San Miguel

by Boyle, T. C.

  On the very morning after they’d returned to the rented house and pulled the covers from the furniture and dusted and swept and sat down to a meal that wasn’t mutton or turkey or fish coated in its own slime—steak, Ida made steak and French-fried potatoes with a fresh garden salad, the greens even better than the meat itself, lettuce a revelation, tomatoes sweet as candy and candy available round the corner and ice cream too—her mother made her go back to school, though she was months behind in her lessons and there were only three weeks remaining in the term. The teacher—Mrs. Sanders—looked different somehow, older, thicker, with a perpetual drop of moisture depending from the tip of her nose and hair thinner and grayer than she remembered. The room seemed smaller, the desks shrunken, the map of the United States that decorated the wall beside the chalkboard more worn and faded. She barely recognized her classmates. Still they were her classmates, young people, people her own age, and what they thought of her clothes or her attitudes or how they might have snubbed her or not didn’t really make a difference, not that first day—it was enough just to be looking at them, hearing them, sitting at a desk in school and listening to Mrs. Sanders drone on as if she were singing in the wrong key.

  Though all the girls wanted to know where she’d been and what it had been like, she felt shy of them, overwhelmed by the wheeling gallery of their faces and the way they seemed to talk without pausing for breath, by their clothes and their boldness and the sheer press of them. One girl, Becky Thorpe, the one she remembered best from last December, asked if she wanted to walk home with her after school but Edith just shook her head, coloring, and murmured, “Maybe tomorrow.”

  Still, she took her time making her way home, peering in the shop windows, lingering outside the drugstore just long enough to avoid attracting notice, going up and down the steps of the Arlington Hotel for the sheer novelty of it. The hotel was her special favorite, a towering glamorous three-story palace dedicated to the society people who came for the air and the sea and the sun, a place that had its own orchestra and, so she’d heard, the best dining room in town. She saw the women arrayed like jewels on the porches that ran the entire length and breadth of the ground floor, the grandes dames from San Francisco and Los Angeles and even farther, from the East Coast maybe, with their silks and furs and their little pug dogs, and she watched them too, studied them as if they were her true curriculum—and they were, or they would be, once school let out and her mother took her back to San Francisco. But she had to laugh at herself, even as a woman came up the steps in a blue velvet polonaise with a borzoi on a leash and the doormen practically fell over themselves to pull back the doors for her, because she’d just gone through her first day at school since before the Christmas holidays and here she was already looking ahead to the end of the term.

  No matter. It wasn’t math or history or geography that interested her. It was the theater, the Burbank, the Tivoli, the Baldwin. Lillian Russell. Danseuses. Stage lights. The orchestra she could feel thrumming in her chest like the wash of her own blood when they were only just tuning up. That was life, not some provincial school, and when she was growing up in San Francisco, for as long back as she could remember, her mother had taken her to the theater and the concert hall, to variety shows and dramas alike. She never tired of the thrill of it, the anticipatory rustling of the audience as the houselights went down, the way the actors emerged from the wings in shirtsleeves and housedresses as if they were in their own parlors with the curtains drawn and no one to see or hear them, or the way the musical performers came right out at you like they were going to rise up and float off the stage.

  For a long while she sat on a bench on the hotel grounds, feeling as if she were doing something illicit, and if anyone questioned her she was going to say she was a guest in the hotel, come down from San Francisco with her parents and staying in Room 200, a number she pulled out of the air. But were there that many rooms? She scanned the windows, doing a quick count, fourteen rooms per side, times three floors, and then multiply that by the four sides, which made a hundred sixty-eight. All right, fine. She was in Room 168, and maybe it was a suite, with a marble bath and gold faucets, and who to say different? She was almost disappointed when no one asked.

