Prospects of a Woman

by Wendy Voorsanger

  Elisabeth arrived back at the cabin with Yellow Dog the next day to a shambles. Nate stumbled toward her, throwing his arms around her and hugging too tight, stammering. His voice shaking.

  “Oh, dear God! My prayers are answered. You’re safe.”

  She stayed rigid in his arms.

  “I thought something awful happened to you. I’d a been shattered. Shattered with guilt. I should’ve never left. I’ll never leave you alone again.”

  “You can leave. I suspect I wouldn’t mind,” she said.

  Nate didn’t hear. Or didn’t want to hear. He turned, fussing frantic over his books.

  “A bear broke in. Thank the Lord you weren’t here, or who knows what might’ve happened. Look! All my books. Rifled through,” he said, holding up frayed pages.

  Nate scuttled from book to book, picking them up and dusting them. He looked pathetic and weak; the accomplished book lender from Lowell had long disappeared. Seeing him dancing with that lady-man drowned out all the affection she’d felt for him. All her hopes of a happy marriage now lay dead at the bottom of his dirty well of deception.

  “The beast rummaged through the food cabinet. It’s all gone. The pork, dried apples, the beans. The damn thing even ate the salt. I’ll have to go back to town for more. We need a gun. Thankfully, it didn’t get your Emerson book,” he said.

  She snatched “Self-Reliance” out of his hand as words and accusations sat dormant and unformed on her tongue, the vocabulary for his actions nonexistent. She couldn’t look at him and turned toward her satchel, dumped open with various spools of thread strewn about. The two remaining bolts of fabric she’d brought from Lowell lay unfurled and torn. She collected her spools, putting them back in the satchel, then sat on the dirt floor of the cabin rolling up the fabric.

  “Where were you last night?” Nate asked.

  “Where were you?”

  Nate fell to his knees, taking hold of her shoulders.

  “Oh, ’Lizbeth. I’m sorry I left you alone.”

  She pushed him away.

  “What’s got into you?” Nate asked.

  “All kinds of something, apparently,” she said, feeling an unfamiliar rage bubbling up.

  “What?”

  “I saw you, last night,” she said.

  Elisabeth saw his eyes flash with fear, but he kept quiet. An ant crawled on her skirt, and she flicked it away as her mind slipped back to the night before. Her husband kneading himself up against that lady-man. Fragments had trickled to her all morning, banging in her head like a bag of jagged rocks as she hiked down from Coyoteville. Her head thudded and clunked with each step, her skin smelling strange and her mouth filling with acid.

  She remembered Nemacio. The drink. Nasty and delicious, drifting warm and swirling her sloppy into an eddy of oblivion. She remembered Nemacio placing her on a feather quilt, the softness sensual, luxurious. She savored that remembrance, and bubbled up more. Perhaps she wouldn’t let go of his neck. Maybe she tried to kiss him and he peeled her hands off and tucked her under a soft blanket. Maybe she tried to take off her dress. Pull him close to her. Had she gotten sick? Maybe he cleaned her lips, gave her water, tucked the blanket under her chin. She captured a slight memory of him washing her feet. Had he rubbed her heels, or did she imagine it? In her fuzzy memory, he’d left her to sleep alone. She’d awoken inside his tent that morning to a hardboiled egg and a single red Indian paintbrush flower placed in a tiny basket. And Yellow Dog licking her blood-crusted toe clean. She wondered now where Nemacio had slept last night, not seeing him anywhere that morning in Coyoteville; she’d wandered around the single street strewn with lean-tos for a solid hour before giving up.

  “What did you see?” Nate asked.

  “I saw you . . . dancing with that lady-man.”

  Nate sucked in air, sharp like he’d been stung by a bee, as she trolled his face for some recognition of the man she knew back in Lowell. Her gentle husband. Sophisticated. Dignified. Managing his own business. The man who read aloud to her and brought her flowers and books and told her she was his everything. She couldn’t see that man in his face now, all squished up with deceit. He leaned in too close, his breath fouled with betrayal. She turned her head and started biting her nails again, spitting bits of skin onto the dirt floor. She bit and picked until her pinky burned raw, blood pooling bright, until she had to suck her wounded finger to stanch the bleeding.

