Everything She Didn't Say

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  “No. I . . . the hotel has a suite for me, until I decide what I want to do.”

  She pooched her lower lip out. “Please. We’ve plenty of room and I’ve missed you. Besides, the sight and sound of giggling girls will be a fine elixir for tired eyes behind those spectacles. Still forgetting to clean them, I see.”

  My hands went automatically to my glasses as I said, “Giggling girls? When did you and Henry . . . that is, I didn’t know. How wonderful for you both. I would have sent baby gifts.”

  She laughed her wonderful flute-like laugh. “Not babies, Dell. They’re students. We’ve given up half our house as a dormitory for the college, built an addition. You’ll love them and they’ll love meeting you.”

  I was easily malleable. I went home with Carrie.

  Annie Boone with her three children came over as soon as our carriage arrived before a grand house on Belmont. It wasn’t nearly as imposing a structure as some I’d visited but felt welcoming, with its white picket fence and geraniums blooming red.

  “This is Mrs. Strahorn, Marie,” Annie said to her daughter. Annie’s blonde hair was wrapped up around the top of her head much like I wore mine. Simple ivory combs held the soft curls in place while a hat squashed my chestnut locks. “She helped your aunt Carrie and a few other of Mama’s friends start the church your papa preaches at sometimes.”

  “And the college,” Carrie said.

  “Oh, I can’t lay claim to any of that,” I said.

  “You got my husband to stay or it wouldn’t exist.”

  I thanked her for that thought.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Strahorn,” Marie said with a curtsy. “I’m already eleven.” Marie was the oldest of three Boone children. She was slightly younger than the twins, Kate and Kambree Bunting, would be. My twins.

  “Eleven is a very important age. Are you a reader? There are many good books to read when one is eleven.”

  “I do like books. And I like to write, don’t I, Mama?”

  “Yes, you do. She’s quite good, for her age,” Annie said to me as she accepted a teacup and saucer. “This is Sarah.” A toddler sat on her lap and Annie carefully put the cup down on the table. Another child, probably three or four, stood beside his mother. “This is shy James.”

  Carrie poured my tea. “You have to sing in the choir Sunday. Surprise Hester. She doesn’t know you’re here yet. It’ll be like old times.” We heard laughter and the clatter of footsteps. “The students. They’ll come in through the back. We built the addition two stories so we could house more. Our little college is growing and doing well, but finding places for students to live has been a challenge.”

  “One day the college will build a dormitory,” Annie said.

  “Can I live in it?” Marie asked.

  “You won’t need to. You can live at home with us and go to school.”

  Lucky you, I thought and meant it.

  It was an afternoon where I felt warm and welcomed, even if annoyed yet again at Robert. He had meant to be kind asking Carrie to meet me, but he was without awareness of how he diminished my abilities with his cloying.

  Carrie’s husband arrived home and we’d finished a lovely meal of lamb with rosemary potatoes and fresh mustard greens.

  “Thank you for the invitation to stay here, but I need a little thinking time. We’ve had such an up-and-down life these past years I wanted to return to my Caldwell roots, alkali though they may be. The hotel will be a good place for contemplation.”

  “Your Robert’s now investing in Spokane, is he?” Henry Blatchley tapped tobacco into his pipe.

  “He wants to build a coastal short line to connect Spokane to Portland. He estimates $30 million. I . . . those numbers boggle my mind. I’m looking for a little house here in Caldwell for maybe $100 at most.”

  “I’ll see what I can find for you.”

  “No. Please, Henry.” I touched his suited sleeve. “I appreciate your help, I do. I want to do this on my own . . . or not. I may just visit, then go on to Hailey or who knows where.”

  He looked at Carrie. She nodded. “I see. Well, call on me if you need to.”

  “I will.”

