But I’d stopped praying. And as with the spring rains that forced me to make new paths, that’s what I was about. I was a woman of new walkways. A verse from Job drifted into my thoughts: “But He knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” I’d never cared much for the emphasis placed on the word when. I’d had enough trials.
“A man has needs,” Jack said. “It’s a condition of this arrangement.”
“If that’s the only way this will happen,” I told him, “I’ll meet them.”
22
Emma
On Reflection
I silenced all the cautionary voices that woke me in the nights before I did it. I listed what I’d tried that had not worked and got as smart as I could about what truly mattered in my life.
Drawing could not be my exodus. It was silly to believe a little picture could turn into something grand enough to support me and my children. My parents were not coming to rescue me. I couldn’t go to Aurora Mills and be forced to live side-by-side with the man whom I held accountable for all my miseries, even though Jonathan had once invited me there. My efforts to remain on the Willapa and work toward the common fund would never earn me a place among Christian’s family; worse, it wouldn’t be enough to keep my children with me. Each spring I’d be fighting family just to have time with my son—my sons, as soon they’d worry over their youngest grandson’s upbringing. As long as I was a widow with male children to raise, my in-laws would seek to “protect” them from unseemly influences. They didn’t mind that Kate was under my thumb.
What mattered most to me was my influence in my children’s lives, my presence to nurture them and hand down to them the values of their father and me. Being able to do that required desperate action.
Jack left after we struck our bargain, and I then read the letters that made me ache all the more. A cousin spoke of the good life in France. The one from my sister advised me to confess sins I didn’t know about and reminded me of the dreariness that life would hold for me back in Bethel if I returned, once again a daughter living with her parents. Bethelites wouldn’t build me a home there, not ever. I learned of my sister Lou’s accident and the new worries she brought to my parents’ lives. They’d never come west now, that was certain. They had new demands to care for their own family. I could understand that.
From Aurora Mills came a letter from my brother with news that he would head back to Bethel in the spring. He was likely already there. His absence just affirmed my need to do what I did.
All three children were to stay with my in-laws for the week of our marriage. “You’re going visiting?” Barbara asked.
I took a deep breath. “No, Jack Giesy and I are getting married.”
“Well, well,” Andreas said. “What does Wilhelm have to say to that?”
“We didn’t ask his permission,” I said. “There was no need.”
“You should marry here then,” Barbara said. “Let us have the family around you as you make this change.” She smiled. “We can have the band play. A party.”
Martin came in while I talked to his parents, and I felt discomfort, as though I was doing something childish and resisted being caught.
“We’ll need to transfer the land titles and things in Olympia anyway,” I said. “We’ll go to Steilacoom too. I have good memories there, of where Andy was born.”
“A waste of time lamenting over old memories,” Andreas said. “But we always like the boys to visit so they can stay.”
He rarely mentions Kate.
“Don’t let Big Jack get you into any trouble now,” he added. “Get him too close to rum and he becomes another man.” He tapped his cane.
“He hasn’t done much like that of late now, has he?” Barbara said. “He’s a good boy.” She clucked her tongue at her husband.
“Kate’s looking a little bit peaked,” Barbara said the day Jack and I left for Olympia. “I wonder if you shouldn’t take her with you. Andreas is fragile these days. He just got over a bad cold.”
Andreas did look frail with his watery eyes. Dark reddish spots covered his face and the backs of his hands. “Whatever will work best for you. We’ll take Kate along.”
“Not possible,” Jack said. “We can’t be hauling a child around all that way. Wouldn’t be good for her.”
“I’ll ask Sarah then,” I said, and she was pleased to watch my daughter when I said I was going to Olympia. “Are you going to take the paintings to show around at last?”
“Shh. No,” I silenced her. Jack stood talking with Sam outside. “No more talk about paintings or drawings except for fun, for pleasure. I’ve other issues to tend to there.”
“I didn’t mean to pry,” she said.
“Ach, I know. I’m just nervous.” She looked quizzically at me. “I’m going to Steilacoom to get married to Jack Giesy.”
“When did this all happen?”
“It didn’t happen in the way you think. It’s an … arrangement. So that I can have my sons with me and the family will see that I have a man to help me. I’ll stop being the Widow Giesy, stop being a burden. Most of all, we’ll stop these months of separation when Andy isn’t living with me. And I’ll have a plan for Kate and Christian, too, when he’s of school age.”
“Oh, Emma, do you think that’s the best way? Wouldn’t it be better to go back to Bethel with your parents? Maybe go to that Aurora place where people live a little more closely together so the boys could stay with you and still go to school?”
I shook my head. “There’ll always be this tension with the Giesys, this idea that without a father I’m not properly raising my sons. And I can’t go to Aurora Mills, I just can’t. It would be betraying Christian, and worse, I’d have to live with the gloating of Keil if I threw myself on the colony’s mercy.”
“Marriage is such a drastic step to take without even love in it to help see you through.”
“This is my help. I’m taking care of things myself. I’m getting married.”
