Frozen Read online

  The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges assistance provided for the publication of this volume by the John K. and Elsie Lampert Fesler Fund.

  Copyright 2012 by Mary Casanova

  Mary Casanova asserts her right to be identified as the Proprietor of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published by the University of Minnesota Press

  111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290

  Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520

  http://www.upress.umn.edu

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Casanova, Mary.

  Frozen / Mary Casanova.

  Summary: Unable to speak or remember the events surrounding her mother’s mysterious death eleven years earlier, sixteen-year-old Sadie Rose, the foster child of a corrupt senator in 1920s northern Minnesota, struggles to regain her voice, memory, and identity.

  Includes bibliographical references (p. ).

  ISBN 978-1-4529-3344-3

  [1. Identity—Fiction. 2. Memory—Fiction. 3. Families—Fiction. 4. Selective mutism—Fiction. 5. Minnesota—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C266Fr 2012

  [Fic]—dc23

  2012019376

  The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

  This story is a work of fiction,

  inspired by historical events

  in Koochiching County, Minnesota.

  Behind the silver-plated parlor stove in the corner, I sat up from my nest of blankets and shivered. Mama should have finished by then with customers who came for visiting. She should have come to wake me with a soft drumming of fingertips and carry me up to our bed.

  Except for someone snoring upstairs and a high-pitched wind howling outside, an unusual quiet had settled on the boardinghouse.

  Footsteps creaked on the staircase, step by slow step downward.

  I tucked back under my blankets and didn’t make a sound. As long as I didn’t get in the way, Darla let us stay. When Mama didn’t work, I snuggled with her upstairs. She brushed my hair, read to me, and often said, “Things won’t always be this way, Sadie Rose. Someday we’ll have a home of our own.”

  I pressed my cheek to the dusty floor and peered out between the curved legs of the cast-iron stove.

  A man stepped onto the parlor carpet of swirling reds and blues. Beneath his knee-length beaver coat appeared his dark pants and polished black boots, unlike so many worn and mud-covered boots that came and went. An edge of quilt—the same light blue circles on white as Mama’s quilt—hung near the bottom of the man’s coat.

  “Damn it,” he huffed, fumbling with the handle. Before the door shut again, a gust of brittle cold whooshed in.

  Chapter 1

  Ranier, Minnesota

  1920

  I dropped my hands from the upright Steinway and stared at my sheet music. What could I truly remember from eleven years ago? Were these memories real or the imagination of a bored sixteen-year-old? Ever since yesterday afternoon, when I’d stumbled on the photographs, my mind had been flighty as a chickadee.

  I pushed damp strands of hair from my forehead and then chewed on the tip of my middle finger, a habit Mrs. Worthington frowned upon. At least for a few days—until they returned from St. Paul—I would do whatever I liked, including coming downstairs in my cotton nightdress.

  “Sadie Rose? Are you well?”

  I twisted on the piano stool. Past the tufted sofa and gleaming dining table, Aasta stood in the kitchen doorway, watching me, her white braids crisscrossed over the top of her head, her apron draped around her broomstick body.

  “You never stop like that,” she continued, the tip of her nose dusted with flour. “I wonder if something wrong?”

  Every day, Aasta filled the lake cottage with scents of rising bread, cardamom, and cinnamon. And Hans, her husband and the Worthingtons’ caretaker, with a rag perpetually jutting from his back trouser pocket, was always trying to teach me something new—how to caulk boards on a leaky rowboat or how to use the oil can to quiet noisy hinges. I loved the Johannsens with their Norwegian accents and fondness for herring, lefse, and buttermilk. But their comforting presence couldn’t still the whirring inside me.

  My mind was spinning too fast, like reels at the motion picture shows in International Falls.

  I reached to the floor and picked up the slate board trimmed in oak, never far from my side. In chalk, I wrote, “I might be taking ill.”

  Aasta stepped closer, wiping her hands on her apron. She placed her warm, soft hand to my forehead. “Ya, you’re sweaty. But weather is warm for June.”

  I nodded, drew a full breath, and then turned back to the keys.

  “While the dough rises, Sadie, I go to grocer’s. Be back soon then.”

  Without turning, I nodded, picking up the melody again. This time, I would concentrate. Besides, I loved Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” My fingers glided easily over the white and black keys. But my mind rode an invisible current. And though my eyes and fingertips found the notes, maintaining a steady and dependable rhythm, I drifted out from the parlor to the cottage’s living and dining area, to the long porch with its row of wicker chairs and screened windows, and above the village and the bay’s invisible border, dividing Minnesota from Canada.

  Shortly after the Worthingtons took me in, they’d sent me to public school, but when I returned home in tears the first day, teased for not speaking, they decided I would be taught at home instead. Tutors were hired, including piano teachers. At first, sitting in front of the piano keys, nothing made sense; but over time, my fingers translated the black shapes and squiggly lines into notes and music. If only memories were as readable and sure.

  Only yesterday everything seemed as it should be.

  Until I’d found the photographs.

