Love and Other Consolation Prizes

by Jamie Ford

  Ernest spat to the dark pavement below, caught his breath, and then spat again. He finally cleared his throat and asked Fahn, “Are we even now?” He didn’t know what was worse, embarrassing himself in front of a girl he had strange affections for, or the searing sensation in his throat and lungs. The combined humiliation seemed to magnify both, as if one plus one now equaled three, or four, or ten.

  “Don’t worry,” Maisie teased, “everything at the Tenderloin gets better the second or third time around. Practice makes perfect. You’ll see. Except Amber, she gets meaner and ornerier with age. She’s old wine turned to vinegar.”

  Ernest wiped his eyes and thought of Jewel.

  “And no, we’re not even,” Fahn said. “You still owe me.”

  Ernest picked bits of tobacco off his tongue. “What exactly do I have to do?”

  Fahn smiled, paused, and then raised that mischievous eyebrow again. “You, young Ernest, have to touch lips with Maisie—the last of the great unkissed.”

  Ernest’s jaw dropped. He shut his mouth, hesitated, unsure if this precocious girl was joking or not. But as nervous as he felt, he was intrigued by the dare. He found himself willing, after all; beneath her brusque tomboy exterior, Maisie was plainly beautiful. He turned to face her…

  “Don’t even think about it.” Maisie stared back.

  At that moment Ernest wanted to jump off the fire escape—to hurl himself into the void. Fahn laughed as she argued with Maisie about being a prude. “Everyone calls you the Mayflower because you’re like those Pilgrims on the ship who were just a bunch of stuck-up Puritans,” she jeered. “Maisie Mayflower can’t hold out forever.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Fahn added in frustration; then she lifted Ernest’s chin and kissed him. “See?”

  The words stung Ernest, and he felt his bubbling affection for Fahn diminishing by the second, fondness leaving his heart like air from a leaking balloon.

  He looked at Maisie, who seemed to be taking the teasing in stride, but that didn’t exactly make him feel any better. If anything, he was more confused.

  “Well,” Fahn said to Ernest, rising to her feet. “I guess you’ll have to pay me back some other way. I’m sure I’ll think of something. Anyway, let’s hit the hay. I imagine we’re going to have our hands full tomorrow.” She slipped through the window and bid them good night as she headed through the room and into the hallway.

  “What do we have to do tomorrow?” Ernest asked as he and Maisie climbed back into the room. “We’ve cleaned up just about everything…”

  “You’ll see,” Maisie said as a serious tone slipped into her voice. Then she took a final drag and tossed the cigarette butt out the window, watching the ember sink like a falling star. “Big parties like this tend to take a toll on Madam Flora, even though she’s a real Rock of Ages. It’s all she can do these days to keep herself together with special teas and crazy medicines and all that, so she can play ringmaster for the night’s circus at the Tenderloin. But tomorrow, you’ll see. We’ll probably need your help, so get some sleep while you can.”

  Ernest didn’t fully understand, but it was late, and he was exhausted, and more than happy to go to bed. He said good night and walked toward the servants’ stairs. That’s when Maisie called to him from her end of the long hallway.

  “Hey, Ernest, don’t believe her. Don’t listen to Fahn.”

  He turned back as she spoke again.

  “A first kiss means everything.”

  BOSTON MARRIAGE

  (1909)

  Ernest thought he was dreaming when he felt someone next to him. He opened his eyes and discovered Fahn sitting on the edge of his bed, still in her nightgown. Her hair was pulled back and she leaned in close, her soft, warm hand on his bare shoulder. His heart lurched from surprise to happiness to panic as he glanced from the open door to the window, saw the sun shining in and realized that it must be late morning. He’d overslept, missed his Sunday morning chores. “I’m sorry, I’m…”

  She shushed him. “It’s okay, Ernest—it’s okay,” she whispered. “I didn’t want to startle you. I’m sorry to wake you like this, but we’re having a bit of an emergency and I need you to get dressed and put on your shoes as quickly as you can, okay?”

  Ernest shook off his slumber and bolted upright. “Is it a fire?” He instinctively sniffed but didn’t smell smoke, only tobacco and the dreamy haze of last night’s perfume.

