Compromise with Sin Page 15

  “Try again.”

  Holding a wet finger in the air, she tested the wind and compensated for its direction when she aimed. This time the bullet hit the can squarely and knocked it off the post. Frank shook his head.

  Feigning surprise, she said, “Would you look at that?”

  He set up a third can. “All right, step back ten paces, and we’ll see what you can do.”

  Even from the greater distance she hit the target dead on.

  He walked to her side. “You’ve done this before.”

  Louise grinned as she handed him the pistol. “A rifle, not a pistol. You forget where I came from. Time was my family wouldn’t have had any supper if I couldn’t have bagged a squirrel or a rabbit.”

  He patted her on the back. “Good girl. I won’t have to worry about you. Just make sure you keep it loaded and on your nightstand.”

  “I intend to. What about you out on the road?”

  “I’ll take the rifle along.”

  “That reminds me, I don’t want to make bank deposits alone, and with Yonder leaving soon to get married─”

  “I meant to tell you. He won’t be leaving. Giovanna has postponed the wedding.”

  Louise could hardly believe his words. “What happened?”

  “Her Chautauqua contract. She has one more season, and she told Yonder she wouldn’t feel right being an absentee bride.”

  Delighted that Yonder wasn’t leaving, at the same time Louise felt badly about the way he was being treated. “That’s odd. Surely she knew─”

  Frank seemed not to hear. “There’s one more thing.” He talked as he removed bullets from the pistol’s chamber. “You’ll have to order dark glasses for Marie.”

  “What?” Louise’s ears were still ringing. Surely he hadn’t said what she thought she heard.

  “The Chautauqua contract requires Marie to wear dark glasses and use her cane whenever she’s in public.”

  “No. What─”

  Frank interrupted. “Ryder says her white bloodshot eyes will repulse people. You have to admit─”

  Louise felt the blood rush to her face. “You would handicap her further for the sake of appearances? I’ve put up with all your cockamamie schemes, but─”

  “I signed a contract, Louise.”

  She was powerless. Poor Marie. She took pride in navigating without her cane whenever possible. Dark glasses would make her totally dependent on it.

  As if to underscore Louise’s thoughts, Marie approached, walking her familiar path toward the clothesline without a cane. “I heard firecrackers.”

  “Gunshots, Junior,” Frank said. “We were practicing with the pistol. Your mother is a sharpshooter.” He patted Louise’s shoulder. Turning away he said, “I’ve seen glasses in the Sears catalog.”

  The thought she’d had when Marie was selected to be child elocutionist resurfaced: Nothing good can come of this.

  It was the eve of Frank and Marie’s departure for the Chautauqua. They would report to Lawrence, Kansas, for rehearsals and orientation and begin the circuit the first week in April.

  “Not there.” Louise stopped Frank from depositing Marie’s newly polished shoes on the tissue paper next to the open suitcase on their bed. Louise packed according to her own inviolate system. To avoid creases from folding, she rolled garments in tissue paper, then stacked them in the suitcase in tidy rows that would make a brickmason proud.

  Louise stopped momentarily to listen to Pachelbel’s “Canon” coming from the back parlor where Marie and the piano had been inseparable since supper. Picking up Marie’s candy-striped nightgown, a gown that epitomized childlike innocence, Louise resisted the idea that her daughter might outgrow it before the tour ended in September. She held it to her nose and inhaled its fresh-air fragrance, remembering how Marie used to go to the clothesline and wrap herself in a dried sheet. Louise tried to hold her emotions in check by attending to the details of packing, but tears welled up nevertheless. The child she was sending off would not be the one who returned.

  This was not Marie’s first time to leave home. When she was six years old, Louise had yielded to pressure to send her to Smithville State Asylum for the Blind, fifteen miles north of Riverbend, only on the condition that she’d return home once she learned Braille and cane travel. But boarding school ravaged the spirits of Marie and her parents alike. When the superintendent reported that Marie was having “accidents,” Louise went weak imagining her daughter’s ordeal and pulled her from the school immediately.

