It was a three-word telegram – "Arriving next Wednesday" – but it was enough to send Audra flying around the Journal's office, concerned that the clutter and grime wouldn't attest to how busy she had been since she had come to Sweetwater but rather to her inability to manage the paper. She could imagine Helena Wells imperiously running her eyes over the office and her white-gloved finger along the edge of the desk, immaculately outfitted in a dress from a New York shop that wouldn't have had to bar its door to the lowly Clarkes. They wouldn't have been able to afford to look through its windows. Audra grimaced at the dirt streaks on her skirt and the dust graying its hem. She would wear this dress on Sunday, when she would find time in the afternoon to sweep and mop the floor, wash the windows, and either file or burn the drafts and extra copies of the invitations, auction notices, and sundry other communications that never made it into the Journal but were equally essential to the well-being of a community. The good townspeople might be aghast at her working on a Sunday, but it was the only time she had.
She would also have to sneak out of the house or fashion a convincing lie to keep Liesl from declaring that she and the boys would accompany her to help. The baby seemed to have doubled in size over the past month, making it so difficult for Liesl to bend over or kneel without some assistance in righting herself that Audra was brought to mind of a river barge grounded on a sandbar, a comparison she would never dare say aloud. Whether it was the greater discomfort or the unrelenting heat, or the two in combination, Liesl was uncharacteristically irritable and then even more remorseful once the irritation passed. Hans uncharitably referred to her snappishness and the tears that would follow as her "hankie times" but only after she would leave the room, handkerchief pressed to her eyes.
Audra had witnessed worse outbursts during Nan's pregnancies, when she had angrily flung vegetables into pots and tin dishes into the sink and muttered that she would "cut it off" while her husband slept. Yet the only muffled squeals and shrieks Audra ended up hearing through the thin walls of Nan and Jim's bedroom were Nan's, and they hadn't been sounds of outrage. They had only heralded a resumption of the cycle, which, six, seven, eight months later would have Nan abusing pie dough with a rolling pin and her sisters' hearing with promises that "I mean it this time, I'm cutting it off." Of course Liesl no longer had a husband to bear the brunt of her frustration, and Audra thought that not having Pete, especially as the baby's birth drew near, was another reason she cried so easily now. That was a thought that Audra didn't say aloud in Liesl's presence either.
Myka and Helena were coming, the Journal's office wasn't even as clean as Lotte's stall, Liesl could go into labor at any moment, and, worst of all, her running of the Journal had led to no great change, in its fortunes or the town's. A public library, a school large enough to hold Sweetwater's ever-increasing number of children, a sanitation system (or at least the recognition that sanitation was a civic good) were some of the proposals she had promoted on the opinion page. A few brave souls had written letters in support of her editorials, and Audra had published them – just as she had published the much larger number of letters either ridiculing such "high-minded, big city notions" or complaining of the taxation necessary to fund them. She had thought that her editorial arguing the benefits of paving the main street would win greater support since it was more modest in scope and cost, but the howls of outrage hadn't lessened. Based on the vociferousness of the objections (many she couldn't publish because after the salutation – if there was one – there followed only a string of curses), she thought she might actually experience what it was like to be ridden out of town on a rail. Yet when the same men greeted her in the street or the general store, they made no reference to her antecedents, her sex, or her perversion thereof; they politely asked after her health and genially commented on the weather. Slowly she came to understand that much like those who put pen to paper to inveigh against the Banner's editorials, the Journal's readers viewed the clash of opinions as a blood sport. By the same token, however, while Mr. Burns might not wholly believe that she had shamed her mother, her grandmother, and all womanhood when she published an editorial supporting secondary education for those girls who wanted it, he remained firmly against the idea of allowing girls to attend school beyond the sixth grade.
Audra never became so despairing that she considered sending a letter of resignation to Myka and boarding a train to St. Paul (and from there to Chicago and New York) the same day, but there were times when the sight of Liesl taking a pie or a pastry from the oven would fail to lighten her mood. Those were the nights when the boys would play quietly on the rug in the parlor (Will with his collection of tin soldiers and Gus with his blocks) and Bruno would silently curl up at Will's feet. Sometimes Audra would retreat to her room, but more often she would ask Liesl to read to her once the boys were put to bed. She would let Liesl's voice, its calm, unhurried pace perfectly matched to the calm, unhurried analysis of the crime by the mystery's hero, sweep her concerns away.
Audra's battles with the majority of the Journal's readers hadn't diminished Dr. Napier's interest in inviting her to accompany him to the charity events and lectures hosted by Sweetwater's churches. Although she suspected that he was no more devout than she was, he had a better appreciation of the fact that there would be virtually no opportunities to meet eligible members of the opposite sex without the churches' intercession. While she mourned the absence of theaters and parks, reading libraries and the numerous "societies" that offered diversion through a variety of activities, from debates on the topical issues of the day to birdwatching, he would describe, without irony, the enjoyment that might be had, that would be had if only she would grant him the privilege of escorting her to Pastor Wallace's Wednesday night lecture on St. Paul. If it were a fundraising supper for a sister church in a foreign country or for the intrepid missionaries, they might attend it with Liesl and the children, Dr. Napier carrying the baked goods that were the joint Lattimer-Clarke contribution. At other times, Liam's good friend, Steve Jinks, would join them, having ridden into town earlier on business for the Donovan ranch. While Mr. Jinks was no less practiced in his courtliness than Liam, it was more perfunctory, and at times Audra thought that she saw in eyes as blue as Liesl's a cool disapproval.
