The Sister's Tale

by Beth Powning

  Ellen crossed her arms, knife in hand, watching the sisters. Her eyes narrowed, as if this might help her understand all that had not been said.

  * * *

  —

  A letter came from Lucy in the morning’s mail. Josephine slipped it into her sleeve and did not mention it to anyone. She wished to read it in privacy, feeling a furtive, half-shamed hunger for its contents.

  In her bedroom, she unbuttoned her cuffs and rolled them back. Today she had chosen to wear black, like the Queen. Clothed in grief.

  She slit the envelope with an ivory letter opener Simeon had brought from India.

  August 30, 1889

  Dear Mother,

  Thank you for your letter. I have had quite the week.

  First, at work, I got in trouble again for organizing a group of women to go to the foreman and demand a separate toilet. We are sick of the conditions, you can’t imagine and I won’t describe, but he got very angry with us and docked me a week’s pay for being the “ringleader” as he called me and so I have had to go to Cousin Carrie’s for my suppers this week.

  Then we had a march through the streets on Sunday afternoon. We held banners calling for the vote. Buckets of water were thrown at us, as well as degrading insults which I will not repeat. Afterwards we went to a wealthy woman’s house where there was a big parlour and we held a meeting. Her husband burst in with some of the other women’s husbands. He roared at his wife and told us we would “never succeed” and that we “didn’t appreciate the protection and guiding minds of husbands” and made us leave.

  We went to another place where we could be safe and we were pretty upset, you can imagine. What we discussed was men’s sense of superiority and how they are afraid of losing it. They say we have innate traits which are appropriate only for childrearing and homemaking. These traits are “emotivity, caring, supportiveness, and intuition.” We can’t reason, they say, because of our emotionalism. They believe it would be “race suicide” if we were allowed out of our sphere because the stresses upon us would damage our reproductive systems. At the bottom of it all, we decided, men are terrified of losing the power they hold over us. And so we decided that they are in fact weaker than we are. This gave us a sense of pride. We refuse to absorb these false descriptions of who we are any longer.

  Are you getting names on the petition? We hope to have over ten thousand signatures.

  Are you getting signatures for Mr. Fairweather’s almshouse petition?

  How is your boarding house business doing? How are you, yourself, doing? Do you wish you did not have so much work?

  I send you much love,

  Lucy

  The window was open, and she could smell the cidery tang of apples; overnight, the Yellow Transparent had dropped most of its fruit. All around the tree, deer tracks made black holes in the dewed grass. Another autumn was upon them: bees burrowing in the borage, slow-winged; leaves gathered against the porch lattice, smelling of frost.

  She sat back in her chair, one hand on the letter and the other on her heart.

  How are you, yourself, doing?

  Lucy’s questions made her realize that the gains she had made within herself did not show as outward attributes. Do you wish you did not have so much work? Work, she thought, suddenly exasperated by the question, was a necessary thing—as Lucy should know from her studies into the rights of women. When she had been unable to rise from her bed, she had felt a sickness not of the body but of the soul. Since she had begun working, she felt no longer lost but necessary, her goal to improve the lives of all those who lived under her roof, even knowing that this circumscribed world was in jeopardy, since the house would never be hers, save for her dower right. Outrage, seeded by injustice, changed the way she walked, spoke and listened.

  How can you own one-third of a house?

  How can you not be the legal mother of children you have borne in pain and joy?

  How can all you brought into the marriage become your husband’s property?

  Lucy, who had left in anger as if the family’s misfortune were a thing Josephine herself had caused, had become an unwitting catalyst. She had no idea, Josephine thought, that the fury ringing from her daughter’s letters had become newly comprehensible, both affirmation and recognition.

  Holding the letter, she went to the window and watched orange leaves detaching, riding the air, a slow and erratic spin, round, round, round: touching down on the green grass.

  Harland was walking up the street. He paused at her lane, looked up at her window. She waved, and he waved in return. He seemed to make a sudden decision, turned into the lane. She hurried downstairs and was at the front door to greet him.

  “Come in, Harland. I was just going to have a cup of tea.”

  He had stirred his hair into disarray. The buttons of his vest were misaligned, the second one in the first hole. He set his linen hat on the sideboard next to Mr. Sprague’s derby. Light fell onto a chinoiserie vase filled with peacock feathers.

  They sat in the turret room. Flora brought a tea tray. Steam curled from the teapot. A white bowl held late-crop raspberries, full-lobed, seedy. Butter cookies circled a plate, each one buttoned with strawberry jam in a thumbed dent. Flora turned, weaving a subtle route between chairs and around the piano. With a quick glance over her shoulder, she closed the door without making a sound.

  Josephine poured tea for Harland. She poured for herself. On the mantelpiece, the clock made a clicking hesitation as the minute hand shifted.

  “Did you come about the petition, Harland?”

  It was the only point of reference between them, since Enid had been found, and the court case completed, and Mr. Mallory sent to prison, and Doreen bundled off to the county poorhouse.

  “I need…” His hands shook and the cup rattled in its saucer. He set it down, untasted. “…advice.”

