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  “Who?”

  Jeanie’s breath was her only reply.

  “So you’re doing me a favor by demanding my forgiveness? You stranded me with nothing. And while I know you need to unburden your heart and cleanse your soul because you are dying, Mama, I don’t think I need to know any further details on the matter.”

  She covered her mouth wanting to trap the word Mama inside even though it had already escaped. She began to quake. It was as though birthing the words, having the conversation she did not want to have, made the meaning behind what was said and unsaid explode inside her, as though the earth separated and Katherine for the first time felt encompassed by true fear.

  Her teeth chattered and she clutched the linen bundle tighter. She couldn’t say what she felt at that moment, besides the oddest chill over her skin, but she knew she couldn’t handle information or anything else her mother had to offer by way of assurance that she’d once loved her as a mother ought to.

  “I did the best I could.” Jeanie said

  “It wasn’t enough. I would never do that to my children. Never. I would die first.”

  “Finally. Truth. It’s about time you uttered it,” Jeanie said. “But, you don’t know my truth. You don’t know the half of it, Katherine.”

  “I know all that I need to.”

  “Well, I need to tell you what happened that year. What really happened.”

  “I want to give you that, Mother, a chance to repent, but whatever you have to say, I do not want to hear. I’ll call a minister or Aleksey, since you’re perfect bosom buddies these days. Anyone but me. Some things aren’t meant to be shared between mother and daughter. That much I learned from you.”

  Jeanie shuddered as wind came through the open window. Katherine closed the window with one hand and wordlessly tucked the dirty quilt around every square inch of her mother’s body.

  She left the room with the bitter smell of death at her heels and the pitiful sound of her mother crying for her to come back, to please understand. She stood in the hallway, back against the closed door. She did want to understand, she did want to truly forgive her mother, she wanted her mother to experience earthly peace, but she didn’t know if she could do that. No matter how much she might regret not forgiving her mother, as Jeanie suggested she would, she was too resentful to do more than act as though she forgave. And that, she hoped would be enough.

  Chapter 7

  1887

  Dakota Territory

  The sight of one’s husband, intimately draped around another woman would be too much to take with no witnesses. But, for Jeanie to have Frank saunter into view, astride a horse and the woman sharing its back, with new neighbors watching? The sight buckled Jeanie’s knees.

  Greta grabbed Jeanie’s arm, and kept her from crashing to the ground.

  Jeanie felt her face bearing the crushed emotions that churned inside and she pulled away from Greta, smoothing her skirts then her hair. “I’m fine.” Jeanie plastered a smile across her face and patted Greta’s arm before striding toward the husband Jeanie wished, at that moment, wasn’t hers.

  As Jeanie neared the dugout, Frank dismounted the horse, helped the woman down, holding her wasp waist a little too long in Jeanie’s opinion.

  Frank dashed around the dugout, his blue eyes alive with something Jeanie couldn’t identify.

  “Oh, I love you my sweet Jeanie, my sweet friend, my love, my Jeanie. You look angry. I see behind that smile of yours.” Frank led Jeanie away from the group, trying to soften her mood. “Please don’t worry, lend me your worries and I’ll take them far away into the prairie where they can be buried deep, so we can live in comfort and pleasantness. Please, don’t buckle into the tensions of this new place. We’ll grow to understand the land, to contemplate the beauties of its nature just as we did so many times in the dense action of Des Moines. We’ll find that sort of feeling again. The freedom, the happiness. The everything we ever thought we wanted. It’s all here for the taking. I can just feel it. Please, come meet Ruthie and Lutie Moore. I told them all about you. They can’t wait to meet you.”

  Jeanie suddenly felt relieved. With the simple words “I told them all about you,” Jeanie’s anger fell away. She fell into Frank, letting him pet her. She felt dim-witted for letting cross feelings infiltrate her body and control its essence. Frank saw it from across the prairie, her discontent, and she was wrong for letting it show like that. It didn’t matter that their life collapsed in Des Moines, that her father had buried himself beneath a mound of powdered morphine long before the coroner claimed him lifeless. None of it was any excuse for her falling into her own blackness, drug-free as it might have been.

