The Gilded Age, a Time Travel

by Lisa Mason

  Mariah scurries for the medicine and a spoon of pure gold. How Jessie loves gold! And how she loves the pale green bottle filled with the precious medicine. The label depicts a buxom, apple-cheeked mother stirring a brew in a cast-iron cauldron while a bevy of cupids flutter all around her on pink wings. Mariah expertly slides a dose through Jessie’s lips, and in a trice, Jessie feels absolutely healthful again. The delicious bitter tonic slides down her throat with a burning sensation, yet swells her head with a sanguine joy that assures her she will live forever, never mind the ache in her liver.

  She slides the fan into her sleeve and peers in the mirror again. She always looks so much better after a dose of Scotch Oats Essence. “Not bad for forty,” she tells her reflection. Forty years old? Can it really be? She smooths some ruby-colored balm over her pursed lips. Mr. Heald watches her, his mouth falling slightly open, his eyes glazed. He likes to watch her put on makeup. A lot of men do. Them Snob Hill ladies never use face paint. That’s why them Snob Hill ladies always look so plain, in spite of their fancy togs.

  “You don’t look a day over twenty, Jessie,” Mr. Heald says in a ragged whisper.

  “Nor am I, darlin’,” she tells him. He is so eager, he’ll pay double the usual when she gets around to entertaining him again. “Nor am I.”

  *

  “Joaquin Miller sent me,” the caller tells her. He leaves off brushing dust from his jacket and politely bows, then pulls out a smoke and lights it, his hands trembling.

  Li’l Lucy gazes at him as if he were a shot of fine-aged bourbon and she a-dyin’ of thirst.

  Jessie enters the foyer regally, Mr. Heald ambling behind her like a courtier at her beck and call, his respectable appearance enhancing her own prestige. The caller examines them curiously. Jessie loves making a grand entrance like one of them Snob Hill ladies.

  “Joaquin Miller,” she says. “Now, there’s a good egg even if he is an odd bird. He says he gimped that leg of his fighting the wild Cherokee, but have you noticed he never limps on the same foot twice? I am Miss Jessie Malone, proprietress and landlady of this establishment. What’s your name, buster?”

  “I am Daniel J. Watkins of Saint Louis, London, and Paris.”

  “Paris! You just blew in from Paris?” Jessie whips out her fan, concealing her excitement behind the lace. “Are they still wearing bustles in Paris, Mr. Watkins?”

  “Heavens, no, Miss Malone. Mr. Worth has eliminated the bustle in his latest creations, which I for one most approve of. Now a gentleman can admire the long, slow sweep of a lady’s hip. Do you not agree, sir?” he says to Mr. Heald.

  Mr. Heald stares, stupefied.

  Li’l Lucy turns beet red and giggles like a lunatic.

  Jessie shushes the girl but she can barely contain herself, either. A gentleman who can yap about Paris fashions! About Mr. Worth’s latest creations! Can you imagine! But her suspicious nature kicks up. Is he one of those odd birds who attends drag parties? She’s been hired to attend drag parties. There was one on Snob Hill where the whiskey magnate demanded that she lace up his corset extra tight. The long, slow sweep of a lady’s hip, indeed.

  “Sure and aren’t you an outspoken young gentleman.” Jessie saunters over to him and circles him, making a show of brushing dust from the back of his jacket. She runs her hand down the long, slow sweep of his back. Young and vigorous, all right, with some little gun tucked in the back of his belt. It would be a crying shame for the ladies of San Francisco if he turned out to be a fairy. “You have an interest in ladies’ fashions?”

  “Only when they’re being discarded.”

  Li’l Lucy presses her palm to her mouth.

  “And Mr. Worth,” Mr. Watkins continues smoothly, “has widened the sleeves and the front of the skirt. Tightened the waist and added fullness to the bosom, pardon my language, miss,” he says to Li’l Lucy, who is beside herself with giggles. “So that a lady like yourself, Miss Malone, will show the perfect figure. Like an hourglass, is how they put it.”

  What gentleman in this burg has flattered her so shamelessly, can anyone tell her that? Jessie tosses her head and stands back, trying to size him up. Is Mr. Daniel J. Watkins of Saint Louis, London, and Paris a little too smooth? What is he, anyway? A gambler or a tool? She’s been scammed and chiseled before. She’ll tolerate no deadheads in her establishment.

  “Tighten the waist?” she says forlornly, kneading her aching liver through the corset.

