It had happened to me once before, the moment it became certain that Mama had not returned from her walk and that she likely would not return. It was a night and a day after she’d left. Papa had searched and the hapless police had searched—“the waves, sir . . . the riptides, sir . . .”—and all had given up on her, except me. But I felt that turning moment nonetheless because it surrounded me, the stench of grief. I froze my memories of that moment like living pictures in a scrapbook: the smell of salt water blowing through an open door; the cry of a lone seagull; a corner of the wide front hallway of our house washed in low, late afternoon sunlight; the reflection off the polished wood floor broken by the shadows of scurrying servants; the soft weeping of Cook, muffling the sound in her apron; the low voices of the men from behind the parlor doors; Papa’s one anguished shout, quickly quelled.
I hadn’t given her up then; I held to my faith that she was alive. But I knew that was a defining moment. And I knew what waited on the other side of it. And now, here in the carriage house, I knew that this was another such moment. Everything I’d held on to before, everything including Mama, had slipped away.
I perched on a rough barrel in a barn by Lake Hotel in Yellowstone, watching motes of hay dust twist and fall behind my uncle. I heard the rain on the roof, pattering the shingles with fat rapid drops. I smelled the leather and oil; I picked at the splinters that stuck out from the barrel with the thumb and index finger of my right hand.
“It was a long time ago. Right after you were born, in fact,” said Uncle John. “Oh, and you were such a bonny baby, Maggie! Very lively. I think your father didn’t know what to make of you. Anyway, you were still an infant when Charles took your mother on a holiday. He was anxious to see this wild place that he’d heard talk about, the west.” John coughed. “And to fix his marriage.”
“Mama was unhappy with Papa.” This was a statement, not a question. It confirmed what I’d known, what I’d seen but denied.
“You have to understand, Maggie. Some women have an easy time of childbearing. Some women”—John paused—“struggle.” He glanced at me and added, “Your mama was prone to fits of melancholy, Margaret. Long before you came along. I think when she married your father . . . Well, anyway . . .”
“Go on with the story.” I plucked hard at a long, fibrous splinter. I knew this about my parents; it made me feel sad and small but I’d known it all along.
“So they took the trip; I guess he thought it would cure her. You were left at home with Mina. You were too little to travel. Otherwise maybe it would have changed things. Who can say? It was in eastern Montana. Their train was stopped by bandits. A gang, and a famous one at that. They laid logs across the tracks.”
“Bandits!” I exclaimed. That explained my father’s anxiety on the train when we passed through eastern Montana. And his reaction to the news of the coach robbery.
“It wasn’t uncommon in those days. These gangs, it was still the Wild West. The men boarded the train, made the passengers disembark, stripped them of jewelry, watches, money. They blew the safes and took the gold. Then came the bad part.”
I waited, not moving.
“The men plucked several of the women from the crowd of passengers and made off. Your mama was one of the women taken by the robbers.” John paused here, his face ashen with his own memories. “She was so pretty. Just so pretty.”
Dust rose behind Uncle John, turned, and fell like mist. The rain washed the roof in soft pats. The men in the next room laughed, then resumed a low murmur.
“It nearly killed your father. For a month he scoured the countryside looking for her, but he had to return to Newport. To you. You were just a baby, after all. He hired Pinkerton men to continue the search. The trail grew hot and cold by intervals. We all thought she was dead. Or as good as dead.” His face grew red. I felt sick. Mrs. Delaney, Mrs. Proctor—they’d all judged her a ruined woman. “All except your father. He wanted her back no matter what.” Uncle John paused. “He was desperate. It nearly drove him insane. I came out west to help with the search. I couldn’t stand to see him grieve so.
“It was almost a year, and we caught a break. The gang had split, it seemed, and one set had made for Wyoming. There were reports of a woman among them who fit your mother’s description. There was only one issue: that woman was traveling with a baby.”
A baby. Slow swirls of dust. The smell of leather oil.
“When the Pinkerton men found the gang, there was a brief firefight. Two gang members were killed outright. Some escaped, but the detectives managed to catch a few—and find your mama. Indeed, it was her.”
