None of the large San Francisco estates seems to have passed without objection from one generation to the next, but the Bell estate is the standard by which all others are measured. Every case from 1897 to 1926 was as bad as the Bell business or it wasn’t. John Bell, Thomas Bell’s supposed nephew, made a claim, as did Viola Smith, as did the Clingan sisters. Decisions were made, appealed, reversed. The case went to the state supreme court.
In May of 1926, litigation ended in a compromise. Of the total, $370,000 went to the surviving Bell children, after they had pledged $100,000 to charity and made a settlement to Viola Smith of close to the same.
Maybe:
Fred Bell was the son of May Thompson and a gambler named Bill Thompson.
Marie was the daughter of May Thompson and Dr. Monser, the abortionist who died in San Quentin.
Robina was the child of Sarah Althea Hill and Reuben Lloyd, a prominent city attorney.
Reginald or possibly Muriel was William Sharon’s child by Bertha Barnson (or maybe Bonstell), a maid at the Palace.
Eustace was born to “one of the Harris girls.”
Or:
They were all, as they themselves claimed, the children of Thomas and Teresa Bell.
Reginald Bell gave the following statement to the San Francisco Examiner: “We always called her [Teresa Bell] mother and she was a good mother to us. Mammy Pleasant was a wonderful woman, but there was nothing mysterious about her and there was really no reason why the home should have been called the House of Mystery.”
SEVEN
Back in April 1890, Lizzie waited at the mission. Sunlight came dimly through the yellow glass of the small windows, so the room was lit with a golden daytime dusk, but there was little heat. The sky was a ceiling striped with Indian dyes. The ground was worn tile. At the far end of the adobe room the altar glittered. This place never seemed to change. The city grew in all directions, but here was its eternal, damp, still-beating Spanish Catholic heart.
To Lizzie’s New World Episcopalian sensibilities, the room had a thrilling aura of overexcitement. Saint Ann clasped her hands together pleadingly. The Archangel Michael was dressed like a Spanish grande. Publicly, Lizzie disapproved of a religion that covered itself in thin gold leaf. It recalled the gorgeous medieval excesses of popery. Privately, if there’d been no one to see her, she would have fallen to her knees.
She sat on the hard pews in the cold cave of the church, wondering how long she would wait. On the wall to her right was a painting of the Last Supper. This suited Lizzie, whose mind was very much on betrayal. The waiting seemed a lenient penance. And better to find Mrs. Pleasant here than have to return again to the still, clogged air of the House of Mystery.
Mrs. Pleasant entered an hour or so later. She did not seem surprised to see Lizzie, though, to Lizzie’s chagrin, she did seem pleased. “I didn’t know you were Catholic,” she said. She crossed herself quickly and gestured for Lizzie to come outside. She wore a purple bonnet with a wide brim, and was wrapped in a purple shawl.
They went to the little graveyard, a garden of blackberries, brambles, and slabs. Mrs. Pleasant stooped over a marker. J Sparrow, whose epitaph was caught in a cage of twisted wrought iron. “There are three vigilante graves around here,” Mrs. Pleasant said. “James Sullivan, Charles Cora, and James Casey. Only I can’t remember right where. And any number of Indians. No stones for the hundreds of them.”
Mrs. Pleasant sighed. “When you get to my age you’ll find things that happened forty years ago are more clear than yesterday’s doings. Part of my mind is always in those splendid, dreadful years.” She shook her head, then straightened, brightened, and began to walk again. “Isn’t this a lovely spot, though? Nothing like the company of the dead when you need a bit of peace and quiet.”
This had never been Lizzie’s experience. “I’m even sorrier, then, to intrude on your peaceful time here,” she said.
“Have you ever given thought to your epitaph?”
“No.”
“No,” repeated Mrs. Pleasant. “Of course, you’re far too young. I’ve picked out mine. Known it for years.”
“What will it be?” Lizzie was genuinely curious. How could such a long and tumultuous history be encapsulated on a single stone? “‘She was a friend to John Brown,’” Mrs. Pleasant said. “That’s what I’d like.”