  Now Mr. Watkins circles around her, staring blatantly, inspecting her. “I fear you will have to nip it in. But just a bit, Miss Malone.”

  Jessie hasn’t blushed in fifteen years. The heat in her cheeks must be a sudden fever. “Jar me, we can all stand for some improvement.” Then she frowns. The Queen of the Underworld has a skin as thick as buffalo hide. She will not be stung by this pup’s insolence. She seizes a heavy brass ashtray, shoves it in his hands. “Smoking is permitted only in the smoking parlor, Mr. Watkins. I despise the demon weed.”

  “I do apologize,” he murmurs, stamps out the smoke, and shuts his trap. A wary look of exhaustion crosses his face. It suddenly occurs to Jessie that young Mr. Watkins looks rather green about the gills. She glares at Li’l Lucy, who stops giggling at once. She sniffs, detecting the stink of choke-dog beneath the tobacco.

  “What can I do for you, sir?” She crosses her arms and taps her toe, looking him up and down with a thundercloud on her face.

  “Miss Malone, I am looking to lease a suite of rooms. I would prefer my own water closet and bath, if this fine establishment boasts such amenities. I’m told you may have something available.”

  Jessie considers the possibilities. As it is, Li’l Lucy will have to add two weeks to the term of her contract for her medical treatment and resting-up time at Dupont Street. It’s high time for Li’l Lucy to get back to work. “Mr. Watkins, this fine establishment boasts many things, and a suite with a private water closet and bath is one of them. This young lady was just about to move out, wasn’t you, dear? Get packin’, Lucy.”

  She stares at Li’l Lucy, who cringes and dashes back up the stairs. Li’l Lucy is pushing nineteen years of age. She is getting long in the tooth and dim in the noggin. Jessie watches her go. If Li’l Lucy suffers another medical problem, Jessie will have to move her to the cribs on Morton Alley, and that’s that. The biz is the biz.

  “There is just one problem, a minor one, I’m sure,” Mr. Watkins says with a lovely smile. He pats his pockets for a smoke with the blind gesture of habit and finds one. Then he recalls her injunction and twirls the ciggie mournfully though his nicotine-stained fingers.

  Jessie sighs. Young and vigorous. And insolent. And on the make. “Sure and you cannot pay me right away.”

  He looks at her, all fraudulent innocence and cunning and genuine desperation aging his youthful face into an odd sort of mask. As if a wholly different person stands before her for a moment.

  What is happening? Something strange! Jessie’s breath catches in her throat. Fireworks pop and crackle overhead, and she starts, her heart fluttering.

  Then a horse clatters on the cobblestones outside, and the spell is broken, and poor Mr. Watkins looks like nothing so much as sick, lost kid.

  Through the window, Jessie spies Madame De Cassin. What a fine lady she is, too. Jessie smiles as the dashing spiritualist leaps off her black stallion, ties him to the hitching post, and stomps up the stairs. She bursts into the foyer without ringing the bell, splendid in her billowing black cape, black riding habit, and tall black boots. She always smells of horses, leather, and lavender oil. Madame De Cassin surveys Mr. Watkins with a piercing glance and, without hesitation, says, “Well, give him a room, Miss Malone, but he’ll want to watch his step. I’ll wager you’re born under the sign of Aries, sir, am I correct?”

  Jessie fairly bursts with joy. Madame De Cassin is the most respected, most sought-after expert in matters of the occult in this burg. Sure and the spiritualist has never laid eyes on Mr. Watkins before, yet she of
fers her opinion of him in less than a trice.

  “You see?” Jessie says. “Madame De Cassin knows everything!”

  “Aries, then, sir?” says Madame De Cassin. “The headstrong ram?”

  “I haven’t the slightest notion, madame,” Mr. Watkins says and lights another smoke in spite of Jessie’s admonition. Mr. Heald pats perspiration off his forehead and grins tightly. The spiritualist has laid eyes on Mr. Heald before.

  “Well, what I do know is this, my dear,” Madame De Cassin says to Jessie, tossing her riding whip on the side table, together with her black riding hat with its jet beads and black plumes. She flexes her hands, which she always keeps gloved in the finest black kid, and imperiously surveys them all. “I do know it’s a fine time to call upon the sweet spirits.”

  “Mariah! Li’l Lucy!” Jessie calls. “Get the sitting room ready.”

  Madame De Cassin boldly stares at Mr. Watkins. “Are you a believer sir?”

  “A believer in what?” Mr. Watkins stares back, bold as you please.