  A different child came home. Her black braids had been cut in an institutional bob, the same cut seen in pictures of children in Indian boarding schools. She craved cuddling, slipped into baby talk when she was tired or upset, and begged Louise to feed her. After many months she began to act her age once more. Louise vowed to never send her away again. But this time Marie was choosing to go.

  Louise held up a dress. “Don’t let anyone starch Marie’s dresses or petticoats unless you want her scratching on stage in front of hundreds of people.”

  “I’ll surely try to remember,” Frank said. “And you remember everything I told you. Keep your eye out when those musicians from Texas come through. They’ll try to sneak extra people into their rooms. Get Yonder to fix the loose railing on the front porch. Keep the pistol by your bed. And don’t ever go to the bank alone. Take Yonder with you.”

  Frank’s allusions in recent weeks to Yonder as her protector affirmed what Louise needed to believe. He trusted her.

  After Frank left home for a final poker game, it was Marie’s usual bedtime, but tonight was special. Marie clapped her hands when her mother presented the plan: hot chocolate together, then a story, and then Louise would lie down with her until she fell asleep.

  Louise made hot chocolate while Marie donned her nightgown, robe and slippers. As they sat together at the breakfast room table, Louise studied her daughter’s movements, having vowed that she would commit this evening to memory. It saddened her to think of the everyday things she couldn’t recall from Marie’s earlier years, such as the name she gave her first teddy bear. Tonight she etched in her mind the manner in which Marie stirred her hot chocolate until the instant she felt the floating marshmallow dissolve into a frothy cloud, and how she slowly licked the spoon.

  Louise envied Marie’s blissful and total engagement in their simple interlude. By contrast, Louise could not will herself to stay in the present, overcome with the realization that these precious hours were numbered.

  When they finished their hot chocolate, they went to the back parlor. Marie said, “Read to me about Chopin and how he fell in love with that lady who smoked cigars and dressed like a man . . . please.”

  “We’ve read that part several times.” Louise took down the book and leafed through its pages. “Here’s a picture of his first love, Konstancja Gladkowska, a most elegant young lady. She has dark hair, like yours, only hers hangs in ringlets. Would you like to hear about her?”

  “Yes.”

  With Marie nestled beside her in her favorite chair, Louise drank in the almond fragrance of her daughter’s just-washed hair. A moment not to be forgotten. Marie sat still as a statue as Louise read about how Frederic Chopin loved the beautiful opera singer from a distance and, being too shy to speak, expressed his feelings in romantic letters. “’Finally they proclaimed their love for one another.’“

  “Did they get married and live happily ever after?” Marie asked.

  “I think not.” She continued reading. “’In spite of his intentions of marriage, he tarried too long and lost his beloved. She wed a merchant and became mistress of his country estate. Heartbroken, Frederic sought comfort in fleeting romances—’”

  “What are ‘fleeting romances?’”

  “That means he courted several women without finding lasting love.” She read on. “’Some years later Konstancja began losing her sight, and in spite of the efforts of the most skilled physicians, she went totally blind.’” Thinking fast, Louise had
substituted the word totally for hopelessly. “One wonders . . . “ Louise stopped and gasped. The unfinished sentence read: One wonders if Chopin was relieved that she had become the responsibility of another man.

  “I’ll never marry, will I?”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re lovely and talented. Eligible young men will vie for your attention.”

  “No they won’t. No one likes me.”

  Holding Marie’s head against her breast, Louise felt the pulsing of muffled cries and dampness of tears. She stroked her daughter’s hair. “Nonsense. I shall tell you a secret. I’ve been saving all your favorite dresses, and when you turn sixteen, I shall cut out the embroidered parts and make them into a magnificent quilt for your hope chest.”

  She wiped away Marie’s tears. “You’re about to embark on a great adventure, and you’ll make new friends.” Louise hated her falsely cheerful tone.

  “Other children won’t play with me.”

