Steal the North: A Novel
Page 17
There’s another secret I’ve had to keep from Matt all these years—so intertwined it is with the first. I told Kate to leave town. I begged her to leave, in fact, and I insisted she take Emmy. Kate had threatened to leave town once, and maybe that planted the seed. I sent my sister and her baby away on a bus.
Shortly after a trucker cut off Kate’s hair, I went to our father behind her back and pleaded with him for any money he could spare. My faith in God had begun to wane for the first time in my life. Where was God’s mercy? Why wouldn’t Jesus help my sister as he had Mary Magdalene? I began to doubt the Lord’s benevolence outside the pages of the Bible. Then, shamefully, I even began to doubt the Bible. It turned out, unbeknownst to Kate or me, that our mother’s family had left us some money in a Seattle bank. Praise be. I promised the Lord my faith in him would never again waver, and it hasn’t.
When I secured the money, I brought it to Kate and said, “You can stop now.”
She shook her head. Emmy was asleep.
“If you don’t stop, there will be nothing left of you.”
She stared out the window. It was an ugly, overcast day. “I don’t want the money,” she said flatly. “You and Matt keep it. Keep Emmy too. She’s better off—”
I didn’t let her finish. “You don’t mean that. Look at me.” I barely recognized her with her choppy hair, smeared eye makeup, distant gaze. “Your little girl needs you,” I said. “She needs you more than she needs me.”
I had to make that true: Emmy had to need Kate more than she did me. It was the key to my sister’s survival.
My voice trembled as I continued. “She needs you more than I need you.” Kate had no idea where I was headed with my reasoning, and maybe I really didn’t either until that exact moment. “Leave town, Kate,” I said, taking a couple of deep breaths. “Take the money and leave town with Emmy.” I told her to go make a new start somewhere far away from all the bad memories of Mother’s death, Father, the church, Jamie, and especially the truckers, who I hoped with all my heart burned in hell. I’d never had such thoughts.
“I can’t leave you,” she protested. And she never would have—I firmly believe this—if I hadn’t begged her to. I told her I’d rather lose her on a Greyhound bus, lose Emmy also, both of them for a while, than have her climb into one more trucker’s cab.
I was fighting for her soul, and maybe for mine as well.
* * *
I miss Kate more with Emmy here, if possible. I had no idea the day I told my sister to leave that she’d never return or ever be in touch. Sometimes I fear, had I known, I would’ve given up eternity to keep her and Emmy by me on earth. Kate looks better than I expected in the photos, certainly better than when she left here: too thin, slouchy shoulders, globs of lipstick. Perhaps Kate holds her shoulders back a little too stiffly now. Since the healing I’ve felt healthier than I have in years, but I still don’t think Kate would say I look better than she expected. Maybe I’ve missed her too much. Because I don’t remember Mother, Kate fills all my memories of childhood. The warmth of her hair, her daring, and her love. It didn’t spill out of her. But it was there, like an ember, and if she let you move in close—and she let me—the heat was intense.
How Jamie could turn away, it still astounds me.
For years after Mother died, I wouldn’t leave Kate’s side in town, at school, or even at home. If I did, a coldness crept over me as if I’d stepped into water. I’d get the same feeling when she’d talk about leaving America to be a missionary overseas. My clinginess never irritated Kate. It irritated her classmates at school, so Kate quit hanging around them, even after the girls apologized. My sister doesn’t do things halfway. Why didn’t I take Kate’s determined nature into consideration when I told her to leave? Kate hasn’t called again since my birthday, when she nearly broke down on the phone. I’m afraid to bother her. Emmy says her mom puts in twice the teaching hours over the summer to make ends meet the rest of the year. I want to tell Kate about the mobile Emmy recently finished and hung above the baby’s crib. I’ve never seen anything quite like it: a flock of delicate paper birds suspended by threads.
