by Janet Fox
“Go on with the story.” I plucked hard at a long, fibrous splinter. I knew this about my parents; it made me feel sad and small but I’d known it all along.
“So they took the trip; I guess he thought it would cure her. You were left at home with Mina. You were too little to travel. Otherwise maybe it would have changed things. Who can say? It was in eastern Montana. Their train was stopped by bandits. A gang, and a famous one at that. They laid logs across the tracks.”
“Bandits!” I exclaimed. That explained my father’s anxiety on the train when we passed through eastern Montana. And his reaction to the news of the coach robbery.
“It wasn’t uncommon in those days. These gangs, it was still the Wild West. The men boarded the train, made the passengers disembark, stripped them of jewelry, watches, money. They blew the safes and took the gold. Then came the bad part.”
I waited, not moving.
“The men plucked several of the women from the crowd of passengers and made off. Your mama was one of the women taken by the robbers.” John paused here, his face ashen with his own memories. “She was so pretty. Just so pretty.”
Dust rose behind Uncle John, turned, and fell like mist. The rain washed the roof in soft pats. The men in the next room laughed, then resumed a low murmur.
“It nearly killed your father. For a month he scoured the countryside looking for her, but he had to return to Newport. To you. You were just a baby, after all. He hired Pinkerton men to continue the search. The trail grew hot and cold by intervals. We all thought she was dead. Or as good as dead.” His face grew red. I felt sick. Mrs. Delaney, Mrs. Proctor—they’d all judged her a ruined woman. “All except your father. He wanted her back no matter what.” Uncle John paused. “He was desperate. It nearly drove him insane. I came out west to help with the search. I couldn’t stand to see him grieve so.
“It was almost a year, and we caught a break. The gang had split, it seemed, and one set had made for Wyoming. There were reports of a woman among them who fit your mother’s description. There was only one issue: that woman was traveling with a baby.”
A baby. Slow swirls of dust. The smell of leather oil.
“When the Pinkerton men found the gang, there was a brief firefight. Two gang members were killed outright. Some escaped, but the detectives managed to catch a few—and find your mama. Indeed, it was her.”
John looked at me again. “It wasn’t ever about you, Maggie. She was desperate about the child. She was crazed. The detectives had failed to take the child. It was lost in the confusion. I had to calm her before returning her to Charles. The doctors prescribed laudanum. It was two more weeks before she was fit to travel. By then, she’d gone silent as a stick, wouldn’t discuss a thing, only asked about you, over and over. When we arrived back in Newport, your mama devoted herself to you. We all thought that was that. It was bad, but nobody talked about it—nobody. At least not in the open. Your grandfather saw to that.” Uncle John spat on the floor.
Oh, I knew better. They talked, all right. I sat very still, seeing, as if anew, in my mind’s eye, Mama painting in a half-dark room, in her loose dressing gown, her hair wild about her. I saw her dressed for some society event, and the barely masked chill of the other women toward her. And how something in her changed as I grew older, as if seeing me grow up, but not the other child, made her miserable with longing. I thought she was insane. In fact, she had been, in a way. Insane with a grief of her own, one she couldn’t share. I leaned my forehead against my palm.
“We all thought she was over it,” Uncle John said. “Until last summer. Your father told me she had been getting worse. Her breakdown at that party. When she had herself that great public display. The way he described it, it was pretty bad, I guess.” Uncle John shook his head.
Mama at Mary’s ball, her arms dripping blood on her white gown, one white glove splayed across the floor. I remembered how humiliated I felt; now I felt shame and remorse. I had not understood. My finger and thumb pinched the splinter. If she had told me, if Mama had told me . . . ah, but I was involved with myself, wasn’t I.
“That’s when Charles found your mother’s journal. And some other things. Letters, business things.” John paused. “I almost wish he hadn’t,” he said as his voice dropped in misery. “Then maybe he’d have picked himself up back there in Newport and you wouldn’t be here right now, chasing phantoms and such . . .”
“Go on,” I whispered. I was close now . . . close to the whole truth.
