The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming

by J. Anderson Coats

  Ida would have told me. Nell would have told me. Only all they can talk about is how many socials they’re invited to. How Seattle can’t get enough of hearing how the Mercer Girls fared on their wondrous voyage.

  “Jane? Are you all right?”

  Mr. Mercer’s original advertisement in the Times said his ship would carry seven hundred girls and women. They could not all have been meant to be schoolteachers.

  Three hundred dollars is a lot of money, and no one can make a girl get married. You can nudge her, though, if you promise her a job teaching in schools that aren’t there.

  “No,” I whisper. “I’m sorry. I must go.”

  Miss Gower, the Old Maid of the Territory, had to go to Olympia to get a school. She wouldn’t have been swayed or distracted by the Seattle ladies’ socials and fawning. She must have asked around and learned the truth, so she boarded that steamer and never looked back.

  Evie takes my elbow. “You all go ahead. I’ll meet you at the big tree. I’m going to see Jane and her brother back to their hotel. She looks greensick.”

  I never thought much of school until it started being more than slates and recitations. Everything I wanted school to be seemed possible in Washington Territory in a way it didn’t anywhere else.

  In Lowell the landlord would still want his rent. Mrs. D would still be flinging shuttles for fourteen hours a day to pay it while growing slowly more bitter with every warp and weft. My friends would still idle past the common pump complaining how dreary lessons were while I dragged Jer here and there and worried at my blisters till they burst.

  We left that behind, though. The Washington Territory in Mr. Mercer’s pamphlet has no landlords. It has no looms. It has neatly turned-out gentleman bachelors and a climate to rival Rio and schoolhouses on every corner.

  It’s all lies, though. Every word Mr. Mercer wrote or said. That means he didn’t care who came on the Continental. We could have had any sort of mind or constitution. We were all brought here because Mr. Mercer took wheelbarrows full of money from big, angry men who swing axes and picks all day.

  We are here because of what we can do for others, not for how we might improve ourselves.

  The walk back is a blur of mud. Evie carries Jer, even though his dirty feet muck up her apron, and she keeps up a constant stream of chatter. So sorry you’re feeling poorly, Jane, but when you’re better, you really do have to come see our woods hideout. Inez and Madge’s cousins built it, but they don’t use it much since they got hired to raft timber out to the sloops . . .

  By the time we get back to the Occidental, I can’t see straight. I thank Evie stiffly and plow up to our room, towing Jer by the sleeve. He squawks, but I don’t care. I slam the door and go right for my carpetbag. I pull out Mr. Mercer’s pamphlet and heave up the window sash and fling that pack of lies as far into the woods as I can.

  Nothing about Washington Territory is the way Mr. Mercer said it would be, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

  13

  MRS. YESLER ALREADY HAS A girl staying with her. So do Mrs. Denny and Mrs. Terry and every other missus in town with a space to spare.

  “We planned for single girls,” Mrs. Yesler says. “We had no idea there’d be . . . children.”

  So Jer and Mrs. D and I stay on in the Occidental along with the other widows in the expedition, since there are no more hearths or floors available. My friends are all safely tucked away, though. There’s not even one girl left to play whist or chat with after supper.

  They’re all up the street and around the corner. Just like Flora said. Only, they’re never in, because every woman with a sawhorse table wants to feed them up on tea and cakes and hear their stories again and again. All of them together, like a regiment of combat veterans.

  Mr. Condon at the registry desk tells Mrs. D the boarding bill will be six dollars a week. It sounds like a lot, but she doesn’t even blink. I know she’s bad at ciphering, so I cipher for her.

  There’s twelve invigilating dollars tucked away in the toe of Jer’s old baby shoe. I first thought there’d be sixteen, but I hadn’t figured on staying almost three weeks in San Francisco or finishing the journey on a lumber schooner. Still, it’s twelve more dollars than we started with.

  Twelve dollars means two weeks in the Occidental and an empty baby shoe. Or one week and new clothes for the fancy wedding Mrs. D will surely want.

  Or three weeks and owing someone else in addition to Mr. Mercer.

