That was what Mama had in mind for me, but it was not what I wanted. I was fifteen, and I knew I wanted to paint the pictures I wanted to paint and draw what I wanted to draw. But how was I going to do that? I had no idea.
One blustery day in early December, the whole family gathered at Aunt Lola’s. Mama, Papa, Auntie, and the three youngest children—and Penelope!—were taking the night train from Madison to begin the journey to Virginia. This was a farewell supper and such an unusual occasion that nobody knew quite how to act. Mama took charge of the pot roast, rescuing it from Aunt Lola. Ida and Nita, who had permission to be absent from Sacred Heart for a few hours, were put to work slicing onions and carrots. Francis was responsible for peeling the potatoes and mashing them until not a single lump survived. I made tapioca pudding with coconut, Papa’s favorite. Auntie and Catherine entertained Claudie. Everyone seemed subdued except Papa, who was exuberant and couldn’t sit still. Mama kept chasing him out of the kitchen.
At last a big meal was laid out on the table, but nobody was hungry except Papa. I hardly touched my plateful. Alexius called the dessert “fish eyes,” made a face, and pushed it away.
Then it was time to go to the railway station.
Our family had never been separated like this. Four of us had been sent away to school, but we always knew we could get home—Sun Prairie was only an hour away. Once in a while Papa had come to Madison on business, or Mama made a special trip to the city to shop or to visit a doctor. We’d grown used to the comings and goings, but this was different. We would not all be together again until summer, and summer was a long way off.
The travelers—especially Papa—were excited, looking forward to a new life, but those of us who would be left behind, even temporarily, were already feeling the loss. Alexius was the first one to begin sobbing and had to be pried out of Nita’s arms. Then everyone was crying—except Francis, and even he was probably choked up.
The conductor shouted, “All aboard,” there was one last round of embraces and promises to write, and the travelers hurried to climb onto the Pullman sleeping car. Papa had reserved a lower berth for himself and Mama and little Claudie, and an upper berth for Auntie and Catherine and Alexius. Penelope had already been led onto a special car fitted with horse stalls. The whistle blasted twice, smoke belched from the locomotive, and the train lurched forward. White handkerchiefs fluttered from the open windows as the train gathered speed. The rest of us stood on the station platform and waved until the last flicker of white had vanished.
At Christmas my brother and I collaborated on a greeting to send to the half of the family that was now in another part of the country. I begged a sheet of fine watercolor paper from Miss Fellers. Francis, who had a talent for elegant printing, copied the words of “Silent Night” in the center of the sheet—it was Mama’s favorite carol, and Papa’s, too. Around the borders I painted miniature scenes of the stable and the manger, the shepherds and the animals, the three Wise Men and the star. We packed our gift between sheets of cardboard and mailed it off to Virginia.
The nuns agreed to allow Ida and Nita to spend their three-day holiday with us at Aunt Lola’s. Francis volunteered to give up his bed and sleep downstairs on a divan I knew would be too short for his long, lean frame. Aunt Lola ordered a turkey—goose seemed too much to undertake—and Francis would do his special mashed potatoes again, and I would attempt to bake a chocolate cake. We would ask Ida and Nita to help with the cranberry sauce and cauliflower, even though we all hated cauliflower and probably no one would eat it.
Everything was planned when my sisters sent word: they would come by to wish us a happy Christmas, but two new friends at Sacred Heart had invited them to their home for the holiday. The father of the family was a wealthy banker with an estate on one of the lakes near Madison.
“They won’t be here for Christmas dinner!” I exclaimed, waving the note under Francis’s nose. “Can you imagine? Ida and Nita have decided to spend the day with friends! How could they do such a thing!”
“Because they want to, I guess,” Francis said with a shrug. “Probably get a better meal there than they would here.”
“That’s hardly the point, is it?” I stormed. “Who cares what they’ll eat! It feels to me like our family is breaking apart!”
“I don’t know why you’re so upset, Georgie. You always dramatize everything. They want to have dinner with their friends, so let them.”
