Mrs. Mike

by Benedict Freedman

  He didn't kiss me or hold me. He said, "Good night, Kathy," very gravely.

  I lay beside him for hours wondering whether or not he was asleep.

  In the morning there was a lot to do. I already had the makings of sandwiches laid out. I just slapped them together. All right, I thought, that's the way he wants it. He hadn't spoken to me of the future, of when I came back. That was all right with me. I'd be glad never to set eyes on this country again. But maybe he thought there was still time; maybe he didn't realize these were our last moments alone. I finished packing the hamper and snapped it closed.

  "I guess there'll be a crowd down at the lake," I said. But he was lugging out my trunk. I wasn't even sure he heard me.

  Everyone was at the dock, and everyone had instructions for me. I was to look up a girl in Los Angeles and somebody's mother in Detroit.

  "But I'm going to Boston."

  So, I was going to Boston, it wouldn't be much out of my way,

  and they loaded me down with names and addresses and presents. If I got to New York there was a little restaurant on Seventh Avenue . . . And the things I was to bring back—dresses, pipes, pictures . . .

  The sick man was lowered into the launch. Tim kept begging Mike to let him go as far as the train.

  "If it's all right with Constance," Mike said.

  James McTavish gave me a list of books I was to pick up second hand if I could.

  "But, Mother, I've never seen a train." That ended it. Constance gave in, and Timmy came with us.

  Bishop Grouard shook my hand, gave me his blessing, and if I got a chance I was to look up Father Grady at St. Anne's. And somehow, all the while, through the confusion, I was conscious of Sarah. She watched me as I smiled and joked, and her eyes were mournful. At the last, when Mike was holding out his hand to me and Timmy was yelling, "Get in, Kathy!" Sarah came up to me.

  "Mrs. Mike," she said, "come back. You must come back."

  Mike lifted me into the boat. I turned and waved, but the faces blurred into a wall of faces. And the shouting, calling, and well-wishing reached me as noise from which I could not separate a word. All the time I was thinking: How could she know?

  The water cut me off from Grouard. I looked at the hill. We were too far away to see the crosses. Don't stand here, I told myself. Walk to the front of the boat. It would be symbolic, a looking forward. But I didn't go forward, not until I felt Mike looking at me.

  There were wild geese honking and flying overhead. They flew in a pattern, making a V across the sky. There had been patterns for me too. A red brick home, mother, sisters, a yellow Pete and a Juno. I had broken that pattern for Uncle John's. Then Mike had carried me into a wild white pattern that had turned gray and frozen.

  Randy and Tim and I laughed over my many and varied commissions. Mike smoked and listened. It took us ten hours to reach

  Sawarage. We were all cramped and tired. We split up for the night, various families taking us in. And in the morning we followed Mike's plan of renting a horse and wagon. The rail lines were only fifteen miles away. But what a fifteen miles!

  The men who had taken us by boat kept on with us. We couldn't have done it without them, for the trail was muskegged. We wallowed in mud, the four men pushing the wagon from one watery rut into another. They laid boards and tried to keep the wheels on them. But every few minutes the horse would get bogged, sinking to his knees in the marshy places. By the time he had been pulled, coaxed, hauled, and kicked out of it, the slime had oozed over the boards, and once again the wheels would go slithering off. To make it worse, Randy gave advice from the wagon. I saw the boatmen look murder at him, more than once. We ate lunch mired to the wheel hubs, and floundered on again. I couldn't believe train tracks had been laid on ground like this.

  "Maybe it's a rumor," I said. "After all, have any of you ever seen the train?"

  And then, there it was. In the midst of nowhere stood an engine, a caboose, and a car with seats. We investigated and exclaimed over everything. But not as much as the men who came out of the station exclaimed over us. I guess we were a sight, solid mud up to our hips, and the rest of us smears and splashes.

  The railroad men were very hospitable. They took us into the station, which was a derailed box car, and fed us black coffee.

