The time since Claudia’s departure had passed slowly and less than gracefully, both for Harriet and Olivia.  Although her daughter’s condition did continue to deteriorate, Harriet remained adamant that she stay at home.  Doctor Warren had argued, vigorously at first, and then in a way that seemed determined to satisfy his professional conscience.  He did continue to provide what help he could, although that of course fell short of bathing Olivia and cleaning her up when she refused to get out of bed to relieve herself.  Those tasks fell to Harriet and she performed them as well as she could, given her age and remaining strength.  Olivia’s lack of grace during this time was about more than her physical needs, as her mistreatment and abuse of her mother escalated sharply once Claudia was gone.  As Harriet had described it to the doctor, her daughter was always either asleep, delusional or frothing at the mouth with rage and obscenities.  Olivia was most quiet when she was lost in that fantasy world she had constructed, carrying around her daughter’s portrait and dress.  She would talk to these objects constantly, or set them up somewhere and play a game of marbles or jacks.  Never once, among all of that illusion, did Olivia ever ask about Claudia or how she was actually doing.

The weather had turned cold by the fourth week after Claudia left, and several wood stove’s were going all of the time to fight off the unseasonable chill.  She had been up late, sitting near the cooking stove and sipping tea when a piercing scream from Olivia cut through her reverie.  Reaching her daughter’s bedroom door, she found her thrashing about in bed, the double quilt she usually covered up with hastily strewn off to the side.  Wanting to avoid Olivia’s flailing arms, she stopped several feet short of the bed.

“What is it?  What is wrong?”

“The cold is coming for me, it comes for me again!  Bring me to the fire to warm my bones!”

These words brought Harriet abruptly back to that scene in the bedroom following Claudia’s birth, those similar strange visions that had accompanied her high fever.

“Please stop throwing yourself around like this.  I cannot help you unless you stop.”

“You cannot help me mother, not now, not ever!  It’s the cold that comes for me and I need the fire to warm my bones.  Find me the god-damn fire!”  Olivia finished with a howl while reaching upward with her arms toward the ceiling and beginning to bang her head backward into the headboard.  Seeing her opportunity, Harriet dove onto her daughter, attempting to grab her head while Olivia bucked in rage underneath her.  Ultimately, her strength failed, and Olivia was able to cast her off the side of the bed, where her head slammed into the nightstand and she was knocked unconscious.

When she came to, the house was quiet but getting cold and her daughter was asleep, curled up with Claudia’s portrait and dress.  Easing herself into the chair, Harriet felt the gash in her temple and then attempted to stretch out her limbs.  Finding herself relatively intact, she walked slowly to the kitchen and tended to herself as best as she could.  When the doctor asked her the next day what had happened, she merely shrugged and waved off his attempts to look at the dressing she had placed over the wound.

Following that event, Olivia’s moments of wakefulness decreased significantly.  Her mother, relieved of some of the strain of constant care by this change, was able to tend to a few details that had been neglected.  One of these was to send a telegram to Wyatt, inquiring about her granddaughter’s welfare.  The reply she received, which reflected the better parts of the situation in Denver, cheered her up significantly.   It had been the right thing to do, the correct decision, to send Claudia to her brother.  Certainly there would have been nothing good that could have come from having such a young child endure the continued downward descent of her own mother.

The final day of that descent was signaled in a way that Harriet understood could mean the end was very near.  Just after midnight she was awakened by a sharp, high-pitched whistle, one that seemed close-by, just outside the house.  Instantly wide awake, her heart beating rapidly in her chest, she held her breath and waited.  The whistle sounded again and this time she rose, grabbing her blanket around her and sitting down in the rocking chair.  She whispered quietly to herself.

“Not again, not the third time.  Not again.”  She knew that three strange sounds in the night, if they came closely together, foretold the death of someone.  This signal had announced the death of four other people close to her, and each time it had been a similar whistle.