Ida and Nita came by, as they had agreed, and we all exchanged handmade cards. For Aunt Lola I had painted a small picture of a sleeping woman, and across the bottom Francis lettered “Beautiful Dreamer,” the Stephen Foster song she loved. She was so pleased she burst into tears.
My sisters had also done little paintings, and I was sure I could see Sister Angelique’s influence. I’d asked Ida about my favorite nun, but she wouldn’t tell me anything. When I had a moment alone with Nita, I pried out of her the admission that the nun often praised my work. She made me promise not to let Ida know she’d told me. Ida never could stand being compared to me, and Sister Angelique’s comments had sent her into fits of jealousy. Hearing what the nun had said did make me feel a little better.
My sisters stayed for less than an hour before they drove off in the carriage that had been hired to take them to “Trianon du Lac.” I did my best not to show how upset I was that my sisters had chosen to be with their rich friends.
That Christmas dinner was surely the saddest I’d ever eaten. It had always been the ten of us, Mama and Papa, Auntie, and seven of us children, celebrating holidays and birthdays together. Now we were scattered everywhere, and it was just Francis and Aunt Lola and me with an undercooked turkey, each of us trying hard to be cheerful for the sake of the other two.
Francis and I had always been rivals, and we’d never really been close, but during a blizzard that paralyzed Madison he taught me to play poker. It became our entertainment that winter, and he almost always won. Winning cheered him up.
Classes that spring were uninspiring, but then I discovered music. As a child I’d taken violin lessons, and Mama had taught me to read music and made me practice scales and arpeggios, but I’d had no one to give me formal piano lessons.
One day when Aunt Lola was not at home, I opened the cover of the old spinet piano in the parlor and struck a few keys. The piano was badly out of tune, and two of the keys didn’t play at all, but I found a book of piano exercises, like the one I’d had when I was six or seven, and I taught myself to play scales again. Arpeggios, too.
Day after day I practiced, though it was frustrating, with the piano in such terrible condition. Aunt Lola returned unexpectedly early one afternoon and heard me. She hired a piano tuner, and she wrote to Mama, suggesting that I take lessons. Mama agreed. Once a week I went to the dusty apartment of Miss Mildred Wentz, a friend of Aunt Lola’s, and took a lesson. I kept practicing. I was improving.
A few houses down the street from Aunt Lola’s lived a boy named Miklos, who was in my brother’s class. Sometimes he and Francis walked home from school together. They ignored me, and I returned the favor, until one day Francis stayed after school and I saw Miklos heading down our street with a violin case. He spoke to me, and we fell into step and walked the rest of the way together.
I mentioned that my father played the violin. “Mostly Irish folk music,” I said.
“I sometimes play Hungarian folk music,” he said. “The czardas, things like that.” He explained that Miklos is the Hungarian form of Nicholas, and he asked if I played an instrument.
“I’m taking piano lessons.”
“We must get together and play some time,” he said. “You can teach me some Irish jigs, and I will teach you the czardas.”
I had been at the high school for more than six months, and this was the first real conversation I’d had with another student outside of school. I was pleased—I’d never really had a male friend—but I didn’t know what was supposed to happen next. Was I supposed to invite him to come t
o Aunt Lola’s? Or was it up to him to suggest a time and place?
Then Miklos resumed walking home with Francis, and we resumed ignoring each other. I was disappointed—I thought it would have been nice to play music with him.
A letter arrived from Mama after Easter.
My dearest children, she had written in her small, neat hand, I am happy to tell you that we have found the perfect place to be your new home. Wheatlands, as it is called, sits on a hill surrounded by green lawns and huge shade trees. There is not nearly so much land as we had in Sun Prairie, but there is enough, and your father successfully negotiated a good price.
The stately old mansion has eighteen rooms, much larger than our house in Sun Prairie. Certainly enough for the O’Keeffe family! I am sure you will love the verandahs, the honeysuckle vines that perfume the air, and the roses that ramble everywhere.