Matt loves the idea of my taking Emmy on a trip. He hasn’t seemed this proud of me in years. I was hoping he’d come with us. I’ve never driven far without him. I married Matt when I was sixteen. He taught me to drive, as he’s been trying to teach Emmy. Kate was fond of looking at maps, but they make me dizzy. Studying one with Matt, I decide on three short excursions rather than one long trek. The idea of coming home between destinations—to rest up, water my garden, and see Matt—sets my mind more at ease. First, Emmy and I will go to Leavenworth, a Bavarian village in the Cascades foothills. Next, to the Columbia Gorge, which divides Washington from Oregon. Third, we’ll go to Walla Walla and the Whitman Mission. I want to take Emmy there most of all.
I treasure the pioneer story of Narcissa and Marcus Whitman. Narcissa, in 1836, was one of the first two white women to cross the Rocky Mountains. Her daughter was the first pioneer child born in the West, although she drowned tragically at age two. Narcissa’s letters were published in a book, a copy of which is in our church’s small lending library. Missionaries to the Cayuse Indians for eleven years, the Whitmans were eventually killed in a massacre. But their spirit lives on. Emmy had no idea her mom ever wanted to be a missionary. I tell her that not only does Kate’s bravery remind me of Narcissa’s but that Narcissa was separated from a sister she deeply loved and never saw again. “You’ll see Mom again,” Emmy says, and I want to believe her. Narcissa used to ride out to meet the wagon trains when they started coming over the mountains, looking for her sister, whom she never found.
The night before Emmy and I leave, Matt holds me particularly close. He’s never slept alone in our bed. I do occasionally when he goes on extended hunting and fishing trips with his brother. Lately it seems he’s been trying to hunt closer to home. I’ve never complained or hinted at how alone I feel when he’s gone.
“Sorry, I’ve been so nervous,” I say to Emmy once we’re on the road. I hesitated to leave behind any of my oils and teas. I had Matt go over the directions with me so many times that he almost came with us. “This is nice, Emmy.”
“We’re adventurers now.”
We chat in a more relaxed manner than we ever did in the trailer. It’s the open road, I suppose. I don’t get sleepy. I feel wide awake.
“Oh, Aunt Beth, look!” It’s the Columbia River. We have to cross it at Vantage. It sits far down in a canyon, and there are no shores. It looks magnificent and deep. I forgot what a mighty river it is. The wind gusts as we cross the bridge, and I have to grip the steering wheel. “I could look at it all day,” she says. I just want to get across.
In Leavenworth, we walk around the village, listen to yodelers, watch men in shorts, suspenders, and knee socks play the accordion. We visit a nutcracker museum. I buy Emmy a music box. We eat German food, then sit on a bench surrounded by pots of geraniums and watch the other tourists. The mountains surround us, but not too closely. I’m almost giddy. Emmy too seems exuberant.
“I love you,” she says to me once we’re back in the hotel room and nibbling on chocolates. “I can’t wait to have a cousin.” We are sitting in huge German chairs that we pushed right up to our third-story hotel room window, to watch the sun set on the mountains and the pines and the fairy tale–looking buildings of the village. “Do you want a boy or a girl?”
“Either would be a blessing.” Emmy and I haven’t talked much at all about the baby. I think she feels awkward with my history of miscarriages. She doesn’t know the extent, and I hope never will. Kate either. Only Matt knows. And now Brother Mathias. Should I have been so open? “Well, maybe a boy for Matt. After all, I have you.”
She smiles. Where did my niece get that smile? It’s not Kate’s. Or Jamie’s, from what I remember. Or even a combination. It’s entirely her own.
“You can hav
e more babies,” she says. “You can have both.”
“No, Emmy. This is it.” Narcissa Whitman had no more children after her firstborn drowned. “I’m getting older.”
“No, you’re not.” She sounds worried. “You and Mom are still young.”
She looks tiny in the big chair, like Goldilocks. Does Emmy think if I miscarry this time, it will be her fault? I hadn’t thought about it until now. How foolish of me.
“If this healing doesn’t work,” I say, “it won’t be your fault in any way.”
She gazes out the window a long time. I shouldn’t have said anything. “God wouldn’t do that to you,” she says. “Would he?”
The way Emmy struggles day to day with faith reminds me of her mom, except that Emmy, bless her heart, tries to pretend otherwise, at least around me.
“Oh, honey.” I don’t want her sad.
“I would never forgive him.”
I’ve never blamed God for my miscarriages. “The Lord is nigh unto me,” I tell her. “Unto us.”
