I heard Nora whisper loud enough for me to hear, without turning her head, “Up to her old tricks.”
The attendants sprang into action at last, hurrying toward the woman in a cluster. As I watched, she managed to shove one of them—Perry, with the spectacles—hard enough that he fell away from her, tumbling onto his back on the ground. He took a while to get back up to his feet. It wasn’t clear whether his body wouldn’t move faster or whether he was only reluctant to taste another blow.
Then she was loose from the rope and sprinting across the green grass, headed for the fence, and I heard a few cheers of encouragement from other inmates. The fence was iron and six feet tall, and I did not see how she expected to scale it, but in any case, she didn’t make it that far. An attendant tackled her—it looked like Gus from this distance, with his hulking frame—and we heard the sound they both made as they hit the ground. He got her arms behind her and frog-marched her back toward the building.
The remaining women struggled back to their feet. The rest of the gang trailed unevenly, some carried and some dragging. The wailing grew softer, though we could still hear some of the noise even after they were out of sight.
“Back to it, ladies,” called the nurse at the head of our line, and we resumed walking toward the building, as if this were an ordinary day.
It hit me. This was an ordinary day. And if I didn’t do something drastic, all my days would be like this, for all the time to come.
Nora said, seemingly out of nowhere, “She’s a very good cook.”
I realized she meant the big redhead. I whispered, “Our cook?”
“Indeed.”
“Not very good.”
“She makes it fast, and she makes it cheap, and they don’t have to pay her. For them, she’s the best there is.”
I wanted to say that this place made no sense, but unfortunately, it did. It made a terrible kind of sense, the kind that seemed completely right as long as you assumed every woman in the place was mad and that her only worth came from labor or silence, preferably both.
Finally, I was able to survey the full crowd and see that there were eight ropes, eight gangs, eight wards’ worth of women. Almost the whole of Goldengrove, so close yet not quite.
The gang of shouting women had been the last to arrive, and I now saw they were being led back toward the building, the first to leave. I assumed they were kept separate to keep their madness from spreading.
Two more rope gangs, neither the quietest nor the loudest, followed them. Then it was our turn to go in. This time, we went through the front door.
I was lost in thought as my wardmates dropped the rope and walked forward into the dimness of the halls of Goldengrove, back toward Terpsichore. They followed the prescribed path, one after another after another. It was just as if they were still tied to the rope, though it lay cast off and forgotten on the floor like the hide of a molted snake, except where it rose to meet the twine still looped around my wrist.
I stood a long while in the entryway, silent and still, waiting for a nurse to remember to untie me.
Chapter Seven
At the end of the day, I could feel worry crushing the breath out of me like a fist. I lay down on my cot in a blind panic. Where was Phoebe? If I’d counted correctly, there was only one ward missing from the yard—was it hers, and where were they? Sprawling dread spread to my every extremity; I needed a reverie to set my mind right. I began to try as soon as the lights went out. My attempts were only partly successful.
In the first memory that swam up at me, I saw my mother more than a dozen years past, her face fresh and young but her brow creased with melancholy. The black dress she wore was too tight in the shoulders, the lace straining. It was borrowed. She stood on the balcony of Aunt Helen’s house in Newport, staring out over the gray expanse of the Atlantic Ocean far below. At the time, it was the only ocean I’d ever seen. I saw the glint of the dying light catch the track of a tear on her cheek.
“Mama?” I was a girl in frilly skirts, not yet four years old, and I didn’t understand the depth of her sadness.
She wiped the tear away before she turned to greet me. With one last fearful look back at the ocean, she grabbed my hand to pull me away toward the house, though the railing was high and strong and there was no danger of falling.
“Inside,” she said. “Now.”
My mother had lost much to the seas. First, her sister Clara, a beloved twin, had been romanced by a young seaman. Their parents’ disapproval had fanned the flames. When both vanished, the family supposed they knew what had happened but waited for word. Four months slid by in a wink. When the news came at last, they wished it never had. The newlyweds had fled to Philadelphia and sailed from there for England. Gale winds swamped the ship. There were no survivors. I did not remember a time when I hadn’t known this story. My mother used it often to warn against misbehavior.
