by Beth Powning
Lucy rushed to answer. “He argued for the enfranchisement of spinsters and widows, didn’t he, Cousin Carrie? But his bill was quashed by the legislative council.”
A silence fell. Josephine felt a rush of anger towards the unknown men. She knew none of this. She had not attended any of Carrie’s meetings.
“They do not reckon on our independence,” Carrie said, pointing a finger as if at Premier Blair. “They have no idea what is coming. Look at Emily Stowe. A woman doctor. Look what will happen when we have women lawyers. We will make a Married Women’s Property Act…”
She looked intently at Josephine, raised her voice.
“…that is not liable to a man’s interpretation.”
Lucy’s cheeks were flushed; she pressed hand to heart as if to slow its beat. “And then, once we have a proper property act, perhaps Maudie and I will get married. And provide you with grandchildren, Mother. Otherwise, there’s really no point, is there. In marrying and giving away our freedom.”
Azuba glanced up sharply. She flicked her eyes between Lucy and Josephine. Carrie pulled the petition across the table, perused what she knew by heart.
No marriage for my girls? No happy companionship with a man, no babies, no grandchildren? Josephine realized, suddenly, the extent to which the girls had been influenced by Simeon’s death. They could see what happened to a woman upon marriage, everything—belongings, beloved home, sense of self—invalidated upon a husband’s death.
She gazed at the women’s hands variously arranged on the carpeted table—loose, folded—and imagined a future in which Lucy might become a lawyer, Maud, a doctor. No matter if they had husbands or not. She envisioned her daughters, coming home to visit. Vigorous, intense. Telling of their work, their happiness. She felt a shift inside herself, like a room pierced by sunlight after days of cloud.
“Do you want us to sign this petition, Carrie?” she asked.
Carrie looked up at the clock. Squat, on the mantelpiece, with a hand-painted scene of a Dutch windmill. Delicate hands touching three-thirty.
“Yes, of course.”
Lucy ran for a pen. Maud slid the chess board beneath the petition.
Josephine angled the paper and signed it in black ink, her signature firm.
Josephine Linden Galloway.
Not Mrs. Simeon Galloway.
Click of a checker piece. Jump, jump, jump. Mr. Sprague’s exclamation of disgust.
* * *
—
Lucy sat at the foot of Maud’s bed and looked around the narrow space. Deal floorboards, uncarpeted. Clothes draped on hooks. Faded wallpaper, curling from the plaster above the door. One small window.
The house in which she had grown up was now a boarding establishment.
“Was this Margaret’s room?”
“Mary’s, I think. Mother is in Margaret’s room. Next to Ellen. And Flora is just across the hall.”
“At least you have your own bed.” Lucy smoothed the coverlet. “I have to sleep with a snoring girl. I use six inches of the mattress and she has the rest.”
Maud sat at a small table. Fingerless gloves were draped on a pile of school books.
“Maud, what do you think of George’s plan?”
“To sell the house?” Maud picked up the gloves and pulled them onto her hands, slowly, not looking at her sister. “I don’t like to think about it. This is home.”
“Home? Not the home I knew.”
“No,” Maud said. She folded her hands and her eyes filled with tears. “Of course not. It’s not the same home. Not without Father.”
“Oh, Maudie. I meant…”
“It’s too soon to be talking like this,” Maud said, suddenly vehement. “You and George. Talking about selling this house.”
Lucy picked at a loose thread in the coverlet, cast a sly look at her plain, earnest sister. “We do need to consider it, you know.” Her voice was pleasant.
“Don’t take that tone with me. I am so sick of it, Lucy. I’m the one who is helping Mother with her grief. I’m the one who has to see our home turn into a…”
“But you know, Maud, once you turn twenty-one, it becomes our house. Yours and mine and George’s. Not Mother’s.”
“We all need to agree, and I will never turn Mother out of her home.” Her hands trembled, tearing off the fingerless gloves. She slapped them down.
