by Megan Chance
Downstairs, Goldie paused, glancing over the telephone table with a frown. “Where is it, Au?” she called, though the butler was nowhere in sight. “Don’t tell me it’s not here yet.”
Like magic, the butler appeared. He had a newspaper in his hand, and he handed it to her without a word, and then disappeared again rather quickly.
Goldie opened the San Francisco Bulletin excitedly. “Oh, I wonder what he said.” Her bright blue eyes scanned the page, and her smile sank. “There’s nothing about us! Nothing at all! How can that be? It was the party. Everyone was here.”
Not everyone, I thought, remembering Goldie’s disappointment over the mysterious but obviously important Mrs. Hoffman.
Goldie gave the paper to me. “Perhaps I’m missing it.”
I glanced down the page until I found the headline Society News, by Alphonse Bandersnitch: The Friday Night Cotillion Club Hosts a Dozen Debutantes at Odd Fellows Hall.
I skimmed the story below:
The popular Strozynski was booked to the very last hour preparing society “hair”esses for Friday night’s ball . . . Gossip and scandal (including, one assumes, those of city politics and impending out-of-town guests) have no place at the Greenway Cotillions, Ned Greenway is oft heard to say . . . Champagne was in attendance and no doubt played the grandest of parts in Miss Hannah Brookner’s recitation of “Little Orphant Annie,” and her particularly inspired “An’ the Gobble-uns ’at gits you Ef you Don’t Watch Out!”
I burst into laughter.
“What?” Goldie asked. “Did I miss it? Is it there?”
“No, it’s just this bit about ‘Little Orphant Annie.’ Did she really recite that at a ball?”
Goldie gave me an odd look. “He’s just being clever. That’s what makes his columns the best.”
“You mean it didn’t happen?”
“Oh, I’m certain it did. Hannah will be furious because he’s made it obvious she was drunk, and her father will no doubt ask for an apology. Mr. Bandersnitch always presses too close to the unacceptable. That’s why everyone reads him. One day the Bulletin will fire him for it. But what about us? Are we mentioned anywhere?”
“There’s nothing in the column from last night, Goldie. Probably it just hasn’t been written yet.”
Goldie considered. “Perhaps you’re right.” She adjusted her hat in the elaborate foyer mirror. “Yes, of course you’re right.”
We went to the waiting brougham. I climbed inside while Goldie instructed the driver to take us to the Emporium, and then we were off, and I had the first true glimpse of the city that was to be my home.
That morning’s fog had retreated to the hollows, on the run from a watery sun. On my arrival yesterday, the fog had been too heavy for me to make out more than the ghostly shades of buildings, though I’d marveled that it was cobblestones that the carriage bounced along, not muddy ruts. Even now, knowing that mansions existed, it was hard to put aside the vivid impressions I’d had from the magazines passed around by the ladies in the boardinghouse. Bret Harte’s tales of campfires and mining towns.
From the top of the hill, we quickly passed into a neighborhood of wooden buildings, many decorated with unusual designs. Signs and windows advertised businesses in Chinese writing; women carried baskets and bunches of produce from stands lining the narrow streets where children played and men with single braids like Au’s gathered, all wearing flat shoes and dark tunics and trousers and hats.
Goldie said, “Chinatown.”
It was like nothing I’d seen before, and I was curious about it, but then I remembered Goldie’s talk of tongs.
She went on, “It’s perfectly safe in the daytime, but you should not come here at night.”
As quickly as we passed into Chinatown, we were out again, crowded now by houses with bay windows and others with gingerbread trim. We went into downtown, with its wires stretching from the many telephone and telegraph poles webbed above the sidewalks and its many-globed gas streetlamps decorating filthy streets scrimmed with urine and manure, and I was reminded of home. Crowds of peddlers and carts placidly ignored carriages and horses and wagons and automobiles, and people barely avoided disaster as they raced across the cable car tracks that ran down the center of the street. A man with a dozen dead rabbits and just as many birds slung from his belt called out, “Wild rabbits! Ducks! Get your game here!”