  “All the best ones are married already,” Mrs. D complains to Mrs. Grinold at breakfast. “The others only have eyes for these empty-headed girls. Like the rest of this town. So much blither-blather about how wonderful these Mercer Girls are. Like those silly pieces were the only ones who made that dreadful trip.”

  Those silly pieces are my friends. It’s not their fault the officers on the Continental took one look at Jer and me and glided their eyes right over Mrs. D in favor of girls like Ida and Nell.

  “Maybe you’re being too choosy.” Mrs. Grinold stabs at her porridge with a bent spoon. “Besides, you didn’t come on the early schooners. Some of those ladies who are fighting to get the girls in their parlors now could barely hide how annoyed they were with more mouths to feed.”

  “I’ve still got irons in the fire,” Mrs. D says with a smile she must imagine to be mysterious. “I’m not going to rush to the altar with just anyone.”

  “Have you talked with Mr. Wright at all?” I ask. “Because he’s really quite clever if—”

  “No, Jane.” Mrs. D sighs big. “Honestly. Now, Marjorie, I wonder if you’ve . . .”

  I help Jer pour molasses on his flapjacks. She’s just not giving the bachelors in the parlor a chance. There has to be at least one who’d make a good husband.

  I was only six when Papa and Mrs. D were married. At supper one night Papa told me I’d be getting a new mother—steps were for walking down. My mother died from a fever when I was quite small, and having a mother again sounded nice. There’d be cookie-baking and quilt-piecing, just like my friends and their mothers. I could wear hair ribbons again because mothers knew how to tie proper bows.

  The girl who became Mrs. D appeared one day in our pew at church. Before the service Papa introduced her as Miss Chandler. I smiled politely like I’d been taught and asked, “Are you coming to school with me tomorrow? The big girls are very nice. I’m sure they’ll take to you right away.”

  Papa laughed aloud.

  The future Mrs. D smiled quick and stabby. “I’ve no need of school. I’m marrying your father.”

  During church that day I ignored Miss Chandler gazing adoringly at Papa and studied the unmarried girls and women. If I’d known Papa planned to choose my new mother so soon, I’d definitely have had some suggestions.

  So I’d be a silly piece myself if I didn’t try to work out which of the bachelors in the Occidental’s parlor would best fit the bill. The fact that they’re still turning up every day—hat in hand, combed and hopeful—definitely helps their cause. At least half a dozen disappointed bachelors have already departed for their mines or homesteads or logging camps, leaving behind strings of threats against one Asa Mercer.

  I don’t want anyone with violence on his mind. You can’t live through a war and its poverty-making and its haunted veterans and come out believing any fist-and-knuckle, gun-and-cannon solution will ever solve a thing. Even for someone like Mr. Mercer and his brazen lies. Even for Nell’s scoundrel of a brother.

  When I go into the parlor, the bachelors stand up. They know I’m too young for courting, but they also know I’m friendly with the girls who aren’t. By my third day in the hotel each of them had introduced himself most courteously with the hope I’d say nice things about the encounter to my friends.

  Mr. Singer isn’t here today. He must have finally given up on Julia. Mr. Davis wants to know if Nell is going to the big meeting later at Yesler’s Hall.

  “What meeting?”

  “Asa Mercer’s going to give
an account of himself,” Mr. FitzHugh replies darkly. “He owes me three hundred dollars, and he owes this town an explanation.”

  He owes me an explanation too. Me and Mrs. D and every one of my friends who came here thinking he was an honest broker.

  Mr. W is whittling what looks to be Hoss’s little wooden friend. There’s curly shavings all over his big belly and a few caught in his beard.

  “My brother has a toy like that,” I say.

  “Then I imagine he’d fancy another.” Mr. W smiles. “I’ll make you one too if you like. What animal?”

  I open my mouth to say I’m too old for toys. But I miss my dolls. I miss my skipping rope. I miss the little tin tea set my grandmother gave me when I turned five.

  “How about a fish?”

  “You shall have it.”

  None of these bachelors are bankers, but if there’s no banker within a week’s paddle, Mrs. D could at least look up from her moaning and talk to men like Mr. W. She could be missing out on something just as good, but in a different way.