“A smaller place would be better for her, Maud. All of this, you know. It’s just keeping up appearances. When in truth, you’re now living like servants. You are servants. To those…boarders.”
“You are a hypocrite, Lucy.”
Now Lucy’s cheeks flared. She sat up straight and glared at her sister.
“I beg your pardon.”
“Yes, you are. You speak of women’s rights, yet you treat Mother like a child. You treat honest work as if it were demeaning. You and George. You are thinking only of yourselves.”
Lucy was silent. Maud fussed with the gloves, glancing up at Lucy, who did not meet her eyes.
“You know, Maud.” Lucy’s voice was less sure. “He’s so…so persuasive. George. You’re right to be thinking for yourself. I just realized that he…”
“But he could be right, I suppose.” Maud, quick. Unaccustomed to being heard. “It is hard on Mother. It is hard.”
“Maud.” Lucy paused, glanced uncertainly at her sister. She took a long breath. “No, really, George is only trying to do the right thing. We have to…”
“Lucy?” Carrie was calling up the stairs. “We will miss the train.”
* * *
—
Harland made a more elaborate window display. He added a Christmas tree: loops of popcorn chains, dangling silver-painted walnuts, candles in tin clasps. Beneath it, he set a wooden crèche, with carved figures: Mary, Joseph, baby, wise men, camels, donkeys, and sheep. Overhead, he hung the usual tin reindeer, suspended on wires.
This afternoon, laying silk scarves and shirts in tissue-filled boxes on which the store’s name was printed in raised script—Fairweather’s Gentlemen’s Clothing—Harland’s hands moved as if independently, making small, fussy tucks. Miss Floyd stood across the aisle at another counter, doing the same with muslin night shirts. Harland’s eldest daughter draped white fabric over plinths, creating a necktie display.
He strove to make himself see the store as a stranger might, in order to keep it fresh. His father—who had recently died, leaving the business to Harland—had been his employer, and he remembered doing his father’s bidding, every Christmas draping the same white fabric over the same plinths; unpacking shipments of handkerchiefs, gloves, bow ties, French suspenders.
The store’s quiet was broken only by the rustling pluck and crimp of tissue paper as he and Miss Floyd made fluted petals around the patterned silks and fancy-front shirts, yet Harland was oblivious of scarves or tissue paper. Yesterday. He had asked for a special meeting of the justices of the peace. His cheeks burned as he remembered. His words, prompting a speculative silence, and then delicate questions. As if there must be something to account for such a decision: ill health, mental incapacity, domestic turmoil? When he avowed that none of these things had caused his decision, rather that he could not in good conscience continue to provide his wholehearted support, he felt their disapproval. And then the shift of status, just as Permelia had predicted. Their eyes, meeting each other’s and not his. A peremptory politeness, harbinger of exclusion. He had pushed his resignation letter across the table, as if bidding farewell to a part of himself.
He moved down the counter to begin on the bow ties.
Outside, Josephine Galloway passed the window. She paused to look up at the tin reindeer, so delicately suspended that they turned on the slightest draught, galloping on air. She opened the door.
“The reindeer! It was a treat for me to see them when I was a child.”
“I wanted to tell you, Josephine—”
He caught himself, flushed.
“Excuse me.”
“No, I am glad. I would like to call you Harland.”
She smiled at him through the black veil sewn to her hat.
“I am no longer the Overseer of the Poor. I have resigned.”
“Why?”
“The three children. I begged someone to take all three. I should have taken them myself if no one would. I fear for the little boy.”
He saw how their reflections in the store window watched them, blind.
Josephine laid her hand on his sleeve; quickly removed it.
“I understand,” she said.
Her voice trembled. She seemed as if she was, like him, without layers against the cold.
He shivered, ran his hands up and down his arms. “I am going to help Flora look for her sister. May I stop in from time to time to keep her informed?”