She was no proper match for Liam, she knew it. As Nan might say, he was prettier by far than she was, and his family boasted a true lineage, traceable back to a minor branch of the Stuart family, or so Liam claimed with a self-mocking smile. The Napier who came to the United States in the middle of the 18th century brought his sense of privilege with him, and for almost 150 years, the Napier men had prided themselves on being gentlemen, above both employment and the rough and tumble of American politics. In that sense, Liam's father and Liam himself were the black sheep of the family, not only rubbing shoulders with the common man but, in John Napier's case, regularly shaking hands with him over the successful passage of a bill in Congress and, in Liam's case, attending to his illnesses. The Clarke family history, by contrast, had its origins in an impoverished immigrant who had taken his surname from a street sign. Yet if Liam yearned for a woman more feminine and with the graces that a man of his class could expect, he never showed it. He wasn't yet assiduous in his attentions, but he had prevailed upon her to call him Liam, and Audra was aware that they were already exciting some gossip about whether an "understanding" existed yet between them.
She considered the gossip a more reliable sign of the dearth of entertainment in the town than the seriousness of his intentions. He had done nothing more than kiss her hand after walking her back to her home, and he had yet to press her for greater intimacies or more time alone. He was different in every respect from Frank Thornton, who persisted in letting his hands roam no matter how often she slapped them away, who had alternately wheedled and shamed her into tolerating his greater and greater license. "Aw, honey, we're practically engaged," he would start, "Can't you let me" and then he would do what it was he had in mind without waiting for her permission. Worse was the sudden anger that would overtake him when she refused to let him push her skirt any farther up her leg or removed his hand when it tried to cup her breasts. "If you're not the coldest fish," he would say or "There are other girls who wouldn't turn down a kiss from me." She knew there were other girls who would find his groping of them stimulating or at least worth suffering in silence because, as her sisters never failed to remind her, he was a marriageable man. So she had slowly but steadily surrendered until there was nothing that she hadn't surrendered, and even then it hadn't been enough because there had, in fact, been another girl . . . .
Audra stopped, feeling a wave of heat rising from the ground to beat at her. The sun had already dipped below the horizon, yet her every step worked a bellows, forcing from the parched grass and earth a superheated gust of air. She wasn't far from the house, she had only the rest of the field to cross, but she felt like she had miles more to go. Ordinarily the lights at the windows would urge her on, but tonight they presaged only more heat. The old men who squatted outside the general store played the role of the town's unofficial barometer, and they were predicting a stormy end to the heat. It was an exaggeration she was sure, but she would swear she hadn't seen a cloud for days, maybe weeks. There had been nothing but sun – the color of butter, the color of goldenrod, the size of a quarter, the size of a dinner plate. It would look one way in the morning, another in the afternoon, and different still at sunset; it reminded Audra of the ladies she would sometimes see stepping down from their fine carriages, so rich they could change dresses several times a day. There were dresses for receiving callers and there were dresses for giving calls, dresses to wear at teas and dresses to wear at dinners. Audra had the same few dresses for every occasion; in this heat, she would wear one for as long as she could stand the smell of her own sweat and then she would put it in the basket of clothes Liesl would wash. Even clean they smelled faintly of sweat.
Nothing smelled clean, nothing felt clean. Water was becoming more precious than gold. The special plumbing system that Helena and Claudia Donovan had devised for the house was vanquished by the drought; turning the handle on the kitchen faucet produced only a trickle of water at best. Liesl was having to go outside and pump water directly from the well, and even pumping from the well had grown harder. When she had pumped enough water, she would have to go through the more exquisite torture of heating it. The room off the kitchen in which she washed their clothes would reach temperatures suitable for a foundry, and when Liesl emerged with a heap of wet shifts and dresses and boy-sized overalls to hang on the line to dry, her face and arms would be little drier than the clothes, and her hair would be unwinding from its coil, spilling over her shoulders, light like the grains in the burlap sacks at the general store that Audra continued to call by the wrong names, oats for barley, barley for millet, but so much softer . . . .
Audra blinked and pressed on. She would go directly to the well and pump a bucket of water. She imagined upending it over her head and almost wriggled at the pleasure of it. But that would be wasteful. She would carry the bucket into the house and use the dipper to ladle herself a glass; she would use the dipper again to wet a cloth that she could hold against the back of her neck. Not the immersion she desired, but a small relief nonetheless. She shuffled up the steps of the back porch. She touched the knob of the screen door to pull it open only to let her hand fall. It wasn't so dim that she couldn't make Liesl out at the table. Usually Liesl would have lit the lamp by now, but as slight as the heat it generated was, it was still heat and therefore intolerable. There was a pail at her feet, and she was squeezing a cloth over the bodice of her dress. Except that her bodice had been unbuttoned and Liesl was wearing no shift underneath it. Her breasts, pale in the dimness, were almost freed from the material, and Audra had a confused and confusing image of working her hand underneath them, much like she would newly born kittens or puppies, feeling their heartbeats pulse rapidly against her palm.
She rocked backward, unsure whether Liesl had seen her, unsure that, if she had, Liesl would care. It had been so hot for so long that observing the proprieties seemed needless exertion. But this was an exertion that had to be made, a propriety that demanded to be observed, and Audra wondered at her trembling as she scraped the soles of her shoes across the floor of the porch and rattled the doorknob. She had accidentally interrupted her sisters disrobing or engaging in an intimate washing numerous times; privacy had been hard to come by in the ever-expanding Clarke and Pawlik families. The embarrassment had always been brief and quickly forgotten on both sides; she wasn't merely embarrassed now, however, she was mortified.
There were sounds of a chair squeaking and of something wetter, as though in her surprise, Liesl had dropped the cloth in the pail or kicked the pail hard enough to send water sloshing over its side. There were a few crossly muttered words in German, the flare of the lamp, and Liesl, dress rebuttoned, was at the door, opening it for Audra. "I can't promise a cold supper," she was saying wryly as she retreated in front of Audra to reach for a plate, covered by a dish towel, on the counter, "but it's no more than lukewarm."
