Authors: Shirley Streshinsky
They were married in the apple orchard on a day with a warm breeze which ruffled the ribbons on Willa's lawn dress, and scattered the scent of apple blossoms. She stood with Owen, tall and
elegant, her face calm and her eyes clear. Looking at Willa through a blur of tears, I saw what Owen Reade must have seen at once: She was unique, and full of promise, and beautiful even, in a way I had not until that moment understood.
Newton Center, Mass.
June 3, 1887
Dearest Lena,
I was thunderstruck this morning. I came awake and all I could see was a mass of yellow rosebuds on the wallpaper, and I had not the slightest notion where I was or what I was doing here. It was that peculiar half-waking sensation that happens sometimes when you are in a new place, but which goes away quickly. Except that this dislodged feeling did not entirely dissipate all morning long.
Oh, I know well enough where I am. I am at Owen's aunts' home in Newton Center, which is not far from Boston. It is a big, comfortable house occupied by his two elderly aunts and the daughter of one, Minnie, who is a spinster with a wonderful, trilly laugh that can be evoked for no good reason at all.
But the fact is, I still do not quite know what has happened to me. Think of it. Six months ago I hadn't the slightest idea that a man named Owen Reade existed. (Though two of my old classmates at Wellesley tell me that they had heard of him, even when we were in school together. I was never in their social set, so I would neither have known or—for that matter—cared.)
One month ago I had never set eyes on Owen. Two weeks ago, the idea that I would be married and in Boston and soon to go west would have made me laugh. Nothing happens that fast. And yet, it has, it has . . . and I am spinning. The whole of my life has changed. I find myself married to a stranger, a delightful stranger, to be sure—and suddenly trusted with his family's possessions. I am to sort through them to choose which I wish to keep. A lifetime of possessions collected by people I never knew, yet no one questions my right to do this. Owen's aunts are as dear as they can be. They call me "niece" or "sweet niece" and act as if I have always been part of the family.
It is all too much to grasp. I find myself catapulted into another world, another life, surrounded by people I have never met, who treat me with great kindness. (Of course it is not me, but Owen's wife, that they are treating with such deference. They are in awe of him! It is as if they can't believe their good fortune to be related to him. You should have seen the disappointment in their faces when he left almost immediately for New Jersey to take care of some business. He apologizes profusely for having to leave, but he has taken upon himself the job of overseeing the family businesses and philanthropies, and there is no one else to do it, it seems.)
I have to admit that I was glad to see my old Wellesley classmates, even though I had not particularly fancied them when we were in school. (They seemed to have forgotten
that they once parodied me as a raw Western girl.) At least they gave me a sense of attachment to my past—which I need right now. They came, I am certain, out of curiosity. They look at me as if to see what magic I practice to have enticed Owen to marry me. I told them nothing, but only smiled when they spoke of our "courtship."
Courtship! One week at Porter Farm, Family Puppet Shows, and some rain-soaked picnics. I was not going to tell them how Owen came to call on me. Let them think it is all some fairytale romance.
We are staying with Owen's aunts because he didn't want to open the family home and because he will be away on business almost all of our time in the East. The aunts seem genuinely delighted to have me. There has been a steady stream of visitors since I arrived. The guest list would have made Grandmother swoon, I do believe. (It is ironic, isn't it, that I should have married into the kind of family Grandmother would have admired?)
A strange thing happened on the trip from Chicago. In some curious and unexplainable way, the conductor mistook us for brother and sister and gave us separate berths. Owen, whom I could never have imagined being embarrassed, was. He flushed and stammered when he told me of the mixup, but we agreed that we did not wish to be identified as newlyweds and be subjected to crude jokes, so we decided simply to go along with the masquerade. (I assume the other passengers thought us to be an especially affectionate brother and sister, as Owen frequently bent to whisper something in my ear and, now and again, I would forget and touch his arm in an intimate manner.) Near the end of the trip, in one of the rare interludes when we were alone, I admitted to Owen that in some ways I had been relieved to be able to get to know him a bit better before sharing his bed. He then suggested that we
should look upon this traveling period as our "courtship," and should begin our "marriage" when we reach the West Coast. I am continually amazed at his thoughtfulness, his understanding of others' feelings. Everyone seems to respect and admire him. I hear nothing but praise of Owen from everyone I meet.
Still, I have discovered that there is a public Owen and a private Owen, and I have so far only had glimpses of the latter. One of these came when we went through his home. It is big and dark and gloomy, filled with heavy furniture and the musty smell of being too long closed. We were alone. In the parlors and dining room, which he never remembers ever being used, Owen pointed out certain items of special interest—portraits, a silver service crafted by Paul Revere, crystal from Bavaria. As we climbed to the second story and approached the old nursery, he fell silent. I walked ahead, and looked into the room that I knew would have been his—there was still a charming coverlet on the bed with his name embroidered on it. I asked him a question, and when he didn't answer, I turned to find tears streaming down his face, forming droplets in his beard. I started to hold out my arms to him, but he turned away as if embarrassed. He walked into another room. I could see his back heaving, so I knew he was sobbing—but soundlessly. I went behind him and slipped my arms around his waist and pressed my face into his back. He let me hold him, but he said nothing at all. When I tried to speak about it, he deflected the conversation, with false enthusiasm telling me about the architect who had designed the house and other trivial items of history.
He must have been perfectly miserable here as a child. I know from his aunts that he was desperately ill at the age
of seven, and spent long months in bed. They marvel that he is now the very picture of health.