  He began, slow and deliberate.

  “I don’t know what you think you saw, ’Lizbeth.”

  “I saw you with a man!”

  “Darling,” he said, kneeling close. “The West has unmoored us. Set us adrift. Confused our sensibilities. Without the steadiness of my book business, I’m at a loss. And with your father gone, you’ve been quite difficult to care for.”

  She hated when he made excuses. Blamed her.

  “What’s taking care of me got to do with you loving on a man?”

  “Oh, darling, you misunderstand. All men have a common desire toward gentlemanly fraternity. It’s perfectly natural, especially for me, contributing so pitiful to our livelihood. You’ve weakened me. Made me dependent upon you in ways I don’t find comfortable.”

  “You’re saying me making money sewing and washing, me keeping us fed . . . that’s what caused you to go dance with men?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I was simply enjoying my companions. A man has a right, even if his wife buys the bread.”

  “Gentlemanly fraternity? Is that what you call it?”

  “I’m more comfortable with the diggers than with you, ’Lizbeth. I enjoy cards. Drinking. Reminiscing about home. You’ve become a hard, rough woman.”

  His words split her like rock smashed under a pick, all consideration and affection crumbling out, slow and sour. Another ant crawled along the length of her dress, scurrying frantic by the upending. She flicked it, too, sending it flying, disoriented and damaged, its lower half ripped clean off. She wished those damn ants hadn’t found their way into the cabin.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said.

  “Which part?”

  “You don’t even know how to love a woman!”

  Hearing her spite, he got up and left, slamming the door behind him. She stayed inside all afternoon tidying the cabin, struggling for some sort of understanding. Forgiveness. She thought back to the Pacific crossing aboard the Humboldt, when Nate had left her below many nights, saying he needed air, a walk on the deck for his constitution. She hadn’t followed him to see what sort of fraternity he’d sought in the dark. She wondered if his peculiar gentleman wanderings had begun then, with the dark sea as cover for his sins.

  Nate returned later that afternoon as if nothing happened, offering her a tin cup.

  “I got coffee from the boys upriver,” he said.

  A whiskey whiff on Nate suffocated her. Hoping coffee might stop her thudding head, she took the cup, leering at Nate, wondering what he was drinking in his cup.

  “From your lady-man?”

  Nate ignored her snide question, holding out his palm.

  “I picked some blackberries for you.”

  She reached for a berry, savoring the ripe sweetness.

  “I tore my skin getting those for you,” Nate said, pulling up his sleeves to show the little dots of dried blood on his forearms.

  “I’m not sorry for it,” she said.

  “Come here,” he slurred.

  “No.”

  Nate reached out with a surprising force and grabbed her wrist. He placed his mouth on hers and slid his tongue along her teeth, trying to pry her mouth open.

  “I don’t want to,” she said, turning her head from side to side.

  “Sure, you do,” he said, running a hand up her leg, sloppy.

  She rolled her eyes like she was bored.

  “You can’t even do it proper.”

  “Yes, I can,” he said, squinting as if he was bringing her into focus.

  She watched him remove his shirt and drop his
pants, struggling clumsy to free each leg. In the candlelight, he cut a handsome figure, tall and ropy from months digging in the dirt. When she saw him lying limp between his legs, she pointed and laughed.

  “I told you so!”

  He threw her down on the bed, kissing her cheeks, and she laughed and laughed unhinged, taunting, “you can’t do it.”

  “I can,” he said.

  She stopped laughing. She pulled up her skirt and opened her legs to him.

  “Then do it. Give me some love.”

  When he hesitated, she sighed in exasperated disgust and started to crawl off the bed. He pushed her backward, rough, flipping her onto her stomach with surprising force. He pulled down her drawers and tried sticking his tip in and out of her, but he lay limp.

  “Soft as a flower,” she said, her sass turning nasty.

  “You want it?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “You like it?” he said, pressing his hips down onto her bottom.

  “I can hardly feel it.”