Liesl sat with her as she picked at the bread and jam, the nearly liquefied cheese, and they exchanged their small stories of the day. It might have been a night like others, coming home to a meal that Liesl had saved for her and casually talking with her as she ate, but she hadn't seen Liesl's breasts on those nights, and she couldn't help noticing that Liesl hadn't buttoned every button. At the base of her throat the top two buttons weren't fastened, and that small arrow-shaped patch of Liesl's skin visible between the edges of the material so teased Audra's attention that she ended up eating five slices of the bread instead of her usual three just so she could focus her eyes on something else, such as her slathering the bread with jam. There was nothing risqué in the effect of those two unbuttoned buttons, Liesl's breasts were securely covered, and the part of her chest that was exposed was so far north of them that Audra could just as well have been darting glances at the back of her hand or forearm. Yet the direction of that vee of cloth was unmistakable, and though she knew Liesl's breasts were like her own (but bigger) or Nan's (but smaller), they also seemed entirely unlike them. They made of Liesl's body a mystery that Audra wouldn't have thought before to ascribe to it, and it made her conscious of Liesl in a way she instinctively knew that she didn't welcome.
Later she lay in her bed, sleepless, blaming the heat, but it wasn't the heat that had her arms pressed as flat to the bed as if they had been nailed. For the first time since the Lattimers had moved into the house, Audra was intensely aware of the fact that Liesl slept in the bedroom across the hall. Except that tonight Liesl wouldn't be able to sleep either, overheated and uncomfortable. What was she thinking about? The baby? Her husband? Or was she thinking about how cool the water had felt on her skin, how, if only the pail had been a pool, she could have floated in it, the water lapping over her stomach, her breasts – and, with a groan, Audra crushed the pillow over her head and started counting the minutes until sunrise.
Over the next few days, Audra virtually lived at the Journal's office, cleaning, organizing, filing, bringing the newspaper's ledger up to date, and attempting to ensure that the printing press was in good order. She would have felt more confident about her efforts if Hans had been there to oversee them, but he was busy addressing a growing list of mechanical breakdowns, from a cash register that refused to ring up totals to telegraph keys that refused to type. Some were the result of a business owner's preference to cut costs by deferring cleaning or care, but many of the problems had only recently announced themselves – after endless days of endless heat. At least the printing press printed – it just complained about it. Hardly anything worked right when it was this hot, Audra conceded, even people. While it wasn't surprising that fights had become more frequent and vicious at the Rusty Spur, it was shocking to see two church elders almost come to blows over money missing from a collection plate. The coins were found underneath a nearby pew, but by then one of the men had grabbed the other by his necktie, threatening to shake the money out of him. Audra's insistence that she would eat dinner at the Journal, making do with preserves and crackers or a tin of baked beans, didn't sit well with Liesl. With a fire that Audra had rarely seen from her, she decided that Mary would be in charge, going forward, with bringing lunches and suppers to the office and that Audra could do as she pleased with them. "Eat them or throw them away. It's all the same to me," Liesl declared with an indifference so poorly assumed that Audra might have laughed had she herself not felt like grabbing the dish Liesl was drying and throwing it to the floor.
The only person in the town who wasn't a cutting remark or a wayward look from committing violence against his neighbor was Helena and Myka's housekeeper, Mrs. Erickson. If she were weakening under the rigors of the summer weather or overwhelmed by everything she had to accomplish before Helena and Myka arrived, she gave no sign of it. Audra, in her periodic strolls along the main street, exchanging the stifling air of the Journal's office for the stifling air outside, which, though no fresher, was at least different, or so she would have said if anyone had asked her, would walk far enough to note whether Mrs. Erickson was hanging up the sheets to dry or sweeping the porch of the big brick house. The more often Mrs. Erickson was visible and the busier she appeared to be, the closer, Audra had to conclude, Helena and Myka were to arriving. After a glimpse of her, Audra's walk back to the Journal was less a stroll than a barely restrained run. Mrs. Erickson was a better calendar than a calendar.
The housekeeper was a striking figure, her dresses black and relieved only by a cross on a gold necklace. Her hair, rigorously bound up, was white, except for a streak, as black as her dresses, that wound through each coil. Sometimes on her way home in the evenings, Audra would see her outside Sweetwater's straggling perimeter of houses, stooping to examine something hidden deep in the grass, a flower that had found a secret source of moisture or a nest of mice (or an animal equally as small and skittery - and stupid not to have left for places more hospitable), her black dress an ink smudge against the horizon. She didn't seem uncomfortable in her surroundings or appalled by how people could stand such sameness, sun, grass, sky and then sun, grass, sky the next day and the day after that one and all the days that followed, differentiated only by where they fell in the week. Even then, Audra sometimes lost track of whether it Tuesday or Thursday, keeping track of the days as they passed only by the Journal's schedule.
Most of the time, Audra was too tired and, lately, too worn by the heat to be struck by the starkness, the emptiness of the plains. She had heard others describe it as what freedom looked like, but she felt the vastness more imprisoning than freeing. There was no escape from it. Sweetwater didn't have buildings large enough to block out the sky, and it didn't have enough buildings to bury the prairie beneath them. Some in the town had asked her how she could stand being just one of a million in a city, an anonymous face in a crowd of anonymous faces. But she had never felt so small or unimportant in New York as she did in Sweetwater. These raw, unfinished slabs of earth and sky, between which Sweetwater seemed perilously set, they would crush her.