“It was clear your mother had, while she was captured—and you can imagine how hard it must have been for her—she had”—he paused and cleared his throat—“grown fond of her captor. Even loved him. But it wasn’t clear about the child. The age of the child, things your mother said, it wasn’t clear who’d fathered it. Your father came to believe the child was his. He hoped the child was his. Isn’t that what any man would hope for? That his wife wouldn’t have a child by another man? That he’d fathered the baby before she was carried off?” Uncle John lowered his head. “Bad enough your pa discovered that your mama didn’t love him. Not in the same way he loved her, leastways. At least, he hoped, he prayed, he had another child with her.
“Your pa went back to the Pinkertons. They showed him everything, all their notes. Things they said made him believe he could be the father. They told him the baby was a boy.”
It was as I’d suspected, and still so different. It wasn’t Mama Papa was looking for; it wasn’t revenge, either. He was looking for his child. He had me right there and I wasn’t enough; he had to find this child, too.
Motes of dust. Fat drops of rain. A boy. Of course I wasn’t enough.
“Your mam’s dead, Maggie. That seems pretty clear. Whether accident, or not, whether she meant it or not, that Cliff Walk took her. Maybe she wanted to come back here, but she didn’t. She didn’t come back here, by all the evidence those detectives could muster.” Yes. Mama was dead.
I knew then what it meant, a broken heart. I could feel it deep inside, a great, sharp pain, like someone had cut my heart out and snapped it in two and shoved it back into my chest.
“The Pinkertons found the trail of the man your mama fell in with. He’s got the child. So, your father is hoping he has a son, somewhere out here. A son only a year younger than you are, Maggie. In Montana, Wyoming, Yellowstone, even. Still with the man who stole your mother. Your papa wants his son, wants to take him away from that man, wants to bring that part of her back, and wants to see that contemptible thief empty and alone.”
I did not feel the way I’d imagined, knowing the truth. The truth was a bare plain, drained and dry, like the desiccated sinter of an abandoned spring; though a terrible pain dwelt far below, ready to erupt. But not in this moment. I held it in. “So, I have a brother,” I said. “And Mama’s dead.”
My uncle looked so miserable that right then I felt more sorry for him than for myself.
Before, and after.
Chapter THIRTY-ONE
July 14–15, 1904
Nestled among the forest-crowned hills which bounded our vision, lay this inland sea, its crystal waves dancing and sparkling in the sunlight as if laughing with joy for their wild freedom.
—The Valley of the Upper Yellowstone, the explorations
of Charles W. Cook, David E. Folsom,
and William Peterson, 1869
“WHERE IS HE NOW?”
Uncle John looked startled. “That’s why you and your father came to Yellowstone. To find him.”
I waved my hand, impatient. I hadn’t meant the boy. My brother. I had a brother. I shook my head, trying to shake out the confusion. “Not him. I mean Papa. Where is he right now?”
Uncle John sighed. “He told me he was off to the Canyon area. That’s where the detectives said they had the latest bit of news. He was to meet them at the hotel there.”
The splinter, worked free at last, stabbed my finger. I looked down at the fat drop of blood, detached from the pain.
�
��Sometimes, when your father looks at you, it reminds him . . . you’re so stubborn . . .” His voice trailed off. “He wants to keep you from making your mama’s mistakes. He wants you to marry right and be well protected. He wants you to be a proper young woman, not like your mam.” Uncle John looked at me from beneath his brows, his head bent. “Your pa’s afraid of that impulsive streak in you. He’s afraid you’ll do what she did. Everything she did.”
I started. Impulsive? No. I followed the rules, didn’t I? I was not like Mama; I’d rejected her and all her bohemian behavior. Oh, at times, once or twice, that dress with the red sash, the photography, the porcelain pitcher . . . but impulsive? I shook my head. “He doesn’t know me, then,” I said. “He’d like a son,” I went on. “It’s perfectly natural. A daughter is . . . incomplete. Inadequate. Not what a father wants.” I wrapped one end of the yellow sash of my dress over my finger and watched the blood darken the silk. What I saw was memories: a red silk sash; blood on white silk.
“He feels like he’s had no control over things,” Uncle John said. “Over your mama, over the robbery, over you . . .”