I can better see why Owen was so overwhelmed with Porter Farm—he was, did you guess? He talked on and on about the Little Boys and how they bob about, all over the place. He watched us closer than I had imagined—even remarking on how attentive all the boys are to you, the small pats and smiles you get from them as a matter of course. You remember how you worried that Owen would think us unruly—that was the very thing that attracted him. He talked about the "life and excitement and good humor" that is part of the farm.
Eula Stanton, one of the Wellesley classmates who came to call, asked how I had managed to meet the "mysterious" Owen Reade. I answered by asking what she meant by "mysterious" and Angelica Sutton, who had come with her and is much the better humored of the two, said, "What Eula means is how did you manage to get his attention when none of the Boston girls could?" My response was to laugh in as good an imitation of Grandmother as I could manage. (You remember that laugh that said, "We'll talk no more of this, my dear"?)
Yet there
is
a mystery about Owen. He needs to do things quickly; action is all-important; he speaks of time as if it were tangible. On the train he needed to meet everyone, talk to them, find out who they were and what they were about. One farmer lectured for better than two hours on pigs! Everyone else (including me) fell asleep, but Owen seemed fascinated. When I asked him in all honesty if he wasn't bored, he only laughed and told me you never could tell when you'd need to know about pigs. He has also asked me to tell him what I know about hawks . . . not, I think, because he is particularly interested in raptors, but because it is something new to learn, and he cannot resist
that opportunity. He has said that reading, studying, is an old habit. It is not a bad one, I think. I watch for flaws, but I find them only in myself. Owen seems too good, too perfect. I cannot believe that we are man and wife. And yet he has said that he knew he wanted to marry me the moment he saw me gasping for breath, having raced the buggy from the Four Corners on his arrival. ("How could I not want to marry a girl who would race two fine bays?" he laughed at me.)
I rattle on; you are to be my "Emma" I think. I feel I must tell you all of it, everything. I miss you. Who else can I speak to so plainly? I worry to think of you without your friend. Do spend time with Val. He is lonely sometimes, too. Until we can be together again, letters will have to do.
Now, you will want some information. We leave for California on the fifteenth of this month, by which time I will have selected the pieces to be shipped west, and will have closed the old Reade home. Owen will then have finished his business and will join me in New York on the same day we are to leave for California.
We shall not be stopping by the farm. I am sorry, dear one. And I know Mama will be disappointed, too. I am counting on you to soothe her. Owen offered to stop if I wished, but I know that he would prefer to go directly to California and to get on with the life we will make there. Everything is ahead of us, everything. The future, all of it, and I don't want to stop until we reach the blue Pacific, for fear I will wake and find the yellow rosebuds gone, and only the empty prairie before me.
Some of my letters will have a small
o
in the lower corner of the envelope, and they are for your eyes only. Be forewarned!
All my love,
Your Willa
Near Galesburg, Illinois
June 18, 1887
My dear Lena,
We will be entering Iowa before long, and Illinois will be behind me. All of this morning we crossed the Grand Prairie. So near, so near and yet so very far away. I had not thought I would feel so sad, yet when I found myself in familiar country, knowing all of you were but a few miles away, I looked out the window over the green prairie and all I could see was a vast mist from the tears that fogged my view.
Owen, who had been talking to a railroad man about the intricacies of the Westinghouse airbrake, materialized next to me and sat very close. He reached for my hand and talked to me. It was the private Owen, again. He said that he could not truly understand what I was feeling because he had never in the whole of his life had a home to long for. And then he said, in a tone so low, and so filled with wanting that it made me shiver, "We are going to have a big house that will sit in the lee of a mountain, and a brook will flow nearby, and the house will be filled with light and with children and with pets. There will be a flower garden and an orchard where we will grow oranges as sweet as anything you have ever tasted, and I will always know you are there." His lips were close to my ear, his voice low and trembling, and I felt something warm inside of me. Little by little I am coming to know this man who is my husband.
Owen talked to me all morning long to help me get through the hurt I felt that I shall not be seeing you and
Mama and Pa and the boys for a long time. (Though where you are concerned, I am determined that it will not be too long.) The frontier, he told me, is closed. The first great migration is over, the men who tamed the wilderness, pioneers like Grandfather, who had the courage and the sheer physical strength and the patience, their day is gone. He spoke of them with admiration, and with sorrow. "There is a kind of man," he said, "who needs always to be separate, who does not want to be part of the civilization. And there is no place, anymore, for that kind of man. He took all the risks, he made it possible for others to come behind him, and in doing so he ruined it for himself. It's like the man who breaks horses. He risks his bones, his back, his health for the joy of breaking the beast. Then someone else takes the animal and trains it. Brawn gives way to brains. That is what is happening now, in the West. Now it is a time for the men who will shape the country to take over, and I plan to be one of them."
He sat silent for a long while, holding my hand in both of his. Then he told me about the first time he had made the westward journey by train, years ago.
"Out of Omaha," he said, "the Union Pacific line runs for a time alongside the old Emigrant Trail, and every now and then we would pass some family going West in one of the old-time prairie schooners, their few possessions tied to its side, maybe driving a few poor head of cattle. The faces of those people were gaunt, poor and pinched and weary, and you knew that something had gone wrong for them, that they were going West because they thought it would be better for them out there. They would stare at the train as it went by, but I noticed that most of the people on the train would hardly look at them. It was as if they didn't want to see it, didn't want to be reminded."
Owen told me, too, about a banker named Sharon that he knows in Virginia City, "a well-educated fellow and a fine poker player," as Owen described him. That's what the West is now, Owen said—a high-stakes poker game. And then he added, "If you can't afford to play, you shouldn't be in the game. Because men like Sharon can smell need, and when they do it's all over. That's why that poor fellow in the Conestoga wagon and his family can't survive out West. They have too much need."