  “Of course, Harland. I have asked the same of you, so many times.” She thought of Lucy’s letter. We refuse to absorb these false descriptions. If a woman had asked for her advice, she would not demur. She reached forward and touched the cuff of his shirt. “What is it, Harland?”

  “Permelia and I have had the most terrible fight of our marriage. Words have been spoken that can never be forgotten. Words have been shouted that cannot be unsaid. It began after supper, last night. We raged on and off, and then it started up again after breakfast. She came to the store. She laid down her demands. She had them all written out on a piece of paper. She…she simply laid down the paper and walked out. I have not been home yet.”

  He pressed a hand to his face. In the cave of his palm, his breath was shaky, hoarse. He took down his hand and leaned his head against the back of the chair. A tear brimmed in one eye and rolled down into his moustache.

  “What were her demands?”

  “Most were to do with the business. She feels I am not running it well. She thinks I spend too much time on my weather station and my notes. She thinks I’m resting on my father’s accomplishments and am not responding to the ‘changing times.’ She has been going over the books behind my back. She wants me to fire the people I now employ, except for my daughters, of course. She wants changes made to the store—how it looks, what I buy, who I hire. She wants things for herself, as well. A new stove, dresses for the girls, things I have been…putting off.”

  “Well. It could be worse. I would assume you can afford to do at least some of those things.”

  “Yes. That is not…really…I should not paint my wife in such a negative way. She is a good friend to the girls, a loving and attentive mother. She is an upstanding citizen, as you know from all her committee work and…”

  He made a circle in the air with his fingers.

  “…and so on. In fact, Permelia has more business acumen than I do. Were we better suited in temperament, perhaps we could run the store together. But that i
s the crux of the issue. We could not run a business together. We cannot make a marriage together.”

  “Oh, Harland.”

  “Truly, Josephine. I do not know how I am going to return home tonight. I don’t know how I can walk into the house and smile at the girls and sit down at the dinner table and talk about the day. I feel like…”

  He held his gaze on the uppermost part of the tall windows.

  “I would like to be heading west with—”

  “A fur cap?” She smiled, joking. “A gun and a tent and a trapline and snowshoes?”

  He dashed at the wetness on his cheek with the back of his hand. She wanted to do for him what she would have done for Simeon. Run a hand through his hair. Straighten his collar.

  “Josephine. I have only one life. And you have only one life.”

  “And you have a good life, Harland. You will repair this.”

  “No. My marriage is a thing that never existed. There is nothing to repair.”

  “No love between you?”

  “Love. So much talk of love. Love for Christ. Love for our fellow man. I search myself. I suppose I love my daughters, in a kind of way. Although sometimes I wonder if they love me. They take on their mother’s attitudes. Sometimes I wonder if I…I think that what I feel for…”

  “Love is…wanting to tell someone every beautiful thing you see. Sharing the love you feel for your children. Not…oh, not finishing a sentence because you know the other person could finish it for you. Love is…feeling your…your…”

  Her voice thickened. Even as the tears came, she watched herself, as if another Josephine were acting a part; she forbade herself to cry, and still the tears came, changing her into a person of whom she had no control, who might say anything.

  “My last gift to him…remember, Harland, it was Christmas when he was expected…still wrapped, still in his…bureau…”

  Harland was on his knees beside her chair. He took her hand. He slid an arm over her shoulder and pulled her to him. She wept against the white linen jacket, smelling Permelia’s Sunlight soap, feeling his lips pressed to her head and his breath on her scalp.

  Just for a minute, she thought, just let me rest here for a minute, as if he is the husband I have lost. It occurred to her, then, that although she was not in love with Harland she did, indeed, love him dearly.

  Her tears subsided. She was in her own parlour. A man was on his knees beside the tea table with his arms around her. She pulled away. He returned to his chair.

  “We could marry, Josephine. I could divorce.”

  She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her eyes. She avoided his eyes and knew that in this avoidance he, too, returned to himself. He patted his vest and looked down.

  The buttons. Awry.

  “Have they been that way all day, Harland?” she said.

  He looked up at her.

  “You know, I care for you dearly,” she murmured. “We can go on together, caring for one another dearly. You know this, Harland. It is another kind of love.”

  He bent his head and did not answer. She watched his fingers, working the buttons.

  * * *

  —

  No one watched as Josephine pulled her nightgown over her head. No one noticed how the satin ribbons were worn or observed the stitches where she had repaired the cambric ruffle. No one murmured tender words.

  She climbed into bed and lay back against the pillows. The kerosene lamp on her bedside table pulled from the darkness the wallpaper’s entwined flowers. Out the window, she could see the lights of a neighbouring window, interrupted by the shiver of leaves.

  She put her hand to her hair, the place his lips had pressed.

  Divorce, disgrace. The failure of a marriage. Should she accept his offer, the failure would be her inheritance as much as his.

  She closed her eyes and realized she could succumb to the longing to be loved. A kiss. His hands would slide to the small of her back. She would bend and fall back.

  She saw how far she would fall, then, from the woman she was in the process of becoming.

