“I didn’t think about leaving the house with no one in it for so long,” Louise said. “What if they forget to come feed Lucky? And I didn’t get anyone to look after Lucy.” She blinked rapidly in that frightened way she had.
“The pastor’s wife,” Olea said quietly.
“Lucy won’t adapt well to others coming to take care of her. I … I think maybe I’ll stay home.” She swallowed and tugged on her apron, picking at the tiny embroidered strawberries. “There might be an earthquake to hit us here, like in San Francisco. That’s only been two months ago. We can plan another time to go to Norway.”
It was such a silly thing to argue over. Maybe if they had told me of their plans earlier, it wouldn’t have bothered me. Some of the silver fox pelts raised by the Finns were earning more than a hundred dollars a pelt at the auctions. Olea had a good head for money; maybe that’s why she wanted to go along.
If I didn’t assert myself with this, I could imagine Olea deciding everything about the ranching operation: where the large pens should go, what the animals should be fed, when the kits should be weaned, which animals to breed. There might not be much demand for ermine yet, but by the time I had the ranching operation down—beginning with fox but moving to mink—there would be. I wasn’t interested in importing Norwegian stock; I wanted to do this my own way. The longhaired furs like silver fox had been popular for decades; it was time for the fashion to change, and I could open the door. I felt my heart pound. Despite the uncertainty, I felt … alive.
“I intend to go alone,” I said.
Olea sighed loudly. “I thought we were family. We’ve traveled together before … I simply … Well, perhaps it’s time we did do things differently.” She straightened a lace doily at the back of the divan, patted it with her long fingers. She didn’t look at anyone.
Louise said. “I don’t want to travel right now, Olea. My hip … You and Franklin go ahead,” she said to me. “We’ll make it a foursome another time, won’t we, Olea?”
Olea stood quietly for a time, her hands touching the cameo at her neck. Her bearing reminded me of Ida’s when Mama and I had returned from New York, anger tensed in a frame as slender as barbed wire and just as dangerous if one didn’t know how to get through it.
“Yes, let them go.” Olea sighed. “But for heaven’s sake, take the time you need. Take three months.”
“I can’t stay that long. What if I need to sign papers about my properties?”
“Give me your power of attorney then,” Olea said. “I can sign for you.”
She was my friend. But what if my not wanting the women to come along sharpened Olea’s nails on a power of attorney? Still, giving her the power would serve as a backup plan if I did want to stay a little longer, knowing she could handle my affairs.
“Good,” I said. I didn’t apologize for asking for what I wanted. I didn’t back down. “I’d appreciate that. We’ll get it signed and recorded in the morning.”
Both women waved me off at the start of my journey. The power of attorney niggled at the back of my mind, but by the time the train hit southern Idaho, the changing landscapes, eavesdropping on strangers’ stories, and settling in with my book brought me ease. I couldn’t help but think of my mother and our journey.
Franklin met me in New York, and we took the train from there to Montreal. “Not a side trip,” Franklin said when I protested the delay. “Essential.” Montreal hosted the fur fair each year with designers and manufacturers bringing their wares. “I think you ought to see the manufacturing processes, and I want you to meet a few designers. They’re very creative and love what they do. It could be a great career for you, Clara. Much less draining than fur ranching and more likely to succeed.”
“I appreciate your opinion,” I said. “But I’m set on fur ranching; I really am.”
The First Nation processing station was a beehive of activity, and I found myself running my hands over the sewn fabrics, looking at the backs to see the thousands of seams, all matched in color and plushness, that made the pelts drape so beautifully. In one room, Indian women used lanolin, salt, and alum to soften the hides. “Used to be they chewed them,” Franklin told me. “In their old age, their teeth were nothing but nubbins.” Several other women worked on fur hats and muffs. “It takes forty hours for a skilled seamstress to make a single coat,” he said as my eyes took in another section of activity.
