San Miguel

by Boyle, T. C.

  She said nothing. She stood there in the pool of light cast by the lamp, looking down at his blistered face, the stippled beak of his nose, the pink revelation of his scalp where the white hair was thinning, giving him her attention.

  “Well,” he said, closing the book on one finger to mark the place, “the long and short of it is that I’ve decided—and your mother, before she died, agreed with me on this—that you’ll not be going back.”

  “Not going back? What do you mean? It’s school, my school, I must go back.”

  For a long moment he just looked at her steadily. “I don’t know about that,” he said finally, and he gave her a smile—or a simulacrum of a smile—that chilled her. “If you ask me, a girl’s place is in the home—especially a home like this one where there’s been a tragedy so fresh I don’t think any of us has had a chance to put it in perspective.”

  “But”—she was stunned, pleading now—“Miss Everton will be expecting me. Mr. Sokolowski, all of them. My things are there. My studies. My books—”

  “That’s all been arranged.”

  “Arranged? What do you mean?”

  He took his time, shifting in the chair so that he was facing her, his eyes locked on hers. “Do you know something,” he said, and it wasn’t a question, “I don’t like your tone.” And then he added, “Young lady,” as if he were her mother, as if he were speaking in her voice, in her place, and the address rang hollow on his lips.

  He was still staring at her, his eyes hardening, and she should have known better, should have backed off and waited till he was more reasonable, but she couldn’t help herself. “My mother would never have said such a thing, I don’t believe you. She wanted me to have an education, you know she did. You’re a liar!”

  He rose from the chair so suddenly she didn’t have time to react, the book spilling to the floor, his mouth twisted in a sneer, his breath in her face, whiskey breath, hateful and stinking. “No,” he said, “I’m no liar. Every word out of my mouth is the truth and nothing but the truth—the truth of your life from now on. You’ll not be up there in that city with no one to watch out for you and your, your boys—”

  “But Miss Everton never—”

  “Enough! You listen to me and listen well because as long as you live under my roof not only will you do exactly as I say in every phase of your conduct, but you can put Miss Everton out of your mind for good and all.” He swung angrily away from her, stalking across the room to set his glass on the mantel. She saw that his hand was shaking. She kept thinking of Ida—where was Ida? Ida would stand up for her, Ida knew her mother’s wishes. But Ida was in the kitchen or out in the yard, and even if she weren’t, Ida was only a servant and servants had no say in anything.

  The house was still, every mote of dust hanging suspended in the air. The fireplace framed him, the great squared-off ridge of the back of his head rising up out of his collar like hammered stone, his shoulders barely contained by the crudely tailored cloth of his jacket. In the next moment he swiveled round, moving so swiftly she didn’t have time to react, and he was right there, thrusting his face into hers and snatching her by the wrist. “Miss Everton,” he spat. “Miss Everton’s an irrelevance. And so’s Mrs. Sanders and the music teacher and all the rest of them. Because the fact is I’m taking you back to the island where I can keep an eye on you. Do you hear me? Do you?”

  He was shouting now, but she wouldn’t stand for it, wouldn’t listen. She jerked her arm away, struggling for balance, and then she was running for the door, the front door, with one thought only: to get out, to get away, to put a stop to whatever it was that was happening to her.

  “And we leave as soon as I can break off the lease and put this furniture in storage, if you want to know!” Then the parting shot, his words hurtling at her as she pushed through the door and fought her way out into the sunshine that seared the walk and set the trees afire: “Go ahead, cry your eyes out. But you pack your bags. And don’t you ever dare call me a liar again.”

  * * *

  She kept on running, through the gate and out into the public street, hatless, sobbing, in her plainest dress and the shoes she wore around the house, not caring what anybody thought. People gave her startled looks, stepped aside for her. The boy three houses down, a boy her own age she barely knew, called out in a jeering voice but the words made no sense to her. She ran past him, ran past them all, and she didn’t stop till she’d reached the grounds of the Arlington, and even then she veered off the flagstone path and across the lawn till she found an isolated bench—the farthest one in the farthest corner of the property where no one was likely to see her—and threw herself down on it. For the longest time she couldn’t seem to catch her breath, couldn’t seem to stop crying, and she understood that she wasn’t crying for her mother anymore but for her own stricken self, because she’d rather die on the spot, rather kill herself, than go back out there to that island. And she would. She’d take poison. Cut her wrists. Find a serpent like Cleopatra, and if it wasn’t an asp then she’d dig up a rattlesnake, with its dripping fangs and furious buzzing tail, and press it to her breast and feel its bite like the kiss of a lover. He couldn’t do this to her. He didn’t have the right. She was almost seventeen years old and he wasn’t her real father, anyway.

  Her nose was stuffed with mucus, her face was a mess. She patted her pockets for a handkerchief, but she didn’t have one. She didn’t have anything, not even a comb. The realization—she was helpless, absolutely helpless, not even a comb—started her sobbing again and she couldn’t stop, her face buried in her hands and her shoulders heaving, all her misery boiling out of her and no one to see or care. Her mother was dead, dead, dead, and her step – father was a tyrant and her life was finished before it had begun, and so what was the use of anything?

