A Violet Season (8 page)

“How are you this morning, Ida?” Anna Brinckerhoff asked warmly when she had finished with the other customers.

“Fine, thank you, and you?” Ida noted that Mrs. Ritter, whose husband ran the Post Road Hotel, had entered the shop, and nodded a polite good day to her as well.

“A new dress for yourself?” Anna asked, taking up her heavy tailor’s scissors.

“For Alice,” Ida said. “I’ll need six yards.”

As Anna cut the fabric, Mrs. Ritter injected herself into their
conversation. “Now that your nephew is taking over, what will become of your place, Ida?” she asked.

“He’s been made a junior partner,” Ida replied. “I sincerely doubt he’ll be taking over anytime soon.”

“Oh! Henry says he heard your brother-in-law was asking about a piece of property in Florida. One of our regular patrons, a gentleman from Kinderhook, is selling it.”

Anna laughed. “Florida, for heaven’s sake!”

“They say it feels this warm all winter long,” Mrs. Ritter said. “Quite a few of the men of means are buying property there.”

“It’s terribly hot in the summer, I would imagine,” Anna added. “Six yards, Ida. And will you need any notions?”

“Some buttons for the jacket, and a hook and eye,” Ida answered. “At any rate, Mr. Fletcher is a wise man,” she said, addressing Mrs. Ritter. “He has no intention of turning over the operation to an inexperienced boy, his son or no.”

“It’s what I heard,” Mrs. Ritter said with a twitch of her shoulder, and the old-fashioned leg-o’-mutton sleeves of her blouse shrugged stiffly with her.

Ida chose her notions carefully as Anna cut her maroon broadcloth and then some calico for Mrs. Ritter, who was sewing curtains for her kitchen. When the woman was gone, Ida brought her things to the counter and watched Anna tally them with a pencil on a piece of brown wrapping paper.

“Don’t pay her any mind, Ida,” she said. “You know she’s full of gossip, and half of it is entirely made up.”

“And the other half?” Ida asked.

“The other half is unkind.”

“So it is,” Ida agreed.

“Now, I’m glad you came in today. Before you go, I have something I’ve been wanting to give you,” Anna said. From under the counter she drew out a red volume with the bold title
Women and Economics
. “Have you heard of it?” she asked. It had been some
time since Ida and Alice had been to the lending library, and Ida admitted she had not.

“It’s just been published by a brilliant woman named Charlotte Perkins Stetson. She’s for women’s suffrage and more. You must read it.”

Anna was clearly anticipating some kind of response from Ida, who was trying to figure why she had been singled out to borrow the book. She raised her hand tentatively to take it. She wanted to be gracious, but the title alone could send Frank into a fit.

“I understand,” Anna said. From the stack of brown wrapping paper, she drew one large sheet and folded it, first lengthwise at top and bottom and then around the book itself, fashioning a paper cover. “Keep it in a safe place and return it when you’re through. I think you’ll like what she has to say.” Ida must have looked skeptical, for Anna added, “It’s food for thought, anyway.”

Ida was embarrassed then to mention her other reason for coming into the shop, but she mustn’t be deterred. This was the most logical place to ask for work for Alice. “While we’re on the subject of women and economics, Alice is seeking work as a seamstress, if you hear of anyone who needs help with sewing. She’ll go to ladies’ homes, provided they aren’t too far and Oliver can take her. Or she’ll take work in.”

“Wonderful,” Anna said, and Ida was relieved to be spared the shame of having to answer any further questions. “I’ll keep her in mind.”

They exchanged a few parting pleasantries, and Ida stepped out of the shop with her package of sewing goods and the borrowed book sandwiched inside. A dark storm cloud was blowing in from the south, and before she could reach the pharmacy, where Oliver was to meet her with the wagon, large drops of cold rain were landing in the street, shooting up dust. Ida had no umbrella, so for a time she stood beneath the faded canvas awning of the print shop, listening to the deep toll of thunder. It was only a summer
cloudburst, and she found herself quieted by it. Rarely did she have an excuse to stand still and wait. She watched the rain spill in jeweled strands from the awning to the sidewalk, where it puddled and then ran downhill as if it were in a hurry. She observed her own stillness as she watched the townsfolk scurry from door to door, holding newspapers and boxes and bags over their heads. She felt impervious, not troubled by rain or snow or the heat of the August sun. She imagined what it would be like to stand still forever, needed by no one.

