by Jamie Ford
He could see Lake Washington in the distance as they entered Windermere and passed the massive marble gateways that led to stately mansions with names like Lochkelden, Summerport, and Islesworth. Beyond the gates were long drives through manicured gardens where lamplighters had kept the roads illuminated.
But the largest home, a sprawling gaslit mansion in white, with endless balconies beneath the high arches of a black-tile roof, was the home of Louis Turnbull.
No sign or demarcation was necessary. The five-story manor known as Speedwell was by far the largest house in the area, and it adorned the highest hill, with a commanding lake view. Ernest took special care not to graze the sculpted topiary that lined the road as he wended his way up the long, serpentine driveway. He finally pulled into a grand porte cochere. The Italian architecture, the fountains, the shrubbery trimmed into the likenesses of soaring birds and leaping fish made the opulence of the Tenderloin look like a secondhand store in a shantytown.
A butler must have noted their approach, for he stood at attention at the top of the steps near the rear entrance. Ernest idled the engine as a pair of uniformed footmen also appeared. One was quick to hold the car door open for Maisie, while the other attended to her small linen suitcase on the other side and that bottle of wine from Miss Amber.
Ernest looked in the rearview mirror, waiting, as Maisie sat with her eyes closed. He silently hoped, begged for her to close the door and ask him to drive away. But then she seemed to awake and took the footman’s hand without so much as a glance in Ernest’s direction. She didn’t say a word of goodbye, and maybe it was better that way.
“Someone will call in the morning for you to come and pick her up,” said one of the footmen. Ernest watched her walk toward the manor, the hem of her dress skimming the wide marble as she ascended the steps. Maisie became a silhouette in the glow of the open door, and her long shadow seemed to reach out to him as the light of a chandelier emanated from the entrance of the mansion. Then the wooden sway closed.
Just like Fahn, Maisie was gone too.
Ernest loosened his collar and surrendered an aching sigh, his throat so tight he found it hard to swallow. He chewed his lip and shifted gears and felt the rumbling engine as he slowly began to motor back down the long, winding driveway. Then he heard a shout over the pistons. He glanced back toward Speedwell and saw a light between the hedges. He couldn’t turn the roadster around on the narrow road, so he slammed on the brakes, opened the door, and stepped to the pavement. He saw a figure in white—Maisie, it had to be—running toward him in stocking feet, her blond hair cascading off her shoulders. Ernest removed his chauffeur’s cap as she threw her arms around his neck, nearly tipping him over as she kissed him on the lips. She tasted like lipstick and sparkling wine. He held her tight, pressed so close that he could feel her heart racing through their layers of silk and cotton and sticky sateen. His hand found a soft spot at the nape of her neck, and he heard a sigh float away on the breeze. And when he finally, reluctantly let go, it was only to exhale his surprise.
“You deserve that more than anyone,” she whispered as she hugged him again, clinging to him, and then letting go. “I’m sorry that’s all I have to give.”
CROSSROADS
(1910)
A first kiss means everything.
Those were the words that echoed in Ernest’s mind as he drove home in a fresh downpour, to the sound of speeding tires on wet pavement, the growl of automobile engines, and the lonely bell of a late-night trolley.
Ernest touched his lips. He felt torn, twisted, pulled between his perpetual longing for Fahn, who knew him better than anyone, and Maisie, who had just surrendered a part of her heart. And yet he couldn’t be with either girl.
He turned the car south, toward the center of the city, and folded the front window down. As he drove into the cold night, he wanted to feel the wind, the chill; he wanted to feel something—anything to assuage the enormous vacancy in the roadster’s passenger seat, the cavity in his chest. But all he found was the dank smell of horses leaving their marks on the muddy streets, the stench of low tide and rotting fish.