  It was past five by the time she started for home—she had no idea it was that late till she glanced up at the clock outside the bank across the street—and she found herself hurrying, feeling guilty, afraid of what her parents would say. Her mother would start scolding in her rasping worn-out voice that was like the buzzing of insects, of hornets, angry hornets, then her stepfather would take over. Had she been wasting her time in nonsense? Had she been with boys, was that it?

  She ran the length of the last block, breathing hard as she swung open the gate and started up the walk. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary—there was the porch swing, the varnished rail and the white palings, the windows glazed in sunlight and the curtains hanging motionless behind them—but she had the oddest feeling that someone was watching her. She had to turn round twice and look back out to the street before she realized with a start that her mother was there, sitting perfectly still in a chair set in the front corner of the yard. At first she thought her mother was waiting for her, ready to pounce, but then she saw that her eyes were closed and her head thrown back so that her face caught the full glare of the sun. Which was odd, not at all like her. Her mother would never sit out of doors and risk her complexion, not without her parasol, but her parasol was nowhere to be seen. And more, and worse: her arms hung limp at her sides, her fingers curled and wrists dangling as if they were barely attached to her.

  “Mother?” she called, coming back down the steps, her heart slamming at her ribs, and then she was bolting across the lawn, the sunlight bleaching everything so that the shadows flattened and the house stood out as if it were made of pasteboard and she were onstage, shaking her now, “Mother! Mother!”

  The moment swelled, huge and hovering, and then, abruptly, it burst. Her mother’s eyes eased open. “What?” she gasped. “What is it?”

  “I thought—” Edith trailed off. Under the glare of the sun her mother’s face looked depleted, the bones standing out in relief, lines tugging at the bloodless flesh around her eyes as if to cinch it tight, tighter, till there was no trace of softness left. “What I mean is . . . I’m home. From school.”

  “I was just sitting here a moment, trying to catch my breath.”

  There was noise, all that clamor she’d missed—voices from the house next door, the creak and clatter of a passing carriage, the dull intonation of bells sounding the quarter hour—and it distracted her. For a moment she was gone, back at the hotel, ascending the steps with a little dog in her arms, the doors flung open wide and all the facets of the chandelier glittering like stars in the ballroom at the end of the hall. She didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to see her mother like this. Didn’t want to be afraid. “Do you need anything?” she heard herself say. “A glass of water? Your parasol—don’t you want your parasol?”

  Her mother was looking at her strangely, almost as if she didn’t recognize her, and then her eyes contracted and she began to cough. The cough was high and hollow, echoing in her diaphragm as if it were the chamber of an instrument, and then there was the wheeze for breath and the next cough and the next until the cough and the wheeze seesawed back and forth and her mother was doubled over in the chair. Edith felt helpless. Once the cycle started it would play itself out whether anyone was there to help or sympathize or not. She began patting her mother’s back automatically, though her mother wasn’t choking—she was drowning on her own fluids, on her blood and mucus and the dead cells of the disease that was in her and would never leave, not till she lay still for the final time. The truth was there before her, but it was hard, too hard to hold on to. She let it go and felt the darkness sweep through her like the chill through an open door.

  Her mother coughed. She patted. Kept on patting. Fro
m the palm tree in the next yard over, a flight of dark miniature birds hurtled themselves into the sky.

  “Let me go get your medicine,” she said.

  “No. I’m”—the cough tore at her—“I’m fine.”

  “Water, then. Here, let me help you up.”

  Her mother pushed her away, arms in furious motion, wrists jangling like bracelets, coughing till something came up and she spat it in the tin cup she kept secreted between her legs. Then she drew in a great wet wheezing breath, the next cough waiting in the wings, hanging there like a bat ready to swoop down and twist through the air, her eyes wet with the effort of turning herself inside out. “I don’t”—and here came the cough, racking and harsh—“I just want to, to . . .”

  “You need a doctor. I’m going for the doctor.”

  And suddenly her mother’s voice hardened, narrowed, came at her like the filed point of a blade: “I just want to be left alone.”

