Waltzing In Ragtime (21 page)

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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

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“The painter.”
“Yes. And Mr. Clemens and his family were welcomed from their home in Hartford. My father enjoyed the stay so much that when I was born some months after, they named me for that house, Olana.”
Matthew’s mother smiled. “That’s like a fairy tale.”
“I wrote to Mr. Clemens, about Matthew reading me
A Connecticut Yankee
while I recovered. He sent me this edition to give
him. Do you think he’ll accept it, Mrs. Hart?”
“He’ll be drummed out of this family if he doesn’t!” She laughed, clutching the book close. “Mr. Twain, he’s the first to give us folks our own voice. I don’t know if … forgive me, but if someone of privilege can understand how important that is to us. And now, Matthew’s name’s on one of his books, in his own hand. My.”
No one Olana knew held the writer in such esteem as the woman before her. Vita Hart went gliding toward Olana’s wet skirt spread out by the stone fireplace. “What a marvelous design this is.”
“A compliment to the material’s quality, my dressmaker said. Where did you get such cloth, Mrs. Hart?”
The tall woman turned and the fire threw lights and shadows across the richly textured weave of her own crimson skirts.
“Vita, please. I wove the cloth, in the attic,” she said with a soft pride. “I’ve been weaving my life long. My mother does the spinning and the sewing. Matthew must look like his own granddaddy to you — Annie hasn’t changed her patterns in fifty years. He came home in store-bought clothes this year. That must be why. Finally fed up with us and the old ways.”
There was a hint of desertion woven through the woman’s accented speech. “Oh, no. He’s proud of his clothes,” Olana protested, gathering up the soft folds of her borrowed muslin dressing gown. “And the first thing I noticed about him was the fine weave.”
The older woman’s eyes searched hers. “What’s happened to them, Olana? There’s almost nothing in his bag.”
“There was a fire.”
The woman’s eyes went wild. “I knew. Something. From his eyes. He was hurt? And you?”
“No, no, I was home by then.” Olana explained the circumstances as Farrell had told her. When she was finished, Olana felt the woman’s long, strong fingers cover her own. “Forgive me. But he never tells us anything.”
Olana smiled. “Me either,” she said.
Vita Hart threw back her head and laughed, the same way her son did, however rarely. “You’re going to be good for this house, Olana.”
Olana looked at the intricate star quilt on the bed. “Thank you for not yet asking why I’ve come.”
“We don’t question blessings. This is going to be great fun. I’ve never seen Matthew in love.”
“Love? He’ll scarcely look at me!”
“That did not escape my notice.”
 
 
As she entered the simply furnished parlor, the gown she’d borrowed from Vita Hart floated a train behind her, making Olana feel like a child playing dress-up. Her only consolation was the similar effect the ranger’s clothes had on Farrell. Matthew was already sitting at a sturdy oak table, and did not even look up from the pieces of his rifle laid out before him. He methodically began to wipe them dry and oil them.
Vita frowned before taking each of his guests by the arm and bringing them to the old woman in the bent wood rocker.
“This is my mother, Annie Smithers,” Vita said.
Farrell shook the woman’s hand vigorously. “Mighty pleased, Ma’am.” He grinned. “But it’s my sacred duty to inform you your grandson’s a blamed fool.”
Matthew Hart grunted and adjusted his spectacles. His mother laughed. “Why is that, Mr. Farrell?” she asked.
“On account of he spent the last three meanest winters on earth in a tree at eight thousand feet when he’s so rich in beautiful women.”
Annie Smithers snorted, but Olana saw a faint blush rise to Vita Hart’s cheeks. Did she not know how beautiful she was? Matthew’s mother took Olana’s hand and put it into Annie Smithers’.
“Olana Whittaker, Mama — the lady Matthew took care of in the storm.”
The strength in Annie Smithers’ fingers belied her age. “I’m
very happy to —” Olana started, but her hand was abruptly released.
She looked over Olana’s shoulder. “Yankee, Matthew,” she called to her grandson. “Her folks won’t take to you no how. Money’s all they think has value, Yankees.”
Vita frowned. “Mama, behave yourself,” she said.
“Should I now? I did when you brought yours home, then I kept a civil tongue. Would to God I’d of spoken up!”
