TWENTY-EIGHT

Journey Outward, Journey Inward

For the love of family, I’d been sent away. At least that’s how I saw it. While I waited at Schwartz’s store for the afternoon train, I pulled my jacket tighter against the cold, as adrift as a snowflake tossed in the wind. The ride back to Spokane was long and lonely. A part of me wished I’d taken time to walk around the old farm before I left, to look in the barn and smell the hay, listen to the chickens cackling, scratch behind a horse’s ear. Take one last cold drink at the pump. I’d never go back to that place even if it remained with the Estbys. I wasn’t one of them anymore.

The train chugged along through the falling snow. I wasn’t sure what to tell Olea and Louise. They’d want to hear how I heroically saved the family farm, rescued my mother from the shame of foreclosure, gave my parents a fresh start on a landscape they loved, used the money we’d rightfully earned for a good cause.

Would I tell them that my family thought their money was dirty? They’d both been so happy to help, when they hadn’t done it before. My receiving the funds relieved them from a former guilt. Maybe they’d wash their hands of a family so foolish as to turn down good money. Maybe they’d wash their hands of me.

“Did the day go well?” Louise chirped when I came through the door. “Why, you’re soaked. Where’d you leave your umbrella?”

“I left it at home. At the farm,” I corrected. “One day I’ll own a car,” I said. “So I won’t get so drenched.”

“Well, get those wet things off and I’ll heat up water for a tub.” She took the fur jacket and hat, hung them in the hall while I peeled the packet of mementos out from under my blouse, where I’d kept it as dry as I could.

“I’ll be fine.” I shivered.

Olea came out of her room. “I thought I heard talking.” She looked at her lapel watch. “Was there a train at this hour? We assumed you’d stay the weekend to finalize things.”

I took a deep breath. “There was nothing to finalize. My stepfather, my mother, everyone … They … rejected the money.”

“What?” Louise said.

“Indeed,” Olea said. She sat down on the arm of a chair. Louise brought a fur wrap and put it around me. “They didn’t want to pay off the mortgage?”

“They … didn’t like the source of the funds,” I said. I felt embarrassed for my family, shamed that they couldn’t see the benefit of the money without the story behind it carrying more weight.

“But you earned it,” Louise said. “You and your mother.”

“Not in my stepfather’s eyes. And Mama … she’s too worn out to stand against him anymore. Saving the farm would have been a gift to her. She might have forgiven herself for not being home when Bertha and Johnny became ill. I wanted to do that for her. For them. But they …” The tears began again. “They want nothing to do with the walk or money from it. They think I’ve abandoned them because I came back here, because I want to continue to work for you. If you’ll have me.”

“Of course we’ll have you.” Louise put a teakettle on. “You must get out of those wet things. Go now,” she urged.

I followed her advice, stripped the wet clothes, then put on a wrapper and rolled the fur around my shoulders again. Louise pointed to a chair and put slippers onto my feet when I sat. She brought me tea. My eyes pooled with tears at her care.

“The money is in my purse,” I said. “Take it back.”

Olea sipped her tea. “It’s not our money anymore, Clara. It’s yours. To do with as you see fit. You earned it. Invest it. Turn it into something your parents can be proud of.”

“They’ll never be proud of anything I do with it,” I said. Nor would they ever be proud of me. I could see that now. Even Mama couldn’t speak up for me anymore, though we’d shared a memory none of the rest of the family had. That might have been another reason why my brothers and sisters could so easily side with my stepfather against me, against their own best interests. They wanted to keep the farm too, but not if I gave the money.

“Then invest it for yourself. Make your own way,” Olea said. “Prove that it isn’t money but what you do with it that is the moral base of who you are. After all, God loved things. He made things every day for six days and said they were all good. It isn’t having things that is the issue; it’s the attitude. Make your own way; give back in your own way too.”

I’d dreamed of having a career, a profession too, a life apart from working for my family. I could go on to college now. The world was open to me if I kept the money, so open that I was paralyzed to act.

“They’ll feel better about it in a few days,” Louise said. “Time is always a good healer. You plan to go back out there again. After they’ve had a little time to consider, they’ll likely welcome your offer.”

In that moment, Louise reminded me of my mother’s once cheerful optimism about mishaps, and I knew it to be equally hopeless.

“They’re not welcoming me back.”

“Not want you?” Olea asked. “Surely that can’t be right.”

“I’m not an Estby anymore,” I said.