  “In communication with dead.” To Mr. Heald, “How about you, sir? Have you ever spoken with the sweet spirits? Indeed, have you ever spoken truthfully with your wife?”

  But Jessie is too excited to pay much attention to Mr. Heald’s scarlet face and sputtering breath. “Sure and we have enough people to sit for a séance, do we not, Madame de Cassin, if we include the gentlemen and Li’l Lucy? Have you ever sat at séance, Mr. Watkins?” she says, taking his arm. “Mariah! Bring us the sherry.”

  *

  Jessie’s sitting room is a small inner chamber with no windows, one door, and one low-burning brass gaslamp left unpolished so that a dark green patina has mottled the metal. The walls are heavily draped in black velvet. Even on this sunny day, the sitting room broods untouched by any natural light. A large round wooden table stands at the chamber’s center, surrounded by eight plain wooden chairs. A single brass candlestick holding a squat black candle thick with wax drippings juts up from the table’s center.

  Li’l Lucy busily rearranges five of the chairs around the table, scraping three chairs into a corner of the room. Mariah lights the black candle, holds the match to incense burners slung on brass chains mounted on the wall among the folds of black velvet. The room is heavy with the scent of lavender oil and incense and candlewax.

  Yes! Just the way Jessie likes it.

  Next Mariah sets out a crystal decanter filled with sherry and five heavy crystal tumblers. She scowls with disapproval, her black eyes flickering. She turns down the gaslamp, makes the sign of the Cross over her breast, and flees, shutting the door behind her.

  Madame De Cassin generously pours out sherry in each of the tumblers. “To the sweet spirits,” she solemnly toasts Jessie and seats herself, swirling her black cape over her shoulder.

  “Well, now. Didn’t know they nipped a tick before the mumbo jumbo,” Mr. Heald mutters to Mr. Watkins with a wink. “No wonder the wife goes in for it.”

  “To the sweet spirits,” says Mr. Watkins enthusiastically, tossing sherry down his throat and reaching for the decanter.

  Li’l Lucy noisily slurps, burps, and giggles.

  “To the sweet spirits,” Jessie says passionately, ignoring the others’ disrespect. They shall see! Madame De Cassin insists on the ritual imbibing of spirits—spirits for the spirits, you see—which opens our mortal door to the Summerland. The great spiritualist supplies this particular sherry to Jessie just for this sacred purpose, and this purpose only. The sherry establishes a certain sympathy with the madame’s spirit guide, Chief Silver Thorne, who during his life on earth much favored the beverage. Jessie happily gulps the smoky-tasting liquor, which warms her just as the medicinal benefit of Scotch Oats Essence is beginning to fade. This particular sherry makes her head spin unlike any other. “I want to speak with Rachael, Madame De Cassin.”

  “Of course you do,” the spiritualist says. She sets her tumbler down, staring severely at the other sitters. Even Mr. Watkins gets the hint, reluctantly relinquishing his tumbler. Madame De Cassin makes long, sweeping motions with her gloved hands, clearing the magnetic energy over the table. Her handsome face goes slack in the candlelight. Her eyelids flutter and her pupils roll up, showing the whites beneath them.

  “You will all join hands,” she whispers.

  Jessie takes the spiritualist’s left hand and Mr. Watkins’s right hand. Her heart begins to pound and her head whirls in the perfumed darkness.

  Mr. Heald sits next to the spiritualist on the right, Li’l Lucy blinks nervously between the two gentlemen. They all join hands, and the circle is complete.

  Madame De Cassin wastes no time going into a trance. She begins to moan and sway, keening louder and louder till she leans over the black candle and, with a chilling screech, blows out the flame.

  “Chief Silver Thorne?” she calls out. “My dear friend in the Summerland, my noble Cherokee chief, where are you-oo-oo?”

  A shudder rocks the spiritualist, and Jessie trembles with fear and excitement. She grips the spiritualist’s gloved hand. Lordy, her hand is so firm from equestrian activities! Jessie cannot see a thing in the darkness. A ghostly caress tickles the back of her neck. “Sure and I feel the chief’s hand,” Jessie whispers, dread rushing deliciously up her spine. Shapes blacker than the darkness reel and totter before her blinded eyes.

  From the other side of the table, Mr. Heald makes little yelping noises.

  Madame De Cassin lets loose a bloodcurdling yell, and a horn blows softly just above Jessie’s ear. Then a bizarre masculine voice spills out in the vicinity of the spiritualist’s mouth. “I am here, Rebecca.” The voice has a strange accent Jessie can’t quite place.

