Page 10

Chicago

Kansas was calling her home.

She closed her eyes and imagined the sun on her face as she listened to the melodic rustle of wind through the crops, like an incantation as the song of the prairie grew louder, summoning her to return.

She longed to feel the earth beneath her feet, the grain running through her fingers, the cool water from the creek, the touch of Henry’s tender embrace.

She stirred from her thoughts as Cora knocked lightly on the bedroom door and peered inside. “There you are. I thought a tot of whiskey might help you sleep.”

Cora’s warm smile was a balm, the whiskey even more so. Emily gladly accepted them both.

“I’m sorting through the last of Annie’s things.” She looked at everything strewn across the bed. “Although I seem to be making more mess than progress.”

There was so much of everything—clothes, tableware and glassware, enough books to build a small library, carefully curated scrapbooks about female explorers and aviators, artwork, photographs, paperwork, furs, trinkets and ornaments, jewelry fit for a queen—on it went, room after room.

It made Emily uncomfortable to see the excess when so many had so little.

“Never an easy job,” Cora said. “Impossible really. Let me help. We’ll get through it a lot faster together.”

Emily was glad of Cora’s company and pragmatism as they placed items into the boxes for the liquidators.

Most things meant nothing to Emily—extravagant gifts from John which, she now knew, he couldn’t afford.

She wanted nothing of John Gale’s false riches and grand gestures, but she did keep a ring of Annie’s that Dorothy especially liked, a cluster of emeralds, set into an intricate Art Deco surround.

The child deserved to keep something of value at least. But it was the smaller personal items of Annie’s that stirred Emily’s emotions and memories: a lace handkerchief their grandmother had made, Annie’s communion prayer book, an Irish penny, a collection of buttons from their mother’s sewing basket, an age-spotted bundle of letters postmarked éire, a tiny man made of metal.

Emily gasped as she lifted the tin man out of an old snuffbox and turned him over in her hands. “Hello! I’d forgotten all about you.”

Cora turned to see who Emily was talking to. “He’s a dotey little thing! Is that an axe he’s holding?”

“Yes. He’s a woodcutter. Our father made us one each as a Christmas gift from scraps of metal. We called them Chip, Stick, and Twig. The names were Nell’s idea. We used to have such fun together, making up little games and stories about them. I lost mine a long time ago.”

“Your father worked in the steel factory? That’s a tough life.”

“He used to joke that he’d worked there so long he would rust if you left him out in the rain.”

As Cora studied the tin man, Emily’s thoughts turned to her father.

Joseph Kelly had the biggest heart she’d ever known.

He’d been the steady harmony to their mother’s restless song, the gentle calm that followed her storms, the reassuring hand at all of their backs.

Tears pricked her eyes as she recalled the last time she’d seen him.

“Years of factory fumes and smoke damaged his lungs, leaving him vulnerable to infection. He died during the influenza epidemic. My mother went soon after. They’d never spent a day apart. She died of a broken heart.”

Cora offered her condolences. “I’m so sorry for your losses.

I try to believe in God, Mrs.Gale, but I struggle to understand Him sometimes.

How He lets one person live, and another die.

” She fussed with a handkerchief in her hands.

“Annie talked about you often. She used to tell me how you’d been the best of friends.

She never told me why you drifted apart, but I know it tormented her. ”

Emily busied herself with the contents of a jewelry box, evading the question Cora had hinted at but hadn’t dared ask.

“Families are complicated,” she offered eventually. “Sisters, especially so. Would you like to keep something of Annie’s? You seem to have been very close to her.”

Cora was very touched. “That’s so kind of you. Annie was different to other women I’ve worked for. She was kind, and gracious. She even let me borrow a dress once or twice, for a special occasion.”

At this, Emily smiled. “We used to swap clothes all the time, but Lord forbid I so much as looked at her favorite shoes! Those were strictly off-limits.”

Cora stood up and reached into the wardrobe. “You mean these?” She pulled a pair of silver shoes from a box. “The silver dance shoes?”

Emily stared at Annie’s shoes as if she were bewitched by them.

They were as good as new, bar a few scuffs on the heels.

They seemed to encapsulate everything good about the postwar years when she and Annie had started to make their way in the world, dancing in Chicago’s jazz clubs and gin joints, wondering what the future held for them both.

