Lily Cigar

by Tom Murphy

  He still ran to her! And the grin he grinned was a boy’s grin. Lily stretched out her slender arms to receive him. No. She very decidedly did not feel sixty-three.

  Brooks laughed out loud to himself as he galloped up the drive. It was a day to make a man laugh, a day on which the sky itself seemed to smile and the wind teased the trees. And there was a letter from young Jon!

  Young Jon indeed: the boy was twenty-nine and quite on his own in Boston, cutting a merry swath among the debutantes of Beacon Hill. How glad Brooks and Lily had been when Jon decided not to join some of his chums in the Cuban invasion that had attracted so many fine young men to the trumped-up cause of freeing the Spanish-dominated island. Jon had a good head on him, and Neddy too, as why should they not, with the blood that flowed in their veins?

  Brooks pressed on his horse and thought in passing how very much this dear, familiar drive had changed in the thirty-five years he’d known it, changed, and for the better, and yet always remaining the same. Oh, sure, the flowering shrubs were a fine sight, a happy replacement for the random sage and scrub oaks that had once served as God’s own decoration, back before the great brushfire. The whole place was neat and trig as twelve gardeners and many years could make it. And it still was the same: its proud Mexican heritage had not been hidden. Here was the same well-loved curve of the hill, the same dearly remembered foothills climbing into the blue distance, the opening of the drive into the courtyard, the simple, noble proportions of the ranch house, that huge dark-oak doorway and…Lily!

  Lily waiting.

  Lily, who had done nothing less than give him back a life in that dark time when he had written himself off as lost to happiness forever. Lily, straight and slender and smiling. Lily, whose flame of hair was only slightly brushed with an occasional white hair. Lily, who had loved him more than he ever deserved, fine and steadfast all these years, loved him even while fighting the devils that haunted her, playing a role if he asked it, the best mother a man could want for his children, sweet and strong and…Lily!

  There was no calculating the breadth and depth of his good luck. Brooks thought of Neddy, Neddy the first, his brother. He thought of Fergy and poor Jack Wallingford and all the other luckless devils and wondered what in God’s green world he had ever done to deserve even a fraction of what had been given him. But then he stopped thinking and spurred the horse and raced for his woman. There was Lily, and there was a letter to read, and in his heart it was springtime, whatever the calendar might say about his age!

  They had tea in the kitchen, as of old, and ate Gloria’s cookies, and read Jon’s letter.

  Jon was getting married. His letter vibrated with love. It was the first time in the history of the world that a young man had been so blessed. To fall in love! To be loved in return! If only his parents could understand. There was no girl like her, not anywhere, nor had there ever been. To what heights his mad heart soared, no astronomer would ever be able to measure. Her name was Felicity. Felicity! The best name a girl could have. The letter went on, three pages’ worth, and before it was half-read, both Brooks and Lily were dissolved in laughter.

  “Stop, do stop, I’ll spill my tea!”

  He stopped reading. “She sounds nice, for a goddess.”

  “Well, it was bound to happen. I suppose we shall have to make the journey.”

  “Maybe they’ll elope, and come out here.”

  “Never, my dear, not if I read between those lines. He’ll have the most proper of proper weddings in a brick Pilgrim church, and all the maiden aunts will frown on us as parvenus.”

  “We’ll frown right back.”

  “On the contrary, we will have a lovely time, my dear. You forget we are old and dignified these days.”

  “You are young as young, Lily, and my love is young, whatever ravages the years have wrought on me.”

  “If we must go East, why not make a proper trip of it and go on to France? I loved it the last time.”

  “We had the children the last time.” There was a note of regret in his voice, and Lily knew just what her husband was thinking. The goddess had taken the last one away from them: they would never really have their children again.

  “But this time we will know people. The Harringtons are in London, the DuBoises in Nice, and—”

  “I will not call on Marianne Wallingford.”

  “It might be a lark, for the wicked baroness to be visited by her mother’s former maid.”