When it did sound the third time,  Harriet shuddered, her teeth briefly chattering as she fought the realization that this may well be the last day of her daughter’s life.  When she had stopped trembling, she went to check on Olivia, who remained alive and asleep in her bed.  Too much on edge to sleep, Harriet waited in the sitting room for the sun to come up while keeping an uneasy eye on her daughter’s bedroom door.  It was past ten a.m. before she gave up her vigil, after once more checking on her daughter, and went to sit on the porch.  Nibbling on cold toast, she passed the remainder of the morning in an effort to convince herself that this one time the omen was going to be wrong.  As Doctor Warren strode up toward the house she rose to greet him.

“You look worried, and worn out ma’am,” he stated, jumping past the usual formalities.

“I am.  It has been a long evening.”  Her voice was barely a whisper and the doctor had to lean in to hear.

“Olivia then?  Another episode?  Is she ranting again?”

Harriet shook her head.

“What then?  Are you ill?”

A long moment passed, one in which she considered telling him about the whistle and what it meant, or could mean, but she knew it would have no effect on him.  He was not someone prone to believing in such things.

“Just a long night.  Sometimes I cannot sleep well, you know.”

“Yes, well, it will not do to have you getting ill.  Come inside and rest and I will look in on her.”

As they walked into the house a sound from Olivia’s room was followed by a cry, one that sounded more like a child than a grown woman.  The doctor pushed Harriet into a chair.

“Please, I’m sure she is just getting herself wound up again.  Sit here and I will go see.”

Harriet reluctantly complied and her weary eyes followed the doctor.  He was one step into the room when he stopped short with an exclamation.

“What the devil is this?”

Quickly getting up, Harriet was at the door several seconds later, to find her daughter sitting on the floor.  Olivia was naked, except for the small dress, which she had somehow managed to get over her head, with one arm also burst through where the armhole used to be.  The portrait was held against her chest.  As Harriet entered the room, her daughter looked at her, eyes younger than her years and an innocent but hurt tone to her voice.

“Mommy, my dress doesn’t fit.”

Shaking herself out of that reverie ten minutes later, she rose and went to look in on Olivia, who lay asleep in bed.  Leaning on the door frame, Harriet reached out her hand, mimicking touching her daughter’s face, something that she did not want to actually do as it might awaken her.  She was fairly certain that asleep was the best place for Olivia.  Turning away, she approached the doctor.

“Could you assist me in getting a telegram sent?”

“Well, of course, however, perhaps you should do it yourself.  Get out of the house for awhile.  I can look after her.”

“I, well, I have not done much of sending telegrams in my day.  I’m a bit behind the times.  It would probably be better if you went.”

Doctor Warren reached out and touched Harriet’s shoulder.  “It really is not that hard.  Just go down to the office and tell them what you want to do.  They will help you.  And you really do need to get out for a bit.”

With a small smile she turned away, grabbing a shawl to wrap around her shoulders before stepping out with a quick word back at the doctor.

“Thank you.”

leader dry goods and clothing courtesy hiawathapics.com

As she walked the road toward Oregon Street, Harriet took time to enjoy both being out of the house and also the sights and sounds of the town.  Knowing that she would be unwilling to commit her daughter to any kind of a care facility, she understood that once the doctor left, her life would be bound to caring for Olivia.  It would certainly be awhile before she had time or opportunity to stroll along and admire Hiawatha again.  Arriving at the telegraph office forty minutes later, the clerk helped her send a short message to Wyatt informing him that Claudia would arrive in five days.  On the way back she stopped by the small park across from Leaders Dry Goods, sitting on the small bench and watching the pigeons scramble around after some loose horse feed that had been spilled on the ground.  As the sky started to darken with rain clouds, she sighed deeply and walked back home, arriving to find the doctor packing up his medical bag.  As he departed ten minutes later he promised to stop by daily for awhile and check on Olivia.

The next morning Harriet found Claudia sitting next to her mother in bed.  Olivia had been reading a children’s book to her, but closed it when she appeared in the doorway.

