Love and Other Consolation Prizes

by Jamie Ford

  Maisie and Fahn had known Ernest’s secrets, all except for the one he’d thought was obvious—that he was in love with both girls. But what did that matter now?

  As Ernest listened, he noticed that the Professor changed the ending of the melancholy song, finishing up-tempo, with a blizzard of stinging quarter notes. “That there was for you, my boy,” he said.

  Ernest nodded. He tried to smile, but the expression came out as more of a polite grimace. He wished Fahn were here so the girls could talk to each other. He had a hard time talking to Maisie about Maisie. But he hadn’t given up.

  Professor True began playing something jazzy and modern called the “Comet Rag,” but Ernest barely batted an eyelash.

  “My playing that bad tonight?”

  “Sorry. It’s not you,” Ernest said. “I’m just, you know…”

  “Man, if you’re nervous…” Professor True began playing a sad tune Ernest didn’t recognize. “I can only imagine how the Mayflower must feel about what’s happening in just a few days. I’m all for parties, but this one…”

  Ernest had tried not to obsess about Maisie and Fahn, but the more he tried, the more he worried, fretted, felt helpless. He had lain awake each evening staring out the window, where the cloudy sky held wishing stars for ransom.

  “How’s that new job of yours working out?” the Professor asked.

  “Gets better every day.” Ernest sighed as he released the top button of his coachman’s uniform and tried to relax. One of his new tasks was to drive a carload of Gibson girls about town, late in the afternoon, decked out in their voluptuously corseted finery. The girls would bare their shoulders and wave their gloved hands as they blew kisses at gentlemen on the streets in a wanton display of advertising. Though lately they’d been pilloried by the Ladies Relief Society, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and Mrs. Irvine’s Mothers of Virtue, who would heckle and throw rotting food at them as they passed, leaving Ernest to wash the car each day and pick bits of eggshell off the chrome.

  But the worst was the long, anguished afternoon he’d spent alone in that fancy black car, delivering invitations for Maisie’s coming-out gala. He’d driven around downtown, then to select gentlemen’s clubs in Wedgwood, Ravenna Heights, and Seward Park. Ernest had somberly read the important-sounding names on the sealed envelopes, which had been addressed by Miss Amber—though he’d seen Madam Flora signing the cards, personally, in a moment of silent lucidity.

  Despite visiting fancy town clubs, the city treasurer’s office, and even the executive floor of Dexter Horton Bank, Ernest knew who the real guest of honor would be. He had delivered an extra-large envelope to the Turnbull Shipwright Corporation. He’d come so close to pitching all of the invitations out the window, or burning them, or sinking them to the murky bottom of Lake Union, even at the risk of getting fired and kicked out into the street. But it didn’t matter. He knew that Miss Amber wouldn’t be put off that easily. She’d just have someone else send out a fresh batch of invitations. Besides, all the driving allowed Ernest to look for Fahn.

  “Do you know much about this Turnbull gentleman?” Ernest asked Professor True. His curiosity was dark, morbid, and painful. He felt the way he had when reading about an avalanche that had made an entire Great Northern passenger train disappear last month. The train cars had fallen 150 feet into the Tye River near Wellington. Hundreds of passengers were missing—all of them probably dead, and no one could lift a finger to search until the snow melted.

  That’s how Ernest felt. Helplessly counting the days.

  “Oh, Turnbull’s well known around these parts,” Professor True said as he played an ominous chord. “Louis Josiah Turnbull was one of the founders of the Arctic Brotherhood. He made his name when he was just a boy, running loads of gelignite up to Alaska, and piloting riverboats up the Yukon River during the first years of the Klondike Gold Rush. Then he placed his newly built fortune on the stern of a shipbuilding concern, named after himself, of course, and got lucky when his wharf was the only one left standing in the wake of the Great Seattle Fire. He went on to become the biggest shipbuilder in the Northwest—and owned a few ships too, importing goods from all over the globe. Now he’s a fellow with enough cash to buy the whole world. I suppose for a fellow like L. J. Turnbull, being denied something that he wants just makes him want it even more.”

  Ernest nodded.

