Bittersweet (17 page)

Behind a long counter partitioned off into several working areas, three men, wearing collars, their sleeves held up with garters, went about the business of the railroad. A knot of men at the counter were arguing vehemently over a missing shipment of harness leather. Imogene skirted them and located the clerk who seemed least concerned with the fray.

“Pardon me.” She raised her voice to get his attention. “I am just arrived with another lady. She’s ill. Is there a place nearby that would be suitable? We’ll be staying here indefinitely.”

The young man she addressed was absorbed in the argument. “Where’s your menfolk?” he said absently.

“We’re traveling alone.”

“They ain’t come to meet you?”

“We are not expecting to be met.”

His face crinkled into a practiced leer and he turned his eyes to her for the first time. Immediately the half-smile disappeared with all thought of fancy ladies. He was all repentant respect under the unflinching gaze of the definitive Schoolteacher. “I beg your pardon, ma’am. I was woolgathering. Expecting those fellas might come to blows. Two lone ladies, you say. I expect the Broken Promise’d be the place. Fred and Lutie run a nice clean house, and nobody’d think the worse of you for staying there. Lutie’d see to that. It’s just down the main street to your right. Everything’s on Virginia Street, pretty much.”

Imogene thanked him and left the hand luggage in his car. With Sarah leaning heavily against her shoulder she set out for the Broken Promise. It was about a quarter of a mile from the station, set back from the street behind a white picket fence. A weathered rocking chair graced the narrow veranda, and an ample woman with faded brown hair and a friendly, fleshy countenance was stooped over,
planting bulbs along the lattice skirting. The woman straightened up and pulled off her gardening gloves as Imogene opened the gate.

“The mite looks a bit poorly,” she clucked, and without further ado she shored up Sarah’s other side and bustled them in out of the wind. She settled them in the second room off the top of the staircase, saying, “I only got a couple of rooms at present, and this’n is the nicest.”

Sarah’s skin was hot to the touch and she shook with chills. The two older women stripped off Sarah’s soiled outergarments and put her to bed. The stocky innkeeper was Lutie Bone; she and her husband, Fred, owned and ran the Broken Promise. Lutie sent a boy to fetch their luggage and went down herself to find a cot that Imogene had requested.

Imogene looked at her watch. It was just half past four. Sarah was dozing. For a few moments she regarded the sleeping girl indecisively. Then she wrote a quick note and pinned it to the cloth cover on the bedstand, where Sarah could not fail to see it if she awoke.

The wind had picked up, scouring a fine dust from the streets and driving it against the wooden façades of the buildings. Imogene let herself out the gate. To the right, Virginia Street petered out into scattered homes and disreputable-looking shops. To the left was the bulk of the town, with its stores and eating houses. Holding on to her hat, she turned resolutely left in search of Isabelle Anne and her husband.

It took an hour to canvass the post office, the courthouse, and finally the stationer’s where Isabelle Anne Close’s husband had worked. The Englewoods had moved to Sacramento.

Letting the wind snatch her hat awry and whip her hair from its pins, she trudged back to the hotel. Mount Rose threw its shadow across the wide valley floor, and without the sun, the wind lost every vestige of spring and blew bitterly cold. Exhaustion drew down Imogene’s cheeks and deepened the creases around her eyes and mouth; she looked like a woman in her forties.

Several people were gathered around the fireplace in the parlor: a man and his wife and an elderly woman with thinning white hair piled elaborately, if inexpertly, on top of her head. Avoiding their curious glances, Imogene went straight up to the room. There was no light showing under the door and she turned the knob slowly, careful not to make too much noise. The room was deep in dusk and shadow. “Sarah, are you asleep?” she whispered. There was no
answering rustle. She closed the door quietly. Without lighting a lamp, Imogene unpinned her hat and sank into a chair, her shoulders stooped. She rubbed her eyes tiredly. “What to do, what to do,” she muttered to herself. Gray in the evening light, her face in the looking glass caught her attention and she stared at her reflection. Hair stuck out from her head like straw, one strand falling down over her eyes. “Double, double, toil and trouble,” she said wryly, and turned her back on herself, massaging her temples.