As Ernest drove through downtown, he was in no hurry to return to the Tenderloin. He didn’t have to be back until 11:00 P.M. to take Madam Flora and Miss Amber to the train station. So he cruised along the waterfront, past piers nine and ten, where the U.S. Navy’s Great White Fleet sat at anchor, running lights aglow. He veered west in the shadow of the glittering Orpheum Theatre, where Maisie and the Gibson girls had seen productions of Misalliance and The Shadow of the Glen, gossipy plays that stretched the definitions of love and dissected the politics of the day, temperance issues, the suffrage movement, labor, socialism, and the union battles that dominated the headlines.
Ernest now realized this had all been part of Maisie’s education, calculated planning by Madam Flora and Miss Amber. And as he regarded a long line of theatergoers paired up beneath dark umbrellas, he saw that tonight’s featured production was At the Old Cross Roads, a show about the child of an octoroon. It was an odd happenstance, since a crib joint called the Octoroon House sat four blocks away on the fringes of the Garment District.
Ernest had always wondered about that place. Almost as much as about Weed’s Pharmacy on Jackson Street. He glanced at his reflection in the shop window as he motored past. Weed’s was where the girls went each month for illegal discourses on womanhood and how to avoid pregnancy. Mrs. Irvine and her group often stood outside the store with signs on Sunday afternoons, protesting.
—
WHEN ERNEST FINALLY arrived back at the Tenderloin, he expected to see preparations for a grand send-off for Madam Flora and Miss Amber. Yet all he heard were honking cars and music from nearby saloons. The upstairs girls were all in their rooms with customers. And the servants had busied themselves elsewhere. Their absence spoke more than a pretend smile ever could, and revealed how much resentment had built up toward their once beloved leader and her business partner.
The only people who said goodbye were Mrs. Blackwell, who held an umbrella for Madam Flora, and Professor True, who was there to help with the luggage, as moisture from a sudden downpour fogged up his glasses.
Ernest expected Miss Amber to ask about Maisie or Louis Turnbull, but all she said was “King Street Station. Be quick about it.”
Madam Flora said nothing.
At the nearby station the Empire Builder was waiting, the flagship locomotive of the Great Northern Railway, a midnight train bound for Chicago. In the City of Broad Shoulders they’d switch trains for New York, where they would board an ocean liner, and then sail beyond the horizon of the Americas.
Ernest watched as Madam Flora, eyelids drooping from laudanum, boarded a Pullman car designed for sleeping, while black porters, all named George, helped with the luggage. After Madam Flora and Miss Amber were aboard, he stood on the platform as others blew kisses and crowds of well-wishers waved at the departing train with a flurry of white handkerchiefs.
Ernest watched Miss Amber disappear without so much as a glance in his direction, or back toward the Tenderloin. He lingered long after the train had departed and the station became as quiet as a library on Sunday morning, nothing but the sound of the rain and the occasional clip-clop of a leather heel on the marble floor.
When Ernest finally walked back outside, he saw that all the cars had stopped, idling in the street, as a team of horses nearby grew restless, braying in their harness. Ernest stepped to the roadster and climbed atop the running board to see what the commotion was. He saw a crowd of people in front of Billy the Mugs, a popular saloon where men drank buckets of beer and often fought in the alley. The vaudeville musicians in the basement had also come up to the street. The fiends who haunted the stoop of a nearby drugstore had even stopped their begging to watch.
Despite the rain, another crowd had gathered on the opposite sidewalk: finely dressed women, holding folded newspapers above their heads to keep their hats from getting wet. That’s when he spo
tted Mrs. Irvine and a dozen other matrons from the Mothers of Virtue, protest signs in hand, warning of the evils of John Barleycorn. The ladies were mixed in with uniformed men and women from the Stranger’s Rest and Olive Branch Missions a few blocks away. But the crowds weren’t shouting at each other. They were silent as a tintype photograph, luminescent in their intensity as they stared at someone between them in the middle of the street, a woman—a girl.
Ernest recognized her immediately from a block away. He recognized her despite the rain, despite the flickering glow of gaslights and the veering, reaching, clawing shadows cast by the headlamps of the motorcars that honked and veered around her.
Fahn.
She was naked. Barefoot. Limping down the middle of the street in the pouring rain.
Some men whistled, others heckled and jeered, laughing.