Matthew Hart dropped his oiling cloth and bounded there, between the two women. He knelt before his grandmother.
“Easy. I ain’t brought her, Gran,” he said.
Her blue veined hands rifled through his hair. “Liar,” she whispered and pushed him away. The woman’s clear brown eyes found Olana’s and she knew the mind behind them was sound.
Olana knew something else as well. “You wrote the book — the one Matthew consulted to make me well.”
Annie Smithers frowned exactly the way Matthew did. “No one deserves credit for the wondrous nature of the body to heal itself. Don’t tell me he’s taken on doctoring airs.”
“No, no. He told me the same thing.”
It was a houseful of echoes of him. No, he was theirs, their echo. Matthew Hart left them as quietly as he’d come, and went back to his firearm cleaning.
The little girl appeared, putting her hand on Matthew’s leg. He smiled and lifted her to his lap.
“You smell something?” he asked her softly.
She nodded solemnly.
“Something good?”
Another nod. When he pulled off his spectacles, she touched his shirt’s pocket.
“Go on,” he said.
She pulled out a rod of peppermint candy and began sucking on it.
Olana had quite forgotten the child. Seeing her closer, there was no resemblance between the girl and Vita Hart. Her hair was black and shining. The shape of her eyes, the high-set cheekbones
said she was an Indian, probably from the mission of St. Pitias nearby.
The ranger took her hand. They walked to the women.
“This is Possum,” he said, with only little growl left in his voice.
“Wesoma,” Vita Hart corrected him. “Her name is Wesoma, but she won’t answer to anything but Possum now.”
Olana lowered herself to the child’s level. The little girl’s sticky fingers reached timidly for her freshly bound-up hair. There, Olana thought. She wasn’t doing so badly in this household, was she? Surely Matthew Hart could see that.
“And whose little girl are you?” Olana asked. The child continued to pat her hair. “Cook’s?” she tried. The small face looked puzzled. “The gardener’s?”
Matthew Hart swept the girl back into his arms so suddenly some of Olana’s hair tore from its bonds. His eyes narrowed at his mother, then bore into Olana.
“She’s mine,” he said. “She’s my daughter.”
“Yours?” Olana’s laugh was high, giddy, broken.
Matthew Hart left the room and the house with the child clinging to his neck.
“Oh my,” Vita Hart said. “He really didn’t tell you anything about us, did he?”
“Matthew! Come back here!”
He stopped, waiting for his mother to catch up with him. She drew a small red bonnet from her deep pocket. Matthew remembered thinking those side seam pockets endless when he was a child. He wondered if Possum saw them that way now. He smiled absently at the thought, but knew his mother was in no humor to discuss pockets as she tied the bonnet under his daughter’s chin.
“Your lady doesn’t know any better. She can’t help the folks she came from any more than you can.”
“She ain’t —”
“‘Isn’t,’ Matthew.”
“Am I supposed to let her treat Possum like —”
“The only one treating anyone rudely is you.”
“Me?”
“What do you call looking at her down the end of your rifle?”
“Prudent.”
She exhaled, ran her finger down the back of her granddaughter’s dimpled hand, a gesture of both tenderness and common sense, checking if the child was cold. Shit, these women could distract, then disarm his anger, he thought.
“Matthew. She wants to set something right between you, I
can feel it. And she finds herself in a place she’s never been, among people entirely different from her own. I think she’s doing splendidly. It’s you who shames me.”
“Mama,” he tried, “Her people treated me like a servant —”
Her fine brow arched. “What’s wrong with serving?”
“Nothing. If you’re acknowledged as a member of the human race.”
“Oh, Matthew. You already know that.”
“But they didn’t, don’t you see?”
“Then feel sorry for them, not yourself.”
Damned woman. Try again. “Mama, I’m used to my own company winters. All I’ve wanted for months was to get back to the woods —”
“And those terrible men burned you out of your home there, almost killed you! When were you going to tell us that?”
“Shit.”
She turned away, pulling her shawl tighter around her strong, straight shoulders.
“Who told you —”
“Don’t blame her for anything else! Talk to us, we love you!”
Possum clung to him tighter. “Mama, that’s over,” he lied softly, knowing it wouldn’t be over until he threw dirt into the graves of both the Carson brothers, and whoever hired them.
