by Rosalyn Eves
“Your father’s sister? Or your mother’s?”
I’m still caught up in the corona, only half attending to my answer. “Oh, she’s not really my aunt. She’s my father’s wi—” My wits catch up with my words.
“Wife?” Miss Culbertson finishes for me. “You said your father was Mormon. Are you as well?”
I nod, weakly.
“I wondered, when Mrs. Jackson asked you about your family. I won’t judge you for hiding that—I know what it’s like, to hide something of who you are from the world’s judgment. But I don’t think you realize how much you could jeopardize the work Miss Mitchell is doing.”
My jaw falls slack. “How could I harm any of you? I’m nothing, no one.”
“You’re Mormon. You’re from the West. You don’t know what it’s like, just now, at schools like Vassar. Our parents, other concerned citizens, already complain to the paper that we women become unsexed in our studies.”
Even Mrs. Stevens echoed the same concern.
Miss Culbertson continues, “Worse, people worry such schools become breeding grounds for unnatural affections, or what has been called the ‘Vassar libel.’ ” Her mouth screws tightly. “As though a woman who loves another woman were the worst fear they could name.”
I remember the way Miss Culbertson watches Miss Harrison. I think of Hyrum, who doesn’t know if he could ever love a woman enough to marry. Perhaps I should be shocked, but all I feel is a flush of sympathy. “When people look at you and see only the ‘Vassar libel,’ they are looking with an outsider’s eyes. When outsiders look at Mormons and our plural marriage, all they see is moral deviance, someone living a life they wouldn’t choose for themselves. But who besides God and those living inside the relationship can judge it?”
Miss Culbertson’s expression softens. “I knew you would understand. We have to maintain the highest possible standards to shut down such accusations, or we risk public censure stopping our work entirely. Surely you can see that the presence of a Mormon woman in our crew could taint all of us? If you admire Miss Mitchell at all, you cannot want that for her. For us.”
We’ve reached the outer doors. Through the glass, I can see Samuel waiting for me beside the street. My insides are ice.
“But who should know? Or care? Please, this is the kind of opportunity I’ve dreamed of.”
“And what of our dreams?” Miss Culbertson asks. “Don’t those matter? Or is it enough if you achieve what you want, the rest of us be damned?”
Her words cut so closely to Alice’s accusation that they knock the wind from me.
“Is it so important to you to be Mormon? If you must be a believer, there are other, more acceptable faiths.” Her expression turns pleading.
Far would agree that I’d be better off outside the church. Doubts churn inside me. Is my particular faith more important than the study of astronomy? I think of how I felt at the Methodist church with the Stevens family, how I feel increasingly called to this study. Every church holds that they have the truth, but perhaps to God it is enough that we believe?
If you must be a believer. And what of faith itself? What I feel is belief, not certainty—what if my study of science reveals ultimately that such belief is empty? I might give up science for faith only to find that I’ve mistaken fool’s gold for the real thing.
Miss Culbertson holds my gaze for a long moment. “Please do the right thing, Miss Bertelsen.”
And then she’s gone.
I stand at the door so long that a dozen people pass me, talking animatedly, on their way out of the high school. I stand there so long that at last Samuel climbs up the stairs himself to meet me.
“Elizabeth?” he asks, studying my face and catching my hands up in his. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I say.
chapter twenty-two
Friday, July 26, 1878
Denver, Colorado
Three days until eclipse
I wake to Samuel shaking my shoulder, saying urgently, “Elizabeth! Wake up!”
Morning light streams through the muslin curtains. My heart jolts: I’m late for work. I sit up, turning my head away from Samuel to hide my breath, which tastes foul on my tongue.
Then I remember: I don’t have a job to rush to. I let my head fall back on the pillow with a whump.
Samuel studies me in some concern. “Are you ill?”
I shake my head. “Only unemployed.”
“What?”
“I was let go yesterday. For sleeping in your room.”
Samuel goes very still. “You didn’t tell me that. I could have said something to the housekeeper. We didn’t do anything.” He flushes a bit as he says this last. If the subject wasn’t already mortifying, I’d find his blush charming.
“It wouldn’t help. It was the appearance of evil she objected to, not any evil itself.”
“I wish you’d told me.” Samuel walks to the window and rests his head against the pane, watching the street below. His shoulders are tight, the line of his back stiff.
“Samuel?”
He lets out a long breath, but his shoulders don’t ease. “I’ve got to head back. Today, most like. I’ve been trying to stay as long as I can, but I haven’t been able to find temporary work and the money’s nearly gone. I’d hoped you’d be all right, with your job, but now—I think I’ve got enough money to get us both to your sister’s place, where we can wire home for more.”
He turns back to face me. “I’m sorry. I know how much this eclipse means to you. I wanted to give it to you, to give you everything you wanted. If I could, I’d pluck the stars from the sky for you.” He laughs, a harsh note I’ve never heard from him. “But I can’t even manage this one thing.”
“It’s not your job to give me things,” I say, my heart pounding. I don’t know if it’s from fear, or anxiety, or something else. “And if you plucked the stars from the sky, there’d be nothing for me to study.”
