Prospects of a Woman

by Wendy Voorsanger

  Elisabeth moved into the apartment above the Pacific Print Shop straightaway, into her very own bedroom with a tiny window overlooking busy Front Street, and a desk and chair and a bathroom all to herself, and real running water and a working toilet. Now she rolled right out of bed to work, saving an extra twenty dollars a week not paying rent, and getting her that much closer to opening her own shop. Wanting something more than working at the Pacific Print Shop was greedy, she knew. She couldn’t help her ambition. Grateful to the Rosenblatts, she still wanted something of her own. After all, she’d endured. Lost. Given up. She deserved it. If she couldn’t have a lasting love, she’d have her own successful business. It wasn’t impossible. She’d done it before.

  39

  Mi Malagueña

  “Lemme take your picture in trade,” said Julie MacRob.

  “I can’t barter. It’s not my shop,” said Elisabeth.

  “No matter, I’ll pay for the advert,” said Julie, passing bills across the counter. “I want it to say: ‘Daguerreotypes taken by a lady. Those wishing to have a good likeness are informed they can have a picture taken in a very superior manner by a real live lady. On Post Street, opposite the St. Francis Hotel, at a very moderate charge. Give her a call, gents.’”

  “I got it all down,” said Elisabeth.

  “Also, write down I birth babies too.”

  Elisabeth raised an eyebrow, thinking it strange a picture lady birthed babies, too, but she wrote down the wording for the advertisement in California Illustrated just as Julie wanted.

  “It’s my own shop. I own it outright,” said Julie. “I like keeping my options open, just in case one or another venture doesn’t pan out. Plus keeping familiar with the society ladies with children makes my picture business more respectable. Sends more customers my way.”

  Elisabeth didn’t appreciate the woman bragging on about having her own business, and found her lack of formality presumptuous.

  The woman thrust out her hand into Elisabeth’s, pumping it up and down aggressive.

  “Julie MacRob,” she said, introducing herself.

  Julie looked too sturdy, with a square jaw jutting out and an unsightly underbite causing her words to come out clumsy and too loud. Tall with wide shoulders, Julie wore two simple loops of blond hair tied up without flourish. But her unfortunate jaw and heavy brow made her look near like a man. In fact, if it wasn’t for her elegant brown silk dress and fine felt hat with peacock feathers, she could’ve been mistaken for a man. But her undeterred confidence was irresistible.

  “Whaddya say I take your picture, anyway? No charge. I’m working up a collection of art pictures, and you gotta good face. I’d like to capture those green eyes.”

  Remembering the womanly fellowship she enjoyed in Manzanita City, Elisabeth agreed. After closing up the shop that evening she met Julie at MacRob Photos on Clay Street. Seeing the inside made her wistful. Even small and dark, the room felt special with pale blue wallpaper, and shelves filled full and neat with stacks of copper plates and silvering chemicals, and spray of baby yellow roses in a crystal vase atop a tiny round table. She wondered where Julie found such gorgeous flowers growing in the gray, dusty city.

  “My customers sit here,” said Julie.

  Julie pulled back a royal-blue velvet curtain, revealing two ornately carved and overstuffed chairs.

  “Marvelous,” she said, running her hand along the arm of one chair.

  “I got the chairs off a Dutch sailing captain. Go ahead. Sit,” said Julie.

  Elisabeth plopped down in the chair and turned to face the large box on a tripod. Nervous, she fiddled with the folds of her silk dress. She’d never had a picture of herself made before.

  “Hat or no?”

  “No.” Julie shook her head.

  Elisabeth took off her hat and smoothed her hair as Julie slid a silvered copper plate into the camera box.

  “Now act natural. No strange expressions. Ready? Freeze!”

  In that intimate moment, Elisabeth sat still and unsmiling, hiding behind her green eyes, raw and wide and unblinking, as Julie looked through the box for nearly two minutes. It felt an eternity. When Julie finally pulled the plate out of the box, Elisabeth gasped, astonished at her likeness looking back. The picture looked like a mirror, but more. Tilting the plate at an angle, she saw her face appear in shadowy darkness. Tilting the plate the opposite way reflected a lighter image in opposite parts, as if the picture captured her whole true self, all that came before, with all the now and unfolding future pressed together. Mesmerized, she kept tilting the picture plate back and forth, looking for an unknown grace hidden inside her soul.