What a pretty town Williamsburg is! The weather is delightfully warm. Papa has opened a store selling groceries as well as feed and grain and anticipates a brisk business.
It was not like Mama to write so glowingly, but I was glad that she seemed pleased with the house. But she went on to say that it was a bit like camping, since nearly all of our furniture had been sold with the house, but they would slowly acquire what they needed to make the mansion into a comfortable home.
We are settling in well in our new home, Mama ended, but of course we miss the four of you very much and look forward to having the O’Keeffe family together again.
“Well!” exclaimed Aunt Lola. “That sounds lovely, doesn’t it?”
We agreed that, yes, it did.
Less than a month later I received a letter from Lena. We had both promised to write, but I’d never gotten around to it, and neither had she. Our lives were moving in different directions. I rushed up to my room with the letter and read it slowly—her handwriting was a mess and hard to read. Buddy was sick a lot, she wrote. Her oldest brother had married a girl from Milwaukee, and they were expecting a baby. Miss Belle’s house in the village had caught fire, and only part of it could be saved.
At the end of the letter came the news I dreaded: She and William would be marrying in June. William was running the farm—our farm—and had hired all of her brothers to work for him. For the time being, she and William planned to live with her parents. She still had to help with Buddy, and the house—our house—had been rented out. “I still dream that one day I will be in your tower room,” she wrote.
During the spring term I had made dozens of pencil sketches, but I’d lost interest in painting. I had a few of my old paintings in Madison, things I’d done in Sun Prairie that I planned to take to Virginia, but when I looked at them now, they seemed amateurish. I crumpled them up and threw them into the stove, along with Lena’s letter, which I didn’t mention to Francis.
Aunt Lola saw what I was doing and gasped. “Why on earth are you destroying them, Georgie? Such lovely pictures going up in flames!”
“It’s only practice work,” I said. “I don’t want to keep them around to remind me of how poorly I’ve made them.”
The term ended in June, and Aunt Lola and I attended Francis’s graduation exercises. He had finished near the top of his class, with distinction in mathematics. Ida and Nita said goodbye to their friends at Sacred Heart. The four of us packed up, ready to leave Wisconsin and join the rest of the family in Virginia.
Aunt Lola cried and cried, wiped her eyes and sniffled, and then commenced weeping again. She said the last two years were the best she’d ever had, and I said we’d miss her, too.
That was true—but I was fifteen and eager to begin a new chapter in my life.
PART II
“I’m going to live a life that’s different from yours.”
6
Williamsburg, Virginia—Summer 1903
AFTER MANY HOURS ON THE TRAIN AND THREE changes at unfamiliar stations, my brother and sisters and I finally arrived in Williamsburg. The rest of the family turned out to meet us as we stepped off the train—Papa in high spirits, Mama smiling but reserved, Auntie dispensing hugs and kisses.
I hadn’t seen the three youngest O’Keeffes since last fall, and it seemed they had each changed while still remaining the way I remembered them. Alexius, twelve, jumped up and down, nearly dizzy with excitement. Catherine, always shyer than the rest, tugged on my hand, wanting to tell me right away about her ninth birthday, while little Claudie was chattering a blue streak about the new kitty. The surroundings might be completely different, but it was my same dear family.
We loaded our valises and boxes onto a wagon with “O’KEEFFE & SONS FEED & GRAIN” painted on the sides—it had replaced the John Deere—and then climbed in for the trip to our new home. We must have made quite a sight as we drove past grand old mansions surrounded by untamed hedges and entangled in unruly vines. It seemed strangely quiet for midafternoon. No one was out and about to witness the passing of ten members of the O’Keeffe clan, as people surely would have been on a bright June day in Sun Prairie. Where was everyone?
It was very warm—much warmer than Wisconsin—and an army of tiny insects buzzed and flitted in the muggy air. Mama and Auntie were fanning themselves, and Papa was in his shirtsleeves.
