by Tom Murphy
Still in a trance, she came to California Street and turned up the hill. She climbed up the street in a daze. She looked neither left nor right except to glance at the house numbers. Three-twenty-eight. It was a tall stone house not unlike Sophie’s, solid and elegant. It was an apartment house and the name LINTON was indicated as resident in apartment 2B.
The marble-floored foyer was empty. Lily climbed the stairs directly, there being no bell to announce her.
2B had a tall, polished wooden door with a large lion’s-head knocker in sparkling brass. She lifted her small fist to knock, then quickly withdrew it as if from a flame. Then Lily’s courage came back to her and she knocked twice, boldly.
The sharp resonance of brass striking on brass echoed in the empty hall.
Lily waited, alone with the echo and the mocking silence that followed.
Then his voice came, loud and careless. “Come in, come in, for heaven’s sake: it’s taken you long enough. The damned door’s open.”
Trembling, she opened the big door. It moved silently on well-oiled hinges. The door opened inward to reveal a big many-windowed room. It was absolutely empty. There was not a stick of furniture, not a rug or a plant or a curtain at the big arch-topped windows. The sun poured in through the windows. At the far side of the room was another door, nearly as big as the first. Slowly, growing more and more concerned, Lily made her way to it. And the voice urged her on. “Well, well, get on with it, then!”
She came to the second door and stood in its opening.
The next room was not quite so big as the first, but it was big enough for what was in it.
This room, too, was empty but for one large and fancifully carved mahogany bed on the far side, piled with pillows and paisley shawls and splendidly colored fabrics that might have been draperies or parts of ball gowns, or almost anything but bedsheets.
Under this pile was a greap lump of heaving flesh. Lily’s disgust was nearly as strong as her fear. Who—what—was this creature? And why in the world had the Wallingfords sent her to him—it?
The naked torso of a very fat man emerged from the tangle of bright silks and challis and cotton prints. On top of the torso was a stack of chins, and above that a round red mouth, great jowly cheeks, small dark eyes that regarded Lily with more curiosity than surprise. His head was round as a pumpkin and nearly that big, draped in fat, cushioned by rolls of plump flesh, pink in color, the flesh itself striving to hide the features that God, many plum puddings ago, had put on the face of Mr. Charles Linton.
“You,” said the querulous voice, “aren’t Jackson.”
“No, sir. I am Lillian Malone, if you please.”
“I would be the last to doubt it, my dear. Yes, the very last. How charming of you to come.”
“I come from New York.”
“Even more charming, then, charminger and charminger.”
“From Mr. Wallingford.”
Lily handed him the note, and quickly drew back, as if he might bite her. Linton’s arm, which resembled nothing more than a fine Easter ham, reached out, all pink and round and edible-looking. Each finger was a kind of fat little sausage: there seemed to be no bones to the man at all. He picked up the letter carefully, between two fat fingers, as if it were some rare species of butterfly, and he a collector. The button eyes danced over Jack’s father’s words on the heavy paper. Then Charles Linton carefully tucked the letter back into its envelope and extended his arm in Lily’s direction, not bothering to look at her.
He sighed a deep and terrible sigh. “You may be sure, Mrs. Malone,” he said softly, as though speaking to someone very old, “yes, you may be quite, quite sure you’ve come to the right place. The cloven hoof, you see, is much in evidence here, yes, yes, the Old Nick has a rather free hand in our fair city, so he does. Aided and abetted by the likes of young Jack-o Wallingford and his endless, or so it seems, chain of castoff hussies. Oh, you blush! Oh! For shame! Fair coveys of soiled doves has Mr. Jack-o sent my way, Miss, Mrs., whatever you call yourself. Fair coveys. And right useful some of ’em. Very consoling to the needs of the flesh, so to speak.”
Lily stood silent, shuddering, too shocked and angry to speak.
He roused himself now, and rose up on one elbow, and turned to look at her, his small eyes burning. Lily watched him as a rabbit is said to watch a serpent, in silence, frozen, hypnotized, utterly fascinated.
