River With No Bridge

by Karen Wills

  While Rose tidied her hair amidst a chorus of little girl voices, all wanting to brush their own or each other’s tresses, Nora again felt a prick of envy over Rose and Patrick’s large brood. But she worried about caring for only herself and Helen. The Murphy family would be hard-pressed not to sink into the sort of poverty that brought hunger. What would it be like to have all these daughters looking to you to feed and keep them? Still, the image reappeared of a son like Tade. She willed away the tears forever threatening to start.

  The two black-clad women, shoulders slumped as if bearing crushing burdens, spoke with Rose’s neighbor, linked arms, and walked to Miners’ Hospital. There Patrick, eyes covered with white bandages, lay on a narrow cot in a men’s ward. He groaned the long rough sound of a creature in agony.

  Rose bent her swollen body to kiss him. “It’s Rose, Patrick. I’ve brought Tade’s Nora.”

  Patrick slurred some words.

  Nora winced. It came to her that there might, after all, have been something worse for Tade than death. Father O’Toole assured her he hadn’t suffered. She hated seeing Patrick’s anguish. Her intention to speak with him seemed an imposition now.

  She rested a hand on Rose’s shoulder. “I’ll leave you for the moment. Tell Patrick I was here when he can understand. I’ll come back later.”

  The women embraced, and Nora walked down the corridor alone. As she opened the outer door, the tall Chinese, Jim Li, crossed in front of her carrying a bundle of laundry in a sling on his broad back. Their eyes met, and he bowed. She paused, thinking she registered sympathy there, but he glided on, queue swinging. This Chinese fellow was a mystery.

  Nora trekked home through the smoke-fogged streets. Bridget opened the door, smiling encouragement and comfort, but Nora nursed the feeling that no matter how many people came to see or help her, the house would always feel abandoned. Tade’s tangible absence filled more space, declared itself more potent, than these well-meaning but inconsequential figures who offered sympathy.

  Tade. She needed Tade.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The following day a delegation arrived from the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Mr. Flynn, her old manager at the Centennial, stepped forward. Solemn, he cleared his throat. “Tade Larkin was one of us. When a brother falls, we do what we can to help his loved ones and dependents. We have a fund to provide for widows so they won’t have to fear losing their homes. I present you now with your mortgage. You will see that it bears the stamp Paid in Full.”

  “Mr. Flynn. I can’t even speak.” Seated at the table, Nora bowed her head, and then raised it with tear-filled eyes. “Helen and I are that grateful.” Each man shook her hand, some with their own eyes welling up as they took their leave. Nora read the canceled note. She looked about her narrow kitchen.

  “Well, Helen.” She gathered her daughter, busy dressing a rag doll, to her lap. “We own the roof over our heads free and clear. Now what do I do to feed us?”

  “Make cookies?” Helen suggested with a rare twinkle.

  Nora laughed and hugged Helen tight, and this time her tears weren’t all from despair.

  The summer proved hot and riddled with grief and anxiety. Even with no mortgage, there remained the crucial matter of earning a living. Nora needed money for food, especially milk for her growing child, wherewithal to clothe them both and to buy other necessaries. She refused to separate herself from Helen for hours every day by doing maid work. Helen still woke from night terrors, old enough to remember the disaster, but not mature enough to cope with memories of that terrible day or with missing her father. Nora opted for taking in seamstress work from Molly Boyle as well as baking pies for the Centennial, often working until dawn. One day cooking in the hot kitchen she stumbled, dizzy from fatigue. Helen saw and clutched at her skirts. “I’m all right, my treasure,” Nora advised the clinging child. “I’ll just sit for a minute.”

  “Mama.” Helen burrowed into her lap and entreated with the chanted, “Mama, Mama, Mama . . .”

  Nora went through the alphabet with Helen, picking out nearly all the letters, but that night brought the child’s worst night terrors yet. Seeing her mother nearly collapse as she’d done the day Tade died had triggered an episode that left Helen pale and sweating.

  After weighing her scant options, Nora decided with little enthusiasm to take in one lodger, a source of income many widows resorted to for supporting their families. Nora could move into Helen’s room, and the lodger would have hers. It would steal their privacy, but she’d put her house to good use. She needed the money far more than solitude.