“Sultry,” Auntie said, swatting at a mosquito. “That’s how they describe the weather here.”
We came to the bottom of a steep, narrow lane. Tall pine trees lined both sides of the lane. Giant oaks threw shade on the broad lawn, and flowering bushes blazed with color. “This is Peacock Hill,” Papa announced with a sweep of his arm. “One of our neighbors has peacocks. Beautiful birds!”
“But very noisy!” Mama added. “How can anything so beautiful make such a dreadful racket?”
Alexius demonstrated a peacock’s squawk and, pleased with himself, did it again.
The draft horse, Danny Boy’s replacement, plodded up the hill and halted in front of a huge white house with tall pillars and long verandahs and shutters on every window.
“There it is,” Papa announced proudly. “Wheatlands! And nine acres of land, too!”
He flung open the front door with a huge brass knocker, and I stepped into the entrance hall. Our farmhouse in Sun Prairie was only a farmhouse, not nearly so grand or so grandly named, but it had been crammed with plush-covered divans and carved tables and Mama’s beloved piano. Wheatlands was nearly empty. The rooms echoed hollowly.
I flew up the sweeping staircase to the second floor, and within minutes I had chosen my bedroom and claimed the room next to it for a studio.
“Why are you taking two rooms?” Nita demanded.
“Because I am an artist, and I must have a studio,” I informed her loftily. I didn’t say “going to be an artist,” as I had when I was twelve. I am an artist, I said. I was still not sure exactly what that meant and hadn’t done much painting lately, but I knew that it was important to keep saying it.
“You always get what you want,” Ida said bitterly. She and Nita had become closer than ever since their year together at Sacred Heart.
That was true. I’d always had the tower room to myself, while my four sisters had to share rooms. They complained, but they didn’t challenge me. They’d learned that it was useless: I always got what I wanted, and I took it for granted that I always would.
During our first few days in Williamsburg, Alexius and Catherine took us exploring. There really wasn’t much to explore. What a quiet little town! “Only about five hundred people, counting the Negroes,” Papa said, “and those black folks are mostly servants for the white folks.”
Smaller than Sun Prairie! The main street, called Duke of Gloucester Street as though it belonged to English royalty, wasn’t even paved, and it was ankle-deep in silky dust or, following an afternoon shower, sucking mud. A couple of shops, several churches, and an inn—that seemed to be the extent of it.
“There’s a college,” Alexius informed Francis. “You’ll probably be going there. And a wrinkled old man who goes up and down the streets holl
ering out the price of oysters. They eat them raw here.”
“Ugh!” said Ida and Nita, shuddering.
“And a lunatic asylum!” Catherine added brightly.
People moved slowly. In the afternoons the streets emptied, and the pace went from languid to motionless in those big old houses with the verandahs and pillars. Everybody rested and didn’t begin to move around again until darkness fell and the temperature drifted downward a few degrees.
People spoke slowly too, dropping the g’s and r’s at the end of words. Their a’s and o’s stretched like taffy. Why would you say “doe” when the word is door? But when I spoke to people, I could tell that they thought I was the one who didn’t speak correctly.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that the O’Keeffes were outsiders. We were northerners, the side that won what I’d been taught in school was the Civil War but in Virginia was called the War Between the States, and the Union victory was still resented. We walked too fast and talked too fast. And we didn’t have Negro house servants, except for Minnie, the cook Mama hired.
Papa often worked outdoors beside the Negro hired men, loading and unloading feed and grain, hauling groceries, and building things, his shirtsleeves soaked with sweat—just the way he’d always worked with our hired hands back in Sun Prairie. He was obviously not a “gentleman.”
“Even the Negroes think there’s something odd about Papa doing that,” Francis told me after we’d been there a few weeks. “The older ones don’t say anything, but Sammy, the fellow who makes the deliveries, said, ‘White men here don’t work with their hands, and they don’t work next to coloreds.’”
Girl with Brush and Canvas Page 5
