The Last Letter (47 page)

“Katherine the Great!” Jeanie suddenly lifted her face from her hands and yelled, her voice lilting over the space that was growing between them.

“You did this Mama, you buried our family on the prairie with James. You murdered our family when you sent Father away! Muuurrrrderrrr!”

It was there that a two-week plan morphed into years, never seeing the Arthurs reunited under the same roof. Again and again, Jeanie stopped by the home in which Katherine worked, promising the next week they would be together. That Yale was sick and Jeanie couldn’t find work. That the woman she was working for shorted her. There was an excuse every time. But, it only took a few more disappointments for Katherine to stop feeling anything but resentment for her mother. How could the woman who could do anything as far as Katherine was concerned choose to do nothing? That was unforgivable.

And for Katherine, the only spot in her heart softened to the world at all was inhabited by Aleksey Zurchenko and it didn’t take long before it was he who rescued her from her lonely life, filling her with all the love her mother couldn’t.

Chapter 23

1905
Des Moines

Dearest brother Tommy,

You must come now. I hope the swamps of Texas haven’t swallowed you, that you are pieced whole and able to make this trip. No one understands more than I that our mother isn’t wonderful. I know you think she did not marry for love
—
she spoiled one man’s life and the other left her…what a dreadful thing it must be to marry without love, what a life of misery must surely follow. It did follow for Mother and Father, but circumstances may have been different than we suspected as children. It is clear that death is less objectionable than marital separation, but it is with this letter I say that Mama is at death’s door. Her cancer is real and I’m left to care for her and find a proper home for Yale thereafter. Though being in the same room with Mama turns my blood acrid, I can’t deny I hate to see her pained this way. You must find it in your minister’s heart and come or you will never forgive yourself. Please.

Your adoring sister,

Katherine

Katherine sat cross-legged on her mother’s sick bed with yellowed letters littered over her lap, crisp recently written ones from Templeton over those. Yale was stretched long against Jeanie. Both were sleeping on their backs, heads cocked to the same side at the same angle.

So much had changed for Katherine, she had learned so much, but she still felt agonizing grit was lodged in her heart, like there was no way to fully carve it out and forgive the way she wanted to. She dropped her face into her hands. There was much she still wanted to know. Their Yale? How had the babies been switched? Why?

“I couldn’t let your father stay.”

Katherine’s head snapped toward Jeanie who was now staring at her.

“What?” Katherine said. She straightened her posture when her mother’s papery hand wrapped around her wrist with a weakened grip.

“You must be wondering why,” Jeanie whispered. The tendons in her neck strained with every word.

Katherine couldn’t move.

“It was because of James. Frank sent him into the blizzard to lie for him. James was trying to protect
me
and cover for his Father when he died…I never wanted you to know that. I thought a fate of knowing your father failed in so many ways was the worst kind of blow for a child.”

“And Yale?” Katherine’s voice was thin as spring wind.

Jeanie’s eyes widened. “I…” Her voice cracked, breaking into a cough, choking her.

Katherine flew off the bed and poured fresh water into a glass. She rushed back to Jeanie and held her up from behind, slowly dripping water into her mouth a sip at a time, practically the same way they had fed baby Yale when she was too small to nurse.

Katherine slid onto the bed, behind her mother, cradling her between life and death, between their former roles of mother and daughter. Her mother’s bird-like bones against Katherine’s chest filled her with sadness, the bitterness crumbling away.

“This bun must give you a headache,” Katherine said to her mother, who had fallen asleep. She loosened Jeanie’s hair and fluffed it at her scalp as the rest of it fell in a wave. Yale stirred and woke, and reached for a brush. She took sections of her mother’s soft locks and brushed tenderly, gently laying each finished section around her shoulders while Katherine put herself in her mother’s shoes—those curled black boots.

She imagined one of her daughters or sons dying, she pictured it being Aleksey’s fault. Could she live with him? She didn’t have that answer. Nor did she have every answer she wanted about that year on the prairie. Though, she thought, perhaps she was finding that she had every answer she needed.

Yale finished brushing her mother’s hair, picked up one of Templeton’s letters and began to read. One by one, she read them starting back from 1888. Although Katherine knew she had chores to attend, listening to the letters riveted her, made it impossible to do anything but absorb Yale’s sweet voice as the letters answered many of the questions Jeanie couldn’t.

“This is cozy,” a voice came from the hall.

Katherine jumped and turned to the doorway. Tommy stood there, tapping his leg, shifting his weight. Katherine lifted a photo from under one of the letters still sprawled over the bed, holding it up in the air. “My God, you are Father, standing there, the exact image of him seventeen years ago.”

“You call that a greeting? How about a hug for your old brother?”

Katherine nodded and slipped out from under the stacks of letters, trying not to disturb her mother. She laid her back on the pillows and nestled the quilt around her chin to keep her warm.

Katherine stretched her arms out to her Tommy and they collapsed into a hug that felt as good as anything Katherine ever experienced. As though the presence of Tommy took her home. They pulled apart.

“Now don’t cry, dearest Katherine. I’m here aren’t I?”

Katherine wiped her tears away with her ring finger, nodding. Tommy’s gaze went to her missing pinky-finger then back to Katherine. She shrugged. “Oh, I’ve put that worry to rest, Tommy. Who really uses their pinky-finger anyhow, right?” She gave him a playful nudge in the shoulder.