  From September to May the Worthingtons and I lived on mansion-lined Summit Avenue in St. Paul; the Worthingtons’ brick mansion, with its stone balustrades, was as formidable as Fort Snelling and hosted a constant flow of politicians and businessmen. June through August, we summered up north. But yesterday, before they’d left in their Model T for the train depot, Mrs. Worthington explained. “Sadie Rose, you’d be bored with so many gatherings. It’s only five days,” she said, looking up at me, yet maintaining her steely posture. “Aasta and Hans will stay overnight as your chaperones.”

  “Five days inside?” I scribbled on my slate board.

  She nodded. “Now that Mr. Worthington’s a senator, maintaining our good name is more important than ever.”

  Women were on the verge of having the right to vote, yet with the Worthingtons I wasn’t free to read on the dock alone or stroll to the grocer’s in the village or wander the fishermen’s docks. I needed something to fill my hours—and for now, I would have to settle for painting flowerpots.

  Though it wasn’t a young lady’s place to rummage in a man’s toolshed, I saw no harm in finding what I needed to amuse myself. And Hans, I knew, would forgive me. I stepped outside, anxious to feel the grass beneath my feet.

  Rounding the corner of the cottage, I breathed in the plucky sweetness of the French lilacs, then stepped into the toolshed. Sunlight squeezed through the dusty paned window and spotlighted the oil-stained floorboards.

  “Green paint.” I silently mouthed the words. Over the years,
when I was alone, I practiced voiceless words.

  I searched for the can of olive green paint that Hans had used on the wooden rowboat. I shaped the words, “It must be here somewhere.”

  The shed held everything a gardener needed to keep the yard pruned and the lake cottage proper: rakes and shovels, pots of various sizes, saws and trimmers, paint cans and paintbrushes, hammers, screws and nails. I rummaged through two dozen cans of paint, some nearly empty, others never opened. With the help of a ladder, I climbed to the top shelf and found what I needed at the very back.

  “Finally,” I mouthed. But when I lifted up the can, I noticed something odd: at the back of the shelf a small stack of photographs lay facedown, their edges curled and yellowing.

  Steadying myself on the ladder, I thumbed through the black-and-white images pasted on black cardboard cards—all scandalous photographs of a woman with luxurious dark hair. I was shocked that Hans might look at such pictures.

  In one, the woman’s hair was undone to her shoulders; she reclined, eyes half-closed, in a camisole and short bloomers on a chaise lounge. In another she sat in a suds-filled claw-foot tub, head back, smiling.

  The images squeezed air from my lungs, all of the same woman. Waves of dark hair and piercing light eyes—perhaps blue, or green—there was no way of knowing for sure. Hoping to find a name or date, I turned each photograph over. Nothing. I hesitated, then tucked the photographs inside my dress, grabbed the can of paint and several small paintbrushes, and left.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon on the front porch with my paints, dabbing blue-winged dragonflies over green flowerpots. I took my time. Finally, before Aasta and Hans returned in the late afternoon, I cleaned the brushes with turpentine and returned to my bedroom.

  Though no one was home, I closed my door and turned the skeleton key with a click. As if they were Mrs. Worthington’s fine china plates, I handled the photographs carefully. I set them on my vanity table and sat down to study them. Despite the warm air blowing in through my screen window, a chill slid from the back of my ears to my toes.

  Hands damp with perspiration, I held the pictures lightly at their edges.

  One captured the woman in a low-cut gown, bending to a footstool as she removed stockings from her long legs.

  Another caught her sitting on a rock ledge at the edge of a high dam, her camisole slightly off one shoulder, her skirt hiked up to her knees as she dangled her legs over the edge. She dared the camera with her smile.

  I held the photo up to my mirror. We shared the same hair, the same oval face, the same raised collarbones. But her eyes . . . this woman’s eyes . . . were full of spirit, as if she might bolt from the camera at any moment. No one owned her. I studied my own eyes . . . but found none of that spirit mirrored there. My eyes were dull by comparison.

  I set aside the photograph.

  In the last image, the woman’s hair was pinned up, with wisps slipping free. She looked over her bare shoulder, her body loosely draped in floral fabric.

  Fabric with a design of cherry blossoms.

  Cherry blossoms.

  I studied the photo more closely and the fabric of the gown. I knew the material. I’d touched it. When I was little, I loved running my hands over the cherry blossoms, feeling the silk swish between my fingers.

  Oh, no.

  Mama.

  The ember—gone nearly cold with time—rekindled.

  Red and hot and glowing.

  I dropped the photograph and pressed my hand to my mouth.

  Chapter 2

  I neared the end of the sheet music, glanced ahead one bar, and then flipped the page without missing a beat. I couldn’t bear to destroy Mozart’s melody with a faulty page turn. I continued on, my fingers translating the composer’s notes into the present. If my fingers could do that, I could puzzle through my past and what had become of my real mother.

  Five knocks—tap, tap, tap, tap, tap—sounded from the porch.

  I quickened the tempo and played through Mozart’s last bars to the end, then jumped up from my piano stool.

  Aasta must have lost her key.

  Outside on the top step, someone waited.

  But it wasn’t Aasta.

  I stopped in the shadows of the living room, hand frozen to the back of the sofa.