He doesn’t smile at my weak attempt at humor. “I know it’s not my job. But I’d like to make it my business. Elizabeth Bertelsen, would you let me court you when we get home? If you think you could tolerate me, that is. I don’t know how it is, but somehow you’ve worked your way into my heart so that I can’t imagine a life without you.”
A thousand different thoughts and feelings fly through me. My hand lifts to my uncombed hair, still bound in its nighttime braid. I want to laugh. Or maybe cry.
How can he ask me this now, when I’m still in bed, with morning stink in my mouth? When he’s just told me he has to leave Denver, and wants me to come with him, wants me to leave the eclipse behind?
His question feels like both a promise and a trap.
I want to shake Samuel.
I want to kiss him.
“Only you, Samuel Willard, would ask a girl that when she’s still in her nightclothes.”
For the first time this morning, a glimmer of humor appears in his eyes. “Should I have waited for you to dress first? Make an occasion out of this?”
“Samuel,” I say, and stop. He has been brave, and I owe him the same courage. But I don’t know how to say what will hurt us both. Outside, clouds are lowering, as they have been all week—part of the high desert rainy season. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what? Come home with me now or be courted?”
“Both.” I can’t go home. Not now. Not so close to the eclipse. I’ll find some other place. Maybe Dr. Avery or Miss Mitchell knows someone, since all the hotels are full.
A very long silence hangs between us. I settle the bedclothes around my waist, wishing I were dressed. Clothes have a dignity to them that I never appreciated before.
“I see. I know you’ve found me irritating, but I didn’t realize I was so intolerable.”
My heart twists. “You’re not intolerable.” Far from it
. I like Samuel too much for my own comfort. “The fault isn’t in you at all. It’s me. I’m not sure I’m meant to be a wife. I want to learn. To go to high school and university and make a career out of studying the stars.”
“I would wait for you,” Samuel says. “I like that you want to learn—it’s one of the things I like best about you. You make me think about ideas I’d never thought on.”
I shake my head. How can I make him understand? “I’m not sure I will go back to Monroe, not for good. That life you want—a quiet home, a wife, children—I can’t do that. I’m not good at those domestic tasks. They make me feel like a stranger in my own skin.”
“Are you saying no to me, or to the life you think I want you to lead?”
I want to reach out and smooth the furrow between his brows with my finger, but I keep my hands clenched tight. “Aren’t they the same? You’re a farmer; you need a farmer’s wife.”
“I have sheep,” Samuel says, “but I’m a carpenter, not a farmer. I can practice my trade anywhere. And I don’t want a farmer’s wife. I want you. If you don’t love me and don’t think you ever can, that’s one thing. But don’t say no because you don’t see how I fit into some future you’ve imagined. I can fit. I can find work where you go to school. I can help you, however you need.”
A surge of emotion washes through me, so powerful I can’t quite tell if it’s good or not. I want you. Samuel Willard, who has never wanted a thing for himself if it would inconvenience someone else, wants me. Yearning pricks at my throat.
I want to say yes.
Each body is itself the centre of an attractive force extending indefinitely into space.
But I can’t. Saying yes to Samuel means saying no to too many other things.
No matter what he says, I don’t think we want the same things. I’d rather hurt a little now than face the pain later, after our lives are twined together and we still don’t fit. “And then what? When I get work in an astronomy laboratory, charting stars, who will make your clothes? Who will care for your children? If you mean to take a second wife, I don’t want that life. If you intend me to do it—I’m not sure I can.” I want so much that seems impossible—I’m not sure I can bear wanting Samuel too and being disappointed.
I feel as though I stand at a crossroads, with one road leading to home and family and faith, the other to science and learning and adventure. But the crossroads does not feel like a choice so much as a crucifix or some other torture device, tugging me in impossible postures—two oxen set to a plow that refuse to pull together and will leave only destruction in their wake.
“It won’t work,” I say.
And then Samuel loses his temper at last.
“Because you won’t try to make it work! I don’t want a second wife—just you. I’ve offered everything, even remaking my life around you, and you won’t even let me try. I wish you’d just say you don’t love me and be done with it.” He throws a few clothes into a battered suitcase, snatches his hat off the desk, and looks at me.
“Don’t choke on your pride,” he says, and then he walks out.
* * *
* * *
I don’t know how long I sit in bed, staring at nothing, before rousing myself to pull on clothes and do my hair. I feel odd, as though someone has taken a scraper to me and scoured out my insides. My arms and hands are strangely heavy.
The door bangs open while I am still pinning up my hair. Frances lifts her nose and stares down at me.
“This room’s been let. Your man paid his bill and left, and it’s time for you to leave too.”
Given the demand for rooms, I’m not surprised this one is already claimed. But I doubt the new owner is already waiting to take possession—I think Frances is just being spiteful. She’s enjoying this, watching me with narrowed eyes.
So I take my time, finishing my hair and then gathering my things into my carpetbag. I drag my trunk into the hallway, down the stairs. In the grand entry to the hotel, I stop.
