice and close it. Louise sat, and the cat that she had recently adopted, Lucy,
curled up on her lap. Blue jays argued outside where snow lingered on the lawn. “I'd like to borrow fifteen hundred dollars to repay my parents' mortgage,” I said. I'd rehearsed a preface to my request, but my heart pounded so that I didn't remember how to sound professional and confident. I cleared my throat.