The Last Letter (10 page)

Greta grinned and shook her head. “You’re smarter than that, Mrs. Frank Arthur. I don’t mean to suppose and I know we haven’t known one another but a minute, but on the prairie, there’s a level of honesty not present in the civilized segments of the great United States. And I can say from this short minute of our acquaintance, that you are smarter than that.”

Jeanie was about to tell her that intelligence and dreaming didn’t exist as separate entities, but as Jeanie started to further engage Greta in this line of conversation, Frank, Templeton, and two women appeared atop the dugout, sitting astride two horses in an entirely inappropriate fashion. Templeton held a rope, making a leash of sorts, connected to a very full cow. Jeanie’s gaze fell over Frank’s legs that were nearly wrapped around one of the women who sat in front of him. The woman’s skirts, though modestly lifted to accommodate the horse, were still lifted. Peeved by the sight of them, Jeanie wished the four slow-pokes and the horses would crash through the roof of the dugout making it impossible for the Arthurs to live inside it.

Chapter 6

1905
Des Moines, Iowa

Katherine’s days changed once her mother and sister came to live with them. She and Aleksey still rose before dawn. She began the wash, made breakfast, and lured her family from warm beds with thick French toast and fluffy eggs while Aleksey shoveled the coal and lit the stove. He shuffled off to his law firm, as he always did. But, Katherine’s afternoons were now spent consulting with Dr. Shoal about Jeanie’s declining condition, Dr. Matthews regarding Yale’s pending institutionalization, and Dr. Patterson regarding her own sanity.

Katherine forwent her weekly garden club meetings, quilting club meetings, and volunteer work at the library to make her mother as comfortable as possible. Katherine’s actions—the way she brought her mother’s food on a beautiful tray with silver utensils and a single flower in a vase, or turned her mother to gently remove and replace sheets—were serviceable and attentive. But, she could have been tending to a plant for as much warmth as she offered. She entered the guest room with a bundle of fresh sheets, towels and quilt.

“Did the blizzard take your tongue along with your pinky finger?” Jeanie said.

Katherine wanted to yank the sheet and dump her frail mother off the bed. Instead she pulled her linen bundle closer to her chest with one hand and with the other hand, she pulled the quilt from atop her mother.

“That’s the rudest thing I’ve ever heard Mother. How could you? You know how that…I was only
ten
at the time. How
could
you?” Katherine squealed as though she were, indeed, ten again.

Jeanie shrugged, her hands clenched at her chest, face softened for the first time Katherine could ever remember. “I just wanted to hear your voice. See if there was a heart inside the shell of a person you’ve become.”

Katherine pulled a corner of the quilt aside to remove it. Jeanie pulled it back.

Katherine felt secure in her kindness, the good works she did for anyone in need. And no one with half a brain to spare would think she was wrong for not doting on her selfish mother.

“I need to wash your linens. They smell sour. I know how much stink unsettles you.”

Jeanie looked away, pulling the quilt under her chin.

“Mother, I don’t want to wrestle it from your grasp. If you’re cold, I’ll put the fresh quilt over you right away,” Katherine said. She yanked the bottom of the quilt up and exposed Jeanie’s feet.

“Mother. What…why?” She pointed at Jeanie’s feet. “Those wretched boots? Why on earth would you wear those horrible things?”

Jeanie turned on her side, refusing to speak.

“You hate those things. Let me take them off. They can’t be comfortable. You’re sick, you’re…
oh please,
let me take those off of your feet.” Katherine reached for the boots and Jeanie inched her feet to the other side of the bed, staring at the wall.

“Katherine. Let me die in peace. Unless you can forgive me. That’s all I need from you. I know the rest will take care of itself, but I need to know that you understand I did my best.”

“Of course I forgive you. I…I don’t ever think about…yes, I forgot about it a long time ago.”

Jeanie scoffed and shrugged, clearly not believing her daughter.

Katherine was stunned at her mother wearing the disgusting boots in bed, the black curled, scarred ones she’d once sworn never to wear past May 1888. Yet, there they were like miniature ghosts of their past, on Jeanie’s feet, holes in the soles. But more than that, she was struck by Jeanie’s request for forgiveness. She’d never wanted it before and though Katherine would say she forgave her mother, she wasn’t sure she ever really could.

