Widow 1881_Flats Junction Series

by Sara Dahmen

  As we level up with one of the homes on the Brinkley farm, I hear the tiny, distinctive sound of a newborn’s hiccupping, fussy cry. The doctor gives a brief knock and then, carrying the pot of cooled soup, walks in casually without waiting for anyone to answer the door. I follow him, carrying a basket of condiments. If I had had time, I would have tried to make bread, but there wasn’t time—not time for bread, let alone time for me to breathe and settle in.

  I glance around for the Brinkley family. It’s a home that might once have been tidy, but currently feels completely disorderly. Doctor Kinney moves with purpose to the bedroom. I hear his accent soften with a croon as he addresses the mother and baby. He has put the pot of soup on the stove in his passing, and I move toward it. Food, I know I can do. I hope there are no nursing duties with today’s visit; I might fold completely.

  A young man comes in from the side door with a pail of milk and an empty washtub under an arm. He stops short at the sight of me.

  I smile encouragingly. “Hello, Mr. Brinkley. I’m Doctor Kinney’s new housekeeper, Mrs. Weber. We’ve brought you some dinner.” I move to the stove and pull a pot from the sideboard. It needs washing before I can put the soup in for them to reheat later.

  He is still staring at me, then remembers himself and sets down the washtub. “You’re here with the doc?”

  “Yes. He’s already in with your wife and the boy.”

  Mitch sets the milk on the table and brushes past me to the bedroom. He seems an eager father, as if he is willing to learn about his son. I admire this, as well as chuckle at his poor attempts to keep house while Alice recovers. I’m surprised there are so few women from the farm helping her.

  I fill the washtub and clean out the pot and a few dishes so the table can be set. Then I pour the soup from Doctor Kinney’s crockery into Alice’s and set it on the stove. As my hands move around the heavy plates and clay mugs, my wedding band clinks loudly against the rims. It reminds me of life back East. It seems any little thing can do so. The amount of housework I am doing now is not so much new to me, but it is the roughness of it all, the lack of fine things and city amenities that make it far less easy. My arms still ache from yesterday’s work, and the soreness hasn’t worn off one bit. How long will it take before I feel some strength?

  “Mrs. Weber?” The doctor’s voice spins me around. I see a small bundle cradled in his arms. He looks strikingly tender, and I feel myself catch. It is an interesting vision. It is not often I would think to see a man holding a newborn.

  “Is everything alright?” I ask.

  “Can you manage wee Pete while I examine Alice?”

  I look past the doctor into the bedroom where the husband is sitting next to his wife on the narrow bed. He does not seem inclined to come out and hold his son. I wipe my hands on my apron and go to get the baby. If this is a nursing duty, I can certainly manage it.

  The doctor’s hands seem overlarge as he gives over the child, carefully maneuvering his little limbs, and the pass of precious cargo is a delicate moment as we both watch the sleeping babe. The little boy is light, air-like, and smells like sweet, warm skin and powdered bedding. Do all babes smell good? I do not know. I have held so few. I hold him a bit awkwardly at first, but Doctor Kinney puts a hand on my arm, then adjusts the crick of my elbow.

  “He won’t break so easily, Mrs. Weber. Relax here. Good.” With a casual tap, he releases me and walks back into the bedroom and shuts the door. I’m dazed by the baby I hold, and am overtly aware of his pale skin, the blue spidery veins on his temple, and the shell of his ear. He is roundly robust, and his plump little lips still have a drop of milk on them. I am suddenly filled with apprehension for my own little baby. Will it be a boy like this, perfect and little? How shall I care for him? How shall I love him and provide for him? The enormity of the undertaking scares me so absolutely that thinking on it for long makes me feel faint. I am afraid to do the whole experience alone, afraid of the uncertainty, afraid of the birth, afraid of what Theodore has left me as a token of our few stolen moments.

