Pasadena

by David Ebershoff

  All Heaven’s undreamt felicity

  Could never blot the past from me.

  No; years may cloud and death may sever

  But what is done is done for ever.

  EMILY BRONTË

  1

  By the late winter of 1945, Andrew Jackson Blackwood had yet to make a move on what Mrs. Nay described as the opportunity of a lifetime.

  “Something like this comes along but once,” she said one day when they ran into each other on Colorado Street. The sun was high and the rains were over. She added that as the months had passed, Mr. Bruder had grown more and more anxious to unload. “Imagine it, Mr. Blackwood. You: the master of the Pasadena. You’ll have come quite a ways, wouldn’t you say?”

  It was one of the few instances in which her sales pitch became, to Blackwood’s ear, excessive. She discreetly inquired whether or not Blackwood had the funds, leaning in and whispering in a mildly insulting fashion. Blackwood politely assured her that he was more than capable of buying not only the Rancho Pasadena but also Condor’s Nest, should Mr. Bruder be interested in selling both.

  “Both? In the same deal? It’s not a bad idea,” said Mrs. Nay.

  “It was, after all, the onion farm that first caught my eye.” They were standing on the sidewalk in front of the former Dodsworth’s, shuttered so long ago.

  Mrs. Nay said that she couldn’t promise anything but would float the idea. And then she was off to a meeting of some sort about the many abandoned buildings on Colorado Street—the Committee to Eradicate Our Eyesores, the group called itself. But she turned on her heel to tell Blackwood one more thing: “I just received a letter from George. He says the Reich is falling faster than even in the newspaper accounts. The first boys could be home by summer!” She waved a tissuey envelope from a hotel in Washington. Her smile was full of the joy of prospective peace. Cherry longed to see her husband after these many months. Their relationship was unusually amiable: George and Cherry Nay—comrades, they thought of themselves. When she was young, she had built herself a somewhat shameful life—rushing from one sordid story to the next!—but back then her options had been limited. At the time, there wasn’t much else for Cherry but living off her words: she had been young and smart but not especially pretty, and in possession of no connections, and the world had offered little to a girl like Charlotte Moss. She’d done her best, although she admitted to herself, when the regret rose in her throat, that sometimes she had done less than that. But then she had helped out Bruder when he needed help the most, and at nearly the same time she had found George; in a matter of months, everything had changed for her. She understood her good fortune, her lot improving just like that!, and now, every time she wrote a letter to her husband—My Dearest Friend …—she reminded herself that in the end, fate had dealt her a fine hand.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Blackwood.”

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Nay.”

  “We’ll be speaking soon, I am sure.”

  The following morning began with an unpromising sunrise, diffuse and white, and a forecast of an early heat wave. But then a bald eagle alit on the telephone pole at Blackwood’s curb. Its hooked yellow bill was clasping something papery and green, and it looked to Blackwood like a dollar bill. He took this event as a sign of good fortune and he rushed for his folding telescope. But upon inspection the greenback turned out to be nothing but a leaf of mountain mahogany. Although hardly symbolic, this incident prompted Blackwood; and he coated himself in his customary cheerful self-confidence, and then and there, in his mint-green pajamas, he decided to pursue what he now thought would be his greatest accomplishment, that for which he would be remembered: to take control of the Rancho Pasadena. He would transform it into something useful and profitable, hauling it into the modern age. This would be the transaction that would forever rechart his destiny—once and for all moving him up the greasewood ladder that over the years had lodged so many splinters in his thumb. All would change for Blackwood; he would become a different man, and the world would have to accept him differently. The world that hadn’t acknowledged him would begin to mail invitations to his red-flagged mailbox. He looked in the mirror and saw the flickering of someone else.

  In early March, he arranged for Mrs. Nay to lead the men from the bank on a tour of the Pasadena. It was the time of year when the middles should have been stacked with field boxes and tracked from the picking trucks, but everything at the ranch was idle and, one could say, dying, if not already dead. While the bank men in their gray suits inspected the land and peered into the abandoned packinghouse and marveled at the California history that lay untouched at the western boundary of their progressive city, Blackwood sat in the Imperial Victoria, listening to the news that became more promising by the day.