I snorted. “He has no control? I’m the one with no choices. And I’m nothing like her.” I looked at the spreading stain. Impulsive? “I wish I was impulsive, and could do as I pleased.” I’d get away from that dreadful Graybull. I’d stay by Mrs. Gale and learn the ways of photography and I’d ride like a man and I’d throw away all my corsets . . . I’d run straight to Tom and throw my arms around him, shamelessly.
My uncle looked at me, so miserable that I felt sorry for him again. He wasn’t to blame.
I stood on shaky legs. “I’ve got to go back.” My throat was tight now and I couldn’t say any more. Uncle John walked me to the door of the carriage house; the men fell silent as we passed as if they knew what we’d been discussing.
I didn’t bother to open the umbrella on the way back and I walked directly through the puddles without seeing them.
Kula had unpacked my things and, back in the safety of my room, I changed out of my damp clothes and pulled on my dressing gown. Watered silk, pale ivory, so soft. It had once belonged to Mama and I’d borrowed it. I’d thought to return it to her, but now it was a token that I’d stepped into her place. Become a prisoner like she was. Silk made such soft shackles.
I had a brother. I had no mother. No Mama. I had been an only child; now I was half an orphan with a brother. Life was thrown far out of balance.
At dinner, I was quiet, thinking about what Uncle John had said: that I was like Mama. I did my level best not to pull away when George Graybull touched my arm or smiled at me, his tongue flickering between his teeth. I thought about Mama, about her longing, and I knew that I was lucky to be under the protection of a respectable man. I wasn’t impulsive. If I were, I’d be running out of this dining room as fast as my legs could carry me. I’d be on my way to Tom. Instead, I stared quietly out the great glass windows at the darkening lake.
Gray water meeting dark gray sky, drifting into distant black mountains. I threw my mind back: the day after Mama disappeared, the sun over Narragansett Bay sank into a scarlet ribbon that rimmed the water, the sky above it a purple bruise that smeared to black.
After dinner, Graybull retired to smoke on the porch. Mrs. Gale went up to her room, and I found Kula still lounging in one of the chairs in the lobby.
“You’ve had dinner?” I asked. I thought for a moment; I’d entirely forgotten about Kula. I sank into the chair next to her. “Where were you all afternoon?” I asked it out of kindness.
Kula regarded me with disdain. “I know how to manage. Thanks for asking.”
The windows were black, now, the lake invisible. But I felt it. The water drew me, like a deep longing, like the ocean as restless as Mama’s soul. For all this time, a year almost, I’d clung to the belief that she was out there. I’d tucked that belief into my pocket like the picture of Ghost and carried it everywhere. Her cameo was my talisman; the green dress was a magic garment meant to draw her to me; she was alive, she would keep her promise and return, she’d be there for me in the season of my womanhood. That’s what I’d believed.
No. She would not. Water, deep and wild and uncontrollable, had taken my mother from me. I wanted to conquer that water, those black and bottomless depths. I wanted to take my mother back.
I’d closed my eyes for some minutes; now I opened them and looked across the lobby. There was a sign on a stand by the door. It advertised boat trips on a steamboat, the Zillah, out to Dot Island in the lake so that tourists could see the buffalo and elk that were kept in pens there up close. I remembered Tom talking about the animals, the bison on the island. An island. I could perhaps find privacy. Make my peace. I rose and went to the desk. “I’d like to book a boat trip,” I said, pointing at the sign.
The man at the desk looked at me with a faint smile. “Alone?” I knew what he was thinking: I was not a respectable young woman.
“No,” said a voice beside me. It was Kula. “I’ll go, too.” Kula stared at the clerk, daring him to question her as well.
The clerk looked at us, eyebrows raised. First I consorted with employees; now with an Indian, and a servant at that. I didn’t care what he thought, what anyone thought anymore.
I narrowed my eyes at the man, feeling a quiet fury. Who was he to judge me? “Two tickets, please. For me and my friend,” I said, emphasizing friend. I paid for the tickets for early the next morning, and then turned away from the desk. I could feel the change in myself already.
“Why do you want to go out there?” Kula asked, gesturing toward the lake.
