Faithful (10 page)

He sighed. “Lifting your voice is not only inappropriate, Margaret, it is unladylike.” As if he had the nerve to speak to me of what was appropriate. I seethed, but he had silenced me for the moment. “I’ve arranged for you to attend private school in Helena come fall. I need to make a fresh start. This is an opportunity—a change!” He turned to face me. He had the audacity to smile. Why, he looked downright thrilled. Now I could see where his earlier happiness had its roots. “There are things waiting for us here.”

I trembled with furious, barely contained rage. I’d lost everything, all the things I’d been dreaming about. My home, my mother, my future, my friends . . . I grew rigid. “I won’t. I will not stay. Send me home to Grandpapa and Grandmama. Tomorrow. On the first train east.”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Grandpapa and Grandmama will take me in.” They would—they had said they would.

“I will not send you, and you have no means by which to leave.” He stared at me, dispassionate.

My stomach lurched. He was right. I had no money, and even if I did, I could not board a train alone, as an unaccompanied woman. It would be impossible, improper. I was trapped here, completely at his mercy. I hated him for what he had done. I narrowed my eyes at him, but he’d turned his back on me again.

“I’ve taken a new job here.” His voice lifted with enthusiasm. “I’ll be working with Robert Reamer, the architect, on his projects in Yellowstone. This will be our new home.” He emphasized
our
; it would never be my home.

“I hate Yellowstone.” I said it in a quiet voice, so thick with anger the words fell like bricks. Yellowstone. An unholy place, the Indians had said. It was hell to me. “You’ve deceived me.”

He seemed not to hear me. “The rest of your things are here already. I shipped them here, Maggie.”

I had been trying to hold together the pieces of my world for months, since Mama left, and now they scattered like dust. I sank onto the bed. No matter how much I protested his actions, I had no options, no choice in the matter. I’d supported him, only to have him betray me. I’d lost everything.

Ah—everything? A thought crossed my mind, and I couldn’t control the waver in my voice. “Papa. What about Ghost?” Oh, please, not Ghost.

“You did a fine job with him, Margaret. He’ll fetch a high price at auction.”

Now tears spilled unchecked onto the navy wool of my skirt, leaving dark, swelling blots. “You’re selling my Ghost?
My
Ghost.” I’d never again ride Ghost, bury my face in his mane, or feel his soft breath on my hand. Just like that, my Ghost, my truest friend, gone from my life. I sucked in a sob and bit my lip hard, my shoulders shaking. My father had taken my entire life from me. “You’ve . . .” I couldn’t talk, I could scarcely breathe.

“I’ll need your help with my papers. The way you offered. The way your mother helped me.”

He wanted my help after what he’d done? He had to be joking, but looking at him, I realized he was serious. His insensitivity knew no bounds. Mama helped him all those years. Did he treat her with as much disdain, as much contempt for her feelings, as he did me? Perhaps that’s why she behaved as she did. Perhaps that’s why she left us.

In my mind, I saw the table in his studio in those early years, spread with papers. The straight-backed oak chairs, soft light filtering through the buttery leaded-glass skylight. Mama, bent over the table, gazing up at Papa with a look I couldn’t fathom, while I stood hovering in the doorway, Mina clucking behind.

Then the next awful realization hit me. I couldn’t even phrase the full question. “Mina?”

He sighed and his shoulders sagged. “I had to let her go. I had to let them all go. Mina, Jonas. All of them.”

I shut my eyes. I clutched at the bedpost and leaned my forehead on my hand. I couldn’t breathe. Jonas. And Mina. She had been the closest thing to a mother since Mama left. Now I understood the strange events surrounding our departure, Mina’s expression, Jonas’s behavior when we left home. I felt both stupid and lost. I was all alone now. More alone than ever in my life. Oh, Mina . . .

“And what if she comes back?” My voice came out a croak. I did not mean Mina.

“Maggie, please. Let’s put it behind us.” Papa walked to the door and paused. “It’s a special place, Maggie, this Yellowstone. You’ll like it. This will be a good change for us. Some wonderful things may come of it.” His eyes glittered again with an excitement I didn’t share. “You’ll see.” He left my room, closing the door with a soft click.

