The Daughter's Walk (45 page)

B
oth Olea and Louise were at my house when I arrived. “We had a little problem,” Louise said. She sniffed at her lavender sachet, looked away from me.

“She scorched the kitchen,” Olea told me.

I looked around them through the door. The kitchen looked fine. I didn't smell smoke.

“My kitchen,” Olea said.

“I started to fry the chicken, but then I heard Lucky groan and went to see about him—he's so old, you know—and Olea smelled the smoke and came downstairs. I heard her and noticed the fire then and tried to lift the pan, but I burned myself and threw fiery grease all over the kitchen.”

“We got it out,” Olea said, “but not before significant damage and the sacrifice of a perfectly good quilt to smother the flames.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “I'll be doing carpentry work and painting. I find I like that kind of work, especially now with European imports drying up with war talk. It's as much fun to make furniture as to buy it.”

“It's perfect timing then,” I said.

“I don't see how,” Olea said.

“You'll need a place to stay while you rework the kitchen. I want you to come home, Olea. We do. I'm not sure we ever said that out loud when I got back from Finland and learned you'd bought your house, but I am now. You are my family, you and Louise, and I'd like us to be together.”

“What's brought this about?”

“I don't know why you left. Maybe you thought I wanted you to go, or maybe you were offended by my wanting to go to Finland alone, but—”

“But you went with Franklin,” Louise said. “Didn't you?”

“Yes. I did. It was selfish of me, and I'm sorry.” I took a deep breath. “I just saw my sister,” I said. “She invited me to come home and told me I hadn't been sent away, that I'd gone on my own. I don't remember it that way at all. I guess in a way I had, but—”

“So you need Louise and I to be together now that you're going home.”

“No! They want me to return but to act as though what I've done these past years has no meaning because … you gave me the start. And they still don't allow my mother to talk about the trip. Apparently she's accepted that, even though my stepfather has passed on.”

“I'm sorry,” Louise said. “He was a good man.”

“You didn't know him, Louise.” Olea said, turning to her.

“Didn't I?”

I patted her hand. “But seeing Ida helped me realize I've been dreaming of a reunion that could never be. I'd like to help them, but what Ida wants is for me to forget who has given me strength these past years.”

“Oh, you can't forget God,” Louise said. “He's the one who's done that.”

I looked at her. “Yes, He did, when I listened. But my sister was speaking of you two. I've made a new life, and you're my family now. So please, Olea, come back. Let's live together. I need you because I'm going to do something you and Franklin suggested I do years ago: make up fur fashion designs and have them manufactured. I'm going to sell the other river property and invest it to take care of us.”

“You'll make designs?” Olea asked.

“I have a few finished, and I'm thinking of—”

“I thought you should have done that years ago instead of that trapping business or the fur ranching fantasy,” Olea said.

“And you were right.”

“She got a nice trip to Europe though,” Louise said.

“And she almost died of pneumonia too,” Olea reminded her.

“But the Warrens looked after me. They were sent just when I needed them,” I said. I loved the banter between Olea and Louise, my part in the subject. I'd missed that!

“Lucky you.” Olea smiled. “We'll have to plan a trip together, the three of us.”

“Yes, we will,” I said. “You'll come back and live here? Please do.”

“I thought you'd never ask.”

We turned the shed into a workplace for Olea and got her house repaired and ready to sell. A hawk circled outside the window higher and higher, and I felt like him, more pleased and satisfied and hopeful than buying property had ever made me. We called Franklin, told him of our plans, and he concurred, helped us define each of our parts in this new venture.

In 1914, when Franklin arrived, we were ready. I'd sold the Spokane River properties to the Washington Water Power Company. It had been the most painful of sales because it meant I was truly giving up the livetrapping future. The water company planned to dam the river, and my orchards and shoreline and even the old building would be under water, only the high timber left. I'd likely never walk the land again. I thought of my mother and the Mica Creek farm. One had to move on.

Olea's house sold. I'd put the rentals in Spokane on the market, and several other properties I'd planned to keep longer to turn a better profit, I released for sale. I wanted to pool our funds for this large investment. We put the farm up for sale too, but I expected it would take a while to sell given the drought. I'd keep the taxes up.

I might sell the ring Franklin gave me to get more cash … but I couldn't let go of it, at least not yet. I twirled it on my finger as we talked.

We all sat at the table after finishing a breakfast of oatmeal and maple syrup. The windows frosted with the February cold made designs that reminded me of my mother's Hardanger lace. Franklin wore a look of anticipation.

“You'll buy high-quality pelts in Montreal, or Russia if you think, but I'd prefer as much come from North American furs,” I said.

“The size and coverage is better and the color richer and deeper,” Olea reminded him.