“I’d always seen Jack as a bachelor,” she said. “He has his own ways, seems to like to come and go, work at odd jobs here and there. The artistic person who can be flighty, maybe.”
“We both love to draw,” I said. “We’ll be a perfect match then.”
“I guess that is a tie … Does he like your work?”
“He doesn’t know of my work. I’ve never told him or shown him. But I like you calling it a tie. It reminds me of that verse my mother always said. ‘Begin to weave; God provides the thread.’ ”
“I hope this is God’s thread, Emma, and not just a badly tied knot. I really do.”
I knew there was a church in Steilacoom and somehow I thought that being married inside it would cover my less-than-sacramental motives for being there. I could have asked Karl Ruge to officiate and wed us in Willapa. Karl was a dear soul, but I guess I knew even then that he held me in a special place in his heart. I hoped that marrying Jack wouldn’t tarnish that. I couldn’t bear to hear him read the vows to us when this was a loveless marriage I was vowing to uphold forever.
Jack behaved as the perfect companion on the mule-riding journey. The trail across required chopping of overgrowth and he tended to that with ease. He smiled, made light little jokes, and looked like a happy groom-to-be. We met no one on the trail and had to sleep out for three nights in our tent. We talked easily together. He said kind things about the food I’d prepared and brought along. He made no demands. I wondered for just a moment if perhaps this might work out. Two adults looking after children, making decisions to affect the little ones’ futures without harming their own.
We reached Olympia and in conversation, mostly Jack’s, as his English was still much better than mine, we learned that the church in Steilacoom was Catholic and the priest traveled greatly. Even if he had been there, he wouldn’t have married us outside his faith.
“We’ll marry here, then,” Jack said. “Find a JP.”
My heart twinged with the memory of Chri
stian’s role as a justice of the peace.
“Can we still go to Steilacoom?” I said.
“What for?”
“Maybe a judge there could marry us. It’s where Andy was born. I just want to walk there, to look at Puget Sound again.”
“You can see the water right here.”
“Please.”
He hesitated. “Let’s marry now then. Get a judge here. Tomorrow or the next day maybe we’ll go to Steilacoom.”
“That’s a good compromise. See, we can work things out.” I said it as much to convince myself as him.
The judge spoke the words to make our marriage legal though certainly not blessed. We moved next door to the land office, wrote the changes to transfer property. My hand shook when I signed the new documents. Christian’s home, my home, was no longer mine.
We spent our wedding night in the same hotel Christian and I had stayed in when we’d first come west. Could that have only been seven years previous? A Chinese cook still shouted from the kitchen. In our room, the sheets smelled clean, and fresh water filled the pitcher. Thank goodness it was not the same room. Still, time had skipped across my life like a small stone across the Willapa. It had left its tracks: three children. I was doing this for them.
That night, to meet my wifely obligations, I sent my mind to the salty ocean sands that looked barren but gave birth to green grasses. I imagined the tides flowing in and out, washing away the choices that disappoint, leaving behind reminders of what I would cherish always: my sons, my daughter. All else didn’t matter. One did what was necessary for what one cherished. That night in my mind, I was in the oyster beds at Bruceport, looking across to the shiny cobbled flats where the tide unveiled abundant oyster shells. I remembered a lantern light held high that showed me only as much as I needed to see: the oysters, hard shells harboring life inside. Oystermen watched over them to make sure the tiny snails didn’t attach themselves and drill inside, sucking out the life from within. I was quite sure there was no one looking out for me. I’d have to do that myself.
Reluctantly, two days later, after we’d walked around Olympia, visited a boatbuilding site, looked at a furniture store but purchased nothing, Jack took me to Steilacoom. He described it as a puny town, but it had a territorial jail built the year after Christian died. There were blacksmith shops and stores and many more houses than when I’d been there before. I was sure I’d seen evidence of a sawmill or two, and a tailor shop opened its doors to the breeze beside a small hotel. A brewery sent smells into the air. It looked like a vigorous town to me. I loved being out in it after all these years. I wished we’d stayed here when we first arrived in the territory. Maybe Christian would still be alive. I pitched the thought aside.
I still marveled at the window boxes of the little houses and the wide-openness of a sea-lapping town. We walked. I carried a parasol and, near Gore Street, I stopped before the orchard that Nathaniel Orr and Phillip Keach had planted beside Orr’s furniture store. “I remember this place,” I said. Then farther up the hill I saw both the Catholic church and a Methodist Episcopal church. “We could have gotten married here,” I said. “In the Methodist church.”
“A judge was fine,” Jack said. “Maybe could make no difference.”
It was in Steilacoom though, in front of that old church, where I asked Jack to halt. The light was perfect, the air balmy. We’d weathered our first few days together with more hope than hassle.
“What now?” Jack removed his hat and brushed at the dust in irritation as I settled onto a stump.
“Just be patient,” I said. I drew out some papers carried in my reticule, found the charcoal and began to sketch the town: the way the little houses marched up the sloping hillside away from the water; that wide, square building with its steeple spired into the blue sky. I was going to put us into the picture. I thought Jack would like that.