  “Nothing of the sort.” She touched his arm and calmly spoke. “Madam Flora is having one of her fits. Miss Amber and Maisie are trying to calm her down, but I need you to run to the herbalist again and get more of that tea. I need you to go right now. I’ll turn around so you can put your clothes on.”

  She handed him his pants and then stood and faced the door while he got dressed and donned a clean shirt. When she turned back to him, she held up a dollar bill. “Mrs. Blackwell will take care of the downstairs, there’s nothing there that you need to trouble yourself with. And the upstairs girls, for the most part, are still sleeping—they have the day off. Everything will be fine, but this is…”

  Ernest didn’t know what one of her fits meant exactly. True gentlemen were not privy to many female mysteries, and the proper response was simply not to inquire further. So he took the money, slipped his shoes on without tying them, and ran down the hall. He descended the grand staircase and sprinted out the front door toward Chinatown.

  By the time he reached the Jue Young Wo herb shop, Ernest was sweaty and nearly out of breath. To make matters worse, the store was closed, though he could see the old proprietor moving about inside, sweeping the floor and brewing a pot of tea. Ernest banged on the door and shouted until the man finally let him in. The herbalist offered him a cup of ginger tea and began speaking to him in Cantonese.

  Ernest shook his head. “I’m sorry.” He couldn’t remember the name of the herb in English or Chinese. He held up the dollar and urgently pointed to the dried red flowers.

  —

  WHEN ERNEST RETURNED, Fahn was busy making breakfast for the servants. Mrs. Blackwell emerged from the kitchen with a kettle of boiling water. “Follow me,” she said, as she quickly brewed the tea and took the concoction upstairs on a lacquered tray, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, as if this were any other Sunday and she were bringing up a breakfast of toast and apple butter. Ernest did as he was told. If the cook was distressed in any way, she didn’t reveal her concern. Instead she handed Ernest a kitchen towel and said, “I have a feeling you’ll need this.”

  A few worried girls, still in their nightgowns, had gathered in the hallway near Madam Flora’s suite, but Mrs. Blackwell shooed them off. From outside Ernest could hear voices, some soothing, some panicked, almost crying. He stepped back as he heard the strange whir and squeak of light machinery.

  He said, “I don’t want to be in the way…”

  “Your chores can wait, lad.” Mrs. Blackwell shrugged. “Time to see the world as it really is—occupational hazards and all.”

  Ernest looked back, confused.

  “Madam is our matron saint, and we all need to pull together and do what we can,” Mrs. Blackwell said as she walked. “Besides, honest Abe Lincoln suffered from the same affliction. It goes away for decades, but when it comes back—oh my, how that sickness does some terrible things to the mind. Hopefully this stuff works, because it’s a frightening way to go—losing your wits, forgetting everyone around you, going blind…”

  Mrs. Blackwell knocked to announce their arrival and then opened the door. Inside the finely appointed room, Madam Flora sat atop a bicycle that had its front wheel propped up so that she was riding in place. The legs of her short, blue silk pajamas had been pulled up to her knees and fluttered as she pedaled.

  I must be dreaming, Ernest thought. I’m having some kind of bizarre nightmare from ingesting too much tobacco smoke.

  He stood paralyzed, towel in hand, staring wide-eyed at the scene of Madam Flora riding, crying, her white legs streaked with thick
purple veins. Wigless, Miss Amber held Flora’s hand and kissed her cheek.

  Standing nearby was Maisie, whose nose and eyes were puffy and wet with tears. She took the cup from Mrs. Blackwell and offered it to her mother.

  “Please, Mama…Flora, just have a sip,” Maisie said. “It’s piping hot, just the way you like it. Please…”

  Madam Flora swiped the cup away from Maisie with the back of her hand. The red liquid splashed on the wallpaper as the cup shattered. Madam Flora screwed up her face like a toddler forced to drink a spoonful of cod-liver oil as Mrs. Blackwell snapped her fingers at Ernest, pointing to the towel. He sprang to life, scrambling on his hands and knees as he wiped up the mess, dabbed at the wall to try to soak up the tea, and collected the broken bits of porcelain.

