33
The Promise of a Rainbow
Stories, I believe, are the most powerful way we have of organizing human experience. As I began to do what President Boone suggested I do, write my memoir, I found myself wrapped up in stories. Of terrible winters and being stuck in Hailey with my helper, making our way out through drifts so deep, men walked before us to make trails for our horses. Robert had gone on ahead and it was several weeks before we met up again. What I’d leave in and what I’d leave out of my memoir became a happy occasion of self-consulting. I’d discover who I really was inside those stories.
September 1, 1900
I have always liked rainbows, both their color and their promise of God’s eternal love for mankind. When I saw Robert step out of the carriage, my heart skipped a beat as it had when I’d first met him. He’d come those years before to bring me to his then fiancée Carrie Lucy, my University of Michigan classmate who was dying. I was struck by the way grief carved his face that day and was encouraged when my eye caught a rainbow behind the carriage following an Illinois summer shower. Then I thought it meant my friend would live; but it had meant a different kind of promise.
No rainbow arched behind my husband nor the woman whose arm threaded through his, her hat feather waving in the Caldwell breeze. She wore a beige linen traveling suit with a pink shirt and cameo brooch at her throat. I swallowed. Of all the perils we’d experienced in our twenty-three years of marriage, I had never had cause to imagine his affections might stray. But I’d never left him before either.
She looked a little older than either Robert or me. I didn’t recognize her face nor gait.
At Robert’s smile, my face grew hot.
“It’s good to see you, Dell.” I could barely hear him over the sound of my pounding heart. Daisy barked and danced at his feet. He hesitated, then dropped the woman’s arm from his, bent to lend the back of his hand to the dog to sniff. Daisy calmed and Robert stepped to hold me, kiss my wet cheeks. “You look as beautiful as ever, even with garden gloves, hat, and apron. And who is this?”
“Daisy. B-flat,” I told her. “And you might have let me know so I could have cleaned up.” I wore a long braid instead of my usual coiffured hair.
“And risk having you tell me not to come?” He stepped out of the way. “This is Mrs. Browne.”
A widow. She reached out both hands to hold my garden-gloved ones. “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Strahorn. I’ve heard so much about you.” Daisy snorted her way between us, her whole body wiggling.
“And Mr. Browne?” Not very hospitable of me.
“He’s had a touch of the stomach upset, but he’ll be fine by dinner, he promised. He’s back at the hotel.”
Confusion must have reigned on my face, but I managed to invite them inside. Daisy romped ahead of us. Mrs. Browne—Ann—smiled at her surroundings and said, “What a lovely home. The leaded glass windows are perfection with that stagecoach and horses.”
“It’s comfortable.”
“Your husband tells me that you and he started this town.”
“With a few other investors and hardy pioneering souls,” I said. “Please, sit. Let me get us some coffee or tea?” I removed my gloves, washed my hands, and put on the kettle.
“Tea,” Ann said. “Some say my husband and I built Spokane Falls but there were already fifty-four people there. Seven families. When we pulled up to the one questionable street—I’d come from Portland—my heart went down. I thought I was coming into a desolate place. We had baby Guy. It was 1878 and we lived for a year with the Post family.”
“Caldwell was alkali desert then. We stayed in a tent.”
What are the Brownes doing with my husband in Caldwell? Why is Mrs. Browne sitting in my parlor?
“They went on to build the magnificent city Spokane is,” Robert said. He cleared his throat. “Mr. and Mrs. Browne have a lovely home they’re selling to the right people. It’s on First Street, and Dell, I think it would be the perfect home for us. We’ll call it Strahorn Pines—but only if you’d like.”
“It must be in the trees then.”
“Robert assures me that you’d turn it into something spectacular. We raised our children there so it’s special to us, but we fully expect others to make their own mark on it.”
“It needs your touch, Dell. It does.”
“We came to meet you, Mrs. Strahorn, because your Robert didn’t want to commit to the purchase unless you approved. I hope you will. Is that an elm tree you’ve planted?”
“Yes. We planted all these trees.”
She stood and looked out the window. “And started the Presbyterian church, your Robert says. He’s quite a supporter of yours. Spokane’s Women’s Club needs strong women like you, Mrs. Strahorn.”
“Will you join us for dinner at the hotel, Dell?” Robert’s invitation carried a sweet note of uncertainty.
Was I strong enough to go back and not lose what I’d gained this summer? Myself. I spoke a silent prayer.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure we’ll have more to talk about.”
We did. There was an ease to the conversation with the Brownes. Mr. Browne spoke Robert’s language of finance and banking and development and railroads. We had both attended the University of Michigan, he in law and me in music; Mrs. Browne came from a wealthy Portland family, lumber in her background. She chimed in, spoke of children, grandchildren, suffrage, and added, “Putting us on the gold standard will be very good.”
Mr. Browne heard his wife’s mention and chose to respond with an honest statement. “I lost money in the Panic of ’93. The bank closed.”
“But he personally guaranteed the deposits and no one else lost money,” Mrs. Browne said.
“I had other businesses. And those people would have been destitute if I hadn’t kept my commitments.”
I liked his integrity. I could imagine them as friends and realized how much proximity meant to the establishment and sustenance of relationships with friends. I’d walked right back into laughter with Delia and Carrie and Hester and even with Annie Boone, who I hadn’t known all that well. But we’d had sustained times, worked through issues with our committee, planned events together. Entertained each other. I’d mostly only chummed with my sisters before Caldwell. Well, Pard and I played too, but in recent years, those excursions had been more obligations than adventures. And in Boston, staying in one hotel all those years, we’d lost the surprise in each other and in our lives. Perhaps Robert’s wanting to pick out our home was his way of bringing surprise back into our marriage. And he had waited before acting. I gave him credit for that.