  “She is, one hears, very wicked indeed.”

  “Poor girl. Think what they forced her to marry.”

  “Quite set the style, though. Now there are more titles for sale in France and England and Italy than Chaffee oranges on Market Street.”

  “And rich American mothers fighting for them.”

  He took her hand and squeezed it. “There isn’t a title in the world I’d trade for the one I’ve got: ‘Husband of Lily.’”

  And the warmth of him and the urgency of his love flowed through her as it always did, undiminished by time, and Lily decided that she most definitely did not feel her age, whatever her age was supposed to feel like.

  “Husband of Lily Cigar?”

  “Especially.”

  “Need I tell you I feel the same, my dearest Brooks, even after all this time? I thought that as you came up the drive just now, and it must be that age is making me silly, for it all seemed just as it was—how I feel for you—only, perhaps, even better now.”

  His reply was a kiss. Then he bent and whispered into her ear, even though there was no one to hear them, “Why do you think I gallop?”

  And Lily laughed, but it was a laugh wrapped in all the shimmering garments of love.

  They told her to use one of the coachmen, but Lily merely smiled. Her horses were tame, the little landau was light and easy to handle, and she would be damned if the mere fact of being in her late sixties was going to certify her as an invalid forever. She climbed up into the driver’s seat with a light enough step if she did say so herself. And the sleek bottle-green carriage was soon tripping merrily along the smooth road to San Mateo. Her only dread was running into one or another of San Francisco’s eight motorcars, smelly clanging inventions that they were, well-calculated to frighten a horse and its driver clear into Marin County. At least they gave plenty of warning, with their wheezing and rattling.

  She was on her way to the academy.

  The day was fine, as only early April can be in San Francisco: the morning fog had gone questing back beyond the hills—from whence it would come pouring back again in late afternoon, seeking its mother, the sea. The sun that broke through was still tempered by mist. Later, it would be warm.

  When Lily thought about her long life, which happened much more often now than she could ever remember, it seemed to her that aside from Brooks and her children, the best thing she had done was to found the academy.

  And what a fine place it had grown to!

  For all of her revulsion at San Francisco society, Lily had to admit that it was her own diligent work among the rich of the city that had built the academy into the model institution it had become.

  Every winter, right at the height of the season, she gave the Academy Assembly Ball, and that was beyond any question the major event of the year. And year by glittering year the profits rose, until last January they had raised more than a hundred thousand dollars.

  Fergy had no heir but his sister, and Lily had diverted her share of his estate to the academy. The Fergus Malone Junior Gymnasium was better equipped than the sports facilities of most universities, or so her own sons told her, and they surely had reason to know. From the simple cluster of cottages that had been the inception of the academy, the physical plant had grown impressive. The hundred and sixteen acres of the original purchase were none too many for the present size of the place. They had nearly a thousand students there now, and a real school, a proper infirmary, and many more cottages. The place still had the countrified atmosphere that Lily had wanted, but San Mat
eo itself was growing ever less rustic, and the effects of this were inevitably felt at the academy. It was a happy place, Lily knew, and a productive one: now the students of the Fergus and Mary Malone Memorial Academy entered college on a regular basis, often winning scholarships on their own, sometimes with financial help from the academy on a special loan arrangement that Brooks had invented, whereby the students’ college expenses were paid for by the academy, and then the academy was paid back in small no-interest installments by the student himself after he found work. In the twelve years that this had been in effect, there had been not one default on those loans.

  Lily went to the academy regularly, not because she felt that she was particularly necessary there—although the administration naturally consulted her on every important decision—but rather because it pleased her to see her plan so beautifully carried into action.

  She would walk the well-trimmed paths of the place, and sometimes peek into classrooms, take apples to the children in the infirmary and read them stories, joke with one or another of the teaching staff. But she took great care never to become intrusive; the academy was run by the finest professionals to be found, a group on the young side, teeming with enthusiasm and ideas.