It was not New York, but it had that same deep city throb that reverberated from the ground into my heart, a pulse born of shouts and the rumble of iron rims on cobblestones, clanging cable cars, groups of men talking in the streets, men on bicycles calling out warnings as they swerved and changed direction as quickly as houseflies, stray dogs barking, and newsboys hawking headlines. Yet it was also unfamiliar, and it was more than just the tang of the sea in the air instead of the green rot of oily rivers that made it so, or the streets so steep that everything must pause halfway up to rest. San Francisco breathed expansiveness and change. It was unsettling, but exciting too, and something in me stirred and stretched, the thrill of starting anew.
The carriage stopped before a giant stone building of Beaux-Arts design with a huge arched entranceway and windows lining the front.
“The Emporium. I imagine you’ve never seen a store like this,” Goldie said.
“We have stores in New York.”
“Not like this,” she said smugly. “We can get nearly everything you need here, and the rest at the City of Paris.”
It was true that the store felt different than those in New York. Not because of its size, but because for me the department stores in New York had been places only to daydream, and even then, those dreams had been about working there as a salesgirl, walking crisply down those aisles, taking orders. I’d never thought to covet anything inside, because I’d never been able to afford any of the things they sold.
Goldie said, “We’ll probably have to throw your clothes out once your trunks arrive. I’m sure you’ve nothing that’s right for San Francisco. The weather is completely different, for one thing. You’ll never need anything heavier than a wool coat.” She tossed scarves around my neck and trailed gloves over my arms until I felt like a bedecked maypole while the salesman trailed after us with bobbing steps and an obsequious “That color is lovely as well, miss.”
There was so much that she insisted I needed: cartwheel hats blooming with flowers, patterned shirtwaists, skirts and walking suits, tea gowns and shoes. Goldie preferred bolder colors, and pooh-poohed my every suggestion of anything more sedate. “I told you, you’re in San Francisco now, May.” I would have preferred more subtlety, but Goldie lived in society; I’d only watched it from afar, and so how should I know that owls on hats were in vogue and that white gloves were on the wane and bright colors much more the thing?
I stood in the alterations room while a dressmaker measured and pinned and Goldie circled with a finger pressed to her full lower lip, saying, “I don’t like the way that drapes. You can cut that bodice a bit lower. Yes, to there.”
“Goldie, do you really think . . . That’s very low.”
Goldie said, “Do you want to be like Mabel Byrnes?”
“Who’s Mabel Byrnes?”
“The most old-fashioned girl in San Francisco. She’s hardly older than you and you’d think she was on the shelf already, the way she dresses. Like a dowdy matron. She’ll never attract a husband that way.”
As far as husband hunting went, I had not thought of that for some time. There had been too many other things in the way—chiefly, no money and my mother’s disdain for the tenor of our neighborhood. Now, the future was a new thing altogether. Who knew what it would bring? “I don’t want to be old-fashioned.”
“Leave it to me,” Goldie assured me.
How I trusted her from the start. How wholly I gave myself over to my cousin. The lure of beautiful things, of a friend . . . I was vulnerable without knowing it, having never had either. Who wouldn’t want a dress with that blue-and-white lace trim? Goldie
was right, the pink was not too bright. Nor was that ivory lace ball gown too revealing. There were shirtwaists and skirts and jackets to match, plaids and stripes that the most fashionable women wore together, and oh, a gown of silk that fell like water through my fingers, the way the light gleamed upon it . . . In the end, I would have let Goldie cut the décolletage to my knees just for the privilege of wearing it.
And then the City of Paris, where we bought lace- and ribbon-festooned combinations—at last I was to have proper, fashionable underwear—embroidered corset covers and nightgowns and sheer silk stockings, and handkerchiefs and scarves. Everything was to be sent to the house when the alterations were done. I was a little sick at the money we’d spent, though Goldie only shrugged off my protests.
She told our driver, Nick, to follow us. “I want to take May somewhere.”
He scowled, but nodded, and she took my arm and we started off on foot.
