Almost Home

by Valerie Fraser Luesse

  “What about the music room?” Anna suggested. Daisy followed her there and was directing Anna through different poses by the piano when Dolly returned with an armload of supplies—combs, brushes, jewelry, and long black lace gloves.

  “Man, Dolly, those are beautiful!” Daisy said as she gently picked up the gloves.

  “Wanna try ’em on?” Dolly asked.

  “I doubt they’d look right with my overalls.”

  “Well, we’ll be gettin’ rid of them overalls one o’ these days, I imagine, so go ahead.”

  Daisy carefully slipped the gloves onto her hands and pulled them up her arms. “Do I look like Princess Elizabeth? Because I feel like Princess Elizabeth.”

  “Absolutely,” Anna said, attempting a curtsy in the ball gown.

  “Daisy, honey, you are hidin’ your light under a bushel,” Dolly said. “Any girl who can pull off lace gloves with overalls is a force to be reckoned with, but we’ll deal with that later. Let’s us get this portrait a-goin’. Come sit right here, Anna.”

  Anna sat down on a velvet pouf in the music room, and Dolly began brushing her long auburn hair and pinning it up, then added a delicate pearl tiara. The necklace she had chosen for Anna was a short strand of tiny pearls with a small emerald pendant. Once Anna had on the lace gloves, Daisy and Dolly stepped back to admire her.

  “You look better than Princess Elizabeth,” Daisy said.

  Anna laughed. “I feel like I’m playing dress up.”

  “Why should kids have all the fun?” Daisy said. “Hey, stand there by the piano and kinda rest your right hand on it. Yeah, just like that.” She took out her sketchpad and went to work. “You have to promise to let me give this to Jesse. I cannot wait to see the look on his face.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Anna shook her head.

  “You’ll see. Now be still.”

  “Here he comes!” Daisy had kept watch as the rain finally let up, and Anna helped Dolly cook supper for her boarders.

  “Dolly, should I be worried about another woman who’s this excited to see my husband?” Anna asked as she checked on a pot roast in the oven.

  “I’d keep an eye on her,” Dolly said. “I’ve always thought she was a floozy.”

  “Y’all just wait—you’ll see,” Daisy said. “I gotta go.”

  Dolly winked at Anna. “Come on—let’s go get us a good view.” They hurried upstairs and slipped out onto the upper porch just in time to see Daisy strolling nonchalantly across the yard.

  “Hey, Jesse.” She threw up her hand as he got out of his truck, but kept walking down the driveway.

  “Hey,” he said as he headed for the porch.

  “What’s she up to?” Anna whispered to Dolly on their perch high above.

  Just then they heard Daisy call out. “Say, Jesse, wait up. I got somethin’ here you might like to have, now that I think about it.”

  He turned back and met Daisy by his truck.

  “Me and Anna were rummagin’ around Dolly’s attic durin’ the rain today, and I talked her into lettin’ me draw her in one o’ the fancy dresses up there. Turned out pretty nice. Why don’t you take it?”

  “Thanks,” he said, taking the portrait from Daisy. He didn’t take his eyes off of it.

  “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to keep it—you won’t hurt my feelin’s,” Daisy said.

  “N-no—she’s—beautiful. Your picture’s beautiful.”

  “You mean it?” Daisy asked, as if she were concerned about the quality of her work. “Because I just got these colored pencils, and I wasn’t sure I got the right shade o’ green for her eyes. You really think I came close?”

  “Remind me never to play poker with her,” Dolly whispered to Anna.

  “They’re . . . they’re perfect,” Jesse said.

  “Well, I gotta go,” Daisy said. “Y’all have a good night.”

  She was near the end of the driveway before Jesse seemed to remember himself and called out, “Bye, Daisy! And thank you!”

  “C’mon!” Dolly said to Anna. “Let’s not get caught. I’ll go to the kitchen and you go meet that husband.”

