by Jamie Ford
To Ernest the man seemed so full of himself, his waistcoat looked ready to burst.
“Just seeing what has become of you”—Mr. Turnbull smiled broadly—“that’s all the thanks I will ever need. You’re living proof that my life’s work has been a noble adventure. Gold is folly, ships—they sail away. But fresh humanity, that is still the ultimate commodity.”
Ernest thought about Fahn, staggering home in the rain. He imagined all the girls like her, who never found someone like Madam Flora. And even Flora, succumbing to the tolls of her labors.
Ernest watched as Mr. Turnbull returned to his morning paper.
The man spoke without looking up. “And now John D. Rockefeller Junior has retired to become a full-time philanthropist.” He turned the page. “Meanwhile half a world away, China has abolished slavery. How about that? If you ask me, it sounds like the slaves have broken their chains of bondage on two shores.” He laughed to himself as he looked up. “It was a pleasure meeting you. I’m sure you can find your way out.”
Ernest left without saying goodbye. He was barely able to depart without grabbing the man and throttling him. But he’d be of no use to Maisie and Fahn in jail.
Beyond the elevator a servant showed Ernest to the door and down the steps to where he found Maisie next to the roadster, eyes closed, sunning on the grass, legs crossed, arms spread, her fingers amid the clover. When Ernest’s shadow fell on her, she opened her eyes and squinted up at him. “He told you, huh?”
“Told me what?”
“That he was the one who brought you over here.”
Ernest nodded. “And Fahn too. She was on that ship as well.”
Maisie closed her eyes. “Just like I said. The good. The bad. It’s all connected. It’s like fate—that’s what our darling Rose would call this. The herbalist in Chinatown would call our tangled lives the red thread. Madam Flora would call it…destiny.”
Ernest looked at her. He was lost for words.
“Don’t look so sad,” Maisie said as she sat up.
Ernest swallowed. “Why are you so happy?”
“I’m happy because Louis Turnbull made me the offer of a lifetime. He doesn’t have a wife anymore, no children to speak of, so he wants me to become his ward. Can you believe that? He said he’d take me abroad—I can go anywhere, do anything. I can find my mother. I can pay for whatever she needs.” Maisie gushed her enthusiasm with a vigor that wounded. “And the best part is, he said I could bring you along as a servant. We could all sail for Europe together. Spread our wings. How does that sound?”
Like he’s never stopped buying and selling people. Ernest sighed.
“Maybe you should take some time and think it over,” he said.
“What’s there to consider? Don’t you see how perfect this is? We can leave this week. The two of us. Just think about where we could go, what we could see.”
Ernest fell silent, though a part of him was screaming to join her.
“Well, the three of us, actually.” Maisie shrugged with a smile. “But I’m sure Turnbull will be occupied most of the time, doing other things, running his business.”
Ernest cared about Maisie, so much that it hurt. But as much as he wanted to be with her, to travel the world in her company, to share the life she’d have, he knew he could never accept that kind of offer. He’d been given away, twice. And in that moment, he swore he would never give himself up that way again.
Maisie stepped closer and placed her hands on his shoulders. She pursed her lips and leaned forward, then paused. She looked into his eyes, as though she were about to speak, as though important, convincing words lingered on the tip of her tongue. Magical whispers. Secret promises. Stories with happy endings.
But she fell silent.
“I can’t,” Ernest said.
He held her hands.
“You can’t?” Maisie asked. “Or you won’t?”
Ernest imagined a sunset at sea. The smell of the ocean. The sound of the waves, crashing. Then he remembered the cold rain last night.
“Fahn is back.” Just speaking Fahn’s name, knowing she was safe again, filled him with hope, satisfaction, and joy. “She needs me.”
Maisie nodded and let go. She wearily climbed into the backseat and closed her eyes. She didn’t stir when he started the noisy car. She hardly moved as he drove back to the Tenderloin in silence.
UNSPOKEN
(1910)
The next morning Maisie was gone.
She didn’t leave a note, but she did leave her necklace in lieu of a goodbye, on a pillow next to Fahn as she slept. Ernest found the strand of diamonds in the morning, when he brought Fahn tea and soft-boiled eggs for breakfast.
