Love and Other Consolation Prizes

by Jamie Ford

“For Maisie,” Miss Amber cut him off. “Louis J. Turnbull offered five thousand dollars for Madam Flora’s little sister. Five. Thousand. Dollars.”

  Ernest watched the fight drain from Maisie’s face.

  Miss Amber kept speaking. “For you, dear—he couldn’t have Flora, so he wanted the next best thing—he wanted you when you came of age. And Flora said no. She protected you. She always protected you, didn’t she? But these are desperate times. Just look at her—now she’s all but lost to us, and the bloody French disease has gone to her head. And you’re right—the great, elegant, magnanimous Madam Florence Nettleton would never do such an unthinkable thing on her own, would she? So I had to make the hard, thankless decision for all of us.”

  Maisie stared back, her shoulders rising and falling with each weary breath.

  “But you’re so stubborn, so mule-headed. We both know I can’t do this to you if you don’t agree to go along willingly.” Miss Amber rubbed her scalp beneath her wig, her voice trembling with emotion. “So there it is, I’ve said my piece. I said what I think should happen, and it’s the only way I know to make this better, the only way to save her. That’s why you must decide for yourself now. Whether she sees the proper doctors, goes to a decent hospital, whether she lives or dies—it’s all on you now.”

  “Maisie, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Ernest said quickly. “There’s got to be some other way—we’ll sell the car…”

  Maisie approached her mother again, and this time Miss Amber didn’t stop her. Slowly, lovingly, Maisie reached out and placed her hands atop her mother’s hands.

  Madam Flora smiled. She held her daughter and then ran her fingers through Maisie’s hair as though she were a porcelain doll, a child’s plaything to be dressed up and served finger sandwiches and petits fours at make-believe tea parties.

  Ernest watched Maisie look into her mother’s eyes, seeking recognition in Madam Flora’s vacant expression.

  “Mama, don’t you know who I am?”

  Madam Flora smiled and nodded. She took a deep breath and exhaled. “Of course, my dear, I’m going to take care of you. My girls are my family.”

  “Who am I, Mama?” Maisie asked. “Say my name.”

  “I know who you are.”

  “Who am I?”

  Madam Flora looked at Miss Amber, then back at Maisie.

  “You’re the new girl. And I’m going to make a proper lady out of you.”

  BEDSIDE

  (1962)

  Dr. Luke politely knocked on the half-open door to Gracie’s hospital room. “How’s our young lady doing this afternoon?” he asked as he walked in. He found her chart at the foot of the bed and began flipping through the pages.

  “I’m not sure how to answer that,” Ernest said as his eyes wandered from his sleeping wife to the pale blue walls, the gray ceiling, the dull overhead lights. “The good news is that she’s starting to remember things. The bad news…well…is she’s starting to remember things.” Ernest held Gracie’s hand, which felt warm but limp. She’d been sedated in the ambulance and once more when they reached the emergency room. She’d been sleeping peacefully ever since, despite the assortment of tubes and wires, the IV, the heart monitor, the hissing oxygen mask.

  There was another tap on the door, and a redheaded nurse came in and attended to Gracie’s roommate. Ernest regarded the other patient, who was sleeping as well—an elderly Asian woman whose bedside table boasted an array of flowers. The adjacent wall was covered with get-well cards, letters, crayon drawings, Polaroid photographs, and a red and gold tasseled scroll with Chinese characters that Ernest could barely see and couldn’t read—he thought it said something about longevity.

  As the nurse opened the blinds on the window, she mentioned that Gracie had a large group of visitors, who had gathered in the waiting room. “Looks like they’re going to be there awhile. They’ve having a potluck.”

  “I guess that means the ladies from church have heard the latest news,” Ernest said. “What do you suppose I should tell them this time?”

  “Well,” Dr. Luke said as the nurse left and closed the door, “from the blood work there doesn’t seem to be a problem—at least not the problem we’d worried about.”

  “Are you sure?” Ernest asked.