When Imogene’s eyes had adjusted to the half-light, she noticed that Sarah was not in the bed. “Sarah?” she called, and stood to walk around the footboard. A candle was extinguished on the floor, a scar burnt in the hardwood. Sarah was sprawled beside it, her petticoats tangled around her knees, her hand outstretched toward the candle. Imogene knelt and cradled her in her arms.

Sarah’s eyes fluttered open and she looked around her with the gaze of a stranger. “I fell,” she murmured. “I have to get Matthew inside before the storm hits; I can hear the wind.”

Imogene pressed her cheek against the girl’s burning forehead, rocking back and forth. “Oh dear God,” she whispered. “Oh dear God.”

SARAH THRASHED IN A PRIVATE NIGHTMARE, SOMETIMES RECOGNIZING
Imogene but more often calling for people who were familiar to her childhood. Always she cried for her mother and David and begged for her son. Imogene stayed awake through the nights, watching the thin, tortured face by the light of a shielded lamp.

At dawn of the third day, Imogene sat near the window. The dark wool of her dress was rumpled; she had not taken it off in four days. The white hair at her temples showed stark in the blue light, and in her lap she twisted a handkerchief, grimy with use. Outside the window, the sun touched the peaks of the Sierra. The rosy hue spread down over the snow and turned at last to gold.

“Imogene.” Sarah’s voice, mostly air, sounded far away. The schoolteacher turned slowly, reluctant to leave the pearly glow of sunrise for the sickroom. Sarah’s face was still flushed with fever, but the delirium had lifted and Imogene saw recognition in her eyes.

“My dear,” Imogene whispered. “You are back with me.” She brought Sarah water from the nightstand and stayed, holding the hot, dry little hand, until the girl slept.

Imogene looked from the helpless white fingers to her own blunt, capable hands, and a heavy tiredness blanketed her features. Lying down on the cot by the far wall, she let herself sleep.

When she awoke, the afternoon sun was throwing the shadow
of the hotel across the backyard. Sarah was still sleeping. Imogene levered herself stiffly out of her cot and sat down near the window to write Margaret Tolstonadge a brief account of their journey and Sarah’s illness, ending with:
Please write Sarah Mary of Matthew and of home. She is still very ill and is not a strong woman. I think news of home and family would be so good for her now. As ever, Imogene G
. She addressed it in care of Mrs. Thomas and, with a last check on Sarah, slipped out of the room.

Having posted the letter, Imogene walked slowly up the boardwalk, her heels making a hollow sound on the wood. The sun shone under the wide overhang of the wooden awning, and Imogene tilted her face back to catch the light. Brown-and-white sparrows perched in the rain gutters, and the bright yellow-orange breast of a Western oriole flashed over V. Milatovich’s grocery store.

Outside Willamette’s Dry Goods and Feed, two men lounged in a warm square of sunlight, their shoulders braced against the building. One was young, around thirty, with thick brown hair that curled boyishly over his ears. Large features crowded his face, and one side of his mouth drooped a little, giving him a puckish look. The other, gnarled and grizzled and in his fifties, was not over five feet seven inches tall, even in his thick-heeled boots. A sharp beak of a nose dominated his face, and bright blue eyes twinkled deep on either side of it. As Imogene drew near, the older man pushed himself out from the wall and tugged at the brim of a battered old hat. His right hand was missing all but the middle finger and thumb.

“Afternoon to you, ma’am.”

“Good afternoon.” Imogene nodded, giving them both a cursory glance.

“You be the lady come in with the little sick miss the other day?”

Imogene stopped. “Yes, I am.” She waited. The man had his hat off and was standing respectfully enough. He had to look up to talk with her. His companion had relinquished the support of the wall at Imogene’s approach and pushed his hat back in deference to her sex.