  Mike asked them if it was true that, in bringing the line in, they followed the old buffalo trails. They said they did that as nearly as possible. The buffaloes always chose the easiest grades and cleared paths in heavily timbered sections.

  They discussed the country, and Mike said it would open up once the railroad was in. "In ten years there'll be tourists and hotels for them to stay at. The vacationing bankers and holiday lawyers will ruin the hunting and trapping, God help us!" The railroad men nodded and spat and agreed with him.

  "Although," said the engineer, "you raise mosquitoes in this country like they raise cows in Jersey, and they'll keep the tourists out better than anything." And he swore to us that the summer before he had seen big mosquitoes who couldn't get through the netting themselves, push the little ones through.

  Mike laughed politely and asked about the fare. It was they who laughed then. "We can't charge you for the kind of ride the young lady will get. She travels as our guest, but at her own risk."

  And though Mike argued till I was afraid they would change their minds, they didn't.

  About that time we missed Timmy. Mike found him in the engine, fondling levers, gloating over switches, touching buttons and knobs.

  We made a bed for Randy in the caboose. And Mike brought my trunk in. The small overnight case he carried into the car with seats. From deep inside a pocket he pulled out ten ten-dollar bills.

  "Not so much," I said.

  "I'll feel better if you have it. You may need it, you never can tell," and he stuffed the money into my hand.

  Tim and the boatmen came up and said good-bye. Suddenly I realized Mike was saying good-bye too.

  "I think you were right, Kathy, that the change will do you a lot of good."

  The conductor looked in on us. "We're pulling out, Sergeant."

  "Kathy . . ."

  "Yes?"

  "I want you to have a good time."

  "I will."

  "Sergeant!"

  "All right. Kathy, I—" His arm went around me, clumsy and uncertain. I watched him walk away, and then he was outside and we were smiling at each other through the window. The train jerked forward. Mike walked along under the window. My last picture of him was standing alone, against the whole Northwest.

  I stared out at the wet dripping country, my heart aching with the things said and the things unsaid.

  The first hour the engine jumped the track twelve times. At each derailment the crew tumbled out and lifted it back on. It took us two days and one night to go two hundred miles. But there were a lot of diversions. There were contractors' tents all along the way where we'd stop for food and talk and black coffee. Then on again. If I got tired of sitting, I'd get out and walk beside the train and talk to the engineer about all the things I was going to do in the city. Every once in a while the ground became slushy, and water covered the tracks. Then I'd hop on and look after Randy. I began to enjoy the trip, to look forward to Boston.

  Twenty-six

  Causeway Street. The North Station. Boston. There it was, gleaming in the rain, familiar and yet unreal. I had the same uneasy feeling you have in a dream when you speak freely and yet a bit dubiously to someone you have loved and who is now long dead. All through the trip with the sick man I had been fretting impatiently, burning to see my home and Mother. Now I was afraid.

  My sister, Anna Frances, and Randy's sister, Mrs. Lentfield, met us at the station. There were introductions, talk about baggage, and hasty good-byes. Randy had stood the trip extremely well, and he was happy, confident that Boston surgeons would have him walking again. I felt I'd been right to bring him.

  My sister had been watching me thought
fully and saying very little. Mother was home, nursing a cold. Mary Ellen hoped to get down from Rhode Island. There were none of the questions I had been expecting about Grouard and Mike. Instead, my sister took my hand as we rode home in one of the new trolleys and said, "Mother is very happy you've come home."

  "I want to stay a long time," I said carefully.

  "As long as you want," my sister said. "This is your home."

  If my sister was strangely silent, my mother was even more strangely talkative. She kissed me and smiled at me and spoke of a thousand and one things—of the elevated railroad they were building, of my sister Ellen's baby, of the awful weather, of guess whom she had run into at the library, of the good and bad habits of the boarders, of the difficulty they had finding out when my train was to arrive—in short of everything under the sun except my four years in the Northwest.