  She posted notices at Hibernia Hall and various churches. That afternoon she answered a firm knock on her door.

  Bat Moriarty faced her, a round-topped trunk behind him. “I’ve come to be your lodger, Mrs. Larkin,” he said. “I’ve answered your notice.”

  Nora almost laughed. “No. I’m sorry, but you’ve wasted your time. I planned on a working man, Mr. Moriarty. Tade would be whirling this minute if he thought I might consider opening our home to a gambler such as yourself.”

  “Nonsense. You need the money. I need a room. I won’t be underfoot. I’ll be gone most of the time at night and when I’m here in the day, I’ll be sleeping. You couldn’t ask for better.”

  “Helen’s chatter would disturb you,” Nora argued. “You’d hate it here.”

  “Don’t be silly, woman. You worked at the Centennial. It never quieted. I’ve had enough of overpaying to live in near squalor. What’s your little Helen compared to that? I’ll be easy as pie to have here, no snoring miner in the next room at night. I’ll take my meals elsewhere, and I won’t be changing shifts on you. I’m an ideal lodger.”

  Nora felt a surge of anxiety as he got round her. She grasped the first idea that came. “The neighbors would be that shocked. They’re used to widows taking in miners. That’s the ordinary way of things, but not a gambler.”

  “Where’s the harm? You’re such a respectable widow they won’t say anything. Now you might worry about Cat Posey and her temper, of course. The girl forever misunderstands my behavior. But you’re safe enough from me. I’m all business.”

  Nora studied him. The question still rang, what would the neighbors say? But with the schedule he set out, there shouldn’t be any harm. She needed the money, and he’d be gone every night. She was in and out during the day. He was clean enough. As much as she treasured her respectability, the tinker’s daughter in her felt old contempt for the hypocrisy of any too quick to judge. After an awkward pause, she relented. “All right, we’ll give it a try, but the first complaint I have, you’ll be out on your ear.”

  “What a gracious landlady. Just point me to my room, and I’ll make myself at home.” Bat hoisted the trunk to his shoulder. Nora showed him to her old bedroom where she’d emptied the armoire and boxed some of Tade’s clothing for the poor relief. She’d also beaten the rug and washed the bedding.

  “I planned to wash the windows, but you appeared so soon.” Nora watched him set down his trunk.

  “I don’t need sunbeams. The shades will be pulled in any event.” He eyed the bed.

  Helen addressed him. “My favorite color is green. What’s yours?”

  “Green, too. Or gold. Yes, gold. Gold is the best.” He pulled out a coin to show her, then added to it and gave Nora her first payment.

  “Well,” Nora said, pocketing the money. She shooed Helen, reluctant to leave, toward the door. “We’ll leave you to unpack. Just push the boxes out the door, if you will.” As she turned away, she felt herself at a sudden disadvantage. She’d go outside and wash all the windows anyway, just for an excuse to escape the shrinking house.

  While Helen sang a nonsense song about gold, slapping the wall with her own wet cloth then dipping it in her pan, Nora started to work with her bucket and rag. She scrubbed the kitchen window first, next hers and Helen’s, and last Bat Moriarty’s. He hadn’t drawn the curtain as he said he would. He slept stretched out, a lean line, the pillo
w thrown over his face.

  Nora stared through the undulated glass of the panes at his rising and falling chest. She remembered the scene in the Centennial a lifetime ago. “Come on, Helen,” she whispered, her face hot. “Mr. Moriarty doesn’t need clean windows.” She grasped Helen’s small hand so firmly the child broke off and looked up in surprise. Disturbed, Nora realized that the sight of Bat Moriarty stretched out so had caused a little flicker of attraction. What was wrong with her?

  Nora baked bread and prepared stew for supper while Bat, true to his word, slept through the afternoon. It felt strange and lonely to have a man there who wasn’t Tade. She and Helen ate together speaking in soft voices. She’d picked up the dishes when Bat came to the kitchen dressed in a dark frockcoat with a wine-colored silk vest, rich in embroidery. He looked both out of place and at ease. “I’m off to labor in the vineyards of sin. Don’t wait up, Mrs. Larkin.”

