She heard his door open and close, and his footsteps approaching. Her door opened and he said, “Your room is warmer than mine. May I come in?”
“Of course.”
He stepped inside and closed the door without compunction. He was dressed in his black woolen trousers, white shirt and suspenders. High-topped shoes, too. He took her hand and led her near the lantern. “Well, look at you...” He took her head in both his hands and placed her clean-scrubbed face in the direct yellow glow. He studied her minutely, a faint smile on his lips. “It’s really Addie Merritt after all. How do you feel?”
“Much better. Amazed. Adrift. Afraid.”
He dropped his arms. “Would you rather be alone, Addie?”
“No, I... it’s Christmas Eve and who wants to be alone on Christmas Eve? I would like to talk, Robert, really I would, but it wouldn’t be good for you if word got out that you’d been in my room with me. Up at Rose’s is one thing, but here... this is a respectable establishment, I’m sure.”
“Addie.” He took her hand and led her to the bed. “You need to start concerning yourself with things that really matter.”
He cocked her pillows against the headboard, ordered “Sit,” and when she did, “Move over.” Atop the coverings he took his place beside her, put both arms around her and snuggled her against his side. He stretched out his legs, crossed his ankles and said, “Listen... the bells have stopped.”
They both listened.
A coal sang a sizzling note in the stove.
Across the hall someone was snoring.
Ruler vaulted up onto the bed and picked his way onto Robert’s lap, settled himself square atop his fly buttons and curled up like a jelly roll.
Robert and Addie laughed.
“Well, I guess that settles that,” he remarked.
She laughed again and ended with a sigh. “Oh Robert, I don’t know where to begin.”
Somehow they found the place. She began with her disillusionment when her mother ran away, the feeling after that of being different from other children who still had mothers. Those years of lonely longing, after Mrs. Smith came, when Sarah and she would stand at the window looking down Lampley Street, still believing their mother would return. Her childish chagrin when she began wetting the bed, and her fear when Sarah’s complaints about it prompted Addie’s move to a room of her own where the loneliness took on space and intensity. Her relief the first time her father had slipped in, in the dark to comfort her. The hazy area between puerile ignorance of what was truly happening and the dawning of revulsion followed by sexual guilt. The clearer recollections of begging to sleep with Sarah, who most often argued, “But you kick and take the covers and talk in your sleep. Go sleep in your own room.” Begging for a lock on her bedroom door while her father declared before both Sarah and Mrs. Smith that the way to cure Adelaide’s problems was not through locking out bogeymen but by leaving the door open and realizing there were none. Going to bed before her father got home, lying rigid with eyelids trembling, pretending to be asleep in hopes he’d pass right by her room and go to his own. Studying hard in hopes she’d become smarter and would be taken under Father’s publisher’s wing as Sarah had been, and so please him that he would reward her by leaving her alone in the bedroom. Learning to hate her physical beauty, which she blamed for the perverted attention it sparked.
And the advent of Robert himself into her life.
Her immediate gravity toward him. Her relief when Isaac had allowed Robert’s visits. Her occasional jealousy of Sarah, who, with her intelligence more matched to Robert’s, could offer him so much more by way of stimulating discussion and even humorous exchanges. Then puberty and the onset of Isaac’s forced intercourse. The added shame it brought. The arrival of her uncontestable love for Robert, confounded by guilt at her lack of virginity and fear that even if and when they either married or became lovers he would discover her unchaste state and hate her for it.
“I felt so helpless,” she said. “He would tell me that if I ever told anybody no man would want me, and I believed him.”
“Of course you did. He stripped away all your feelings of self-worth.”
“I felt like I was wearing a coat of shame, and no matter where I went everyone could see it, especially you.”
“I never guessed, never.”
“When I told you tonight, you were shocked, weren’t you?”
“I felt like I’d been poleaxed.”
“So imagine my fear of your guessing it when I was only fifteen or sixteen years old. You would have been revolted, just the way my father said.”
“Maybe I would have. Who’s to say now?”
“Every time after you kissed me, I went to my room and cried.”
“And that day in the flower cart...”
“I thought you’d be able to tell I wasn’t a virgin if we did anything. I was so afraid of losing you.”
“So you ran away and I was the one who lost you.”
“I thought I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t stay with him any longer, and I couldn’t go to you.”
“You left two very confused and worried people behind— three counting Mrs. Smith.”
“I’m sorry I had to do that.”
“Where did you go? First off, I mean.”
“I started in Kansas City, but one of the girls there got pregnant and gave the baby out for adoption, and that sort of ruined everything for all of us so I moved on to Cheyenne for a change of scenery. There one of the girls put ground glass in one of the other girl’s douches—there was a lot of jealousy over the good-paying customers. The girl nearly died. She was my friend—or as close as you can get in the business. So anyway, after that I came up here when the gold rush started. But the houses were all the same. I really only exchanged one prison for another. The difference was I hated men and could get even with hundreds of them for what one had done to me.” They lay in silence awhile before she finished, “You should know, Robert, I still hate men.”