“Remember your aunt,” she said. “She forsook her family duty and sank beneath the waves.”
Once or twice, Phoebe had even invoked this malediction in jest—“faaamily duuuty,” she intoned, waggling her fingers at me—but I could never make light of it. I learned exactly the lesson our mother intended. Those who turned their back on duty were punished. I would not risk joining their number.
My mother had also married a man of the sea, but the circumstances could hardly have been more different. He was well-established and recently widowed, well known to her parents, who urged her to accept his proposal. His two young sons needed a mother. She took the ring and the family. For years, the gods seemed to smile on her choice. The boys remembered no mother but her, and she loved them as dearly as if she’d borne them.
But eventually, they sailed. Father approved or at least allowed it. William left at eighteen on his first voyage, when I was only three years old, and never returned. Fletcher sailed from San Francisco and back five times, making us prouder and prouder as he rose through the ranks. Then one night, an inexperienced navigator misread the sextant and ran aground in the Torres Strait. A nest of rocks mashed the ship to splinters, killing more than half the men aboard, including Fletcher, who by then had risen to the position of mate. My mother’s cry when she heard the news was a wretched, animal howl. We girls would never set foot on a ship that left harbor—we were girls, after all—but my mother extracted a promise from our father to keep us from the sea nonetheless.
But the sea had also given us so much. From the initial three-masted schooner carrying indigo and hemp, my father had earned a good solid stake, and he gambled it all on our family’s move to San Francisco and a shift into luxury goods. Burgeoning traffic and the underserved upper class helped grow his stake into a small fortune, and we moved to Nob Hill, my mother’s eyes sparkling with joy.
Over the years, my father built his fleet, extending his reach; my mother lavished her attention on the household, her charitable works, and the methodical education of her daughters, the only children our family had left. When my father’s steamship the Phobos took the record for the fastest crossing between San Francisco and Yokohama, Mr. Stanford himself sponsored his bid to join the Union Club, helping cement us in society. We knew there was always someone with more, but we tried to be grateful for what we had. We prided ourselves on our accomplishments but didn’t boast. We were well turned out but not vain. We went to the second-best finishing school in San Francisco, Miss Buckingham’s, and were forbidden from even mentioning the name of the first. Envy, my mother reminded us girls often, was a sin.
Other sins came to mind as I thought of Henry Sidwell, though I did not see him again until the year I turned eighteen, nearly two years after our brief conversation in Pioneer Park. While our families were friendly, my mother only arranged for us to pay calls regularly on families with daughters, and the Sidwells had none. When we saw the Sidwell family at church and he wasn’t among them, it took weeks for me to muster the nerve to ask after him. On the day that I did, his father made a snuffling sound and said, “The
boy’s taken a wild hair and journeyed off to visit the Welsh settlement in Patagonia.” I despaired of ever seeing him again.
Not long after, Sarah Walsh—a notorious chinwag—brought me the news that Henry had been engaged to be married. Hearing this would’ve broken my heart, but in the same breath as the news of the engagement, Sarah told me the girl had thrown him over, and it was this disaster that had prompted the trip to Patagonia on a ship called the Compass. I listened closely for gossip, at church and elsewhere. I both hoped for news of him and hoped there would be none, as the most likely news to reach us would be his death at sea. I was my mother’s daughter in this way; not only did I fear the worst, I somehow expected it.
Bad news arrived during his absence but from a different quarter. The Sidwells’ oldest son, John, had taken temporary leave from his position as Goldengrove’s founding superintendent to investigate an outbreak of yellow fever among the French workers attempting to build a canal through Panama. He caught the fever himself, fatally. The funeral filled the church, but neither of his brothers was in attendance. George was at a meeting of the state legislature campaigning for Leland Stanford to be named senator, and his father reportedly refused to recall him with the election only days away. It was unclear whether he had even been told John had died. Henry certainly did not know; he was still in Patagonia, as far as his family knew, and there was no way to get a message to him. My heart ached for their mother, whose loss of one son must have been compounded by the absence of the others. I saw my mother reach out to embrace the other woman and whisper sympathies in her ear, and I saw the tears welling in both their eyes. It was the only time I saw my mother’s reserve break in public.
