Pasadena

by David Ebershoff

  He had been walking for several minutes when the grove ended at the foot of a hill. There before him was a white temple of some sort. Blackwood was as surprised to come upon it as he would have been to find at his feet a trunk of gold. It was of Greek design in its circular peristyle, a dome of milky marble supported by a double ring of columns. It made Blackwood think of the Jefferson Memorial, opened in Washington last year to celebration. In fact, this little orange-grove temple was nearly similar in design (he remembered the pictures in the Star-News), although smaller and, most certainly, in memoriam to an event or a person of much less significance than Mr. Jefferson—about this, Blackwood was sure. Maybe it was a temple to the mighty orange, or to the god of oranges—who was that? Blackwood made a note of looking it up in his Bulfinch; not that the Bulfinch was actually his, it had belonged to Edith; there’d been a couple of months when she’d loll in his arms and read him myths, like the story of Cupid and Psyche. Blackwood mounted the steps and inspected the cold white box beneath the dome. Only then did he realize that he had come across the family mausoleum Mrs. Nay had pointed out. At once he understood that he was inspecting an aboveground tomb housing the unburied dead.

  The fact of it shocked Blackwood, and he withdrew his hand from the frigid marble, aghast, as if he’d been touching the corpses themselves. The tomb was taller than he, perhaps as long as the Imperial Victoria, and inscribed with five sets of initials: WFP, ACP, LP, LB, WFP II, Cpt.

  Blackwood scratched his head. It became clear that Mrs. Nay had not finished her story. He checked the other side for dates or other information but found only these words:

  Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,

  Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?

  Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea

  “What brings you to the Rancho Pasadena, Mr. Blackwood?”

  The voice came from behind a column, and Blackwood turned to find Mr. Bruder. Blackwood felt the deep red of embarrassment sweeping his face. He removed his hat, and it fell from his fingers; he retrieved it from the mausoleum’s icing-white floor. “I hope you don’t think I’m trespassing, Mr. Bruder.”

  “But you are.”

  “No, not at all.” Blackwood’s hands were up in the air in protest. “I’ve been shown the property by Mrs. Nay. I’ve come back for a second look. We didn’t get to see the orange grove at the time.”

  “Mrs. Nay told me. I’m glad you’ve returned.”

  Bruder’s hair blew against the pillar, and he stood in angled sunlight. There was a phantasmagoric quality to him, and Blackwood rubbed his eyes. Maybe he hadn’t woken yet and was having a Christmas dream? But Bruder interrupted this reverie: “May I show you the groves myself?”

  He took Blackwood by the elbow and escorted him down a lane of orange trees. Bruder’s boot came down on the withered fruit littering the soil, stomping hard, crushing the inedible oranges, and leaving a trail of squashed rinds.

  “Did you have any questions in particular?”

  “Quite a few.”

  They returned to the yard outside the ranch house, and Bruder seemed to collapse onto the bench, dropping his face into his hands. For the first time, Blackwood noticed the meatless shoulders pressing sharply against Bruder’s shirt and the neck thin in the collar. Blackwood’s antennae sensed decay. Not only had the good times passed for the Rancho Pasadena, they had passed for Bruder as well. Deals were made under such duress, Blackwood knew, and hadn’t Mrs. Nay hinted at Bruder’s exigency?

  “So much for a warm Christmas,” said Blackwood, approaching the bench. “All this land is a lot to have on one’s mind, I’m sure.” Up close, Bruder’s weariness was obvious: the scrubby chin, the saucered cheek, the tendons in the throat, the blood-threaded eyes rimmed by yellow and the moon-blue on the lids; he clearly needed a shower and some rest. Blackwood moved closer and suggested that they sit on the Imperial Victoria’s quilted front seat, with the heater running. “Let me turn on the radio. How about a little fa-la-la-la-la?”

  In the car, the heater blew gassy air. Bruder’s knees pressed the dash and he said, “What would you do with it?”