The missionary women gasped, clutching their pearls.
Ernest felt his heart in his throat as he pushed his way through the crowd, running toward her, shouting her name. But she was confused and didn’t seem to recognize him. Her skin was so pale she looked cadaverous, dazed, staring ahead in the direction of the Tenderloin. The street was littered with cigarette butts and broken glass from discarded bottles of beer, and her feet were cut, bleeding, leaving ruddy footprints on the pavement. Ernest removed his coat as she fell to her knees. He wrapped the long woolen shell around her shoulders. Her wet, tangled hair reeked of smoke. She held out a clenched fist and slowly opened her fingers like flower petals blooming. She stared down at a handful of quarters, then dropped them. The bits of silver clattered to the pavement and rolled away, skittering toward the gutters and the feet of a group of women who were crossing themselves and saying silent prayers.
Ernest looked up at the ladies, many of whom shielded their eyes with their hats or their scarves, receding into the shadows. “Help me!” he shouted as he heard bells in the distance. “She’s hurt! Help me get her to a doctor.”
The women stared back in silence, shaking their heads with pity.
“Call a doctor!” Ernest shouted again. Then he saw Mrs. Irvine. She looked him in the eye and said, “The wages of sin.” Then she turned her back and disappeared into the crowd.
Ernest struggled to his feet with Fahn cradled in his arms. Her body was cold, and as she went limp, he heard the wail of a siren. He thought it was a motorized police wagon until he saw flames erupt from the windows of a building five blocks away, tongues of flame illuminating old brick, licking the sky as clouds continued to weep. It was a crib joint, the Tangerine.
The fire brigade arrived shouting, “Move!” and “Make way!” as more bells rang.
Women shrieked and fled; dozens of men with axes and buckets, a horse-drawn steamer, a hose wagon, and a new motorized chemical engine made their way up the crowded avenue.
Ernest opened the passenger door to the car and set Fahn in the backseat as gently as possible. He found all the driving robes and covered her shivering body. With a small lap blanket, he tried to dry her long hair, which clung to her face like swashes of ink, strange letters, foreboding characters. Her lips were pale, and she began to shake.
“It’s going to be okay,” Ernest said, though he wasn’t sure.
Then Fahn drew a deep, shuddering breath, as though she’d kicked her way to the surface of the ocean, released from the grasp of a hidden current. She blinked and looked around. She stared, recognizing him as the rain dripped from her bangs down her cheeks. She swallowed and cleared her throat, smiling, trembling as she spoke. “A-a-are you still going to marry m-m-me?”
STILL
(1962)
Ernest sat in his apartment at the Publix while Gracie slept in the bedroom.
After his arguing with his daughters at the hospital about where she should go, Gracie herself spoke up. “If you don’t mind…I’d like to go home with young Ernest,” she said with tired eyes. “He always took excellent care of me.”
I did, Ernest thought.
From that moment I found her bleeding in the street, I never let go again.
—
JUJU HAD BEEN furious—at the doctors who murmured about Gracie’s unstable behavior and how she’d be better off in a mental hospital. And at Ernest for thinking Gracie would be fine back in Chinatown and not at Juju’s house on Queen Anne Hill.
But as Ernest stared through the cracked window toward King Street Station, he knew that while his apartment was certainly lacking, Gracie’s home was with him. That had always been true, except for the time when she’d become lost to herself. And to him. At least the neighborhood still had a certain familiarity. Despite the good and the bad, there was also peace. In the end Gracie had chosen to be here, and she seemed more comfortable now. Though she didn’t always remember him as her husband, she now always remembered Ernest as her friend—a beacon, a safe harbor. After a day of sporadic rest, always waking up with him nearby, that was still the case.
Even Juju had to relent then.
Ernest stretched his back and tried to relax as he read the Sunday Seattle Times. It was the World’s Fair Souvenir Edition, THE LARGEST EDITION IN THE PAPER’S HISTORY, or so a front-page headline declared in bold black and blue type.
Gracie still wanted to go to the expo. In her waking moments, that was all she talked about—often mixing up the new fair and the old.