  “I want to go home,” Madam Flora pleaded. “Please, just let me go home…”

  Ernest looked back and saw Miss Amber, a kind shadow of her gruff self, softly whispering, “Ah, you are home, my love. You are the heart and soul of the Tenderloin, and we need you. Please come back to us, my dear.”

  Ernest watched as Madam Flora stopped pedaling and looked around the room. The front wheel continued to spin, winding down like the slowing of a panicked heart. Then Flora seemed to realize where she was, and hysteria dissolved into confusion. She touched her hair, the disheveled mess, part up, part hanging down in a ratted clump, as though she’d been caught in a transient state between celebration and slumber. The exhausted woman held out her trembling palms when Miss Amber offered her a fresh cup of tea. This time Madam Flora cradled the delicate china cup in both hands and sipped.

  “I’m so sorry…” Madam Flora whispered as she stared at the tea-stained wall. She looked at Maisie and began to sob. “My sweet little girl.”

  “It’s okay now, Mama,” Maisie said as she helped her mother from the bicycle to a velvet settee.

  Ernest watched as Maisie melted into her mother’s embrace, gently rocking back and forth. Then Madam Flora dried her eyes and regained a modicum of composure. She held her daughter at arm’s length, touched her hair appraisingly. She seemed somewhat confused again as she said, “Look at this one. I know you. You’ll always be my little hummingbird.”

  Miss Amber interrupted. “Just drink your tea, my love. I’ll always be here for you.” Then she glanced at the others in the room, pointing with her chin toward the door and whispering, “Out.”

  Ernest felt a hand at his elbow as Mrs. Blackwell pulled Maisie and him out of the room. He watched Madam Flora recline on the scarlet settee, eyes closed, burying herself in a flocked quilt and Amber’s arms as the door closed.

  Mrs. Blackwell turned on her heel and disappeared down the servants’ staircase. Maisie slowly sank to the floor, her legs splayed across the dark red carpet. Ernest sat next to her, and they rested their backs against the wainscoting, hip to hip, hearts still racing. Ernest felt his hand touch Maisie’s. Her fingers were shorter than Fahn’s, and her nails had been polished, shining like pearls, for last night’s soirée. She quickly placed her hands in her lap. She and Ernest stared at the closed door in silence, listening to the two older women cry.

  Ernest didn’t know which was more confounding, the thought of Madam Flora frantically riding a bicycle to nowhere, the image of the two tragic women cradling each other, or Maisie May showing a vulnerable side. He wanted to speak, but Mrs. Irvine had once told him that a gentleman should never ask personal questions of a lady.

  Yet Ernest didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to ruin this moment with Maisie, let alone abandon her. In the month he had known her, she’d been perfectly distant, so far away—angry. Now that they were here, and even if only under duress, he realized that there was a part of her that was so different from Fahn. Unlike Fahn’s, Maisie’s affections weren’t freely given. They had to be earned.

  And so they sat in silence.

  From the corner of his eye, Ernest could see Maisie wiping an occasional tear. He could hear her sniffling, until the grandfather clock downstairs chimed and she finally drew a deep breath and spoke. “Can I ask you something, Ernest?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you know what a Boston marriage is?”

  Ernest shook his head.

  “A Boston marriage is a kind of arrangement where two old spinsters live together,” Maisie said. “What do you think of that kind of marriage?”

  Ernest stammered, “I’m…I’m not sure what…”

  “I used to wish that my mother would leave here. I’d go to bed dreaming that Flora would find a man—a husband for her, a father for me. I used to imagine that we’d run away, that we’d escape all of this and have a normal home, become a family, and that she’d see me as a real daughter—that our life would be as simple as the families you see in photographs.”

  But you are her real daughter, Ernest thought.

  She answered before he could speak. “I think the days of hoping for that are gone.”

  He tried to change the subject. “Miss Amber is a bit of a porcupine, but beneath that outer layer, she doesn’t seem all that bad…”

  Maisie snorted a laugh and wiped her cheek. “You know, Mrs. Blackwell once drank too much kitchen wine and let it slip that Miss Amber had spent a year down in Lakewood at Western Washington Hospital—it’s an insane asylum, you know. That’s where she got the idea for the bicycle. Mrs. Blackwell said that they sometimes treat madness with exercise. But we can’t let the great dame, the all-important Madam Flora, be seen on the street like this, can we? They’d lock her up for sure.”