  “The land? Why, I’d develop it, of course.” Blackwood was careful not to reveal too much about the potential profit. An investor keeps his ideas to himself, Stinky had taught Blackwood. Yet Blackwood couldn’t help but share the idea that popped into his head just then: “My hunch is that an offshoot of the parkway could run right up this valley to connect Glendale with South Pasadena.”

  “A highway through the orange grove?”

  “It’s one of the many possibilities. But you’ll see, Mr. Bruder. The trolleys are already on the decline.”

  “And the house?”

  “Condominiums are the way, Mr. Bruder.” Blackwood felt the need to add, “The mansion itself doesn’t need to come down. It could be divided up into a rooming house. I have experience with walling up a mansion. Or it could be turned into something more useful for the community, like a home for the elderly or the indigent. Something that contributes and gives back. Naturally, the modern man is too busy for such a large house. No one could live there on his own.”

  “It isn’t for yourself?”

  “It’d be too much for me.” Blackwood added, “Not too much money, but too much waste.” His face flushed with pride. “Then again, maybe I would enjoy such a big house.”

  Bruder didn’t respond; his head hung heavy in his palms. The orange in his breast pocket sagged strangely against his chest, and he took it out and coil-peeled its rind and held aloft the dry white fruit. “You can’t eat it,” he said. “Not even good for juice.” He threw it out the car’s window. It hit the ranch house and split apart, and the small hard sound of it, the thonk, hung with them. Finally Blackwood put forth the question that had long been on his mind, “How did you come to own the Rancho Pasadena, Mr. Bruder?”

  Bruder shifted in the seat, his boots leaving dirt clods on the foot mat. He turned to Blackwood, and this made him think of a raccoon lifting its eyes. “We’ll get to that.”

  “Get to it?”

  “In a minute. But let’s start at the beginning. Do you have another question, Mr. Blackwood? Don’t you want to know how I came to Pasadena?”

  “How, then?”

  “I was born here.”

  “On the ranch?” Blackwood eyed the ranch house, and it didn’t take much for him to imagine a young servant with black hair birthing a baby boy beneath the tin roof. As Blackwood thought this, a sympathy rose in him, for Bruder had started off with things piled up against him; and Blackwood knew about that.

  “Not on the rancho,” said Bruder. “No one knows where.”

  “Mrs. Nay mentioned an orphanage.”

  Bruder’s chin jerked. “The Children’s Training Society. The woman who ran it, Mrs. Banning, at first she refused to tell me anything about my mother, even when I begged and begged. When I got older, I begged a little more forcefully.”

  “No one wants to help you out, isn’t that right? You have to forge ahead on your own.” Blackwood added: “We’re of the same lot, I’ll have you know.”

  Blackwood felt his first connection with Bruder, as if they shared something, a disdain for antecedents and inheritance, perhaps, or the knowledge that each man was meant to find success in a solitary life. Nothing more specific than that, but a glance at Bruder’s softening brow suggested that he too was feeling the same just then.

  “What did she tell you about your mother?”

  Bruder said, “Why do you want to know?”

  “I lost mine when I was young too.”

  “It’s a common story,” said Bruder.

  “Aren’t they all?” said Blackwood. “They’re common unless they’re our own.”

  Again Blackwood sensed that Bruder’s estimation of him was rising. “She was a chambermaid,” said Bruder. “At the Hotel Maryland, working seven days a week in apron and cap. She worked in what they called Bungalowland, cleaning all the littl
e houses where the heiresses from Chicago spent their winters flirting with the valets.”

  “That’s a bit coarse of you, Mr. Bruder.”

  “But it’s true.”

  “Mr. Bruder, what are you trying to tell me?”

  “The truth.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Blackwood. “Then go on. You didn’t ever know your mother, did you?”

  Bruder shook his head. He told Blackwood about the orange crate left at the Training Society. Then Bruder did something that Blackwood could interpret only as a gesture of intimacy: he produced from his pocket two small photographs. He passed the first to Blackwood. It was of a thin, sable-haired girl in a bonnet standing beneath the Maryland’s pergola, her feather duster held as demurely as a bride clings to her bouquet. “What was her name?”

