Love and Other Consolation Prizes

by Jamie Ford

  Ernest said, “Good luck. I’ll be right here with Fahn. I guess we’re sticking together for a while.”

  Professor True raised an eyebrow and climbed into the back of the truck. Then he smiled as he sat down on a bale of hay and began singing “Movin’ Man, Don’t Take My Baby Grand.” The truck drove away in a cloud of dust, leaving behind streets that were less crowded than ever before, and eerily quiet, with just the distant clanging of a trolley and the chatter of gulls to keep Ernest company.

  Alone in the house now, Ernest walked back upstairs and peeked into Miss Amber’s room, which had long been vacant. It was now empty, the window cracked. He went to Madam Flora’s master suite, which was also bare except for tea stains on the wall. He sighed and finally, reluctantly, went to say goodbye to the room that had been Maisie’s, then Fahn’s. In the hallway, he paused where some of the ladies had been piling up the things they were leaving behind. There was a small mound of discarded clothing, broken hatboxes, and empty tins of makeup. Ernest took his raffle ticket from the AYP out of his shirt pocket and left it behind on the pile.

  Then he went back downstairs, retrieved his suitcase, and stepped out into the mist. He looked up at the four-story edifice that had been his only real home. As the gaslights flickered to life, he found a dry spot beneath the awning and sat alone atop his valise. He listened to the patter of the rain as it showered the streets, turning the dusty pavement black and luminescent. He surveyed the boarded-up buildings, the darkened neon signs as he patiently waited for Fahn, who showed up twenty minutes later. She was soaking wet but beaming.

  “I got a job!” she shouted. “Two actually. I got hired as a waitress,” she gushed. “But when the owner found out I spoke English, she also referred me to the Japanese Language School—that’s what took me so long. After a tour and a short test, they hired me on the spot. It’ll probably take me a year to make what the upstairs girls were earning in a month, but it’s a fresh start, and you have your savings. They even suggested using me to reach out to some of the displaced girls in the neighborhood.”

  Ernest cocked his head.

  “Well…” Fahn said. “I had to lie about where I’d worked. But Mrs. Blackwell said she’d cover for me. She gave me a marvelous reference. And since I told them we had a motorcar, they said they’d pay us to use it to retrieve some of the girls.”

  “We?” Ernest asked. “You told them about me? About us?”

  “I had to,” Fahn said. “A single woman arouses a certain suspicion around here—I couldn’t risk that, not right now. I doubt they would have hired me. And it’ll be tough for us to rent an apartment together unless we play along, even here in the colored neighborhoods. So I told a fib. There was no other way, not out there in the real world. I hope you don’t mind me pretending to be Mrs. Ernest Young, at least for a while?”

  Ernest smiled as he felt warmth spreading from the center of his chest. He was almost fifteen and could pass for marrying age. And Fahn was nearly eighteen.

  “We could…” He hesitated. Then he took her hands. “We could make it official. We could go to the courthouse…”

  “I can’t believe you still want to marry me…”

  “Why? What’s wrong with that?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing at all. A part of me would like that, Ernest.” She spoke the affirming words, but her eyes were filled with apologies as she let go. “I love the thought of a life together, with someone, anyone, but especially with you. I dream of that sometimes. But…I’m not the girl you marry. I never was and I never will be. I don’t think I’m the marrying kind.”

  “I do.”

  Fahn turned her back toward the Tenderloin. “Then I guess we’ll see what happens. The world is changing. Maybe I’ll be allowed to change as well.”

  Ernest picked up his suitcase and stared at the vacant street, the darkened buildings. Everything was quiet. He could hear birds calling on the rooftops, the clip-clop of a distant horse. The faint sound of a church choir.

  Ernest thought about the future and sighed. “Goodness, gracious.”