The silver shoes conjured so many memories and emotions that Emily was almost afraid to look at them.

“She slept in them the first night she got them,” she said. “Declared she was never going to take them off. When I woke up, all I could see was a pair of silver shoes sticking out of the bedcovers.”

Cora smiled at the image. “You should take them with you.”

Emily shook her head. “I don’t have much call for silver dancing shoes on the prairie. Henry would think I’d lost my mind.” Emily glanced at the collection of items she’d already put aside to take to Kansas. “Besides, I’m not sure there’s room to take anything else.”

“There’s always room, Mrs.Gale. Dorothy might like them one day, when she’s older.” Cora placed the shoes into a box marked Kansas . “We make room, don’t we. Find space for the things we treasure.”

Emily’s stomach lurched as she thought about the space she and Henry would need to make for Dorothy in their humble prairie home, and in their lives and hearts.

While Cora folded John’s suits and shirts, Emily looked through Annie’s collection of circus memorabilia, stored in a Marshall Field’s hatbox beneath the bed, along with the hourglass, carefully wrapped in tissue paper.

Emily recalled how they would sit and watch the sand trickle from one end to the other.

She did the same now, turning the wooden casing, but among the sand that fell from one end to the other, she also saw secrets and regrets.

If only she could go back, make things different, force the sand to run in the opposite direction.

But time was not forgiving or sympathetic, and regret was the heavy cost Emily must now pay.

“That’s a beauty,” Cora said as she saw the hourglass in Emily’s hands. “You’re unearthing all sorts of treasures.”

“It was a gift from a circus performer Annie fell in love with. He gave this to her so that she could count the hours until he came back.”

“Oh, how romantic! Did he? Come back?”

Emily nodded. “Every summer.” She recalled her mother’s disapproval and Nell’s quiet envy.

She remembered the exotic scent of hair pomade and cigarette smoke Annie carried with her when she returned from their secret liaisons.

“He came back every year, until the war. We heard he’d gone to Italy to join the army. ”

It was as if another life was held within that old hatbox; a trace of whispers and secrets and dangerous things carried among the musty leaflets. She replaced the lid, put the hatbox on the dressing table to take to Kansas, and looked around the almost empty room.

“A whole life packed away. It’s as if Annie never existed.”

Cora placed her hand on Emily’s arm. “She existed, Mrs.Gale. Even without a single thing left, your sister will live on, in your heart, and in Dorothy.”

Finally, they took down the heavy velvet drapes from the windows. The material would be donated to the Women’s Benevolent League to sew into dresses and skirts for those who had no closet to fill with clothes of their own.

“Will you stay on here?” Emily asked. “I presume the new owners will need a housekeeper.”

Cora shook her head. “It wouldn’t be the same. I’ll find a new position somewhere, although there’s not the same call for housekeepers now, what with everyone going through hard times, and domestic staff being cut back.”

“You could always come to Kansas with us? We live a simple life, but we’re comfortable—most of the time.

” Emily hadn’t planned to offer the invitation, but it occurred to her that it might not be the worst idea.

She’d enjoyed Cora’s company. She was a touchstone back to her Irish roots, and someone Dorothy knew and trusted.

It would be good for her to retain something familiar.

Suddenly, Emily couldn’t bear to leave Cora behind. “You’d be more than welcome.”

Cora shook her head. “You’re very kind to offer, but I’m a city girl now. Don’t think I’d last long on the prairie.”

“Then promise you’ll visit sometime. Head to Liberal and ask for Mrs.Miller at the general store. She’ll point you in our direction.”

“I’ll do my best. Let’s see where the wind blows me. Now, I’ll fix us a bit of supper and leave you to finish up in here. Can I get you anything else? Another whiskey?”

“No, thank you. This has gone straight to my head.”

Emily took a moment alone in the room, her fingertips walking through memories as they brushed against the bed where Annie had labored through a storm, and the window seat where she had first held her infant niece.

She remembered it so clearly: the fragile featherlike feel of her, the almond-sweet scent of her, the soft nuzzle at her neck when she’d held her to her shoulder.

