“That’s just silly, Mary Pearl. You’re the bravest, strongest girl I’ve ever met. Listen, there were two men over there admiring you. I’ll tell them to ask you to dance.”

  My heart gave a thump. To be touched by a strange man! Just the thought of it made me feel like gagging. “No, that’s not needed. If they have to be prodded, they aren’t likely my sort of fellow. I’m not interested in the likes of those two. Don’t like either one. What is wrong with city men? They are all so odd I can’t get a rope around any of ’em.” I was aware of eyes following me from the direction she’d waved her fan. One of the fellows looked well built and tanned from being outdoors. I thought it might be nice to talk to someone who didn’t live inside a building every day of his life, but even my horse didn’t have to be asked to come to me. He just came. Then it turned out the outdoor-looking fellow shied off in favor of a refreshment table, and the pale, narrow-faced boy wearing a pound of hair pomade came and asked me to dance. I did one turn around the floor, cringing the whole time from the smell of his hair. Once the waltz had finished, I slipped into another room. Men. Seemed the ones I didn’t want showed up like rattlesnakes, and the ones I might have had a talk with didn’t have any interest. Finally the happy couple posed for a photograph, and Nation was there, arranging the flowers at their feet, popping his head under the black sheet, making sure everything looked perfect before he flashed the pan.

  The very next day, Nation came to the dormitory waiting room to call on me. He’d brought a bouquet of flowers, and even though it was cold outside, and there were still patches of snow under every tree and bush, he wanted to walk in the garden. He handed me the roses.

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  “Please. They are the color of your cheeks. You must take them. They cost dearly this time of year.”

  “Leftover from Prairie’s engagement?”

  He looked genuinely angry for a moment. “Not at all. I paid for them and I have the receipt. I have come to call.”

  “Well, at least you have some honor. Thank you for the roses. What’s that flower?” I pointed next to the walkway.

  “Ah, I think it’s called daffodil.”

  “I’ll come back and sketch it, and paint it for my mother.” No one here called their parents Ma and Pa.

  “Would you please sit here, on this bench?” he asked, then pulled out a paper from his coat. There he read to me of his earnest fondness and kind regards from a piece of notepaper, and asked me to marry him. I put my fingers to my lips. Marry? Could I marry someone instead of moving to Albuquerque? This was a solution I had not thought of. That would change everything. My eyes settled on the yellow flower just opened amid a handful of spearlike leaves coming from the ground. Almost every one of them was swollen, pregnant, ready to blossom.

  I swallowed hard. Studied his face. He wasn’t really bad-looking, though his hair needed combing every time I saw him. I told him I would seriously consider it. I realized, too, that I didn’t really hate him. I just wanted my portrait to represent who I was, not some made-up version. It would mean lying to him, but I would be saved from any reproach. Plenty of babies came early. No. I couldn’t do that. I might accept his offer, but he would have to know why I did; I vowed that much to myself. “Give me one week for an answer. But,” I said, “I hardly know you. I want to know what you will do with yourself. What plans do you have for the future? Are you rich? All the rich fellows were at the Longmores’ party last night. Do you have a job? What do you do besides take plates of people and floozy up their looks?”

  He laughed, a sound that warmed me, and said, “I borrowed that dinner jacket and pants. Honestly, I don’t have a cent. My folks both died a few years ago and I live with an aunt who likes to write stories under the pen name of Milton Barnes. She’s going to introduce me to her editor at the Trib, and I’m going to sell my photographs to all the newspapers in Chicago. It’s a great start on a real groundbreaking career. They’re starting to print photographs in all the big papers. I’ll be there and drive a horseless carriage to every big scene. Fires, murders, bank holdups, you name it.” His eyes lit up as he spoke of it. “I’m not rich, not yet, but you and I, we’d make a swell time of it.”

  “Where do you plan we would live?”

  “With my aunt at first. Later, we’ll get a little apartment right downtown. Right in the middle of everything.”