The afternoon was advanced, casting shadows, and the chill breeze from the water tunneled briskly through the city. A large building with a giant clock tower at the end of the street blocked the view of the harbor. “That’s the ferry building,” Goldie told me, “where you catch the boat to Oakland. Now, hurry.”
“Is that where we’re going? Oakland?”
“Why would we go there? It’s nowhere.” Goldie grabbed her hat at an especially strong gust and walked so quickly that even with my long legs I had trouble keeping up. The street grew crowded with suited men gathering and talking sociably. As quickly as stinking clouds of cigar smoke dissipated in the breeze, new ones took their place.
“Where did everyone come from?” I asked.
“Cocktail hour.” Again, Goldie’s hand went to her hat. “Be ready! We’re going ’round the Horn!”
She swept around the corner. I followed—and was whipped and buffeted by a breeze so strong it exposed my petticoat and tried to yank the hat from my head. I grabbed desperately at both.
Someone shouted, someone else whistled. Goldie waved at one of the groups of men leaning against a large cast-iron fountain and watching women battle their clothing. Obviously, it was the sole reason they loitered here in the triangle between streets.
“Hey, Goldie, is that the cousin we’ve heard so much about?” called a young man standing beneath a nearby awning.
I waited for Goldie to turn up her nose or offer a chilling set down at his familiarity, but she didn’t, and I began to understand that these ogling men were what she wanted to show me. She only laughed. “It is indeed! Don’t ask me why she insisted on coming down to see all you derelicts. I told her you weren’t worth our time.”
He waggled his eyebrows. “Why don’t you two come over here and I’ll make it worth it.”
“We’re far too busy, much to your disappointment, I’m sure!”
“Goldie!” I whispered.
“Come on, now. Don’t make me beg!” the man pleaded.
“Wouldn’t that be a pretty sight? My cousin says she’d like to see it. Down on your knees!”
I was stunned at such open flirting, and everyone watching.
Goldie said to me in a loud whisper, “Thank God you’re not tiresome. I’d been so afraid you would be like Mabel after all.”
“No. No, of course not.” This was not the behavior Mama had taught me, and in Brooklyn it would have brought nothing but trouble. But such was Goldie’s power that I ignored my own instincts; she convinced me that here in San Francisco, women could be daring without consequence. I had no other example to follow. My aunt was an invalid; I was far from everything I knew. I glanced over my shoulder, reassured at the sight of Nick following in the Sullivan carriage.
A man sucking on a cheroot called, “Hey, Goldie! I saw your pa at the Palace.”
Goldie veered sharply over to him. “What exactly do you mean by that, sir?”
He exhaled smoke in a noxious cloud, grinning when Goldie batted it away. “Just that he’s in the bar getting all cozy with Abe Ruef and Mrs. Dennehy. I guess those government contracts make a pretty penny, especially when everyone’s getting paid not to watch things too closely.”
“I’m sure I don’t know.” Goldie spun me away in the wake of his soft chuckle.
We were well down the street when I ventured, “What did he mean by that?”
“Nothing. Politics and rumors. No one cares.” Goldie stopped short, gripping my arm almost painfully. “How would you like to see the Palace Hotel? It’s the finest in the city. We’ll go there for tea.”
The gleam in her eyes told me that whatever she wanted to do was going to be as daring as flirting with young men in public. But again, perhaps it was not; I didn’t want to be a Mabel. I smiled. “That sounds perfect.”
Her answering smile made me glad I’d decided not to protest.
The Palace Hotel had six upper stories of bay windows and a facade of brick that had once been white, but was now patinaed by coal smoke to a drab gray. The gilded ornaments of the edifice tried vainly to sparkle through the soot. A doorman—Chinese, again—in maroon livery held the door. I followed my cousin inside, and was immediately overwhelmed by the Palace’s splendor: oak floors, white pillars, redwood paneling, and great brass cuspidors. The footman said, “The Ladies’ Grill is this way—”
“I know where it is. Haven’t I been here a hundred times?” Goldie snapped.