  Nineteen forty-five was turning out to be the year—for the good of the world and Andrew Jackson Blackwood. Matters would settle in his favor, he realized.

  After the tour, he and the bankers returned to the conference room next to the bank’s vault. Blackwood made a formal presentation, unrolling a map of the ranch’s small valley, each square in the grid representing an acre. “What will you do with so much land?” one of them inquired phlegmatically. “Do?” “What are your plans, Blackwood?” Blackwood admitted that his plans were not yet firm. “The Pasadena is one of those properties that you buy when you can and figure out what to do with later. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that the opportunities are endless.” He added, “Wouldn’t you agree that it’s best for the city if this land falls into the hands of someone like me? Someone whose goals are in alignment with our mutual notion of progress?” The men around the white-oak table murmured inscrutably. Blackwood knew that plucking the civic strings often did the trick in Pasadena, and that the bank men (100 Percenters, they used to call themselves) were also directors of the Tournament of Roses and the First Presbyterian and, over on Euclid, All Saints. But they were cautious men in a cautious age. Way back in 1930, a couple of them had bet money that the Arroyo Parkway would run one direction, but the river of concrete had ended up flowing another route. The bank had also sunk money into the Hotel Vista, expecting its reign to last a hundred years. Blackwood hadn’t been around during those days, but they said it was once the spot—movie stars and gangsters and orange heiresses all around the swimming pool! And now look at the Vista: the most luxurious hotel in California converted to an army hospital, the bridle trails and the bungalows and the carpets sold off for pennies on the dollar, the swimming pool as deep and empty as a socket without its eye. No, the Vista hadn’t turned out well for the bank, but this would be different, Blackwood assured the men, their cheeks gray and bloodless, and these were different times. Why, just today, March 1, 1945, the siege lines were forming around Cologne. “The war is almost over,” Blackwood stated in his meeting at the bank. “The boys will be coming home to California. Shouldn’t we ready the city for them, gentlemen? After all they’ve done for us? Don’t they at least deserve an apartment with a covered garage?”

  Blackwood didn’t need the bank’s assistance to buy the ranch, but if he wanted to put up a condominium city he’d need their involvement, not really for the cash but to spread the risk. If Blackwood knew anything, it was that you don’t open a condominium complex on your own. The chances of going belly-up were too great. He would say, “Be a bull, be a bear, but don’t be a pig.” Besides, the men of the bank belonged to the circles Blackwood aspired to, and he imagined each of the men at dinner later that night saying to his wife, “Honey, that Blackwood’s a fine-enough man. We should ask him over some time.” Blackwood imagined their post-debutante daughters, idle and in patriotic khaki, greeting him at the front door: “You must be Mr. Blackwood!”

  Blackwood’s final argument in front of the bank’s Investment Committee ended with the chairman, a thoughtful, hard-whiskered man by the name of Dr. Freeman, saying, “We will have to think about this a little further, Blackwood. This may not be the time.”

  “Not the time?”
Blackwood said with dismay, sensing that they were more opposed to him than to the idea itself. Who was this Freeman, anyway? A graduate of Old Throop and then medical school back east; he’d gone on to make a small fortune in women’s health. Blackwood had nosed around and learned that Dr. Freeman had a secret past, just like the rest of them. Imagine it: Blackwood thwarted by a man who had performed quite a few illegal procedures in his day. Not that anyone said these things about Dr. Freeman; no, only the most clever knew it. Blackwood wouldn’t stop; he would go to others. Or maybe he would abandon the Investment Committee altogether and pursue the Pasadena on his own. Blackwood had always done well on his own. And then a fear overtook him: What if Freeman and the others were to buy the property from beneath him? Would Mrs. Nay protect Blackwood? Was Bruder an ethical man? These questions left Blackwood with a new sense of urgency: he would have to pounce.

  In the evening, after the meeting at the bank had ended inconclusively, Blackwood was sitting on his sofa with his chart before him. The telephone rang. It was Mrs. Nay, inviting him to the Pasadena for one last visit. “To be certain, Mr. Blackwood.”

  “Certain?”

  “Certain that you’re the one meant to carry this property into the future.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean. But I would like to see you again, Mrs. Nay.” And they agreed to meet the following afternoon.