  * * *

  They were three at dinner that night—Edith, her stepfather and Adolph. Ida served—a roast of beef, with baked potatoes and sautéed vegetables and lemon pie for dessert—and when the serving bowls had been set out and the glasses filled, Ida took a portion for herself and went out to the kitchen with it. Edith’s stepfather never said a word about school or whether she’d been late in coming home or not. He was in high spirits, the glass before him stained dark with whiskey poured from the bottle he kept right out in plain sight on the table, and Adolph’s glass was dark too. The main theme of the evening was business—business couldn’t be better, or so she gathered. Wool prices were up and the profit was in, more than anyone could have expected, and her stepfather kept pouring whiskey from the bottle and reaching out to pour for Adolph too. From upstairs, from behind the closed door of her mother’s room, came the sawing rasp of a cough that wouldn’t let up.

  She kept her head down through the meal, surreptitiously reading from the book spread open in her lap and hidden from view by the corner of her napkin, though she found she couldn’t concentrate. She was more upset than she wanted to admit, the image of her mother pushing her away driving everything before it, the school, her homecoming, the pleasure she’d taken in the hotel grounds and the fashions of the ladies. She spoke only when her stepfather addressed her—“You like that cut of meat? Beef for a change, huh? I don’t know about you, missy, but after all that mutton I think I could eat a whole steer by myself”—and as soon as the meal was done and Ida cleared the table she went out to the kitchen. Ida was at the sink, her back to the door, arms and shoulders working over the dishes. Steam rose around her. Outside, beyond the window, the sun picked its careful way through the red-gold trumpet flowers climbing the espalier against the fence.

  “Would you like some help?” she asked.

  Ida looked over one shoulder, the sunlight catching her eyes so that they seemed all at once to leap out of her face. “It’d be a mercy, I’m so worn with all this moving from one place to another. Truly, I’m dead on my feet.”

  Edith took up the dish towel and Ida plucked the plates from the rinse water—her mother’s best china, in a pretty rose pattern that made you feel good just to look at it—and handed them to her one by one.

  “And what of you? How was your first day back to school?”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine? No more to say than that? Don’t tell me it’s not a glory to be laying your eyes on somebody your own age besides Jimmie, who might mean well, who might—” She lifted her hands from the dishwater to sketch a picture in the air and they both laughed.

  “Oh, no, I don’t mean that. It’s just strange, that’s all, to be back after all this time. Everything seems so busy.”

  Ida gave her a look. “I’d say busy is just what you want—myself, I felt half-dead out there on the island, dead of boredom for one thing. Do you know I went down to the market this morning, just that, just there and back, and it was like being transported to heaven—and on the wings of angels, no less.” She was going to say more but just then there was a fierce breathless burst of coughing from above and they both paused to lift their eyes to the ceiling. “Your mother seems worse today,” Ida observed after a moment. “It’s the moving, is what it is.” She shook her head. “The dampness of that boat . . .”

  “She pushed me away.” Edith tried to control her voice, tried to focus on drying the plate in her hand and finding a place for it in the stack on the counter, but she couldn’t help herself. “She was having a spasm—outside, in the chair, when I’d just got home—and all I wanted to do was, was—” She could feel it all coming up in her, all the tension and fear and loneliness—her mother was dying and she’d been dying a long time and once you started dying it was like being dragged down the side of a hill and all the dirt coming with you. To the bottom. To bury you. “I just wanted to help.”

