by Megan Chance
But I had her letter of invitation. The paid train ticket. That was what mattered.
“Mother!” Goldie marched through the door in her dressing gown, impatient and exasperated. “Mother, what are you doing here?”
Aunt Florence’s hands dropped to her sides.
“I’m so sorry, May.” Goldie went to her mother. “Come now, back to bed with you.”
I said, “If she’s sleepwalking—”
“It’s nothing for you to worry about. I’ll take care of it.” Goldie tugged Aunt Florence to the door the way one might an ill-behaved child.
I followed them to the hallway, feeling helpless and stupid. “Do you need my help? Is there anything I can do?”
Goldie didn’t answer. She took her mother into the bedroom at the end of the hall, shutting the door firmly, and the house swallowed them in silence.
I’d forgotten to draw the curtains, and I woke to a blanket of bright fog outside the window obscuring all else, and the hauntingly disorienting sense that the world had slipped away and I was suspended, imprisoned in a vast nothingness.
Some of that feeling had to do with my aunt’s strange visit last night, but my dreams too had chased uncertainty and dread into the morning, though I could not remember what they’d been. Full of questions, certainly.
I listened for something to tell me that the household had thrown off sleep, but I heard nothing, not a maid, nor my aunt or uncle, nor, unsurprisingly, Goldie. Only, again, that spooky silence, accented now by the suffocating sequester of the fog. I wondered if I would make too much noise if I went to the bath. Should I dress? Should I go downstairs or wait for a maid to come? My questions only emphasized that, while I was not quite a guest, neither would I be a member of the family until I’d mastered these details of day-to-day living. Strange, wasn’t it, how such things were hardly worth thinking about until one did not know them?
I crept to the bath with its blue delft sink and tub and an embellished toilet that looked carved from marble. What a miracle, to turn a faucet and have water—hot water, too, no less. A bath in the boardinghouse had meant buckets of water heated on the stove, half grown cold before the tub was full. I might have spent all day luxuriating in this bathroom, had not the wallpaper been so intimidating. It was bright and garish, with animal faces peering from between jungle leaves. They seemed to be watching my every move, and I was glad to hurry out again.
I’d seen no sign that anyone was awake, and so I pulled my sketchbook in its leather case from my valise, along with the set of drawing pencils. The pencils had been an extravagance, and I still felt guilty when I used them. But Mama had insisted. “I don’t know where you got such talent. Not from me, certainly, and your father, well . . .” She’d become lost in a memory, then shaken it loose with a smile and a small laugh, and when I’d begged her to share it, had only said, “Just remember, my dear, not to judge so harshly. There are two sides to every story.”
It did no good to ask anything more; the promise my mother had made to my father, whatever it was, was as binding as her love for me. In the beginning, I’d buried my questions in imaginings about my father where I gave him a hundred excuses for being away. He was lost at sea. He’d been kidnapped. He was an explorer in the Arctic desperate to find his way home to us. As I grew older, those stories no longer satisfied; I became frustrated with everything I didn’t know, frustrated with our poverty, with the everyday evidence of our want. Our rooms where nothing belonged to us, not the furniture, not the rugs, not the cheap chromolithographs on the walls. Only a few things here and there: a commemorative candy jar from the Centennial Exposition, an empty perfume bottle that still held a lingering scent of something complex and fascinating—“French perfume,” Mama would say, waving it enticingly past my nose—a few books, our clothing, the drawings I made sometimes, when there was spare paper about, of fantasy lands where my father was held prisoner, though I didn’t tell my mother that’s what they were. The only time I had, her sorrow had made me sick with myself.
Then one day, I’d lost my temper over something small—I don’t remember now what it was—and kicked the table, which rocked so the Centennial candy jar fell to the ground and shattered, and I began to cry. To think of it now, my mother’s horror at my misery, the things I said . . . “Why must we live like this if he’s so rich? Why doesn’t he come for us? Why does he want us to be poor?”
I was young; it embarrasses me now to think of it. It embarrasses me to think of the look in Mama’s eyes—though what did she imagine, when she planted in my head such stories of riches and what my life should have been and would one day be?