“Since I seem to be occupying half of the connubial couch, so to speak, Mrs. whatever-your-name-is, mayhap you would see fit to join me? We can discuss your possibilities at—hee-hee—some length!”
A flash of rage inflamed Lily’s mind in that moment, and she found herself glad her reticule contained no deadly weapon. For, surely, this would have been a time for guns or knives. If Linton hadn’t been such a comical figure, fat as he was, crazy as he might be, Lily couldn’t have answered for her behavior.
As it was, she could think of nothing to say in her surprise and outrage, so she said nothing. She turned on her heels and walked out of the room.
Charles Linton seemed not to notice her hasty departure. His voice went on.
“Yes, possibilities, oh, the possibilities, you are a lady of many, many possibilities, Mrs…Miss…oh, yes, the hair of copper and gold, oh, the eyes, aha! the flower flesh, yes, the joy of it all, the cloven hoof dances at the thought of it, of the many, many possibilities, yes…”
Lily walked out of Linton’s bedroom and across the emptiness of the front room and into the hall and down the stairs, shock piling up on shock, insult on insult, until she thought she could bear it no longer. He’s insane, of course, the failure of the Emporium drove him right off his head, saying things like that. Mr. Wallingford never would have put such a thing in a letter, nor Jack, either, not ever. Mr. Charles Linton might be crazy, but Lily’s hurt was real and deep, and by the time she reached the sidewalk on California Street she was filled with it to the point of fainting.
She looked up and down the street. There they were. Men. All men. All thinking the kind of thoughts that Mr. Charles Linton thought, all knowing—or guessing—her secret, all wanting her flesh, all conspiring against whatever might be left of her self-respect or her good name.
The good name she’d hoped—prayed!—to make here in the new golden land. New golden land! And that was the final bitter joke.
The streets of San Francisco were paved with mud and broken dreams, and the gutters were just waiting, hungrily, yawning and gaping for the likes of Lily Malone!
Lily couldn’t fight back the bitterness, and at last she stopped even trying. For hadn’t they all left her, everyone she had ever loved, or belonged to, or even cared about? Hadn’t her parents gone and died on her, and Fergy run off too, and dead like the rest of them, and Jack wanting her body, and getting it and casting her off like his torn Chinese robe, throwing her across the continent to the likes of Charles Linton?
Only Sophie cared for her, and Sophie was in partnership with the devil himself. In the end, there was Kate, only Kate, Kate, who was hers and hers completely and forever, Kate, who’d have no recriminations, Kate, who’d never leave her or betray her.
Kate: her baby born in a whorehouse.
Lily walked down California Street blinking back the tears, determined to hold her head proud, high, if it broke her neck to do it. She’d take her baby out of Sophie’s place this very day!
Well, tomorrow, at the latest; she’d have to find a new place, a cheap place, somewhere to shelter them until she found the job that had to be waiting for her in this raw and frightening city.
The first thing Lily did when she got back to Sophie’s was go straight to her room and read Mr. Wallingford’s letter. It was just as she’d thought: stiff and formal, polite to the point of diplomacy. Well, at least that was a relief. At least it proved Linton was mad, that the Wallingfords hadn’t been setting her up for some kind of white slavery, for some devil’s practical joke. If you could call playing with a girl’s life and, yes, a baby’s life an
ything like joking.
Some of the bitterness left her then, but none of the regret, and not much of the humiliation. For Lily hadn’t known herself until that moment how very desperately she had relied on Jack’s bank draft, on the promise of a job in the store.
What in the world was she to do now? Alone, with the baby, the money running low, an Irish girl who could only just read a little and write not much more, who could sew a bit. take care of a fine lady’s clothes. But no one wanted a ladies’ maid with a baby—she knew that from her days in the Wallingford mansion: none of the maids had babies, they weren’t even supposed to be married, unless it was a situation like Mr. and Mrs. Groome.
She sat on the bed, then lay back, exhausted. Lily closed her eyes, but sleep would not come.
Dolores came and went with the baby, and Lily could hardly bear to look at her child. In some way she couldn’t quite comprehend. Lily felt she had betrayed her daughter. It was as if Lily herself had caused the Wallingfords’ ruin, caused Charles Linton to go mad, caused there to be no women on the streets of San Francisco and few enough women’s jobs, and fewer still the places she could go for sympathy.