  And then something—a whisper in the grass, a murmur of voices?—made her glance up. Standing there before her was a young couple—very young, no more than four or five years older than she—looking alarmed. They were dressed beautifully, à la mode, the woman—girl—in a gauze veil and a high wide-brimmed hat crowned with aigrettes, and their faces were numb. She saw it all in an instant—they’d come here, to this bench sheltered in its bower of jasmine, to make love, and here she was, unkempt and unfashionable, in her homeliest shirtwaist and scuffed shoes, creating a scene. She was pitiable. Beneath contempt.

  The man was saying something, asking if she needed help—assistance, that was the term he used, Do you need assistance?—but she was so mortified all she could do was shake her head. She watched them exchange a look, and why couldn’t they leave her alone, why couldn’t they find some other bench, some other hotel, why couldn’t they take a stroll along the beach or watch the boats from the pier like all the other tourists? Or vanish. Why couldn’t they just vanish?

  The man tried again, leaning forward so that his shadow fell over her. “Are you certain? Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  And now the woman spoke: “Anyone we might call? Your mother? Do you want us to fetch your mother?”

  And the man: “Are you at the hotel?”

  She was sobbing still—she couldn’t seem to stop—but she pushed herself up, turned her back on them without a word and made her way across the grounds and past the front entrance and out into the street, where she found herself running again, but this time she wasn’t running blindly. This time she had a purpose, a plan. She wasn’t helpless. She had money. A lot of money. Enough to get her far away from here if she had the courage to use it.

  The streets were shabby, muddy. The sun mocked her. After a block or so she slowed to a brisk walk, her skirts fanning out behind her, her eyes locked straight ahead. In the drawer of the night table beside her bed was a letter from her mother, her mother’s last letter, written in a wavering hand the night before she died. It was all too short, just a paragraph telling her that she loved her and would be looking
down on her from above and that her father would provide for her until she reached her maturity and then there would be an inheritance coming to her according to the terms of the will, though she—her mother—wished it were more. In the meanwhile, she enclosed a bracelet of precious stones her own mother had once worn and a twenty-dollar gold piece—a double eagle—for her to spend as she pleased. There was a single dried drop of blood on the envelope, and the valediction—With All My Love, Mother—trailed away till it was barely legible, and the thought of it made her want to break down all over again, but she didn’t, because she was calculating now. She would sit down to dinner as if nothing had happened and if her stepfather wanted to make small talk she would oblige him and she would smile when he wanted her to smile. And when he went to bed, when the house was still and Ida was asleep in her room and Adolph in his, she would pack the suitcase she’d brought with her, slip down the stairs and out the door and into the night, never to look back.

  The Ticket

  The man behind the ticket window at the steamship office said he couldn’t make change for a double eagle and so she had to wait for the bank to open and then the man at the bank wanted to know who she was and how she’d come by the coin. She didn’t see what business it was of his what she did with her own money or where she’d got it from, but she gave him her name and informed him that her mother had just died and she was taking the one o’clock steamer for San Francisco, where her school was, which would explain the suitcase at her feet. The man—he was wearing a green celluloid visor that took the luster out of his eyes—stared down at the coin where it lay on the counter between them. Then he glanced up at her again, considering, but he made no move to slide it across the counter and into the money drawer or to begin counting out bills. Or silver. Or asking which she preferred. “I’m a second-year student at Miss Everton’s Young Ladies’ Seminary,” she said, offering further evidence of her legitimacy—she was a schoolgirl, that was all, on her sad way back up the coast after burying her mother.

  She tried to hold the man’s eyes, but she felt her confidence slipping, felt guilty, and she stole a glance at the window next to her, where an overdressed woman tottering under a hat the size of a birdbath stood chatting with the teller there. The woman gave a sidelong glance and Edith froze—she knew her, didn’t she? Wasn’t she one of the teachers at the high school? But now the woman had turned and was staring directly at her, and what was her name? It came to her in the moment she spoke it aloud: “Mrs. Parsons, how are you? Don’t you remember me—I was in Mrs. Sanders’ class the year before last? Edith Waters?”

  Clearly the woman didn’t remember, but that didn’t stop her from chiming, “Yes, yes, of course. And how are you?”

  The teller was watching her closely and so she just nodded her head, as if to say she was very well, thank you, then added, “I’m at Miss Everton’s Seminary now—up in San Francisco?”

  “Oh, well . . . that must be quite a change from our humble little school.”

  “It is,” she said, “yes,” and she was going to say how much she’d enjoyed the Santa Barbara school and how advanced it really was, but the teller was already counting out her change, so she merely smiled. She put the money carefully in her purse, taking up her suitcase and stepping aside for the man waiting behind her. “Remember me to Mrs. Sanders,” she said in her sweetest voice and made her way to the door.