Jeanie pulled the quilt back over her feet. Katherine shook her head. What was the point of changing the quilt if Jeanie was going to house stinky black boots under it?

“So much happened, Katherine. You don’t really understand, you were a child and I couldn’t, I
wouldn’t…
I was trying to protect you.” Jeanie’s voice was thin.

Katherine’s mind spun. Was the woman insane? Protect her? She only protected herself.

“I know everything I need to know, Mother. You tried to be selfless to put us first, but in the end, you simply weren’t equipped to do so. I thank you for the apology and you have my deepest forgiveness.”

Jeanie lay there, stone still. “I once allowed a friend to die without my forgiveness. That selfish act of mine, it grips me still. It’s an awful thing to do to a dying soul. Over the years I’ve realized she did her best at the time with what she had, her limitations. But, my heart was closed to her at the time…“

“Who?”

Jeanie’s breath was her only reply.

“So you’re doing
me
a favor by demanding my forgiveness? You stranded me with nothing. And while I know you need to unburden your heart and cleanse your soul because you are dying, Mama, I don’t think I need to know any further details on the matter.”

She covered her mouth wanting to trap the word Mama inside even though it had already escaped. She began to quake. It was as though birthing the words, having the conversation she did not want to have, made the meaning behind what was said and unsaid explode inside her, as though the earth separated and Katherine for the first time felt encompassed by true fear.

Her teeth chattered and she clutched the linen bundle tighter. She couldn’t say what she felt at that moment, besides the oddest chill over her skin, but she knew she couldn’t handle information or anything else her mother had to offer by way of assurance that she’d once loved her as a mother ought to.

“I did the best I could.” Jeanie said

“It wasn’t enough. I would never do that to my children. Never. I would die first.”

“Finally. Truth. It’s about time you uttered it,” Jeanie said. “But, you don’t know
my
truth. You don’t know the half of it, Katherine.”

“I know all that I need to.”

“Well, I need to tell you what happened that year. What really happened.”

“I want to give you that, Mother, a chance to repent, but whatever you have to say, I do not want to hear. I’ll call a minister or Aleksey, since you’re perfect bosom buddies these days. Anyone but me. Some things aren’t meant to be shared between mother and daughter. That much I learned from you.”

Jeanie shuddered as wind came through the open window. Katherine closed the window with one hand and wordlessly tucked the dirty quilt around every square inch of her mother’s body.

She left the room with the bitter smell of death at her heels and the pitiful sound of her mother crying for her to come back, to please understand. She stood in the hallway, back against the closed door. She did want to understand, she did want to truly forgive her mother, she wanted her mother to experience earthly peace, but she didn’t know if she could do that. No matter how much she might regret not forgiving her mother, as Jeanie suggested she would, she was too resentful to do more than act as though she forgave. And that, she hoped would be enough.

Chapter 7

1887
Dakota Territory

The sight of one’s husband, intimately draped around another woman would be too much to take with no witnesses. But, for Jeanie to have Frank saunter into view, astride a horse and the woman sharing its back, with new neighbors watching? The sight buckled Jeanie’s knees.

Greta grabbed Jeanie’s arm, and kept her from crashing to the ground.

Jeanie felt her face bearing the crushed emotions that churned inside and she pulled away from Greta, smoothing her skirts then her hair. “I’m fine.” Jeanie plastered a smile across her face and patted Greta’s arm before striding toward the husband Jeanie wished, at that moment, wasn’t hers.

As Jeanie neared the dugout, Frank dismounted the horse, helped the woman down, holding her wasp waist a little too long in Jeanie’s opinion.

Frank dashed around the dugout, his blue eyes alive with something Jeanie couldn’t identify.

“Oh, I love you my sweet Jeanie, my sweet friend, my love, my Jeanie. You look angry. I see behind that smile of yours.” Frank led Jeanie away from the group, trying to soften her mood. “Please don’t worry, lend me your worries and I’ll take them far away into the prairie where they can be buried deep, so we can live in comfort and pleasantness. Please, don’t buckle into the tensions of this new place. We’ll grow to understand the land, to contemplate the beauties of its nature just as we did so many times in the dense action of Des Moines. We’ll find that sort of feeling again. The freedom, the happiness. The everything we ever thought we wanted. It’s all here for the taking. I can just feel it. Please, come meet Ruthie and Lutie Moore. I told them all about you. They can’t wait to meet you.”