It would be death. Her heart beat once, hard against her bones, then lay back in her breast.

A farm wagon rolled by, its wheels spinning muddy spirals of rainwater. Ida stepped into the easing rain and made her way across the street to the pharmacy to wait for Oliver.

The sky was still gray as an army blanket when he finally pulled up. Another storm was steering up the valley, and Ida wished she had brought her wrap. “Maybe this one will pass us by,” she said as she set her heavy package beside Oliver, then lifted herself to the wagon seat.

“Dunno, Ma,” Oliver said, glancing south and then west.

“Fall is coming,” she said as Oliver steered the team toward home. “I can feel it.”

“It’s going to be a good harvest!” he said.

“Oh?”

“Norris’ll be taking over.” Oliver grinned as if he’d just won five dollars at horseshoes. Did he imagine his cousin would do him any favors? Ida wanted to shake him.

“How soon do you suppose?” she asked. Apparently she was the only one to have missed the news. She should have treated her request for work for Alice with more urgency. She nearly asked Oliver to take her back to Anna Brinckerhoff’s shop.

Oliver shrugged. “Soon as he’s ready. He’s a quick study.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Ida said, and she gripped the edges of
her hat as the breeze taunted it. She looked up to check the progress of the next threatening cloud.

“Well, that’s what he says. Maybe he’s wrong,” Oliver said. Noticing, as she had, that the cloud was bearing down fast, he slapped the reins and clicked his tongue at Trudy and Trip. “Slow old devils, ain’t you,” he said, but Ida pointed out neither his crude language nor his bad grammar.

“Did you hear Avery is home?” Oliver asked her.

“No!” Ida said. What else was she unaware of, stuck in her own backyard every day with the children?

“He’s sick in bed,” Oliver said. “Yellow fever. He never even made it to the battlefield; caught it on the docks.”

“That’s awful!”

“I’ll go see him. Maybe tomorrow,” Oliver said. “Wish I could have gone.”

“What, and caught yellow fever?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I feel like I missed something big. Now it’s over already.”

“You’ll have other opportunities,” Ida said, praying one of them wouldn’t be war.

For a time they rode in silence, while the lower clouds roiled like bluing in the laundry water and bulbous thumbs of iron gray stirred them from above. Ida and Oliver held their peace through the outskirts of the village. It wasn’t until they were nearing home that Oliver spoke again.

“George and I have been talking, Ma,” he said. He had worked himself up to making some kind of announcement.

“About what?” she asked.

“A business plan. When the season’s over, next spring, we were thinking . . .” Ida waited, expecting him to have yet another rash idea like prospecting for gold in the Klondike. “We thought we’d head out to Boston. George’s uncle has a fishing business, and he says he could use our help.”

“That’s a difficult life,” Ida said. “And a dangerous one. Harder than what we do here.”

“No, George’s uncle wants us to run a market for him. He’s opening his own, and he’d still go out and do the fishing with his crew. He needs us to run the business.”

“What do you know about selling fish?” Ida laughed.

“I’ve caught a few nice bass and a lot of sunnies,” Oliver replied with a self-deprecating smile. “Look, Ma, sometime I’ve got to strike out on my own. It’s Boston or New York. I can’t stay here all my life. The city is where things are happening!”

“I quite agree,” Ida said. “You can’t stay here. I hope you won’t.”

Oliver pulled inadvertently on the reins as he turned to her, and the team stopped in the middle of the road. “I thought you were going to argue with me all the way home,” he said. “I was scared to say anything.”

“Have you said anything to your father?”

“Not yet. I told you first.” This news warmed her, and then she felt ashamed, competing with Frank for Oliver’s affection.

“I think it’s time I tell you more about the farm,” she said.

Oliver clicked to set the team walking. Ida hesitated then. Frank wouldn’t want some of this said. But something had shifted, she realized, as she sorted the words she could use. Her loyalties were with Oliver, not Frank. She didn’t know what was happening to her husband, what he was thinking or why he was behaving as he was, but if it came to choosing between what Frank would want and what Oliver needed, she would choose her boy. Perhaps that had always been true, and she had simply never been tested before.