“I’m looking for something.” I’d called her a friend; but she wasn’t, and I couldn’t tell her my heart. I stared out the window into the blackness. Kula had been right about one thing. I had to fight for what I wanted. Mama was gone. I was alone. And now I needed to find out who I was by myself.
The next morning dawned clear and windy. The still-wet trees glittered in the early light. I’d asked Mrs. Gale if I could borrow the camera, and Kula and I avoided Graybull, sneaking off to the docks without breakfast. I didn’t let Kula in on my plan; I wasn’t sure of my plan. All I knew was that I needed to find my way to the water.
We boarded the boat and I stood in the bow, clutching the camera to my chest. The steamboat chugged away from shore, turned, and plowed through the rough water toward the island. Kula stood silent, her black braid snaking down her back, so like Mama’s, wisps of hair lashing her strong cheeks.
I took off my hat and, as the boat gathered speed, pulled the pins from my hair and stuffed them into my jacket pocket. I gripped the rail, letting the breeze whip my hair loose. It was risky, leaving without word. The water gave up no secrets: It was opaque, inky, racing beneath the boat. I held the rail so tightly my knuckles were white.
We docked, the bright sunshine throwing sparks off the water. The wind whipped the women’s scarves into banners. Men pressed their fedoras to their heads.
I touched Kula’s arm. “I’ll be along in a minute. I want to get a picture of the lake.” It was a lie meant to protect us both. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do, but I had to do it alone.
Kula looked at me curiously. “I’ll come.”
“No. I need to go alone.”
Kula’s dark eyes met mine, and she regarded me, suspicious. “What are you planning?”
“Did I ask for your help?” I was abrupt. She would only get in the way.
Kula’s gaze grew sharp. “Mr. Graybull told me to keep an eye out. Not to let you go off wandering.”
“Mr. Graybull is not my master.” My throat was tight. Then I looked away from her. “Anyway, it’s only for a picture.”
“Whatever you say.” Kula shrugged and turned away.
I picked my way along the shore away from the steamer. I needed to find a place out of sight of the tourists, the steamer, the buffalo pens. It wasn’t easy going, as the underbrush grew thick and tangled right to the edge, and t
here was only a rocky shelf. Several times I slipped into the water, soaking my feet. My stockings were heavy cotton, but my shoes were thin, and the cold penetrated to my bones.
I found my way to a small inlet that faced the vast expanse of the lake. The blue sky was reflected in the water that rippled in the strong breeze. Mountains ringed the lake; snow glowed white in the morning sun. I set up the camera. The image, upside down, made me dizzy: water at the top. I glanced back toward the boat, just out of sight around the spit of land, and made up my mind.
Until that moment I’d thought I was only here for a picture, as I told Kula. I thought that might answer the questions inside me, but it was inadequate. Now I knew why I was here and what I had to do.
I had to see how much I was like my mother. I had to have her experience. I had to try to bring her back. I had to bring her to me.
It was risky, but no one could see.
I pulled off my jacket and stepped out of my shoes and skirt. I slipped off my shirtwaist, camisette, petticoat, stockings, bloomers. Naked, I waded, fast, into the lake, picking my way through the rocks, and then let myself fall.
The cold water hit me like a wall and I gasped. Instinct took over and I drew up and began to swim hard as Mama had taught me, knowing that working would warm my limbs. At first my arms and legs wouldn’t respond, but after a few poorly made strokes, I began to move and pulled myself out to deeper water. My feet left the bottom and my gut clenched.
But it was the cold that was more terrifying than the depth. This water was much more frigid than I’d expected, and that made it much more difficult to swim. My legs felt heavy, and dragged me down. I turned back toward the shore. It wasn’t far, but I had to fight for every inch, and I grew colder and colder, made dreamy and stupid by my icy limbs.
I wasn’t afraid of drowning, or of the deep, deep void beneath me. Not anymore. Even in my increasingly dreamy state, I knew what I feared most: I feared living a life without love. A shallow life. A life where I could always touch the bottom, where impulse was a curse and everything I had was given to me by someone else. I feared living a life like Mama’s, where I yearned for what I could not have.