Maybe it was because she had grown accustomed to associating Mrs. Erickson with the big rambling brick house and the big rambling prairie that Audra was shocked to see her enter the Journal's office. She must have carried the prairie in with her because the office suddenly seemed small and cluttered, and Audra tripped over a stack of paper as she went to greet her. If Mrs. Erickson found the Journal's office confining, she betrayed no hint of it. She seemed rather to take no notice of the office at all, black skirt skimming the floor as she met Audra at the desk. "Mrs. Wells telegraphed me first thing this morning to make sure that I invited you to supper this evening." There might have been a dry inflection to "invited" that acknowledged it was closer in meaning to "commanded," but Mrs. Erickson's habits of speech were as unvarying as her attire – she said everything with the slow, careful neutrality of a banker appraising the value of a homesteader's possessions.
"It's Wednesday already, isn't it?" Audra asked with a dismay that was its own confirmation.
"Her train arrives in just a few hours, and I've already received several telegrams from her. She's ready to get to work." Again there was that inflection, lightly underscoring "several," and Audra saw, not a handful of telegrams covering a desk or table but a mountain of them, and yet she had no doubt that Mrs. Erickson would, as methodically as if she had weeks to attend to them, emerge from the telegrams and start carrying out her employer's charges. "She's taken great interest in your editorials, Miss Clarke, and I believe she wants to discuss with you her ideas for putting some of those proposals into action." Mrs. Erickson's features were too irregularly arranged for beauty, eyes, nose, and cheekbones squeezed close together in a narrow face, but when she smiled and they reclaimed their proper space, Audra imagined that she had been once, about the time that Mr. Erickson entered the picture, a very fetching young woman. "Supper will be at 7:00. Be prepared, she's not been this excited about returning to Sweetwater in a very long time."
Helena didn't look excited when Audra promptly showed up at the front door several minutes before 7:00. She looked regal in a dark blue dress with lace so white at the collar and cuffs that Audra was convinced she must be wearing it for the first time. Nothing in Sweetwater looked bright or new or unblemished for long. Audra had almost expected a footman or butler to open the door, but Helena didn't appear to think she was lowering herself by greeting her guest rather than having Audra's arrival announced to her. Her hair was impeccably swept up, and her earrings had the hard glitter of diamonds, yet the hand she extended for Audra to shake was strong and not soft. Those were calluses that Audra could feel. The high cheekbones, over which the dark eyes were almost interrogatively tilted, lent her face a severity that had Audra thinking supper could be one long examination of all that she had yet to accomplish in the two months she had lived in Sweetwater. She tried not to look as though she were looking for Myka, but she was. Myka would have even more reason to be impatient with her, perhaps even question her judgement in selecting someone as untried as Audra Clarke for the job, but, if Audra were honest with herself, she still found Helena Wells intimidating.
"Myka's overseeing some changes we're instituting at the Clarion, but she should be out here next week." Suddenly those high cheekbones were pleating, a wide smile undercutting the air of authority. "You'll have to make do with me, but I haven't forgotten how a paper is run. I've been taking great interest in the battle you've been waging with the reactionary forces." The smile acquired a sardonic slant. "Otherwise known as the 'good folks' of Sweetwater."
Audra tried not to stare at the parlor and the library, not to mention the sweeping staircase, that they passed as Helena led her into the dining room. This house wasn't as grand as Helena and Myka's home in New York, but it was grander than Audra had ever imagined she would see in Sweetwater. The parlor wasn't oppressively furnished with pieces in dark, heavy wood; instead, there were just a few chairs and a delicate loveseat, their upholstery neither too plush nor too plumped but invitingly soft. The library, what she could see of it, had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a long and deep sofa. The dining room was no less imposing, the tablecloth as virginally white as the lace on Helena's dress and the polished silver as bright as her earrings. Audra fast ran out of names and purposes for all the dishes and silverware that had been placed with geometric precision in front of each chair. Helena took the chair at the head of the table and motioned to Audra to take the chair to her right.
Audra expected Mrs. Erickson, maybe even a serving girl, to come into the room from the kitchen because, while Sweetwater didn't look like the kind of place that suggested serving girls and valets and footmen would have ready employment, Helena Wells's house did. Yet the door to the kitchen didn't open, and Helena, rising from her chair to lift a lid from a serving dish, invited Audra to hand her her plate. She filled it with slices of marinated beef, the sharp tang greeting Audra's nose, not unpleasantly, and cold boiled potatoes sprinkled with herbs. As if she had divined Audra's thoughts, Helena asked, "You wouldn't know of any girls looking for work, would you? I want to find one to assist Dorothy, Mrs. Erickson, this summer as Myka and I will be doing more entertaining than we have in years past." She handed Audra's plate back to her, the sardonic smile reappearing. "It's far easier to bluster in an anonymous letter that those desiring an education will find a way to pay for their schooling elsewhere and to claim that the town will never support the expense of a new school than to express the same sentiments in front of your fellow citizens at, let's say, a formal dinner." She looked around the dining room, gazing appreciatively at its wallpaper and wainscoting, the high polish on its floor. As her glance swept up to the table and chairs, their elegance speaking to the craft, and money, that produced them, she said, "Sometimes a well-appointed house is as effective a weapon as a gun or knife – and it results in less bloodshed."
Audra was very carefully cutting her beef, equally divided between hoping she was using the right knife and fork and hoping that, if she wasn't, Helena wouldn't notice. "Do you mean to bludgeon the Burnses and the Wallaces and, for that matter, most of the town council with crystal and fine china?" She savored the coolness of the beef and potatoes, finding it more than a little ridiculous that her respite from the heat was in a meal she would normally eat warm. Perhaps she could start bathing in ice cream as well. She would have grinned at the thought except that an unbidden image flashed through her mind of Liesl squeezing ice cream from a cloth over the opened bodice of her dress, and Audra heard, as if from a distance, the clatter of her knife and fork falling to the floor.