Then one Sunday the following year, a week before Palm Sunday, there he was. The Sidwells’ pew was closer to the pulpit than ours, so I could only see the back of Henry’s head, but I knew him instantly. I was wearing one of my older dresses, a striped green shirtwaist with a plain bodice, and a simple straw hat. Mother had told me time and again that time spent on one’s toilette was never wasted, especially for a girl my age, and generally, I obeyed her whether we agreed or not. But that morning, I’d stolen a few extra minutes of sleep instead, and I regretted them. You shall not know the day of my coming, the pastor quoted Jesus, and I blushed furiously, happy at least that Henry couldn’t see my face.
After the recessional, Mother and Phoebe began to descend the stairs as usual, and I trailed behind. At the base of the stairs, I drifted into the crowd, pretending to be unhurried and almost wandering, though in truth, I headed straight for him as if drawn by a towline. Phoebe saw me turn and opened her mouth to speak, but when she saw the object of my gaze, she paused and smiled. She touched our mother’s elbow and drew her into conversation, knitting her brow as if there were something serious to discuss at that moment. Away from Mother’s gaze, I took in a breath and drew nearer to Henry.
He looked unchanged from my memory, as if no time had passed since we spoke in the park, not a single day. My heart spun in my chest, a private gyroscope.
I was too nervous to attempt drawing his attention, but by chance, he raised his head, looked toward me, and nodded in acknowledgment. His eyes were quick and bright, and he did not look away. His father was drawn into conversation with another parishioner, their wives standing mutely alongside them, and Henry was alone. I could ask for no better opportunity.
Pretending confidence, I stepped forward with what I hoped was a dignified nod.
“Mr. Henry,” I said. “What a surprise. Back from Patagonia?”
“Oh no, I’m still there,” he said, his grin wide.
I blushed, feeling a fool. I’d been anticipating his return for so long, imagining what we might say to each other, how I might strike the perfect note of elegance and allure. Now that the moment had come, I was unprepared. “I mean to say, welcome back.”
“Thank you. I feel welcome.”
From just over my left shoulder, my mother’s voice interrupted. “There you are, Charlotte. Good morning to you, Henry! A pleasure to see you.” Her words were correct, but I heard no warmth in any of them.
Phoebe followed on her heels, and I knew without asking that she’d done all she could to delay the moment. Her eyes spoke volumes. She’d done well, and I would thank her later.
“May I offer you a ride in our carriage?” Henry asked, his voice neutral and pleasant, directing the invitation generally to include all three of us.
“No, thank you,” Mother said quickly, making sure I didn’t get the chance to speak first. March had brought in the spring weather, and I saw her mind working. “We plan to take the air.”
“Then I shall accompany you.” He gestured for her to proceed him.
“But your carriage?”
“My parents will enjoy it without me, I’m certain. Please, let’s walk.” He repeated the gesture, and I knew she was too polite to refuse a second time. In this case, if no other, I was glad for her slavish devotion to etiquette.
As we got underway, Phoebe hurried up to walk next to Mother—I gave a silent thanks for her cleverness and quick thinking, the scamp—and I fell into step, quite naturally, beside Henry. The sun had burned off the fog and shone in a balmy blue sky, and I turned my face up to soak in its rays.
“Have I missed anything of great event?” he asked me, his tone light and merry. There was a quality to his voice that I loved instantly. He spoke as if every word mattered, both his and mine.
“Not at all, I’d say. Nothing at all.”
“No great social gatherings—I was thinking, a wedding or two? Your sister’s, perhaps? Yours?”