John looked at me again. “It wasn’t ever about you, Maggie. She was desperate about the child. She was crazed. The detectives had failed to take the child. It was lost in the confusion. I had to calm her before returning her to Charles. The doctors prescribed laudanum. It was two more weeks before she was fit to travel. By then, she’d gone silent as a stick, wouldn’t discuss a thing, only asked about you, over and over. When we arrived back in Newport, your mama devoted herself to you. We all thought that was that. It was bad, but nobody talked about it—nobody. At least not in the open. Your grandfather saw to that.” Uncle John spat on the floor.
Oh, I knew better. They talked, all right. I sat very still, seeing, as if anew, in my mind’s eye, Mama painting in a half-dark room, in her loose dressing gown, her hair wild about her. I saw her dressed for some society event, and the barely masked chill of the other women toward her. And how something in her changed as I grew older, as if seeing me grow up, but not the other child, made her miserable with longing. I thought she was insane. In fact, she had been, in a way. Insane with a grief of her own, one she couldn’t share. I leaned my forehead against my palm.
“We all thought she was over it,” Uncle John said. “Until last summer. Your father told me she had been getting worse. Her breakdown at that party. When she had herself that great public display. The way he described it, it was pretty bad, I guess.” Uncle John shook his head.
Mama at Mary’s ball, her arms dripping blood on her white gown, one white glove splayed across the floor. I remembered how humiliated I felt; now I felt shame and remorse. I had not understood. My finger and thumb pinched the splinter. If she had told me, if Mama had told me . . . ah, but I was involved with myself, wasn’t I.
“That’s when Charles found your mother’s journal. And some other things. Letters, business things.” John paused. “I almost wish he hadn’t,” he said as his voice dropped in misery. “Then maybe he’d have picked himself up back there in Newport and you wouldn’t be here right now, chasing phantoms and such . . .”
“Go on,” I whispered. I was close now . . . close to the whole truth.
“It was clear your mother had, while she was captured—and you can imagine how hard it must have been for her—she had”—he paused and cleared his throat—“grown fond of her captor. Even loved him. But it wasn’t clear about the child. The age of the child, things your mother said, it wasn’t clear who’d fathered it. Your father came to believe the child was his. He hoped the child was his. Isn’t that what any man would hope for? That his wife wouldn’t have a child by another man? That he’d fathered the baby before she was carried off?” Uncle John lowered his head. “Bad enough your pa discovered that your mama didn’t love him. Not in the same way he loved her, leastways. At least, he hoped, he prayed, he had another child with her.
“Your pa went back to the Pinkertons. They showed him everything, all their notes. Things they said made him believe he could be the father. They told him the baby was a boy.”
It was as I’d suspected, and still so different. It wasn’t Mama Papa was looking for; it wasn’t revenge, either. He was looking for his child. He had me right there and I wasn’t enough; he had to find this child, too.
Motes of dust. Fat drops of rain. A boy. Of course I wasn’t enough.
“Your mam’s dead, Maggie. That seems pretty clear. Whether accident, or not, whether she meant it or not, that Cliff Walk took her. Maybe she wanted to come back here, but she didn’t. She didn’t come back here, by all the evidence those detectives could muster.” Yes. Mama was dead.
I knew then what it meant, a broken heart. I could feel it deep inside, a great, sharp pain, like someone had cut my heart out and snapped it in two and shoved it back into my chest.
“The Pinkertons found the trail of the man your mama fell in with. He’s got the child. So, your father is hoping he has a son, somewhere out here. A son only a year younger than you are, Maggie. In Montana, Wyoming, Yellowstone, even. Still with the man who stole your mother. Your papa wants his son, wants to take him away from that man, wants to bring that part of her back, and wants to see that contemptible thief empty and alone.”
I did not feel the way I’d imagined, knowing the truth. The truth was a bare plain, drained and dry, like the desiccated sinter of an abandoned spring; though a terrible pain dwelt far below, ready to erupt. But not in this moment. I held it in. “So, I have a brother,” I said. “And Mama’s dead.”
My uncle looked so miserable that right then I felt more sorry for him than for myself.
Before, and after.
Chapter THIRTY-ONE
July 14–15, 1904
Nestled among the forest-crowned hills which bounded our vision, lay this inland sea, its crystal waves dancing and sparkling in the sunlight as if laughing with joy for their wild freedom.