Fahn had recovered just enough to fully understand the significance of her friend’s absence, as Ernest explained that Maisie had left to become the ward of Louis Turnbull. He also told her that it was Turnbull who in all likelihood had helped bring him and Fahn across the Pacific. The words sounded like fiction as Ernest described Maisie’s plan to travel to Europe to find her mother—and how she’d invited Ernest along.
“Why didn’t you go?” Fahn asked, holding the necklace.
He could sense the strange admiration and jealousy of the upstairs girls that had driven Fahn to such disastrous choices. But he could also now see a greater wisdom in her eyes, a validation. She knew what such choices could cost; whether they involved a crib joint or a gilded cage—the price was always the same.
“Because…” Ernest stirred milk and honey into Fahn’s tea. Then he handed her the cup. “I thought you were still going to marry me someday.”
A small part of him regretted not going with Maisie. It would have been nice to travel the globe. But this was his world now—she was his world.
Fahn held his hand. “Be careful what you wish for, young Ernest.”
—
WHEN SUPPERTIME CAME, Fahn dressed for dinner. She limped to the servants’ table, sat next to Ernest, and chatted amiably with the maids and Mrs. Blackwell as though little had changed. She even joked about becoming a Gibson girl after all, now that the Mayflower had left a vacancy—which made Ernest nearly choke on his Welsh rarebit. Violet and Iris laughed, albeit nervously. No one dared to ask what had happened at the Tangerine, about the fire, and whether Fahn had had anything to do with that calamity. At least until Rose walked in, late from cleaning Maisie’s now-empty room.
“I went up the street today to pick up mending for the girls,” Rose gushed. “I just had to take a detour to the crib that caught fire. Lord, it’s a wreck! Just beams and part of a staircase—like looking at the carcass of a whale, bones burned black. Workmen on the avenues were saying it’s a miracle no one got hurt.”
Ernest noticed how everyone in the servants’ dining room was doing their level best not to look in Fahn’s direction. He couldn’t help but see her again in memory, stumbling down the street in the rain. Bloody footprints. Laughter.
“I don’t suppose you had anything to do with that fire, did you?” Rose asked, glancing at Fahn before tucking her napkin into her lap. Then she noticed the condemning stares. “Oh, my. I said something out of turn again, didn’t I?”
The room fell so silent that Ernest could hear the thrum of the electric lightbulbs flickering overhead, the sound of someone’s stomach gurgling through layers of silk, cotton, and wool, the muffled footfalls of the ladies upstairs, heels on carpet.
Fahn set aside her knife and fork. She delicately wiped her chin. “What do you think, thorny Rose?” she said as she adjusted the wick on the oil lamp in the center of the table, turning a brass knob up and down and making the flame hiss.
Then she asked Ernest to pass the bread.
—
THERE WAS NO doubt in Ernest’s mind that Fahn had set fire to the place. And he didn’t blame her one bit. What he could not allow, though, was for her to work upstairs.
That evening, Ernest stoically manned the front door, greeted the night’s patrons, and gathered the g
entlemen’s woolen overcoats, their pearl-handled walking sticks, and their hats for brushing and cleaning. He showed the guests into the grand parlor, where they were welcomed by the ladies and treated to their usual glasses of sparkling wine served on silver platters. They were rich gentlemen, Ernest had seen some of them many times before, but he had stopped caring to remember their names.
“Don’t look so grim,” Professor True said as he sat down at his piano.
“Is it that obvious?”
“It’s election night, so things are bound to be slow around here. But beyond that, if you really want to know the truth, young man…”
Ernest knew the Professor only wanted to help, that he wanted to add some kind of thoughtful, fatherly advice—a verbal salve to ease the outbreak of melancholy caused by Maisie’s departure and Fahn’s return. But Ernest wasn’t in the mood to listen.
“I’m sorry, Professor,” he said as he walked away. “But I’ve got all the truth I can handle right now.”