What am I to do now?
* * *
* * *
I persuade the clerk at the desk to hold my trunk for me. By nightfall, either I’ll have a new place to stay, or I’ll have to lug the trunk to the railway station and sleep on it there. (Safer to sleep there, with other passengers, than on the streets, I reason. I hope it won’t come to that.)
Walking the long blocks to Dr. Avery’s house, I try not to think about Samuel, likely waiting now in the station for a train home. Perhaps already aboard. Hating me.
It’s for the best. Someday he’ll thank me.
Clouds spit cold rain in my face. What if the storm carries through until Monday, and despite everything and everyone I’ve sacrificed to be here, I can’t see the eclipse after all? The irony would almost be funny if it wasn’t so personal.
I climb Dr. Avery’s steps and knock.
Miss Culbertson answers the door. “I thought you might turn up,” she says warily, folding her arms across her chest.
“I’ve thought about what you said about faith,” I say, drawing a deep breath, thinking of that crossroads. I’ve already sacrificed Samuel on an altar of stars—what’s one more sacrifice? Per aspera ad astra. “My faith won’t be an obstacle. I’d rather be a scientist than a Mormon.” I pull at a long hangnail, then press my finger against the blood, against the sharp spurt of pain.
I follow Miss Culbertson into the now familiar parlor. Dr. Avery, she tells me, is at her practice, but the other women are gathered in a close circle. Miss Harrison plays the piano softly, and Miss Abbot turns pages for her. Miss Mitchell smiles when I walk in. I pinch my hangnail again.
I settle beside Miss Mitchell, and her sister brings us both tea.
Miss Mitchell gestures with her cup at the window. “These wide-open western spaces and mountains always seem strange to me. So much space. I grew up on a small island, you know, boxed in by water and customs. Have you lived out west your whole life?”
I nod. “I was born in Salt Lake City. Though my parents are immigrants, my father from Denmark and my mother from England. They met in Utah Territory.”
“They must be very proud of you.”
I study my hands in my lap. After a moment, I look up at Miss Mitchell. “I hope they will be proud of me someday. But my mother would rather I stayed home to raise a family, as she has done.”
Miss Mitchell nods. “Such an attitude, unfortunately, is not uncommon. Are you here on your own, or with your parents’ blessing?”
I swallow. “My parents know where I am—but I would not say I have their blessing.”
Despite the warm room, despite the watery sunlight just now spurting through the clouds outside, I am suddenly cold, as though all the things that make me substantial have evaporated in the sun and there’s nothing of me left. I pinch my finger again, but it doesn’t make me feel any more real.
Miss Mitchell asks something else—I hardly know what—and I answer at random. This is wrong; it’s all wrong. Much as I want to be here, I want to be here as me, not as someone I’m pretending to be. The whole mess at Alice’s started because I was trying to soften myself to make other people more comfortable. Maybe it goes back even further: if I wasn’t trying to hide from Mama, I’d never have left Rachel while she was napping.
“Miss Mitchell, I—” I start, stop.
“Whatever it is, you can tell me. There’s nothing more critical to the work we do than the truth.”
The truth.
“I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely truthful with you. I told you my father was no longer Mormon. That was true. But my mother is.” I take a deep breath. “I am.”
Miss Culbertson looks at me from across the room, her brows drawn together.
“And yet, when you first met us, you allowed us to believe otherwise,” Miss Mitchell says.
“Yes. I’m sorry. My experi
ence suggested I wouldn’t be welcome if you knew my background.” I drop my eyes again, unable to meet that steady regard. “And I didn’t think my faith would matter in this.” I glance at Miss Culbertson, now speaking in a low voice to Miss Harrison.
“In that belief, you do both yourself and us a wrong,” Miss Mitchell says. “Why would you deny who you are? If you cannot bring your whole self to your work, what do you bring instead?”
There’s a tightness in my throat, and I can’t bring myself to answer. I’m not sure I know the answer.
Miss Mitchell continues, “And what of your background in astronomy? Do you truly have experience handling telescopes and sighting stars?”
I release a long, low sigh. All my chickens are coming home to roost, it seems. “I’ve handled a telescope once, ma’am. I don’t have formal schooling. But I’ve read as much as I possibly can about astronomy, and I’m a fast study. I’ll do exactly as I’m told, and I won’t need repeated instructions.”
Miss Mitchell shakes her head, her graying ringlets dancing. “It grieves me to tell you this, Miss Bertelsen, as I can see you are eager, and I like you. But the eclipse is serious. We have only a few minutes to record everything we can, and we cannot afford mistakes made by amateurs. It has been nine years since I was last able to study an eclipse with my students—the next eclipse in America is not until 1889, and I might not live so long, to rectify any missteps. I encourage you to assist Dr. Colbert with the drawing of the corona on your own time—but we cannot bring you with our party.”
When I do not answer immediately, she adds, “I appreciate your honesty now. In a year or two, when you’ve had some formal schooling and finished your studies, send me a letter, and I will see if I can help you find a place at Vassar. But I hope you can understand that you simply are not ready yet.”