  As he whittles, Mr. W tells me about his time in the Fraser River valley during the gold rush. Pretty soon I’m giggling at his stories of harried camp cooks and miners chased by bears and a furious one-eyed lady prospector who swore as much as three deckhands put together.

  By dinner two more bachelors have left the parlor. They want to get good seats at the front of the hall so Mr. Mercer will hear every bad word they plan to shout at him. Mrs. D comes in with Jer, and Mr. W offers to walk us down to the meeting.

  “Sure!” I say, before Mrs. D can politely refuse.

  She fixes a smile and drops Jer into my arms. It’s not far from the hotel to Yesler’s Hall, but Jer and I get there way before Mrs. D and Mr. W. Even I can tell Mr. W’s dragging his feet and taking his sweet time.

  I like Mr. W, but he’s no banker or storekeeper. He’s not handsome. Not even if you squint. He’s got a plain, round face, and he walks like a deckhand. He doesn’t stand a chance against Mrs. D’s picture of the sort of man she’s decided Seattle owes her.

  Yesler’s Hall is packed. The moment Mr. Mercer appears on a platform at the front, people shout questions at him. Also accusations. And plain old swears. Reverend Bagley holds up his hands and launches into a boring speech about the rightness of Mr. Mercer’s enterprise and how he did a service to Seattle and should be thanked instead of taken to task.

  It’s hot and close in here. Jer’s getting restless. Not even Hoss will keep him busy for long. I can’t leave, though. I won’t get another chance like this.

  Mr. Bagley is going on and on like every preacher ever, so I decide to sit outside on the step till he’s done. Mr. Mercer certainly won’t leave till he’s had a chance to say his piece. The crowd won’t let him leave till it’s satisfied.

  I duck under elbows. I squeeze past skirts. I tow Jer behind me inch by inch.

  I’m almost at the door when Reverend Bagley starts talking about vice and moral degeneration and how good it is for the town to have more marriageable white women so there won’t be any more mixing of the races.

  At least a dozen people turn in my direction.

  Only, they’re not looking at me. They’re looking at Mr. W. They must be, because he’s turning shiny red, and his brows come together, and he walks out of the hall with his chin up and his gaze blank, like a soldier on parade.

  Reverend Bagley goes on something something civic pride and the crowd turns back to Mr. Mercer, who is still standing hand-on-heart downcast like he’s the one who’s been wronged. Jer and I finally make it outside, where it’s ten times cooler and fifty times less awkward.

  Mr. W is nowhere in sight. Nell said he’d gotten his heart broken. Maybe he was married to an Indian girl, and some people in town thought it was a bad idea. Something must have happened to her, then, or Mr. W wouldn’t be in the parlor of the Occidental trying to get a wife.

  “I pay dere?” Jer points across the street at the Occidental’s common.

  “Sure, Jer, off you go.”

  I sit down on the step and watch Jer trot through the muddy road and pick up rocks to throw at stumps.

  There are Indians everywhere in town. They paddle around in their canoes and sell things like fish and berries and work in the mill and sometimes go to church. There was nothing in the pamphlet about Indians, but I’m not too surprised about that. It would probably have been lies anyway.

  Behind me the hall gets quiet, and I hear Mr. Mercer’s voice. Men shout questions at him, but someone shushes them, and Mr. Mercer’s allowed to give a speech that’s almost as tiresome as Reverend Bagley’s.

  Only Mr. Mercer’s boring speech is about how wrong the newspapers are to spread such slander about him. Instead of being celebrated as a hero like the last time he arrived in the company of marriageable maidens, he’s unjustly accused of the worst vile villainies, and he is deeply offended that people in this town would believe such hatefulness.

  All I can do is laugh.

  This whole expedition was Mr. Mercer’s pride and joy, and not even he got what he expected at the end.

  The meeting lasts ages, and after a while I stop listening. All the questions sound the same, and Mr. Mercer’s answers never change. Finally, people start coming out, and I stand up so I don’t get stepped on. Jer is still happy playing on the common, so it’s time to do what I came here for.

  I put myself in front of Mr. Mercer, but he dodges around me like I’m a stump.