  For a moment, I want to rail against Henry. If he hadn’t died, everything would still be the same, and I wouldn’t be facing either widowhood or motherhood. While Henry was not the husband I had dreamed about in my youth, he was steady and grave. To lose him so early in marriage, before we could build much tenderness or history, leaves me still feeling detached from his memory. I enjoyed being married, but the marriage itself was filled with guarded lovemaking, quiet conversation, and dispassionate expressions. I feel as though I had not fulfilled the potential within me to be a wife, and now I will not fulfill my potential as a mother. Having a child must be very different here, though I expected as much when I made the choice to come West. I doubt there will be such a thing as a formal nursemaid. Besides, I will not be able to afford it. And I have no family in the Territories to help.

  But it was this or face everyone I know and tell them I was not proper, and not demure, and not a good mourning widow.

  I allowed passion, curiosity, and a fanciful few hours to make a vulgar, lustful woman of me. If my family and acquaintances knew this, they would never forget it. I would live under the ache of shame all my days.

  I bend over the little baby and will myself not to cry. Without realizing it, I am swaying lightly, holding the little face near mine so I can press my forehead to his tiny one.

  “Mrs. Weber.” The doctor is back. I lift my face, glad there are no tears. He has a half-smile on his face, but it is almost sad, and he takes the baby without another word. I go back to the stove and finish the rest of the dirty dishes so that the kitchen area, at least, is picked up.

  He returns again. “Ready?”

  I glance at the bedroom. I have not met Alice, and it seems rude that I’ve been in her house and managed her dishes without at least introducing myself, but I figure there will be time for that later. I nod and follow him out.

  We walk in silence for a minute. The air is warmer than earlier, though I still find the breeze cuttingly cold. To bridge our quiet, I venture, “There is not much help for Alice?”

  He understands my question and gives a rueful chuckle.

  “Not at the moment. Mitch’s family isn’t happy with him for takin’ a day or so from spring plantin’ and farmin’ to spend time with his wife and babe. The men figure, if he’s so sure to help with the babby, the womenfolk can keep workin’ in the fields instead of taking over Alice’s household. They’ll get over it soon, and Alice’ll win them over, too. But in the meantime, thank you for helpin’.”

  I nod, pleased he notices my work, but continue my questions about Mitch. “He’s unique in being so involved in…women’s issues.”

  “Aye.” Doctor Kinney thinks for a moment, then says with bluntness, “I wish more men would be interested. It would be a godsend to some of the women ’round here who do not have family to help them, and it might make it more likely I’m called for a birthin’.”

  “I can see your point,” I say. He touches on a subject I was musing earlier. He gives me an amused sideways smile.

  “You don’t agree?”

  I think. I am rather traditional and, to me, it does not seem a man’s place to be with his wife during childbirth, or even after. But then I wonder about myself. What would I wish, if Henry were alive and the child his? Well, I would be too embarrassed to have him near while I screamed in labor, or to hear the diagnosis after I gave birth. But suppose my marriage had been with a man whom I loved, instead of simply held in affection? Suppose our child had been conceived in passion, not the careful, chilly sex I’d known? What if Theodore and I had been madly in love? Then I might wish for more sharing in everything, from childbirth to childcare and beyond.

  “I think perhaps some marriages do not make it easy for such openness,” I say.

  The doctor does not rejoin my comment at first. He nods once or twice. Then he says, unexpectedly, “Do you not have family, Mrs. Weber? Parents?”

  I smile with
reflection. “Yes. I have a mother and father. They are alive and live in Rockport.”

  “No siblings?”

  “I have a sister who is older than me.” I refrain from talking further, hoping he lets it be. I don’t wish to speak of my sister especially, nor the man she married.

  “Did you not wish to be with them after your husband’s untimely death? Forgive me, Mrs. Weber, but family is important out here. When one does not have any, we tend to create our own to survive. But you left yours. Were you not able to return?”

  I hug the empty soup pot to my chest, wincing slightly against the tenderness of my bosom. How to answer this truthfully, vaguely, so I can create the story I wish to provide? Well, surely my mother would have let me have my old room. I’d been married a few years, but they had kept my childhood house. My sister would not have welcomed me into her busy life, though had I begged, she would have eventually, unhappily, relented. And I would not have wished such a thing for myself anyway. Imagine seeing her husband James every day! I would certainly be reminded of Theodore—the two look so much alike—and why I’d relented to the affair in the first place.

  And no matter what, I could not go to anyone widowed and pregnant with another man’s child.