“I have something very difficult to say to you,” Lizzie told her.
They’d reached the obelisk of Don Luis Antonio Arguello. Mrs. Pleasant paused to admire it. “Then just open your mouth and let it come,” she suggested.
Lizzie took a breath. Sunlight dappled the leaves, twirled warningly in the wind. Something was corking her throat. She spoke anyway. “It’s my fault that Miss Viola was snooping last night. I put her up to it. Please don’t hold her responsible, since it’s all my fault. I’m more sorry than I can say.”
There was a silence. The shards of light, spinning like tops. Lizzie’s breath coming through her mouth, thin as thread.
Then, “You astonish me,” Mrs. Pleasant said. Her face was shadowed. Lizzie was glad not to see her eyes. He was frightened of those eyes, she’d once said, although Lizzie couldn’t remember about whom. “I thought you a lady and a friend.”
“I meant no harm to you. I certainly meant no harm to Viola. I just got it in my head that my father killed Malina Paillet. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I felt I had to know.”
“Who’s Malina Paillet?”
Lizzie told herself there was no way to offend Mrs. Pleasant more than she’d already done. No way back, in any case, only forward. “Mrs. Bell told me about Malina. The beautiful young girl in a yellow silk dress. Killed by a white man at one of your parties. Her throat cut.”
“There’s a Victoria Paillet has a place around the corner from us. Malina, I never heard of.”
“But Mrs. Bell said.”
Mrs. Pleasant turned. Her face was every bit as angry as Lizzie expected, deserved. The southern vowels hardened and shortened in her mouth. “Mrs. Bell says that she can fly. She floats over the bay to the Oakland estuary. The wind tells her stories. I love her dearly, but I don’t credit everything she says.”
“Oh,” said Lizzie.
“Are you much of a reader, Miss Hayes?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. Now, I’ve left books alone and studied people. You don’t have time for both. A woman like you will always go with the person who tells a story. You should watch out for that.”
This was so obviously true. “I’ll be more careful,” Lizzie said, more and more ashamed. And still she couldn’t stop. “Where is Jenny Ijub’s mother?”
“Buried in the sea. You society women. You always think everything’s about you. You think everyone else is only here to cook your meals or sew your clothes or be grateful for your charity or forgive you.”
Lizzie’s father had once said that very thing to Lizzie’s mother. “You think the poor are only here to provide you with a reason to be charitable,” he’d said. “So why are the poor here?” her mother had answered.
Had Lizzie’s moral position not been so compromised, she might have argued. If it’s not all about me, she might have said, why does everyone watch everything I do? Lucky she didn’t. Who would complain of this to Mrs. Pleasant, about whom the whispers never hushed? Mary E. Pleasant, who had only to touch a thing to turn it notorious. Mary E. Pleasant, Queen of the Galloping Tongues.
Lizzie tried to believe that Jenny’s mother was buried at sea. She owed Mrs. Pleasant at least this much, so she tried her best. Unlikely as it was.
“It does tire me sometimes,” Mrs. Pleasant finished, and Lizzie could see why: Lizzie was tired of Lizzie, too.
“I’m going to be different,” Lizzie offered, and she meant it; she was determined to be so, but Mrs. Pleasant walked away while she was speaking. Lizzie trailed behind, though there were no more gestures inviting her to do so.
“I have never been given to explaining away lies,” Mr
s. Pleasant said. “And you can’t explain away the truth.”
Her voice was tight with hurt. Even so, Lizzie couldn’t escape the brief suspicion that everything she’d ever done had been entirely as Mrs. Pleasant wished. Hadn’t she produced all those signs out of her very own hallway, forced a magical juncture on Lizzie merely by asserting that she faced one?
An invisible bird sang in the blackberries, a fluttering, descending whistle, which stopped as they approached. They arrived at a large stone. Mrs. Pleasant pointed to the name—James Sullivan. And a prayer with an odd mixture of sentiments:
Remember not, O Lord, our offenses, nor those of our parents. Neither take thou vengeance of our sins—
Thou shalt bring my soul out of Tribulation, and in thy mercy thou shall destroy mine enemies.