She’d loved her so much she could hardly bear to let her go as she’d placed her in Annie’s arms.

She turned then to the collection of things she’d put aside and opened the shoebox. The silver shoes sparkled when she lifted them toward the light, as if they were alive.

“Oh, Em! You got them for me! You’re the best sister in the world!”

She had tried to be. She really had.

As she returned the shoes to the box, she noticed the corner of an envelope beneath the bottom layer of tissue paper.

She pulled the paper back and lifted out a bundle of envelopes, tied together with a ribbon.

She recognized Annie’s handwriting on the front of each envelope.

Dorothy—1st birthday. Dorothy—2nd birthday , and so on.

There were seven envelopes in total. One for each birthday Annie had celebrated with her daughter. The envelopes were still sealed.

Seeing them reminded Emily of the letter the attorney had given her, for Dorothy’s sixteenth birthday.

Again, she wondered—dreaded—what it might contain.

Were all the letters to be given to Dorothy on her sixteenth birthday, and if so, what secrets might they reveal?

The remaining birthdays stretched ahead like a held breath.

Nine birthdays, and nine letters, which were Emily’s responsibility now.

—

Stomach full of knots, she went to wish Dorothy good night, watching her silently for a moment through a crack in the doorframe.

She looked so small and alone in the middle of her bed as she packed a small suitcase with a few favorite books and agonized over which toys to take and which to leave behind.

Emily still couldn’t quite comprehend that the child was coming to live with them.

Not just for a week, or a short holiday, but until she was old enough to have a home and start a family of her own.

The months and years ahead seemed to spool at Emily’s feet like a thousand unraveled cotton reels.

How would they ever untangle their very separate lives and thread this new family together?

She stepped into the bedroom and showed Dorothy the tin woodcutter. “I thought you might like this. He belonged to your mother.”

Dorothy took the little man and turned him over in her hands. “What is it?”

“He’s a tin man. His name is Twig. Your grandfather made one for each of his daughters when he worked at the steel mills. You can keep him if you like.”

Dorothy smiled at the little man as she put him on her nightstand beside her lion. “Hello, Twig. I’m Dorothy. And this is Lion. We’re going to live in a place called Kansas. It’s very far away, but you mustn’t be afraid.”

As Dorothy spoke, Emily pictured herself, Annie, and Nell in a frosty boardinghouse room on Christmas morning, their eyes alight with wonder as they admired the little tin men their father had made for each of them, and suddenly her heart surged with affection for the child.

Finally, she felt a connection, a bond forged by the tin woodman.

“Why can’t I take all my toys to Kansas?” Dorothy asked as she closed her suitcase and fastened the buckles.

“Well, we don’t have room for them all, for a start. There are rather a lot.” The child had clearly been spoiled. “And I thought you might like to give some to a children’s orphanage, for the boys and girls who don’t have toys to play with.”

“What’s an orphanage?”

“It’s where children go to be looked after when they don’t have a mommy or daddy to look after them. They’re called orphans, and they live at the orphanage.”

Dorothy thought about this for a moment. “Am I an orphan?”

The word pierced Emily’s heart. It was so bleak, so lonely.

“You’re what’s known as a niece. My niece. And Uncle Henry’s. A very special niece.”

“Where do nieces go to be looked after? Do they go to Kansas?”

Emily’s hands stalled for a moment as she pulled up the bedcovers and tucked Dorothy in tight beneath them.

“Yes, dear. That’s right. They go to Kansas.

” She took a moment to swallow a knot of emotion in her throat.

“Time to get some rest now. We’ve a long journey tomorrow.

” She placed the back of her hand against the child’s cheek, as she’d seen Cora do, then walked from the room and switched off the light. “Good night, Dorothy.”

As she had every night since she’d arrived, Emily waited a moment, a pause in the dark before she pulled the door behind her, except that night a small voice punctured the silence.

“Good night, Auntie Em.”

The drought of tears finally broke that night as Emily wept for the little girl who would grow up without her mother’s tender touch and reassurance. She wept, also, for her own parents, and for the dear sister she’d lost, and for the impossible task that had been asked of her and Henry.

She lay in the dark and thought about the life they’d planned together before Dorothy was even a whisper on the wind, when everything was still a dream and anything was possible.