Ernest returned to the cloakroom wishing his circumstances could change. That’s when the lights went out, quite literally, and he heard the Gibson girls shrieking and hooting in amusement. Ernest stepped into the gloom and saw that the electric chandeliers that lit the foyer and the parlors were all off, and the belt-driven ceiling fans that cooled the building were winding to a halt, squeaking in the darkness. Mrs. Blackwell barked orders to the maids, who fetched candles and matches to light the oil lamps in each room. Meanwhile, Professor True kept playing, barely skipping a beat.
“Well, I guess we know who our new mayor is,” Mrs. Blackwell muttered to Ernest as he opened the blinds to let in the glow of the gaslit street. Councilman Gill had been a vocal critic of Seattle’s Department of Lighting and Water Works, and it seemed as if the upstart utility had shut down their services in protest of his election.
“How long do you think we’ll be without electricity?” Ernest asked.
“Not long,” Mrs. Blackwell said. “Just long enough to make a point, lad.”
Ernest peered out the window and saw that the nearby saloons were emptying drunken patrons into the street, bottles in hand, filling the sidewalks of the Garment District. Traffic came to a halt as coachmen redoubled the grip on their reins, idling their horses as motorcars honked their horns in vain at the electric streetcars, frozen in place beneath a cobweb of power lines. Despite the blackout, people in the neighborhood shouted and cheered, celebrating the victory of Mayor Gill.
“Politics, lad,” Mrs. Blackwell mused. “It’s still mired in the shuffling of people, from one place to another. According to the rumors I heard, Gill’s campaigners trucked in hundreds of unemployed men from Wenatchee, Yakima, and Cle Elum, from wherever they could find them. They boarded them all over the district, then ushered the entire lot to the polls as newly registered voters. Half of ’em probably can’t even read or sign their names properly.”
Ernest stared out into evening, benumbed. The new mayor was now free to harvest the ripe fruit of the open town policy from the wild seeds he’d sown as a councilman. Ernest knew that in all likelihood business would be better in the long run. The bars and taverns would be allowed to stay open all night now, all week long, and bands would be playing, even on Sundays. How it would affect the Tenderloin was anyone’s guess.
Ernest squinted and rubbed his eyes as the electricity flickered and hummed, and the lights came back on. Everyone cheered, and the Gibson girls toasted their customers and one another. That’s when Ernest saw Fahn across the crowded parlor in her black maid’s uniform and apron. But she wore her hair down like the upstairs girls, in a way that made her look older, and she wore the diamond necklace that Maisie had left. She chatted with the guests, then looked over her shoulder, found Ernest, and tried her best to smile.
—
ERNEST STOOD IN the basement, where he liked to go to collect his thoughts. The dank, musty boiler room, with new electrical wires and old groaning pipes, was as far away as he could get and still technically be performing his duties.
I used to be scared of this place, Ernest thought, remembering how he had hated to be alone in such an eerie, cavernous room. Now this was his sanctuary.
He tied his handkerchief, covering his nose and mouth, feeling the warmth of his breath as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Then he found his way to the coal bin and the boiler, which radiated so much heat his forehead began to perspire.
In a fog of frustration, Ernest reached to open the furnace door, forgetting to put on his gloves first. He felt the searing metal handle burn his palm. He cursed and snatched his hand back, gritting his teeth. His fingers felt icy and hot all at once, and his eyes watered with the pain. He sniffled and examined his swelling hand in the dimly lit room, touching his swollen skin where a blister or two would surely appear. Eventually the pain began to subside and with it, a measure of his sadness.
Ernest shook his head at his foolishness and settled onto an old crate. He looked at the marks on his hand and remembered once catching a glimpse of mysterious cuts along Miss Amber’s upper arm, the old scars that she kept hidden by wearing long sleeves. When Ernest had mentioned what he’d seen to Mrs. Blackwell, she’d called those marks the wrinkles of past suffering, but she’d also said that the men at Western Washington Hospital called Amber’s pernicious habit of cutting herself in her youth a partial suicide. The term seemed absurd, but now, with Fahn’s departure and return, he understood how a part of you could perish. As he stared into the radiant heat, watching the flaring embers, he felt how easy it could be to slip from a place of warmth to a place of engulfing fire.