Lizzie read the epitaph aloud. “‘Who died by the hands of the Vigilance Committee.’”
“That was never proved,” Mrs. Pleasant said.
The strings of her purple bonnet had come loose. She retied them briskly. Her fingers were long and thin, her creased face set. She did not look saddened or surprised or angry or vengeful. She did not look hurt so much as she looked like a person who could be hurt. She looked old.
“Now our acquaintance is at an end,” she said. “Be so good as to leave me here with my friends.”
EIGHT
On the seventh of April, Maud Curry’s mother attended one of Mrs. Woodworth’s revival meetings and was instantly cured of her tuberculosis. She came at once to the Brown Ark for Maud, who left in a daze of happiness, hardly able to believe she’d been collected at last.
April 14 approached. Without crediting the prophecy, without mentioning it, possibly without even thinking about it, the Putnams joined a number of residents about the bay who had decided to spend Easter week taking the waters in Napa or Middletown or Calistoga. Some went to confession. Some wrote letters that apologized for old faults, revealed secret loves, and otherwise settled accounts.
Most paid no attention to the Doom Sealers. The press, long bored with it all, gave the story less space than the Sharon trial had routinely taken.
Lizzie dressed in her corset and her apricot silk and went to see her solicitor, Mr. Griswold. It was raining just slightly. Wherever the ground was unpaved it had softened, but not all the way to mud. The air had a lovely laundered smell. Lizzie shook her umbrella off and left it with the doorman.
“I need some money,” she told Mr. Griswold. “I was thinking maybe fifty dollars, but I’m not really sure what would be right. I have to pay off a blackmailer.” This wasn’t quite true, but avoided a longer explanation.
“How that takes me back!” Mr. Griswold said. “How often your father came to me with those very words!”
Mr. Griswold agreed that fifty was a standard payoff. Low for a man, but very standard for a woman. He thought he could advance Lizzie that much so long as it didn’t become a habit. He supposed she’d require cash.
She was planning to give the money to Viola at Jenny’s next piano lesson, assuming Viola was still Jenny’s piano teacher. Otherwise, Sam would have to tell her where and how to find the Boones. It didn’t make up for the trouble Lizzie had caused, of course; she wouldn’t pretend that it did.
By the time Lizzie had finished her business, she’d taken up Mr. Griswold’s lunchtime. The downtown streets were filled with women at this hour, the men all working in their offices, except for those in the bars. There was a matinee of Rip Van Winkle at the Tivoli. Lizzie saw groups of women going inside with their children, their skirts brushing together, the children’s voices high and piping like birds’. Edward Bryan would be singing the lead, and his smoldering overacting was very much to Lizzie’s taste. What a treat this would be for the wards. Lizzie determined to suggest it to Mrs. Lake.
A hack stopped beside her and Mr. Finney looked down from it. “May I offer you a lift?” he asked. “Nasty weather to be walking in.”
It was nothing of the sort, a softer rain couldn’t be imagined. “I like it.” Lizzie went on without stopping.
He jumped down, tied the horses. When Lizzie looked back, he was running after her. He walked a moment by her side, catching his breath, a little water dripping from the brim of his hat. “I hope you’ve forgiven the messenger, Miss Hayes,” he said finally. “I’d be sorry to think I’d lost you as a friend.”
“Your interest in me was never social.”
“Your interest in me was never social,” he replied. “You know nothing about my interest in you.”
“So you’re not here to ask for money? I’ve quite mistaken things?”
Mr. Finney gave an awkward laugh, made an awkward gesture with his hand. Of course he wished there was nothing financial between them, that they were only a couple of old friends out for a stroll. He hoped someday that would be the case. Nothing would please him more. As to now, he only wanted what was fair. He entirely understood Miss Hayes’s reluctance to pay anything before his information had been confirmed. She was a lady with delicate feelings. The things he’d told her were, no doubt, shocking to hear.
But now he had it on good authority that she knew them to be true. Now was the time to determine a fair price for a secret delivered and a secret kept.