—The Valley of the Upper Yellowstone,
the explorations
of Charles W. Cook, David E. Folsom,
and William Peterson, 1869
“WHERE IS HE NOW?”
Uncle John looked startled. “That’s why you and your father came to Yellowstone. To find him.”
I waved my hand, impatient. I hadn’t meant the boy. My brother. I had a brother. I shook my head, trying to shake out the confusion. “Not him. I mean Papa. Where is he right now?”
Uncle John sighed. “He told me he was off to the Canyon area. That’s where the detectives said they had the latest bit of news. He was to meet them at the hotel there.”
The splinter, worked free at last, stabbed my finger. I looked down at the fat drop of blood, detached from the pain.
“Sometimes, when your father looks at you, it reminds him . . . you’re so stubborn . . .” His voice trailed off. “He wants to keep you from making your mama’s mistakes. He wants you to marry right and be well protected. He wants you to be a proper young woman, not like your mam.” Uncle John looked at me from beneath his brows, his head bent. “Your pa’s afraid of that impulsive streak in you. He’s afraid you’ll do what she did. Everything she did.”
I started. Impulsive? No. I followed the rules, didn’t I? I was not like Mama; I’d rejected her and all her bohemian behavior. Oh, at times, once or twice, that dress with the red sash, the photography, the porcelain pitcher . . . but impulsive? I shook my head. “He doesn’t know me, then,” I said. “He’d like a son,” I went on. “It’s perfectly natural. A daughter is . . . incomplete. Inadequate. Not what a father wants.” I wrapped one end of the yellow sash of my dress over my finger and watched the blood darken the silk. What I saw was memories: a red silk sash; blood on white silk.
“He feels like he’s had no control over things,” Uncle John said. “Over your mama, over the robbery, over you . . .”
I snorted. “He has no control? I’m the one with no choices. And I’m nothing like her.” I looked at the spreading stain. Impulsive? “I wish I was impulsive, and could do as I pleased.” I’d get away from that dreadful Graybull. I’d stay by Mrs. Gale and learn the ways of photography and I’d ride like a man and I’d throw away all my corsets . . . I’d run straight to Tom and throw my arms around him, shamelessly.
My uncle looked at me, so miserable that I felt sorry for him again. He wasn’t to blame.
I stood on shaky legs. “I’ve got to go back.” My throat was tight now and I couldn’t say any more. Uncle John walked me to the door of the carriage house; the men fell silent as we passed as if they knew what we’d been discussing.
I didn’t bother to open the umbrella on the way back and I walked directly through the puddles without seeing them.
Kula had unpacked my things and, back in the safety of my room, I changed out of my damp clothes and pulled on my dressing gown. Watered silk, pale ivory, so soft. It had once belonged to Mama and I’d borrowed it. I’d thought to return it to her, but now it was a token that I’d stepped into her place. Become a prisoner like she was. Silk made such soft shackles.
I had a brother. I had no mother. No Mama. I had been an only child; now I was half an orphan with a brother. Life was thrown far out of balance.
At dinner, I was quiet, thinking about what Uncle John had said: that I was like Mama. I did my level best not to pull away when George Graybull touched my arm or smiled at me, his tongue flickering between his teeth. I thought about Mama, about her longing, and I knew that I was lucky to be under the protection of a respectable man. I wasn’t impulsive. If I were, I’d be running out of this dining room as fast as my legs could carry me. I’d be on my way to Tom. Instead, I stared quietly out the great glass windows at the darkening lake.
Gray water meeting dark gray sky, drifting into distant black mountains. I threw my mind back: the day after Mama disappeared, the sun over Narragansett Bay sank into a scarlet ribbon that rimmed the water, the sky above it a purple bruise that smeared to black.
After dinner, Graybull retired to smoke on the porch. Mrs. Gale went up to her room, and I found Kula still lounging in one of the chairs in the lobby.
“You’ve had dinner?” I asked. I thought for a moment; I’d entirely forgotten about Kula. I sank into the chair next to her. “Where were you all afternoon?” I asked it out of kindness.
Kula regarded me with disdain. “I know how to manage. Thanks for asking.”