“Your father,” she began, then thought better of opening there. “Your uncles have been holding a grudge against your father for nearly thirty years.”

“I know that,” Oliver said. “He doesn’t own his share of the farm. Why not?”

“When he was about sixteen, your father took some money from the family safe. He’d met a man he wanted to invest it with. He thought he could make a profit and prove to everyone that he should be taken seriously.”

“And he lost it all,” Oliver said, guessing the end of her story.

“He lost it all.”

Oliver whistled gravely, and Trip raised his head, thinking the whistle was for him.

Ida went on. “Some of it, I suspect, he may have spent on other things—things he didn’t need, like the fancy buggy he had when I met him. Trips to the city. I’ve never asked him, and I’d rather not know.” Oliver did not press her on this account, but he looked embarrassed, as if he understood his father’s youthful tendencies.

“They needed that money,” Ida continued. “Your grandparents struggled hard to save the farm after that, and they both died within a couple of years. I’ve heard Uncle William say they died of grief—your grandfather over the farm, and your grandmother over him.”

“Do you believe that?” Oliver asked.

“I wasn’t there,” Ida said. “All I know is my father grieved my mother’s death horribly, but it didn’t kill him. I think some days he wished it would.”

Oliver nodded, and she could see that he was piecing the story to make his own sense of things.

“In any case,” she continued, “once your grandparents were gone, Uncle William and Uncle Harold decided to start fresh. The market for wheat was poor. They sold some land to the Mortons, and Uncle William went down to the city to work. He charmed his way into society and met Aunt Frances, and brought her and all her money up here. That’s when they built their big house. They tried pear trees first, and when that didn’t work, Aunt Frances’s money let them take up the violets. Now, of course, they’re doing very well.”

“But what about Pa?”

“He ran off for a while. First to New York, then to Albany. He wasn’t here when his parents died. When he came back to claim his share, we were newlyweds. Uncle William wanted nothing to do with him, but he knew it wouldn’t look good if he turned us away. Uncle Harold said we should be allowed to stay but that Pa would have to earn his way back in.”

“Why did Pa come back? He could do anything.” Oliver looked pained, and she could see he was building up a head of steam that might be released in the wrong way if she didn’t take care.

“I think your father felt he had something to prove. He’s the youngest brother. Think about how hard Reuben works to keep up with you.” Oliver bowed his head and ran his fingers through his damp hair.

“Pa wanted to show them he could succeed,” Ida said. “He thought he could pay them back what he’d lost, and that would vindicate him. It hasn’t happened quite that easily.” She didn’t add that at one time Frank had tried to move over to working for the Tenneys or the DuMonts, the other major violet growers, but his reputation for hotheadedness had preceded him.

They had reached their turn onto Dutch Lane, and Ida hastened to finish what she had to say, for the sky was curtained and she didn’t want to slow their pace. “That’s all,” she said. “We never left. I wish we had, but I think for your father, leaving would mean conceding defeat. Uncle William and Uncle Harold let us live in the tenant house, and they pay your father like a hired hand. They expect the rest of us to pitch in, and they credit our work against his debt. They say if he repays them what he lost, they’ll give him the house and let him in on the farm as a partner. But he’ll never be able to do that on nine dollars a week.”

“Why doesn’t he sue them?” Oliver asked.

She saw how tightly he was gripping the reins. “Your uncles are respected members of the community. It wouldn’t reflect well on
your father. And he’s a strong-willed man. Like you.” She smiled, meaning this as a compliment, but Oliver was too angry, and he looked away.

“I’d like to take a shot at both of them,” he said.

“Take care, Oliver. Know your place.”

“My place ought to be the same as Norris’s!”

“It ought to, but it’s not. You’ve known that all along.”

“And now I know why! I wish I could march right up there and set a match to that fancy old house.”

“I used to feel that, too,” Ida said. “But your best revenge is to refuse to play the part they’ve given you. Go to Boston.”

Her son, her young man, held her gaze then. For the first time, they were adults in league, and she had reached the moment when she would willingly send him away.

“I’ll finish this season,” Oliver said. “Do you think that’s all right, to wait until spring?”

“That will give you plenty of time to save up and make your plans,” Ida said. She placed her hand firmly on his and added, “Don’t tell your father.”