Ernest skimmed articles about pencils and postcards being given away; stories about livestock judges from France; the Spacearama featuring twenty-five UFO experts and astronomers from around the world; even photos of the feathered, high-heeled showgirls who would be performing Salute to Ziegfeld. Nothing surprised him anymore, not even reading about the Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov, who’d visited the fair last week and had offended everyone by stating that he didn’t believe in God. “I,” he declared, “believe in man and science and the future.”
The future, Ernest thought. Everyone in town seemed to be happily abuzz, even at the hospital, where silk-screened Century 21 decals had been slapped on doors and windows. It was a collective celebration—the future was here, ready or not. Meanwhile a part of Gracie was still marooned on an island somewhere in the past.
Ernest was finishing the paper, reading about abstract paintings that had been hung sideways at the Fine Arts Pavilion, when Rich, Hanny, and Juju arrived. They carried an enormous basket of flowers and a bouquet of helium balloons that swayed and twirled beneath the ceiling fan. Ernest watched their strings slowly twist into a knot.
“Someone from church sent these,” Hanny said with a smile. “The manager downstairs asked me to bring them up.” She put them in a corner of the room where other arrangements from the hospital had already begun to wilt.
Ernest smelled something savory and was surprised to see that Rich had a familiar carton on his lap, tied with twine. Hanny’s fiancé undid the string and folded back the lid, tilting the box so Ernest could see inside.
“The Lun Ting Bakery?” Ernest asked in disbelief.
“Hanny said these were your wife’s favorite comfort food.”
“Mine too,” Ernest said as he took one of the bau. It felt warm as he peeled the wax paper from the bottom and bit into the pillowy pastry, a barbecue-pork-filled cloud. He could smell the mushrooms, the scallions, even before his taste buds could react to the filling. The buns were a welcome change from the bland hospital meals he’d been subsisting on for the past few days.
“How’s Mom reacting to her new surroundings after her little setback?” Hanny asked. She reached into her purse for a pack of Winstons. Ernest watched as she lit a cigarette with a matchbook from the Golden Apple Nightclub down the street.
Setback? Ernest thought. He was grateful she had seen only her mother resting in the hospital, not her collapse in the street.
“Maybe tomorrow we should bring her buckwheat udon from Maneki? Ma always loved that place,” Hanny said to Rich. “She even worked there as a hostess once upon a time, long before the war. She used to tell us stories of how all th
e women would read poetry and sing folk songs to homesick Japanese boys, who called them nihonjin tori. Ma was one of those Japanese birds who raised enough money to fund the Japantown library.”
Ernest checked on Gracie, who was still napping as their daughters reminisced about their mother volunteering at the Betsuin Buddhist Temple and the Japanese Community Center, how she used to lead dances in the street during Obon each summer.
Meanwhile, Rich was busy exploring the tiny apartment, examining the faded prints on his walls, the books in Ernest’s bookcase. He tilted his head as he read the titles: America Is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan and Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone; romantic novels by Longus, Chéri by Colette, and Henry De Vere Stacpoole; and volumes of translated poetry by Li Bai and Cao Xueqin. Ernest listened as Rich read the title of Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets.
“Seems like your apartment is nothing but books,” Rich said.
“A terrible habit.” Ernest smiled. “Picked it up in my youth.”
Rich furrowed his brow. “It’s like books are your religion.”
“Well, my mother was a Confucian, and I believe my father was a Methodist,” Ernest answered with a shrug. “But I didn’t see either one again after I was four or five.”
Rich nodded and clicked his jaw. He seemed to consider this as he drifted to Ernest’s makeshift kitchen, examining photos on the refrigerator of Hanny and Juju as little girls, playing in a plastic swimming pool, drinking from a garden hose.
“What’s the story with this morbid-looking thing?” Rich held up a picture postcard of an oil painting that stood out from the black-and-white smiles of the photographs. The postcard’s flat colors depicted a woman with a book and a cigarette. A sad, partially decorated tree, surrounded by faceless women, haunted the background.