A scent like leather, not unpleasant, filled the workers’ room, and I found I couldn’t pass a table without wanting to run my hands over the furs laid out on paper over new designs.
Franklin picked up an unfinished sealskin coat banded with fox and held it for me try on. “I see this worn over a pale blue velvet gown,” he said, “to match your eyes.” Even without the shoulder pads or buttons and a final cleaning yet to follow, I felt elegant wrapped inside. Maybe even … desired. It was an unfamiliar feeling.
“Much too elegant for the likes of me,” I told him and moved on down the tables to watch another seamstress.
“I hadn’t realized,” I told him as we waited for the cab to return us to the hotel, “how sensual fur is.” I know my face grew warm with the use of that word, but I could think of none better. “Soft and warm. It’s like wearing fire without being burned.”
“Body heat,” Franklin said. “Put a fur coat over you at night, you’ll see. You’ve been focused on the business end of things,” he said. “And that’s not bad,” he defended when I started to protest. “But you can’t ignore the rest of it. It’s why people work with the pelts, why they enjoy coming up with the newest designs. Fur is part of the natural world, the earth itself.” My hands still carried the memory of the soft furs I’d handled that day. My shoulders remembered the pleasant weight of the garment he’d draped around my back.
“Let the fullness of this business come in to you, Clara. Be open to it,” he said. “You’re entitled to the main course of life.” I heard more than financial matters being spoken of in the tone of his voice. His words recalled Louise’s charge that I ate the way I saw the world, refusing the main course, spending my time nibbling without taking in true sustenance. But wasn’t that required of one in exile, preserving what one had, carefully rationing it while wandering in the wilderness, hoping to make one’s way home? I put out of my mind the biblical stories of manna being offered daily in exile, trusting God for provision, with no preservation but only faith for the future allowed.
“I’m trying to let it in,” I said. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
The cab arrived. “Good.” He pressed his hand on my shoulder and I allowed it.
Back in New York, we boarded the ship to England. We didn’t travel first class; we occupied separate rooms. Still, in the dining room, assumptions were made when we were introduced because we shared a last name and it was obvious we traveled together. I didn’t correct people. I enjoyed having an escort and I found myself following his advice, allowing myself to open up to the sights and smells and sounds of what surrounded me. For entire evenings over dinner, I didn’t think of my family, didn’t wonder what they’d say if they knew where I was and what I was doing, an unmarried woman using that money for such decadent pleasures as fine food and a ship’s cabin, becoming a property owner, and soon a fur rancher too.
Unlike when I’d traveled with Olea and Louise, I set the pace, and Franklin obliged. If I wanted to be alone to read or write notes back to Louise and Olea, he left me. If I wanted to talk about business, he made the time. He’d packed a number of books for reading on board the St. Louis, which took us first to Liverpool. We exchanged titles as we’d finish and speak of the authors and themes. He was kind to the servers, gentle with children. But he spoke with confidence at the dining table, told stories that made people lean in to hear him and settle back in laughter at the proper time. In groups, Olaf had been as silent as a mouse. So was I. Others sought Franklin’s advice about travel when they learned that he’d crossed the ocean numerous times and felt at home in markets arou
nd the world. Maybe Olaf would have found such confidence one day. Maybe I would too, with the proper training.
Franklin walked me to my room, holding my elbow against the movement of the ship. He looked into my eyes as he opened the stateroom door and leaned forward toward my face. I turned away. My heartbeat quickened, though from the inexperience of what might happen next. Uncertainty pulsing? I had no trouble breathing. He wasn’t the Forest of my youth. It was an observation I could have done without.
We spent several days in London visiting manufacturing houses. I thought I’d smell leaves and streams lingering on the raw skins as when I’d trapped with the Warrens’ help, but the tanning process stripped that all away with sawdust and corncobs tumbling the fur. Franklin patted my gloved hand drawn through his arm as we made our way past the soft gold of fur. This was a new world to me, the facilities bigger than those I’d seen in New York years before.