“Please. Please stop in and visit us.”
Her words were plain, unadorned, separate from this season of excess; he watched as she continued along the plank sidewalk and then stepped down into the street, pausing to wait for a wagon to pass. He went inside and resumed laying scarves and shirts into tissue. He thought of how he had begun to loathe Christmas and by extension, it seemed, his own wife, and how this terrified him, as if it were a thing beyond his control, a disaster sweeping down upon him.
NINE
Someone Who Talks Back
IT WAS PITCH DARK by five o’clock in the afternoon. A hanging paraffin lamp made the dining table shine like a stage in the shadowed room. Flora set down a bowl of stew; steam furled as she lifted the lid.
Hands, reaching for ladle. For salt and pepper shakers.
“I seen your light down on the corner, Mr. Sprague,” murmured Miss Harvey, lifting her fork with ink-stained fingers.
“I endeavour to please,” he said. He fussed through his stew with the tines of his fork, turning over pieces of potato, carrot, turnip.
Flora left and returned with a covered bowl of buttermilk biscuits. She set down the bowl in front of Jasper Tuck. He glanced her way. Keeps to himself, Flora thought, with a pang of hurt. Even though they had spoken together a few times, he did not acknowledge her as anything other than a servant.
She checked the table. Pitcher of tea. Milk and sugar. Butter on a covered china plate. Water in Josephine’s plainest glassware. Dilly beans in a dish. Sweet pickles, sliced cheese.
“That fellow who was here, George Francis Train,” Mr. Sprague said. He took a breath, preparing to hold forth. He was fascinated by The Comet, as Train referred to himself, who had exposed the pauper auction. Flora paused on her way out, pretending to inspect the candles. “We thought he was a crank—but you know he truly did go around the world in eighty days. I was reading about it. New York to San Francisco, seven days. Clipper ship to Yokohama, then over to Singapore. Up to France, across to Liverpool, back to New York. Imagine that. And he really did own a town in Omaha. He really did have a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. I seen a picture of it.” He paused to break open a biscuit, reached with a knife for a pat of butter. Lips pursed, he spread his biscuit with tiny dabs. Silver and glassware gleamed in the pool of light. “He’s fallen on hard times now. Gone bust.”
Flora ate her stew in the kitchen, along with Josephine, Ellen and Maud. Occasionally, she rose to check the boarders’ progress. She cleared the table, served tapioca pudding, listened for the scraping of chairs and the thud of footfall—into the parlour, up the stairs.
When the dishes were done, Josephine bid them goodnight, saying she had a headache and was going to bed. Maud and Flora exchanged glances. The quieter Josephine became, the more, it seemed, her grief deepened.
Maud decided to study in the kitchen, where it was warm. Ellen settled in her rocking chair with her knitting.
“Couldn’t you sell those, Ellen?” Flora asked.
“Who would want my old mittens, now,” Ellen said. Her voice was exasperated, as if her mittens, like herself, were without value, and it had been rude of Flora to point this out.
“I didn’t—”
“Anyone can make a mitten.” A thumb was growing, stitches shifting from needle to needle on a spiky triangle.
The two girls exchanged another glance. Neither understood the reason for Ellen’s unpredictable moods, yet they were complicit in their tolerance. Flora untied her apron and hung it on the back of the door, feeling that she had space within herself to absorb Ellen’s prickly retorts. She had a room of her own, a quarterly stipend now, all the food she could eat, and a status in the household that revealed itself like a plant, its growth imperceptible but steady.
“I’m going up to read,” Flora said.
Maud ran a hand down the seam of her open book, smoothing. “Come down if you need help.”
Flora caught Ellen’s sharp observance and felt a sear of frustration. Ellen wanted Flora to remain forever at the back of the house, in the kitchen, a procurer of needs, whereas she expected to see Maud finish her education, marry, and have a house such as this one had been before Simeon’s death.