“If you’re a spinster lady or a widow, I’d like to suggest we get hitched.” The man rubbed his grizzled head with the stumps of his fingers in an overabundance of humility. Imogene stared at him uncomprehendingly. “I’m proposing matrimony,” he explained.

Imogene touched her drawn cheeks, her hair; then, with an obvious effort at self-control, she dropped her hands to her sides. Blood
rose in her face to the roots of her hair, only her lips and the edges of her nostrils retaining their former pallor. “Excuse me.” Holding her dress back so it wouldn’t brush against him, she stepped around the man as though he were a pile of manure.

Undaunted, he called after her, “You ever change your mind, name’s McMurphy. Willamette’ll know where I can be found.”

The younger man laughed. “Now you’ve torn it, Mac. You’re too little. Gal like that throws the little ones back.”

Mac hit him with his hat. “Go on. Mouth off. You got yourself a woman.”

The younger man snorted derisively.

Sarah was asleep. Still warm with fever, she had thrown off her covers and her small feet showed pink beneath the hem of the nightdress.

Quietly, Imogene unpacked the rest of her bags and put her things away. She saved out ink and a dozen sheets of white paper. When the room had been tidied to her satisfaction, she sat down again at the window and carefully wrote in large letters across the top of each sheet:
LAUNDRY AND MENDING. I. GRELZNIK—INQUIRE AT THE BROKEN PROMISE
. She waited several moments for the ink to dry, then took them downstairs.

Lutie was busy in the kitchen. But for the parlor, the kitchen was the largest room in the hotel, with the stove and pantry at one end and a long plank table flanked by benches at the other. The hotel residents ate in the kitchen along with two railroad men who lived near the station and boarded with the Bones. Lutie was cutting potatoes into cubes with a meat cleaver when Imogene came in.

“Pardon me, Mrs. Bone.”

“Lutie. We’re not so formal as all that.” She waved the cleaver in the direction of the bench opposite. “Sit yourself down. How’s little Mrs. Ebbitt?”

“Still sleeping.” Imogene slid in between the table and the wall.

“That’ll do her more good than anything. What’ve you got there?”

Imogene had laid the papers out on the table. “That’s what I’ve come to ask you about. Until I can find a position, I’ve got to turn my hand to something to earn our keep.” Lutie’s face clouded as she read the leaflets. “I still have enough to pay the rent,” Imogene added quickly.

“I’m not worried about that, hon. I expect Fred and I aren’t
going to starve if we have to carry you a bit, till you’re settled. Taking in laundry just maybe isn’t the best way.”

“There will be no teaching positions until fall term, and I want to pay our way.”

“Chinese do most of that kind of work. Some white folks do it, it’s just that a Chinee’ll work for less money. I don’t know how they live, but they do. It kind of puts the squeeze on everybody. I don’t think you can get by charging less, and nobody’s going to pay you more.”

“I need to do something.” Imogene poised her pen over the ink bottle. “How much should I charge?”

“Fred and I can carry you for a bit.”

“A nickel per shirt and ten cents for trousers?”

“Whatever you make it, six Chinese will go you a dime better.”

Imogene penned in
REASONABLE RATES
under the name of the hotel.

The laundry did not pour in. Fred said the people in Reno who were genteel enough to wash their clothes didn’t like asking a white woman to do it for the pittance they could pay a Chinese.

Sarah was bedridden, her recovery progressing so slowly that at times Imogene feared her health had been destroyed by the fever and the shock of being driven from her child and home. Most of every day, Imogene sat with her, reading or writing letters. Propped up in bed, small against the bulwark of pillows, Sarah spent the days uncomplaining, watching the shadows move across the wall.

Imogene coaxed her with books and lively talk, and spread breadcrumbs on the windowsill so the birds would stop there, but Sarah seemed too tired; the books would slip from her hands and her mind wandered from conversation.

Mid-May brought a letter from Mam, and with it the first spark of interest Sarah had shown.

Enclosed in the letter were four one-dollar bills.

