When Thea did not answer, Rebekah continued, “Some of those fellas came into town on Saturday nights. They were all so strong. Even in their filthy clothes and with whiskey on their breath, I loved it when they came in here.” Now she was loosening Thea’s braid and cupping more bathwater over her hair. “When Hosea wasn’t around I’d flirt with them. Some of them I just wanted to grab hold of.”
Rebekah watched as Thea’s downy hair spread across her back. She wet Thea’s hair, the warm water drawing the stench from those blond tresses the way a cold rain brought out a hound’s dank odor. She took the bottle of hair oil and poured a drop in the palm of her hand. “This will get the awful stink from your hair. Honestly, you’re as foul as those jacks!”
She hummed as she shampooed Thea’s fine hair. “I hope you’ll sleep in my bed. With me. Would you do that? We can be sisters. I never had a sister, did you?”
Thea glanced over her shoulder, met Rebekah’s eyes, but then looked away. They sat in silence as Rebekah rinsed Thea’s hair, as the bathwater cooled and the steam on the mirror above the sink began to run down the glass. “Never mind,” Rebekah said. She kissed Thea’s shoulder without any warning before rising and stepping from the bath. She crossed the room and turned the doorknob and walked dripping into the next room.
Thea stepped from the tub and wrapped a bath linen around her bosom and stood before the mirror. She saw herself as Joshua Smith must have seen her the night of the wolves, blurred and ghostlike. For a long time she stood at the mirror.
When she finally walked into the next room Rebekah was sitting on the floor, Thea’s bag open before her. There were half-a-dozen dresses and skirts from Rebekah’s armoire spread across the four-poster bed. They were all pressed and clean and in the height of fashion. Rebekah herself was already dressed.
“Hosea thinks if he keeps me in fine clothes I’ll be happy.” She paused to consider her wardrobe. “I suppose there are things worse than pretty dresses.” Now a complicated smile came across her face. “Pick what you like. Anything. You can have it all if you want.” She stood and crossed the room and picked a gingham skirt from the pile. “This would suit you. There are all the undergarments you could ever want in the chest of drawers there.” She gestured to the bureau across the room.
Inside the top drawer Thea found a scandalous collection of bloomers and corsets and bodices. Filmy cotton and soft velvet where she was used to coarse wool.
“Hosea says they’ll never catch Joshua Smith. Says a man as cunning as that deserves to be free. I guess he would know.” Rebekah paused, crossed the room again and stood beside Thea. “I’m sorry. I keep mentioning him.” She squeezed Thea’s hand and then crossed the room again.
Rebekah lay down on her bed, her arms tucked behind her head, her legs folded up under her skirt, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. “You don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you?” The thought had only then occurred to her. She propped herself up on an elbow. “Well, then, I’ll have to teach you.”
Thea forced a smile, she took a pair of bloomers and a shift from the drawer and went to the bed and dressed in the clothes Rebekah had selected. When she was finished she joined Rebekah on the floor and removed her hairbrush.
“Let me,” Rebekah said, patting the floor beside her and taking the hairbrush from Thea’s hand.
Thea scooted closer. Before Rebekah began brushing Thea’s hair, she found herself talking. “Hosea promised me, when we left Chicago, that I’d never have to be that girl again. Said he’d teach me to read and cook and say the Lord’s Prayer. He said I might even find a hardworking husband. A husband! Ha! A fine husband any of these boys’d make.
“I guess I’m not the same girl anymore. He was honest about something. I guess that makes him better than Hruby.” She leaned over Thea’s shoulder and tried to look into her eyes. “That was a man with a mean streak. At least Hosea’s not mean.” She pulled the brush through Thea’s hair. “There’s not a true thing about me. Not one.” Now she set the brush on her lap. “Guess you don’t suffer that, do you?”
Rebekah picked the Bible off the floor and handed it to Thea. “Would you read this to me?”
Thea held it before her as though it were some rare and ancient relic, something not to be dropped or smudged.
“Pick some words. Read it,” Rebekah insisted. When Thea sat there still silently, Rebekah opened the Bible, pointed randomly at a passage, and said, “Read.”
So, as Rebekah brushed Thea’s lovely long hair, Thea read her the eighteenth Psalm. She read haltingly, unsure of the sound of her voice. The fresh smell of her own hair was intoxicating, as was the feel of Rebekah’s steady brush strokes. Thea paused midpsalm, she held her place in the Bible with her finger and rearranged herself on the floor.
“Keep reading,” Rebekah said. She sounded as though she had just awoken.
Thea opened her Bible again and continued. When she finished, she turned to look at Rebekah. The folds of Rebekah’s skirt fanned around her and she was fastening the buttons at the wrists of her blouse. Her eyes were wet.
“Let’s be sisters, okay? We’ll be sisters forever,” Rebekah said.
XIX.
For all his exhaustion, Odd could not sleep their first night in Duluth. The soft yellow glow from the streetlamps below crept under the curtains, filling the room with a kind of haunted light.
So instead of sleeping he took inventory of the days left behind, of the hours of that night, and of a hereafter that was more than ever hard to see, with only that tawny light filtering up from the street. Already the luxury of that hotel room — the big bed and fine linens, the gourmet dinner, the hot bath — was showing its dim foolishness. He couldn’t help thinking, lying there, tired beyond all reason, that it was the season of mending nets, of building new fish boxes, of darning socks and patching his oilskin pants. It was the season for sleeping in past sunup, for long lunch hours at the Traveler’s Hotel. It was the season for running traplines with Danny and fishing steelhead on the shore ice. It was not the season for lying hungover in hotel beds fit for governors. He got up and walked to the window and pulled the curtain aside. The street below was empty.
He looked back at Rebekah, sound asleep on the bed. He ought to have felt at ease with her lying there, with the hundred miles between them and the life of lies they’d left behind. The truth, though, was that the distance and finality of their coming here served only to deepen the lies. Up in Gunflint at least part of him was true. His boat and fish house. His knowledge of the land and lake and Burnt Wood River. His feelings for Rebekah. The ghostly presence of his unknown mother.
He paused on this last thought — his mother — and went to his duffel bag to retrieve the pictures of her. The picture of them together. He went back to the window and angled the photographs to the light. Was it possible that he had once been that babe? That his mother, with all that love in her aspect, with all that kindness and goodness plain for any fool to see, could be speaking to him in that hour before dawn? Was he capable of listening if she was speaking to him? Could he start his life over, down here in the city, with the child curled in Rebekah’s belly?