After dinner, we said good evening to the Brownes. “I hope you’ll see your way into becoming the mistress of our . . . your home,” Mrs. Browne said. “And bring your many talents back to Spokane.”
“I’ll think about it, certainly,” I said. “I understand how a home can mean so much to a family.”
Robert stood as they left, then said he’d call a carriage to take me back to my house. “Unless you want to spend the night in my hotel room.”
“Are you propositioning me, Mr. Strahorn?”
“I am, Mrs. Strahorn.”
“Then let me counter. Why don’t you spend the evening with me at my home? We can talk about acquiring an architect for this house you plan to buy. Is there room for a dog?”
His eyes lit up. “Yes. Oh, yes. Any number of dogs. We can discuss architects . . . among other things.” He put his elbow out and I took his arm as he opened the carriage door. He pulled the step down, then took my hand and helped me in. I let him.
“I’ll join you in a week,” I told Robert the next morning. “I want to close up this house or maybe make it available to one of the college teachers. If students have difficulty finding housing, I suspect the teachers may as well.”
“Very civic minded.” He brushed the crumbs from his mustache. He looked out of place in my little house, his tallness filling it. “The Browne house,” he said, changing the subject. “It has three stories. I’d like to see steam heat in it and billiards, a bowling alley and buffet palace in the basement.”
“Is it that large? And how much will the renovations cost?”
“I want it to be one of the finest houses between Minneapolis and Portland. But you have to choose it, to make it yours. Ours. Whatever you want, that’s what we’ll do.”
“As I have with my little Caldwell house.”
“As you have here.” He paused, then looked at me, those black eyes shining. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come back. I . . . I brought along the Brownes because I couldn’t bear it if I’d had to return to Spokane alone without you or the promise you would return to me.”
“And my heart sank when I saw you with an attractive woman on your arm.”
“You didn’t think that I—”
“I didn’t know. Perhaps I’d given you cause, leaving you. But I’m grateful she wasn’t a replacement for me.”
“There will never be a replacement for you. You’re my partner and always will be.” He kissed my fingers. “Don’t ever doubt it.”
“And the cost?”
“Don’t worry about it. The budget for remodeling is $100,000.”
I gasped. “Robert—”
“We can afford it. I promise. The money is in the bank.”
“I’ll like to see the accounts.”
“Absolutely. Anything you want.”
Robert had arranged for the driver to pick him up so he could catch the train and ride back with the Brownes. I came along and told them all goodbye.
“You will come to tea soon.”
“Within the month,” I told Mrs. Browne. They boarded and Robert and I stood on the platform. He held my hands.
“Why don’t I wait and travel with you?” Robert said.
“Go on. Get the papers signed for the house.”
“You don’t want to look at it first?”
“It was less about having a home of our own than about who I am with you, home or not. I have a better understanding of all that now. I think I’ve matched the hatch that will make the flow go so much easier.”
And so, it did.
The Browne house on West First Avenue was astonishing. The structure sat in the trees and we called it The Pines, though others called it Strahorn Pines or simply Strahorns. Mrs. Browne had recommended Kirtland Cutter as an architect. I met him at the house and liked him. He was a few years younger than me, and he took me around by carriage to several homes he and his partner had designed so I could see the possibilities. He’d made a name for himself rebuilding after the big Spokane fire of 1889.
“Sometimes out of flames the new has a chance to flourish,” he told me.
“It’s good to be able to push away the bad with something good,” I agreed. “We’ve never lived through a fire.”
“Spokane lost the entire downtown. I’d suggest a fourth floor, Mrs. Strahorn.” We stood in front of our new home. Pard had left us to it. He was off making plans for his North Coast Railway and another idea, one in Central Oregon near Bend; another not far from Crater Lake.
“A fourth floor?”
“You could then put that bowling alley in the basement. That would be quite a dramatic draw.” He often spoke in alliterative phrases. He parted his hair in the middle and didn’t always wear a hat, which gave him a boyish appearance. A storm thundered in the east and shafts of color in a linear rainbow broke the horizon. “And steam heat, the first in Spokane.”
“I hadn’t thought of a dramatic draw being in the basement.”
“I see handsome hand-carved beams and woodwork, damask-covered walls with rare oriental rugs, mosaic floor tiles.”
“Oh, I know of an old palace in Italy. We might be able to get tiles from there.”
“We’ll work well together, Mrs. Strahorn. Your husband has said I have a blank check.”
“We still need to be . . . wise,” I said.
He nodded. “It’s likely to take a couple of years to do all we want. I can get sixty carpenters working at once if need be.”
“Just so at the end there are enough bedrooms. We’ll have many guests, I’m sure.” Daisy trotted around, following us.
“Nine or ten bedrooms with the master suite, of course. Will that be enough?”
“I should think so.” We walked in the upstairs hall, looked at the maid’s room, then made our way to the kitchen. He made notes about the pantry and a small mudroom near the back door. “Daisy will have a place here but of course in our bedroom as well.” He smiled. “And I hope to see if Whitworth University students could use rooms. What’s the use of a large house without young laughter and the happy barks of a dog within its walls?”
“That’s a splendid idea, Mrs. S. What a prize for those students to have time with you.”
I hadn’t told Robert yet about the student invitations. I would find a new way to mother in this West. A crystal chandelier cast a rainbow across the empty foyer as the architect, Daisy, and I made our way down the grand staircase. I took the rainbow as a sign.