Over the next few days, Sarah read the letter again and again until Imogene teased that she could repeat it by rote. The letter gave Sarah no pleasure and there was an unhealthy sense of urgency when she pored over it.

One evening after reading it through again, Sarah lay back on the pillows. “When last I saw him, Sam called me an abomination in the sight of God.” Imogene looked up from her book. Sarah was tearing soundlessly at her sunken cheeks, her nails raking the skin red. Imogene held her hands until she slept, and stayed at the bedside long into the night, afraid to leave her. After that, the letter was put away and Sarah never asked for it.

The four dollars went to Lutie in partial payment of May’s room and board. Lutie was a gracious creditor, but her mother-in-law, Evelynne, never missed a chance to remind Imogene that she lived at the Broken Promise on “Bown-yay” (as she insisted Bone was pronounced) charity.

In June, Imogene had a caller. She was upstairs with Sarah when Lutie came up to announce that there was a man waiting in the parlor. “Looks like a beau.” Lutie winked at Sarah. Embarrassed, Imogene shook her head a curt “no” and preceded Lutie down the stairs.

Evelynne had come in from the porch to cross-examine Imo
gene’s guest, and he stood by the hearth, parrying the old lady’s questions with a guilty air. He looked up with relief when Imogene came into the room.

“How do, ma’am. I’m McMurphy. You probably don’t remember me.”

“I remember.”

“You do?” He looked sheepish. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, but what with one thing and another…”

Mrs. Bone hung on his every word. Annoyed, Imogene checked him with a look. “Is there something I can do for you, Mr. McMurphy?

A tattered piece of paper was crushed in his hands along with the hat. He spread it out apologetically. “I found it all messed up like this or I wouldn’t have mashed it.” He smoothed the page. “Did you write this?”

Imogene glanced at the sheet briefly; it was one of her handbills for laundry. “It’s my advertisement.”

“No, ma’am. Did you write it yourself? The letters?”

“Yes. I wrote it myself. Please make your point, Mr. McMurphy.”

“Mac.” He pulled some crumpled dollar bills out of his shirt pocket and held them out to her. “I was wondering if you’d write a letter home for me. My writing is not so good as yours, and I want it to be a good letter.”

Imogene fetched pen and ink and led McMurphy into the kitchen, where there was a steady writing surface. “About that other…” Mac began when they were alone.

“There’s no need, Mr. McMurphy. A joke is a joke and it’s done.”

“Oh no, ma’am! That was the straight goods. I’m sorrier’n hell if you took me wrong. I don’t blame you for getting your back up, but it’s dead earnest. A big, handsome gal like yourself might not get around to looking at a wart of a fellow like me if I was to wait for the natural course of events. I wanted to get my bid in first, is all. No offense meant, none at all.”

McMurphy’s manner was frank and open, his head bowed over his fisted hat, his eyes as clear as a mountain lake and as blue.

Efficient and businesslike, Imogene dipped her pen and readied the paper, but her cheeks were warmed by the gnarled little man’s sincerity. “It’s quite all right, Mr. McMurphy. Please sit.”

She was at a loss where to look. With an abrupt gesture of annoyance, she brushed her belated girlishness aside and snorted. Meeting Mr. McMurphy’s eye, she said, “I am flattered and I thank you for thinking so well of me, but I don’t think I will marry. Not in this lifetime.”

Halfway through the dictation, old Mrs. Bone found reason to busy herself in the kitchen—a part of the house she avoided at all costs on most days. Neither Imogene nor Mac took any notice of her until the letter was finished and Mac had asked Imogene to sign his name for him. When the ink was dry he folded the page reverently and tucked it into his wallet. Then he hovered near Imogene, standing stiffly by the table, looking pained and pulling absently on his bottom lip. Imogene stoppered the ink, wiped the nib clean, and waited.

“There’s something I want to ask you,” he finally muttered. Imogene inclined her head. “In private, I mean.” Imogene started to say no, but caught Evelynne Bone cocking an eager ear. She escorted Mac out onto the front porch.