  Cherry arrived at the rancho early, and she sat on a chair opposite the Cupid statue and pondered the urgency of Bruder’s most recent call. He’d been coughing, rasping with fluid, and he spoke slowly, hesitating often. The pauses had made her guess that he was rubbing his temple between his sentences. She had asked if he had seen a doctor but the question was dismissed; she should have known that Bruder was the type of man who would refuse medical help until it was too late. He was fatalistic about these things, Cherry knew, often saying What good will it do? But for a man resigned to what he called a greater evil force, he had become awfully busy making arrangements for his estate. “Sell the ranch,” he insisted. “I want the memories to go away.” Bruder wasn’t a naïve man, but Cherry thought this was rather simplistic of him. If only recollected horrors could be sold off! Cherry imagined the auctioneer calling out to an empty hall. Who would buy someone else’s history?

  But she had agreed: “I’ll do my best.” He thanked her and said, “Cherry, you’ve saved me once again.”

  She opened the iron-and-glass door and greeted Blackwood. Ushering him down the gallery she said, “I realized you never toured the complete grounds.”

  Blackwood didn’t argue, although in fact he had seen nearly every corner of the Rancho Pasadena—the sickly groves and the sugar-white mausoleum and the abandoned packinghouse, where years of heat and disuse had disintegrated the rubber conveyor belts into crumbling black webs. She had shown him the parched crater that had once been the trout pond, “where Mrs. Poore used to go when she was lonely, casting a bamboo rod from the pavilion.” With Bruder, Blackwood had inspected the rusting bunks in the ranch house and the overgrown paths through the camellia garden and the sun-blazed corner of the property where Lolly Poore had tried and failed to grow a cactus garden. What was left for him to see?

  “Why don’t we go out to the rose garden? It’s a mess, but it is salvageable, I’m told. That is, if you intend to keep some of the property as it is.”

  “We took a quick look at it, Mrs. Nay. Don’t you recall?” Her imprecise memory startled him.

  “Of course I remember, but let’s see it again, Mr. Blackwood.” He followed her across the terrace and down the far steps. She was telling him about the word that had come from her husband. “All looks well, doesn’t it? Good news on the horizon, as visible as the far hills. We’re coming to the end, aren’t we, Mr. Blackwood? The boys home and everything. A new era about to begin.”

  “Everything’s pointing that way.”

  “It’s why I wanted to see you. Mr. Bruder hopes we can come to terms as soon as possible.”

  “And so do I.”

  “He’s worried that you’ve bogged things down with the bank. The paperwork can take months. The due diligence would ask questions that might be painful for him to answer, might force him to remember things he’s spent several years trying to forget.”

  Blackwood asked Mrs. Nay what she meant.

  “Mr. Blackwood, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but Mr. Bruder doesn’t have months to close a deal.”

  “Mrs. Nay, whatever do you mean?”

  “What I should say is that he’s eager to be rid of this land at once. He’s sent me to find out whether you have the money right now.”

  “I could have the money right now, if I chose.” He said this proudly, and registered the twitch upon Mrs. Nay’s lip: he could see that she was impressed by both his resources and his negotiating skills. But actually, that wasn’t the case: Cherry Nay was simply relieved, for she wanted to close the deal for Bruder’s sake. He had nearly begged, “Do this for me, Cherry?” She knew that Bruder could no longer bear the ache that the Pasadena lodged within him.

  She stopped at a tulip tree, its fallen pink-and-white blossoms littering the ground. “She planted this tree.”

  “Who did?”

  “Mrs. Poore.”

  “You mean Linda Stamp?”

  “That’s correct, Mr. Blackwood.”

  “Can I ask you a question, Mrs. Nay?”

  “I’ll do my best to answer.”

  “How did you know that she’d be at the Valley Hunt Club that night? It turned out to be such a fateful night for poor Linda. How’d you know where to find your story?”

  “Don’t you remember what I told you about the leaky house, Mr. Blackwood?” He said that indeed he remembered, and he mentioned the heating ducts.

  “Yes, but this was even more direct than heating ducts or whispering dumbwaiters. In this case, Rosa called me up. She was the one who gave me the tip.”

  “Rosa? The maid who had the—” But some things Blackwood couldn’t say aloud.

  “Yes, Rosa.”