  “Excuse me,” I call. “Sir?”

  “What?” He rounds on me, hostile, till he realizes I’m a child and people are watching. Then he says in a kinder voice, “Yes, my girl?”

  I’m not fooled, but as I look up at Mr. Mercer—and up—I wish Nell were here so some of her brass would rub off on me.

  That’s when I realize I don’t want an explanation. I want him to beg my pardon, and all I’m going to get is a chuck to the cheek and a dear child. Washington Territory is not paradise. It’s just a place, and not a particularly nice one at that.

  But he’s standing there with a bland, treacly look on his sunburned face, so I have to say something, and what I manage is, “Um . . . when is the special market going to be?”

  “Market?”

  “For socks,” I blather, “like you said on the ship. We all made things to sell. Like you wanted. My stepmother and I knitted socks and we really need the money and—”

  “Socks?” Mr. Mercer barks it like a sergeant major. “Do you really think I have time to think about such petty—”

  Then he coughs into his hand and smiles over my head at the crowd and chucks my cheek. “My dear child, please be assured it will be attended to with the utmost care.”

  He glides past me through the crowd to Reverend Bagley’s side and away.

  The utmost care.

  In other words, there won’t be a market and it’s a darn good thing Miss Gower needed an invigilator.

  In other words, I’m on my own.

  14

  WE’RE HEADING INTO THE DINING room for breakfast when Mr. Condon calls Mrs. D over to the registry desk and asks if she plans to stay another week.

  “Yes, I think we will,” Mrs. D replies with her coy smile. Mr. Condon isn’t a banker, but he doesn’t have a wife, and I suspect Mrs. D might be changing her mind about how vulgar it would be to be married to an innkeeper.

  “Very good,” Mr. Condon says, like he doesn’t notice her trailing curls and bitten-red lips. “If you’d kindly pay the boarding bill for last week, then.”

  “Th-that’s not how it’s done in New York!” Mrs. D forgets to be flirty. She sounds scared instead. “I’m just a helpless widow. All alone in the world and far from friends and kin.”

  I muffle a snort into Jer’s hair. Mrs. D is a lot of things, but she’s not helpless.

  “Ma’am, this isn’t New York.” Mr. Condon smiles like he’s heard it all before. “A week’s worth of credit is the best I can do.”

  “Even for one of t
he Mercer Girls?”

  Mr. Condon doesn’t reply, and Mrs. D’s whole face goes dark, because she’s not one of the Mercer Girls and they both know it. She might have come on the same expedition and shared a ship with them, but that’s where it ends. A widow can’t be a girl, even when in a way she is, and definitely not when she’s got me and Jer behind her.

  “Fine.” Mrs. D storms toward the stairs. “I’ll be back directly.”

  While we wait, Jer gallops Hoss around the room and I peek into the parlor. There are no bachelors. Not a one. Not even Mr. W.

  I shouldn’t care, but I do. Mr. W was going to finish telling me how he found gold the first time, how he was sure it couldn’t be real. Sometimes I forget he’s a grown-up, since he talks to me friendly and companionable. Like Nell does, and Flora used to.

  Mrs. D bustles up to the registry desk. She carefully lays out three of the two-dollar bills, counting under her breath one-two, three-four, five-six like she practiced it all the way down.

  Then she beams proudly, and considering how rarely she smiles that big—and that genuine—I smile too. It must be hard when you can’t cipher properly. You have to trust that people aren’t cheating you. It’s not like you can catch them in the act.

  Longhand division is worth something after all.

  Mr. Condon picks up the bills. “Ma’am . . . this is only three dollars’ worth of currency.”

  “No. I—I did it right.” Mrs. D blinks rapidly as her cheeks go shiny pink. “I counted six.”

  “Those are two-dollar bills,” I say to Mr. Condon. “She did count it right. It’s six dollars.”

  Mrs. D straightens and lifts her chin, just like I did when Miss Gower asked what I thought of something.

  “Yes,” Mr. Condon replies patiently, “that’s what it says on the money, but the war depreciated all these greenbacks till they’re barely worth the paper they’re printed on. I’m being generous when I’m giving you fifty cents on the dollar.”