  Professor True said, “Turnbull was still a fairly youthful man when his health started failing, and since he was from a consumptive family, his doctors gave him a year to live. So what does he do? He builds the biggest house anyone has ever seen—a place to spend his waning months. Named the mansion Speedwell. But instead, his wife dies of the hundred days’ cough, and here it is ten years later and Ol’ Louis Turnbull is still going strong. He was smitten with Madam Flora back in the day. And when he found out she’d retired, he started asking when the Mayflower would be up for bid—sister, daughter, I don’t think he cares—next best thing, I guess. Rich men get spoiled, or go crazy, a little of both I suppose. Grown men who should know better, I’ve seen them fall hard, like tripping down stairs, head over teakettle for some of the working girls, and then they can’t understand why the girls don’t fall right back.”

  Ernest felt the anger and helplessness surge through him again. “I guess there’s a difference between the body and the soul. You can buy a body, but the heart…” He shook his head. “The heart, you can’t even rent.”

  —

  THOSE WERE THE words that lingered in Ernest’s mind as he scoured his room for every nickel, dime, and wheat penny. He’d saved most of his wages since he had begun working as a houseboy last year, and now he earned tips as a coachman—sometimes large ones. He’d drive home patrons who’d had too much to drink, and they were loose with their wallets.

  He counted $128. He paused for a moment, astonished, after not having had even a penny for so many years. But then, chagrined, he remembered his savings were but a pittance compared to the enormous wads of folding money that the regulars would be throwing about at the party on Saturday night.

  Ernest also took out the ticket from the fair—his prize-winning ticket—that humble piece of cardboard that had put his future in the generous, magnanimous, but now-quaking hands of Madam Flora. For a moment he wondered what his life would have been like had someone else claimed him. Where would he be? As torn as he was about Fahn’s and Maisie’s fates, he wouldn’t have wished to be anywhere else.

  Last, and with much reluctance, he added the gold hairpin topped with jade that had once belonged to his mother. When he wasn’t wearing it on his lapel, he’d kept the piece of jewelry hidden in an old sock in the bottom of his dresser. That slender piece of soft, tarnished gold was his only earthly reminder of his time in China, those dark moments with his ah-ma.

  Ernest gathered everything and walked down the hall to Miss Amber’s room, where the door stood partially open. He peered inside, where she stood in a casual evening dress, smoking a cigarette and tending to one of her many wigs, as though the nest of golden hair were a small terrier in need of grooming.

  “What now?” she snapped, blowing out the candle that she had used to heat a curling iron. “Let me guess. A few gents come early tonight? Tell ’em I’ll be right down.”

  Ernest shook his head. “No one is here yet. It’s just me. I have a question…”

  “Speak your mind, kid, but make it quick. You’re wasting time and I’m sure there are things you need to busy yourself with downstairs. Is the car gassed up and ready? I have a few gentlemen who might need a ride tonight.”

  Ernest nodded. He cleared his throat as he searched for the right combination of words that could somehow change Miss Amber’s mind. Then he held out his money and the winning ticket. “I know you’re only doing what’s best for Madam Flora. And I understand how sick she is and all, and that if we don’t do something quick, she’ll only get worse, and no one wants that. But…”

  “Ah, geez Louise…�
�

  Ernest spoke faster. “There must be another answer. I don’t have much…” He handed her his money and the gold pin. Then he held up the ticket. “Maybe we could figure out an arrangement. I could work here for free, for as long as it takes to pay off the amount that the Tenderloin would be making for Maisie.”

  “You want her?” Miss Amber stared at him, confused.

  “Yes. I mean, no,” Ernest stammered. “It’s not that. I don’t want her to do this at all. You could even sell my services, maybe Mr. Turnbull needs a houseboy or a driver—I could ask him to loan you the money you need for Madam Flora’s treatment. Then I would work without pay, for as long as it takes…”

  Miss Amber took a long final drag on her cigarette and then snuffed it out. “That’s a sweet idea, kid, and the sentiment isn’t lost on me. I think my heart skipped a beat. Wait…there it goes—it’s beating again. See, you almost killed me.”

