I do, I do, I do (6 page)

"You're happy, aren't you?" her mother asked, studying Zoe in the hazy light filtering past grimy windowpanes.

"Yes," Zoe answered softly, smiling down at her coffee. Ma had given her the last of the real cream instead of using the skim.

"I used to think you never would get married. I guess you broke every male heart in Newcastle." Alice Wilder smiled, and some of the years softened on her face. "When I was twenty-four, I'd already buried two babies and had two more hanging on my skirts."

That was the life Zoe had escaped, thank heaven. She didn't want to be stuck in a tiny, crowded house slaving after males who always had a dark line embedded beneath their fingernails no matter how hard they scrubbed. She didn't want a half dozen babies wearing her out before her time. Most of all, she wanted a few nice things in her life, something more than a coal miner's wife could expect.

"I was right to wait, Ma." If she had married a Newcastle man, she would have been stuck here. Instead, she had bided her time and used the wait to improve herself. Her reward had been Jean Jacques Villette. Zoe hadn't dared to dream that men like him existed.

Her mother smiled. "I used to tell your pa if you ever lost your heart, it would happen just like that." She snapped her fingers. "And you'd be married before we even knew you'd met someone special."

Zoe smiled. "The week I met Jean Jacques was the most exciting week of my life. First I saved the Van Hooten boy after he fell in the tide marsh, then came the award ceremony."

"And the newspaper article. Don't forget that. I clipped it out and saved it inside the family Bible. They called you a heroine." Pride restored the color to her mother's faded eyes.

"Three days after that article, Jean Jacques walked into Uncle Milton's store. Did I tell you the first words he said to me?" Lord, she would never forget. "I was working in the back, sacking dried peas, and I heard a man's voice talking with an accent that made everything he said sound like music. And he said this, Ma. 'Your hair reminds me of midnight spun into silk.' "

"Oh, my!" Her mother gasped and slapped a hand over her chest. "He said
that
?"

Zoe touched the glossy coil on her neck, trying to imagine silk. "It was like lightning flashed out of the ceiling and struck me to the heart. There he was, the handsomest man I'd ever seen, and he had clean fingernails, and he was standing in front of me saying I had hair like midnight silk."

"Well. I guess I understand why you'd marry a man with no calluses on his hands. I thought for sure you'd made a mistake." Her mother stared across the table. "Did he say other pretty things?"

Oh, yes. She'd heard poetry from her husband's lips, but never a coarse word. He believed she was a real lady. She, who had grown up fighting with six brothers, scrapping for a few feet of space that she could call her own. She'd tried so hard to rise above her background, but she hadn't known if she had succeeded until Jean Jacques Villette came into her life and treated her as if she were made of eggshell, as if she'd never bloodied her knuckles standing her ground.

"When do you expect your husband to return?"

"After he finds gold, I expect. And Ma, we have such plans!" A sparkle jumped into her eyes, and she leaned forward. "When Jean Jacques comes back from the Yukon, we'll either buy Uncle Milton's store or design our own. And we're going to build a big house on Denny Hill like all the swells."

"But Zoe, what if your husband doesn't strike it rich up there in the Klondike?"

"There's something I didn't tell you, Ma." She'd feared she would pop her dream bubble if she talked too much about the wonders of her new life. But enough time had passed that she felt secure now. "Jean Jacques comes from a rich family. Prospecting for gold is just a lark for him. An adventure. He'd like to scrape up a fortune so he doesn't have to depend on family money, but if that doesn't happen," she shook her head, marveling, "it won't matter."

"You married a rich man?" Her mother leaned back and frowned. If Ma had said it once, she'd said it a hundred times.
Stay with your own. If you marry above or below yourself, you'll wed heartache and sorrow
.

Ma's expression said it cost her dear not to repeat the warning. Instead, she fell silent for several minutes and then asked, "But didn't you mention that you paid for your husband's outfit and his passage with some of your reward money?"

"Something went awry with the transfer of funds from Jean Jacques's accounts back East to his account in the Seattle bank. First it was a problem with his accountant, then the wire service. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Rather than delay his journey I paid for the outfit and passage."