  “Hush, it’s all right, she doesn’t mean it.” Ida laid a hand on her shoulder and they stood there a moment without moving. “When people fall ill they’re not themselves anymore. It’s like dogs, same thing. I can recall when I was ten or eleven maybe and living with my Aunt Maeve—remember I told you about her, my father’s sister, the one that took in the three of us? We had a dog, just a mutt, really—Lucky, his name was—and he liked me most of all, maybe because I fed him scraps when no one else would bother with him, but then a wagon ran him over and broke his leg so the bone was showing through and my aunt warned me not to go near him because in his pain he wouldn’t know me—”

  “But she’s so angry all the time. Angry at everybody. You especially. Why is that? It’s just not right, the way she won’t have you in the room anymore, won’t even come to the table if you’re there.” She looked away, out across the yard to where the woman next door was cutting flowers and arranging them in a vase the little girl beside her held out patiently, the moment crystallizing, butterflies, birds, the sun like syrup poured over everything and all the trees reaching in unison for the sky. “What happened?” she asked, turning back to her. “What did you ever do to her?”

  Ida’s eyes. Her moon face. The pursing of her lips, dry lips, lips that clung together with a thin film of soft pink flesh. “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I just don’t know.”

  The Empty Shell

  Then everything changed. They went back to San Francisco, as promised, though it was to rented rooms and not the apartment she’d grown up in because strangers lived there now, and if she walked past it she told herself it was only to get where she was going by the shortest possible route and she never allowed herself to look up at the second-floor windows where her mother had kept her geraniums and Sampan would bunch himself against the glass to bask in the sun so that you could see him there from all the way down the block. There were doctors for her mother, new medicines. The cook—Ida had stayed behind in Santa Barbara and there was no arguing with her mother about it—was an irascible old woman named Mrs. Offenbacher, who could have played one of the weird sisters in Macbeth, and without a wig or a touch of greasepaint either. The rooms were dreary, furnished by somebody else, withered plumes of pampas grass sprouting from a vase at the door, the furniture nicked and worn, a smell of dust and disuse in the air. It might have been depressing under other circumstances, but not to her, not after the island. She was in San Francisco, and nothing else mattered. Her friends were here, her true friends, girls she’d known all her life, not just acquaintances like Becky Thorpe and the other girls in Santa Barbara, and they hadn’t forgotten her—within days of her arrival she began to receive invitations to parties and dances, carriage rides in the park, picnics, outings at the beach. Better yet, there was money again and that meant she could go back to her ballet and voice lessons.

  At the end of August, when it came time to return to Santa Barbara—For the air, her stepfather said, and school, school of course—she began to feel dejected all over again. She wanted her mother to recover
, of course she did, with all her heart, but as far as she could see the air was no better down there than it was here—it was all California, wasn’t it? Why couldn’t they stay? Why couldn’t they wait till the lease was up on their old apartment and move back in and have a normal life instead of packing up and moving from one place to another like gypsies? She didn’t want to whine, didn’t want to be a complainer, but she did and she was.

  She came up the stairs one afternoon after ballet class, trudging, dragging her feet, angry at the world, the hallway reeking of Mrs. Offenbacher’s sauerbraten and the odious woman in the flat next door crowding the staircase with her two brats in tow so that she had to put on a false smile for them though all she wanted to do was tear out her hair and scream like one of the damned in Dante’s river of fire, and was surprised to see her mother and stepfather sitting in the parlor at that hour. It was odd to see them together like that, especially in the afternoon. More and more, her mother was confined to bed, where she read or knitted or dozed off sporadically throughout the day and then let her lamp burn into the small hours of the night, and Edith’s stepfather was always out somewhere doing whatever he did when he wasn’t wrestling sheep on a muddy ranch in the middle of nowhere. Business, that’s what he called it—he had business—and left it at that.

  Before she could even remove her coat, she could feel the tension in the room. Her stepfather sat rigid in the armchair by the window, his jaws clamped and his gaze fixed on the street below, and her mother—in a pretty plum-colored dress instead of her chintz wrapper—sat just as stiffly across from him. They’d been quarreling, that much was evident. “I’m back,” she said, slipping out of her coat and hanging it in the hall closet—it had been brisk out on the street, the fog creeping in over the rooftops to dissolve the sun and a chill breeze running in ahead of it, though she’d never admit it. San Francisco? Cold? Never.