"Only with condescension, darling. I wouldn't waste my china by breaking it over Pastor Wallace's head," Helena said dryly as Audra, flushed at the direction her thoughts had taken, searched for her silverware. Growing serious, she said, "I could have done more to make this town hospitable. I could have tried harder to make people want to settle here - and not just because they were too exhausted to press on." She paused, then said firmly, "I will do more, and if I have to shame every one of the town fathers into assisting me, I won't hesitate." Audra righted herself in her chair, knife and fork clutched in her hand, only to see an expression of malicious enjoyment cross Helena's face. "They'll have me harrying them from one side and, on the other, they'll have the goad of seeing Sweetwater's new public library being built brick by brick, courtesy of another rich reprobate whose presence they had to suffer, Henry Tremaine."
As Audra was about to use the knife and fork she had picked up from the floor, Helena raised an eyebrow and nodded at the untouched place setting a few inches from Audra's elbow. "Audra, I accept that etiquette, along with so much else, may be lacking in Sweetwater, but we have not come to such a pass that I will deny my guests the use of clean silverware." While Audra exchanged her knife and fork, Helena refilled her virtually untouched glass of wine. Helena's had been all but empty, which might account for the combative light in her eyes and the pugnacious jut of her chin. Audra could only be thankful that Helena hadn't invited any of the town council; she didn't have difficulties picturing her grabbing hold of the men by the lapels of their suit coats – or their ears – and demanding that they open their wallets and make real their commitment to civic virtue.
After taking a sip of wine, Helena said, "If we can't shake money out of the council for paving the main street, perhaps Claudia might be willing to support it, given her current passion for motor cars." She extended her foot, and on the top of the richly embroidered slipper (of a blue perfectly matched to her dress), Audra could see a thin layer of silt. "Not that Dorothy isn't an excellent housekeeper, but no one can keep up with the dust." Shuddering as she looked at the tip of her slipper, Helena said, "God knows what blows in with it. All the horses that go up and down the main street, the dogs . . . ." Her gaze became abstracted. "It's a hazard to our health when you think about it." Leaning forward, Helena suggested, "Perhaps Dr. Napier might be willing to talk up the benefits of having a brick street instead of a mud pit in the spring and a dust bowl in the summer. If he could be persuaded to provide his learned opinion in an article for the Journal, even better." The abstracted gaze had given way to a look so sharp that Audra could almost believe it had drilled into her head. Helena would be witness to every one of her outings with Liam, able to view in unsparing detail each moment of their tentative courtship, if that was what it was. "Would you have the time to talk to him? I have a feeling he'll be more receptive to the idea if you were to ask him."
Was that the beginning of a coy smile at the corners of Helena's lips? Had the gossip reached all the way out to New York? "Dr. Napier is a gentleman. He'd find it hard to refuse a plea for his assistance," Audra replied, all too aware of the blush heating her cheeks.
"Especially from a young, attractive woman," Helena smoothly concurred.
Young, relatively so, Audra guessed, but attractive only because Sweetwater offered so little in the way of competition. Unmarried women in their prime childbearing years were at a premium. Audra figured she could have no teeth and a face full of warts and wens, and there would be some lonely farmer who would be willing to stand up with her in front of a minister. Her complexion was clear, her teeth sound, and her features, while they might be on the plain and uncompromising side, were acceptable. She met Helena's eyes, and she again had the feeling that Helena could see inside her mind. The smile that Helena's lips curved into was gentle rather than coy. "To thrive in this town, you'll need to use every advantage you have, Audra, and you have more than you think."
A public library and a paved main street weren't enough to satisfy Helena. After dinner, they drank coffee and brandy in her library, and while Audra examined the books filling every shelf of the bookshelves, Helena scribbled down ideas on a pad of her paper in her lap. They ranged from the inconsequential to the important, as Helena probably would have described them, but Audra described them, if only to herself, as ranging from practical to pie in the sky. Helena said each one aloud, as though she were weighing both its soundness and its chances for support, but she didn't fail to write a single idea down. A new building in Halliday befitting its post office, sidewalks for Meridian (even if they were only wood), gas lamps for Sweetwater's main street, a teachers' college, courses offered to farmers and ranchers (by said teachers' college) on the newest ideas of land management, a hospital. Audra almost dropped the book she was skimming when Helena mentioned improvements for Halliday and Meridian, noting "They're part of the Journal's family now."
It was yet another reminder of how she was failing to manage the paper and its business as Myka had envisioned, as Audra herself had dreamily envisioned on the train ride from New York. She had visited Halliday and Meridian all of once since she had arrived, meeting with the former editors of the Free Press and Pioneer News to discuss how the concerns, interests, and needs of the towns were best reflected in the Journal. The men had looked behind her for the Journal's real editor, and the realization that she was the one they would be working with had shortened the time they were willing to spend with her as well their replies about how the Journal could serve their communities. They would take care of everything, they assured her, sending her advertisements, notices, and the occasional story to be published as circumstances warranted. If they needed to meet with a representative of the paper, they could always count on running into Hans Albrecht, who was either at the Donovan ranch, which was hardly a day's ride away, or working on farm machinery somewhere nearby. They had smiled and patted Audra on the shoulder as they might a child sent to beg them for a contribution to charity, and with those smiles and pats, they had dismissed her. She had let them, too overwhelmed by her responsibilities to assert her authority more forcefully and unsure that, if she did, it wouldn't undermine her the more. Another error to be remedied – when it was cooler.