“Where is my picture, mother?”

There was an edge to Olivia’s voice although she appeared calm enough, running her hand through Claudia’s hair as she spoke.

“Yes, well, I have it. I will bring it to you.”

When she returned and presented the portrait of Claudia to her, Olivia looked at it for several minutes before turning to look at her daughter who still sat beside her.

“This will be all that remains of you my dear, all that I will have to remember you by.  This is what I will keep.”

With that, Olivia closed her eyes and began to hum softly, before drifting off to sleep, still clutching the portrait.

Over the course of that day and the next, as Harriet took care of the business of packing things up for Claudia, it became apparent that Olivia had no further interest in her real-life daughter.  She ignored all of Claudia’s attempts to speak with her, or interact in any way, spending time instead reading books to the portrait and carrying it around on the few occasions she did get out of bed.  Her discussions with Harriet during this time were curt, at least until she walked past as the last of Claudia’s clothing was being packed in a large leather packer trunk that had been purchased the day before by the doctor and brought over to the house.

“I hoped to get one thing before you finished up.”

“What is that Olivia?”

“The dress, her dress, the one you made.  I want to keep it here with me.”

“Maybe you should ask Claudia if she cares that you keep it?”

As Olivia glanced down at the portrait she held, Harriet cut back in.

“You need to talk to that girl Olivia.  The real one.  The one in that other room over there who you have been ignoring these past few days.  She leaves tomorrow and you need to say good-bye to her.”

“I won’t ever have to say good-bye mother.  I have her here with me always.  Now I want that dress please, just to help remember her.”

They locked eyes for several moments and then Harriet gave in, remarking to herself that the dress had little use left in it anyway.  She had made it big so it would last for awhile but now it just barely fit the young girl.  Although she worried that possessing it might remove Olivia even farther from reality, she also saw little point in arguing about it.

“Thank you.  I am returning to my room.”

“You do understand that she leaves tomorrow, early, and she won’t be coming back.

Met with only silence and her daughter’s back as a reply, Harriet finished up and then went to spend the remainder of the day with Claudia.  She also slept next to the girl that night, spending over half of the time awake, holding Claudia’s small body next to her and silently crying.  There was no doubt that she would miss her granddaughter, as they had grown very close over the three years she had been alive, especially as Olivia’s condition worsened.  Harriet also felt great sorrow for her own daughter, who she knew was unable to cope with Claudia’s leaving and would probably never truly understand, or admit, that the girl was forever removed from their lives.  So much loss and sorrow had washed across her life during the decades she had been alive, and yet there always seemed to be just a little bit more to bear.  First Olivia had disappeared into the fog of her present condition and now Claudia would fade off into a distant land.  This was for the best though, for her granddaughter anyway, and maybe this would be the last great heartache of her life.

As the sun came up, Harriet drew upon her inner strength and showed no more than surface emotion as she readied Claudia and saw her to the front door at nine a.m., where the doctor waited.  He had agreed to ensure that the girl made it safely onto the train and then to her stop in Colorado, even agreeing to purchase his own ticket.  He arrived just as Harriet and Claudia stepped out onto the porch.

Reaching down, he took the young girl’s hand.  “You look lovely today Claudia.  Are you ready for our trip?”

The girl just nodded and stared back at him, the look on her face similar to the one she had shown to the camera in the portrait.

“Thank you again doctor.  Please ensure she is safely to Wyatt for me.  I am certain he will meet you at the station.  He is a reliable man.”

“I’m sure he will.  Did Olivia?” and he finished with a downward glance at Claudia.

“She refused to open her eyes, so I left her in bed with her delusions.”

“Very well.  Then we must go.”

A final hug, as strong as she felt her granddaughter could bear, was given by Harriet and then she stood up to watch them leave, tears in her eyes, but frozen there, refusing to fall.

She whispered softly to herself.  “Good-bye.”

…to be continued