  “I’m absolutely positive. All of her lab work is clean. Honestly, she’s in great health for a woman her age, despite the neurosyphilis that’s been asymptomatic for most of her life. Ever since she was treated as a young woman, it’s been dormant, which is why you never got it, why it never showed up during childbirth. And we took care of the recurrence with those heavy antibiotics three years ago—still gone, completely—not a trace. As you know, though, residual damage can be severe, even mimicking Alzheimer’s disease.” Dr. Luke tapped his forehead. “But the human body is a marvelous work and a wonder. While the damage to the front, temporal part of Gracie’s brain was permanent, our neurological will has some sneaky, unexpected, and not entirely understood ways of reconnecting those cognitive pathways.”

  “So, you’re saying…”

  “I’m saying she’s fine. She’s just…being overstimulated with memories that are flooding back,” Dr. Luke explained. “Like waking up from a dream and realizing that dream was real.”

  “Or a nightmare,” Ernest added.

  “That too.” Dr. Luke nodded, frowning. “I’m sorry, Ernest.”

  —

  WHEN ERNEST STEPPED out of the hospital room, he found Pascual sitting in a padded armchair in the hallway. His friend looked up from a dog-eared Doc Savage paperback and grinned. “About time you came out, kuya. Too bright in there—you want me to have someone close the light?”

  Ernest shook his head as his senses adjusted to the dimly lit hallway.

  “Juju and Hanny are downstairs entertaining folks in the waiting room. Those church ladies mean well, but they kinda drive me crazy, so I figured I’d hang out up here.” Pascual closed the book, marking his place with a lottery stub from the Sun May Store. Then he clasped his dark, scarred workingman’s mitts around Ernest’s hand and touched the back of it to his forehead, a gesture that Ernest had seen his friend use often with elders in the neighborhood. His friend’s arms, with their assortment of scars, burns, and faded, blurry tattoos, told the story of Pascual’s life—coming from the Philippines as a boy, working the canneries in Alaska, the orchards in Yakima, and then back to Seattle and the loading docks along the waterfront. Ernest thought about the IV taped to his wife’s wrist, which told a different tale, the ending yet unwritten.

  “This place got nothing on the Chateau Marmont,” Pascual said as he scratched his unshaven face and winked at one of the candy stripers passing by with a cart of fresh linens.

  Harborview Medical Center. The crown jewel of First Hill. Ernest felt awash in the irony that Gracie was being cared for in a hospital founded by the Reverend Matthews, one of the many people who had helped the late Mrs. Irvine put an end to the Garment District all those years ago. The fancy hospital was a far cry from the old Yesler Home—a mass of pink stucco that catered to wayward women after the red lights faded. Gracie must have been able to see the old building from Juju’s living room, until the place had been condemned and flattened to make room for the new world’s fair.

  Pascual pointed toward the nurses’ station with his pursed lips. “I tried to get them to transfer you guys to the Edgewater Inn; that way we can spend Gracie’s recovery time fishing for coho salmon right out your window, instead of being cooped up here.” He shrugged. “But they said the new hotel is booked solid for the world’s fair. Oh, and I got your car home from where it was parked near Ruby Chow’s. I’ll keep an eye on your place—get your mail, water your plants, as long as you need.”

  Ernest thanked his friend and said goodbye. Then he sat thinking about Gracie, about Madam Flora, and the nights of his youth, filled with celebration and echoes of madness. He remembered running through Chinatown in search of dried bamboo flowers that w
ould be mixed with red wine, just one of many home remedies, strange concoctions born out of desperation. He thought about visiting an herbalist in the morning to get foxglove tea and red yeast rice and all the other things old men and women in the neighborhood used these days to treat a nervous condition, even bouts of hysteria.

  Tomorrow, Gracie would be sent home, wherever that was. And he was at a complete loss about what else he could do to help her.

  CARDBOARD AND LACE

  (1910)

  Fahn had left the only real home she’d ever known, leaving Ernest alone to console Maisie about her fate. If she was still upset, though, she didn’t let those emotions show anymore. Not since that tearful breakdown days ago with Madam Flora.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Ernest argued. “Miss Amber is just using you to solve her problems. Madam Flora—your mother, if she were able to think clearly—you know she wouldn’t make you go through with this.”