  PART IV

  September 1889 – June 1890

  TWENTY

  Brass Duck

  FLORA STOOD IN THE dust and scraps of the empty workshop. She felt a childlike rush of tears.

  He was sweeping the floor, his mouth ugly.

  “Did they…did they like it, Mr. Tuck?”

  He stopped and crossed his arms, imitating her. “Did they like it, Mr. Tuck? What do you think?”

  “I just would like to have seen…”

  She would like to have seen the sisters exclaim over the perfect, tiny carpets. The curtains, with their barely visible stitches. The matchstick windows, the feather-light tables. She would have liked to have seen how they did not notice glue, brads, all the meticulous work of measuring, whittling and sanding, but saw only their results, like something from a fairy tale. Oh, Rosamund, isn’t it exquisite? Don’t you love it?

  He was in a terrible temper. “Oh, they liked it good enough. They liked it.”

  “Well, maybe they will show it to other people and we will get more orders.”

  “Somebody snitched to them as to how I was taking advantage of you. Must have been what you told that one who didn’t order. That Mrs. Dunfield.”

  “I never…”

  “Told me they would ‘withhold’ a certain amount of what was owing unless I promised it would go straight to you. So I promised. But it ain’t. Going to you. Because I put down good money for that dress and you won’t wear it, so now you’ll work for me until you earn back what I paid for it.”

  “You could take the amount they were going to withhold and put it towards the dress.”

  “You think that will be enough? Hey?”

  Flora turned away and pressed her forehead to the window. It was the first day of September, the sky a brilliant blue, the clouds larger, closer.

  He had laid hands on her once. She would give him no reason to do so again. The sock filled with coins, hidden beneath the floorboard, was becoming heavy. She did not know what else she could do to make money. Every effort she made in that regard—eggs, mittens, butter—went towards maintaining Josephine’s household.

  He slammed the broom into its corner, picked up a scrub brush and dipped it into a bucket of water and lye. He drew the bristles deep into the grain of the table, bore down.

  “I’ll wear the dress. It was just too hot, that’s all. I’ll try to order up another house. I can tell people to go to see Hilltop. I can ask the sisters if they would mind.”

  He avoided her eyes, muttered something to himself.

  “What?” she said. She wanted to snatch the brush and throw it in his face. “I didn’t hear.”

  “Never you mind,” he said. “Just git.”

  * * *

  —

  The following day, at breakfast, Ellen noticed dark circles beneath Flora’s eyes and a corresponding anxiety in Enid. Josephine, as well, seemed unaccountably agitated, as she had for several days.

  Get them out of the house…

  She sent the girls to the grocery store.

  “I can’t make my cookies until I get more oatmeal and molasses. Beds can wait.”

  Enid and Flora walked down the hill. Frost lay as if strewn from buckets—behind sheds, in ditches. A maid stood on a veranda, shaking a small carpet; dust rose in a cloud and then unravelled.

  “He thought if I wore the dress I would be able to sell the houses.”

  “Why, Flora? Why do you have to wear the dress?”

  To hide the guttersnipe. To make me a lady.

  Flora sought patience, impatient not with Enid but with the situation she found herself in. Mr. Tuck, and his sulks. The miniature houses, only an idea, now, since the house they had made was gone.

  �
��Anyway,” Flora said. “I said I’d put the thing on and go around again.”

  Enid said nothing, and Flora, waiting for a response—commiseration, perhaps, or protest—could not read her expression.

  * * *

  —

  After lunch, Enid went out to the garden. The shell bean vines had collapsed, their leaves crunchy. Red and white speckled beans pushed open the stiff pods. She pulled the plants up by the roots and piled them in the wheelbarrow. She pushed the wheelbarrow into the barn and gathered the beans into bunches, weaving lengths of string into the dry, wish-boned stems. Behind her, large doors stood open, framing the green fields, the red and golden hardwoods spiked with spruce trees.

  She wore a brown gingham dress with full sleeves. An apron. She had stuffed her hair into a cap, tied at the back.

  Jasper Tuck opened the door of the workshop.

  His hair fell over his forehead, shading his eyes. He leaned against the wall, ankles crossed.

  “You want some nails? For to hang them?”

  “Oh.” She looked up at the barn wall, where she had thought to find enough protuberances to hang the bunched beans.

  He went back into the workshop and came back with a hammer and nails. He set a neat line of nails along the wall.

  This morning Ellen had wondered aloud what Mr. Tuck was doing with himself, now that he had finished Hilltop.

  Lots of things he could be doing. Mr. Dougan, now. Would have fixed that latticework. Would have glazed them storm windows.

  I could ask him, Josephine had mused. But I can’t pay him, you see.

  It occurred to Enid that they were all, to some degree, afraid of Mr. Tuck, although aside from moodiness he gave them no reason to be.

  Enid lifted the handles of the wheelbarrow. She saw the subtle, almost unconscious motion of his hand, bidding her to set them down.

  “You like it here?”

  “Do you mean here at Mrs. Galloway’s or here in Canada?”