  Anna paused at the screen door and watched Jesse. He had taken a seat on the front steps and was staring at her portrait, running a finger lightly over the image of her cheek and then her throat. How strange it was to feel like an intruder, watching her own husband absorbed in her image, showing her likeness the affection he could not bring himself to offer in the flesh. She would spare him—not his pride but his wounded spirit, bruised from the sense of utter failure and helplessness that had engulfed him when their farm and all the dreams it held fell apart.

  She walked back to the dining room and called his name as she moved toward the front door, giving him ample warning. “Jesse? Is that you?”

  He stood up and quickly turned around as she stepped onto the porch. She had taken off her finery but left her hair up, as Dolly had styled it.

  “Hey,” he said, still holding the drawing.

  “Hey.” She smiled back. “I see Daisy showed you what she got me into this afternoon.”

  “What?” He was looking at her just as he had looked at the drawing.

  “The drawing,” she said, pointing to it.

  “Oh! Yeah. She gave it to me. It’s beautiful.”

  “Daisy’s really talented.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant you’re beautiful.” He came to her, cupped her face in his hand, and kissed her. And then he whispered, “You always have been.”

  CHAPTER

  ten

  Daisy and Anna hiked down a furrow of the cotton field in front of Lillian’s house, where the porch was empty. The cotton was getting tall, but it was still green, its leaves slapping at their legs as they walked to the edge of the field, where red dirt gave way to patches of Johnsongrass, dandelions, and occasional briars. Just a few yards away sat the housekeeper’s shack—an unpainted shotgun with a tin roof and rough-hewn logs used as pillars to hold up the roof of the front porch. It was shaded by oaks that no doubt kept anything from growing below, because the yard, if you could call it that, looked bare.

  “Dang, this place is creepy—and snaky,” Daisy said. “Here, grab you one of these and poke around in the grass before you take a step.” She handed Anna a piece of cane from a pile at the edge of the field. “Looks like somebody was plannin’ to fish and thought better of it.”

  They slowly trekked through the weeds, poking about with their canes and watching where they stepped, until they reached the tiny shaded yard, where there was nothing but dirt beneath their feet.

  “I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” Anna said as they stepped onto the front porch. “And I’m mighty glad you thought to bring a flashlight.”

  Daisy gingerly bounced on the boards of the porch floor, testing to make sure she and Anna wouldn’t fall through. “Feels sturdy enough.” She pulled open the remains of a screen door—only the frame was left—and then turned the knob on the front door and pushed it open.

  Anna followed her into the one-room house, which was lit with morning sunlight. Its sparse furnishings—a rocker by the fireplace, a small table and two chairs in the kitchen—were covered with dust.

  “I’ve seen some small houses in my time,” Daisy said, “but this place is a postage stamp.”

  “Lillian said the woman who lived here cooked and kept house for Andre before he married Catherine, so she probably spent most of her time at his house. I’ll bet this was just a place for her to sleep.”

  “But there’s no bed.”

  “Maybe somebody took it? Hey, I wonder what’s in here.” Anna pointed to a narrow door next to the stove. She pulled it open, only to find canning jars, mixing bowls, and some kitchen tools. “Just cooking stuff.”

  Daisy was coming over to have a look when she caught the toe of her sneaker on something and tripped, stumbling a few steps to right herself.

  “You okay?” Anna asked.

/>   “Yeah. Looks like an old board curled up a little. Hey, look—there’s a whole row o’ short ones like it.”

  Studying the spot where Daisy tripped, they could see the outline of what looked like a small door in the kitchen floor. There was a round hole in the middle of one end, just big enough to fit a thumb.

  “What do you make of that?” Anna asked.

  Daisy shrugged. “Prob’ly a root cellar. Only one way to find out.” She stuck her thumb in the hole and pulled the door up, revealing what was indeed a root cellar down below. “I’ll bet you there’s spiders as big as a heifer down there.”

  “What about snakes?”

  “Too cold underground.”

  Daisy aimed her flashlight at the foot of the cellar steps, where she and Anna immediately spotted it—an old-fashioned steamer trunk. They both gasped as they looked at each other, then back at the trunk.

  “Oh my gosh, Daisy! What if it’s Catherine’s?”

  “What if it’s just the housekeeper’s?”