  After the picturing, the two women struck up a grand friendship, taking Sunday suppers together every week at the Gold Dust Restaurant on the waterfront, eating crab, cracking and digging in the claws for meat, chatting about any old thing. Julie always ordered a brandy, and Elisabeth took only coffee with a teaspoon of sugar. When Julie asked if she was too prissy for a drink, she didn’t tell the full reason.

  “I’ve had my fill,” she said.

  “I’d like to hear that story,” said Julie.

  “Not interesting, I assure you,” she said.

  “Well, my story is interesting. Quite an adventure . . . swimming through that sea of grassland on a wagon train for so many months. I was nearly done in when the Sierra Nevadas came up tall like land ahoy . . . I’ll tell you about it someday, if you’re lucky!”

  Elisabeth filled with both admiration and jealousy over Julie, even as the woman worked at winning her over with a bubbly and infectious disposition bursting forth as wholly agreeable, like a much-needed fresh breeze streaming into a musty, stifling room. Julie walked with a bouncy carefree stride as if nothing bothered her. No worry. No loneliness. No lost love. Much too audacious and bold, and not at all shied by her unlovely looks, Julie struck up conversations with just about everyone in the restaurant, promoting her picturing shop. Elisabeth knew a woman in the West looking for freedom required a certain level of force, and Julie reminded her of her friends Luenza and Ginny and Millie back in Manzanita City, and Nandy in Culoma Town and Gabriella Sanchez at the bottom of Telegraph Hill. It seemed all the women of California shared the same silver thread of determination and fortitude, spun up from the soul out of nothing. A silver thread required for surviving, thriving, in California.

  One Sunday, Elisabeth begged off from their weekly supper, asking John Langley if he’d invite her to the opera. Julie teased at Elisabeth asking him, saying all the women in the city were after that Langley fellow, as he was on the lookout for a wife.

  “Quite a catch, I hear. If you like that sort,” said Julie.

  “What sort is that?”

  “Rich,” said Julie.

  “Not interested! I don’t need a man bossing me. I’d rather get rich myself. Besides, I asked him to take me to the new Jenny Lind Opera House, so I can write about it for California Illustrated,” she explained.

  Of course John Langley agreed, picking her up at the Pacific Print Shop on Sunday afternoon in his very own brougham carriage, sleek and brightly polished, pulled by two gray horses harnessed up in silver. Blue paisley silk lined the inside. When the driver opened the carriage door, Elisabeth slid in beside Mr. Langley.

  “You look a peach tonight, Miss Parker,” he said, kissing her hand.

  She blushed, pulling at the cuffs of her white lace gloves, nervous. He was just being kind. She knew her outfit wasn’t quite up to par for the outing. The gray-and-white dress was good quality silk but had no ruffles, only a modest collar up to her neck. She couldn’t be bothered with the latest fashions. She wore no tall hat with feathers and embellishments like the fancier ladies she’d seen around town. Instead, she simply parted her brown hair down the middle, fastening it in a bun with the abalone comb Nemacio had given her.

  As they bounced along through the bumpy streets of San Francisco, Mr. Langley bragged on about his daughter Lily B. Elisabeth listened b
ut hoped outside the formal confines of his bank he might reveal more about her mining investments.

  “I’m so pleased you’ll finally meet her tonight. She’s coming with her new husband. They live down on the family ranch now, only coming up once a month. I miss her something terrible. She has exquisite taste, you know. She decorated my whole place up on Nob Hill. Six bedrooms, a ballroom, three parlors. Filled with beautiful art and furniture of the most cultivated sort. Turkish rugs. French armories. Lacquer vases from China. Fine bone dinnerware from England. Venetian glass goblets. She even got me a Casilear painting of a mountain range to hang above my marble fireplace. Very classy. I give her all the credit.”