As I raged, she tugged one of my drawings from the wall and turned it over, then shoved it into my hands. “What would you rather our rooms looked like? Draw them for me, May. Show me what you dream about.”
That was how it started. My railing at circumstance transformed my world, if only on paper. There, I drew a fantasy for us both, rooms to escape the cheap meanness of our lives, safe harbors of beauty and peace, the places Mama told me I belonged. Her hopes for my life—wealth, comfort, society, with nothing to do but spend my hours going to balls and suppers and making my home beautiful—became my own. Those scrap pages gave way to sketchbooks, bought with hoarded pennies for my birthday, for Christmas, and then one day, a leather case with my initials stamped into the corner in gold leaf. I slipped each new sketchbook into it. I don’t know how Mama afforded it, and she only smiled when I asked her and told me it was a reminder that these designs belonged to me. “Be sure to sign each drawing, May. They are so beautiful you must claim them as your own.”
I’d taken such pride in her delighted joy when one of my ballrooms made her smile. “It makes me think of a moonlit night.” Or an orangery brought a sigh. “One can imagine falling in love here.” I drew rooms to please her, to elicit that faraway look when I knew she was thinking of my father, hoping always that she might reveal some snippet, some clue, and whenever she did—“He would love this bedroom, May”—I’d go over every detail of the drawing as if I could somehow divine what it was he would have loved, what of him I had captured, what of him was in me, that I could access this part of him so unknowingly. She revealed nothing of him, and yet, my anger with him faded a bit with every room she told me he would like.
Those hours with Mama were our best, and now the memory brought a tightness of grief that almost made me put the sketchbook down again. But no, she would be so disappointed if I let sorrow and loneliness triumph over the joy I took in this.
I crawled back into bed and opened the sketchbook to the most recent page, which I’d drawn on the train, and lost myself in the decorations, which were beautiful and harmonious, and had no clashing colors, designs, or patterns, no surfaces so crowded with ostentatious demonstrations of wealth that taste had played no part in their selection. It was a relief to draw a room where china cupids did not form a celestial army that kept one awake in fear of being battered by tiny wings.
There was a light tapping on my door, and I remembered last night with a mix of dismay and anticipation. But this time, it was not Aunt Florence who cracked open my door, but Goldie. She peeked around the edge. “You’re awake? What are you doing? Reading? Is it a novel?”
“No, it’s nothing. A sketchbook.” I tried to put it aside.
“You can draw?”
“A bit.”
“You must let me see.”
She was so insistent that I put the book into her hands. Only Mama had ever seen my drawings, and I couldn’t deny that I hungered for a compliment from my cousin and hoped that my mother’s were not just out of fondness. And perhaps too, I hoped that Goldie might become the admirer, the friend, my mother had been.
Goldie leafed through the pages rapidly at first—no, too quickly, she was hardly looking—but then she slowed, suddenly attentive, and I felt a tense little anticipation.
She stilled. “They’re all rooms.”
Patience, I counseled myself. �
��Yes. I’ve always drawn them. When I was young, Mama thought it would—”
I’d meant to tell her the story, but I stopped at the look on her face, a careful consideration that changed to something I couldn’t define. “Why, these are perfect!”
“Perfect? Thank you, but I—”
“But I’ve never heard of a woman interior architect.”
She’d put a name to what I’d been doing with my drawings. Something I’d never thought about. That’s what it was called. Interior architect. It had an interesting sound, even alluring, but her skepticism at the word woman dampened my pleasure at her praise. I reached for the sketchbook. “It’s hardly as if I’m planning to be one.”
Goldie held the sketchbook beyond my reach. “No, of course you aren’t. That would be absurd.” She flipped to a sketch of a library with arched ceilings and a squared pillar in the center with desks positioned all around it. “You could put in a few statues.”