  She pushed Frank at the chest, then took his face in her hands, peppering him with kisses, not caring who saw or what it meant for society as it was becoming very clear, society as she knew it was not in their presence.

  “Okay, I trust you, us, everything, this land. We can do this. I’m so sorry I’ve been disagreeable. We can make this work. I love you Frank Arthur. I love you like it was the first day we met.” What she didn’t say was that this trust she felt was artificial, forced, constructed from something that used to be there, like the life they used to know. But, at that point, all Jeanie had was the will to construct a new life, even if that meant forcing intangible aspects of it into being, hoping that the act of pretending might bring forth reality.

  Jeanie and Frank turned toward the dugout and her normal energies returned. They headed to greet their guests in an appropriate manner, one that would be suitable in any civilized place.

  Lutie Moore, the woman who Frank had ridden with, looked down from the dugout at Jeanie. She held a bucket, with water slushing over the sides. “Well, now, you must be the famous, pregnant Mrs. Arthur.” She squealed like a child and squeezed her shoulders to her ears, face frozen into a smile of obnoxious glee.

  Jeanie’s hands flew to her waist. Her knees nearly buckled from the mortification that dripped over her like honey. Before Jeanie could respond, Lutie bounded down the side of the dugout and quite effectively skipped like a six-year-old. She placed the bucket at Jeanie’s feet. “Pleased to meet you Mrs. Arthur. My sister Ruthie and I have both of your books and ten of your columns. The very chivalrous and debonair Howard Templeton is always kind enough to bring a copy of your column when he comes back from the city. You have a fine, fine husband and I can only say that I hope when the time comes, I can fetch a boy just like him.”

  Lutie stuck her hand out to shake Jeanie’s. It was a tiny, smooth thing, with bones no larger than little Katherine’s. Lutie’s face, molded into a perfect oval, boasted wide-set eyes and lush lips like Jeanie’d only seen in Harper’s Bazaar. Her slim waist seemed to only get smaller and smaller until it belled out as just the right juncture to make her appear as though an artist had drawn the essence of woman and Lutie came to life right off the paper.

  Mostly, Lutie’s youth and vibrance struck Jeanie, making her feel instantly dowdy and unworthy of her wiry, electrified husband. The word divorcee kept leaping to mind, making Jeanie immediately suspicious of the kind of woman who could possibly divorce and be so happy thereafter.

  “My, my, my. A pleasure to meet you, Lutie. Call me Jeanie.” If Jeanie had learned anything from her father and mother it was that a woman should never let anyone recognize her insecurity as it related to her looks or her husband’s intentions. Such weaknesses, displayed for others was like blood in the water, calling all interested sharks to feed at the trough of one’s husband.

  “Oh, I will,” Lutie said, “that’s right pleasant of you. You just put me right to work as my sister Ruthie and I have sort of relaxed our conduct, not so much as to be scandalous, but in terms of keeping home. We’ve narrowed our work load to the nitty-gritty so to conserve time for music, song, and well, gardening and such. Your books are like home-keeping fantasy novels, fairytales that we can enjoy in print, but the chance of us bringing your words to life, are well, as slim as Cinderella herse
lf riding over that plain there. But we are thrilled that you will be able to do just that. Imagine it. The great Jeanie Arthur, right here in Darlington Township. Our very own big-bug come to town to bestow us with great knowledge, eloquently bestowed, I’m sure.”

  Jeanie shifted her weight and shyly glanced at the others who were listening. In light of the current condition of her home and body, she couldn’t have been more self-conscious of the mess it put her in to have written those books and to be held to their standard. Lutie didn’t seem to notice the discomfort as she gushed on.

  “And your Frank just about had a fit when he saw how we were mistreating our cows with improper milking technique. He said you were the fastest milk maid in Des Moines at one time,” she rambled on.