  “But why?”

  “To protect Linda.”

  “To protect her? From what?”

  “From Captain Poore, I’m afraid.”

  “Because he wasn’t who he said he was?”

  Mrs. Nay nodded.

  Each of them hesitated, pondering the world and its falsities.

  “By the time she married Willis in the spring of 1925,” said Mrs. Nay, “he was calling her Lindy. And soon enough, everyone else was calling her Lindy too. It didn’t take much time for most people to forget that Lindy Poore had ever gone by another name.”

  Blackwood eyed Mrs. Nay, thinking that she was no different. She too had transformed herself in just a few years. Reinvention doesn’t require much time, thought Blackwood—not around here. In the past several weeks he had become something of a self-reflective man, and now he thought to himself: And look at me. Lately, a terrible pang had interrupted his sleep and he would find himself sitting up in the dark, clutching his chest. He’d be breathing hard and he would realize that he’d been dreaming; typically, Blackwood was the kind of man who never remembered his dreams, but now they stayed with him as clearly as if he had just read them in the newspaper. In his sleep, the girl was visiting him, Edith Knight with her red hair blowing and a white panic in her face.

  “Mr. Blackwood? Mr. Blackwood? Is something wrong?”

  “Mrs. Nay?”

  “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” she said. “You’re as white as a sheet.”

  He brought his fingers to his cold cheek. He blinked, and a shudder released him from the spell, and Blackwood moved to fold up and put away his past. He unpacked it so rarely that when he did, he ended up startling himself. Was that really once Blackwood, the campus dirt perpetually ground into his knees? A few days ago he had called to find the girl, to send her the money with interest, but the operator for Isle au Haut turned up no one who once might have been Edith Knight: “You said red h
air? Don’t know anyone with red hair but Shelley Stone, and she’s but sixteen.” He had written out a note of apology, asking: Is there a child? But there was no address to mail the letter to, and Blackwood tasted the regret upon his tongue as he assured Mrs. Nay that he was fine.

  “You were daydreaming.”

  “I was, I’m afraid.”

  “This place takes you back down the tunnel of time, doesn’t it?”

  Their shoes ground the sticky cup-shaped blossoms into the earth and they continued along the property.

  “We all hold a past, don’t we, Mr. Blackwood?” He said that she was more than right, but he worried that an awkward color had risen in his cheek, revealing something. But Mrs. Nay continued, changing the subject, “The men at the bank. They’re all fine men.”

  “They are, Mrs. Nay.”

  “Sometimes they have trouble imagining the future. They aren’t visionaries. Not like you.”

  Blackwood succumbed to the flattery. “That they aren’t.”

  “Mr. Bruder doesn’t want to get bogged down in their red tape.”

  “You said that, Mrs. Nay.”

  “That Dr. Freeman, the Investment Committee chair—”

  “Yes?” If anyone’s opposition to Blackwood’s plan had been most difficult to bear, it had been Dr. Freeman’s. His probe had proven uncomfortable, like a prong reaching inside.

  “He treated her, of course.”

  Blackwood was silent.

  “He was Lindy Poore’s doctor at the very end. It was 1930, and New Year’s Day of 1931.”

  “What was?” said Blackwood.

  They had reached the rose garden. Years of neglect had left it a wide thicket of tapering branch and stillborn bud. Blackwood knew that Lolly Poore had once tended the most coveted rose garden in the San Gabriel Valley: more than nineteen hundred cultivars and species, plants from every period of the flower’s history, going as far back as those described by Herodotus. Lolly had hunted for cuttings and rootstock, importing them from as far away as China, where a velvet-red climber perfumed the pagodas. But now thorn and bitter rose fruit snarled the garden, and the climbers were working to pull down the pergola. Willis Fishe Poore had staked out the rose garden on this spot for its view of the valley, but on this day in 1945 that view was smudged by a yellowish haze. Just this morning, the Star-News had written about something called “smog.” But Blackwood didn’t believe it: that the Imperial Victoria’s rear-pipe cough could get trapped up against the mountains, although that was what the newspaper had implied. The notion was laughable—that the sky wasn’t endless!, that the heavens weren’t infinite! It was like saying that a tear shed into the Pacific was enough to pollute the ocean.