“The books are the decoration. Imagine their colors. Calfskin bindings and morocco and gold-leaf—”
“All with uncut pages, no doubt. What’s the point of a book if no one reads it? Are there any paper covers on those shelves?” Goldie handed it back. “You need a new case too, one with a better leather. Look, all the gold is flaking off. Anyway, I’ve come to tell you to get dressed. We’re going shopping.”
I felt a vague disappointment, though I wasn’t certain why. She’d been complimentary, hadn’t she? Why then did I feel so disgruntled?
“How is your mother this morning?” I asked.
Goldie sighed. “I am sorry about last night, May. Sometimes the laudanum gives her nightmares.”
“Laudanum?”
Goldie hesitated.
“If I’m to live here, you must tell me,” I urged. “I heard everyone last night, you know. How long has she been ill?”
“Only a few months. It began with headaches, and the doctor gave her laudanum, which made them better, but honestly she’s become more and more difficult without it. She’s taken to her bed. It’s best not to expect her to do, well, anything. Or to be anywhere. She probably won’t remember last night. Half the time she makes no sense at all. Just ignore her.”
“But I have so many questions.”
“She won’t be able to answer them, May, and it just confuses her more if you try to speak with her. Believe me, it’s best for everyone if you don’t try.” She went to the door. “Don’t be long.”
Goldie left, and I stared after her in dismay. I had not wanted to give any credence to my fear that my aunt was unbalanced. “Half the time she makes no sense . . .” Yes, but what of the other half? I didn’t want to confuse or upset her, yet there must be something she remembered of my mother, of the past. Also, which half had invited me here to San Francisco? Aunt Florence had been ill a few months, Goldie had said. I’d received her letter two weeks ago. But no one was surprised that I was here, and I’d been so warmly welcomed. I didn’t think I needed to worry on that score, at least.
Another knock on my door, and a young Chinese woman came inside. I recognized her as the maid with the heart-shaped face who had directed me back to the ballroom last night. She wore a simple shirtwaist and skirt, and her glossy black hair was in a perfect chignon, which only accented the wideness of her face at the temples and the delicacy of her chin. Her brows were straight, her eyes dark, and her smile slight but not unfriendly as she set the tray she carried on the dressing table. “Good morning, miss. I’m Shin. I’m here to help you dress.”
Her voice was accented, but her English was perfect. Goldie had said nothing about a maid, and I had no idea what to do with her, or even how to address her. “Oh. Goldie didn’t tell me. I didn’t expect—”
“Of course you must have a maid,” she said firmly.
I felt immediately stupid, and said only, “Yes.” I set my sketchbook beside the tray, which held a steaming pot of coffee, a stack of buttered toast, and a small dish of apricot jam. “It’s nice to meet you, Shin, and thank you for bringing breakfast. But I don’t need help dressing.”
I waited for her to leave. She said nothing, but stood as if waiting for some instruction that I had no idea how to give, or even what it should be. Finally she said, “Have you unpacked, miss?”
“Oh. Oh no, there’s been no time.”
She was already at the foot of the bed, opening my suitcase. She took out a faded, rust-striped shirtwaist, a brown skirt, and my unmentionables. No fashionable combination underwear for me, but only a frayed chemise and drawers. Shin’s clothing was of better quality than any of mine, and I could only imagine what she must think of my plain petticoats, the pink corset cover that had been washed to beige, and the oft-mended stockings. It was all I could do to keep from crawling beneath the bed in shame.
But Shin was insistent in a quiet and determined way as she began to divest me of my nightgown, and it seemed easier to give in than to resist. I supposed I should get used to this. Still, my skin goosepimpled; I could not meet her eyes. I had no idea where to put my hands, my arms, how to ignore her or even if I should, and in my attempts to avoid embarrassment, my gaze landed on her right hand, which was missing an index finger.
I gasped.
She paused. “Miss?”
Flustered and more embarrassed than ever—one could not ask about such a thing—I said, “Nothing. Nothing.”
It was a relief when I was properly dressed again.
“Your hair, miss,” Shin said, indicating the padded bench at the dressing table.