  My mother was looking remarkably young and gay. She insisted her cold was much better, just seeing me had been the tonic she needed, so we ended up going out to lunch and taking in the town. Mother knew her Boston, and I had to admire everything, even the new bank building. After a while I was carried away by her gaiety, but even so I felt there was something forced and nervous about it.

  The second day there was a homecoming party for me. Boys and girls whose faces I vaguely remembered crowded into my mother's living room. Someone played "Alexander's Ragtime Band" on the piano. I missed Uncle Martin's bagpipe, but he ruefully explained that the boarders couldn't stand its "outlandish noise," and it was gathering dust in the attic.

  A tall pale youth called Dick or some other equally colorless name invited me to dance. My sister served sherbet and small delicate cakes. I ate them greedily. The food was the only thing that tasted real to me.

  Dick made me sit down next to him at the piano while he sang "Oh, You Great Big Beautiful Doll" in an exaggerated comic style, looking at me and grinning after every chorus. A din of chatter and gossip filled the room. I got up and walked out on the porch. I couldn't stand so many people so close to me. I was overpowered by the noise, the perfume, the decorations, and by the glare of the electric lights. After the soft glow of candles, everything seemed harsh and artificially bright.

  On the porch the air was cold and wet. It felt good. I strode into the drizzle. I turned my face up, and the rain caressed my cheeks. The subdued secret patter it made on the pavement soothed me.

  "Kathy, what are you doing out here?"

  Dick was standing on the porch, testing the rain with his outstretched hand. He drew me back under the eaves.

  "Aren't you enjoying the party?"

  "Oh, yes, it's nice," I said.

  "I know how you feel. I like to get away from the crowd too." He looked me over curiously. "You're liable to catch cold. It's raining, you know." He laughed and leaned on the porch rail beside me.

  "Well, how does it feel to be back in civilization?"

  He edged closer and put his hand on mine.

  "You'll think I'm kidding, but it was quite a blow to my young life when you moved away."

  I drew back, feeling suddenly uncomfortable in my sister's full-skirted party dress.

  "You're teasing," I said, trying to match his gay air. "Aren't you, Dick ... it is Dick?" Now I was really confused and hardly ready to resist when he took both my hands and began to speak earnestly and rapidly.

  "Kathy, you have no idea how beautiful you look in that gown. I'm quite an expert on color harmony, and take it from me, chartreuse is the perfect thing for your eyes and hair. I will always remember you as you are now."

  I wanted to say this is my sister's dress, and I generally wear trousers, sometimes two pair if it's cold enough, and this talk of color harmony is ridiculous, and you know you don't mean a word of all that chatter, and please let go of my hands . . . But a numb bewilderment was on me, and in a moment he was drawing me closer. When I saw that silly face bending down toward me, however, the spell broke. I laughed and pushed Dick away. I could see that he was as surprised as I was at my strength and roughness.

  "Go in and play with the girls," I said. I opened the screen door and walked upstairs. I was gleeful. In Alberta I had been delicate, even pampered. Sarah kept a continuous eye on me. Mike saw that I had nine hours' sleep. Everybody knew I had to be careful because of my pleurisy. But down here in Boston I was almost indecently healthy and strong. For the first time since I'd left, I allowed myself to think of Mike. There were no men like him in Boston. Tall, yes, but not solid. Brilliant, but not enduring. I sat on the bed in my sister's room and smiled proudly. After a while, I cried.

  The door opened softly, and my mother stole into the room. She put her arms about me. "Katie," she said, "you're lonely."

  "It's all over now," I said. I rubbed my eyes with my hands and stood up. "I'd rather not go back to the party, Mother. I'd rather just sit here and talk to you. We really haven't had a chance to be alone."

  "I wanted you to myself too, Katie. But I thought, after all those years, you'd like some fun . . . some gaiety."

  "Mother," I said abruptly, "I love him. I always will."

  "I know."

  "I wish he were here."

  My mother smoothed my hair. "We can work that out," she said. "I don't want you to leave home for a long time." She looked thoughtfully down at the floor. "Perhaps . . . Sergeant Flannigan would like to come to Boston."