My teeth chattered from the cold train ride back to Spokane. Or maybe from the possibilities that now lay before me with no one but myself to stand in my way.

I caught a cold. Its sneezing and sore throat kept me down for a week. I coughed and ran a fever and heard Louise say the word diphtheria followed by Olea’s reassuring scoff. But as Mama had once tended me through food poisoning and my sprained ankle, so these two women looked after me, reassuring me that I’d be better soon with Louise’s concoctions, prepared with what the doctor recommended.

Whatever it was the doctor had ordered to stop my cough put me to dreamless sleep, so I didn’t feel up to taking the train back to Mica Creek on the day of the auction. Going would have been self-punishment. Even Louise didn’t suggest it again after that first night.

I didn’t know what I did want to do once I finished my classes at Blair College in a month, except for one thing.

“I’ve decided to change my name officially to Clara Ann Doré,” I told Olea one morning close to my graduation.

“Doré? How odd. That’s Franklin’s name,” Olea noted. “Our agent.”

“I remember you told me that. I’m choosing it because one thing I did learn when I visited my family was who my father was. John Doré. Apparently his mother’s name was Clara, and Mama named me for her.”

“Indeed,” Olea said.

“Maybe your mother wanted to maintain connection to him and chose his mother’s name to honor him,” Louise said. She put milk in a bowl for Lucy, who had now become an inside cat all the time, not just during cold winter nights.

I wondered if Mama might have named me as an act of defiance, the only action left to her with everyone else making the decisions that defined her life—leaving Michigan and arriving in Yellow Medicine, Minnesota, where no one knew her secret shame.

No one defined my life now.

“There’s little use to speculate,” Olea said.

“No, I suppose not,” Louise said.

“Will I have to find a lawyer to change my name?”

“Oh, goodness no,” Louise said. “I changed my name back in 1897 in New York. You go to the courthouse and fill out forms and stand before a judge. Like when you get married. I used to be Gulbrandson instead of Gubner. Gubner is so much easier to spell.”

“You changed it because of the spelling?” I asked.

“As good a reason as any.”

“We can get that started for you,” Olea said. “I’ll pick up forms when I’m at the courthouse later this week. So you’re to be Clara Doré. And what will Clara Doré be doing with her time, once she’s well, of course?”

“Do I still have a job?” I asked.

“Of course,” they both said in unison.

“Then for now, I’ll put the money in the bank.”

“A wise choice,” Olea said. “In the long run, I wouldn’t invest in anything that doesn’t stir your passions.”

“Passions?” I said. What did passion have to do with money?

“Well, yes. Otherwise the work involved becomes a drudgery, something you’re required to do each day to pay the bills. Meeting obligations is required, of course, but you don’t want it to consume you. Our fur business has had good years and bad, but we’ve always loved the fashion part, the shows where new items are modeled, seeing happy looks on people’s faces when they don those coats. Passion allows you to see through the mists of disappointment or failures. Earn a little less but have work you enjoy. That’s my motto. Money isn’t the most fulfilling thing one can work for, Clara.”

“Having money isn’t the most fulfilling thing at all,” Louise said. “But you’ll discover that in time, now that you have it.”

I let a few weeks pass before making a trip to the farm where Olaf worked. I was taking a chance, I knew. I didn’t want to put Olaf in a difficult position, but I thought he might understand why I’d chosen to stay and work for the women rather than move with the family to Aunt Hannah’s in Spokane. Maybe he’d understand that I owed the women, for putting me through school. He might accept the money and go to school himself. That was my hope when I approached him as he and several other men walked from the field toward the house. I’d arrived at lunchtime.

Olaf stopped short, frowned when he recognized me, and I wondered if he’d turn back. Could he really be displeased to see me? He didn’t reach to hug me, but then, it was a public place. He soon smiled, enough encouragement. I stepped forward.

His fellow workers teased him when I approached, and they pretended not to believe him when he said, “She’s my sister.”

“Introduce me then,” a large blond bloke of a man said.

Olaf hesitated, then said, “Clara Estby. Meet Erik Elstad. My boss’s son.”

“Miss Estby,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.” He had a grin that he knew charmed.

“Likewise,” I curtsied, gave him a cool nod before turning to Olaf. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

He took my elbow and we headed toward the haystacks, leaving Erik Elstad shouting, “You’ll be back.”

“He’s pretty taken with himself,” I said.

“And he’s taken a fair number of girls too,” Olaf said.

“So that’s why you didn’t want to introduce us.”