  I did take a walk that next beautiful May morning. The air was as I remembered it, but there were many more trees, the canals flourished and bridges crisscrossed where there hadn’t been a need before. At our cottage, I remembered how Argos had romped and played and how I had one evening fallen into a small irrigation ditch while out calling for him to prevent his playing with coyotes. Argos had passed on at my niece’s in California. I wished I’d had his bones buried in our old backyard.

  Those had been good years for us, Robert and me. Maybe I missed our joint enterprises as we’d had in our beginnings. Maybe twenty-three years of marriage of uncertainty left me in a fuddle. What had been different about Caldwell?

  My work. Helping build up that church and being able to let go of it when it was finished. It was something good for someone else, not just for Robert’s clients or to promote the railroad’s interests. It made a difference. And I’d enjoyed the activity of serving, being hospitable to people, having them visit my home. The Wood River Presbytery had accepted our congregation and gone further with forming the college. Carrie had said she and Henry intended to bequeath property and an endowment to the college if they still had money when they died. “It gives me comfort knowing I can contribute now with our little dormitory,” she had said. Maybe I could do something like that as well.

  The following day, I visited a real estate agent and asked to see a small house I’d walked by on the way to our old cottage. It had a fenced-in yard and a small garden area. After seeing the interior, I knew it would be a perfect getaway place for me for when I needed time to remember the things that mattered. I wired the bank in Marengo that sent cash for the purchase and was in it and thriving when George Little came to my door to ask the census questions. I felt quite pleased to see him write “Head of Household” on the form. That Sunday I sang in the choir.

  It was a healing summer.

  Carrie Blatchley and I took bamboo fly poles and fished the Boise River, where she showed me how to match the hatch, as she called it. “You look carefully at the bugs that flutter over the water and that the fish are paying attention to and then you offer them a fly that resembles that. It works every time.”

  “It sounds like promotional material for the railroad.”

  She laughed. But the stripping of the line, the quiet comradery, the scent of pine and shades of willow soothed my soul, and I wondered why I didn’t do more of this. Robert and I used to fish, though often it was a promotional activity with senators and corporate presidents with us too. I didn’t have time to listen to my own thoughts. There was something comforting about this fishing with flies that Carrie said she tied herself. “And you could learn how too.” That summer, I did.

  Hester’s husband still owned the expanded livery and he loaned me a horse so I could ride in the early mornings, sometimes at sunset, beside the Wood River. Developing a relationship with such a big animal gave me confidence I’d lost in Fairhaven and Boston and even in Spokane.

  I also made an appointment to speak with Reverend Boone.

  Not being a reflective person, meeting with the Reverend took quite an effort. But I tried on my own to reconcile my marriage vows, my love for Robert—and I did love him—with a deep sense of emptiness that I had put upon his shoulders rather than find another way to be the person I was created to be. A helpmate, yes. But surely, more.

  “Your voice is a gift to all who hear you sing,” President Boone told me. We sat in his office at the college, the sounds of student chatter in the background. “And your passion for the church has met many needs, including students’.”

  “All indirectly, though.”

  “Nothing wrong with that. Think of the quiet women of the Bible from dressmaker to cook to foot washer to water carrier. Each did what she could do, never forgot what she could do, and did it. I’m here becau
se of your words and your work, because you did what you could do.”

  “That’s something, I guess.”

  “Quite a bit of something.” He got up from behind the desk and pulled a chair to sit beside me. “You’re a hospitable woman, Dell, and that kind of gift can’t be minimized. You see people, put them at ease.”

  “Too bad I can’t do that for myself.” I smiled. “Something gets in my way.”

  “Why don’t you write about your life? An autobiography has a way of pulling threads together that you otherwise might miss. I’d like to read such a book.”

  “Would you?” He nodded.

  “Writing about why you’re even here now in Caldwell might bring you insights our Lord would be pleased to reveal.”

  Hester concurred when I told her that I was thinking of writing a memoir.

  “Have you journaled?” Her hair had turned gray in the passage of years, the silver only adding to her beauty. We sat on my little back porch dotted with wicker rockers and colorful pads. My ore served as a centerpiece that held down the center napkin against the occasional gust.