  Louise recalled the birthday party. It wasn’t fair that blindness hid so much that was beautiful, such as rainbows and sunsets, yet it failed to hide the cruelty. “Of course other children like you.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” Marie screamed. She leaped from the chair and pounded her mother with her fists. “I hate you. Just leave me alone . . .”

  Louise gripped her daughter’s hands and pulled her onto her lap. Marie continued to resist, but Louise held her securely and rocked her from side to side. “I’m sorry that sighted children won’t play with you. Children can be very cruel to those who are different. I know, because when I was your age no one would play with me.”

  Marie sniffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “But you weren’t blind. Why wouldn’t they play with you?”

  “Their families were rich, and mine was poor. I wore rags to school and shoes with holes in them. Other children called me a ragamuffin.”

  “You never told me.”

  “I never wanted anyone to know I was poor. But I want you to know I sympathize with how you feel, how lonely it is when other children don’t like you. When you grow up things will get better. You’re beautiful and talented, and people will want to know you.”

  “But you have friends because you’re not poor anymore. I shall always be blind.”

  Louise had hoped Marie would not detect the flaw in her logic. “That’s true. But consider Miss Helen Keller. She grew up with only her family and Miss Sullivan to love her, and now she has many friends.”

  Louise stood and lifted Marie, almost too big to hold, and carried her to bed. They lay together, Marie on her side facing away from her mother. Louise sought to soothe the tension in the young body next to hers, to ease the rigidity of the child’s head resting against her shoulder. She rubbed Marie’s back.

  “Guessing game, please?” Marie said.

  That Marie would request the childish game they hadn’t played for several years touched Louise. The game’s object was for Marie to guess the object her mother traced on her back.

  “Banana,” Marie said after Louise traced the first object.

  “Good.” Louise then made a star, which Marie guessed correctly.

  They played their game until finally Marie exhaled a shuddering sigh, went limp, and surrendered to peaceful sleep.

  “I shall miss you, my darling.”

  Perhaps it was the frequent need for pretense, the masking of feelings, that made Louise acutely aware of instances when she was being genuine. She had told Marie she would miss her, and that was the heartfelt truth.

  This moment, so precious and transitory, lodged as a lump in Louise’s throat. Daughters have a way of growing up and out of reach of a mother’s comforting hand.

  16

  April 1905

  The intoxication of the open road coursed through Frank’s veins like a spring tonic. With his new customized Mack Brothers truck, outfitted with a plate glass windshield and side curtains, he and Marie were the envy of many Chautauqua presenters who had to make their way from town to town any way they could.

  He needed this break from the Inn. It had been his whole life except for a stint at an Omaha bank as a young man. Learning banking and finance was his father’s plan for him, but Frank had chafed at being captive in a gloomy building and having to look busy. How was a man supposed to dream and invent with his mind and body in hock from dawn to dusk? Frank’s older brother, Aidan, had been groomed to take over the Inn, but his sudden death from a horseback riding accident thrust Frank in his place.

  Frank had gladly left banking and returned to the Inn, where he had worked since he was a child. He could count presidential candidates, captains of industry, and European royalty among the people whose shoes he had shined or trunks he had hauled. Occasionally a head of state from a far-off land swept in with an entourage, stopping en route to the plains to hunt buffalo.

  The rooms held stories. One room became forever known as “the drummer’s room,” so named for a salesman who was an occasional guest until one Christmas Eve when he took a gun and splattered his brains on the wall and floor. Frank had to help scrape up the mess and replace wallpaper and curtains. To this day, the room gave him cold shivers.

  One time Buffalo Bill himself stopped, and after he left Frank helped the hired girls clean the room. At school the next day, he held his chums spellbound as he unfolded a piece of paper to reveal the great showman’s beard clippings.

  He learned younger than most that people are not what they appear to be. The detritus left in rooms taught him volumes—used condoms left under a bed, blood-drenched pads tossed in a corner, a priest’s forgotten collar along with empty whiskey bottles and dirty pictures.