  The image of my baby growing up in a busy, dirty corner of a bustling city, her father always dashing out to photograph some tragedy, filled me with sadness. My baby. I had to protect her from the world he described. “I thank you for the compliment of your offer,” I said. “But I don’t need to consider for a week. My answer is no. I already have other plans. I believe I’m not in love with you.”

  He looked truly crestfallen. “You’re not? I’m quite lovable. Everyone thinks so. My ears don’t stick out, much. Are you still engaged? I heard that was called off.”

  “It was, truly. It’s not that,” I said with a little laugh, “but I’m very practical. I have plans. Plus, I’d like to feel more than fondness for the fellow I marry. And a sense that my life will be settled and, and, will you be so kind as to give me the plate you took of me for class? Why don’t you give me that print where you colored my lips to look like rouge?”

  He smiled. “Well, no. That one is mine. If you’ll marry me, the print and the plate’ll be yours, though. And you said you are fond of me.”

  I didn’t smile in return. “Most people who pull a holdup use a gun.” I handed him his flowers. “Believe those roses cost you something, getting them this time of year. Take them home to your aunt.”

  “That’s your final word?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll give you the uncolorized portrait of yourself. I need the colored one for my portfolio.”

  “You want to show people you take pictures of scandalous women?”

  “Gorgeous women. You don’t look scandalous. You look gorgeous. And, well, complicated.”

  “Give me one of the plain ones, then, for my mother. She has a photograph of everyone except me. Then we’ll at least part as friends.”

  He smiled, the real, genuine kind of smile that came from his eyes as well as his mouth. I was beginning to see what I’d missed about people, especially men outside my own family. That there was a deeper quality I could read better if I watched with the eyes of an artist. Maybe he hadn’t meant to be mean after all, the way he’d done my portrait. Nation said, “Friends, then, forever,” and bowed, then reached into his ragged satchel and pulled out the print I’d asked for.

  “You carry it with you?” I held out my hand, but he held the print right above my grasp.

  “You know I love you, don’t you?”

  “It’s called ‘being smitten.’ You don’t know me enough to love me. I’ve been smitten before and no good comes of it.”

  He bent his head close, placing the print in my hand. “It’s true no Aphrodite could compete with your features, ‘a woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted,’ but I feel the fire in your eyes like hot coals in the depths of my soul. I’ll spend my lifetime learning, only let me sit at your feet.”

  Shakespeare. He’d quoted Shakespeare to me. My resolve was softening. “I can’t ever tell when you are just pulling my leg, Nation Hollingsworth. Do you mean to court me?”

  “I do,” he said. “Don’t let those two words give you any nuptial ideas, though. I’ll carry this photograph of you with me my whole life.” Then he laughed, tipped his hat, bowed, put the hat back on his head at a jaunty angle, the roses over one shoulder, and went whistling down the garden path. At one point he turned and called out so loudly that people turned and stared, grinning at the two of us. “‘Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stelled, Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart’!”

  Well of all things. I felt a blush rise as I turned to hurry away, for I had wanted him to stay and keep on talking love to me.

  * * *

  Over the next few days, I made many sketches and watercolors of the little stand of daffodils. Along with that, I began to look at every man I saw as a potential husband. Standing in the darkroom one morning, I thought, I couldn’t force myself to feel attraction just to get me out of a fix, and I still couldn’t stand the thought of one of them touching me. Quite obviously, even a rich, educated man can have the heart of a rattler. No. I would not marry someone I hardly knew just to save myself the hard road I saw ahead. Nation Hollingsworth looked better every minute. Living in cold Chicago in a cramped apartment with some other woman and a crying baby did not, however.

  It was April twenty-fourth. Less than a week until the trip. That afternoon, mail was piled on a table by the door of the dormitory. There was a letter from Ma. Before I opened it, I thought of the letter I intended to write to her, to let her know I would never come home again and why. How it might break her heart. How it might shatter all my dear family’s love of me. I might be forever banned. But I would think about that later. I would concentrate on doing everything I could with my plates of the canyon. That was my future. I had to succeed at it. If Ma would accept me a year from now, I could visit her from Albuquerque.