  Ernest stared back, frustrated, loathing her.

  She shook her head. “Look, I live in the real world. Besides, Louis Turnbull could buy a hundred other girls and a hundred thousand servants like you. But that’s not what he’s after—he wants the Mayflower, so he gets the Mayflower. Understand? Trust me, we’re just lucky that we happen to have something he wants so badly. The way I see it, this is fate paying back a kindness to Flora for not giving up Maisie in the first place.”

  She lit another cigarette and put on her wig. She spoke to Ernest, addressing his reflection in a three-way mirror. “I only needed one good reason to turn Maisie out, and that’s our Madam Flora’s well-being. But this man has given me five thousand reasons.”

  “This”—she waved her hand at the ticket—“this doesn’t even come close.”

  Ernest put the cash, the pin, the ticket, back into his pocket.

  “You’re too late anyway. I already closed the deal.”

  Ernest stared at her three reflections in the dressing mirrors as they moved in unison; he felt equally confused by each one.

  “Kid, no one—and I mean no one on God’s green Earth—was going to outbid Louis Turnbull, so I called and we settled things on the telephone, quick and proper. He won’t grace us with his presence, but we’ll have a coming-out party for the Mayflower nonetheless—she’ll have her big, showy entrance, descend the staircase, and get her moment in society’s grand spotlight—then whoosh, out the door she goes. I’ll make sure that the upstairs girls treat the guests to something special for showing up, everyone will have a swell time in the style and fashion that the Tenderloin is known for, and Maisie gets to have her own party. All I need from you is to keep your wits about you and deliver her to his mansion in Windermere, with a bottle of our finest bubbly, of course.” Miss Amber winked and smiled through tobacco-stained teeth. “Compliments of Madam Flora.”

  ALL I HAVE TO GIVE

  (1910)

  To Ernest, Maisie’s coming-out ceremony was a blur of silk, lost in a haze of cigar smoke, tainted with the smell of brandy and Canadian rye. She wasn’t wheeled in atop a silver cart like Jewel; instead she walked on her own two feet, gilded in her expertly tailored dress. Ernest was simultaneously awestruck and heartbroken as she slowly descended the grand staircase in shimmering high-heeled shoes that made her seem much older than her fifteen and a half years. As she made her entrance she was flanked and feted by every Gibson girl, who smiled as they fanned her with plumes of ostrich feathers, while Professor True played a waltz.

  Compared to Maisie, Ernest thought, the others looked like last year’s models.

  All of the wealthy men in attendance, with slick hair and waxed mustaches, who wore tuxedos with open collars and sparkling cuff links, cheered. A few of the younger gents dared to kiss the back of Maisie’s gloved hand, but none ventured further, not even for a peck on the cheek. Ernest wondered, wryly, if there was some unspoken etiquette regarding virgins on their nights of deflowering. Or perhaps the distance in Maisie’s smile was enough to keep the wolves at bay.

  Like the sober banker who said, “I’ll pay you one hundred dollars for a kiss on the lips, dollface. How ’bout it, sweetheart?”

  Or the sloppily drunk man who heckled, “How about five hundred for a bumpy ride in the back of my new car?”

  Maisie deflected each offer with a piercing stare and a smile that might have killed had she not lowered its intensity.

  Ernest waited along the far wall and listened to the music. The rest of the help were quick to fill an empty drink, replace a full ashtray, or fetch the humidor for a fresh cigarillo. Professor True broke into an original song he had composed for the occasion as Maisie made her way, turning her attention to one patron and then quickly to another, flitting like a hummingbird through the room. The working girls all swayed, mooning over the sweet, gentle music, but Ernest knew that when the song ended, Maisie would be leaving. To his weary heart it sounded like a funeral dirge.

  As Maisie orbited the room once more, stoking the fires in the bellies of rich men for the other girls, Miss Amber snapped her fingers toward him. For Maisie, the party was ending. Ernest donned his driving gloves and worked his way to the foyer. Her very presence—her magnetic beauty coupled with her coy aloofness—teased the gentlemen who looked on. They knew they’d been outbid and who the lucky winner was. They raised their glasses and drained them as they toasted their misfortune and jokingly cursed Louis Turnbull.