  “My favorite animal is a bluebird,” Helen had never seen one, but Nora had described it. “What’s yours?”

  “A horse that wins races.” He winked and tickled Helen under her chin as he strode out the door, an illustration from a gentleman’s magazine come to life. The kitchen appeared shabby in his wake.

  “What a fellow,” Nora said, dropping soap flakes into a pan.

  “He’s funny,” Helen giggled, a rare sound. Nora smiled back. At least Bat’s presence had cheered the child, too often serious. Helen had learned of life’s fragility too soon.

  If only something could cheer Nora as well.

  Nora and Helen saw little of their elegant boarder. He came home just as their day began, greeted them, went to his room, closed the door. At suppertime he awakened, took hot water for shaving to his room, then left. He took his baths in saloons’ back rooms. He paid his rent on time.

  Occasionally, he teased Helen as he came or left. They played the favorite game often. His favorite food was pecan pie. His favorite flower, the magnolia. Helen’s were chocolate and shamrocks.

  There were also mornings when he didn’t return. During one sunrise Nora caught herself watching for him as she sewed a lace collar for one of Molly’s customers. Reflected in the rippled windowpane, Nora had an eager, strained look. She yanked the curtain closed. This would never happen again. Why, she’d looked like a girl waiting for her beau.

  “His sheets are never even dirty,” Nora told Rose as they walked to the market later. “He’s like a man who’s not there at all.”

  Rose shrugged. “I suppose that’s a good enough thing, but I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Be watchful. You know Patrick disapproves.”

  Fall and winter months went by and the pattern didn’t vary. Nora’s life settled into baking pies, stitching for Molly Crane, care of Helen, church, and housework. She needed to work, but also wanted to keep so tired that missing Tade didn’t become so—what was the word? Physical. But there were often dreams, dreams of loving Tade. Tade in her arms. She would awake from these with a start, aching for his touch. Then there was nothing but to wander to the kitchen and sit at the table, the rosary slipping through her fingers until desire ebbed like a receding tide.

  She’d returned to God, no longer angry, but trying to cope by seeking comfort where she’d found it in her life before Tade’s death. If she sometimes questioned whether God existed, she still sought peace in those forlorn predawn hours. She didn’t try to understand why her life had been shattered, she only knew she had to give Helen what she could. Her anger now went to the company that provided no pension, no help to widows of the men who’d given their lives to the mines, widows now left to scrounge a living without their husband’s paychecks. Her dark thoughts mixed grief, worry, and anger.

  The mines had killed Tade as they’d taken hundreds of others who tore silver and copper from the resistant earth so their families could have decent lives. She resented the uncaring mine owners. She’d buried hope along with Tade in Butte’s hard soil. Her fine man died to bring even greater wealth to the rich. On the terrible day of his death, workers removed the dead as if they were ore. Another miner replaced Tade at the Never-sweat, one body as good as another, just the nature of the business.

  How could the rich live knowing they treated workers’ lives like they mattered less than rocks in the dirt?

  Helen could read now. A widow Nora knew from church decided to give up and move back east to live with family. She gave her three books of children’s stories and poems. Helen read and memorized them in a way that astonished and comforted her mother. Here is my future, Nora told herself, my bright shining child. Tade’s daughter. She’s worth my tired eyes, my aching muscles, my lonely hours.

  Some predawn hours Nora just reached her bed again when Bat came in. She heard him moving about, removing his elegant clothes and lying down in his bed with only the thin wall between them. Twice, she shocked herself by falling back asleep to dream not of Tade, but of Bat Moriarty.

  When he left through her kitchen in the evenings, they eyed each other. He began stopping to visit, standing so close she could smell his cologne and the sharp, earthy cigar scent from his coat. She started to glance in the mirror before the time when he’d step out of his room. It became like a dance: his comings and goings in between her dreams of love and the clicking of rosary beads.

  Clicking, clicking, clicking, faster and faster.