  1908

  Dear Mary Pearl,

  Your Aunt Sarah and I are coming to get you. I am aware your school year is not over, and I am sorry. Be ready to travel by April 28, and meet us at the depot. The train schedule says we arrive there at 11:45 in the morning. We will take the next train south that same afternoon. Please arrange for your ticket. We have already got round trip fares. Your Pa will fetch us in Benson.

  Very sincerely, your ma

  No, no, no! screamed my heart. I gasped so loudly that other girls in the dorm looked up. I had to get to Albuquerque. I wrote her immediately.

  Please wait until after the class trip. Please tell me what is wrong. Please tell me who has died. Please just another couple of weeks. I have a plan for my future that depends on taking this photographing trip. I can’t leave yet. Let me do this. Please. Just a little more time. A few more days. Please.

  Had I mailed my note that very instant, I knew, they would be on the train before it reached home. There was no reason for me to post it. Her letter gave me no escape. Something had happened, something now so dire it could not be written in a letter. No one had written to me of my cousin Blessing’s death. No one had told me to come home because Elsa had been killed and Gilbert was shot. What could be worse than those things? If Ma herself was coming, was it Granny who had died? Even with that, I decided, Ma would have waited until I arrived and shown me the grave. Had Pa died?

  I told Prairie I had to leave in only four days, but I didn’t tell her why. She didn’t ask, either, only said, “Oh, dear, before my wedding?” dabbed at her eyes, kissed my cheek, and then asked me if I’d still go with her to choose some dishes for her new home.

  “Aren’t you going back to classes at all?” I asked. “School’s not over until the trip.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter now. I’m leaving all that behind me. So tell me, did Nation ask you? What did you say? He’s terribly taken with you. Although, well, he dresses quite shabbily.”

  “Taken with me? I don’t think he knows me at all.” I didn’t want to talk about Nation Hollingsworth.

  “You’re blushing,” she said with a giggle.

  “No. He’s a nice man and all. I don’t care about shabby clothes.” But he’d quoted Shakespeare. There was more to him than his ragged clothes and wild dreams, just as there was more to me than a set of dimples. I wanted to turn the conversation elsewhere. “Well, do you think married life will suit you?”

  “Oh, certainly.”

  “You know, he’s going to want children.”

  “I can’t wait.” She squeezed my arm and her face flushed. “You know.”

  “I grew up on a ranch, so yes, I’ve always known about that.” We sat silently for several moments, and I felt ashamed that the image of Nation came to me then with more than a little urge to have him kiss me. Wasn’t there a sonnet about “cursed desire”? And how could that be true and lasting love?

  Prairie cleared her throat demurely and whispered, “Do come with me downtown. I want to show you a pattern of china.”

  “No, I have work I haven’t finished. I need to take my rig home with me.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll get Rosalee to come. I do hope you and your mother have a nice trip. Maybe you can get back here in time for the Grand Canyon. Write me! Oh, I’m so thrilled for the both of us. Tell me all about your wedding plans, when you make them, and I will come, I promise!”

  “Sure.” Where did she get the idea I was making wedding plans? With Nation? I didn’t correct her because she’d already flitted down the boardwalk, just happy as a robin.

  And that was it. All our days and weeks of friendship seemed to have dried up in one small conversation. From the way things had gone, I could see her mind was buzzing like a bee tree full up with wedding plans. If I wasn’t available, Rosalee was just as good. I felt glad she was so cheerful. Still, I’d lost so many loved ones, it hurt me even more to watch her saunter happily away. The thought came to me, then, that I shouldn’t dump sand in her beans just because I was disappointed. I had six dollars left in my pocket, although there was more in the bank I had plans to use, and took five of them with me downtown. There, I bought the prettiest petticoat I could find and had it wrapped and sent to Prairie for her wedding trousseau. I added a note that said, “I hope you’re as happy as you can be, forever.” In the depths of my heart I was saying good-bye forever as well.