  LOVE AND MARRIAGE

  (1962)

  Ernest left Gracie at the apartment, engrossed in a live television program about the Century 21 Expo and the opening of the Space Needle. He walked east on South Weller, beyond a vacant lot where an old abandoned building had been torn down and past the smoky entrance of the Consistory Legionarios del Trabajo. He’d visited the lodge with Pascual on occasion, whenever the Filipino-American brethren were serving lechón.

  As he passed, he didn’t smell the telltale aroma of lemongrass and vinegar, so he kept going on across the street to the humble Crescent Café. Inside there were burgers frying, chili simmering, and coffee noisily percolating behind the counter. He found a booth by the window and rested his elbows on the chipped Formica tabletop, hands in front of his face as though in prayer. He thought about Maisie and Fahn—better known these days as Margaret and Gracie. As if in answer to his silent invocation, a waitress brought him a glass of water and a menu.

  Ernest glanced at his wristwatch and then looked outside at the creeping shadows of the setting sun. As he waited for Juju, pedestrians walked up and down the sidewalk beneath the awnings of the Red Front Tavern, the Manila Café, and the Victory Laundry & Bath.

  He’d told Juju all of his recollections regarding the great Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. He’d shared how Madam Flora and Miss Amber had traveled abroad and never returned, how Fahn had run away to a less reputable establishment, and how Maisie had eventually transcended her social status. But as his reporter daughter walked through the door, he knew that he had to answer whatever other lingering questions she might have, if only to keep Gracie from surprising her on a regular basis.

  “Wow, Dad, charming place you picked out. It’s almost as nice as the Publix,” Juju said as she hung up her coat and settled into the booth across from him.

  “Some people go out to be seen,” Ernest said. “I prefer to be unseen.”

  “Yeah, you and Sasquatch.”

  Ernest motioned to the waitress, who brought them a fresh pot of tea, steaming hot. He swirled the pot and then poured for both of them. He observed how the bits of leaves settled at the bottom of each cup, and he wondered what secrets might be foretold, past and future. “What are Hanny and Rich up to this evening?”

  Juju opened her reporter’s notebook. “Han said they’d meet us back at your lovely apartment after dinner; she wanted to spend some more time with Mom before they fly back.” Then she shifted on the cracked vinyl of her seat. “How’s she doing?”

  “Better,” Ernest said with a nod. “I think she’s getting a little bit better every day. Though occasionally she’ll ask where old friends are—most of whom have long since passed away. But we’re together again, so that’s something—”

  “Dad, I told Hanny the truth about Mom’s situation,” Juju interrupted.

  Ernest paused and slowly sipped his tea. “And…how did that go?”

  “Oh, she already knew.” Juju rolled her eyes. “Han works in Las Vegas as a showgirl. She’s around gangsters and gamblers and topless dancers all the time—she’s not that naïve, trust me. She just doesn’t like to dwell on the thought of her mom working as a—what was that word you used?”

  Ernest cleared his throat. “The Chinese called them mui tsai. The Caucasian girls had other, less interesting terms for ladies who were caught up in that line of work. Your mother was what they called a karayuki-san. And while she only worked for a brief time, it had a lasting effect, as you well know, mental, physical. Sometimes the girls were lucky, they only worked as maids—domestic servants. But others…”

  “Yeah, that,” Juju said with an exasperated sigh. “It’s hard to sort it all out. Though I did find this article.” She unfolded a newspaper, a yellowed, brittle copy of the Seattle Times from 1901. She pointed to a small headline about Chinese and Japanese children sold as domestic servants. She’d highlighted the line
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  These women, these children were auctioned off like cattle for four hundred dollars each, with discounts for buying in quantity.

  She tapped the newspaper. “This was big business. Almost forty years after slavery was abolished, this was still going on. Here I am trying to write about the world’s fair and cotton candy and roller coasters and cosmonauts, now all of a sudden my story leads directly to the seedy underbelly of the Garment District, to the Tenderloin. And to other places.” She shuddered. “From what I’ve gathered the whole mui tsai system was spotlighted by…” She looked down at her notes. “Winston Churchill. He railed against the selling of people as servants and prostitutes. And then the whole thing collapsed. The circus of that odious business was dismantled by the League of Nations. You could say that was one of the fringe benefits of the Great Depression—too many workers, even in red-light districts. The demand dried up. No profit. So no more supply from overseas.”