He accepted her remark without comment, even though she was still beneath his arm with her head on his shoulder and her hand on his chest. He supposed she had a right.
In time he asked quietly, “Does Sarah know about Isaac?”
“No.”
“Do you intend to tell her?”
She rolled away from him. “What good would it do?”
He pulled her back where she’d been. “It would help her understand, just like it did me.”
Addie sat up and hugged her knees. “But it would hurt her.”
“Yes, it would hurt her.”
Silence settled, a long, trying silence. She broke it as if Robert had argued.
“But I’d be so ashamed to tell her.”
“Then he’s still got a hold on you, even though he’s dead.”
She dropped her forehead to her knees and said, muffled, “I know... I know.”
He had planted the seed; let it bear fruit or not, as it would.
“Come... lie back, Addie. You don’t have to decide tonight.”
She returned to the lee of his arm, lying silent and thoughtful. He lay as before with his ankles crossed, but gave her arm a squeeze. She sighed and stared across his chest at the doorframe, where lamplight and shadow created a sharp edge of gold and gray. Her eyelids grew heavy and blinked... grew heavier... blinked again and remained closed. Shortly, his followed suit.
She awakened to find the room sunny and smelling of an oil-fed wick that had run out of fuel, the bedding flipped from the outsides toward the middle and Robert sleeping with his back to her.
She yawned and tried to stretch without waking him.
Robert made minuscule waking movements, eventually looked back over his shoulder and said, “Morning.”
“Closer to noon, I think.”
He rolled to his back and yawned, great big, stretching with his hands behind his head, making the mattress tremble. When his mouth closed he turned his head, grinned at her and said, “Let’s go give Sarah
a Christmas surprise.”
She smiled and said, “All right, let’s.”
CHAPTER
15
Christmas began for Sarah with a bittersweet cast, her first without her father; without Addie, too. Though she was looking forward to dinner with the Dawkins family, they were not her own. Furthermore, the day seemed to stretch interminably toward four P.M., the time of her invitation. Meanwhile, Mrs. Roundtree’s felt forlorn, filled with men missing loved ones back home, crowding the parlor until it became stuffy, reminiscing about pung rides or lutefisk or oyster stuffing, depending upon the geographic location or nationality from which they’d hailed.
To her credit, Mrs. Roundtree did her best to offer a festive air. There was the tree in the parlor and a special late-morning breakfast of ham and potato pancakes, herbed eggs and assorted sweetbreads with a rare delicacy: real butter. Mealtime, however, lacked attraction due to Noah Campbell’s absence.
Sarah had awakened thinking of him, of something Addie had once said about certain men making a woman feel like a thimbleful of fondant. Last night in her room she had for the first time begun understanding the treachery of such feelings. Kissing him, breast to breast, she had felt the hollow hand of temptation reaching to be filled. For those few minutes— seconds?—she had felt voluptuous. He had said inviting such feelings was natural, but there were Commandments against such situations. Now she understood why.
He remained in her thoughts, vivid and imposing, the key to her day’s brightness or eclipse. She supposed, much to her dismay, that she loved him. In her childish fantasies she had imagined that falling in love was like being lifted by seraphs to a supreme plane where roses trailed forever at one’s feet and the soul so radiated joy that it lit the space around it. Instead, it resembled falling off a horse—a stumble, a roll, and reproach with herself for having chosen poorly and tumbled when she might as easily have drawn a Pegasus and flown.
No, this was not flying. This was picking one’s way through the morass of cans and cannots, do’s and don’ts, must and must nots that had been fixed in her conscience years ago by a good Christian father who took her to church every Sunday and so respected that church’s laws that he clung to his marriage vows until death, even in the face of his wife’s desertion.
She wished Isaac were here now. How comforting it would feel to sit in the same room and confide in him, “Father, I’m so confused.”
Instead, she went to her room and penned a letter to Mrs. Smith.
Deadwood, Dakota Territory
Christmas Day, 1876
Dear Mrs. Smith,
The blessed holiday is here, spreading its beneficence on Deadwood Gulch.
She went on to describe the pageant, then wrote:
It has been exciting to be a part of the growth of Deadwood. The Chronicle not only succeeds, it thrives. I’m up to six pages now and having no trouble filling them with the freshest news: the telegraph, you see, has arrived at last. When Mr. Hayes and Mr. Wheeler take their oaths of office next month, I will be reporting their inaugural addresses at the same time the rest of the nation reads them. Imagine that.
Addie is well. I see her daily, though we don’t live together. I am still residing at Mrs. Roundtree’s board-inghouse, though I believe it’s time I purchase a house of my own since I know I’ll be staying in Deadwood indefinitely.
Now where had that come from? She didn’t recall consciously making such a decision, but once the words were on paper she reread them and found the idea splendid. A home of her own with furnishings of her choice and more than a mere parlor to move about in, where she wasn’t engulfed by men or crowded into a lonely cubicle. She spent time imagining it, and afterward, her day felt brighter.