  This was reflected in the children, who came in virtually every size and shade and color from Chinese to red Indian. Yet for all their physical diversity, these children had one strong bond in common: almost without exception they were alert, and interested, and happy. This happiness reflected directly into Lily’s heart, and warmed her in the most secret corners of her being.

  The little green landau climbed the last hill. There was the academy, all spread out before her, gleaming with care and promise.

  Lily smiled, as she almost always did just at this turning in the road. How very fine it is to have a dream, and have it come true!

  49

  Lily sat in their biggest formal carriage and wondered, as the driver rattled down Market Street, when in the world they’d replace the outmoded cable cars with their clumsy-looking overhead wires. She was far from sure that every new development in the booming town represented any real progress: Mr. Claus Spreckels had his huge eighteen-story building, pride of the city, bristling with all the newest electrical devices and those swaying, clanging elevators. This was a noisy, vulgar kind of progress, if progress it was. Nor was she overjoyed at the huge white Greek Revival bulk of the new Fairmont Hotel that had lately sprung up at the top of California Street, intruding on the Chaffee view of sunsets and the western bay.

  Still, the city was a magnet for money, the city must grow, and there were some attractive plans in the air. Cutting great new boulevards around the seven hills rather than the silly pioneer-day grids of streets that ran straight up and down the steepest slopes—there was an idea that made sense.

  And the culture of the town was booming too, hand in hand with trade. It was culture, in the form of the Metropolitan Opera tour, that brought Lily downtown on this warm Tuesday morning of April 17, 1906. Ever since her adventure with the soprano Christine Nilsson, Brooks had left all operatic arrangements to Lily, and she was on her way to make sure their seats for Caruso’s performance of Carmen tonight were as specified, with the extra four chairs in their regular box for the guests. On an evening that had generated such anticipation, it would pay to inspect the setup in person, and to secure the tickets in her own hands. Thinking of Caruso reminded Lily of Italy, and of the recent disastrous eruption of Vesuvius, in which uncounted hundreds of villagers in the Neapolitan area had been killed. Just Saturday, they had attended an Italian Relief dinner, and Brooks, with his typical generosity, had given a substantial check to the cause. But the tempestuous behavior of Vesuvius seemed very far away to Lily as she gazed out of the carriage at the imposing commercial buildings of Market Street.

  The city had learned its lesson about fires long ago. Well she remembered the earthquake and fire of 1868, and the panic that followed. But these new buildings were stone and bronze and glass, warranted fireproof.

  There was still Chinatown, of course, a shambles of narrow wood hovels and narrower alleys. There were bad fires regularly in that section, but they were quickly put out, and the place was as quickly rebuilt, only to wait for the next fire, and the next. The men in City Hall were always just about to do something about this, but like so many other somethings, it never seemed to get done.

  The carriage made its way into the workingmen’s district everyone called simply South of the Slot, by which they meant the slot that ran the length of Market Street for the use of the cable cars. The old Grand Opera House was an anachronism in the Slot, built thirty years ago in a neighborhood no one suspected would change so dramatically. The fusty old structure stood gathering the remnants of its faded grandeur about it, a forlorn dowager among the rabble, hoping for rescue.

  The manager led Lily deferentially up to their box. How sad the old place looked in the dim light of day; a harsh gray light leaked through sooty windows and spilled over the dusty gilt and fading plush of the big theater. The box had been arranged as Lily asked, and the tickets were ready. From backstage came the sound of a big tenor voice doing scales. She looked inquiringly at the manager. He nodded wisely, guardian of a great treasure. Caruso himself was about to begin a dress rehearsal!

  Lily was half-tempted to stay and hide herself in the box like some naughty schoolgirl, but she had many things to do before the night’s performance.