Her mother's gaze sharpened. "You do have access to his funds now, don't you?"

"Actually Jean Jacques sailed before the problem was solved. He had to leave when he did, or the weather would have made reaching the gold fields impossible."

She didn't like the way her mother stared, didn't like the way her explanation sounded a bit airy, like something out of a storybook. The longer Zoe talked, the more inexplicably naive she sounded. Irritated, she lapsed into silence.

"I'm suspicious by nature," Ma said finally. "So you can take this with a grain of salt. But it doesn't sound right that this rich husband of yours would go off for months and months without leaving you any money to live on."

"I have my employment at Uncle Milton's store, and I still have some of the reward money. Plus, I've saved a nice nest egg." And she had married a wealthy man. Never again would she worry about money. Never again would anyone look down on her. It was a miracle.

But from Ma's viewpoint, she admitted it did seem peculiar that Jean Jacques would sail away without an apparent worry as to how his new bride would fare. On the other hand, it hadn't seemed odd at the time. Zoe remembered urging him to go, assuring him that she would manage nicely on her salary from Uncle Milton. She had felt proud when Jean Jacques praised her independence and self-sufficiency.

Ma refilled their coffee cups from the scorched pot on the stove top. "You have time for one more cup before you leave."

The coal train would take her back to Seattle. Mr. Cummings, the engineer, wasn't permitted to transport passengers, but he looked the other way if a miner or his family wanted to climb into the caboose.

"I'm sorry I didn't warn you about the Owner's Day Parade before you came. I know you've never enjoyed the festivities."

Zoe turned her face to the window, and her lips thinned. She'd been five or six when she realized the elegantly dressed men and women in the carriage parade looked at the people lining the lanes of Newcastle with a mixture of superiority and contempt. That was the year she had overheard one of the men say, "They're so dirty. And look how they live." As if they were animals. As if they had a choice about the coal dust and the small company houses.

The following year she had promised herself that she would not scrabble in the dirt for the candy the ladies threw from the carriages. She'd stood upright, her spindly body stiff with pride while pieces of candy pelted her skirt. But it was the only candy she would have until the parade next year, and in the end she had dropped to her knees and snatched at the pieces before someone else got them.

She was eleven before her pride grew stronger than her longing for the candy. But her pride was crushed anyway. She might as well have fought for the candy.

The rich people in the carriages observed the children and people of Newcastle with laughter and nods and occasional pointing, the way they might have viewed dumb beasts in a zoo. As if the visitors were members of a superior species that had never seen or imagined such distasteful creatures or the hovels that furnished their habitat. They looked at Zoe as they passed, and she felt ashamed of the dress she had outgrown, ashamed of her bare feet and the unpainted small house behind her. Their laughter diminished her and made her tee! like weeping.

"I hate Owner's Day," she said quietly, keeping her eyes on the window. "They come here like feudal lords to view the peasants."

"Just ignore them like the rest of us do." Her mother shrugged. "It's a holiday. The men have a day off. There's the picnic and dancing afterward. When something nice comes along, Zoe, you grab it."

"I suppose so," she said for her mother's sake.

Ma studied her until Zoe felt heat rise in her cheeks. "You worry me sometimes."

"Don't you worry about me, Ma. I've got my head on straight."

"Do you, Zoe? I hope so. Those people in the parade aren't any better than you and me. The people in Newcastle aren't rich, they don't have fancy manners, and they don't talk pretty, but they're good, decent, hardworking folks."

Sometimes Ma layered meaning in her words, and Zoe wondered if this was one of those times. "Are you hinting something about Jean Jacques?"

"I haven't met the man, and I don't know him. But I'm wondering if it's possible that your husband is taking advantage of you."

Shock widened Zoe's eyes, and it was hard not to take offense. "How can you say that?"

"Think about it, Zoe. Your pa would never go off and leave me without access to our money."

"This isn't the same thing at all. I don't need to depend on Jean Jacques's funds. I earn enough from my job to pay my expenses. You couldn't support yourself on your egg money."