He nodded and I continued. “You'll need to secure a contract with tanners and manufacturers in London. Or Paris or Florence or Athens. We'll leave that to you. Have the garments made up where you think best, but I did like what I saw in Montreal and Paris. Bring them back for sale here in the States. Sell them in New York and Chicago.”

“Not Spokane?” he said. “Isn't that what you imagined years ago?”

“Maybe, but you were all right: the big markets are where people are, and that's the East, New York. Maybe Chicago and Detroit.”

“Clara,” Franklin said, “if you now have resources to invest, don't you think you should follow what you'd always wanted to do, ranch wild game?”

“It's sweet of you to remember,” I said. I sat back. “This is a better arrangement for our … family. And this yield doesn't depend on vagaries of breeding stock or whether I can locate enough protein within a reasonable distance, nor the years it'll take to see a profit. This is what we think we should do.”

“Tensions are running high in Europe,” he said. “The Balkans. The Greek president was assassinated. The war could involve us.”

That surprised me. “Surely we've found more civilized ways to deal with conflict,” I said. We sat thoughtful. Franklin had a better command of European issues.

“Even so, we can contract with Lloyd's to insure the shipments,” he said. “That way we won't be out anything if something should happen.”

Lucky meandered into the kitchen, shook himself all over. The gray around his muzzle was a sign that all of us were aging.

“Clara has a surprise for you,” Olea said. “Go ahead, show him.”

This was the real risk, to put out my own work. “I have a few creations,” I said. I went to the room where I kept my folder of precious things: the sketches I'd drawn on the walk, the album of stamps I'd collected. The signature page of the distinguished people, including McKinley's, fell out. I laid it aside. He was gone now, assassinated by an anarchist way back in '02, the same year as Olaf's death. I lifted the thin drawing sheets I'd worked on while Louise snored in her chair. Olea showed Franklin her side cabinets, her new interest now with bedside tables over birds.

But they all hovered when I pulled out the first designs, an ermine stole and muff. “I see it over a red broadcloth coat with black velvet lining and a black beaver hat with a veil. This one would be black fox, the scarf and muff with tails.” He lifted up two or three others. Ermine caps, “near seal,” a man's black sealskin collar on an overcoat. “He'd wear gaiters over black oxfords,” I pointed. “And this is my personal favorite, a black velvet mantle edged with white fox.” I'd drawn a lattice embroidery of pearl beads and drops to crisscross the cape's back. “The silver tissue turban would have a paradise.” I pointed to the feather I'd drawn coming off the model's turban, but Franklin's eyes were on the magnificent cape.

“Do you have more?”

“A few,” I said. I felt like I was undressing in front of a window at night with the lights on.

“How much are you willing to invest to have these made up?”

I told him. He whistled. “It should return us triple that.”

“Yes. It should.”

“I don't have those kinds of funds to match your investments,” he said. “I can't even contribute a quarter of that cash.”

“You'll be contributing your expertise, the contacts, setting everything up,” Olea told him, “making the best deals you can, marketing what we expect will be one of the finest outlays of fur fashion customers have seen since the turn of the century. We've formed a company. Deluxe DDOL Furs, with two
Ds
for two Dorés and one Olea and Louise. You'll have to escort the finished product back. That will make up your contribution.”

“I know exactly who should work on these,” he said. “They're stunning, Clara. You could find yourself in demand as a designer. Maybe I should simply take these and sell them. You wouldn't risk so much that way.”

“No. We're going all the way. I'm willing to invest ten thousand dollars for our future.”

The same as what my mother and I had been promised when we started our walk across the country.

Franklin wrote of his progress. I read his letters while Olea sanded a table in the shed. He'd bought fine pelts; he'd chosen the tanners and dressers and shown my designs to furriers in Paris, whom he said raised their eyebrows at their elegance. “Especially the beaded cape,” he wrote. “It will be a smash in Paris and New York.”

I worked on others with Olea leaning over my shoulder, commenting now and then. I soon forgot that I didn't know what had caused our rift. Families had their ebb and flow, I decided, not unlike a river. There could be dry periods and floods. What mattered was keeping on the river, not letting old snags pull one under or diverting us to streams that simply dried up and disappeared. That's what had happened with my family: we moved on different rivers. I didn't see how those streams would ever intersect again.

As I walked the fields that summer under blue skies without a hint of rain, I prayed that it wouldn't be another year of wanting. I did miss the green of the Palouse Hills, and I wondered if my mother had missed the Mica Creek farm during that long walk, missed not only the children and Ole, but the land itself. What had given her hope on that trip? Her faith? Her history of persevering, of making things happen? Was she trying to repay Ole for all he'd done, rescuing her from the shame of my existence? Maybe our conversations gave her courage on that journey. Maybe my presence did. But no longer, that was certain.