  The spiritualist’s cloak rustles as she sways and lurches. “Forgive me, Chief Silver Thorne, but we have strangers with us today.”

  “Yes, I sense their presence,” Chief Silver Thorne answers irritably. “Two gentlemen who do not support woman suffrage.”

  Mr. Heald sputters and says, “Well, I’ll be a fiddler’s bitch.”

  Mr. Watkins says, “I certainly do not. Women suffer enough. Ha, ha.”

  Ghostly caresses patter on the back of Jessie’s head. “Please, Chief Silver Thorne,” she pleads. “Let us not discuss woman suffrage again. You know I don’t approve of giving women the vote or a role in politics. It ain’t ladylike.”

  “Yes, my dear chief,” Madame De Cassin implores. “As always, Miss Malone wishes to speak with her beloved Rachael.”

  “Very well, Miss Malone,” Chief Silver Thorne says. “I will see if I can find Rachael in the Summerland if you will promise to treat Li’l Lucy with continuing kindness. She has been ill, Miss Malone, has she not?”

  Jessie clucks her tongue. Chief Silver Thorne is forever going on about equality for women, rights for Negroes and for the heathen Chinese, and showing kindness toward the girls she’s got under contract. Why should a Cherokee chief who lived two hundred years ago give two hoots about such things? Sure and she wishes Madame De Cassin would find another spirit guide who ain’t so damn self-righteous.

  “Has she not been ill?” Chief Silver Thorne repeats.

  “It’s quite true, sir, I still ache,” Li’l Lucy whispers.

  “Yes, yes, she’s been ill,” Jessie says, vexed. Li’l Lucy fell ill because she failed to follow Jessie’s instructions on how avoid getting in the family way. Serves Jessie right, including the pathetic girl at a séance on her most magnetic day.

  “You will promise me, won’t you, Miss Malone?” Chief Silver Thorne persists.

  “Oh, fine and dandy. I promise.” She’s still sending Li’l Lucy back to the Parisian Mansion. But perhaps the Morton Alley cribs can wait.

  “Good. Now, then. Rachael?” Chief Silver Thorne begins to call out in a cloudy voice that seems to come from the ceiling. “Rachael?”

  “Rachael?” Madame De Cassin says briskly in-between the spirit guide’s masculine summonings. “Rachael, answer us please.”

 
The high, clear voice of a young girl emanates from the ceiling. “Jessie? Oh my dear one, is that you, Jessie?”

  Grief spills through Jessie like it always does. The sharp, deep yearning for her Rachael, for Lily Lake lost so long ago. Jessie grips the hands of Mr. Watkins and the spiritualist even tighter as tears, real tears, spill down her face. “Rachael? My beloved Rachael?”

  “I’m here, Jessie.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Of course, I am, Jessie. What about you? How are you, my darlin’?”

  “I’m fine, Rachael.”

  “Have you gone to see a doctor about that pain in your liver we talked about last time?”

  “No. I… .I’ve been busy. You know how it is.”

  “You really must go, Jessie. You must see a doctor. I feel something is wrong.”

  “Pah, never mind about me. Rachael, I saw a lady today. She was attacked by them hatchet men in the park. I can’t get her out of my mind! Can you tell me if she’s all right?”

  Rachael hesitates, and Madame De Cassin says in her own voice, “Rachael has been picnicking in the Summerland today, Jessie. She’s enjoying her own Fourth of July, and she may not know—“

  Now Rachael’s voice interjects, “Someone else has come. Someone else is here with me. Someone who has crossed over in recent days. A lady. A pale, pretty lady with such a sad face. And such deep sea eyes, swimming with tears, always swimming with tears.”

  Mr. Watkins inhales sharply as if someone has punched him in the gut. He whispers, “By God, is that you, Mama?”

  “Yes, she is your mama,” Rachael whispers. “Mama is telling me something. Mama says, ‘Beware, my son. Beware, you are in danger.’”

  “Yes, it’s true! A dip pinched my boodle book on the ferry from Oakland.”

  “’No, the pickpocket is not the danger she means,’” Rachael whispers. “Mama says… .”

  Suddenly a freezing wind whips through the sitting room, and an eerie sound whistles. Jessie’s teeth begin to chatter, a sour taste pools on her tongue. The stench of rotgut wafts over the table, and a snippet of honky-tonk music blares in her ear. The darkness turns blindingly white, stark white for an eye blink, then flips into darkness again.