  Framed by blue sky, white lake clouds, and lake water, a young man paced on the landing, bobbing his head of sandy-gold hair as he talked to himself. The wire glasses sitting on his straight nose contrasted with his muscled shoulders.

  I wasn’t dressed properly to accept visitors. The man hadn’t spotted me yet. Better to remain hidden until Aasta, at least, returned to the cottage. I waited for him to leave, but instead he knocked again.

  This man’s attire fit neither the linen-suited tourists heading out on boats to their island estates nor the local workers in their plaid shirts and trousers. His khaki trousers were rolled up above his bare ankles, and he wore moccasins rather than shoes. I spotted a birch bark canoe tied to the dock. Though he was deeply tan, he was not Ojibwa or half-breed.

  Shifting my weight, I stepped back toward the stairs. At that very moment, he shaded his forehead with his hand and peered in through the porch door.

  “Hello!” he shouted, as I took another step backward. “I thought no one was home. Excuse me for disturbing you.”

  I stopped. I couldn’t pretend he hadn’t seen me. It would be impolite.

  “My name is Vic—rather, uh—Victor Guttenberg.”

  Though he was too forthright to be well bred, I was drawn to his voice, as inviting as hot cocoa with whipped cream. I stepped onto the long porch with its red-cushioned wicker chairs.

  Unlatching the hook, I remembered my bare feet, with Mrs. Worthington’s words in my head: “A well-reared young lady wouldn’t step into public without stockings and shoes.”

  “I’m looking for Mr. Worthington,” the young man said, as the door swung wide. “I didn’t realize he had . . . Is he home?”

  He was younger than most men who sought out the senator, but he was still at least six or seven years older than I was. Still, something about him made me wish I could answer with spoken words. Other than an occasional cry or moan, my voice had died with Mama years ago.

  Silence. My sanctuary and my prison.

  I shook my head.

  Victor frowned. “I should have made an appointment,” he said, removing his battered fedora, revealing a pale forehead. “I really should have written a letter ahead, but, well, you see—Ennis’s proposed dams, they’ll change the landscape forever. Your father, he’s friends with E. W. Ennis—he might be able to communicate some sense—when might I catch him here?”

  Without my slate board, a quick answer wasn’t easy. I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Tomorrow?” he asked.

  I nodded, even though I knew it would be three more days. I’d lied and wasn’t sure why, but I wanted to see Victor Guttenberg again, without the Worthingtons’ scrutiny.

  “Once I get an idea in my head . . . ,” he trailed off, then began again. “Not that I’m the only one seeing things differently, of course. There’re other movements afoot, trying to conserve—to save and protect what we have. But you see, I’m living on Falcon Island . . . this lake means everything to me.” He motioned over his shoulder to the trestle bridge, as if to prove his point that there really was a massive lake beyond, dotted with islands that stretched for miles and miles.

  I pointed to his canoe and raised my eyebrows in question.

  “An hour’s paddle is nothing,” he said, “not when I’ve been canoeing and mapping regions—north—for hundreds of miles.” He wore a saddle of peeling skin and sunburn over his nose as proof. His white shirt was wrinkled and graying, and I wondered if he’d put it on to impress Mr. Worthington. If so, his efforts would have
been lost. No one was taken seriously who didn’t either support Mr. Worthington politically or work for E. W. Ennis’s paper mill operation in some way. And from the water dam downriver and to the farthest reaches of the lake, Ennis employed every man, directly or indirectly, in Koochiching County.

  This Victor Guttenberg . . . did he have any idea what he was up against?

  “Will you tell him I stopped by then, Miss Worthington?”

  I held up my forefinger, then hurried inside for my slate board and returned with it, scribbling as I approached the porch door, and stepped out again. I showed him what I’d written: “My name is Sadie Rose, but not Worthington.”

  “Huh. I guess I heard something about you, now that . . . Rose. So that’s your last name?”

  I shook my head.

  “If not Worthington, then what is your last name?”

  I erased the board with the edge of my nightdress, bit down on my lip, and wrote the answer. Reluctantly, I showed it to Victor.

  He seemed to study the words for a long time. Then he met my eyes and seemed to see clear through me. “You don’t have one?”

  I pressed the slate board to my chest, my throat burning.

  “Sadie Rose, everyone has a last name. Perhaps I can help you find yours . . . and maybe someday . . . you’ll help me.” Then he tipped his hat and strode down the stone steps. Nimble as the mink that darted in and out of the dock’s supporting log cribs, Victor untied his canoe, stepped in gently, and pushed off. Then he carved his paddle into the water, heading toward the lift bridge that connected Ranier with Canada.

  Beyond the bridge, a speck of a tugboat pulled a boom of floating logs. With a lasso of heavy chain, tugboats corralled thousands of cords of logs from Rainy Lake, sluiced them under the lift bridge, and floated them downriver to the paper mill.

  Victor was safely out of the tug’s path, and I watched until he disappeared.

  The lift bridge was Mr. Worthington’s engineering marvel. With it, he’d brought shipping and trade to the county. I’d always felt part of some greater design, too, waiting for the Worthingtons to tell me. I was, I’d always told myself, Sadie Rose Worthington, even though they hadn’t adopted me.