Whatever he saw in Goldie’s expression made him step back hastily. I followed my cousin to a bar bounded by a brass footrail. Shafts of sunlight glowed through a room fogged with cigar smoke and swirling with the scents of tobacco, seafood, and roasted meat. Goldie paused, no doubt searching for her father through the throng of palms and men.
I caught sight of him first. My uncle sat at a table in the center of the room, his back to us. Beside him was an excitedly gesturing man with a bushy mustache and short, dark curling hair receding from a shining forehead. On my uncle’s right was an auburn-haired woman, gowned elegantly in deep plum and black lace. She was not the only woman in the Palace Bar, but she stood out among the few. She was striking, with a face that in profile was sharply defined, large heavily lidded eyes, a long nose that, while dominating, was somehow regal, a small chin, and a jawline that accented the dangling pearl at her ear. Her neck was impossibly slender. More impossibly, she too smoked a cigar, and had a glass of whiskey before her. She sat very close to Uncle Jonny, whose red-gold hair shone in the sun-smoke and the light of the chandeliers. He said something, and she laughed, reaching over his arm to tap her ash. Too intimate. He turned to her with a smile, a word. I couldn’t see his expression, but he was obviously intent, focused in a way that made me think uncomfortably of my aunt. The woman laughed. The curly-haired man’s expression froze in impatience. He did not like dealing with my uncle’s momentary distraction, I thought. I had the sense that he was a man who expected devotion and undivided attention.
Goldie cursed beneath her breath. I felt her determination deflate into resignation.
“You see that man talking with Papa?” she whispered, inclining her head toward the other man at the table. “That’s Abe Ruef. Papa says nothing in this city gets done without him.”
It did not surprise me. He reminded me of Mrs. Beard’s brother—those same eyes that seemed to take in everything, that way he leaned back in his chair as if the room were his to command. “Then I imagine it’s a good thing he’s a friend of Uncle Jonny’s.”
Goldie laughed shortly. “A good thing. Yes, I suppose.”
The woman exhaled a thin and almost elegant stream of smoke, and then whispered something in Uncle Jonny’s ear. Goldie stiffened.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“Mrs. Edward Dennehy. Alma.” There was no mistaking Goldie’s scorn. “She’s a widow. Her husband worked at United Railroads. I don’t remember what he did, but he was important. She’s very clever. Very clever indeed.”
It did not sound a compliment. “Is your father investing in United Railroads?”
“Ha. He�
�s investing in her. She’s Papa’s mistress.”
It explained the intimacy and my discomfort, but it was another disparity, another thing to question. My uncle with his mistress in such a public place, talking investments with the man who ran San Francisco. Everything I’d learned today made my mother’s lessons obsolete. Either that, or San Francisco was truly nothing like New York. “Aunt Florence must be mortified.”
“She doesn’t know.” Goldie fixed me with a searing, pointed gaze. “And she won’t. The widow lives in a suite here, for which my father undoubtedly pays a great deal. Good God, that diamond she’s wearing is huge—do you see? I wonder when he bought her that?”
It was hard to miss. Its flash competed with that of the crystal drops on the chandeliers—and won handily.
Goldie said sharply, “Let’s go.”
We were both quiet as we left. The carriage waited outside. I touched her arm gently. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she asked.
“For your father. I imagine it’s very hard to see.”
Goldie’s gaze was long and lingering. “You are not what I expected at all.”
Compliment or curse? I didn’t know. When I frowned in confusion, she smiled.
Even as I noted that it did not reach her eyes, she said, “You’re more than I hoped for, May. Truly you are.”
So I ignored the rest. I ignored everything that told me nothing was as I’d believed. That was my first mistake.
On the way home, it was as if Goldie had forgotten I was there. She stared silently out the carriage window, and when we arrived, my cousin hurried up the stairs, leaving me alone in the foyer.
“May, is that you?” My aunt stepped into the hall. She looked drawn and frail, but awake, and alert. She smiled tremulously, as if afraid of her reception. “I’m your Aunt Florence. Forgive me for being unable to meet you sooner.”