she said, taking the only empty chair at the table, “today is a day for catching up on housekeeping.”
I was put to work in the basement, helping Dolores with the washing, which was mostly bedding. Since the laundress, who had also been the housekeeper, was let go, the women rotated that particular responsibility, which, for reasons not then apparent to me, had to be done every day.
“You remind me of my brother,” Dolores said as we hung sheets on the drying racks.
“Does he live around here?”
“Mayville. Little town outside Joplin. You’re what? Thirteen, fourteen? That’s what he’d be.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“The day I left home. Five years ago. About your age.”
“What do you do here? Do you have a job?”
She held up in her work and gave me an odd look. “Do you know what this house is, Odysseus?”
“A women’s residence, I figure.”
“Yeah,” Dolores said. “A women’s residence. Exactly.”
The rain showed no signs of letting up, and in the afternoon, when the work had been done, Aunt Julia told me to go to the attic and she would be up shortly. Upstairs, I stood at the window and stared beyond it and thought about all those people down on the river flats. The paths they walked would be nothing but mud by now, and waiting in line for food at the Welcome Inn, they would be soaked to the bone. I knew I was lucky and felt guilty because although the attic was stuffy, there was a good roof over my head, and my stomach was full, and I had an aunt who cared about me.
I heard her mounting the stairs. She came carrying a silver tray on which sat two glasses of lemonade and a plate of gingersnaps. She set the tray on the bed and patted the mattress. “Come, sit,” she said.
“Is this your house?” I asked after I’d sipped a bit of the lemonade and had taken a bite of a cookie.
“Yes.”
“You must be rich.”
“It cost me more than you can imagine, Odysseus.”
“I was only here once,” I said.
“Still, you found your way. The last time I saw you was just after Rosalee died.” She was talking about my mother. “When Zeke came to tell me the news.” That was my father. Ezekiel O’Banion. “Do you recall?”
“Not much. I remember that you gave me and Albert a few pennies to buy fudge.”
She smiled and said, as if I’d brought back a good memory for her, “That’s right.”
“What was she like? My mother?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Not really.”
“Rosalee was a wonderful big sister, and she was a fine mother to you.”
“But what was she like?”
“For someone who couldn’t hear, she was awfully talky. I remember when Mom and Dad sent her off to Gallaudet, oh, did I cry my eyes out. When she came back to visit at Christmas, seeing her was the best present I could have asked for.”
“Gallaudet? What’s that?”
“A school for deaf people. But she didn’t stay there long. Dad died the next year and Mom took a job teaching school, which paid nothing. Rosalee came home to help make ends meet. I’d always had a flair for fashion and made my own clothes, so I went to work in a dress shop in town, saving whatever I could. Then Mom died. Zeke had been in love with Rosalee since they were kids, and marrying him seemed like the best thing for her. Me, I wanted to get out of that suffocating little Ozark town in the worst way. So I left and ended up—” She looked around her and held out her hands, indicating the stuffy room and the house it was in. “Ended up here.”
“You bought this place?”
“The man who owned it before I did was put away in prison.”
“What for?”
“He killed a man. Before he went, he deeded me the property.”
“You were married?”
“Just . . . good friends. But that didn’t answer your question about your mother. Rosalee was smart and read everything and was kind, and all I ever wanted when I was a kid was to be just like her.”
“Why . . . ?”
“Why what?”
“After my father died, why didn’t you bring Albert and me back here to live with you?”
“It was a long time before I learned about your father’s death. I was told that you were both being well cared for in a school in Minnesota. I sent money to help with things there, and, well, that was really the best I could do under the