We shared our dinners in the dining rooms of London’s finest. “My treat,” Franklin insisted each time. The view of the Thames through floor-to-ceiling windows crossed into tiny squares transported me to Shakespeare’s days. I marveled that I was even here.
The day before we left England, Franklin handed me a large box wrapped in a black velvet ribbon.
“What’s this?” I asked. I sat a proper distance from him on the settee in his room, always before our dinner, never after.
“Something you ought to have,” he said.
I opened it with a flicker of anticipation. I’d never been given a gift from a man who was neither a brother nor stepfather. Out of the box I unfolded a luxurious motor coat made from pelts of white fox with a matching muff.
“Stand up,” he said, lifting it from me to place on my shoulders. “I think I chose the correct size.”
It felt like a gentle rain falling over me. The collar enthralled my neck, and with both hands I pulled it toward my chin. It smelled of the outdoors, fresh, pure. Franklin stood in front of me and buttoned the coat. It was the length of the reform dress, leaving a good foot of my black skirt hanging beneath it. “We’ll be having cooler weather from here on,” he said, “and you ought to have fur to ward off the chill.” He stood back and gazed at me. “White becomes you, brings out the darkness of your eyes.”
His words sounded thick, and his fingers lifted soft curls at my temple. With both hands, he centered the collar so it rose up toward the chignon at the top of my head. “Yes,” he repeated. “White fur becomes you, especially with that new hair color.” He bent to kiss me. My thoughts jumbled. When our lips parted, he stepped back.
“You’ll set the pace of this, Clara. I won’t push you.”
“I appreciate that.” My mind swirled with complications well beyond the innovations of the fur business in Finland. I wished now that Louise and Olea had come along.
Franklin stepped back, rubbed his fingers along my arms, reached back, and gave me the muff. I slipped my hands inside. He didn’t apologize, for which I’m grateful, and I had no need to tell him he was the first man who had ever kissed me—save that cheek peck from Forest years before. I felt warm and protected and wondered in that moment if this—not thumping hearts or shortened breaths—was the truer form of love.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Memory Geography
JULY 1906
Cool sunshine brushed my face as summer winds whistled past our ears on the deck of the Helsingfors taking us to Hanko, Finland. Franklin didn’t tell me until later that our new ship replaced one that had sunk the previous year coming into the gulf.
“They’re building a new lighthouse in Bengtskär,” he told me as we approached the gulf. “It’ll rise up fifty-two meters from a rocky island. We might be able to see it from here.” He pointed into the blue horizon dotted with sea gulls.
My eyes scanned the distance. Lighthouses would always make me think of Manistee, Michigan, perhaps my best memory of that city. I wished I had Olea’s binoculars along. “You know so much about everything here,” I said.
He shrugged. “To know Russia is to know a bit of Finland, and I know a little of Russia.” The sea air felt almost warm the closer we got to our destination, and an English-speaking Finn said the port stayed free of ice in the wintertime, making it a desirable passage for both Finns and Russians. “Wealthy people come here for the climate in the summer. And winter too.”
I pulled my motor coat tight around me. I liked the admiring looks from fellow travelers. A few even asked to see the coat, and I showed the lining and told them how the manufacturer sliced the leather side and then resewed it to make it supple. I’d gained a sense of competence using the terminology of manufacturing these past weeks. After visiting and listening, I could describe the artistry in what I wore and admire the intricacies of the designs, but I was still a novice.
“If the port rarely freezes, they likely don’t need fur coats here,” I told Franklin later.
“Russians always need fur coats,” Franklin told me. “They may not be interested in your Northwest sable, but they’d be aware if someone became commercially successful in farming it.”
“It’s my intent to make them notice then,” I said. First foxes, then mink.
“Oh, they’ll notice you,” he said. “I have no doubt.”