“You learned to read,” Maud remarked, also noticing Ellen’s expression.
“Yes, but I know my place.” The rocking chair and the needles went faster.
“What a thing to say, Ellen. If Flora wants to become educated, there’s every reason in the world she should. Don’t you be like one of those—”
Maud paused, pursuing her thought.
“Look at what they did to Mother when the will couldn’t be found. Those men. With their laws. Saying she had to go to court to claim her own children as hers.”
Flora went up the back stairs into the chill of the hallway. One dim gaslight mounted on the wall illuminated the spruce floorboards. Josephine’s door was cracked open for heat; she could see a slice of light. Her own room was freezing. She wrapped herself in a yellow and brown plaid shawl and sat at a small table. She had stood the books that Maud had brought her from the school so that their spines were impeccably aligned. Embossed titles gleamed, golden.
The Practical Speller.
An English Grammar with copious and carefully graduated exercises.
Literary Extracts.
A Practical Introduction to Arithmetic.
Shavings dropped into the wastebasket as she sharpened her pencil with a small knife.
She began writing out tonight’s spelling words: obvious, thorough, simplicity, courageous, impetuous, field, yield, incessant.
She worked until she could no longer keep her eyes open, writing these words over and over, until both penmanship and spelling were perfect.
* * *
—
Every Saturday, Flora had a half day off. She felt guilty.
“I could do the baking,” she said. She had put her apron on, pretending to forget that it was Saturday.
“Go,” Josephine said. She did not meet Flora’s eyes, as if to open herself to sympathy was a thing she could not bear. She waved her hand, the motion unnecessarily emphatic. “Leave everything behind, do something nice.”
None of the women in the house had any enthusiasm for the holiday. They were not making cookies or new decorations for the tree. The tree had been set up mainly for the pleasure of the boarders, and the Christmas dinner was prepared only for their sake. George, living at his uncle’s house, would have afternoon dinner with his mother, sisters and Josephine’s parents; then spend the evening with Simeon’s family. Ellen and Flora would eat the boarders’ meal, only in the kitchen.
Sunlight slanted through the frosted parlour windows, broken and made lively by crystals. Flora hesitated. Do something nice. With
whom?
“I could stay here,” Flora said. “We could…”
Josephine looked up, attempting a smile. “I’m all right, Flora. Take my skates, we have the same size feet. Or you could go to the hill with a sled. They’re hanging on the wall in the back shed. You could walk along the river. You could go into the shops.”
She put out a hand, as if to be shaken, but slid her fingers around Flora’s own and brought them to her cheek.
“There’s nothing you can do for me,” she whispered.
Flora untied her apron and dressed for the cold.
As she passed the barn with skates hung over her shoulder, she heard a tap on the window of Jasper Tuck’s workshop. She saw him, dim behind the frosted pane, beckoning; so she went into the barn, unslung the skates and sat on the edge of a chair. Warmth emanated from a small wood stove set on a slab of stone.
“Saved this for you. Don’t think there’s anyone else could do it.”
“Why not? You could.” A bit of cheek, in her words, to cover how he set her akilter.
“My fingers are too big. See.”
He had laid out miniscule windowpanes, a jar of paste and a fine brush on a table. She could not resist the little windows with their empty muntins. Like playing with the toys she had never had. Making something that had no plain use. He leaned over her, showing her how to set the panes. She felt his solidity, like a horse—a contained energy. He unscrewed the jar of paste, made sure she understood; then settled back at his own workbench.
Mr. Tuck was making a replica of the house across the street—gables, veranda with matchstick railings, tall downstairs windows. He was attaching its gingerbread trim with tiny tacks. He held his mouth in a tender grimace, almost feminine, as he rapped gently with his ball-peen hammer.
“Is it hard to go back to real carpentry?”
He sat back, adjusted his vision to take her in. “What do you mean?”
“During the week. When you got to use an ordinary hammer and ordinary-sized shingles.”