  “Well, even that would be something, wouldn’t it?”

  “How brave do you feel?”

  “Not very, but I’m plenty curious.”

  Daisy started down the steps first, shining her light all around the trunk and on the ceiling overhead to see what might be crawling up there. Spiderwebs were everywhere. “I feel like they’re crawlin’ all over me!” she said. “Quick, you grab one handle and I’ll grab the other—let’s get outta here.”

  The two of them took hold of the trunk and hurried up the steps as fast as they could. Back in the light of the kitchen, they stepped back to have a look. It was very plain. Daisy found an old rag in the kitchen sink and wiped away the cobwebs. Then she went over the trunk with her flashlight.

  “Hey, look,” she said when the light struck what looked like initials on the latch of the trunk. “E. E. O. Who the heck is that?”

  “The ‘O’ could be for ‘O’Dwyer,’ but I’ve got no idea who ‘E. E.’ might be. Why don’t we take it to Dolly’s to open it? Don’t you feel like she should be with us, just in case there’s something special inside?”

  “Yeah, you’re prob’ly right. It’s not that heavy—we should be able to carry it if we stop and rest a few times. Ready?”

  The women of Dolly’s house gathered in her front parlor, sitting on the floor around the steamer trunk.

  “I just can’t believe it,” Dolly said. “All the times me and Vi searched this house, it never occurred to us to search that ol’ shotgun.”

  “What do you make of the initials, Dolly?” Anna asked.

  “Oh, that has to be Esther O’Dwyer. She was Catherine’s older sister—much older—and she’s kinda famous around here, or maybe it would be ‘infamous,’ Evelyn? Anyway, when she was in her forties, she left her husband and run off up north with one o’ them abolitionists. Fell head over heels with him at a camp meetin’ and never looked back. Lucky she didn’t have any kids. They said her stern ol’ miserly husband was still tryin’ to figure out why she left till the day he died.”

  “Yes, I do believe that would make her infamous,” Evelyn said.

  “They say she’s buried somewhere up in Maryland,” Dolly added.

  Evelyn looked puzzled. “Why would Esther’s trunk be in the Creole woman’s house?”

  “Well, seein’ as how she was a lot older’n Catherine, maybe the trunk’s a hand-me-down,” Dolly said.

  “Ladies, could I make a suggestion?” Daisy flipped the latch up. “Let’s open the dang thing.”

  The smell of cedar chips, tucked into some of the side pockets, wafted out as Daisy lifted the top of the trunk. “Man!” she said as they began examining the contents. “These have gotta be the ugliest dresses I ever saw.”

  One by one, they pulled out the few dresses in the trunk—all of them severe frocks in gray or dark blue wool or cotton.

  “Bless her heart, this underwear’s just as sad,” Dolly said, shaking her head over a pair of plain cotton pantaloons.

  With the trunk emptied of clothing, the women could see what was stored in its interior pockets.

  “Even her books were dull,” Anna said, handing a few volumes on philosophy and theology to Evelyn, who began thumbing through them.

  “Ha!” Evelyn exclaimed. “Don’t count Miss Catherine out just yet. Look.” The center pages of each book had been ripped out, replaced with poetry by Tennyson, Byron, and Poe. “Our girl was smuggling the Romantics and that madman Poe in her philosophy books,” she said. “Well done, Catherine. Well done indeed.”

  “Hey, y’all, look at this.” Daisy presented a plain brown leather journal that had been pushed deep down into a side pocket of the trunk. Opening the book, she looked up at the others, her eyes wide, then began to read.

  February 10, 1844

  I’ve never done this before. And I’m not quite sure who I’m talking to. Myself, I suppose? Shall I introduce myself to myself, do you think? How do you do, self. My name is Catherine Elizabeth O’Dwyer, and I am nineteen years old.

  All the women squealed and clapped their hands with delight. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!” Anna exclaimed. “It’s her! It’s really her! Keep reading, Daisy!”

  Daisy shook her head. “No, it oughta be you, Anna. You oughta speak for Catherine. Here, read it to us.”

  Anna took the leather journal and began reading.