Helena set aside her pad of paper. "Why don't you keep the book with you? You're always free to come here, regardless of where Myka and I might be globetrotting, to borrow as many books as you like. Think of it as a lending library until the real one is built." She glanced at the clock on the mantel. "Do you think it's too late to visit Liesl and the children? Myka would tell me to wait until tomorrow or the next day, but," she flashed an impish grin at Audra, "I can't buy a gift without wanting to give it the next instant."
The hauteur that characterized how Helena held herself, how she swept into a room, how she regarded her interlocutors disappeared in an instant with that grin. It gave her features a warmth and a charm that explained to Audra how a powerful man like Henry Tremaine could remain besotted with her and how a woman like Myka, whose own cool reserve would have prevented her from challenging Helena's, could have become entranced by her. "It's been impossible to sleep in this heat. They'll all be up and eager for a distraction."
She couldn't have said that Helena ran out of the library. It would have been undignified in that dress, and Audra wasn't sure that her skirts would have allowed it, but Helena had left the library at a speed very close to running, and Audra could hear the rapid thumping of feet on the stairs. She tucked the book under her arm, a Gissing novel, and decided to wait for Helena in the foyer. If she stayed in the library any longer, more books would end up tucked under her arm. A far-off door closed and Audra looked up toward the second floor, but the sounds were coming from the direction of the kitchen. Helena appeared at the head of the stairs, head cocked toward the hallway. "Dorothy must be back," she said. She held two bags filled with wrapped packages but extended one toward Audra. "You can play Santa Claus, too."
Audra met her halfway, taking the bag. Her gifts, had she money to buy them, would be clumsily wrapped . . . and far fewer in number. At the foot of the stairs they met Mrs. Erickson, her black dress streaked with dust, its skirt covered with straw. "Are you packed?" Helena asked.
Mrs. Erickson looked down at her dress and then at Helena. "I would say so," she said, with that hint of irony Audra had heard in her voice before. "However, the wagon put up a fierce resistance." As Helena nudged Audra to precede her to the door, Mrs. Erickson glanced at the bags they carried with the same soberness with which she had appraised her dress. "I'll have the supper dishes cleaned and your breakfast for tomorrow set out. If there's anything else . . . . ."
Helena shook her head. "I'll survive until Myka arrives, and if her cooking doesn't kill us both, you should see us when you return. Safe travels, Dorothy."
Audra tried to repress her curiosity about what mission Helena would be sending her housekeeper on, finding that, despite being the taller, Helena's stride was the quicker. Her longer legs gave her no advantage as Helena seemed determined to propel herself down the street rather than walk. As they neared the Rusty Spur, its light and noise virtually the only sign of life in Sweetwater at this time of the evening, Helena slowed, appearing to count the number of men in the saloon. With an odd little jerk of her head that might have been a nod of approval or a sign of her disappointment, Helena gripped her bag tighter and increased her pace. "Dorothy is taking supplies to the reservation," she said suddenly. "You think it's difficult to persuade the fine citizens of Sweetwater to invest in their future? Try to convince them that the people who lived here before the first farmer set a plow to the prairie deserve a future. Most of our 'leaders,'" she emphasized sarcastically, "are in the Spur tonight, happy to throw their money away at the poker tables, but let someone suggest spending a dollar for the benefit of another . . . " Helena let her words trail off. She was silent for a moment, then she said with a calmness that was too deliberate, as if she wanted to do nothing more than continue railing at the council's self-interest, "You should consider visiting the reservation. I think you would find it a . . . memorable . . . experience, and Dorothy would take you. She goes there quite often."
Audra hoped her sigh wasn't audible. She had a feeling that by the time Helena made her return migration to New York, her responsibilities would have increased tenfold. Not only did she have to learn how to manage a newspaper, she realized she would have to learn how to manage its co-publisher in all but name as well. When the passed the Journal's office, Helena didn't slow as she had in front of the Rusty Spur, but she looked over her shoulder at it, stumbling a little as she did, and Audra could only hope that whatever thoughts about it that were passing through Helena's mind were more positive than the ones that had preoccupied her outside the saloon. This time, however, Helena chose to keep them to herself. They turned into the parallel ruts that led away from the town and into the prairie, the houses lining either side in no uniform pattern, some practically set on top of the ruts and others set far back, as if asserting their superiority to their neighbors by the distance they maintained from them. Audra felt an unaccustomed surge of pride upon seeing the handsome outline of her own home, thinking how well built it was, how well situated it was, yet she felt just as keenly that it wasn't her house. It was hers to occupy only for as long as the woman beside her deemed her a worthy employee. Audra's feet were flat on the ground, but her toes were curling inside her shoes as though her next step would plunge her into an abyss. While she was aware that her mistakes had outstripped her successes, she wasn't ready to give up on the challenge presented by the Journal, and she hoped that Helena's impatience to improve Sweetwater wouldn't extend to her persuading Myka to search for a new editor, one older, more experienced . . . more effective. Maybe buried deep among the gifts she was carrying was the gift of time. That's all she wanted of Helena and Myka, time.
"It's working out then?" Helena's question so startled her that Audra almost dropped her bag. "It does seem an ideal arrangement." With wry amusement she said, "Before she married the sheriff, Liesl kept house for Myka. I think Myka still looks back fondly on those days." Helena chuckled to herself, and Audra sensed a private joke.
"Yes," she said quietly, "it's working out fine." Audra didn't find her living situation with Liesl a source of amusement, and "fondness" was much too pale and an inaccurate a term to describe the flux of emotions that beset her even in her sleep. But she pushed those thoughts aside as she did her worries about the Journal or, more truthfully, her place with it and climbed the porch steps with an appropriate display of eagerness. As she had predicted to Helena, Liesl and the boys were still up, the boys in their nightshirts playing at their mother's feet and Liesl listlessly paging through a magazine in the rocking chair. It was the boys' shouts that caused her to look up as Helena and Audra entered the parlor, and her eyes widened in surprise.