I sat helplessly. She poured my coffee, and then unplaited my braid while I ate and tried to keep from looking at that missing finger. It called to me like a ghost, always in my periphery. How well she managed without it. How deft she was as she began to brush my hair. I could not help closing my eyes at her steady, soothing hand. Like Mama’s.
To distract myself from the sudden urge to cry, I opened the sketchbook. I’d gone through four or five designs when I glanced into the mirror to find Shin staring at the pages. When I caught her, she glanced quickly away.
“They’re really very rough.” I closed the book again.
“They’re pretty, miss.”
She wound my tresses skillfully about her remaining fingers. I had to force my stare away. I wondered if she noticed. “Please, I would like it if you called me May.”
“Yes, Miss May.”
It was probably the best I would be able to do. “I wonder if I could ask a favor, Shin. If I do something wrong or inappropriate, would you please tell me? Don’t worry about my feelings. I want the Sullivans to be glad they brought me here. I want to fit in.”
Shin regarded me solemnly. “Of course, Miss May.”
I did not mistake her quiet censure. I had been wrong to ask. But I smiled as if I were satisfied, and when Shin had finished with my hair—doing it far more expertly than I could, even with her deformity—and held out my coat and my hat for me to put on, I thanked her, and went into the hall to wait for Goldie. Idly I counted the fawns and cupids on the table—where was the angel with the harp they’d gathered so reverently round yesterday? Perhaps it had heard my thoughts and whisked itself away. Its absence was notable, given that now all the little worshippers were praying to nothing.
Goldie came out of her room, shoving a jeweled hatpin into the crown of her hat, which had a brim nearly the width of her shoulders. It was lavishly decorated with ribbons and bows in several shades of yellow to match the short jacket she wore. She glanced at my hat, not so wide, much less fashionable, and with ribbons pinned into place so they were interchangeable and thus one hat could serve for a dozen.
“Your hair looks very fine this morning,” she said. “Oh, I didn’t mean—”
I laughed. “Shin worked a miracle. Thank you for sending her.”
Goldie looked surprised, but then she leaned close and lowered her voice. “Mind her, May. The Chinese are the best servants we can get, but they have their faults. For one thing, you can’t beli
eve anything they say. They’re terrible liars. Everyone knows it. Even the police don’t believe them unless they’re in a cemetery. They won’t lie in front of their ancestors, you know.”
“No, I didn’t. She’s—her finger—”
Goldie made a face and shuddered. “I know. It’s horrible, isn’t it? Does it trouble you? I’ll have her sent away immediately. You needn’t look at her again.”
“Oh, no, no.” I didn’t know whether to be grateful for Goldie’s quickness in easing my discomfort or alarmed at it for Shin’s sake. “That’s not what I meant. I just wondered how it happened.”
“She came to us that way. Papa says she probably lost it in some factory, but I think she must have been a tong girl.”
“What’s a tong?”
“A Chinese gang. They’re everywhere in Chinatown. There’s something insolent about her, don’t you think? Either she never really looks at you, or she looks too intently.”
I couldn’t say, having done my best not to look at her.
“I think she got into a fight with another tong girl and”—Goldie shrugged—“well, you know.”
“I don’t really. I’ve never known any Chinese,” I confessed.
“You don’t want to know any here, either, if you understand me. But never fear, I’m here to tell you everything you need.” Goldie patted my arm reassuringly. She started down the stairs.
I touched her elbow to stop her, and when she looked back at me, I said, “Please do. Teach me everything important, I mean. This is all so new, and I don’t wish to embarrass you, or your parents. I want to make you proud.”
She smiled. “I will never lead you astray. We’ll be seen everywhere together, after all. I’m certain we’ll become the best of friends.”
It was her special talent to know the perfect thing to say. I had not had many friends in Brooklyn; I was the only one at the shop beyond Mrs. Beard herself, my mother had quickly ended whatever relationships I’d managed in our neighborhood, and the other ladies in the boardinghouse had been much older, more kindly aunts than friends. Now here was beautiful, vibrant Goldie, saying that we would be the best of friends, and I was foolish enough to think it was what I wanted above all else.