  Not a modest man, Mr. Langley had acquired a boastful reputation by talking up his various speculations and investments, gaining favor with many politicians and businessmen and their wives and daughters. He opened up his Nob Hill mansion for lavish parties every other Friday to all the who’s who in San Francisco to enjoy good whiskey and listen to a Bach harpsichord sonata or a one-act Shakespeare play. Word floated around town he was in the market for a wife, now that his daughter had married and moved down the peninsula. Many single ladies vied for his favor, flitting about him like moths to a flame taken in by his new money. Not Elisabeth. Unable to overlook his less-than-handsome countenance in exchange for a comfortable life, she never accepted an invitation to one of his soirees. She simply found the man a charming father to his daughter.

  “I admire your dedication to your daughter,” she said.

  “I adore Lily B., and I can’t stand being all alone in my empty house without her. She thinks I need a wife. One who can appreciate all I have to offer,” he said, spreading his arms wide and leaning back in the leather carriage seat.

  Perhaps Elisabeth should’ve married a man like John Langley instead of Nathaniel Parker, as he surely enjoyed the intimate company of women over men.

  “No need to sell yourself, Mr. Langley. I’m not in the market,” she said, abrupt.

  “A woman like you, with a quick mind and independent spirit. You’re not an ornament,” he said, earnest.

  “I take that as a compliment,” she said, feeling at the same time understood, but not entirely pretty either.

  “We both know you’re the sort of woman who prefers a compliment about the quality of her mind rather than the color of her eyes. Although, I daresay I do admire those just as much.”

  “I’m not looking for a position, Mr. Langley. I’m already employed.”

  He chuckled, sweet and infectious, and pointed at her.

  “Clever, clever, woman. You must join me at Lily B.’s ranch . . . see the beautiful country down the peninsula.”

  “I’m heading up to the placers soon,” she said.

  “You’re leaving me?”

  “Researching an article about the deep well mines for California Illustrated.”

  “Can’t those Rosenblatts send someone else?”

  “I’m the reporter,” she said.

  “Come to the ranch instead.”

  “Perhaps when I return. In September.”

  “September is too far off!”

  “Two months,” she said.

  John stroked her hand, and she realized she hadn’t been touched for over a year by anyone. She enjoyed the attention.

  “Why don’t you take your gloves off?”

  “I’ve working hands, John. Not as fine as most of the ladies you entertain, I suspect.”

  She stated a fact, no longer ashamed at her rough, nicked-up, calloused, ink-stained hands.

  “It’s not safe for women up there in the placers alone,” he said.

  “Greatly exaggerated, I assure you. I’m quite familiar with the gold country. I lived there before and found the living quite safe.”

  He closed his eyes and sighed heavy and exasperated.

  “I suspect there’s no talking you out of it,” he said.

  “Writing about the success of deep well mining might boost the stock prices in both our holdings,” she said.

  “Hmmm . . . like your thinking, Miss Parker,” he said, tapping his temple as the carriage clattered through the streets of San Francisco toward the opera house.

  “I hear word of a new contraption. A stamp mill. Crushes ore in a fraction of time it takes pickaxe operations. And quicksilver. Apparently it separates the gold from the rock. How about you give me a list of your mining investments, their general location, and such? I’ll report back,” she explained.

  “How about I send one of my men instead.”

  “Nope.”

  He leaned over, kissing her hand in the rocking carriage, and his mouth lingered warm through her gloves, pulling her into well-charted waters. She looked into his face, examining all those freckles, thinking if she took the time she might be able to count each one and guess how many’d been cut clean off, replaced by that long scar, glistening clear and smooth.

  “I know the gold country. Besides, you’ve got plenty of ladies to entertain you while I’m away,” she said, teasing.

  “I do like the ladies,” he said, chuckling to himself.

  “I miss the fresh air. The river.”

  “Ahh . . . you’re looking for adventure.”

  Mr. Langley listened with interest as she spoke wistful of her time living down on the American and up in Manzanita City until the carriage arrived at the Jenny Lind Opera House. The three-story building rivaled the most noted theaters in Boston or New York, outfitted exquisitely inside with a grand spectacle of light pink walls, tastefully gilded with a turquoise drapery covering the stage and richly carved wooden seats with plush, tasseled cushions. Nearly a thousand folks crowded in, putting on a brilliant display of beauty and fashion. As friends and acquaintances vied for Mr. Langley’s attention, he introduced Elisabeth around, fawning all over her, saying she reported stories for California Illustrated. When they sat in a box closest to the stage, Mr. McGuire, the owner of the opera house, came by to pay his respects.