Lizzie hauled up her skirts to cross the street. There was a carriage coming, black with glass windows. The driver wore full purple livery except for a large white cowboy hat. Only in San Francisco, her father would have remarked, had he been there to see it. Heaven must be wonderful indeed to make up for all the things you missed by being dead. “You can say whatever you like about my father.” Lizzie stepped up onto the far curb. “My father was a good man, and when he was alive he wouldn’t have spared a thought for a sharper like you. I don’t imagine he cares more now.”
Mr. Finney tipped his hat and clucked his tongue in admiration. “I do admire the way you speak your mind. I never met a society lady like you. No pretense, what you think is what you say.”
“Only to you.” Lizzie was surprised to realize this was true. It made her suddenly, unexpectedly fond of Mr. Finney, in spite of his being such a loathsome man. Hadn’t she always stood her ground with him? You couldn’t say Lizzie was nobody’s fool, but she wasn’t Mr. Finney’s.
She turned, stopping, and raised her umbrella so that he could slip beneath it, too. He took off his glasses to wipe them dry, and his eyes were that mottled, pebbled blue.
“What about the child?” he said. “There are details, things once said that can’t be unsaid.” But Lizzie had already reached into her pocket and drawn out the money, and this had nothing at all to do with Jenny. Lizzie was trusting her instincts. She put the fifty dollars into Mr. Finney’s hand.
“Here’s what I’m buying,” she was already saying. “It occurs to me that Miss Viola Bell held an interest for you that Miss Viola Smith might not. For fifty dollars, you look into your heart. If you’ll be a good husband to her, then marry her. If you won’t be a good husband, then let her alone. The decision is yours. You’ve come to a magical juncture here, Mr. Finney, but you’re a man who takes the long view. I trust you absolutely to do what’s right.”
He was staring at her, his face close to hers under the single umbrella, the light, intimate tune of the rain hitting the taut cloth and the stone street. The passing horses were polished and the air fragrant. It was a perfect day, one she would often remember. She’d just cursed Mr. Finney with his very own magical juncture. “The person I’m saving here is you,” she said.
Then he went forward into his magical juncture and she went backward into hers. She returned to Mr. Griswold for another fifty dollars. He was far less agreeable this time. What an amateur she was at this! If she went on letting just anyone on the street blackmail her this way, her father’s estate would be gone before she knew it.
When the morning of the fourteenth arrived, it came wrapped in a blue sky and a bright sun. Lizzie woke early and drove to the Brown Ark. “Isn’t this a beautiful day?” people
asked her as they passed on the street. All over the city people were saying the same thing to one another. “Beautiful day, isn’t it? Did you ever see such a beautiful day?”
It was the day after the end of everything. Lizzie had chosen it deliberately as the day on which she would become someone new. She was a notorious woman now; there was no point in continuing to pretend otherwise.
She sent a letter of resignation to Mrs. Hallis. Included in it was her Atlantis-coin necklace and her written decision to remove the offending child from the Brown Ark. On April 14 she took custody of Jenny Ijub.
And then, because she still wasn’t sure she liked Jenny all that much, she sweetened the deal by taking Ti Wong, too. Jenny was an obligation of blood, but she and God had a covenant for Ti Wong.
She’d met many times with Mr. Griswold, to discuss her finances. Luckily she had her experience as Ark treasurer to draw on. She knew more about money than some women of her class. Lizzie was going to court to challenge her father’s will. It was a frighteningly public thing to do. A lady appears in the papers only twice—on the day she weds and the day she dies, Mrs. Putnam reminded her. The Putnams were, of course, most disapproving. She is not your sister, they insisted with some cause, and Lizzie couldn’t make them understand that this had simply ceased to matter.
Lizzie hoped for a quick and quiet decision in her favor. She was not, after all, getting married, as her father had absolutely forbidden her to do. If she now had a family to support, there was no one to blame for this but him. She was prepared to say so in open court if it should come to that. She only hoped there’d be no further claimants on the estate, no additional children she knew nothing about.
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