“Well, as a matter of fact, I certainly did employ my pinky-finger just the other day when I lost my toe-hold on a cold mountainside and—”

“Tommy. Don’t you think you should say hello to your Mama?”

Katherine and Tommy were startled at their mother’s voice. Katherine hadn’t heard it so strong in weeks. Tommy hadn’t heard it in years.

Tommy stepped forward, removed his hat and finally moved toward Yale and Jeanie. Yale was stretching, smiling at her brother. He grinned and went to Yale, hugged her then kissed his mother’s cheek.

“That’s it? I’m dying and all I get is a little peck on the cheek? My darling son.” Jeanie’s lips curled up, but never broke into a full smile.

Katherine felt tension between her brother and mother as though it were fast drying plaster that adhered to her skin pulling at it while sinking into her pores. She hadn’t had the opportunity to fill her brother in on what she’d remembered and found out about her parents and Yale nor had she had the chance to ask her mother more questions, to ask her why she lied to her about Yale, why she didn’t come back for her, ever?

Still, Katherine found pity for her mother, seeing her weakened, reading those letters. And seeing Tommy treat Jeanie coldly, she’d finally found some warmth for the mother she’d grown to hate.

“Now, Mama, now, I’m sure Tommy is simply spent from climbing down off his mountain and finding you in this condition. Allow me to feed him and then you can have him back in better humor.”

“Pfft,” Jeanie said. “I could be still and cold by then, you know.”

“Just a few minutes, Mama. That’s it.”

“I’m hungry, too,” Yale said.

“Oh fine, there, everyone go on ahead, enjoy your meals.” Jeanie sunk into the bed, turning toward the window, pulling the quilts over her head.

“Mama, just a minute and we’ll be back. We won’t throw a party in there. I’ll send in the children to sit with you while we get Tommy settled. If you’re up to it, we can bring you to the kitchen. Aleksey can carry you.”

“Pfft. See what bearing and raising children gets you,” Jeanie said.

Tommy chortled at the ceiling.

Katherine felt the hardened tension crack, flying from her skin in great chunks. She couldn’t hold her temper.

She balled her fists at her sides. “I won’t have this argument in my home. My home. I’m in charge and we won’t entertain incivility, especially at a time like this. Tommy, you find some respect and
Mama,
we’re not dying people. I can see from your rising spirit that we’ll have you for many a week, month or year.”

“Pfft,” Jeanie said.

“Bathroom. I need the bathroom,” Yale said. Katherine led her from the room and Tommy followed, pulling the door shut.

In the white tiled kitchen, Tommy sat at the pine table, digging his thumbnail through a worn groove while his nieces, nephews, and Yale gathered to hear tales of his adventures—bona fide air castle building—he called it. Katherine wiped the final dish dry and shooed them out of the kitchen to sit with their grandmother and get ready for bed.

Katherine sat at the table across from her brother. The silence was thick and scratchy, as until that moment, Tommy hadn’t stopped talking. His yammering had been soothing to Katherine’s prickly worries.

“You’re so much like Father,” Katherine said.

“Is that an insult?”

“Should it be an insult?”

Tommy pulled a knife from his pocket and used it to push his cuticles.

“Well, I don’t know. I’ve done my best not to contemplate our family life as I plow through my own and tend my flock.”

“Don’t talk like that. You sound affected.”

“Let’s not get judgmental about one’s life.”

Katherine nodded.

“What
aren’t
you telling me?”

Katherine’s mouth dried like batting in an old blanket. She didn’t know where to start.

“It seems that perhaps we misjudged our mother and what she had to deal with that year.”

Tommy stopped with the knife, closed it, and tossed it on the tabletop. “Meaning what? That driving our father from our lives and then turning down the proposal of the one man who might be able to overlook her inability to soothe a man’s constitution properly, that boarding us out like farm animals, is forgivable, that there might be a solid reason for such choices?”

“Think of all the changes she went through that year. In Des Moines she was a
writer,
wealthy, pampered…and then we lost it all…how hard that must have been for her. That was just the beginning. Yet she took it all on and did a good job until…“

“Right.
Until”
Tommy said.

“Where’s all that Lord and Bible stuff you were so fond of
until
apparently today? It didn’t happen like
that.”

“Like what?”

Katherine took his pocketknife, opening and closing it. He watched her, but Katherine had no idea what thoughts he entertained.

She leaned forward. “Listen, every time I think of the Millers, the years I spent in that house with the pitiful weak wife and subhuman husband…the desperation I felt trying to service each of them in utterly different ways, the utter loss at knowing our mother was down the street, protecting Yale, who should have been institutionalized by the age of three, all of that…I
know
what anger and blame are, what they do to people. But she’s dying. Strong as she appears at this moment…” Katherine rubbed her face with both hands.

“My sweet sister. There’s a difference between respecting and loving your parents. You’ve done the former and done it well. I couldn’t have lived in the same town with her, inviting her to functions, acting as though what happened to us was proper. You don’t have to beat yourself with her pending death. We don’t have to say we forgive her. Well, maybe I should say it, but you’ve already said as much with your actions over the years.”