I struggled to hide my pleasure, hoping I was right about why he should ask such questions. Not for my sister’s sake, I was sure. “I should hardly be at church with my mother and sister if I were married.”
“Your mother is here without her husband. Is he at sea?”
“On business,” I said, “but not at sea. Inspecting the dockworks at Santa Ynez.”
“Safe within sight of shore, then.”
“To all our delights.” I began to feel more confident. “But you! You were truly among the waves. Did you like being a sailor?”
“Well enough, though I was of little use. Flimsy and soft-handed.” He drew his hand out of his glove, displaying it for me. Before I could stop myself, I reached out to touch his palm. The calluses were rough under my fingertips.
“Not so soft-handed anymore.”
“I learned.”
“You’ve come back changed, then?”
“Not so changed as all that,” he said with a soft voice, husky and low, as if imparting a confidence.
We strolled and chattered, and I slowed my step as much as I dared—was he slowing his too?—but the walk was over all too soon.
“And here we are,” my mother said brightly. I wasn’t fooled by her false cheer, but I doubted Henry would hear the difference. “Girls, hurry in, Mrs. Shepherd will be waiting on us.”
Henry tipped his hat and smiled, melting me with his grin. His teeth gleamed against the darkness of his beard, which still entranced me. Phoebe went in after our mother, and when it was clear I had no choice, I followed.
As soon as the front door shut behind us, Mother wheeled on me. I was so surprised, I jumped back, and she took the opportunity to fasten her hands on my shoulders and lean her face down into mine.
“No” was all she said.
I understood instantly. Sidwell though he might be, Henry had done the one thing my mother would never forgive. He had sailed into danger. The fact that he had come back safely once couldn’t be trusted; every voyage was a risk, and my mother had had her fill.
I hadn’t.
* * *
I wasn’t at all surprised to be awoken in darkness the next day, and this time, I cooperated quickly enough to avoid being tied to the rope. The hike was both easier and harder the second time. Easier because I knew what to expect and because the idea of another glorious sunrise buoyed my
spirits; harder because my muscles ached from the previous day. The sky was clouded over, so there wasn’t much sunrise to see, and when we returned, there were no other wards taking their exercise. While other wards used the lawn for exercise once or twice weekly, ours was the only ward that went out every day and the only one that ventured so far. Finally, Nora was nowhere near me on the rope, nor were Damaris or Mouse. Instead, I was wedged between grumpy Bess who had shushed us in the dark and a frail-looking woman who clutched a rag bundle to her chest, whispering and cooing to it the whole time. I was afraid I knew exactly why she did such a pathetic thing. I did not want to ask and be right.
It was time for our midday meal before I managed to find Nora, and I made sure to sit next to her at table. We only had a few minutes, I knew, but I was determined to make use of them. I’d noticed that both Winter and Piper tended to be distracted during meals, chatting with nurses from other wards, which made whispered conversations possible. I slipped in between Nora and Mouse, who I knew would move aside for me. Lunch was a roll as hard as my fist but half the size and a few strips of meat that resembled nothing so much as boiled shoe leather in an inch of thin, watery broth that smelled mostly of onions. We weren’t trusted with either a spoon or a knife to tackle it.
I tapped my knuckle next to Nora’s hand to get her attention and spoke softly. “How long have I been here?”
“You don’t know?”
“I think I do, but things are—hazy.”
“You’ve been in Terpsichore two days, but I have no idea about Thalia.”
Looking around, I spotted the waif who had arrived in the same wagon I had, the one whose fresh wound I’d seen in the baths. “That girl. With the high cheekbones. I’ve been here since she’s been here.”
Nora looked down at her leg, then up at the girl, and down again. “Five days,” she said.
I began counting. If this was the sixth day since I’d left home, my first week was almost up. I had five weeks more if I was to arrive home before October 24. That was the day my parents expected me to return from the trip to Newport that I had not taken. On one hand, it seemed an abundance of time. On the other, one week had passed in a blink. The others likely would too.
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