  The waitress reappeared, and Juju ordered a bowl of clam chowder. Ernest ordered a red Reuben and watched in silence as Juju paged through her copious notes.

  “And now no one talks about it,” he said. “It’s as though…”

  “It never happened,” Juju finished.

  “So are you still going to write about me? About your mother?”

  “I’m not sure I’m the right person to write anything,” Juju said. “I know I barreled in here like a bull in a china shop, but now it’s obvious why you were so reluctant to talk. It’s very personal. I need to turn in something for my deadline, though.”

  Ernest nodded.

  “In the meantime,” Juju said. “I do have one other question. Something that’s been bugging me ever since I started digging around. I mean—I have friends who work in City Hall, good friends, people who can get me old records. So I’ve been pulling on loose threads, trying to track down every detail about you and Mom.”

  “You’re worried,” Ernest said, “that I’m not telling you everything. You think I’m covering for Maisie—the great widowed heiress, Margaret Turnbull. She’s a popular Seattleite now, a society page regular. She’s in the news almost every day…”

  Juju looked up from her notes. “Well, yeah. That too, now that you mention it. But actually, what I’m trying to figure out—and it’s something silly, but I’m curious…because I can’t seem to find a record of you and Mom ever getting married.”

  Ernest smiled and finished his tea. “That’s because we’re not.”

  Juju coughed and then reached for her water glass.

  “What do you mean you’re not married? I’m looking at your wedding ring.”

  Ernest regarded the bit of gold he wore. He thought about the matching band on Gracie’s ring finger. “We told everyone we were married. Back in the day. The fiction of being married was a necessity at first—the only way anyone would rent us an apartment. Most landlords demanded to see a marriage certificate, but we managed to fudge it. A few years later we were basically living as a young husband and wife, and I proposed—believe me, I did—again and again, but your mother is quite stubborn.” Ernest drummed his fingers on the table. “She decided that we were as good as wedded, even though there’s no common-law marriage here in Washington State. And, well, as the years turned into decades, it seemed too late. If we had gotten married, the legal announcement would have been in the paper, right next to the police blotter and the obituaries.”

  “You’re serious,” Juju said.

  “Then everyone would know we’d been deceiving them—they’d have questions and we wouldn’t have suitable answers. It was easier to just leave well enough alone.”

  Juju closed her notebook and set down her pencil.

  “But it was more than that.” Ernest smiled, though he felt like crying. “I think she felt unworthy of the sanctity of marriage, somehow. It was a way for your mother to pay some kind of sad penance for her former life. None of it was her fault, I should have done more to protect her—every day I wished I had, but we were just…teenagers. When she went to the Tangerine, I was fourteen, your mother seventeen. We were complicit, willing participants, and our lives were wonderful and they were horrible and everything was painful and true, the good, the bad, together.”

  “So…to this day…”

  He nodded. “To this day…”

  “You’ve been living together.”

  “In sin?”

  Ernest looked into his daughter’s eyes—Gracie’s eyes, Fahn’s eyes, Madam Flora’s eyes, his mother’s weary, desperate eyes, the eyes of the little sister he’d known for only two days. “Parents always have a story that their children don’t really know,” Ernest said. “I guess this is mine.”

  —

  AS ERNEST AND his daughter walked up the wooden stairs to his apartment at the Publix, Juju kept going on about how she couldn’t believe that she and Hanny had been born out of wedlock. Their whole adult lives, their mother had chided them about how they should settle down, get married.

  “After a while, marriage just didn’t matter,” Ernest said. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “Well, it matters now,” she said. “What if Mom does something crazy again? What if the doctors find out? They won’t let you make medical decisions on her behalf…”

  “Dr. Luke has treated patients in this neighborhood forever,” Ernest said as they passed strangers in the hallway. “He understands.”