I suggest we eat the whole box of chocolates instead of saving any for tomorrow.
“I’m going to be the best cousin. Just wait.”
I sleep beside her for two nights. I keep having to tell myself I’m not dreaming.
* * *
For our second trip, we head south to the Columbia Gorge, which is the only sea level route through the Cascades. We follow the river on the Oregon side because the highway is lower. As we travel west, I can see pines beginning on the cliffs farther down the highway, and snow-covered Mount Hood looms. The wind in the gorge nearly rips off the car doors when we stop at The Dalles Dam. We spend an hour in the attached museum. Emmy loves all the old photographs of Indians fishing on wooden piers built out precariously into the raging Columbia before it was dammed. I’d had no idea the river ever looked like that. The place used to be called Celilo Falls, and it was a major native fishery. Now the falls are silent and below water. A tiny dilapidated Indian village still remains, but the interstate separates it from the river. We cross back over the Columbia to the more rugged Washington side to find the heritage marker for Celilo. I’ve lived in Washington my whole life and never heard the story of Celilo Falls or felt wind as fierce as the wind by that marker. Actually I feel more than wind. The sense of loss is enormous and foreboding, especially in an already barren landscape.
How did Narcissa, born and raised in New York State, handle the bleakness of the land out west, especially after her only baby drowned? She adopted eleven children, mostly orphans from the Oregon Trail, trying to fill the emptiness.
“I can almost hear the falls in the wind,” Emmy says. “Can’t you, Aunt Beth?”
I get back in the car, but she stands there a long time by that marker, looking down at the river. Emmy belongs here, more even than I do, more than Kate. The Columbia scares me. It always has, and the wind close to the river is too harsh. Kate wanted to love the rivers and lakes of eastern Washington, even the rocks she used to collect, but Dad kept her back, and then the land for her became symbolic of Jamie. Emmy accepts the wind and the barren cliffs for what they are, and she finds beauty. She accepts me also. What more can a person ask from a niece, or even from a daughter?
On the drive home from the gorge the next day, I start to feel weary and heavy in my bones. I don’t say anything to Emmy, but I wish she knew how to drive. We stop for lunch at a café in Umatilla. Emmy likes the Russian olive trees that grow in dense strands here. To me they appear ancient and biblical. I sip coffee. The cook is Indian and looks more like Reuben the longer I stare at him. He brings out our plates because the waitress, who has Kate’s hair color and suddenly looks like Kate, is too busy flirting with a couple of cowboys in the corner booth. Sister, is that you?
“Are you okay?” Emmy asks.
I nod, sipping more coffee. I try to eat as much as I can so Emmy won’t worry and the baby will be nourished. The waitress touches my arm, inquiring a little too late how everything is and if I want her to box up my leftovers. I don’t remember my reply. Only her touch. Kate?
Emmy smiles wide when we pull into Quail Run and see not only Matt’s truck but Reuben’s. She thought Reuben would still be in Omak with his mom or on the reservation chopping wood for the elderly. Matt and Reuben stand in the driveway talking about fishing, obviously, because Matt is pretending to cast. I missed him incredibly. Emmy notices Reuben’s black eye and busted lip before I do. Her eyes widen. But thank the Lord, no broken arm this time. He quickly comes to Emmy’s side of the car as Matt comes to mine. The kids hug. Emmy is worried. They walk to his truck, for privacy, I assume.
Matt hugs me tightly. “You look tired, darling. A long drive?”
“The wind got to me.” He helps me inside. “I just need a nap.” I get a drink of water and then head for the bedroom. Matt tucks me in. “Did Reuben say what happened to him?” I ask. I’ll prepare some herbs for him. Emmy has been telling me since she first got here that in California I could make money off my oils and herbs. But I can’t imagine I could. Only the missionary wives in service overseas, who occasionally visit our church to raise funds, show the least interest in my tonics.
“The kid assured me he isn’t in trouble,” Matt says. I think my husband is feeling a little fatherly toward Reuben. He’s fatherly with Emmy, but that makes more sense. Matt has blood nephews: his brother has a son, and his sister has two boys. Matt loves them dearly, but he thinks they’ve been given too much. They don’t need him. Maybe he thinks Reuben does.