  “I’m gonna give you what you want,” he said, an unfamiliar fire in his voice.

  He stank of sour mud and madness.

  “Get off me!”

  She flailed out from under him and stood up.

  “I thought you wanted to,” said Nate, reaching out toward her, gentle.

  “You don’t know how to love a woman.”

  She hoped to shame him into feeling something for her.

  “I do. I love . . .” he said.

  “Men! You love men! You don’t love me.”

  She was crying now, but she wiped away her tears, not wanting to look weak. Nate turned away in shame, pulling on his pants. He fled out into the night, and Elisabeth curled up in a heap on the bed, staring at the shadowy log walls. She was disgusted and angry but guilty, too, that she’d shamed him so. And she’d said it out loud. Said the thing maybe she’d already known. He couldn’t love her; he loved men. She listened to the crickets outside, the noisy rhythm shutting out the vision of him dancing up against those men the night before. Loving with that man in the shadows. She started picking again, biting her fingernails to the quick, as her ears rang harsh. Grasping for an understanding, she felt the ground shift beneath her, with relations emerging far more complicated than she’d previously known, with a gradation of morality and no fixed points to grab hold.

  Elisabeth felt used. Her mother would’ve understood, having gone crazy from being used up by Henry, worn down to a nub of nothing, making her feel there was nothing fine left. Nothing special to hope on. Nothing but soreness and hurt, and a heavy load to carry up a steep, endless mountain, like a donkey being dragged along by a rope. A torrent of guilt and regret swamped her. She should’ve shown her mother greater patience and kindness and love. She should’ve told her she was worth more than how Henry treated her, with his leaving them with nothing. Maybe then her mother might not have crumbled and crushed and split open by a sickness as bad as those cursed apples.

  Lightheaded, she lost focus. She closed her eyes as darkness spun round and round inside her head, and she faded, falling into a void of regret she couldn’t escape. She wished she’d never married and come west with Nate looking for her father. A vicious rage flowed through her blood, solidifying her heart like molten lava cooling into a heavy rock. She knew she’d never rid herself of that weight; she’d carry the burden forever.

  11

  October 1850

  My Dearest Friend Louisa May,

  I haven’t yet heard from you and am sorely missing your company, especially your particular frank perspective, full of sharp wit and humor, so deeply refreshing and never veiled. I find myself lacking the necessity of your particular female companionship, even as I discover the true meaning of loving in my marriage. There is so much to tell, I hardly know where to begin.

  We revel in Father’s riverside home, which is vast with many rooms and comforts I never knew back East. I was surprised to find, even without my mother’s touch, Father managed to fix up this western Goodwin homestead quite nicely, with lace curtains on all the windows and an impressive set of china on which we enjoy our supper. He’s filled the walls with extravagant prints in every color made from his woodcuts, brightening up my mood with every glance. We even have a red mohair divan where I take my respite every afternoon in front of a cozy fire and an oil lamp to light my way though the pages of “Self-Reliance.” Our large front porch is simply the perfect place, filling with sunshine as I take morning tea with the scones made from the wild berries I find growing in abundance along the river canyon.

  My days are not so difficult. I dig leisurely in the river with Nate, as I cannot wile away all my hours and days reading. Women grow bored by doing nothing of significance. I need something to occupy my spirit, as do you. I never struggle alongside Nate, practically scooping gold up in my bonnet. We’ve nary the hours to tally up our finds! The work is far easier than what I knew at the orchard or the mill, with the benefit of a glorious air giving me vigorous good health in mind and body, and no angry machines threatening to rip off my scalp. The nature here is singularly spectacular, far more than I could put into words. The river ravine is steep and wild with a large variety of majestic pines and other trees, too, and a blinding sunlight so clear that it’s quite painful to the eye. I take daily walks through the canyon, losing myself in the pristine beauty. The air is soft and gentle and safe, and the river itself offers me a great source of comfort, filling me with a sense of calm and hope, never murky or rippling with discontent. The fears I once shared with you about Nate becoming silent with bitter disappointment on false promises of family hold absolutely no merit. We grow richer in love by the day, as he shares his mind with constancy. He dances with me under the moonlight, whispering what a fortunate lot he’s drawn in marrying me. I’m relieved I make him so happy, as a good wife should, although, I must admit, with only men for company, loneliness creeps upon me now and again, and I miss you dearly. Fortunately, a big yellow dog has taken up my favor, following me around like a shadow everywhere I go, sitting by my side at the riverbank as I dig. At first, his blind loyalty struck me as rather stupid, as I never feed him and push him off when he puts his slobbery face in my lap for a cuddle. But his incessant love has grown endearing, and when he greets me on the porch in the mornings, I’m filled with such a rush of warmth that I take hold of his chin in my hands and whisper praise and love into his floppy ears, not at all minding his stinky slobber. How silly I am!