  "For a visit? He couldn't do that."

  "I mean permanently," my mother said.

  "No, Mother. In Boston, Mike would be just a cop."

  "Katherine Mary." My mother spoke in a new firm voice. "The last thing I would ever do is to interfere in my daughters' lives. You were married somewhere off in the wilderness to a man I never met, and you've lived four years in a place I never heard of. I always dreamed of the day when you would have a big church wedding with your sisters and myself by your side. Well, that can't be helped. It's a wild thing you are, just like your father that went off to Australia and came back with a parrot on his shoulder. But it's not my happiness I'm thinking of now. You've lived hardly like a woman, stuck in a little cabin with snow outside and mosquitoes inside, with not two dresses to your name, and not a white woman to pass the time of day with, nor a doctor to care for your babies when they lay dying, far from your friends and your family. No one should be made to do that. It's not right. I'm an old-fashioned woman, Katie. I believe a woman should stick by her husband. But this time it's different. If your man wants you, let him come here and get you. It's no blame I have for him. A man lives the life he has to. But I'm your mother. And I'm not letting you go north again to loneliness and the graves of your children!"

  "I don't want to," I murmured.

  "And now," my mother said brightly, "you're to forget all this. You're to remember you're only a child of twenty years, and you're to cheer up and smile. Surely you've worked hard enough and suffered long enough. Now, let's go back to the party."

  "All right," I said, "I will."

  So I went down and danced and talked and sang and drank punch, and though I didn't believe it was possible, my spirits began to lift, and when I went to bed that night I was too exhausted to think back or brood; so I went to sleep content, if not happy.

  In the morning I gave my sister back her party skirt, and Mother took me out and bought me one.

  "Would you like to go to the theater tonight?" she asked.

  "Yes," I said. "Tonight, and tomorrow night too."

  There were weeks of plays, operettas, and musical comedies— color, movement, and song reaching out from the stage and holding me entranced. The Red Mill, The Dollar Princess ... It was after The Chocolate Soldier. Mother and I were riding home on the "L." The tunes I had heard were running through my head, the full taffeta skirts were still whirling. Mother was speaking of the boarders, and I wished she wouldn't. I wished she would let me waltz and coquette with the twelve tall, gold-braided, uniformed men and sing with the pretty powdered women. It was
about Miss Ivy that she didn't know what to do.

  "She has a perfectly good position. Why, she earns more than Mr. Monts. Of course, when I took her in she wasn't earning, but now it's different. She can afford to pay for her room; after all, it's the nicest in the house, and I think she should."

  The blue painted sky with its white clouds gave place to the real one, black, wet, and drizzly.

  "Why don't you ask her to pay, Mother?"

  "Well, I've hinted at it. But you're right, Katherine Mary, and I'll be asking her straight out."

  I was ashamed of myself for being so thoughtless. Mother'd done so much for me since I'd been here. It wasn't right. She was middle-aged and working hard for the little she had. When we went to The Pink Lady and Quaker Girl, I took Mother. We saw Peg o' My Heart too, so sweet and Irish, with love going all the wrong way till the end.

  We went to all the shows, and there were plenty, for Boston was always the big try-out town. But the most thrilling evening was the one spent at the Boston Theatre. Sarah Bernhardt was playing, and the Washington Street entrance was jammed with pushing sables and prodding minks. Mother and I went around to the side and into the theater by a sort of tunnel. The galleries were steep, and we climbed to the very top, so high that I got vertigo and pictured myself crashing into the orchestra. Funny, at Hudson's Hope I scaled the highest, most dangerous bluffs and wasn't afraid.

  Well, I couldn't tell you much about the play, but every movement of that woman is engraved upon my mind. She was tall and very slight, with a mass of red hair piled high on her head. She hypnotized the entire audience. We strained forward to catch each inflection of that clear, high voice. The other actors annoyed me. I waited for them to finish, that she might answer. What a night! After that I piled my red hair high on my head.