Jeanie suddenly felt relieved. With the simple words “I told them all about you,” Jeanie’s anger fell away. She fell into Frank, letting him pet her. She felt dim-witted for letting cross feelings infiltrate her body and control its essence. Frank saw it from across the prairie, her discontent, and she was wrong for letting it show like that. It didn’t matter that their life collapsed in Des Moines, that her father had buried himself beneath a mound of powdered morphine long before the coroner claimed him lifeless. None of it was any excuse for her falling into her own blackness, drug-free as it might have been.

She pushed Frank at the chest, then took his face in her hands, peppering him with kisses, not caring who saw or what it meant for society as it was becoming very clear, society as she knew it was not in their presence.

“Okay, I trust you, us, everything, this land. We can do this. I’m so sorry I’ve been disagreeable. We can make this work. I love you Frank Arthur. I love you like it was the first day we met.” What she didn’t say was that this trust she felt was artificial, forced, constructed from something that used to be there, like the life they used to know. But, at that point, all Jeanie had was the will to construct a new life, even if that meant forcing intangible aspects of it into being, hoping that the act of pretending might bring forth reality.

Jeanie and Frank turned toward the dugout and her normal energies returned. They headed to greet their guests in an appropriate manner, one that would be suitable in any civilized place.

Lutie Moore, the woman who Frank had ridden with, looked down from the dugout at Jeanie. She held a bucket, with water slushing over the sides. “Well, now, you must be
the famous,
pregnant Mrs. Arthur.” She squealed like a child and squeezed her shoulders to her ears, face frozen into a smile of obnoxious glee.

Jeanie’s hands flew to her waist. Her knees nearly buckled from the mortification that dripped over her like honey. Before Jeanie could respond, Lutie bounded down the side of the dugout and quite effectively skipped like a six-year-old. She placed the bucket at Jeanie’s feet. “Pleased to meet you Mrs. Arthur. My sister Ruthie and I have both of your books and ten of your columns. The very chivalrous and debonair Howard Templeton is always kind enough to bring a copy of your column when he comes back from the city. You have a fine, fine husband and I can only say that I hope when the time comes, I can fetch a boy just like him.”

Lutie stuck her hand out to shake Jeanie’s. It was a tiny, smooth thing, with bones no larger than little Katherine’s. Lutie’s face, molded into a perfect oval, boasted wide-set eyes and lush lips like Jeanie’d only seen in
Harper’s Bazaar.
Her slim waist seemed to only get smaller and smaller until it belled out as just the right juncture to make her appear as though an artist had drawn the essence of woman and Lutie came to life right off the paper.

Mostly, Lutie’s youth and vibrance struck Jeanie, making her feel instantly dowdy and unworthy of her wiry, electrified husband. The word divorcee kept leaping to mind, making Jeanie immediately suspicious of the kind of woman who could possibly divorce and be so happy thereafter.

“My, my, my. A pleasure to meet you, Lutie. Call me Jeanie.” If Jeanie had learned anything from her father and mother it was that a woman should never let anyone recognize her insecurity as it related to her looks or her husband’s intentions. Such weaknesses, displayed for others was like blood in the water, calling all interested sharks to feed at the trough of one’s husband.

“Oh, I will,” Lutie said, “that’s right pleasant of you. You just put me right to work as my sister Ruthie and I have sort of relaxed our conduct, not so much as to be scandalous, but in terms of keeping home. We’ve narrowed our work load to the nitty-gritty so to conserve time for music, song, and well, gardening and such. Your books are like home-keeping fantasy novels, fairytales that we can enjoy in print, but the chance of us bringing your words to life, are well, as slim as Cinderella herself riding over that plain there. But we are thrilled that you will be able to do just that. Imagine it. The great Jeanie Arthur, right here in Darlington Township. Our very own big-bug come to town to bestow us with great knowledge, eloquently bestowed, I’m sure.”