Will, calling out a name that only approximated Helena's – Audra counted at least three extra "L's" – rushed to her and wrapped his arms around her hips. "You've been gone too long," he said reproachfully.
With an affectionate smile, Helena smoothed his hair, agreeing softly, "I have been gone too long."
Gus was less certain that he remembered Helena but he was no less excited by her presence, hopping up and down and shrieking, quieting only when Liesl picked him up, shifting his weight to better accommodate the obdurate thrust of her belly. She approached Helena with the alertness to trouble Audra recognized from her riding lessons, when Lotte was more inclined than usual to resist being saddled. However, she lingered in the embrace as Helena whispered in her ear and when she drew back, her eyes were wet. Even Gus began to frown and whimper. She set him down and he ran to join Will and ransack the bags. Helena, saying brightly, "Happier thoughts, we'll think happier thoughts. He would want it that way," was dramatically eyeing the size of Liesl's belly, an eyebrow arched in disbelief. "Are you giving birth to a child or a litter?"
"Girl, boy, puppy, I don't care, so long as it comes soon," Liesl said wearily. Gazing down at the boys who were tearing off the excessively beribboned wrapping, she said to them so mildly and with such exhaustion that it was more plea than admonishment, "You should thank your godmother for the presents before you start opening them."
"They're not all for Will and Gus. I brought some books for you as well, as many new detective stories as I could find."
Liesl shuffled toward the doorway. "Let me put on a kettle for tea, and I'm sure we have cookies or muffins . . . unless Audra ate them all." Despite the fatigue in her voice, the tone was teasing and her smile at Audra was quick and warm. Audra shrugged in abashed acknowledgment; she would pocket a muffin or two before leaving for the Journal's office in the morning, and she would pocket a few cookies – if that was what Liesl had baked – before going up to her room at night. She hadn't known until the Lattimers moved in that bread and pies baked at home didn't always harbor an ashy taste or that bread and pies didn't constitute the universe of baked goods. "Now you'll get to listen to something besides The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes."
Helena's eyes flickered between them, but she made no comment. For no reason, except that Helena's glance seemed to suggest something an inch beyond Audra's ability to grasp it, she felt a blush climbing into her cheeks, and she said almost brusquely. "Liesl, please sit down. I can make tea, and I know where the rest of the cookies are. I didn't eat all of them." Most of them, but not all, she added silently. For once, Liesl didn't protest, following Audra and Helena into the kitchen and calling for Will and Gus to join her. Will sped ahead, nightshirt flapping at his calves. He carried a paintbox and pad of paper and declared to Helena that he was going to paint her a beautiful picture of Lotte. It was Audra's opinion that horses only ruined a picture, but her relationship with Will was still tenuous and, in any event, he wasn't painting the picture for her.
The old men of the town might watch the clouds and trace the patterns of the birds in the sky and predict that the heat would linger for weeks or end tomorrow, but Audra, observing how Will demanded to sit next to Helena at the table, believed then that the best predictor of when the heat would end was when Will would demand to sit next to her at the table or offer to draw her a picture. In other words, when hell froze over. As Audra lifted the kettle one-handed and settled it on the stove, Gus gabbled happily against her shoulder, clutching a doll dressed in cowboy chaps and a tiny bandanna. He didn't continue to view her as a stranger, but for Gus, there were no strangers, only people who had yet to pick him up when he held out his arms or give him treats. Unhesitatingly she kissed his head and he issued a happy shriek that caused Helena to turn her attention away from Will and tilt her head speculatively at the two of them. Her eyes had the same musing cast as they had had in the parlor when Liesl claimed that she would retire Sherlock Holmes in favor of new mysteries to read to her. But Helena said simply, "It looks like you've made a home here."
Those dark eyes saw too much. Helena was too shrewd, too quick for her, understanding what she herself could only sense. It was bad enough that Helena knew Sweetwater better than she ever would, but Helena appeared also to have figured something out that, to Audra, remained bafflingly opaque. As if she were aware of Audra's unease, Helena rose, saying, "I can make myself useful in a kitchen. Where are the plates and cups? I can get those out."
Audra bent to let Gus slide to the floor so he could trail after Helena as she circled the kitchen, collecting dishes and silverware. Of course on a night so warm that it felt like flannel against her skin, she would be trying to adjust the flame under the kettle, all for a few cups of tea that would have them blotting the sweat from their foreheads as they drank it. It was undeniable, however, that Liesl was the livelier for Helena's visit. Her face was too pale and drawn, fatigue scoring lines under her eyes, but she was laughing at Helena's juggling, unintentionally, a stack of plates and a basket of cookies baked yesterday (the symmetrical, unbroken, perfect ones had been delivered to the hotel). "Don't break the plates. They were part of the set of china that you and Myka gave us as a wedding present."
"I thought the design was interesting." Helena said set the plates and basket on the table. Her eyes tracing the vines and leaves that formed the intricate pattern, she said, with exasperated fondness, "Your husband cared only for the food that covered it. Whether the design was of flowers or gamboling elephants would have made little difference to him."
Liesl appeared to nod in agreement, although her response was a gentle defense. "He had a keener appreciation of the finer things, as you would call them, than he was willing to let on, especially in front of you. He acted like a gamboling," she hesitated over the word, then said it again, "yes, a gamboling elephant because he knew it irritated you."
Helena arranged cookies on plates for Will and Gus and sat Gus in a chair next to his mother. "He should have shown such subtlety when we played poker." She passed a plate and the basket of cookies to Liesl. "Next to Myka, he was the worst player I've ever seen. You, on the other hand . . . ." She looked from Liesl to Audra. "What should I get the boys to drink?"
