The Last Letter (17 page)

And so for the first time in months, instead of Jeanie fighting the anger and resentment that was foremost on her mind and in her body, she used the crippled anger to scrub their clothes cleaner than they’d been since she made them. She thrust back and forth, pushing and pulling the clothing over the washboard, skirts nearly swooshing into the fire that heated the wash-water from underneath.

She ignored her belly when cramping came. She gave into the rhythm of yanking the clothing back and forth. She squeezed her eyes tight, and behind her lids, images of a feed-sack, hanging over her head, splitting open dumping grain onto her head, flattening her, came to mind. With the imagined impact, came the realization that her life as it had been in Des Moines wasn’t possible on the prairie. That she’d written books espousing “simple” ways to maintain gracious living even while doing charity, tending to children, that she believed women who lived anywhere under any circumstance could make use of her books, her thoughts,
that
ridiculousness hit her like a splayed feed-sack.

“How utterly, utter of me to not have understood my own idiocy.” She spit out her words and finally gave into the cramps, resting on all fours. She tried to steady her breathing and recalculate how far she was in her pregnancy. She couldn’t remember. She was nearly three months along, was that right? She counted back, then forward, unable to sort the dates in her head.

“Jeanie,” Templeton said. He squatted next to her and put his arm around her shoulder.

Jeanie flinched at her unladylike position.

“You’re exhausted. Here, let me help you inside. You need some water. Just by chance, in Yankton, I spoke with a doctor who happened to be caring for a woman like you and he said lack of water brought on early birth pains. All it will take is a little water and rest to bring you back to even keel.”

Jeanie flinched away, at his candidness, inappropriateness, at the way his arm felt reassuring and strong across her back. When was the last time she felt Frank’s arm this way? When had he last offered a supportive gesture? The warmth, the improper reaction, it all made Jeanie cry harder. She fell into Templeton’s body and clung to him, digging at his shirt, pulling bunches in her balled fists.

“Here, let me help you.”

Jeanie nodded into his chest and he stood, pulling her up and supporting her into the dugout where he lay her down and went to the kitchen for water. Jeanie knew it was wrong to be there like that, to have him fetch water like a servant, to have a man in her room while she reclined like, like a tramp or slovenly woman who had no boundaries or upbringing.

There was so much wrong with it, that she began to black out with the heaviness of it all. On top of the breaking of mores that humiliated her so, there was the appearance of her dugout. Having thought she’d put her material interests behind for simpler ideals, her shame at her home’s appearance took over her thoughts.

She sniffled as Templeton poked around for a cup and ladle.

She turned away from the sight of him, looking at her ill-equipped kitchen. She closed her eyes, hand over her forehead. “You’d think it’d be no big concern to lose your money, your
things.
” Jeanie spoke so quietly she didn’t think he’d even hear her. “As long as you had family and health and mind, and determination. But then you lose it, the silk dresses, shiny gold, glittery gems, a household staff, and you realize all of those things are actually part of who you are. I was a fraud without even knowing it.” Jeanie chortled, her throat scratchy. “How was I to know when I wrote those books, that my thoughts on keeping a home were entirely dependent on keeping my things. I really believed I was simply…”

“Shhh, shhh, shhh,” Templeton sat on the edge of the bed. Jeanie kept her eyes closed, let him lift her up and put the cup to her lips, water running down her mouth, over her chin. She opened her eyes and looked into Templeton’s face, his skin creased with his obvious concern. His grey eyes anchored his gaze into her soul, making her feel as though their private souls were slipping together, greeting one another in a way they couldn’t verbally do.

“You have to go,” Jeanie said. She searched his expression for evidence he’d heard what she said, that he didn’t think she was awful. She was further shamed that she cared what he thought.

Templeton hesitated then nodded and stood. He pulled the chair across the room and set it beside the bed where he laid the water cup. “I’ll find Frank. You shouldn’t be alone.”

Jeanie almost screamed for him to stay, to tell her she wasn’t a fraud. Please, tell me, she thought. Someone, please tell me… please, she thought. She wanted him to put his hands back on her, to touch her face. She was swimming with the same feelings that Frank had once brought out in her just by standing nearby.

“I can’t sleep,” Jeanie said. “That’s what’s wrong. I haven’t slept since the fire. If I sleep, I might wake and find out they died. I couldn’t live, I couldn’t.”

Templeton came back to the bed and sat down heavy, as though this was exactly the invitation he’d been waiting for. “You don’t have to be afraid to sleep. Everyone’s fine. This is reality, you’re alive, they’re alive. And, I think you would do fine under any circumstance. Even if you can’t imagine…it’s what people like us do. We’re pioneers, Jeanie, and it’s what we do. We live no matter what.”

Though convention demanded that she be humiliated at what had transpired in the room where she slept, with a man not her husband, Jeanie felt nothing at all. It was as though Templeton saw something in her that she didn’t, and unlike Frank who might have said those very same words to her, Templeton saying them meant mountains, as he wanted and needed nothing from her. Frank’s kind words were often the currency of manipulation to direct her actions down the path that would most benefit him.

Jeanie watched Templeton leave the dugout, put his hat on, straighten it before walking away. Jeanie’s body felt as though she were trapped in mud, she had never felt such fatigue, yet her eyes wouldn’t close, her mind wouldn’t stop and let her sleep. And Frank finally arrived looking hot and sweaty. Jeanie didn’t have a chance to inquire what he’d been up to because he began to tend to her as though she were his delicate angel, his greatest love, the way he used to treat her.