The bed feels so nice. “Will you sit beside me, Matt, until I fall asleep?” I tell him to let me rest only a few hours. I sleep until the next morning. I dreamed all night of the river. Emmy made me eggs and potatoes and kept them warm in the oven. I’ve been teaching her to cook. She already knows how to bake all kinds of cakes, cookies, and muffins. She does charity bake sales at her school, which makes me so proud. I feel much better. By Friday I feel well enough to go into the church and help.
Brother Mathias is excited to see me. He tells me how much the congregation missed me. “It doesn’t feel the same without you, Sister.” He almost hugs me, but then gives me a lengthy handshake instead. “How are you feeling? And your lovely niece?” He invites me into his office, even shuts the door. But once inside, he seems to have forgotten what he was going to say to me.
I thank him again for the healing. He put everything on the line for me.
“It was the best evening of my life,” he says. “I should be thanking you for your belief in me.”
We sit in silence a few moments. He stares intently at me. I feel uncomfortable and levitated at the same time. He’s an attractive man, in a different way from my husband. I never believed Matt until after the healing that Brother Mathias has feelings for me. Which, in truth, is a tiny part of why I wanted to take the trips with Emmy: to get away from Mathias’s eyes. But are the feelings mutual at all? I don’t think so. I never intended.
“Eastern Washington is a desert,” he says. “All great men in the Bible did time in the desert.” I nod. He sometimes has a roundabout way of speaking. “I’m not a great man, but you have been like a balm to me in this desert.”
Does he mean my faith has been like a balm?
“I should get started on the bulletin,” I say.
“Stay five more minutes. You are a dear friend.” He puts his hand up to his heart. “And a deeply loved sister.”
His confession of love shakes me like a gust of wind from the river, but it doesn’t scare me. It saddens me, and I begin to weep. Have I in any way led him on? Led him astray? If so, I have wronged two men. “And you, Mathias, a dear brother.” I wish he were my real brother, my handsome younger brother that I could watch fondly and loop arms with occasionally and encourage to find a wife to soothe his loneliness. Wiping my eyes, I say, “I should go.”
“Stay, Bethany. Please. I’ll never ask agai
n.”
I give him five minutes, or maybe ten. We don’t talk. He just looks at me, and I look at him, and then he bows his head in prayer. I pray too, and silently like him, with him.
The bleeding begins the following night. I wake to it.
I am sixteen weeks pregnant, further along than I’ve ever been, so the bleeding should feel heavier, but not this heavy. Matt’s hand slipped off my belly in sleep. In fact, he has his back to me, which is better, or he’d be sticky. The pain isn’t sharp. It’s a deep, dull ache. It presses me to the bed, and I feel it even in my teeth. I remember Kate’s teeth hurting while she was pregnant. My heart races, then slows. Races. My pulse has been unsteady for years, but nothing like this. I sit up and pull back my side of the covers. In the moonlight I can see the swath of blood. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee. If I can just make it to the bathroom before Matt wakes up. And through the rivers. I find myself in the kitchen. They shall not overflow thee. I leave a trail, despite keeping my legs together to hold what remains of my baby inside me. I make a phone call to my minister, Brother Mathias. I whisper frantically into the receiver for him to pray for me because I have no prayers left. I hang up before he can reply. I need clary sage oil to calm me. I accidentally drop the first bottle. The moans start deep inside me, like the pain, and I can’t stop them. The second bottle I smash. I tear open my precious bags of different tea leaves and scatter them, but there is no wind in here, no breeze, no air at all.
Then I smash another jar and another and another.
How long has Matt been standing there? At first, his look is one of love and sorrow, then a shadow passes over his face. Fear? Terror? I cannot bear it. I will my vision to blur, but then I see Emmy to my left. Her eyes are wide, and she covers her mouth with both hands. Matt yells at her to stay back. He yells again. “Emmy, damn it, I said stay back!” Why would he tell her to stay away from me? He keeps trying to approach me, but I moan louder and won’t let him. He begs me to calm down and not to move or I’ll cut my feet. I feel so weak. Hours seem to pass, but of course it’s only minutes. My pulse slows. Years and years in this kitchen making oils and teas.