Except right here, here in Sophie Delage’s brothel.
You’ve gotten too well used to the comfort of it, Lily, and to Sophie’s kind words and thoughtfulness. She’s made it too easy for you, with the fine food always ready, and the maid coming and going for you, and the rest of it. And the resolve came back to Lily, stronger and more clear now, for she saw the trap for what it was.
How easy it would be to get used to this life. How hard she’d fight not to get used to it or the wickedness that created it. Sophie might be a good person, but surely she was the devil’s agent on earth for all that. I must get out of here, and tomorrow is none too soon!
23
Lily knew just what she wanted as a place to live. A clean suite of rooms in a well-kept house, kitchen privileges, and a kindly landlady who might be persuaded to take care of the baby while Lily went out working.
All the next day she looked, walking the length and breadth of San Francisco from the steamy waterfront to the top of Russian Hill, crossing and recrossing Market Street, sore of foot and heavy of heart, walking, walking, daring not to spend even the ten cents for a horse-drawn omnibus, much less hire a cab.
Again, Sophie had offered her barouche. And again, Lily refused. A fine thing, to look for cheap rooms—cheap, Lily, but respectable—in Sophie’s carriage.
Lily walked. She walked on the muddy sidewalks and out where there were no sidewalks. She walked almost to Rincon Point, past the rotting hulks of ships abandoned in the first hot fervor of the gold rush eight years earlier, past the squatters’ cabins, and always, always past the silent, lonely eyes of men.
The longing in their eyes was almost more to endure than mockery would have been, or lewdness, or propositions.
Lily knocked on many doors and got many different kinds of answers, but never the right one. Yes, there were rooms to let, said a harridan who smelled of gin, thirty dollars the week, payable in advance. Lily swallowed her repugnance and followed the woman up a dark and reeking flight of stairs. The thirty-dollar room was dim and filthy, with one small window looking over a chicken yard. Lily walked on.
Finally, at the end of a day that seemed to last forever, she found a place. For sure, it wasn’t what she’d hoped for, but then, what ever was?
What Lily found was the second-floor front of a clean house far out on Broadway at the foot of Russian Hill. The woman who owned the place wasn’t old, but she looked older than time, gray-faced and thin of lip, a face that might never have known a smile. She looked at Lily unblinking, in a way that made Lily wonder if something was wrong in her dress. But no. The woman looked at the whole world thus, in the certain knowledge that no good would come of it. A room and a half it was, but sunny, with a nook for Kate, almost her own little room, kitchen privileges, but watch you don’t cook up any of those smelly foreign messes, and be sure you scrub up proper afterward, and no pets, and does the child cry? Mrs. Moss was cut from the same unyielding fabric as Mrs. Peabody, scourge of the Eurydice, and Lily could see that she’d get no sympathy from that quarter. But Mrs. Moss kept a clean house, Mrs. Moss would look after Kate for five dollars a week, and there seemed to be no other alternative in all of San Francisco. Lily had promised herself and her little daughter that she’d spend not one more night under Sophie’s roof. So she smiled and thanked the grim chatelaine of number 2014 Broadway, and said that she and the child and her belongings would return that very evening.
Sophie laughed when she heard the name.
“Louisa Moss? If it’s respectability you want, my dear, old Louisa’ll give you a bucketful! He left her, did Jerry Moss. Ran quite away, and can you blame him? What a dried-up prune of a woman that is, not a drop of juice in her, mark my words, and mean, Lily, mean as the day is long. If blood could be got from a stone, Lily, it’s Louisa Moss who’d be there straightaway drinking it.”
“She seemed quite grim, it’s a fact.”
“Grim, next to Louisa, is a barrel of laughs, Lily. But she’s honest enough, I suppose.”
“She’ll help look after Kate, and that’s a help.”
“Lily, you know it isn’t going to be easy out there? There aren’t many jobs for a woman here, and such as there are don’t pay well. The respectable ones, I mean. It’s a man’s town, and women are either married or fancy, and not much between.”