  Maisie sat at her mirrored vanity, brushing her hair. She’d taken to wearing parlor dresses regularly now, and Ernest could hardly remember the tomboy she used to be.

  “No one can make me do anything I don’t want to,” Maisie said. “It’s my choice and it’s just one night. I can tolerate anything for one night. Especially if it means getting my mother the treatment she needs—the medicine, the specialists, whatever is required. And if I can help keep a roof over the heads of everyone else, so be it.”

  Ernest knew next to nothing about Louis Turnbull, but he now hated the man. If he was so rich—so vastly wealthy—and if he cared that much about Madam Flora, why didn’t he help her without strings attached?

  Ernest asked, “And what if I don’t want you to go through with it?” He remembered how she had felt standing next to him, high above the city.

  Maisie stopped brushing her hair and stared back at Ernest. Her words cut like blades. “It’s just one night, Ernest. One night doesn’t mean anything.”

  —

  ERNEST THOUGHT ABOUT Maisie’s words as he worried about Fahn. He missed her terribly. She’d been gone only a few days, but no one had seen her, no one had heard from her. Everyone hoped for the best—certain that she’d calm down and return. But Ernest had scoured the neighborhood, to no avail.

  In the meantime there were preparations to be made for Maisie’s big night. And if the finest parlor joint in Seattle was hard-pressed for money, Miss Amber didn’t acknowledge such concerns as she gave Ernest precise instructions. Maisie was not to settle for a frilly one-piece sorority dress, even the elegant kind offered at Frederick & Nelson. Instead a tailor at J. A. Baillargeon’s would take care of her personally.

  When they arrived at the clothier, Ernest parked the motorcar out front and opened the door for Maisie. He helped her alight to the curb like he’d been taught by Professor True, and he tipped his hat to the uniformed valet who ushered them along a purple carpet on the sidewalk and through the double doors into the posh clothier. Ernest’s leather heels clicked on the polished wooden floor, and his dark uniform stood out in sharp contrast to the rows of glass display cases, and the columns of white marble that supported a pressed tin ceiling. Dozens of elegantly dressed mannequins stood in repose beneath an array of crystal tulip lighting, backlit by sconces that looked like glowing seashells.

  Ernest stood next to Maisie, hands behind his back, feeling conspicuously out of place as she handed Madam Flora’s calling card to a slender man who wore a monocle around his neck.

  He bowed and then kissed Maisie’s outstretched hand. “You must be the one and only Miss Margaret Nettleton—I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you. For years I’ve worked with Flora, and it is such an honor to meet her spirited little sister.” He fished out a silver pocket watch. “And you’re right on time.”

  “Please, call me Maisie.”

  The man then said, “Your boy can wait outside.”

  “This is my driver and colleague, Ernest Young,” said Maisie. “He has excellent taste, so I value his opinion. I’m sure you won’t mind if he has a seat.”

  Ernest smiled, silently cheering Maisie for her refusal to be pushed around. Even as the clothier sneered down his nose at Ernest’s outfit, his black leather gloves, and the driver’s cap, which he’d removed and tucked beneath his arm.

  “Of course, be my guest,” the tailor chirped as he donned an obliging smile, one reserved for wealth. “Let’s begin this little adventure of ours.”

  Ernest sat on a tall stool and watched as the tailor put a shellac record on a windup Victrola, playing an Italian ballad. Maisie was offered a cup of English tea with milk and honey as the slender man discussed her preferences. Then the real work began as she stood on a platform and was measured in every way imaginable. Ernest looked on as Maisie disappeared behind a large Coromandel screen, followed by a trio of seamstresses, who attended to her like a flock of fairy godmothers.

  Maisie periodically reappeared, each time wearing a gown more elegant than before. Ernest loved them all, even the heavy white linen dresses that Maisie rolled her eyes at. She finally settled on an elegant design of white satin. Over her bare skin she wore a guimpe of lace that had been held in place by pearl-topped dress pins. The sheen of the new machine-made fabric was all the rage, and made her lightly freckled skin look like creamy silk, almost translucent, shimmering beneath the humming electric glow of the store.