  Sister gave me a set of three journals and said I might find it a comfort to record my thoughts as she has done for many years. She hides her journals from her husband. When I marry, as it appears I am about to do, I hope my husband will not be the sort of man from whom I must hide my thoughts.

  My troubles began with a tea party, if you can believe that. It was hosted by a new member of Father’s church, Mrs. Bertram Claypool, wife of the recently elected—and very first—mayor of Blackberry Springs. The Claypools are quite wealthy. They have always lived on a plantation by the river, but now that they are the royalty of our little village, they decided to build what they call a townhome in Blackberry Springs.

  As they have now joined Father’s church, Mrs. Claypool invited all the ladies to tea. Mother has not been the same since. I regret she is often guilty of the sin of covetousness. She cannot rejoice in the good fortune of others for the weight of her own envy. Father is not so much envious as ambitious, and he has a way of bending us all to his will. Sometimes I wonder if he has even read the Bible he preaches from—read all of it as I have, from cover to cover, seeking understanding—or does he merely search the Scriptures for whatever passage he can shape to his purpose? The latter, I think.

  What does this have to do with me? Marriage. Father has rarely allowed me so much as a conversation with a boy, and then only under the probing eyes of the church ladies. But ever since the tea party, he has begun speaking of marriage—my marriage—incessantly, just as Mother talks of the Claypool townhome incessantly. It is past time I married, Father said. I owe it to my family to make a good match, he said. And then the suitors started calling on us—most of them old or otherwise uninteresting, but all with land and money. I would rather die than let any of them lay a hand on me, and I pray fervently every night for God’s protection.

  “Dang, how awful would that be?” Daisy said. “Havin’ your daddy try to marry you off to some ol’ coot just to get his money.”

  “I would imagine arranged marriages were common in the South back then,” Evelyn said.

  “Prob’ly,” Daisy agreed. “Still, you’d hope your daddy would think more o’ you than to ship you off with somebody you couldn’t stand the sight of.”

  “Girls, be glad you’re livin’ in the modern age,” Dolly said. “But we’re holdin’ Anna up. Go on, dear. What does Catherine say next?”

  February 12, 1844

  Dear Self,

  Yesterday I was in the dining room, polishing Mother’s silver—it actually belongs to the church, but she convinced the ladies it would be better cared for here—when I heard Father welcome someone
into the parlor. Next, I heard a man’s voice, which I can only describe as the sound of velvet. There was something luxurious about the way he spoke, the way his words glided almost musically from one to the other, and there was a hint of something—I don’t know how to describe it . . . foreign?—in his accent. I searched about for a way to get a look at him without getting caught, but there was none.

  February 13, 1844

  Dear Self,

  No sooner had Father said his goodbyes to the man with the velvet voice than Mother was in my room, riffling through my wardrobe in search of a suitable frock for supper tomorrow night. The man’s name, it turns out, is Andrew Sinclair. He is the son of a wealthy rice planter from South Carolina and moved here to “establish a base” (Mother’s words) for extending the family’s holdings into Alabama cotton. He has bought 100 acres, mostly pasture and woodlands, Mother said, and built a home, which no one has been invited to see, on Tanyard Creek. Mother was all but salivating. There had been rumors that someone “substantial” (again, Mother’s words) had moved to Blackberry Springs, based on the enormous order for lumber placed at the sawmill months ago and the shipments of furniture from New Orleans that had recently been delivered by train. They had been picked up at the depot by a dark-skinned woman no one knew, driving four fine horses and a large wagon. Someone was building something grand, and that someone was Andrew Sinclair. Now that he had come calling to inquire about church membership, Father “wisely” invited him to supper. It seems I am finally to meet Mr. Sinclair.

  “So that’s where all o’ Little Mama’s furniture came from!” Dolly exclaimed. “She always said most of it was here when Granddaddy Talmadge bought the house, and now we come to find out it was shipped from New Orleans! That makes me feel downright uppity. Y’all call me Mrs. Chandler from now on.”

  “I just can’t believe this,” Anna said. “It’s like Catherine’s right here with us.”