"Way back, I offered to buy your pa some decent boots and pay his union dues so we could get married sooner. But he wouldn't hear of it, wouldn't take a cent from a woman. We didn't tie the knot until he'd hired on with the company and had a place for us to live. I'd feel better if I saw that sort of thinking in your man. He should have straightened out his affairs and taken care of his wife before he went traipsing off on his Yukon adventure."

Anger deepened the color in Zoe's cheeks. "I didn't turn down all those proposals and wait all these years to end up marrying badly. I'm not dumb, Ma. If you'd met Jean Jacques, you'd know that he's wonderful and he loves me. He'd never treat me wrong."

"I worry, Zoe. That's all."

"Rich people do things differently. They don't think like we do. Jean Jacques never had to scrape pennies, money just appears when he needs it. I doubt he thought about leaving me without access to his money. I doubt it entered his mind. Rich people don't think about paying rent or buying food or things like that. They've never had to."

"One more question, then I won't say any more about it."

"Good."

"How much of your reward money did you spend on outfitting Mr. Villette?"

"A lot," she admitted eventually, resenting the implications behind her mother's question. "I would have spent it all because a man like him is used to the best of everything, but he wouldn't hear of it. In many ways, he's like regular people, Ma. You'll see when you finally meet him."

Inside she cringed at the thought of bringing Jean Jacques here to meet her family. She didn't think he'd look at her home and the people in it the way the swells in the carriages did. He wasn't like that. But still, he'd see the grime and the chipped dishes and all the rest. In fact, she couldn't imagine Jean Jacques in this tiny house at this dusty table focusing his charm on a tired woman who didn't place much value on charm.

"One last thing. Did you tell Mr. Villette about us? About your family?"

Standing, Zoe looked around for her hat and gloves. Ala had placed them atop her small overnight bag. Taking up her hat, she pinned it on before a cloudy mirror framed next to the window where the light was good.

"I told Jean Jacques about Newcastle and Coal Creek and about the family." She'd never been able to look into her mother's eyes and lie, so she kept her gaze fixed on the mirror. "He knows I didn't grow up with advantages." That much was true, but she had kept the details vague. She would confess her complete history eventually. Feeling guilty, knowing she hadn't done right, she avoided turning toward her mother.

"Will his family accept you? Are you worried about meeting those rich folks?"

The inevitability terrified her. She pulled on her gloves and smoothed down the fingers. Jean Jacques had promised that his family would love her as much as he did. But she felt certain they would have preferred that he marry in his own class.

"That's a bridge I'll cross when I reach it," she murmured, giving her skirts a twitch to shake dust from the folds.

Her mother stood and came around the table. "I'll walk to the train with you." She didn't mention Jean Jacques again until Zoe was about to climb onto the narrow porch behind the caboose. Then she caught Zoe's face between chapped hands and looked into her daughter's eyes. "I'm so proud of you. I know you're too smart to let some scoundrel bamboozle you, but I can't help worrying about my chicks. I just want you to be safe and happy."

"I know, Ma. Don't worry."

"I trust your judgment. I'm sure Mr. Villette is as wonderful as you say he is or you wouldn't have married him."

Zoe stood on the little porch of the caboose waving her handkerchief until she saw Ma turn up the road toward the company store, then she stepped inside to get out of the wind and the blowing soot and smoke.

A visit home always left her with a disturbing mix of feelings. It was good to see everyone, but no one in her family could talk without shouting, and the house seemed smaller each time she came. Though it made her feel guilty, she felt relieved when the coal-laden train rolled away from Newcastle and she left behind the black dust and the chickens scratching for treasure in dirt yards and men scratching for coal under Cougar Mountain while their women waited and worried.

Thank heaven she had escaped all that. And she had done it by working hard to better herself through evening classes to improve her education and by taking Miss Lydia's weekly classes in decorum.

Bending her head, she closed her eyes and touched her wedding ring through her gloves, thinking about the conversation with her mother. She wished they hadn't talked about Jean Jacques. Decisions that had felt perfectly reasonable at the time seemed odd and puzzling when examined through her mother's hard-eyed skepticism.