  “Well now, Jeanie,” Greta said stepping into the conversation. “You didn’t mention one bit of this—your skill as a milker. A writer of all things gracious, I know you said you dreamt of writing again, but I assumed it was letters you spoke of. Well, that’s right wonderful seeing as Lutie and Ruthie neglect to milk at all half the time, why don’t you, Lutie, offer Jeanie the cow in return for milk every few days?”

  “Oh, no, we couldn’t. We plan to buy livestock after we bring in the first crop or after Frank sells some of his furniture commissions,” Jeanie said.

  “Oh, why, Greta,” Lutie said. “That’s right intelligent of you, for an unread woman to come up with that. Well, okay, that’ll give me a chance to see you Arthurs on a regular basis, and yes, well, yes. That’s a great idea. How about we trade. Our cow for your home-keeping knowledge. We can be your apprentices.” Lutie walked away, talking to herself, repeating those words, making a dead-line toward Ruthie.

  “Greta, I can’t accept that. It’s not right.”

  “S’not right what’s happening in that house of theirs. I call it the house of ill-repute.”

  Jeanie’s jaw fell.

  “No, no,” Greta said. “There’s not actually such devious acts taking place there, other than Lutie’s blood-boiling flirtation, but they abuse their resources. Well that’s a scandal if one were likely to see the world in that way. I have much less trouble with loose women than I do loose women with loose housekeeping.”

  Jeanie covered her mouth and chortled into her hand. “Greta, you’re charming me right out of my blue mood. I have to thank you.”

  “And,” Greta said, “Don’t worry about Ruthie, she rules the roost over there—they’d be dead if not for her—but she’s no more interested in milking than old Loopy Lutie.”

  Templeton made his way to Nikolai and the boys to help with what now she could see was plowing. Frank had disappeared into the dugout while the other men cleared space for the Arthur’s garden. How could she let them do such back-breaking work while Frank entertained Darlington Township’s ladies of leisure?

  “Mrs. Arthur, uh, Jeanie?” The sister called Ruthie had come up on Jeanie without her noticing. Jeanie spun around.

  “Jeanie, please. Call me that.”

  Ruthie bit her lower lip then sucked both into her mouth and clamped down, and averted her gaze. She seemed to nearly shake in Jeanie’s presence. Her face was pock-marked, pudgy, without the planes that exposed just the right hills and valleys in a face, the contours that make one beautiful. Sprigs of Ruthie’s hair jutted from under her bonnet like the grasses inside the dugout. Some were black and others were the color of the dirty foam that had gathered atop the pond that nearly swallowed Katherine and Jeanie whole the day before. It was wavy like Lutie’s with none of the shine.

  Ruthie finally looked Jeanie in the eye. “I know what you’re thinking. What everyone does when they meet us. Are they really sisters? Well yes. Lutie’s always been the lucky one right down to when, by pure happenstance, she escorted our mother to tend our sickly grandmother and in the interim, small-pox knocked back seventy-five percent of our town.”

  As Ruthie spoke her posture straightened and she transformed from a shy mouse into more of a Greta figure. Strong in her limitations.

  Jeanie put her hand on Ruthie’s arm. “I didn’t think anything at all, Ruthie. I try not to put too many eggs in the attractiveness basket as I’ve found it guarantees nothing by way of happiness or honesty or loyalty.”

  Ruthie didn’t say anything but instead whipped to her right and marched off toward Greta and Lutie as though Jeanie’d smacked her. Well, so far, Jeanie was one in three for finding an acquaintance that suited her. Perhaps the prairie would be even lonelier than she had guessed it could be.

  Each time Jeanie tried to contribute to preparing the food, another neighbor arrived. The Hunts and their two sons Maxwell and Tobias were next. Mrs. Hunt was a minister of a Quaker Meeting and Mr. Hunt did his best to farm. That’s how they introduced themselves and quickly they ran through where the monthly meetings would be held and all the ways they hoped to bring literacy to the community while allowing each neighbor to find their inner light.

  Jeanie didn’t know anything about Quakers except that they were unlikely to cause problems and so she didn’t give them much thought in terms of their religion. She was, however, mesmerized by the notion that it was Abby Hunt who was the minister. Not at all something she’d ever explored through her writing or thinking.