My room. A dreary, threadbare, green coverlet draped the bed. A small oak table served as both dresser and writing desk. It was clean, but spare.

The pitcher and washbasin were plain porcelain; if I’d been less restrained, they would already be smashed to pieces, smashed a thousand times against these flimsy lath-and-plaster walls. But a proper lady didn’t throw things, didn’t display such emotion. Wasn’t that what he had said? And I was a proper young lady, was I not?

In two steps I’d reached the dresser. I picked up the pitcher and dashed it to the floor. The sound surely carried to every room in the hotel.

I stared at the mess I’d made, the scattered shards, my one moment of defiance oozing away. I sank to the floor.

I took a deep breath, and held it, and when I let it out I let my tears fall. My father’s cruelty was too awful to be true. I wept until I ran out of tears. I rubbed my face with my palms until it was dry and pulled my hair down, yanking out the pins and letting my hair fall over my shoulders, clutching the pins in my fist.

I sat motionless, working to still the writhing in my stomach. My father had taken away everything I cared about in this world. I didn’t think it was possible for me to hate anyone more than I hated him in that moment. My throat jammed with grief; my eyes squeezed tight. How could I put this behind me? Ghost, Mina, my home, they were gone . . . But Mama? I would never give up. Never. She was alive, I knew it. And if she wasn’t here in Yellowstone, as Papa had led me to believe, then I was sure she’d return to Newport. I would find her even if I had to cross the continent to Newport on foot.

I sat for a long quiet time before I could determine my next move.

I decided I had to take care of things in proper fashion. Maybe I’d done something the wrong way, and I was being punished. Like a child’s game, I reasoned. I’d jinxed myself. I would take even greater care now to mind the rules. It seemed important to tend to ordinary things; the ordinary seemed to now possess uncommon power.

There would be no more red-as-blood sashes in my future.

I unpacked my traveling trunk, and placed my hairbrush and jewelry box carefully on the table. I tidied the broken pitcher, sweeping the pieces into a neat pile. I brushed the dust from my hat. I removed Mama’s cameo from my throat and set it carefully on the dresser. Each thing I did, I murmured a prayer that this was all a dreadful mistake; each movement I made I whispered a hateful curse at Papa.

Then I sat down at the table to begin a letter.

 

My dearest Kit. You won’t believe what has happened.

 

I stopped and looked at the rugged hillside framed by my window. I put aside the letter to Kitty and took out another sheet of paper. I had to act, had to set wheels in motion to undo Papa’s mistakes. This called for drastic action. I had no idea what the outcome might be, but I began to write again.

 

Dearest Grandpapa. I am in urgent need of your help.

 

I glanced up, searching the air for the words that might compel my rescue. I was treading a fine line, both disobeying my father and seeking help from those who might confine me even further. But it was my only option. Once again, the question sprang to my mind: What did I want? Freedom? Respect from society? A future?

My grandparents would secure my social standing, my inheritance, and give me a lovely debut into Newport society and all that entailed, but certainly not my freedom. They would dictate everything, from what I wore to whom I married.

I was trapped. I gazed through tears around the stark foreign room that contained me. If I had seen that the windows sported bars, I would not have been surprised.

June 19, 1904

I WOKE WITH A START IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND had no idea where I was. For a moment my terror was so deep that I stopped breathing.

Then I heard the sound that must have awakened me, coming in through the open window. It was a cough, throaty and animal. Deer coughed like that, I knew, although this was a more full-bodied sound. Elk, maybe? I closed my eyes. I’d been carted off to this alien place where everything seemed huge and overbearing; even the animals were larger and more frightening.

Carted off . . . I knew. I had to stop blaming Papa. I knew whose fault it was. Mine.

I squeezed my eyes tight against the memory that came unbidden and would not be suppressed. I lay in this strange bed, worlds away from everything I cared about, and remembered it all. Mama’s breakdown at Mary’s ball. The blood that stained her white gown; the stares that followed me from Mary’s house.

But worse, I remembered how I behaved the morning after Mama’s breakdown. The dreadful morning last August when I saw my mother for the last time.