  “I could have gone back to family, I suppose,” I venture, unwilling to dive into my past further than I already am. “But I married late and had enjoyed making my own household. To return would be too . . . easy.”

  “And you are not partial to easiness?” There is surprise in his voice.

  “Maybe not. Life has not been difficult for me, nor has it been easy,” I explain obscurely. “But that is most lives, is it not, Doctor?”

  He shakes his head at my trite comment. “Yes. But when given an easy way out, many would take it. Instead, you embark on a journey, alone, to a place where you know no one. I must say it’s a bit gutsy. Here we be.”

  We’ve quickly arrived at Kate’s mercantile before I can flip the discussion to his own history. I mull on his characterization of my spirit. Do I have a bit of spitfire in me? I think he is mistaken. It was a simple choice for me. Even had I not been pregnant, to return home as if I’d never left would be taking a step backward, ignoring what I’d learned as a wife and lover, and forever succumbing to life as a widow. I’m not a wild woman, nor one who will dramatize life’s woes, but I certainly had no intention of fading into obscurity even before I was saddled with a babe.

  “Be sure to pick up proper shoes. Kate knows my billin’.” And he is off, his easy athletic gait propelling him down the street.

  The store is warm, and I wonder how hot it gets in the heat of summer. Perhaps she will open the glass window. It is dusty and smudged, and the same two men are sitting at it in front of their checkers, though they are not playing today. Both creak in their chairs when I enter, and I instinctively cringe as they turn toward me.

  “Back, are you then?” Horeb Harvey smirks and rubs his old wrinkly hands together. “Doc say you need to do his shopping for him then, does he?”

  “It’s just . . . for me?” I feel foolish to give them my order, and flustered enough to provide far more information than I intend.

  “Boots?” Gilroy stares pointedly at my shoes.

  “That too,” I nod, noting that the two of them seem to be wearing the exact same layers of flannel as yesterday.

  Oh heavens! Yesterday! Have I only arrived yesterday!? It feels like it was ages ago.

  “Heard you’re bunking with the old Widow Hawks,” Horeb declares, settling back in his chair and picking at a tooth. “You ain’t scared of the Injuns then, are you?”

  “Ah . . .”

  Kate suddenly comes out from behind a shelf with a fraying burlap bag slung over one of her strong shoulders. I have to wonder how she keeps up the store without any men to help her.

  “Jane Weber.” Her voice is more melodious than I remember, but she does not seem as welcoming today. “What can I get the doctor?”

  I hesitate. “It’s not for him. For me. I . . . I need proper work things, he says.”

  “Does he now?” There is a forced lightness in her voice. “Well, he’s right. Those shoes won’t last the summer.” She stands before me, drops the heavy bag of dried beans to the floor, and frowns at my light city footwear.

  “That’s what I said!” Horeb calls.

  “Ain’t. I did,” Gilroy argues.

  “Well, I figured the same,” Horeb tells Gilroy testily.

  Kate ignores their insertions into our discussion, and I try to do the same.

  “I would be obliged if you could help me, Kate.” I’m surprised to realize that I am pleading. Please let her be a friend to me here. Please let her help me fit in. How else will I have friends? I’m sure most other women here in Flats Junction are all married and have children. She and I must be alike, to be alone and need to survive. “I know nothing of what to do here.”

  She finally meets my face. How beautiful she is! Why is she unmarried? And why is she so skeptical of me? I wish I were a brave person to ask her these questions, using the casualness Doctor Kinney asks of my own past.

  “The shoes are over here.” Spinning on her heels, she goes to a table where serviceable shoes pile together. They are all black or dark brown. There are no laces on most of the boots, though a few have metal toe tips. I pick out a few pairs that seem to be my size, and I try them on while Kate heads to the counter. She calls to me over her shoulder.

  “You won’t be doing much riding out, so you’ll need mainly clothes for tending house, I should think. Just one split skirt, an overskirt, and a housedress or two should do you.”

  “Tell her to pick a pink! None of the gals around here wear pink!” Horeb suggests.

  “Fortuna’s girls,” Gilroy reminds.

  “Well, them. But they don’t count.”

