16
A Growing Family
Portland, 1925
Four years after Opal and Felix married, great joy and great sorrow visited them. Opal gave birth to twin girls, Jane and Jean. Jane lived, but Jean failed to thrive and died a few weeks after her birth.
The progress Felix had made winning over Leone diminished. No more weekend afternoons at the movies or trips to the beach, Felix now had his hands full making funeral arrangements for the tiny infant, fixing bottles for the surviving twin, and comforting Opal. It was Nellie who noticed Leone’s barely contained resentment. Leone seemed to have three temperatures. She simmered on sulky, erupted into heated outbursts, and boiled over in defiance.
Nellie didn’t wish to intrude, but something had to be done. Felix lacked the will, and Opal lacked the strength to deal with a moody teenager. One Sunday morning, Nellie showed up at their house and shooed the exhausted parents out of doors.
“It’s a beautiful day.” Nellie held the front door open. “Take the baby for a carriage ride.”
Leone shuffled into the front room, her hair in her face, her pajamas limp with too much wear between washings. “I’m not going,” she said.
“No,” Nellie said, “you’re not. You are going to stay here, and you and I are going to have a talk.”
Felix mouthed a thank you over Leone’s head and scooped up the red-faced baby from where she lay on a rug, kicking tiny feet inside the blanket that swaddled her.
“Scoot,” Nellie said to Opal. “Go get some air.”
The door banged behind them, and Leone rubbed sleep and tears out of her eyes. “Fifteen is a ridiculous age to have a baby sister!”
“You are hardly the first to be inconvenienced by a late arrival.”
Leone threw her hands in the air and thrust her face heavenward. “I have been banished to Saint Mary’s so Mother can fuss over her new cub.”
Nellie clicked her tongue. Leone snickered and fell back on the sofa pillow. “Get it? Wolff. Cub.”
“Oh, I get it, Leone.” Nellie bent down and patted the girl’s knee. “My sister was born when I was seven years old.”
“Not the same.” Leone thrust out her lower lip and glowered at her grandmother.
“I suppose not. But listen, I have an idea. I have to go to Omaha next month for a meeting of the National Shorthand Reporter’s Association. How about you go with me?”
Leone brushed her hair out of her eyes. “What would I do while you are in meetings?”
“You are a big girl. You could wander around downtown and poke in the shops and art galleries. Omaha has the most beautiful playhouse in America. I will get us tickets to see Abie’s Irish Rose at the Brandeis Theatre.”
Teenage Leone was as stagestruck as they come. With such a grand adventure in sight, her mood improved, if only to ensure that the carrot would not be yanked from her grasp. More difficult was convincing Opal, but Nellie had an ally. Felix talked Opal into letting Leone make the trip.
“Travel is an essential part of her education,” Felix argued. “She’ll be with family. My people made several trips back and forth between Europe and the United States when I was young.”
Who were Felix’s people? It had never occurred to Nellie to ask. She was vaguely aware that he had family in San Francisco, but this was the first she had heard of connections in Europe. When they married, Nellie had quizzed Opal. What did she know about Felix? His French was more than an affectation; it sounded as if it might be his native language. Opal had been circumspect. Nellie had supposed it was disinterest, but now she wondered. There was no time to probe; all her attention went to what she hoped would be a glorious coming-of-age trip for her beloved granddaughter.
R
“Count your blessings,” Nellie told Leone the day they boarded the train for Omaha. “I was a good deal older than you when I got my first taste of freedom.”
“Freedom,” Leone growled the word like a wolf ravenous for something long denied. She clutched the handle of a brand new train case festooned with her very first luggage tag.
The trip proved educational for both grandmother and granddaughter. Listening to speeches at the association luncheon, Nellie wished she were young enough to consider becoming more active in the organization. Buoyed by legislation that had given them the right to vote and to be treated equal to men under the law, professional women were stepping into leadership roles. They stumped for safer working conditions and higher pay for themselves. They strove for better education and more opportunities for the generations of women who would follow them.
During the keynote speech, Nellie’s spirit soared. What would Amanda have thought of all this? Her mother had realized her highest aspirations when she moved to town and devoted herself to local charity work. What would she think of her daughter working to improve the lives of women across the United States? For the first time, Nellie felt a connection to some higher purpose. A fleeting sense of significance uncurled within her and sought the warmth of approval, but no mother’s eyes in heaven smiled down on her, no child’s eyes looked up to her, no lover’s eyes held her in esteem. Self-approval was cold comfort. What, then, was the source of the glow that flickered inside her, filling her with teasing seconds of contentment and delight? How could she hold onto it? Applause peppered the room and she returned her attention to the podium.
While Nellie attended to business, Leone strolled the prosperous downtown. Back at the hotel as they dressed for dinner and an evening of theater, Leone gushed about straining to get a peek at what looked to be an Old Market speakeasy.
Nellie frowned. “You’d better not tell your mother that. Did you spend some time in the shops and the galleries?”
“Oh sure,” Leone said, but further questioning elicited no information on what she saw on store shelves or gallery walls.
Any concerns Nellie might have had about her granddaughter’s cultural interests vanished as they settled into their seats at the Brandeis Theatre. Grandmother and granddaughter both enjoyed the new comedy about the Jewish boy and Irish Catholic girl who marry against their parents’ wishes. As they were preparing for bed in their hotel room after the play, Leone questioned Nellie. “What religion are we?”
“I suppose we are Protestants. I was raised in the Presbyterian church.”
“When did you stop going to church?”
“When I left Kansas.”
“Why?”
Nellie thought for a moment. “I felt no need.”
Is that true? Something hard and dry prickled. A nameless heartache attacked a bit of damaged tissue and ripped the cover off an unknown hurt.
“Grandmother?”
Nellie pulled herself back. “No, that’s not precisely true. I had no desire to let other people tell me how to live. Now go to bed.”
R
It rankled, that silly comedy. A Jewish boy, an Irish Catholic girl, bonded in love and reconciled to their families and a future together. A fairy tale. Nellie lay on her pillow, thinking furiously. A streetlight shot a beam through the part in the curtains. It cast light on the sleeping form in the bed next to hers. Nellie watched the bedcovers rise and fall. She tried to slow her racing heartbeat by tuning it to the rhythm of her granddaughter’s soft snoring.
When had she stopped believing the fairy tale? She knew the answer. When Eustace chose Helen. What was the fairy tale? That there was someone who would see her, know her, want her, love her, and set her free from old wounds? Someone who would show her a better way to live?
Had she done so badly on her own? She would not have thought so until this moment. Nellie fought for sleep, calming herself by summoning the gentle clack, clack, clack of train wheels rolling on the smooth track, the flutter of aspen leaves painting the sky in high passes. Her body relaxed and floated on the river of forgetfulness to a dark place.
She lay there, aware of her limbs but unable to move them. She fought to open her eyes, even as a vivid image torn from a familiar dream fixed itself clearly in her vision. Two birds perched side by side inside a wire cage. Lovebirds, she thought. She tittered at them, tapped her fingers on wire bars, but they ignored her. There was something else she could do. Should she? She moved her fingers to the cage door, lifted the latch and pulled open the door, then stepped back. One by one, the birds hopped forward, stretched their wings, and flew away. She stood open-mouthed before the empty cage. Accusations whooshed out of the cage and followed the birds. You shouldn’t have done that! They will die! You’ll get in trouble!
Nellie woke abruptly, her heart pounding. Leone stood over her, shaking her by the shoulder. “Wake up; we’re going to miss the train.” Morning light streamed through the open curtains.
Nellie threw off the covers and planted her feet on the floor. “Oh no, we won’t. We’re not going to miss a thing.”