  Ernest sighed.

  “For a while I assumed Amber had worked at the asylum,” Maisie continued. “But then I heard how she’d been a patient instead—diagnosed with what they called a diabolical obsession. They said that she was somehow ‘inverted.’ I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but I figured her condition out later. She’d been given the electric cure and later forced to have relations with all the men there, including her doctor, until she declared herself well and was finally released. I don’t know if that’s better or worse than what I heard they did to the diabolical boys.”

  Ernest winced when she made a scissor-cutting gesture with her fingers.

  “I have never understood what my mother saw in her,” Maisie said. “But I think I understand now. What do you think?”

  Ernest hesitated. “I don’t understand much…” He chose his words the way a man on thin ice chooses his footing. “But I understand how sadness can make some people bitter, or angry.” And he was starting to understand Maisie’s mistrust of men in general and him in particular.

  Maisie looked at him, and he wondered for a moment if she somehow knew what he was thinking. She smiled, sadly.

  “And I definitely don’t know anything about Boston marriages,” Ernest said, “or Seattle marriages, or arranged marriages, or plain ol’ normal, I-pronounce-you-husband-and-wife marriages, for that matter. But I know devotion when I see it.”

  They listened to the silence, together.

  “I wish I knew what that felt like,” Maisie said. “Because as much as Miss Amber cares about my mother, she doesn’t care a whit about me—I’m just extra baggage most days, a haversack full of rocks. And my mother isn’t getting better. She’s only getting worse. The mother I used to know, that person is going away. The woman who proudly told the world I was her baby sister, I think she’s going away too. And the stranger who’s left, the great Madam Flora…that person hardly recognizes me anymore.”

  STROLL ON THE PAY STREAK

  (1909)

  The next time Ernest saw Madam Flora was on the following Saturday. She swept into the servants’ dining room during breakfast, elegantly dressed, hair lofted high into a cascade of curls, fingernails freshly manicured. She acted as though nothing unusual had ever happened beneath her roof, though Ernest knew that she and Amber had abandoned the Tenderloin for a while, leaving everyone, especially Maisie, to wonder and worry all week. There had been speculation about docto
rs’ visits, special treatments, and miraculous remedies.

  But now she was back, and despite the gossip, Madam Flora beamed and grandly announced, “Good morning, everyone. You’ll be pleased to know that we’re closing our doors for this evening. But we’re not locking up our wares—you fine ladies, I mean—because we’re taking everyone to Hurrah Day at the fair!”

  The servants—Iris, Rose, Violet—and even Mrs. Blackwell whooped and cheered. Were they celebrating Madam Flora’s return or the day off? Ernest couldn’t tell. But as Fahn elbowed him and smiled, he realized that today’s closing of the AYP would draw an enormous crowd and that the Tenderloin would practically be deserted anyway.

  This was splendid news indeed. After 138 days of festivities, fireworks, parades, races, and grand hoopla, the great Seattle World’s Fair was coming to an end. And their glamorous benefactor seemed to be healthy again.

  Madam Flora smiled and said, “Everyone, even Miss Amber and Professor True, will be going, just as soon as my Gibson girls finish getting properly dressed for the occasion. And we’ll stay through the closing ceremony.”

  Ernest watched as she delighted in handing out passes along with envelopes containing ten dollars each, a celebratory bonus to their monthly wages.

  Ernest looked at the money, which was twice his weekly salary, and examined the strange cardboard admission ticket—a punch card, barely used.

  “Don’t worry,” Fahn whispered. “We’re not working the fair. Madam had girls running the Klondyke Saloon at the AYP during opening week, but the joint got shut down a month later. We might as well put the passes to good use.”

  Forty furious minutes later, everyone had assembled at the nearest streetcar stand, beneath an enormous world’s fair pennant that had faded in the sunlight. Ernest noted that the servants all wore simple black and white dresses. Fahn stood apart, wearing a plum robe over her high-collared shirt, which drew whispered comments and sideways glances from the Gibson girls.