  I think of you often, squished together with your whole family in that little Boston apartment, wondering how you manage. As you adjust, I do hope you find space between lessons in your current position as teacher and governess to post word to me in Coyoteville. Tell me about the stories you’re writing under your mysterious nom de plume, Flora Fairfield. Is your latest a thriller or a children’s yarn? I implore you, LM. Do not stop writing, no matter what stumbles you up or blocks your path. You must find a way. A woman must truly have something of her own before embarking on a partnership with a man. Please write when you’re able.

  Your gold digger friend in the West,

  EP

  12

  “It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”

  Nate stumbled back to the cabin in the middle of the night, acting a baby, saying he’d been bitten by a snake. Trying to make her open the door, he pleaded in a trembling voice outside the cabin. She’d barred the door with the table so he couldn’t get inside.

  “It’s coming on something terrible. My whole leg’s swollen up, ’Lizbeth.”

  What a great pretender, just like that hognose snake that bit her back on the orchard in Concord. She’d been climbing trees in the back row of the orchard. When she jumped down, she’d landed right on top of an old hognose. It put on such an impressive display, puffing up and hissing fierce. When it lunged and bit, her father had come running with a stick. He didn’t even have to
beat that snake. As soon as it saw the stick, the hognose had started writhing around, vomiting, then let its tongue loll out like it was dead. The bite in her leg was shallow and clean; it hadn’t even required a bandage. She remembered her father saying she had a better chance being killed by lightning than a snake, but he’d picked her up in his arms anyway, carrying her back to the house gently. When she looked over her father’s shoulder, the snake had righted itself and slithered away.

  Nate rapped weakly on the door, whining.

  “I come all the way from Coyoteville. Getting us a gun. Open up, ’Lizbeth. Please. Please. I’m hurting real bad.”

  What a fool. They didn’t have the money to buy a gun. She ignored his begging, letting him go on and on about the pain like that sneaky hognose, pretending. She wasn’t about to let Nate trick her into taking him back inside. He could sleep in their old tent, suffering all night, for all she cared. She stuffed her fingers in her ears to drown out his cries and fell asleep on the bed.

  When she woke the next morning, she slid the table away and opened the door to see Nate crumpled up on the stoop with a new gun and Yellow Dog licking and licking his knee. His pant leg was torn nearly off with a bandage wrapped tight around his right calf. As she removed the wrapping to inspect the wound, he stirred.

  “’Lizbeth? That you? My sight’s blurring,” he said, blinking and squinting.

  “Hold still,” she said.

  His leg looked fat, nearly twice its normal size, with two red blood spots near the ankle where the snake must’ve grabbed hold. She ran to the river, filling a bucket of water. She heaved the heavy bucket back to the cabin, scooting Yellow Dog aside. The dog whimpered as she put down the bucket, kicked open the door, and dragged Nate inside. She grabbed a bolt of fabric she’d been saving from Lowell and tore off strips. Dipping the rags into the bucket, she tried to clean the wound, but the whole lower half of his leg had swelled grotesque. She dumped all the water onto his leg, muddying up the dirt floor inside the cabin, then ran to the river for more. She made six or seven trips, filling the bucket up and dumping water onto his bitten leg. She held his head and put a cup of water to his lips. Most of the water dribbled out the side of his mouth. Nearly delirious now, Nate mumbled.