  There was shopping that must be done, gifts to be sent for the third birthday of Jon’s little boy, her fourth grandchild, and with the mails as they were, a month in advance was none too soon. Then, she must see to the final arrangements of the dinner party they were giving after the performance. This would be a small, informal group, only a dozen close friends, but there were details that Lily would leave to no one else. She was superstitious, for example, about arranging the flowers herself. Sometimes she thought that this was because of that afternoon several eternities ago, back on Fifth Avenue in the Wallingford mansion, when she had been arranging flowers and first caught sight of Brooks. But the fact was that she had a great flair with flowers, and other people’s arrangements of them rarely pleased her. It would be a busy day, but what a night! Lily thanked the manager, tucked the tickets into her purse, and climbed into her carriage.

  Lily sat tall in the Chaffee box and reached out for Brooks’s hand. It was a tribute to the raw power of Enrico Caruso’s voice that he could send such shivers through her in his performance as Don Jose, for it must be admitted that the pudgy Italian tenor was not the physical image of the romantic and impetuous Jose. Yet still she thrilled to his singing.

  Madame Fremstad, however, was another matter entirely. She sang Carmen like Brunhilde, and not an especially fine Brunhilde at that. Well, still and all, this was the place to be in San Francisco tonight: the California debut of the legendary Caruso!

  Lily held her husband’s hand and listened intently. It was a fine time of the year, after an especially cold and rainy winter. Or, maybe, it was simple old age that made the winters seem harder every year. Suddenly Lily had to repress a giggle. Madame Fremstad was flirting. Madame Fremstad was being saucy.

  It was like watching Russian Hill try to waltz.

  Lily took great care not to meet Brooks’s eyes, for she knew he must be thinking along similar lines, and it would never do for the dignified patrons of the arts, Mr. and Mrs. Brooks Chaffee, of Nob Hill, to be found giggling at such a solemn moment in the history of art. She buried her face in her lace handkerchief and pretended to hide a sneeze.

  The final curtain rang down to a roar of applause, and both of the principals took many a bow. Out of politeness to Caruso, the usually more discriminating audience, including the Chaffees and their party, clapped generously for Madame Fremstad as well.

  Caruso came out alone, sweat gleaming from his two chins. He bowed and smiled, and gestured elegantly to the farthest balcony.

  Three thousand pairs of hands responded as if
on strings. It was deafening, and the tenor’s bright dark eyes flashed hungrily, flicking from corner to corner of the great theater, absorbing their praise through his very pores.

  Soon they were in the carriage, and soon after that the small and very happy group was gathered around Lily’s rosewood dining table doing justice to one of her well-known late suppers. It was relaxed, low-key, and the last guests left a bit past one in the morning.

  Brooks blew out the last of the candles, and they climbed the great staircase together, hand in hand.

  “Was it fun for you?” she asked, thinking that he looked a bit tired, that maybe the opera bored him.

  “The best part was watching you try not to laugh at that walrus playing Carmen. And I must say Hettie Mills is getting more boring by the minute, either that or my tolerance grows less. All she talked about at dinner was how fat Stanford Dickinson has gotten since Mamie died, and who really cares about that?”

  “Not Mamie, for sure. He is getting fat. Well, my love, it was nice to hear Caruso.”

  “Speaking of fat.”

  “You are a wicked man. He’s a great artist.”

  “And great in girth.”

  Brooks was proud of his physical condition. At seventy-two he could still ride all day or hike over farmland with his sons and their friends and never tire.

  “Any evening I spend in your company, Lily, is fun no matter what else intrudes.”

  She said nothing, but squeezed his hand tighter. Soon they were in the warmth and quiet of their big bed and the only sound in the room was the barely audible rise and fall of their breathing.

  Lily woke quickly. Someone was shaking her, shaking the whole bed, the whole house. There was a jolt and a great quiver, then another jolt, then an ominous stillness. Lily lay still, her mind racing. The gasworks had exploded! It was spring thunder. The Russian Navy was shelling them.

  The shock had lasted only seconds. Or had she dreamed it? She sat bolt upright in the great bed and reached for Brooks. Then Lily smiled. There he was, asleep like a great baby!