  Frank had slipped into the conversation without Jeanie even realizing he was back from watering the horses or hiding in the dugout. “I like that notion, that Quakers hold as their guiding principle—finding the light within. Sort of how I make it my business to contemplate the beauties of nature. To really appreciate what beauty in that form means.”

  Jeanie had no idea where Frank had become informed of the principles of Quaker beliefs, but that wasn’t the time to ask.

  “Frank, darling,” Jeanie said putting her hand on his back. “Won’t you be a dear and bring in fresh water. I’d like some extra for the ladies as they may enjoy a fresh toilet before dinner.” Those words, the manner in which she delivered them felt good, normal, as though she could bring a little of the past into their present and in the future, perhaps, they could create the kind of society that demanded proper behavior and allowed for enjoyment of culture.

  “Sure,” he said. His face drooped a bit, sorry definitely to be removed from the conversation. But compared to the Zurchenkos, none of them had done anything and that was humiliating to Jeanie. She didn’t have time to work with Frank’s limitations, push him to perform as he should have been innately inclined to do.

  So, thanks to Ruthie, Greta and Abby Hunt, they enjoyed a rich dinner, conversation that revealed their little group as being slightly more intellectual than handy in nature and at that time Jeanie only gave that the label of interesting. It turned out Nikolai and Greta Zurchenko had only gone to school until sixth grade. And the current lot of Zurchenko children had barely attended at all. Ruthie had taught school for a year in Yankton before home-steading. Lutie had been promoted out of eighth grade, but showed no practical evidence of having done so. Ruthie had intimated that perhaps her parents thought Lutie had been secure in her beauty and standing, and hadn’t pushed her to do much more than revel in her own splendor.

  But, the flu took them and upon burial, the sisters discovered they were penniless. Lutie did the only thing she could imagine doing, and that was to get married, to attempt to bring some income to her and Ruthie. Greta discreetly told Jeanie that Lutie’s divorce was solely her doing, that she couldn’t stand being stifled by rules and a man’s place in the home as superior to hers. She simply drew up papers with her husband’s lawyer and walked out, requesting nothing.

  Had it been a different grouping, different circumstance, Jeanie might have offered her experience—her father’s death marked not only with typical grief, but laced with mind-numbing humiliation—as a means to bridging the enormous social gap, but Jeanie had never been the type to offer up weaknesses for conversational purposes. If she could pretend whatever was bad wasn’t there, then so could those around her.

  Jeanie enjoyed listening to
the others anyway, shaping who each person was and was not in her mind. Frank, though, was blustery, gushing forth with all method of dreams and his latest in air castle construction as he suggested all manner of ways they might make quick money. Jeanie shuddered thinking that Greta would suppose Jeanie kept the same silly dreams tucked inside her as Frank did. But Jeanie’d never dreamed of something she couldn’t achieve. She resisted the urge to tell Greta, she wasn’t that kind of dreamer. She was practical in her wishes.

  Sheep and cotton were two of Frank’s latest areas of focus. He’d not yet researched each fully, but he pulled several stacks of literature from the bottom of the book trunk and shook the paper at everyone saying how the path to riches, though going through the township of Darlington, would not stop there.

  Frank wielded his dreams as though he could spend them like cash—money to make people impressed. And this made Jeanie want to crawl into herself, made her grateful that get-togethers such as these would be limited by daily responsibilities. She wouldn’t have to either book-end Frank’s statements with impact softening verbal cotton, or shrink inside herself wishing she’d never met the man, then hating herself for not taking up residence inside each and every one of his very stately air castles.

  “My dear Jeanie, here, disagrees with my plans, but that’s all right. All it takes is one half of a couple to see the dream and grab it.”

  Jeanie felt attacked. “Now Frank, all I did was offer the information that flat prairie lands aren’t conducive to…“

  “Ah, that’s my Jeanie,” Frank’s words bit her as his eyes narrowed and he shook his head. Jeanie drew back, unsure of what she’d done wrong. “Always has all the answers. Loves to offer them up for—”