  Bruder didn’t answer, saying, “I have this picture that Mrs. Banning gave me. It was taken for the hotel’s brochure.”

  Blackwood didn’t know why Bruder was confessing all this, but he took it as a sign of some sort of effort to reach a deal. Trust is another factor in the real-estate equation, as important as the numbers, and trust has to come from both sides: this was Bruder’s way of saying he trusted Blackwood. And only then did Blackwood notice that Bruder was wearing the coral pendant; it dangled as smooth as a sucked mint against his flesh.

  “Is the other picture your father?”

  Bruder shook his head, offering the second photo.

  “Is this you?” Blackwood inspected the picture more closely: it showed Bruder as a young infantryman, his hair cropped close, sturdy under a sixty-pound pack, one stiff nailed boot resting jauntily on a boulder, rifle in hand. Hanging from him, as if he were a rack at the Raymond Street hardware store, were a bayonet and a collapsible shovel and ammunition pouches stuffed with a hundred rounds. Bruder must have been only eighteen or nineteen then, and this struck Blackwood, because there was something about Bruder that could make you believe he had never been young. Next to him, blurry in the face, was another doughboy, although Blackwood could make out nothing about him.

  “Is this France?” Blackwood asked.

  “Saint-Mihiel, not far from Verdun.”

  “I had to sit it out,” said Blackwood. “Bad knees.”

  Bruder was motionless and pensive and said, “It changed everything, that war.”

  Blackwood nodded, although the idea seemed a bit quaint now: that war, the one they had naïvely called “the Great War,” the doughboys sent over in spring and snugly home by Christmas. Sure, kids had done their part, but it wasn’t like today. Bruder could have stood in a trench and never fired a round; that was the difference between 1918 and now, thought Blackwood. “I’m sure you were a fine soldier,” he said.

  “Drive up to the house,” Bruder ordered.

  Once they’d parked beneath the portico, Bruder asked Blackwood in. To Blackwood’s eye, Bruder looked more like a burglar than a landlord, fumbling with the front door and his boots dragging in field dirt. The library blinds were drawn, and Blackwood’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. His hand was up as he oriented himself, and it fell to Bruder’s shoulder; and then he saw the tapestries and the stepladder with the ostrich-skin railing. It struck him again that Bruder must be among the richest men in Pasadena. Or maybe not; maybe that’s why he was selling: nothing erects a FOR SALE sign faster than an empty pocket. Bruder sat on a chair that resembled a throne, roses carved in the gilt frame, but Blackwood doubted that Bruder would ever think of himself as a king on a throne; and no doubt his dirty pants would ruin the raw silk.

  “What else did Mrs. Nay tell you?” asked Bruder.

  “Very little.”

  “She said you spent the entire morning here.”

  “There’s a lot to see. She told me some stories and such, but, Mr. Bruder, you underestimate the way I inspect a property.”

  “Did she tell you about the war?”

  Blackwood shook his head.

  “And that’s why I’ve returned today. Just as I told you before.”

  “Did Mrs. Nay tell you how I came to own the Rancho Pasadena?”

  Blackwood shook his head again.

  “Did she tell you how I first met the Poores?”

  “She did not.”

  “It was at the Valley Hunt Club.”

  A thorn of envy pressed into Blackwood. “Are you a member, Mr. Bruder?”

  “Me? You haven’t been paying attention, Mr. Blackwood. I used to work in the kitchen.” And Bruder said that when he was fifteen, Mrs. Banning had sent him to work there as a pot-scrubber, and as long as he lived he’d never forget how they had treated him: the snapped fingers; the “Boy, over here!”; the members’ children telling him to stop looking at the girls, Keep your eyes off her legs!, telling him to go back into the kitchen, Go back home, wherever that was, Go to wherever it is you belong! “El Brunito,” they’d call him.

  “Yes,” said Blackwood. “Mrs. Nay mentioned your, ah, nickname. But did they know your real name?”