  “Little paragraphs here and there,” I answered. “Enough to remind me of what was happening though.”

  “An autobiography is a legacy, really.”

  “But for who? I have no children who might care.”

  “There are others, Carrie. Friends, your nieces. Historians, perhaps. Write it for yourself, your own love story.”

  I laughed. “I’d best be careful what I say if friends find themselves in it.”

  Hester picked up the ore, moved it from hand to hand. “Find the diamonds inside and let them shine. Let the irritating souls you’ve come across be nameless. And be kind to yourself. A memoir is no place to whine but rather give us wisdom we can all share without having to go through the pain ourselves.”

  I did then begin to write in earnest but not all of happy-lane experiences deciding I could always edit painful details out later. And when at night I listened to the coyotes call or watched the summer moon rise to fill the sky, it occurred to me that Robert might never be able to do for me what I needed when I needed it. And in fact, neither he nor any husband should be required to. Or any other person for that matter: a mother for her children; a sister for her sibling. What happiness I’d find inside my marriage—or even with myself—required giving myself credit when I felt credit was due and not relying on Robert or my sisters or the sweet friends I’d made to fill me up. Nor on the gifts of having a child of my own, whether born to me or adopted or fostered. Those poor little things could waste away trying to meet my needs—if that was why I longed for them. A husband weaker than Robert might have wasted away too. After all, if we were created as fearfully and wonderfully made, then surely that included all the gifts and talents and tools necessary to live creatively and fully. To be enough. To be loved enough, competent enough; to soak in enough—and then to pour love out.

  I had much here in Caldwell. I bought an English bulldog puppy, white with a brown splotch around one eye and ear. I named her Daisy. Taught her to “b-flat” instead of “down,” just as I had Argos. She took walks with me, made me laugh at her antics. I felt myself invigorated by the pace of the days, the control I had over time, and the writing of my memoir. I could do what I’m doing here with Robert daily in my life as well as when he isn’t. I simply had to make the commitment to care for myself and not wait for anyone else to do it for me.

  I enjoyed my morning tea I made myself, loved my back porch that looked out on a patch of green into the wide vistas. I adored inviting young Marie Boone to bring her books and read with me. Delia Gwinn still made those marvelous croissants. Mrs. Meacham had passed on, but there were new people to listen to who sang in the choir. And Hester read early drafts of my autobiography that gave me confidence to carry on. I’d found my way clear to writing my own love story.

  Robert and I wrote letters back and forth. He’d asked when I was coming home, a question I didn’t have an answer to. But when the time was right, I felt assured that I’d hear that inner voice making it clear what I should do.

  And then one day while I was out weeding in the garden, a carriage pulled up. It was Robert. He had a woman with him.

  From Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage, vol. 2, by Carrie Adell Strahorn (page 301)

  What hardships have been endured and heart-strings crushed and broken; what family ties have been rent by the great movement to the West!

  33

  The Promise of a Rainbow

  Stories, I believe, are the most powerful way we have of organizing human experience. As I began to do what President Boone suggested I do, write my memoir, I found myself wrapped up in stories. Of terrible winters and being stuck in Hailey with my helper, making our way out through drifts so deep, men walked before us to make trails for our horses. Robert had gone on ahead and it was several weeks before we met up again. What I’d leave in and what I’d leave out of my memoir became a happy occasion of self-consulting. I’d discover who I really was inside those stories.

  September 1, 1900

  I have always liked rainbows, both their color and their promise of God’s eternal love for mankind. When I saw Robert step out of the carriage, my heart skipped a beat as it had when I’d first met him. He’d come those years before to bring me to his then fiancée Carrie Lucy, my University of Michigan classmate who was dying. I was struck by the way grief carved his face that day and was encouraged when my eye caught a rainbow behind the carriage following an Illinois summer shower. Then I thought it meant my friend would live; but it had meant a different kind of promise.

