I passed a furrier. I’d need to bring my motor coat here not for summer storage, but to sell.
The Davenport Hotel rose up several stories between Sprague and First Street, and the elegant lobby was as astonishing as the Waldorf-Astoria’s, though much newer. I didn’t swirl around like a country bumpkin beneath the domed ceiling nor stare too long at the intricate wrought-iron railings that defined the balcony, but I considered it. The thick Persian carpets, large potted plants, and English furniture softened the noise of a very busy place. Men and women in fine fashion, many wearing furs, sauntered after bellboys carrying stacks of luggage like layered cakes. The men behind the desk wore ties and vests and boutonnieres, while the scent of fresh croissants floated like a melody from the kitchen.
This is what my life had come to.
I turned around, entered the more appropriate service entrance.
I found a house for us to rent on Fairview, the same street Olea’s home had been on, just down the block. She’d sold it to enter our adventure with my designs. From that quiet street I walked to the streetcar stop and began my life as a waitress at the Davenport Hotel. After three months, both Louise and Olea were hired as domestics at a smaller hotel down the street, changing sheets and washing towels. It troubled me to see them working so hard, but unexpectedly, Louise perked up with steady, routine tasks. Olea could encourage her and urged her to rest at various times through the day. It kept Louise from thinking about the garden she no longer tended.
On the streetcar, we made a game of looking at the people, guessing where they hurried to or what happened in their day to make them laugh or scowl. When I ate my lunch outside, the sun warm on my face, I wondered what I’d do if I saw Arthur or Billy or Lillian, or if I’d even recognize them. Lillian had been twelve, writing in a diary, when I’d seen her last. Maybe I’d find out where Lillian worked and take an order to her, have a dress made for Louise when I had enough saved up.
While elegant, the Davenport didn’t pay waitresses all that well. But a meal was included, and I liked working among the other servers. I enjoyed the finery of the hotel and its well-portioned guests. The kitchen help told jokes, and I often took my lunch with them, remembering the hotel in Minneapolis where the reporter had found us laughing in the kitchen. Even the Deer Park Egg Farm delivery man sometimes sat down for coffee with us. His presence made me briefly long for my idea of the fur ranch. Eggs would be good food for captive animals, a fine source of protein.
Once I even brought water to the table of a man who looked familiar, and I startled when I realized it was Forest Stapleton seated next to a woman I assumed to be his wife. He was dressed as a fine businessman, but the cuffs of his coat looked frayed. He wore a puzzled expression when I said, “Good afternoon.” He stared at my face and didn’t answer when I asked what beverage he might like. His wife poked his side and said more loudly than necessary, “It’s not polite to stare, especially at the waitresses.”
“Yes. Coffee. With cream and sugar. Don’t I know you?” He stared again as he handed me the menu.
“How could you, Forest? Goodness. She’s the help!” his wife said, grinding out the word help.
“You’re right, my dear.” I knew he recognized me. “How ever would I know a serving girl, not even from my youth?” He looked away.
I took her order, curtsied, and left, expressing silent thanks to my mother that she had offered me a different path from where my fantasy of life with Forest Stapleton might have taken me.
I put aside a little money each month in the precious packet that held the news clippings of the walk. The hotel work proved tiring, and I slept well but had little time for card playing, stamp collecting, or even trying my hand again at designing. Walks brought me by the Spokane River and the falls, and the views of the Twin Sisters mountains in the distance gave me riches.
Olea said I became more and more frugal. I’d be alone before long. My two friends were in their sixties and I’d likely outlive them, so I needed to prepare for what lay ahead. I found it difficult to accept Olea’s contributions to the household rent, but each of us contributed. That’s what family did.
Franklin continued to write to us all. I read the letters out loud. He and Sharon had settled in Montreal, and he’d acquired new work in the furrier field that still required him to travel. He encouraged me to offer up new designs. He sold the ones that had been made up as garments before and made certain I received the proceeds. If you come to Montreal, you could see them on the models at the fair next spring. The seamstresses in Paris plan to replicate the latticework cape. Bring more designs with you. You could keep a little finger in the business without any risk at all, except perhaps becoming known as a fine designer.
I had no money to go to Montreal, barely enough to take the streetcar across town.
Sharon always added a message or two in her tiny script. This time she told of the weather and the beauty of the city. “You must come visit,” she wrote. “Franklin says you are destined to travel.”
“She’s so much like you,” Olea said after we read the last letter aloud. “You could be sisters.”
“Clara has a sister?” Louise asked.
“We have the same name.”
“Your name is Sharon?”
“Her last name, Louise,” Olea said. “Doré. I didn’t say Clara has a sister, though she does. I said Sharon and Clara were so much alike they could be sisters. That tiny script, the same tall stature, that baby-fine hair.”
“And they both love Franklin,” Louise said.
“But in different ways,” I told her. “My hair has a bit of gray in it,” I said. I’d long ago let the blond grow out. “Sharon’s is black as mink.”