I was accustomed to Franklin’s compliments in the presence of Olea and Louise, but they were different when only my ears heard them. Still, I didn’t want to lose myself in this man; it would be dangerous with no certain outcome.
Everywhere we went, we heard about the Finns’ decision to grant women the vote and to allow women to stand for public office next year.
A Finn traveler winked at me and said, “We’ve sent many a countryman to America through the years, so expect them to push for such rights for women there too.”
Suffrage had been my mother’s cause, not mine.
At the hotel we arranged for a carriage. I commented on how many Russian voices I overheard and that the English used by the serving staff had a Russian accent to it.
“Everyone here is required to know Russian,” he told me. “Finland has an uneasy relationship with the Motherland. Russia worries that the Germans might use Sweden to talk Finland into allowing a staging site for a German attack against Russia one day.”
“Is that likely?”
He shrugged. “The alliances here are uneasy ones. You have to know the histories and family lineages to be sure not to step on someone’s toes. I wouldn’t want to be a diplomat in this part of the world. Distant cousins can be as much trouble as siblings,” Franklin said.
“You are a diplomat of sorts,” I said.
“Trade is different from politics,” he noted. “I’ve kept the same contacts for years now, people Olea and Louise introduced me to, and then those contacts introduced me to others. We make many decisions based on experience over time. I accept the differences of each country’s operations, and they accept my expectations and tell me if they can deliver or not. Saves a lot of time.”
I knew then I’d always need an intermediary for me if I continued in this trade. I could be blunt with people, but I’d never have the knowledge Franklin had. I looked at the profile of his handsome face as he stared out at the sea. I admired him. I liked learning from him and traveling with him. But I realized that was as far as I ever wanted it to go. Olea and Louise could have come along. I’d deprived them of something they would have enjoyed, and I likely would have discovered what I needed to about Franklin and myself anyway. I’d have to write and apologize.
The second day in Hanko, we took a car to the site of the silver fox farms situated well out in the countryside with the timber and crisp air. I wore my coat, though once we got out of the vehicle, I didn’t need it in the balmy breeze. Here my education deepened, and I learned from Kalmar Martensen, our host, that my success would depend on how well I treated my animals. What he told me confirmed that I had the right instincts. Our ranch near Coulee City would be quiet and isolated, no trucks or car noise to stress anima
ls. But I’d have to build covered cages and fence running areas to keep predators out, while also allowing the animals to run freely safe inside, maturing until the fur came into prime. We discussed breeding and birthing needs, space and nutrition. Winter housing requirements. It would be no easy operation.
The foxes disappeared in the underbrush and reappeared for feeding, their bushy tails and bright eyes reminding me of dogs. “Many tons of fish we give them,” Kalmar said in quite passable English.
“Fish?”
“We live near the sea, so is easy.”
I looked at Franklin. “I’m thinking chickens. And eggs,” I said.
“Could work,” Kalmar said. We took dinner at noon with Kalmar and his family. The conversation reminded me of the table discussion on the Mica farm, where Olaf and Ole and my mother too spoke of breeding and milking and selling our cows. It was a farmer’s life. Kalmar’s wife said, “Is your coat one of Tsoukas’s designs?”
I couldn’t answer, but Franklin did. “No, it’s a London designer. We haven’t been to Greece yet. We’ll go there after Paris. Miss Doré wants to see all aspects of the business.”
“You hope to farm fox?” his wife asked.
“To begin with. But what I really want is to breed weasels, for ermine. We have some of the finest in Washington State, though short-tailed.”
Kalmar leaned back in his chair. He shook his head. “Can’t be done,” he said. “Need the canine family to breed. It’s why foxes work. Wasted time to try other wild animals. I could sell you breeding stock from here,” he offered. “Don’t let the woman waste her time, Franklin.”
“I don’t control her,” he said. Then, “How much?”
Kalmar shrugged. “For you, one thousand dollars for the pair.”