  No rainbow arched behind my husband nor the woman whose arm threaded through his, her hat feather waving in the Caldwell breeze. She wore a beige linen traveling suit with a pink shirt and cameo brooch at her throat. I swallowed. Of all the perils we’d experienced in our twenty-three years of marriage, I had never had cause to imagine his affections might stray. But I’d never left him before either.

  She looked a little older than either Robert or me. I didn’t recognize her face nor gait.

  At Robert’s smile, my face grew hot.

  “It’s good to see you, Dell.” I could barely hear him over the sound of my pounding heart. Daisy barked and danced at his feet. He hesitated, then dropped the woman’s arm from his, bent to lend the back of his hand to the dog to sniff. Daisy calmed and Robert stepped to hold me, kiss my wet cheeks. “You look as beautiful as ever, even with garden gloves, hat, and apron. And who is this?”

  “Daisy. B-flat,” I told her. “And you might have let me know so I could have cleaned up.” I wore a long braid instead of my usual coiffured hair.

  “And risk having you tell me not to come?” He stepped out of the way. “This is Mrs. Browne.”

  A widow. She reached out both hands to hold my garden-gloved ones. “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Strahorn. I’ve heard so much about you.” Daisy snorted her way between us, her whole body wiggling.

  “And Mr. Browne?” Not very hospitable of me.

  “He’s had a touch of the stomach upset, but he’ll be fine by dinner, he promised. He’s back at the hotel.”

  Confusion must have reigned on my face, but I managed to invite them inside. Daisy romped ahead of us. Mrs. Browne—Ann—smiled at her surroundings and said, “What a lovely home. The leaded glass windows are perfection with that stagecoach and horses.”

  “It’s comfortable.”

  “Your husband tells me that you and he started this town.”

  “With a few other investors and hardy pioneering souls,” I said. “Please, sit. Let me get us some coffee or tea?” I removed my gloves, washed my hands, and put on the kettle.

  “Tea,” Ann said. “Some say my husband and I built Spokane Falls but there were already fifty-four people there. Seven families. When we pulled up to the one questionable street—I’d come from Portland—my heart went down. I thought I was coming into a desolate place. We had baby Guy. It was 1878 and we lived for
a year with the Post family.”

  “Caldwell was alkali desert then. We stayed in a tent.”

  What are the Brownes doing with my husband in Caldwell? Why is Mrs. Browne sitting in my parlor?

  “They went on to build the magnificent city Spokane is,” Robert said. He cleared his throat. “Mr. and Mrs. Browne have a lovely home they’re selling to the right people. It’s on First Street, and Dell, I think it would be the perfect home for us. We’ll call it Strahorn Pines—but only if you’d like.”

  “It must be in the trees then.”

  “Robert assures me that you’d turn it into something spectacular. We raised our children there so it’s special to us, but we fully expect others to make their own mark on it.”

  “It needs your touch, Dell. It does.”

  “We came to meet you, Mrs. Strahorn, because your Robert didn’t want to commit to the purchase unless you approved. I hope you will. Is that an elm tree you’ve planted?”

  “Yes. We planted all these trees.”

  She stood and looked out the window. “And started the Presbyterian church, your Robert says. He’s quite a supporter of yours. Spokane’s Women’s Club needs strong women like you, Mrs. Strahorn.”

  “Will you join us for dinner at the hotel, Dell?” Robert’s invitation carried a sweet note of uncertainty.

  Was I strong enough to go back and not lose what I’d gained this summer? Myself. I spoke a silent prayer.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sure we’ll have more to talk about.”

  We did. There was an ease to the conversation with the Brownes. Mr. Browne spoke Robert’s language of finance and banking and development and railroads. We had both attended the University of Michigan, he in law and me in music; Mrs. Browne came from a wealthy Portland family, lumber in her background. She chimed in, spoke of children, grandchildren, suffrage, and added, “Putting us on the gold standard will be very good.”