  “Here’s to Old Man Turnbull, the only fellow I know who succeeds at everything he sets his mind to…with the exception of dying!” one bearded fellow yelled above the crowd. “He knows how to pick ’em. Let’s just hope he remembers what to do with ’em!”

  Ernest gritted his teeth and stared at his shoes, trying not to think about the age of the man awaiting Maisie in his mansion. In his mind’s eye all he saw was a gray-haired Methuselah in moth-eaten robes, with a face of wrinkles, a tongue darting to the corners of old, cracked lips.

  Maybe he’ll have heart failure. Ernest smiled grimly as he regarded a few of the older gentlemen in the room. His eyes wandered back up the stairs.

  Ernest had hoped Madam Flora might marshal some of her wits in reserve and find her way down to the party, where she’d perform a miracle by postponing Maisie’s fate the way Governor Hay might have offered a stay of execution.

  But no last-minute rescue came.

  Instead, Miss Amber held court as best she could. She wasn’t regal, or well spoken, like her flamboyant business partner, but the free-flowing Canadian whiskey and Kentucky bourbon worked well enough. The men laughed and raised their glasses to Madam Flora in absentia.

  And then Miss Amber announced that it was time for the belle of the ball to take her leave. The men cheered once again.

  Ernest knew that Amber and Flora would be leaving by train soon after the party ended, for New York City, followed by the journey by sea to Europe. And as some of the men began to ascend the stairs with their girls of choice for the evening, it became obvious that they knew as well, as they wished the grande dame bon voyage.

  Ernest stood by as the rest of the upstairs girls hugged Maisie. They whispered in her ear, and Ernest could only imagine their congratulations, condolences, words of advice perhaps. Maisie smiled and laughed.

  And then the downstairs servants took their turn near the door, forming a makeshift receiving line, though the Mayflower wasn’t a bride.

  Mrs. Blackwell, Violet, Iris shared a toast of purloined champagne in servants’ teacups, all but Rose, who barely restrained her sobs, as though she somehow knew that Maisie’s departure foretold the ending of an era.

  Ernest, who was drifting in the barrel of his imagination, toward the lip of his own emotional Niagara Falls, had almost forgotten that the end of Maisie’s childhood was almost too much to bear for everyone else as well. For a moment, he wondered why there had been so much vested emotion for Maisie but not for Fahn. He worried that they all knew something he didn’t, that Louis Turnbull was some kind of sadistic creature. Then he realized that in the min
ds of the downstairs help, if Maisie was leaving, Madam Flora must truly be lost, and no one knew when she’d ever come back. The big heart and little soul of the Tenderloin were both leaving within one sweep of the clock hand.

  Ernest stood at the curb and put Maisie’s small overnight valise into the trunk of the roadster. He warmed up the car and watched as Maisie slowly descended the steps. He got out and held the door, helping her inside, offering her a blanket, which she gratefully took to ward off the chill. She sank into the plush leather and closed her eyes, as if leaving had been the hardest part of the evening.

  Ernest honked the horn and waved goodbye to a tearful Mrs. Blackwell.

  In the rearview mirror he could see that Maisie was smiling but also dabbing at the corners of her eyes with the lace fringe of her long sleeves.

  Ernest hesitated and then asked, “Did you say goodbye to Madam Flora?”

  Maisie shook her head and composed herself. She took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out slowly. “No need. I’ll see her when she returns. And it wouldn’t matter right now anyway.”

  Ernest turned north toward the Turnbull estate. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s fine.”

  Ernest glanced over his shoulder. “Last chance,” he said soberly. “Just say the word and we’ll light out for them hills. I could be Wild Bill Hickok and you can be Calamity Jane. We’ll search the cribs until we find Fahn, we’ll rob a few banks, and they’ll never bring us back alive.”

  Maisie smiled back, but said nothing.

  After that, Ernest didn’t say another word. He drove in silence, his feelings of love, loss, regret, and remorse drowned out by the roar of an eighty-horsepower engine.