Jack frowned. “I didn’t know you could draw,” he said. “Did I know this about you?”
“It’s just little sketches. I sometimes draw things in letters, do little portraits. I could draw you sometime if you’d like. I’ll sketch you in right here.” I smiled up at him. He grunted. “Oh. Well, as I said, they’re not very good.”
“All this time you never mentioned it.”
“Wasn’t important.” I held the paper on my knees as I sat.
“Maybe could be you don’t always know what’s important,” he said. His voice held a warning that I ignored. “Look at those pelicans,” he said then, pointing. As I looked up he lifted the charcoal from my fingers, leaned over me, and began scribbling the birds in flight, making them fly right on top of what I’d sketched. They were morbidlike, his pelicans, as though from a bad dream, all dark with storm clouds around them with lines so heavy I could barely make out what I’d drawn beneath.
“Jack. Don’t. Here, I’ll give you another paper to draw them on.”
“I’ll draw where I like.” He marked so hard the page tore.
“Jack.” I grabbed at the charcoal. It broke. “Ach. Look at this now.”
“Your pelicans have flown right off the page,” he said. He laughed.
“So childish.” I threw up my hands.
“Am I? Is that how you treat a husband? You stay here and draw then,” he said. “I’ll follow those birds toward that brewery we passed a while back.”
“Jack, please. What’s this about?”
“Jack, please,” he mimicked. “I won’t stay here to be whipped by a woman.” He strode off. Do I follow? My fingers made nervous circles at the pads. I should have chosen another time to talk to him about my drawings. I should have never let him see my efforts at all. But I hadn’t expected this kind of response. I wasn’t in competition with him. I smoothed the paper. The hole was in the very center. Like the drill of a snail damaging the life of the picture. I folded what was left of it, picked up the broken charcoal pieces that had fallen when he’d ripped the paper. My reticule was full again but my heart was empty.
I raised my chin. I wouldn’t be cowed by his childish behavior. Let him do what he wished; I’d do likewise.
Jack’s behavior shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. He wasn’t a man who tolerated equality. He always had to be above another. Frankly, his drawings were better than mine, so I saw no reason for him to be jealous, and that’s what the behavior had looked like to me. A bit of jealousy over my simple sketches. I decided to let time do its healing. I walked the few miles out through the trees toward the fort, where Andy had been born. Later I’d reassure Jack that he was the better artist, and that we could put this spat behind us. Until then, I’d enjoy my day.
Like a town itself, the fort was much larger than before, with several more buildings and what looked like officers’ quarters. Men hung laundry and others stood guard. The Yakima War of years back would have required greater troops here, which would account for the additional buildings. Or maybe they were readying for the war between the States that my sister Catherine wrote about. I walked along the split rails to where I’d taken the fall that Christian thought had brought on Andy’s delivery. I looked for An-Gie, the Indian woman who had been so helpful to me, but I didn’t see any other women, not even any officers’ wives. I was a woman alone on my honeymoon.
I should return and see if I could find the brewery and Jack. Honeymoon. Where the sweetness waned, that’s what Christian had said.
I bypassed the brewery and returned to the hotel. The waiter took me to a table without a second thought, which was gratifying indeed, me never being sure of my English. I wasn’t sure of much these days. I ordered biscuits and tea and ate it in the dining room alone. People watch, that’s what I did, saw how women dressed in this outside world and noted how my plain black dress stood out, my bonnet years out of fashion. The women all wore hoops to keep their skirts billowed out like tulip bulbs. I saw how men and women treated each other in public. I thought about what my next steps would be if my husband just walked away and left me here in Steilacoom. I??
?d go back and get my children. That would be the first step. I didn’t have a second one.
“You’re like a cat,” Jack said. He startled me, having come into the dining room from a back way, spied me, then sat down across from me, his eyes glaring even as he sat. I slowly sipped my fourth cup of tea, keeping my hand steady. My heart pounded. Do I bring up his absence or let him?
“Like a cat … because I enjoy high places?”
“You always land on your feet.”
I made myself smile. “Jack, you have your … interests. I have mine.” He didn’t smell of barley. Maybe he hadn’t gone to the brewery after all. “I didn’t tell you about my drawing because the pictures are so amateur. I certainly don’t think they equal your own in any way.”
He grunted. “When you’re finished, I’ve something to show you.”
He acted the proper husband in the presence of others. He ordered a coffee and I took my time with the tea. Finished, he pulled back my chair, then put out his arm so that I could take it as we walked. He took me up the street to a gift shop near the Sound. It was almost closing time. “They get imported things in here,” he said. “I’ll buy you anything you want. A wedding present.”
“That’s … not necessary, Jack.”
“Maybe could be it is.”
He urged me to look around, and the shopkeeper talked with him as though this wasn’t the first time they’d met. He smiled at me, called me Missis.
Most of the wares looked European. There were German pewter candlesticks, silver bowls, and what looked like Italian pottery. Furniture from England or possibly back East sat nestled in the back of the cluttered store. Nothing practical to speak of, mostly luxury items for people who had others to do their work for them.