  Ernest watched Maisie become more beautiful with each incarnation of fabric and sequined lace. He almost forgot that she wasn’t dressing for him.

  “What do you think?” Maisie asked.

  He opened his mouth but found his capacity for rational thought to be temporarily impaired. He tried not to imagine who would eventually be removing Maisie’s party dress. Or Fahn’s silk robe, for that matter. The girl whom he had shared a balloon ride with was drifting away. And the girl who had stolen his first kiss was expanding her collection.

  “Ernest, your opinion please?”

  “You don’t really want to know what I’m thinking.”

  “You’re a man,” the slender man said. “Your opinion always matters.”

  “If my opinion mattered, this wouldn’t be happening.” He tried to reconcile his feelings—balancing what he wanted so much with how little he actually could attain. “I think you’re perfect just the way you are. It doesn’t matter what you wear.”

  “And…spoken like a man,” the tailor said with a groan.

  “Thanks.” Maisie shook her head. “You’re a big help.”

  Ernest stared at Maisie, her reflections—facets in the many mirrors that surrounded her. She wore no makeup, no eye shadow or lip rouge. Her hair wasn’t curled or pressed like that of the upstairs girls. She looked like the stubborn Mayflower he’d always known, but with longer tresses now and a ballroom dress that made her look like royalty. Through the kaleidoscope of Ernest’s imagination, she looked more beautiful than all the Jewels in all the Tenderloins in all the red-light districts in the whole world. But in this moment, he found himself feeling guilty for admiring her. As if doing so made him complicit, somehow in league with the men who would be bidding.

  The world is upside down, spinning backward, Ernest thought. And what about Fahn? She was somewhere, selling herself as well, though deprived of such luxury.

  The slender man snapped his fingers and left to get something. Maisie posed in front of Ernest, one hand on her hip, her head cocked to the side. She pursed her lips and batted her eyes.

  “How much would you pay for me?”

  Ernest felt tongue-tied.

  “Why so quiet? What’s there to think about?”

  Ernest smiled and looked away.

  Maisie laughed. “Aside from that.”

  Ernest finally laughed as well. “I was worth a cardboard ticket when they raffled me off—the going rate for a novelty. But for you, I suppose I’d pay the going rate—plus a nickel,” he said.

  “And what would you want in return?” Maisie asked casually. Her eyes reminded him of
the way she had looked floating above the world, amid the fireworks.

  Ernest shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “You wouldn’t want anything?”

  All I want is everything.

  He shook his head again.

  He kept his mouth shut and took a deep breath, exhaling from a place in his chest that ached with sadness and longing. He couldn’t bring himself to speak about things he wanted, things he could never have, either for himself or for the people he loved, so he turned away. He pretended to be interested in a display of fur coats made from mink and fox, though he couldn’t look at them without remembering the wild and beautiful things that had been trapped to make them.

  FIVE THOUSAND REASONS

  (1910)

  After dinner, Ernest sat next to Professor True on his well-worn piano bench and watched the musician’s long fingers dance across the polished ivories playing the hit song “Chinatown, My Chinatown.” When the Professor reached the chorus he drew a deep breath and crooned, “Where the lights are low, hearts that know no other land, drifting…drifting to and fro…”

  Ernest listened and touched the spot on the mantel that used to belong to an old windup metronome. He remembered seeing it earlier in the week, atop Madam Flora’s messy desk—Miss Amber had placed it there so that the tick-tock motion would soothe the grande dame. Ernest had watched, fascinated by Madam Flora’s twitching eyes as the swaying arm of the oaken box enthralled her. Ernest found himself squarely jealous of her madness, which insulated her from the world more than Miss Amber ever could.

  Bliss, Ernest thought. Madam found her own bliss at the Tenderloin.

  Meanwhile Ernest had found his heart torn between Fahn—so headstrong and hot-tempered, but fearless, daring to do what she wanted—and Maisie, who was willing to sacrifice herself for a mother who didn’t know her anymore. Fahn had been given nothing in life but the short straw at every turn, while Maisie, in comparison, had had so much, at least until now. Both struggled to do what they thought was best, even for him.