  “Do you know of California Illustrated? The most important newspaper in all of California? This woman here, Miss Elisabeth Parker, is the star reporter,” Mr. Langley said.

  Elisabeth asked Mr. McGuire a few questions about the building and the night’s performance, jotting down his comments in her notebook. As the orchestra warmed up their violins and flutes, Lily B. finally arrived, bounding into the box, looking like just a girl. She had John’s same light features of yellow skin, flaming with freckles, and curly red hair. Overjoyed, Mr. Langley embraced his daughter, kissing her cheek over and over as if he hadn’t seen her just last month. Overcome with envy, Elisabeth turned away, thinking of everything she didn’t have. A loving father. A place to call home. A man of her own.

  “This is my Lily Beth. The sunshine of my life,” said John.

  Lily B. grabbed her by the shoulders, hugging her much too tight and talking much too fast and animated in a high-pitched, wild playacting.

  “My father’s writer friend, Elisabeth Parker. We’ve heard all about you!”

  Lily B. wasn’t exactly beautiful, with brown eyes too small and flecked in yellow, and a too-tiny chin, and a long pointy nose, but her giddiness made her magnetic, and her shock of red hair looked spectacular, even with her orange dress clashing in terrible taste. She pulled out of Lily B.’s grip, interjecting a mature formality to calm the girl down a bit.

  “How do you do,” said Elisabeth.

  When the lamplighters snuffed the lights to a dim and the curtain opened, she turned to sit down.

  “Wait! You must meet my husband!” Lily B. squealed.

  Elisabeth turned around and nearly fell over at seeing him come in through the box curtain. Nemacio. Her Californio. Her lover. Her love. He drew in his breath at seeing her, too, and took a step back. But he collected himself quick, removing his hat and bowing, as if they hadn’t once loved each other.

  “Good evening,” he said.

  He looked the same as when she last saw him leaving her cabin
in Manzanita City, full of promises. His smooth skin. His eyes, black and enticing. How absurd, seeing him here of all places. If she’d only asked John about Lily B.’s husband. Asked after her surname. If only she’d thought to ask. Thought to remember. She’d have never come.

  Sitting through the performance with him just behind her felt like pure torture. Elisabeth didn’t find the opera La Cambiale di Matrimonio even a little funny. The audience laughed and howled at the comic farce, while she remained flat, looking straight ahead at the performers. She tried not to come apart, knowing he was right behind her with his silly wife. She couldn’t understand the words of Rossini’s composition but got the meaning, to be sure. An ironic plot in the face of her own tragic life. The rich Tobias Mill marrying his daughter Fanny off to an even richer foreigner. Of course, Fanny is in love with another man, the modest Eduardo. Chaos issues. Secrets. Promises. Misunderstandings. Duels and tricks. In the end, Fanny gets to marry Eduardo. What cruel irony!

  Just beneath the songs sung in Italian, she strained to hear Nemacio’s breathing behind her like she had back in the dark cabin on the American River. But she couldn’t hear a thing, just a terrible ringing in her ears. Loud and painful. When the performance ended and the lamplighters lit the lamps, the audience stood, but she remained seated, frozen in fear at facing him. She focused on the red carpet beneath her feet, as she felt him stand up behind her, next to silly Lily B., giggling gleeful. Her face grew hot, burning with vengeance. Rage. She imagined turning around and stabbing Lily B. with a sharp engraving bruin.

  “You don’t look well,” said Mr. Langley, leaning down to touch her shoulder.

  “Yes. I need to go home, straight away,” she said, standing.

  She hurried out of the opera box brushing past Nemacio, not looking at him. Brushing his shoulders. Slight. Touching. Remembering. Forgetting. She fled out of the opera box as John Langley struggled to catch up. She slipped away quick, disappearing into the crowd and out into the street, where she picked up the folds of her skirt and ran all the way home through the dark.