I’m afraid I must abbreviate this, for I am invited to the home of friends—the Dawkins—for Christmas dinner. Dear Mrs. Smith, I hope this finds you hale and hearty. You linger on my mind often with the fondest of regard. Please do write back soon to let us know you are as wholesome and happy as we remember you.
Your loving,
Sarah
Upon rereading the letter Sarah found the description of the Christmas program suitable for publication with minor revisions and some additions. She made these, recopied it for Patrick, and was proofreading the final draft when a knock sounded at the door.
She opened it to find Mrs. Roundtree in the hall, looking as if all her sphincters were cinched.
“Visitors for you downstairs.”
“Visitors?” Sarah was surprised.
“I’d as lief they wouldn’t come here again,” the landlady added sourly. “You might tell them that. Not him, just her. Mind you, I run a respectable place here.”
“Who is it, Mrs. Roundtree?”
“Mr. Baysinger and one of them from up at the badlands, judging from the look of her, and marching into my parlor as bold as brass. What are my men going to think!”
Sarah’s heart began pounding. “Tell them I’ll be right down.”
“I don’t speak to her sort, thank you, and if you want to you’ll have to do it somewheres else besides in my house.”
“Very well,” Sarah snapped, flushing with indignation at the woman’s captiousness. “I shall do exactly that. Thank you for your charitable attitude, Mrs. Roundtree, especially in this season of love!”
Mrs. Roundtree swung away in a self-righteous huff. Sarah snagged her coat and hat and clattered down the stairs with excitement brimming in her throat.
Robert and Addie stood just inside the parlor door, flanked by a roomful of gawking man with faces red as scalded pigs. Robert looked wonderfully at ease, maintaining a light hold on Addie’s elbow. Addie fixed her stare on Sarah’s descending form as if petrified to swing her eyes aside.
Sarah walked directly to her, extending both hands, smiling so hard her molars showed. “Addie, darling... merry Christmas.” She squeezed Addie’s hands and suggested, “Let’s go,” as if a plan had been previously made.
Outside, beneath the two o’clock sun, Sarah gave her sister an immense hug. “Oh Addie, you’ve come at last. Now my happiness is complete.” After a moment she turned to do the same to their longtime friend. “And Robert... you’ve brought her. I always knew I loved you and now I know why. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“I thought you two sisters should be together for the holiday.”
“Absolutely. And with you here, too, our gathering is complete.”
Addie said, “Your landlady didn’t like me in her parlor.”
“My landlady has a worm up her posterior—you’ll forgive my vulgarism, especially today, but her superciliousness galls me!”
“Sarah!” Addie said in amazement.
Robert laughed heartily while Sarah secured her outerwear.
Addie was still too shocked to linger over the snub. “I’ve never heard you talk like that in my whole life!”
“Hadn’t you heard?” Sarah tugged on her gloves, leading the way down the endless stairs to the path below. “I’m a firebrand. You have to be to run a newspaper that’s worth anything at all. What have you planned for the day?”
“Nothing. We just came to see you,” Robert replied, following both women.
“Wonderful. I can offer you a cup of coffee at the newspaper office.”
“Fine,” he said.
Sarah sensed that somehow Robert had talked Addie out of Rose’s, but that Addie had capitulated reluctantly. A keen thread of understanding ran between her and Robert: they would win Addie over by keeping her off-guard. At the bottom of the long steps each of them captured one of Addie’s arms and they walked along linked three abreast.
“Addie stayed overnight at my hotel last night.”
“You did!“ Sarah came up short, bringing the others to a halt. “Does this mean you’ve left Rose’s for good?”
Addie and Robert answered simultaneously.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes.”
Robert spoke as they moved on. “I??
?ve told her I don’t want her to go back there and I think she’d be willing if we came up with a plan.”
Addie said, “And I’ve told Robert that he doesn’t know how terrifying it is to face a world of people who cross to the other side of the street when they see you coming. Besides, I don’t know anything else. What would I do?”
“You’d live with me.”
“At Mrs. Roundtree’s? Don’t be absurd. You saw how she treated me.”
“Not at Mrs. Roundtree’s. We’ll get a place of our own. Why, I was just thinking this morning that it’s time I did that. I even wrote to Mrs. Smith and told her so.”
Robert put in, “And I’d subsidize you in return for... oh, let’s say darning my socks. How good are you at darning socks, Addie?”
Addie pinched back a smile. “I’ve never darned a sock in my life and you know it.”
“That’s right. Mrs. Smith did things like that, didn’t she? Then cooking. How good are you at cooking? I’d pay you handsomely for a home-cooked meal now and then.”
“I don’t cook either.”
They reached the newspaper office and went inside.
“If you’ll light a fire, Robert, I’ll go out to the pump and get some water. Addie, will you grind the coffee?”
“I just realized,” Addie said forlornly, “I’ve never done that either.”
Sarah said cheeringly, “Well, it’s easy enough. Just put the beans in and crank. Maybe we’ll make a domestic of you yet.”
At a small rectangular table near the rear of the office Addie found the coffee grinder and the sack of coffee beans. “What do I catch them in?” she asked.