  Also at a young age he cultivated a charming manner, partly to boost the size of tips, but mostly to challenge himself to win over strangers in a matter of minutes. What made him irresistible was a spark that said, “I think you are fascinating.”

  Indeed Frank seldom met anyone he did not find interesting. But owning a hotel eventually proved a poor fit for a man who hated being captive. Taking to the road was just what he needed.

  After three weeks on the tour, Frank was having misgivings. When Marie begged him not to make her wear the dark glasses, he spared her the truth. “The glasses are a ‘prop’ necessary to convince audiences they’re seeing a blind child.” Louise’s angry objection to the glasses resided just below his skin and surfaced whenever Marie put them on.

  One of Louise’s objections to the Chautauqua Frank had to concede was valid: Marie needed familiarity and routines. While the novelty of living out of a suitcase exhilarated him, it challenged Marie. It meant navigating a new environment every few days. With each move she had to learn the locations of her bed, a chest of drawers, wall pegs for her clothes, and obstacles that could stub toes.

  Her distress was affecting her performance. After opening night in Norfolk, Nebraska, Mr. Ryder put it to Frank bluntly, “She’s too timid. I overheard a mother in the audience say, ‘My little Janie can do better than that.’ I’ll give her two more weeks to get up to snuff.”

  Frank went straight to work to salvage Marie’s budding career. He arranged for Bernard to coach her. And to help her feel more at home, as well as to appease Louise, he scheduled piano lessons with the Chautauqua accompanist, a man who held a degree from an Austrian conservatory, and vowed he’d see to it she could practice two hours a day.

  After Norfolk, the next tour stop was Sioux City, Iowa. When Mrs. Ryder arrived in the hotel room two hours before the show on opening night, Marie was sitting on a bed composing a letter to her mother with her Braille slate and stylus while Frank lounged on the other bed rubbing Vaseline on a black patent-leather shoe. He employed the matronly woman to personally tend to Marie, aside from her duties policing the appearance and behavior of Chautauqua presenters and teaching elocution.

  Mrs. Ryder plugged in the curling iron, placed the hotel room’s lone chair in front of the dressing table, and stacked books on it. Marie climbed up and sat perfectly still
so as not to get burned by the hot iron. Mrs. Ryder wound a strand of hair around the iron, slipped the iron out, and repeated the action with another strand of hair, then another.

  As she worked, she gave Marie a pep talk, delivered as though she aspired to the platform herself. “Here’s what you must remember. Think about the people in your audience. They toil in fields and kitchens day in and day out. Once a year the Chautauqua comes, and they travel for miles and sleep on the ground because they crave a dose of culture. You, my child, are their life raft. You will transport them from their cares, sweeten their lackluster lives, and they will love you for it. Think of the good you are doing.”

  The incongruity of an elocution teacher with clicking dentures made Frank smile to himself. At the same time, he appreciated the woman’s sincere desire to help his daughter. She might be brusque with everyone else, but she adored Marie.

  Once Mrs. Ryder finished making coils with the curling iron, she allowed them to cool, then combed each one out and wrapped it around her finger. “Such stubborn hair, child. Doesn’t want to hold a curl. Straight as a little Indian’s.”

  “That’s because I am part Indian,” Marie said. “My great-grandmother was an Ioway Indian.”

  Once every curl met her satisfaction, Mrs. Ryder unplugged the curling iron and eased the yellow dress with brown trim over Marie’s head without disturbing the sculpted ringlets. She retrieved a yellow ribbon from a drawer, deftly swept hair away from Marie’s face, and tied the ribbon in a bow. Finally she slipped the now-lustrous black shoes on Marie’s feet.

  Frank handed Marie the glasses, which she put on without a fuss, and her cane. In keeping with routine, the trio went to the Chautauqua tent where Frank and Marie waited backstage while Mrs. Ryder scrutinized the presenters before they went on. “Mr. Whitney,” she said to the ventriloquist, “you had best have that suit pressed by tomorrow night or you’ll be paying a fine.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.