  She’d sat through dinner the night before and then breakfast in the morning, though she’d lain awake half the night, fighting with herself. As much as it appealed to her sense of drama to melt off into the night, an empty bed would have given her away and she couldn’t afford that, so she dressed and came down to breakfast. The parlor was quiet, the cat nowhere in sight. There was a vase of flowers on the dining room table, but they were wilted and they only reminded her of her mother. Her stepfather was already there, seated at the head of the table, a greasy plate with a half-gnawed bone on it set before him. He seemed bored and remote, hardly glancing up from the newspaper, his blunt battered fingers clumsy with the thin china handle of the teacup. He only brightened when Adolph came in, pushing back his chair to light a cigar and call out to the kitchen for more coffee.

  All the while her suitcase was packed and hidden away in the back of her closet, the image of it glowing in her mind till it wasn’t a suitcase at all but a pair of wings, angel’s wings, to lift her up and out of this house and this life forever. Too wrought up to eat, she took only a bite or two of toast and a mouthful of scrambled eggs with catsup, sugaring her tea so heavily it was like a parfait and no one to notice or tell her different. She forced herself to bid good morning to Adolph, and even ventured a comment about the weather, but he just grunted and took his place beside her stepfather. Ida drifted in with the coffee pot and back out again and as soon as the door swung shut behind her, the two of them started in on the only subject that seemed to hold any interest for them: sheep. Sheep and the island, that is, and all the minutiae of their preparations for the move back. Adolph said it was a shame the way the Englishman was letting the place go to ruin and her stepfather just nodded his head and reiterated for the tenth time how now that poor Marantha was gone there was no sense in maintaining two separate establishments, no sense in the world. They barely noticed when she took up her plate and went out to the kitchen with it.

  After that, it was easy—she didn’t let on to anyone about what she was planning, not even Ida, and she made sure no one saw her leaving the house. All she could think was that if she could somehow get back to her room at school her stepfather would relent—he’d have to. Either that or make the trip himself to reclaim her. There would be the question of board and tuition, she wasn’t fooling herself on that account, but once Miss Everton saw her there at her lessons with the other girls, in the dining hall, at the piano—saw how she belonged—she’d intervene for her, Edith was sure she would. And her stepfather would have to pay. He’d be too ashamed not to.

  This was what she was thinking as she walked briskly back down the street to the wharf, one hand occupied with her parasol, the other with the suitcase, and she didn’t want to think beyond that. Her feet, buttoned tightly into her best shoes, had begun to chafe, but she ignored them. She was fixated on getting her ticket before the smokestack of the Santa Rosa appeared on the southern horizon on its way up from Los Angeles, and then losing herself in the crowd until the boat left the pier and she could breathe again, because there was no telling when her stepfather would discover her missing. Hurrying on, she scanned the glistening apron of the sea as it opened up at the base of the street and fanned out across the channel to the islands. Santa Cruz, the largest of them, was clearly visible on the horizon and not a cloud in the sky. Which meant that the seas would be calm—or calmer than on the way down. Or at least she hoped so.

  And then she was in the waiting room, the benches full, baggage scattered about and everybody staring at her as if they’d never in their lives seen a young girl traveling back to school on her own. She took her place in line at the ticket window and concentrated on her posture—chin high, shoulders back, No slouching, Edith, take pride in yourself, her mother would nag if she were here, but her mother wasn’t here and never would be again. When she got to the ticket counter and presented the precise amount for a steerage ticket as it was listed in the schedule of fares, the clerk just stared at her. “I’ve gone to the bank for the proper change,” she said.

  He was an effete little man, no bigger than Jimmie, and Jimmie was only a boy. She could see that he was trying to grow out his whiskers, his face splotched with reddish patches of hair that looked like open wounds at a distance and animal’s fur close up. “I beg your pardon?” he said.

  “For the double eagle,” she said, pushing the money forward. “I’d like a ticket, please. One way to San Francisco, third class.”

  “I’m sorry, miss, but it’s against company policy to issue tickets to unaccompanied”�
��here he hesitated, snatching a quick look at her face before dropping his eyes to the counter—“children.”

  “But you said . . . you said you didn’t have change.”

  He stiffened. “I didn’t,” he said, and the lie lay there between them.

  “I’m no child. I’m”—she could lie too—“twenty-one years old.”

  “Company policy,” he said. “You’ll have to bring a parent, your father or mother—”

  She didn’t want to draw attention to herself, that was the last thing she wanted, but she couldn’t help it. “My mother’s dead,” she said.

  “Then your father.” He spoke softly, sadly. He was already looking past her to the next person in line.

  “My father’s dead too.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  When she saw he wasn’t going to give her what she wanted—he was immovable, a mule, an idiot—she swung round abruptly, glaring at the man waiting in line behind her, stalked the length of the room with her heels clattering and the suitcase flaring at her side and flung herself out the door and into the full blaze of the sun. She tried to calm herself, to think things through, but already her anger was shading into despair. She felt exposed. Helpless. Anyone could have seen her there, some friend of her stepfather’s she didn’t even know, some sheep magnate or deckhand or dry-goods merchant come down to meet the ship. She felt a small flutter of panic. Just then the blast of the ship’s horn racketed across the water and she looked up to see the boat riding just offshore, as big as a block of houses, its smokestack fuming. The planks of the pier shifted subtly beneath her. “Here she comes!” somebody cried.