“He sees women as conquests,” he said. “You don’t need to be one. You have to be careful, Clara. Men can be such dolts. I have my lunch,” he said. “Care to share it?”

I let his words sink in. “I brought an apple along, thanks.”

He swept an area with his foot so we could sit in the shade of the haystack. We sat side by side and leaned against it, the scratchy hay barely poking at my short jacket. I didn’t remove my hat, knowing the humidity would have flattened my hair into a drenched-cat look.

“Was the foreclosure awful?” I said.

He shrugged. “The auction was worse. But it’s done now, all over. Someone else bought the farm for a pittance.”

“How’s Mama?” I asked.

He shrugged. “She pretty much lets Aunt Hannah and Ida tell her what to do. I hope when Papa builds the house he wants and she gets her own home again that she’ll be better.”

“Papa is going to build a house?”

“He got a carpenter’s job and he’s doing well. I think they’re all doing better without the weight of that farm, though I’d never say that in front of them.”

“No,” I agreed.

“Ida’s got a job as a domestic. Arthur’s looking for carpentry work too. With what I send them added to their income, they’ll be able to build soon enough and move out of Aunt Hannah’s house. How are you doing?”

“Good. I’m doing good,” I said. I didn’t tell him of the nights I cried myself to sleep feeling separate and alone. “Olaf, would you go to school if I paid your way?”

He looked startled. “Pay my way? Why don’t you go yourself?”

“I finished my coursework at Blair and I have a job. The bookkeeping I do for the women is satisfying. I don’t think having a degree would help me find a better job than the one I have.” I pulled a strand of grass hay from the stack and chewed on it. “They wouldn’t take the money back,” I said. “I’m to invest it. And I want to invest in you.”

Olaf stared off toward the fields, and the laughter of the other workers rose up now and then. He drank cold coffee from a jar, then set it next to him.

“I need to send money to Mama and Papa,” he said. “They count on it.”

“I could send it to you for them. They wouldn’t even have to know it came from me.”

“Clara …”

“Or that you were even in school. You could go to the university and—”

“If they ever found out, they wouldn’t talk to me,” he said. “I don’t think I could. You’re stronger than I am, Clara. Stronger than any of us. You’ll do all right out there on your own, but me.”

“You work away from home now. You’re hardly ever there. The university would give you a chance to do what you’ve always wanted to do—have a profession, not be tied to the seasons.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the seasons, Clara.”

“Oh, I know that. I love the land as much as you do. I only meant you’d have a chance to operate a farm on your own if you wanted. I could even buy a ranch for you,” I said. I hadn’t thought of it before, but why not?

“I like working for other people, helping Mama and Papa when I can. Even if I marry one day, I can’t see myself holding up under the pressure of being my own boss. I’ve seen what Mama and Papa went through. I’d rent.”

His view was yet another indication of how different I really was from the Estby family.

“You have money now, Clara. Do something good with it.”

“I’m trying to, but you won’t take it.”

He grinned. “Then do something you never imagined you’d be able to do.”

“Help you. Help my family. That’s all I ever wanted, and look where it’s gotten me.”

A terrible sadness crossed his face, and I knew he couldn’t agree to anything I offered. The money was tainted by its history, by the consequences he’d endure if he accepted anything from his ostracized sister.

“I’m a coward, Clara. If I took the risk of having my own farm and failed, I’d have lost your money, and for what?”

“But what’s the point of having a dream if you don’t take a chance to accomplish it?”

He shrugged. “They’d never forgive me if they found out I let you talk me into something.”

“I’m not trying to talk you into anything.” I bristled. I didn’t want to be angry with my brother, but I could feel the palms of my hands grow wet, heard my heart thumping louder in my chest. “I’m offering you a chance.” Didn’t he have an ounce of Mama’s fighting blood in him—the blood that made her take a chance even though we failed in the end?

“I can’t take it,” he said. “It’s too big a risk.”

He’d chosen too.

I stood, brushed off my skirt, picked up my reticule, and wrapped the string around my wrist. I adjusted my hat.

“Maybe I can still write to you,” I said. “Or will that be too risky?”

“Clara. Of course, write. Send it here. I’ll let you know if I leave and take another job.”

“I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble with Mama and Papa,” I said.

His eyes had the sad look of Sailor when I’d sent him home, wouldn’t let him follow me.

“At least you talk to me,” I said.

“Always,” he said. “I always will.”

I was connected to one member of my family. His would have to be the thread I hung on to.