  As Ernest reached for his keys he noticed that his apartment door was ajar. Hanny was standing inside, coat and purse in hand. An audience on the TV was laughing.

  “Hello. Sorry we’re late.” Ernest glanced about. “Where’s Rich?”

  “He said he had a late-night meeting. Rich is always on the go, he said he was pitching a new client who might do business in Nevada. So, where’s Ma?” Hanny looked around wide-eyed; she opened the bedroom door, peeked into the bathroom.

  “What do you mean, where’s Ma?” Juju said as she double-checked the tiny bedroom, opened the closet door. “She’s supposed to be here with you.”

  Hanny smiled and cocked her head as though she thought her sister was teasing. Then she grew serious. “Wait, she didn’t go out to dinner with the two of you?”

  MEET ME AT THE FAIR

  (1962)

  Hanny telephoned her hotel and left a message for Rich. Then she immediately set off for Juju’s house on Queen Anne Hill. If her mother wasn’t there, she planned to call the police and report Gracie as a missing person. Then she’d sit by the phone. Meanwhile Juju had left to canvas the Betsuin Buddhist Temple, the Japanese Baptist Church, the sento beneath the Panama Hotel, Ruby Chow’s, and any other place she could think of where her mother might have wandered. That left Ernest to visit the nearby train stations and the Union Gospel Mission, where the Tenderloin used to be. They’d check, then call Hanny and leave messages, doing their best to coordinate their search.

  A part of Ernest suspected where Gracie was really headed, though, even before Pascual met him in the hallway. A woman Ernest vaguely recognized from the Black and Tan hung on his friend’s arm, smiling.

  “Kuya, what’s up? We popped by earlier and Gracie was heading out, all alone. I knew that probably wasn’t a good idea, but she seemed—you know—pretty well put together. I tried to stop and talk to her, but she wouldn’t listen. She just handed me this note to give to you and boom, out the door. I figured maybe one of your daughters was waiting for her downstairs. From the look on your face, I’m guessing I was wrong.”

  Ernest unfolded the note, which read:

  Dear Ernest, I’ve gone to the fair. It’s been too long. I’m going to make things better now. Go to the Space Needle and you’ll understand. Yours, Gracie.

  He found Juju’s business card in his wallet and handed it to his friend. “Call my daughter—her number’s on the back—let her know that I’ve found Gracie.” Then he tucked the note in his pocket and headed downstairs.

  Pascual leaned over the banister. “Kuya, wait, where are you going?”
>
  —

  ERNEST HAD WORRIED that the new Alweg Monorail would still be jam-packed—overflowing with tourists, even in the early evening—so he skipped the electric sky train and parked as near as he could to the Century 21 Expo’s south entrance, which was mercifully uncrowded. He paid $1.60 for a general admission ticket and pushed his way through the turnstile while hundreds of bells chimed in the distance. Once inside, he felt like a desperate kid again. Everything smelled new, like sawdust, concrete, and blooming flowers, with a hint of cotton candy and candied apples lingering on the breeze.

  Ernest inhaled the haunting scents and walked as fast as he could among the thicket of people. He weaved his way through the crowds, past the Interior Design and Fashion pavilion and beyond the snarling stuffed polar bears of the Alaska Exhibit, covered in fake snow. He felt a wave of nostalgia. So much had changed, beyond the location. The long, elegant dresses, petticoats, and colorful parasols were gone, replaced with a rainbow of short dresses and leather boots. Cinched waists had become soft, bare midriffs. Dark French curls had given way to frosted beehives and soaring bleached bouffants. And the decorum of suits and hats had been updated with Bermuda shorts, denim, and sunglasses.

  The elaborate neoclassical architecture, the Grecian columns and faux marble arches that decorated his memories had been replaced as well, supplanted with visions of the future made manifest in painted steel and soaring walls of pastel concrete.