I’d huddled in bed that morning until the sun had slipped past noon. Crash and boom, crash and boom. I’d heard the noise throughout my nightmares. As I lay drowsy in the midday heat, I recognized the sound of storm-raised surf and thought of the water that battered the cliffs, and the steep descent into darkness that would greet a misplaced foot on those treacherous paths, and I shuddered fully awake.

Another sound intruded: the soft sweep of the door to my room.

Mama.

She moved across the room to sit in a chair opposite me. Her arms were wrapped in linen bandages. On one I saw the brown stain of dried blood. I was surprised to see that she looked quite herself. Anger and humiliation filled me for what she did the night before, the scene she made at Mary’s ball. Any sympathy I might have felt left me, and what I felt then was anger and shame.

I slipped out of bed and pulled on my dressing gown. My voice trembled. “Mama. How could you act like that? In front of everyone.”

She folded her arms and tugged at the bandages with her fingers, but her eyes were unguarded and calm. “Maggie, I’ve come to a realization. It’s time I went to take care of something. I should have done it long ago.”

The rumble and crash of waves filled the room. I hugged myself hard. I wanted to hug her, but she’d made that impossible. I wrestled with my surging emotions: confusion, anger, shame. Love.

Her restless fingers worked the bandages. “Many years ago I made a mistake. I’ve been paying for it ever since.”

I interrupted. “Was I the mistake?” My heart felt like it would crack in two.

She hung her head and her loose hair swung past her shoulders. “No, Maggie. You’ve been the one right thing in my life.”

Crash and boom, the ocean pounded the shore. The smell of seaweed, raw and salt rank, filled the air. As she tugged at the bandages that wrapped her arms, I saw again the scene in Mary’s parlor, Mama’s crazed expression and the bloodstains on her white gown. She would be completely rejected by society now, and so would I. Tears filled my eyes. “Why did you do this to me?”

“I can’t explain everything. Maggie, understand. Too often I’ve done what was expected of me instead of following my heart. In one important way I did only what was expected of me, and that was a huge mistake.” She looked up at me, her cheeks hollow and dark. “Don’t make this mistake, Maggie. Don’t make my mistakes. Follow your heart.”

My heart could not be followed; it was broken. Didn’t she know? My life was unraveling before my very eyes because of her madness. My pent-up misery exploded. “Is your heart telling you to act as if you don’t care about me or Papa, to act insane? Fine. Have your mad fits! Pay no attention to what people think. Go ahead, ruin any chance I might have for happiness. You don’t think about anyone but yourself. You certainly don’t think about me.” The last words came out in a strangled sob.

Mama’s face shut and she stared at the floor. “I love you, Maggie.” She said it in a whisper. Her hands opened as if she would reach for me; her hands, like birds, fluttered and then dropped and landed in her lap. “In time, you’ll understand.” It was as if she aged a thousand years in that single heartbeat. She struggled out of the chair, pushing herself up with terrible effort, holding on to the arms of the chair for support. Her robe fell open and I saw the bathing costume underneath.

“Mama! Where are you going dressed like that?”

“I’m taking a walk. Maybe a swim.”

“On a day like this? After the storm last night, the breakers will be over the seawall! You can’t swim in that ocean. Are you insane?” I stood, facing her and shaking. “Well? Are you?” She must be. I was shocked and terrified—on a clear day, swimming in the ocean could be risky. After a storm, on a day like this, it was true madness.

She turned her head away from me.

“Fine. Go on, then. I don’t care. I don’t care if I never see you again.” It was a lie. I threw myself on my bed, my stomach clenching with smothered sobs.

I didn’t mean it. I wanted her to stay. I hoped she would gentle me with her touch as she had only a few months earlier. I hoped that my agony would keep her from leaving, would bring her back to me. I needed Mama so much, I needed her love.

Her voice wobbled from swallowing her own tears. “Next to my cameo, on my dresser, there’s a note for you, Maggie. For
you.
Not for your father. You must promise you won’t tell him about this. Once you’ve read what I have to say, maybe you’ll hear me out. I will be back. That’s my promise.”