Possum tugged at his sleeve. “Why does Mama cry?” she asked.
His mother took the child into her arms. “Because you and your daddy are all I have to leave this world,” she said.
Matthew didn’t understand her devotion, didn’t know why she even tolerated him. She loved Possum, of course. He had, in the most accidental way, helped make her a mother again. Maybe that was it. He rested his arm lightly on her shoulder and looked out toward the sea.
“I been thinking —”
“‘I’ve’, Matthew.” She sighed. “Please. I don’t want to be Possum’s sole source of proper English while you’re home.”
Matthew doubted his daughter would remember his improper
English tonight. Her head was already surrendered to his mother’s shoulder. How much she’d grown from last year. How splendid she was. “You’re right, Mama. And I wanted to talk to you about that. Being home. I’ve let the place go too long.”
“What do you mean, Matthew?”
“I mean, up at the park, the road’s all built, you know? And I left all my notes with the folks there. I want to come back year round, Mama. If you think y’all, uh — you all could stand that.”
Vita Hart pressed the sleeping child between them as she embraced her son. “This is your home, Matthew. Stay. Watch the stars,” she advised, “while I put Possum down into her dreams.”
 
 
Olana had wanted to run. But Farrell held her anchored beside Annie Smithers. “I’m sure Miss Whittaker here meant no disrespect —” he began.
It was not hatred that sparked the old woman’s eyes. What was it? Curiosity? “Can she learn different?” she asked Farrell.
“Learn? Why you should have seen her slinging hash at Three Rivers, without never having to at home, I’ll wager.”
A soft grunt. “Hard times ahead for these two. Bad blood mix.”
Olana stood. “I have no intention of —”
“There, see? Always with their ‘intentions,’ Yankees, as if they mattered any.”
Farrell smiled uneasily. “I’m from Ireland myself,” he said.
Annie Smithers took Olana’s hand in a gentle hold. “What is it you want, child?” she asked.
“Possum’s mother —” Olana heard herself, in spite of intentions.
“He lost her three years ago, to the sea. Full-blooded Yurok. Came out strong in Possum, excepting her build. She’ll be tall, like him and his mama.
“He found her on an island out there, beyond the channel. Abandoned after some sailors stole her from the mission, long before. They raped her, cut her tongue out, and threw her overboard
when they were done. She’d been living wild with the seals for years. That she didn’t kill Matthew on sight for the sin of being a man, I’ll never understand. Then, we did raise the child right and respectful, his mama and me did. And a few other good women had a hand in his education by that time, I imagine. He was bringing Possum and her mama home to us when they were wrecked. That’s when he went inland, after Seal Woman drowned.”
“To us, the road building, and the trees!” Farrell exclaimed. “I knew he was carrying a burden when he first came to us. Didn’t I tell you that, Miss Whittaker?”
Olana thought of nothing but her mistake, and a damaged woman who’d been his wife, and the gentle way he held his child. Vita Hart entered with the little girl asleep on her shoulder. How gracefully she walked. Farrell noticed it too. He watched the stairway long after she was gone.
Suddenly the front door opened with the force of a blow. Matthew Hart charged in. He ran his hand through his air and focused on Olana. “Any of your fancy education make you conversant in Italian?”
She stood in her excitement. “My music lessons last year, in Italy. I sang arias from operas.”
“Come see if you can understand all this fuss then,” he demanded, catching up her hand in his.
“But what —”
“A whole carriage full of folks. Needing help. I think it’s Italian they’re speaking. Opera,” he muttered over his shoulder to Annie Smithers.
His grandmother grinned, showing a full set of strong white teeth. “Well. Ain’t been this social around here since the last big storm blew a few of the lowlanders over,” she proclaimed.
Outside, they were beset by a hail of conversation. Children were speaking in English and Italian and translating for each other. One thrust a large grapefruit in Olana’s hand before she’d been able to decipher any of it. They pulled like a tide to the black carriage.
Inside the long, low, coach was a mustached man and an enormous woman. Her head was on his shoulder and she panted high in her chest.
Olana looked to Matthew and saw the night’s tensions dissolve from his face. A calm serenity took over. When the woman heaved a long sigh, he grasped her hand gently.