WHISPERS OF CALLIOPE
(1910)
The following Sunday, Ernest stood next to Fahn on the breezy upper passenger deck of the ferry City of Seattle, staring across the murky blue-green waters of Elliott Bay as the vessel steered toward the tidal flats of Duwamish Head and Alki Beach.
In months past, their days off had been spent in the Garment District, strictly below the line, since so many businesses, theaters, and penny arcades were closed on Sunday. But since Mayor Gill’s election a week ago, Luna Park, the Coney Island of the West, was open every day, just like the many bars and taverns across the city. In fact, Ernest had heard the saloon at Luna Park boasted the largest and best-stocked bar in all of Seattle—a fact that probably didn’t sit well with the amusement park’s sleepy West Seattle neighbors.
As the ferry swayed, he strained to hear the faint sound of a roller coaster and the calliope music of a carousel.
“So, young Ernest, what would you like to do first?” Fahn asked as the ferry slowed on its approach. She leaned on his shoulder as the wooden deck gently rocked, the engine idled, and seabirds circled overhead, squawking, swooping, and diving.
Ernest inhaled the salty air.
This.
He imagined wrapping his arms around her.
And this.
As he’d lean down and kiss each cheek, rosy and cool from the breeze.
And finally this.
He pictured himself whispering.
Something to undo the past.
Then the ferry blared its horn and interrupted his daydreaming.
“The Canals of Venice sound nice,” he said as she took his arm and they joined the crowds and the horses that disembarked from the ferry. They took their time and strolled the mossy boardwalk toward Seattle’s own Midway Plaisance, past freshly painted sandwich boards advertising LaSousa’s Minstrel Band, a Water Carnival, and Madame Schelle the Lion Tamer. They both smirked at the word madame.
Ernest enjoyed the comforting echoes of their visit to the fair. Even some of the attractions were the same, including the hot-air balloon. And he’d also heard that Luna Park was in the process of relocating the Fairy Gorge Tickler, which they had purchased to bolster their own special assortment of thrill rides: the Chute-the-Chutes, the Joy Wheel, the Cave of Mystery, and the enormous Figure Eight Roller Coaster, which was advertised as being a half mile high.
Ernest pulled Fahn aside to let a clown with a tremendous purple wig walk by; the clown pulled a pig in a tiny Studebaker. Then they boarded a long black gondola and floated through the park’s Venetian canals, past string musicians in black tuxedos and a woman in a lofted wig who sang in Italian. Ernest sat back in the red leather seat, warm from the afternoon sun, and wrapped his arm around Fahn’s shoulder the way the couples in the other boats did. As they drifted, Fahn talked about how much she missed Maisie. Ernest felt the same emptiness. He didn’t really believe it—nor did he think Fahn did—but they both agreed that their friend was probably better off. They told themselves that no one could make the Mayflower do anything she didn’t want to do. And as the gondola finally drifted to a stop, they were helped out of the boat.
Fahn brightened as she pointed to a ride off in the distance. “Look, a carousel.”
Ernest heard the pipe organ and chased after her as she ran toward the menagerie of painted horses. They slowed, and she climbed aboard, where she wended her way through a forest of animals—mares mostly, but also bears, buffalo, and even a striped tiger covered in glass jewels. Ernest caught up to her as the previous riders were stepping off and men and women, some still in their Sunday finery, boarded the carousel. He climbed atop a black stallion with a tail made from real horsehair as Fahn sat facing him, sidesaddle, legs crossed, on a matching steed, the lace fringe of her simple yellow dress cresting just below her knees. Ernest paid the operator a dime for the both of them and held on to the striped pole as the music played and the roundabout began to move. As they spun in merry circles, their mounts rising and falling, Fahn’s figure was dappled and reflected a thousand times in the mirrored mosaic at the center of the ride. To Ernest she looked like a girl again, a happy teenager, cheeks flushed with joy, hair pulled back in a bow. And in that moment—that perfect, breathtaking minute, he felt so lucky. He opened his mouth to speak when she looked down at her feet and he saw that her childlike smile had vanished.