Lily looked at her friend. She’s trying to persuade me to take up whoring. She’s trying to make a scarlet woman of me. Well, she won’t.
“I couldn’t sell myself, Sophie.”
“You don’t think we all sell ourselves, one way or the other? That it’s putting too fine a point on it by half, to call me a whore, and the girl who marries the rich man she doesn’t love fine and proper? Where’s the difference, I ask you?”
“God knows the difference.”
“That’s as may be, but I’m not God and neither are you. Think of it, Lily. I’m not trying to lure you into wickedness, if that’s what you’re thinking. But you could make a fortune—I mean a real fortune—in just a few years. And then retire into something else, set up a shop, who knows what? Believe me, it happens, and no one would think the worse of you.”
“I know you mean to help, Sophie, but I couldn’t.”
“Well, dear. Perhaps not. In any event, the carriage will be ready now. I’ll have someone load your things. You will come and see me, Lily? You won’t forget old Sophie?”
“How could I forget? Never! Never think I’m ungrateful, dear Sophie. But I have to make my own way as best I can. For Kate’s sake. For my own sake.”
“I understand, darling. Now. Before I start weeping and carrying on like a fool. Go. But keep in touch, dear.”
“I will. Always. And thank you, thank you, Sophie. For everything. For being a true friend.”
Lily stood up then, and kissed Sophie. Then they both went downstairs, where Dolores was waiting with the baby. The luggage had already been loaded onto Sophie’s glittering carriage, and a hamper of food, milk for the baby, extra little towels and sheets and blankets, for the nights were often chilly. There were more kisses, more promises, and then Lily and Kate went clattering off up the dusty street toward the dubious comforts of Mrs. Moss and her second-floor front and her pursed lips and respectability. Lily found herself sighing as they drove off, for the hopes that had vanished forever, for the comfort and companionship of Sophie, for the luxury of the maid Dolores.
Yes, you’re on your own now, well and truly, and may you find what you are seeking, my girl, and find it damned quickly, for Jack Wallingford’s money can’t last you a month, and there is surely no more where that came from! The sun had nearly set when the Delage carriage pulled up in front of Mrs. Moss’s narrow gray front door.
Lily thought it a good omen that her new landlady seemed not to know Sophie’s fine carriage, bought with the wages of sin.
As long as she had money. The thought of how terribly vital that question had become stabbed into Lily at once, deep and sharp, and took the pleasure out of her fair morning. Well, then, I’ll just do what I have to do quickly, in the morning, there’s lots of time, and find a job in the afternoon.
Lily was afraid to mention her quest to Mrs. Moss, afraid the older woman would consider her unreliable and ask her to leave. She went out onto Broadway to do errands, and was appalled by what things cost. Milk, thirty cents the quart, and Kate needed nearly a quart of it fresh every day! One not very handsome cabbage, two dollars. Beef, four dollars the pound, when you could find it. She had heard that there were Chinese stores where things were cheaper, where they had fish for not too much money, but these were far away from Mrs. Moss’s practically suburban end of Broadway. Looking dubiously about the small greengrocer’s shop, Lily realized it would cost her and Kate at the least nearly a dollar a day merely to survive. And that was without clothes, medicine, if, God forfend, they should need it, or anything else.
A handsome young farmer will ask me to marry him, and I’ll fall in love and he’ll take me to his beautiful farm in the country and we will have five fine baby boys to play with Kate, and we will live happily ever after. Lily smiled sadly at her daydream, bought the milk and a little cheese, and walked back to Mrs. Moss’s.
The best weekly newspaper was the Alta California, and it was filled with advertisements, including many for help wanted. But there was nothing for Lily, and the ten cents she had spent were all wasted. Two rich ladies over in South Park, near Rincon Hill, where she had been apartment-hunting just yesterday, had advertised for maids. Twenty-four dollars a month, room and board included, only single girls with good references need apply. Well, single I’m not, and references I have none, unless you count old Wallingford’s letter, but that doesn’t say about me being a maid. There were situations open for cooks in restaurants near the docks, and Lily wondered if she could talk herself into a job like that. Or if, in fact, she could do that job if she got it.