  Kate shakes her head and calls across the store. “Likely Jane doesn’t want to dress the way the bordello girls do, Horeb.”

  Heat floods across my forehead, and I bend to try on another pair of boots. I am embarrassed about this expense on the doctor’s credit, but do not know if I should express this to Kate. Then again, she is privy to the doctor’s accounts. She might tell me what he can afford.

  One soft, well-worn pair fits without pinching, and I wear them over to the counter to get a feel for them on my feet. They are immediately more comfortable than my city shoes, and are broken in across the lasts under my feet. I walk to the back of the store and find Kate on a ladder, pulling down fabric materials.

  “Kate . . .” I start softly, then dive in while she continues to move in silence. I’m too aware of the obvious eavesdropping of Horeb and Gilroy, but there’s nothing to do about it. “Kate, I am unsure how to pay for this. The doctor is paying me in board, not much in the way of cash. It will take me some time to save it up to repay the debt.”

  She pauses for a moment, then comes down to the floor with a stack of cloth. The look on her face is softer. I do not understand the mercurial nature of her moods at all. They are disconcerting, and yet becoming of her, so that I wish to figure out the enigma of her personality. There is a charm about her. Is that why she’s been so successful as the general’s manager?

  “Jane. It’s alright. If I know the doctor, he will consider this part of your ‘board,’ but I can make a note in the accounting so that should you ever wish to pay him back, you would know how much.”

  “Very well,” I agree. “But do not let me choose things that are too expensive, anyway.”

  “Well, you’ve done fine on the boots already,” she says, peering down at my feet.

  I smile tentatively at her, and then browse at what she has spread out. A brown work calico makes sense to match with the leather split skirt she recommends. But I am dissatisfied with the options for a housedress. Kate has brought out mostly dowdy, plain colors. I am not vain, nor am I prone to dress prettily, but I do have an idea of what looks pleasing on me.

  “Do you . . . I wonder if you m
ight have something in more color?”

  “It will fade faster,” she remarks a bit sharply. I bite my tongue against a quick reply against her, unconsciously staring at her orange blouse and blue skirt. It looks lovely on her, and it doesn’t seem to have faded much unless it is very new, which I doubt.

  “Perhaps . . . perhaps something in blue . . . or even yellow?”

  “Pink!” Horeb yells.

  “Green!” Gilroy bellows.

  “Damnit, Gil, you know she’d look much finer in pink.”

  “Yellow, please, Kate?” I ask.

  She climbs back up with a huff. Is she so easily offended that I did not take to her suggestions?

  “You won’t need much frill,” she reasons from her perch. “No men to dress for here, like out East.”

  “That ain’t true, Kitty. We all will look.”

  “You boys don’t count,” she shoots back.

  Horeb cackles and Gilroy snorts.

  “Boys! She calls us boys yet, is it?” Horeb wheezes. “Kitty, this woman is good for you. Gets you all spiced up. Plus, fine enough to look at, even in mourning.” He leans forward and cocks his head appreciatively.

  “Pay them no mind,” she advises. “It only encourages them to make noise. Anyway, you’ll want a plain calico. It’s no good to be flashy here.” She glowers at the two old men.

  I nod sagely, playing along with her irritation and counsel. “You’re quite right. Besides, my late husband did not much care for bows and things, so I’ve forgotten how to really adorn myself.”

  She seems to relent a bit and comes down with some prettier fabrics. I choose a yellow calico, and then I cannot help myself as I ask her to pull down a lavender with no pattern at all. I simply like the color, and I know my dark brown hair and lighter skin look well in purples. And if I wear purple, I won’t be so far off my mourning requirements. I’ll still feel slightly proper.

  “I’m just going to be happy to wear color again, you see,” I try to explain to Kate. “The colors of mourning are not suitable here, nor do they look well on anyone.”

  Kate gives a half-shrug of indifference and goes to cut the bolts for me. I ask her to cut enough to make a bonnet of one or two of the fabrics. I hope my sewing skills are up for this challenge. I’ve learned, as any woman does, the physics of making clothing, but I am more used to making samplers and cross stitches than actual garments. In Boston, everything could be bought from the local seamstress and dressmakers.