  “No, never, not in those days.” No one had called him Bruder: he was merely the wandering orphan, or the boy who wanted to learn to read, or the kid with the criminal stare, and no one today would remember that all those years ago it had been Bruder whose foot received the poke of a sterling-silver walking stick; that it was he who was pushed into the swimming pool, his burgundy velvet uniform shrinking tightly across his swelling adolescent body. They weren’t all like that, but Bruder remembered the names and the eyes of those who were: the blue eyes flecked with gold of a blond-mopped boy named Willis Poore; the deeper blue of the eyes of his sister, a girl named Lolly, frail in her tennis dress. One day the Santa Anas were blowing violently, and the wind pulled free Lolly’s hair ribbon. It blew through the kitchen window, landing on Bruder’s shoulder. There it lay, green satin and three feet long. Willis Poore had yelled: “Keep your stinking hands off her things!” Lolly Poore, fourteen and birdlike, had smiled through the window, her chin dipping to her chest. Bruder passed the ribbon over the sill and set it in the small hummingbird of her hand, and Willis Poore, hands on hips, marched to the club manager and had Bruder fired and escorted out the gate.

  Blackwood said, “Yes, but if the Rancho Pasadena belonged to Willis and Lolly Poore, how did you manage to become its owner?” He wondered if something criminal had occurred.

  “Let me start at the beginning.”

  “Yes, at the beginning.”

  “The first Willis Poore built the ranch, and when he died it passed to his son, the second Willis Poore.”

  “When did the first Poore die?” said Blackwood.

  “You mean to say Mrs. Nay didn’t tell you that?” Blackwood said that she had not. “What on earth did she tell you?” And then, “The Rancho Pasadena transferred from father to son on a cloudless day in 1913, when the dirigible crashed into the Arroyo Seco.”

  “The what?”

  It was a pod-shaped balloon, said Bruder, with a sight-seeing car hanging from its belly. The bag was made of gray silk, and it was filled with city gas, and the balloon would take ten passengers up twelve hundred feet so they could survey their properties from the air, snapping pictures to show off at their dinner dances. It was the first commercial dirigible in the country, reported Bruder, and Mr. Poore, the senior Mr. Poore, took his wife up to take aerial photos of his ranch. Mrs. Poore had told her two children to watch from the rim of the arroyo. The dirigible motored around the city sky, and the children waved into the glare. Lolly would always say that she could see her mother’s face in the little suspended car, that she saw her mother blow a kiss just as the silk tore—like a run in a stocking on a giant thigh—and the balloon collapsed souffléishly and plummeted to the ground.

  “It’s a terrible story, Mr. Bruder. Is it really true?”

  “Of course it’s true. It’s the story of how the Pasadena was passed from father to son. That’s why I’m telling it.”

  “And the story of how the Pasadena passed from son to you?”

&nb
sp; Bruder rubbed his chin, and the two men sat silently on Christmas morning, the house groaning and stretching, as an empty house will, and each turned over the facts in his mind, conjuring a world sealed off from the present. A window or a door must have been open somewhere, because a whispery breeze ran into the library, from nowhere in particular, and Blackwood thought of Mrs. Nay demonstrating how gossip traveled down the dumbwaiter and up the heating ducts. The rustling noise lifted like a child’s cry, and Blackwood turned to Bruder and asked, “What is that?” And Bruder said, “That? That’s the house. It, too, is thinking of the past.”

  Blackwood thought to say, “She sounds like she was quite some girl.”

  “Who are you talking about now, Mr. Blackwood?” His voice was weary, like that of an invalid whose energy has left him before his visitors depart.

  “Linda Stamp.”

  “Why do you say that? What do you know about her?” And then: “Has Cherry been telling you stories? I hope you’ve learned by now that embellishment is Cherry’s finest talent.”

  “She said that you two were close.”

  “Is that what she said?”

  Blackwood hesitated. “Not in so many words.”

  “She was a whore.”

  “Sorry?”

  “The girl you keep asking about, she was a whore. She sold herself.”

  “Isn’t that a bit harsh, Mr. Bruder? She was quite young when you knew her.”