West of Here Read Online Free Page B

shrill voice of a white man in their midst.

an honest woman
     
    DECEMBER 1889
     
    But for the cedar placard reading LAMBERT , and the lone decorative flourish of a holly wreath fastened to the door, Eva’s plain white house, quaint and ugly, was all but indistinguishable from the thirty small houses huddled around it. Nothing Utopian about it, to Ethan’s way of thinking. The thought of the place made him restless.
    The Eva who greeted Ethan at the door, just as he was straightening his waterlogged salmon pink tie, was clearly not the bustle-and-petticoat Eva who had abandoned him in Seattle, but rather a new incarnation, replete with divided skirts and a hard little bun atop her head, and a floppy hand-painted tie. However, it was apparent at once, as she stood fiercely in the doorway, jaw set, with one hand on her hip and the other on the bulge beneath her white blouse, that she was the same hardheaded Eva Lambert who had twice refused his hand.
    “Oh, Ethan, no,” she said, blocking his way. “Do you never learn? Have I not been brutally honest with you?”
    “Brutal, yes,” said Ethan. “Are you going to let me in?”
    “What happened to your eye? You look awful. You’ve been drinking.”
    “I had a skirmish in Seattle. Now, may I come in?”
    “You’ve always been less of a physical coward than a moral one.”
    “I’ve changed,” he said.
    “I’ve not,” she said. “But come in if you must.”
    Eva led him to a cluttered sitting room, where Ethan sat himself down. He commenced rolling up his muddy trousers, removing his squeaky shoes and wet stockings, and setting his feet on the quilted pad of a sizable divan, where his toes set to wiggling, as he finessed his wilted mustache back into shape.
    The room was populated by an upright piano, a pair of balloon-backed chairs upholstered in red velvet, and no less than three curios,riddled with bric-a-brac ranging from exotic butterflies and souvenir spoons to gleaming silver urns and porcelain gravy boats. It occurred to Ethan that the room’s tumultuous decor was probably not so different from the furniture of Eva’s mind. There was nothing plain about Eva. No tight hair bun could belie the frazzles; no high-necked blouse could button up her spirit.
    “All right, Ethan, what are you doing here? The condensed version.”
    Ethan could not look at her. His eyes sought the clutter all about him and lit upon a little cluster of porcelain figurines arranged in a half circle atop a tasseled runner: a man, a woman, a boy, a dog, and two penguins. “There’s an honest woman in you somewhere, Eva, I just know it.”
    “Ha! An honest woman! Really, Ethan, what have you been reading? And just what is an honest woman? One unburdened by initiative? One without opinions, one without—”
    “Damn it, I mean it! It’s time to put aside all the rest of it and get serious.”
    “The rest of what? The rest of me? The rest of my life? Why is it every time a woman gets serious, she has to set something aside?”
    “It’s not like that! I’m not asking you to give anything up. I’m not asking you to come back to Seattle. I want you exactly as you are, not one bit different. I just want to join you, to make a life with you. The life we set out to make when we left Chicago. Be sensible, Eva. You could use a man around here.”
    Eva turned toward the window. The rain was coming harder. “Even if that were true, you’re too late. We’ve sold the cows. The brickyard has closed. The opera house sits half finished like a monument to our failure.”
    “I don’t mean here. And I don’t mean in town, either. I mean out there.” He gestured vaguely toward the window. “Gads, look at it out there! It’s glorious, it’s endless. It’s up for grabs.” He reached up and grabbed two possibilities out of the air, and closed his fists around them. “Why not us, Eva? You’re a new woman, why not a new life?”
    “What do you think
this
is?” she said, clutching her