"Water."
"It's in the icebox."
As their voices crossed, Helena's lips curled into a smile that was both amused and knowing. She looked down at the boys and straightened the shoulders of Gus's nightshirt. "I'm surprised there's ice left."
"There was a shipment earlier this week. Our block is half the size it was when we got it," Liesl said gloomily.
"The heat has to break sometime." Helena retrieved the pitcher from the icebox and poured the water into cups. Giving one to Will and placing the other within easy reach of Gus, she took her seat next to Will. "What kind of poker player is she?"
Liesl, who was nibbling half-heartedly at a cookie, turned to look at Audra. "I don't know, we haven't played. Some would think it's an unladylike pasttime, Helena."
"I doubt that Audra puts much store in being ladylike," Helena said approvingly.
The kettle steaming, Audra pretended to be attending to it, although she wasn't sure she could entirely blame the heat - of the stove, the kettle, the day - for the sweat suddenly beading her cheeks. She didn't look or feel like much of a lady right now. A lady looked like Helena did, impervious to the vagaries of the weather. By contrast, Audra felt riven through, by everything, but at the moment particularly by Liesl's gaze. There was something detached and speculative about that gaze as Liesl tried to determine whether Audra was the type to fold or bet the house, which had Audra thinking for the first time, ever she believed, that the kitchen was a very small room. The January blue of Liesl's eyes was harder and brighter as they observed her clumsily pouring the hot water into cups, in which dented tea balls held a a sparse collection of leaves. The sharpness made Liesl no less lovely but it lent her a remoteness that called to Audra's mind the pictures of winged goddesses and Valkyries in the fairy tale books that Liesl read to her children. The fancy faded, and Audra was once more looking at a woman, tired and nine-months pregnant, who was waiting for her tea.
They drank the tea and ate the cookies and talked of things having nothing to do with the Journal or poker games. They talked about the trips Helena and Myka had taken, to Egypt to visit the pyramids and to Greece to visit the temples, and Audra marveled that she was sitting close enough to touch a woman who had, in turn, touched structures thousands of years old. She marveled the more when she learned that Liesl had also been to Greece "many years ago," but Liesl hadn't elaborated on how a farmer's daughter had had the opportunity, or the money, to visit Greece. They batted mosquitoes away from the lamp on the table and let the boys crawl sleepily onto their laps, Will in Helena's and Gus in Liesl's, and as the boys slept, their conversation had turned to Liesl's husband and how the boys were like him in their different ways.
"You were happy," Helena said, a statement that nonetheless held a question at its end.
"More than I thought I would be," Liesl said, lightly stroking Gus's cheek with the backs of her fingers.
"And yet," Helena suggested, her voice dropping so low that it almost became a whisper.
Liesl shook her head. "I have my sons, and I have her." She looked down at her belly. Gus's head was resting on it, as if he were not sleeping but listening to his little sister's – or brother's – murmurs.
Helena said nothing more, but in the restless glancing of her eyes around the room, Audra sensed her disagreement, and when her eyes found Audra that tiny knowing smile touched her lips and disappeared. She left not long afterward, insisting first on taking an only mildly protesting Will up to his and Gus's bedroom and settling him in his bed ("I was never able to do this with my own child," she had said to Liesl, "so you'll need to indulge me"). She took Gus from Liesl's arms and tucked him into bed as well. Declining Audra's offer to accompany her back to her house, Helena said, "I've always enjoyed walking the prairie at night. When we're apart like this, I look up at the stars and let myself believe that Myka is looking up at them at the same time." She straightened her shoulders, as if she were going to spend the rest of the night tackling the other tasks that awaited her. "If I come by the Journal at nine, will that be convenient?"
What could she say except yes? Audra hoped her response sounded sincere, but she could feel a pressure, not yet sharp, at the base of her skull that always presaged a headache. Without thinking, she dug her fingers into the back of her neck once Helena left, hearing Liesl's wry laugh behind her. "She is exhausting, isn't she?"
I'll disappoint her. She'll take over the paper and run it the way she wants to. But Audra said none of this, only smiling wanly at Liesl. "I should clean up the kitchen."
"The kitchen can wait until tomorrow. You need your sleep." Liesl placed her hands on Audra's shoulders, and Audra realized she never tired of recognizing the unusual fact that Liesl was as tall as she was, those wondrously clear eyes on a level with hers. "Helena can be demanding, but she's also fair."
"You're her friend. I haven't earned that."
"I wasn't always. There was a time when . . . let me just say that she and I had good reason not to like each other." Liesl's brows knitted together in recollection. Audra saw the traces of an old hurt in her expression that the relaxing of the muscles in her forehead didn't also smooth away. "It was a long time ago, however, and she and I have realized that we're more alike in some ways than we liked to think." Audra found it difficult to imagine how Liesl, with her warmth and her desire to set others at ease, shared much of anything with the regal Helena Wells, but she knew virtually nothing of their history so she would take Liesl at her word. It did make her curious to learn more about their history, but that could wait. She needed whatever rest her stuffy bedroom and tangle of bedsheets would hold out to her.
She was tired enough that even standing this close to Liesl didn't disturb her, but it was best not to prolong the contact. They simultaneously stepped away from each other, and Liesl said, "Start saving your pennies, Audra. I believe we have poker games in our future." She looked intently at her for a moment. "You're not as easy to read as Pete was. I think Helena may be in for a surprise."
Audra remembered Helena's swift, piercing looks and knowing smiles. Liesl was wrong. Helena would know her hand before she laid her cards on the table. Sighing, because tomorrow morning and her appointment with Helena wasn't nearly distant enough, Audra turned toward the stairs, hoping she would fall asleep the minute she collapsed onto her bed but knowing she wouldn't.