  Rose and Patrick strained to meet the demands of Patrick’s injuries. Patrick seemed to be groping both physically and spiritually to make peace with darkness, as Nora had to do with her loss and poverty. The community elected him Justice of the Peace, a not unusual post for blinded men before and after him. Justice with her scales and covered eyes appeared in Patrick’s living form.

  In August of 1888, word went out of a benefit dance for Rose and Patrick. Nora still mourned, but Rose coaxed her to come. “It wouldn’t be right without you,” Rose wheedled, as they sat nibbling pie dough at Nora’s table. “You’re my dearest friend. Tade would want you to go. You know he would.”

  Finally, Nora agreed. “I’ll still dress in mourning,” she reminded Rose.

  “It’s been a year. Time to come out of the black. Wear the green walking suit. It’s so lovely with your hair. Bring little Helen over to stay with ours. Megan Dugan will come over to care for them. In fact, give me our darlin’ Helen now.”

  Helen, who loved to play teacher with the Murphy girls as students, ran for her coat. Nora waved good-by as her daughter happily skipped along beside Rose, her second mother.

  Being alone in the house felt strange. Nora walked to the window and gazed at the sooty sky. She looked down at her clothes. How tired she was of black and gray, living like a figure in a charcoal sketch. She went to her chest, knelt, and opened it. She shook out the green suit, holding the colored cloth close to her face and studying herself in the mirror. Her eyes caught the green, and her mood lightened in spite of her doubts.

  She bathed in the kitchen, locking the door against Bat rising early and catching her. She washed her hair and pinned it up, damp and curly. She put on her pink dressing gown and pulled the tub to the back door, sending water sloshing into the bed of mums she tried with small success to convince that blooming would be a good thing. As she reentered the living room, Bat’s door opened. He took a breath.

  “Nora, you look beautiful.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be awake,” she told him, “or I wouldn’t have come through.” She drew the robe close.

  “Why aren’t you dressed? Aren’t you well?”

  “I’m putting myself in order for the benefit dance for Rose and Patrick Murphy.”

  “Ah, is that tonight? I’ll make an appearance myself. In fact, Nora, let me escort you. You shouldn’t walk out alone on the streets at night.”

  “No. Thank you all the same, but it wouldn’t be right.” How she wished he hadn’t seen her.

  “Don’t be silly. We start out from the same house, and we’re bound for the same destination. Do you want to walk behind me
like the Chinamen’s women do?”

  “I’m no man’s woman.” Bitterness, always waiting to show itself, grated in her voice.

  “Fine, but let’s walk together. I promise to be a perfect gentleman.” He bowed deeply.

  “Oh, all right,” she said, a little breathless. “Now go on, and let me ready myself.” She closed the door to her room, shaking her head. Why let a short walk start a racket in her heart? Was it the question of impropriety or something else?

  Nora put on the lacy white shirtwaist with a green ribbon at the collar and her green suit. Her face shone rosy in the lamp-light, younger than since Tade’s death. At eight o’clock Nora and Bat left the house. He crooked his arm. “Milady, you must take a gentleman escort’s arm.”

  “Go away with you,” Nora pushed at his wrist, wishing she could be wittier. With a pang she realized she’d never thought to wish that with Tade. Bat crooked his elbow toward her again, and she took it. She missed the big rough hand that used to cover hers, but Bat Moriarty smiled with a flash of white teeth and his eyes spoke of masculine admiration. No one had gazed at her so for a long time.

  “Little Nora Flanagan,” he murmured. “What changes you’ve undergone since Boston. A wife, a mother, a widow—and lovelier than that nervous girl trying to be so proper.”

  “You shouldn’t talk to me that way, Bat. Please.” She thought of Tade, of how wrong this would seem to him, and pulled her arm free.

  “Very well, but I see a light in you that’s been dim for some time. You’re alive with a long life ahead. Let the grief drift away when you can.”

  She didn’t answer, aware as they walked on of their shoulders touching. They made their way to the hall, gay with lights.

  Upon entering, she spotted Rose and Patrick seated near the bank, a ticket table manned by Mr. Flynn. Nora excused herself to greet them. “Nora, you look grand,” Rose told her. “Patrick, she’s out of mourning.”