“What about your other sisters?” Louise asked. “What color is their hair?”
“They’re blondes,” I said. “They’re too young yet to have gray twining through their chignons.”
“Maybe you ought to see for sure,” Olea said.
FORTY-THREE
Accounting
Olea discovered the Unity Church of Truth on Sixth and Jefferson with an assistant pastor named Emma Wells. “The first woman pastor in Spokane,” Olea said. “It’s good to know the faith is expanding to allow women to be of greater service.” Though Emma Wells did not preach, she taught, and there was a calm about her as she did. She was gentle with Louise, so interested in what anyone had to say that I found hopefulness in her presence.
On Mother’s Day I thought of contacting my mother. It was her birthday month as well. Now that I had no “dirty money” behind me, perhaps I’d be seen as one of them again.
I talked with Reverend Wells about it, and she asked me one day if money was really what the separation had been about. “The real story is rarely about what the story is about,” she said. “There’s always some underlying theme, with guilt and the lack of grace the main characters.” I’d made an appointment to talk with her following a service when I couldn’t hold back the tears. The sermon had been about the Prodigal Son.
“Louise said this curious thing one time,” I said, “about how I act as though I don’t deserve a full plate. Something about how I leave no time for real nourishment. I’m always busy working, looking at my schedule, keeping tidy ledger notes,” I said. “Silly, don’t you think?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Reverend Wells said.
“But could that be? Could my desire to do things my own way be what I feed on?”
“It could. Or it could be what keeps you from a nourished spirit. Many of us don’t think we deserve the goodness of life. We think suffering is our lot. We forget that like the Prodigal Son we are always welcomed back by God. Prodigal even means ‘given in abundance.’ Did you know that?”
“No,” I said. “I thought it meant ‘wayward’ and ‘wasteful.’ ”
“You’re focused on how the boy behaved, not on how the father loved him.”
“I attempted to reconcile,” I defended. “I visited my sister.”
“And you’ve forgiven your mother? Your sister? Forgiveness is a choice, Clara. We’re commanded to forgive.” I wondered if Louise’s corollary about commands as promises fit with forgiveness. “It’s for our own good,” Reverend Wells added. “Not just for the one who is separated from us.”
I rolled the Reverend’s words over in my mind as I took the streetcar home. I’d accepted Ida’s version of my mother, but I hadn’t seen her for myself for nearly twenty years. As an opening perhaps I’d take to my mother my packet with the newspaper clippings, the signatures, those few sketches I’d made. Maybe seeing the old articles would encourage her to write the story down in secret if she hadn’t already; maybe it would let her see how important the walk had been for me and for her and for other women too.
Or maybe the articles would open old wounds, as Ida suggested, where flesh had already grown over and was best left alone.
We’d lived on Fairview over a year when I learned of an opening for a clerk at a finance company, the Merchants Rating & Adjustment firm located in the realty building near Riverside and Main. I applied, and though I was a little disconcerted by the work they did—collecting from people who could not pay their debts—it paid so much better than the serving job, and physically, it wouldn’t drain me. At least I hoped it wouldn’t.
“You won’t be asked to make collections,” Mr. Oehler, the manager told me. “That task is reserved for men. It’s not the sort of thing a woman could handle. But I need a clerk, a good stenographer, and you’ve had classes at Blair Business College, I see.”
“Some years ago, but yes.”
“And what have you been doing since then?”
I cleared my throat. If I tell him I’ve been destitute, will that disqualify me? “Working in the furrier industry,” I said. “Assisting businesswomen from New York who moved here. I kept their accounts for many years.”
“That’s good. You have business experience. You’ve never been sent to collections?” I shook my head. “No foreclosures in your past?”
“Not in my past, no,” I said.
“And right now you’re …?”
“A waitress at the Davenport.” He frowned. “To supplement my other work,” I explained. “I like to pay cash for everything.”
“That’s good. You have a family?”
“I’m not married.”
“Well, I know that. I wouldn’t interview a married woman. Married women belong in the home. I meant, will anyone be distressed if you’re asked to work late?”
“I live with two friends,” I said. “If I’m needed to work late, I can arrange that.” It was good to consider that I had others who might “be distressed” over me.
“Very well. I think you’ll find our industry quite intriguing, Miss Doré. We’re good for this country. We help people be accountable and thus become good citizens. Their lives have less pressure when they pay their bills on time. It’s good they learn that.”
“ ‘Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility,’ ” I quoted.
“That’s good,” he said. “Very good.”
“A suffragette said it years ago.” He might as well know that I could be outspoken.
“Are you one of that ilk?” he asked.
I had not yet registered to vote. “I believe individuals ought to have the right to pursue their dreams and live with the consequences of their decisions, whether men or women.” I sound like my mother. “If that makes me of that ilk, then I guess I am.”
He grinned. “My wife says the same thing.” He wagged his finger at me. “She’ll be pleased to know I’ll be kept in line during the day.”
And so our lives went forward one step after the other.