“How do you say ‘good,’ ’Lana?”
“Bene.”
“Bene, Señora.”
“Signora.”
“Oh, yes.
Signora
,” he corrected himself.
The woman’s face beamed back at them both before she rested her head again on the man’s shoulder.
“Signora Amadeo
,” the man completed his wife’s name while shaking Matthew’s hand. I am Antonio Amadeo. This is Smithers?”
“Yes.”
“My wife. None came like this, before time. We thought travel safe? Please — in the town — they say to come here. You can help?”
“Yes. Come in.”
Together the men eased the woman out of the carriage. They began walking, again swarmed by the children. Olana finally realized where Mrs. Amadeo’s enormity was centered.
“Matthew, is she —”
“Very.” He smiled.
“But what on earth can we do for her?”
“Not much. She’s got the hard part.”
“But —”
Mrs. Amadeo stopped the procession following her by standing stock still. She reached out her arms. Her husband, who was a head shorter than she was, took one hand. She grasped the empty air with the other. Olana wanted to run away from the desperate, groping fingers.
“Hold her,” Matthew Hart commanded.
Olana caught the hand, felt the grip tighten. Matthew Hart
placed his hands somewhere inside the woman’s worn black cloak. Slowly, the grip on her hand eased.
“Bene, bene,” he said. He turned to Mr. Amadeo. “Olana. Ask him how long have her pains been coming this close.”
“Ah —
Quanto tempo
— ah,
allegro spirito?”
“Un’ora fa.
”
“He says for an hour. What does it mean, Matthew?”
“Means we’d better get this lady inside and wash our hands.”
He was enjoying her confusion. Why had she ever come here? She wanted to go home, not be thrown into this strange woman’s agony.
Once they were in the house, Annie Smithers pointed the way to a small room off the kitchen. Mrs. Amadeo reached the room’s doorway just as another of her pains started. She knelt, waving everyone else away furiously. Olana heard round, full words that sounded like a prayer. When it was over Mrs. Amadeo looked around the tiny room as if she’d been brought to the Taj Mahal. “
Grazie
,” she told them all.
Matthew Hart’s mother and grandmother smiled. Then Annie Smithers spoke. “Vita, help her with her clothes. Matthew, fetch me the things in the bottom drawer. And you, child — shoo these useless men into the front parlor. Tell them to keep the children quiet. And put the kettle on.”
When she returned from performing her tasks, Olana saw the room transformed into a workplace. Mrs. Amadeo was dressed in a white nightgown. Pillows were piled high behind her. Both her attending women had full white aprons over their homespun clothes. Matthew was different only in his rolled-up sleeves. They showed the strong forearms she knew well, but still gave her a shiver of delight to see.
He and his women were talking softly as he put on his spectacles. His grandmother was clearly in charge, though she kept her hands nested in the pockets of her apron until she pushed her grandson toward Olana’s steaming kettle.
He held out a low basin of scissors and instruments.
“Pour,” he said.
She did. The steam rose up between them, misting his spectacles and the laughing eyes behind them. The task done, Vita Hart pointed to a chair beside the bed. “Talk to her for us, Olana,” she asked softly.
Olana slipped into the chair. Mrs. Amadeo’s breathing changed again. Vita climbed up on the small bed and stroked the laboring woman’s head with a wet cloth. Matthew and his grandmother sat on either side of the bed’s foot. The sheets widened. Annie held them higher. Olana swallowed hard. That meant they both could see —
“Crowning!” came Annie Smithers’ triumphant whisper. “Your baby’s almost here, ma’am.”
The woman’s tormented face turned to Olana.
“Quando?”
“Yes, soon.
Si!
”
Annie Smithers handed her grandson a small brown bottle. “Can’t depend on my hands anymore, Matthew.”
“But Gran —”
“I taught you well.”
“It’s been years.”
“You didn’t forget. Don’t fuss now. Make me proud.”
Olana watched a battle of opposing forces waging war for possession of Matthew Hart’s face. Finally, it reflected the pride in the old woman’s eyes. With Mrs. Amadeo’s next pain, he poured some of the bottle’s amber liquid onto a cloth and put it somewhere inside those spread sheets. The woman pulled back into Vita’s arms.

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