  The next day, I hunted up all my teachers and explained I’d be leaving, except for that scoundrel in the photography department, and the ones I couldn’t find in person, I left notes for. I thanked them all for helping me learn so much. Told them I hoped to use my learning in the future, but I was leaving for home before the end of term. Told them how glad I was to have gotten the chance to live at this nice college and hear about artists. To my drawing teacher I added that I would continue to practice my perspectives and shadows. He seemed truly concerned, but I said it was a family emergency and I didn’t have any more information. Then he smiled and said, “You have come a very long way in this class. Made a great deal of progress. I’m very sorry you have to leave. Give my best to your family, and my sentiments for whatever trials they are facing. Do keep at it, dear.” That made me feel very nice indeed.

  Later, I moped for wanting to see the Grand Canyon while I sorted and packed things. I believed I was showing the tearfulness of carrying a baby. I remembered Ma getting just tore up over dropping an egg on the floor when Zachary was coming. I supposed that canyon wasn’t going anywhere. I’d go by myself, someday, if I had to. Because I had to. I had to have a set of fine pictures to hang on the walls of my photography business.

  All I had left to do, I did alone. Every person there was in their own whirlwind of motion, and I don’t think a soul realized I’d be gone. I had to pay a buggy company to carry my things to the train depot, and I rode away without even waving, as if I’d never been there, and would not be missed.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I sat at the depot waiting for the train, shivering in my shawl, imagining that it was probably hotter than Hades back home. My belly was round enough that I could feel it pressing my clothes, now, although no one had guessed. What was I going to tell my mama? It had seemed like the right thing, to just carry on, go on to school, keep quiet, to protect everyone from what had happened. Seemed the only person I couldn’t protect was myself. I should have written a note and explained. Run away. Married Nation Hollingsworth. Only I hadn’t. Here I was at the depot waiting for a train that was three hours late. Maybe I wouldn’t tell anyone. Maybe I could still make it to Albuquerque.

  At last, some boy who’d been listening to the tracks with his head laid on them hollered, “Here she comes!” and I settled my hat at a nicer angle and waited.

  Soon as I saw Ma and Aunt Sarah, all three of us said as one, “What is the matter?”

  Ma grabbed me to her and said, “You look so worried, honey.”

  “I am, Ma.” Both the women looked haggard and gaunt, as well. Aunt Sarah had her arm through Ma’s elbow, and we went to wait for their bag—a single valise shared between them—so we could make sure it got right back on the train to head home. The outbound southern was due to leave in only forty-five minutes.

  “Train was slowed up by the weather a hundred miles south of here,” Sarah said. The look in her eyes scared me more than any snow.

  “How is everyone at home?” I asked.

  “Not until we’re on board,” Ma said. “Do we just get back on the same train?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said. “It’ll be headed to Chicago and then New York. Other side of the depot is where the southbound goes out. The switchman will make sure it comes up next to the platform.”

  Ma stared at me. “You seem like you’ve grown five years older in such a short time. Not my little girl anymore. Well, no longer a child, at least.”

  I clung to her as close as I could, allowing that we could both walk, wishing she’d see there was still some little girl left in me. “It’s only that I’ve learned to get along here,” I said.

  It took some trouble to get my trunks loaded. The second, a new one, was entirely camera equipment. I had decided to invest in a good trunk to carry it all, since it was to be my livelihood. I had four boxes of Eastman’s dry plates to take home. Large jugs of chemicals and mixing and rinsing pans. I also had a carpetbag and three hatboxes, two valises, and a small reticule stuffed into a large one. At last we sat on a pair of facing benches. Aunt Sarah leaned forward to take my hands. Just as she did, another woman came and looked as if she might want to sit with us. Sarah shook her head and the woman moved on, but only sat in the very next bench behind Ma.

  “How is Gilbert?” I whispered.