He mixed a drink and brought it to her. She looked at him, her heart beating with the surge of feelings Templeton had awakened, though now they were for her husband. She winced at the bite in the drink.

“Frank? What’s in this?”

“Just some herbs. From the Moores. Nothing…“

Jeanie fell back on the pillows and almost immediately her mind lifted and her spirit ran with lightness that was nearly a miracle and her question, whatever it was faded from her mind. She reached up to Frank and felt his face, seeing two of him, but remembering every single reason she ever fell in love with him. And it could be whittled down to a list of three things—his good looks dwarfed hers and made her feel as though winning at poker to have him love her as though she didn’t deserve to be with someone so handsome, but like any winner at poker, she could live with it once it happened. Two, his optimism that there wasn’t anything in the world he couldn’t do. And three, the way he loved their children, as though his life locked down in peace when they were born.

She finally coasted into sleep, feeling as though smothered in nothing but goodness, happy to be nothing more than Frank’s wife.

Jeanie raised her head trying to wake, the room blurred, the fuzzy figures and furniture shifted and she dragged her thick tongue around her mouth, feeling as though dirty rags were jammed in it. Voices filled the dugout, Frank’s strained while a woman’s was pleading. Greta? Yes, it was Greta.

Jeanie must have fallen back asleep because when she finally woke for good, she could make out the people and objects in the room clearly. Frank and Greta were convened at the cook-stove, Katherine sat on the floor with two-year-old Anzhela. It was the first time Jeanie could remember not seeing Anzhela attached to Greta’s body with clasped arms and legs.

“Mama!” Katherine hopped up and tumbled into bed with Jeanie.

“Now, Kath, don’t crowd your Mama, she’s not up to speed yet.”

Jeanie wrapped her arm around Katherine, squeezed her tight and kissed her forehead, smelling just washed hair. Roses.

“I got a bath at the Moore’s, Mama,” Katherine said, her eyes nearly dancing in her skull as the memory was clearly a decadent one for her. “They allowed me use of their big white porcelain tub, fit for queens, their shampoo—rose-scented, then a thick substance, apple smelling that they said would smooth the knots away after rinsing it, then they had me dry myself, put on a pinafore and they swabbed my arms and legs with the most wonderful rose-scented lotion.”

Katherine thrust her arm under her mother’s nose. “Isn’t that fantastic?”

The intense smell caused Jeanie’s stomach to tighten and shoot acid upward. She bolted up, covering her mouth. Greta dove toward Jeanie, shoving the water pail under her mouth where she vomited clear fluids, then nothing.

Katherine’s face crinkled with fear. She backed away, hiding in the corner where Anzhela was still playing with a doll. Greta climbed onto the bed, knelt beside Jeanie, ran her hand over the back of Jeanie’s head and down her back.

Jeanie’s breathing evened and she pulled her ankles in to sit cross-legged, handing the pail to Frank who appeared as horrified as Katherine.

“Come here Katherine,” Jeanie said, “it’s okay. With the baby my stomach is a little sensitive to smells. Those lotions and concoctions are something else. Why you’re a veritable farmer’s market with all the fruits and flowers emanating from your skin like that. It’s just my being pregnant.”

Frank flinched then snuck a glance at Greta who caught the gaze then looked away.

“What?” Jeanie said.

Greta and Frank stared at one another as though each was threatening to expose the other’s worst secret. Jeanie’d seen the expressions, the tension that gripped a person’s entire body.

Frank broke Greta’s gaze and shrugged. “I just gave you a little—”

Greta cut her hand through the air. “Not with the kids in here. Katherine, could you make sure Anzhela is under the care of Anna and the boys. Aleksey’s the most reliable, but see to it she doesn’t wander.”

Katherine nodded and pulled Anzhela to her feet and out the door. She took a final glance at Jeanie who nodded reassuringly before turning her attention back on Frank.

“What is it? Exactly how long have I been asleep? The baby?”

Frank shrugged. “Baby’s fine as far as we can tell. You had so much trouble sleeping after the fire that I just helped you a little, I put a little elixir in your tea, that’s all, just a little something to help you along to sleep. It wasn’t good for the baby to have you living on two hours sleep.”

Jeanie looked at her lap and let Frank’s words wrap around memories of other elixirs. “No, no you didn’t.”

“I had to, I didn’t know what else to do.”

“The baby, he’ll be slow or dead or—”

Greta grabbed Jeanie’s biceps. “Now listen to me, I gave Frank, who I barely know, let alone know well to tell him his business, but I gave it to him good, Jeanie, I told him not to give you any more of that or your baby would be born limp or stupid or dead. I’ve seen people with just one swig of laudanum, marry it until death comes way too early and ugly and wasted.”

“Okay, okay,” Frank said. His words were hissing, his face disgusted at what Jeanie knew he would consider theatrics on Greta’s part.

“Don’t speak to her that way,” Jeanie said. “Don’t you dare.”

Greta stood and ladled fresh water into a tin cup. She handed it to Jeanie and as the mug passed from her hands to Jeanie’s, Greta patted Jeanie’s offering comfort even though she knew she’d crossed the line into another’s marital bounds.

Greta straightened and doing so, came eye to eye with Frank. She scowled at him then disappeared through the doorway. Jeanie downed the entire cup of water. She pushed from the bed, staggering. Frank caught her weight and they held each other until she recovered her balance. Once she did, they dropped their arms from each other and stood, staring at one another.