Louise became neither better nor any worse but continued her daily devotional ritual, finding new insights every day. The three of us shared the household tasks, took occasional weekend camping trips to Coeur d’Alene Lake, and sometimes rode the train back to Coulee City to visit the town and tell our old friends hello. We attended the big rodeo in the fall, sang Christmas carols in December, and watched with interest the smaller fur auction in January just to see how things had changed.
Steady work gave me confidence, and I found I liked the duties, keeping track of numbers and accounts, taking dictation, and having my suggested wording be well-received by my employer. I looked forward to the evenings, reading and listening to the new radio Olea had purchased. I thought about contacting my other family. I really did. But I couldn’t find the steps to take me to their door.
America entered the war then, in the summer of 1917, and we each involved ourselves in the women’s clubs raising money for refugees in Europe. Olea attended suffrage ratification meetings and told me that four women were arrested in front of the White House for picketing in support of the suffrage vote—Washington women had the vote, but only fourteen other states had adopted it. The three of us went to see The Butcher Boy with Buster Keaton. In all the shopping, traipsing around Spokane, and riding the streetcar, I never once caught a glimpse of my mother or sisters or brothers.
“I wish there was a way to get a little more money so we could purchase a rental,” I told Olea. I put my colored stamps into the book, having solicited neighbors and office mates to share their canceled stamps with me.
“What would you do with it? We’re comfortable,” Olea said.
“Enough is as good as a feast,” I said.
“Well, yes it is,” Olea agreed.
“I wish we could own this house we live in so no one could evict us. I wish we could buy a few other properties where rent would make the payments. We could keep the rents low, for young couples with families, but those would be good investments. You have to keep making money grow,” I said.
“You never rest, Clara,” Olea said, but she smiled.
“I’m still young,” I told her. “I’d like to travel. We never did get the trip all of us hoped to make.”
“No, we didn’t.”
“Even Louise last week told me that the scriptural phrase ‘commit thy works unto the LORD’ is yet another command that turns out to be a promise as well, that one day we’ll all commit.”
“The rest of that Proverb is ‘and thy thoughts shall be established.’ ”
“I guess if we’re to take another trip one day or have funds to help out others, we’ll have to commit,” I said. I put the stamp folder into my packet with the articles and the sketch of the Dale Creek trestle I’d made those years before. I looked over the signatures again. “It really is amazing that we got these signatures,” I said. “The Governor of Idaho. President-elect McKinley. Mama got Mr. Depew to sign it too. He said he’d buy the first book, which, of course, we never wrote.” I proclaimed, as Mr. Depew had: “ ‘The first step toward getting anywhere is to decide you’re not going to stay where you are.’ He told us that when my mother and I sat in his office looking at his glass cases of collections and begging for train fare.”
Olea winced. “I’m so sorry you had to ask for help like that. If we had been there—”
“I didn’t mean that, really. It’s all forgiven, truly.”
She nodded. She too wished more than once she’d done something other than what she had.
“What sorts of collections did Mr. Depew have?” Louise asked, rescuing us from further painful reminiscence.
“Let me think. Something that belonged to President Lincoln, a coffee cup, I think. A pen from General Grant. Oh, and a letter supposedly written by Shakespeare to his publisher.”
“Depew was a senator for a while, you know. He must like singular memorabilia,” Olea said.
“Apparently,” I agreed.
I looked at the signatures. I looked at Olea.
“Do you suppose,” I said, my throat dry, “do you suppose he might be interested in purchasing famous signatures? From a remarkable walk?” I waved the list. “Like these?”
Olea grinned. “It wouldn’t hurt to commit to t
rying.”
I might still be able to hang on to my ring.
Mr. Depew paid us well for the signatures. He planned to have them framed and hang them in his office with a tiny brass plate saying they came from “The Women Trekkers of 1896: Spokane to New York City.”
“You can do what you want now with the money,” Louise said when I told them. “You don’t have to work at Merchants.”
“I like my employment,” I said. “It’s honest work, and I do it well.”
“Then you can take a trip, go to Montreal as Franklin’s always asking you to do,” Olea said.
“The money belongs to all of us,” I said. “I’ll give some away. Louise, you get a shopping trip. And Olea?”
“Until we have universal suffrage, there’s still work to do.”
“We’ll make a contribution to suffrage ratification and to the refugee fund too. And I’ll find a way to give some to my mother.” I wasn’t sure how. “Maybe through the carpenters’ union. I’ll ask Marion Doré to make sure she gets it. She need never know.”
And one day, when I heard the Voice say, This is the way, I’d take a step toward reconciliation, a word Reverend Emma Wells said meant “to regain.” Perhaps my mother had nothing to regain in seeing me again, but I did.
I invested the remaining money in what had nurtured me as a child: land.
I bought a house on Cleveland, a block from Fairview, with a nice backyard (and a close-by privy) and inside plumbing too, and we three moved into it. I believe that house helped us weather the terrible flu epidemic that swept across the country in 1918. None of us got sick; we were healthy enough to help our neighbors who suffered.
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