As I stood by, feeling my unjust fate, Tan made a show of setting his whip aside. He had only to roll the reins across General’s back to set him in a trot. I watched them go. I couldn’t imagine going home with my bag and heavy heart. So I lingered, as the late-afternoon fog poured in like the fingers of God—the city’s famous wet wind relentless and insistent, asking me, Whoareyou, whoareyou, whoareyou?
Morie and Pie were waiting in the parlor. They stood as I came in. I must have looked wretched, for Morie wrung her hands and said, “I’m glad you’re home.”
“Tan isn’t coming back,” I replied, and let that sink in.
Morie covered her mouth with her palm. She had always bragged about her prowess in the kitchen, her Swedish meatballs adored by Lars, her lingonberry jam. Now she’d have to prove it—day after day. And the shopping and housekeeping too.
She and Pie exchanged glances. No doubt they’d passed the afternoon in a fit of worry, fearing and guessing where I’d gone. They’d spend the evening working over this new alarming turn.
“And… the other?” Morie asked, trying not say what was most on her mind, the Haj. “Did she—”
“She said no to everything.” I turned for the stairs.
“I’ll bring up supper,” Pie called.
“Don’t bother.”
But later that evening, Pie knocked on my door. She had a cup of hot milk and a plate of toast and cheese. She smiled shyly. “Stop. I know you’re starving.”
“Please, Pie. Leave me alone.”
She joined me on the bed. “You might as well tell me everything.” Pie wrinkled her nose. “Was it awful?”
I paused, thinking of how to answer. I was a jumble of feelings, most of them wretched; I was stuck and the urge to stick the next guy, in this case Pie, was powerful. She looked so earnest—I was tempted to make up a sordid tale of the whorehouse, just to shock her. But the truth was much worse, and it would have broken me to have to tell it.
“What do you want, Pie?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, what do you really want? Is there anything you’d die for? Or is everything with you always sensible?”
She dipped her chin, the way she did when faced with unpleasantness. She knew me so well: my weaknesses, my worries. I thought I knew hers. I had never liked playing with other children, only Pie, while she had all kinds of friends, and a special understanding with Eugenie. Pie insisted that whenever she went visiting, I should be allowed to tag along, though I was never any fun for her friends and only stared at them, memorizing their faces and the black velvet chokers that bobbed on their thin throats, and the silly thoughts that spilled from their idle heads. Afterward, Pie would gently ask: V, couldn’t you manage to smile just a little? I’d try and fail, and she would let it go. The one thing we never discussed was the deal that made us family; we never talked about the two women who’d decided our lives.
“Same as you,” she said. “Same as you, I want my own life.”
“Is that why you’re marrying James? Do you even love him?”
Pie blushed. “Sometimes I forget you’re a child.”
“You might as well call me stupid.”
“Oh, no, not stupid.” Pie looked unusually focused, intense. “Do you think you’re the only girl with dreams?” Her face was shiny with passion. “I just don’t go about it… the same. I mean, where does it get you?” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “Rose knew you were clever. You had nothing more to prove, yet you ratted on Tan. And today, you had to push the point. I suppose you thought it was for us—I’m sure you did—but it was also to prove you could go where a sensible girl isn’t allowed. You think the rules don’t apply to you because of her but you’re wrong. It was a fool’s errand.” She shook her head. “Don’t you see? If Rose wanted you there, why—why all this?” Pie opened her arms wide.
“Go away. Go away,” I cried. “You don’t understand… you couldn’t possibly—”
“Oh, I understand.” Frowning, she smoothed a pleat in her skirt. “I think about you all the time,” she declared. “I think you are the bravest and the loneliest girl I ever saw.”
She looked me in the eye and nodded. She climbed to her feet and added, “I just don’t see the point of pushing on a locked door. I pick my time. You might try that for a change.”
She was halfway out the door when I said, “Pie? Next summer, after you announce your engagement, Rose said I could move in with her.”
“Did she, now?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“So, she proposed to propose. Is that it?”
I nodded.
“Well, then, I guess we’re both set.”
But set was not what her face read, nor mine. Set was the furthest thing we felt.
Caruso
Later, folks recalled that on the night of Caruso, the horses in front of the opera were jumpy, impossible to control. Did they feel the quake coming in just a few hours? We humans had no sense at all.
Yet everyone had the same notion to arrive early. Inside the main hall, the ushers were still sweeping the trash from the aisles of the matinee, while three thousand San Franciscans decked in their finest were pushing through the narrow opera doors.
The night was unseasonably warm for April. Pie and Morie hadn’t planned for it. By the looks of it, neither had the other women. They were so determined to give Caruso their best, they’d put on every pelt and sparkle they owned, including their fur coats.
“Now, mind you, ladies,” warned Hank as he ushered us inside. “Keep close.”
I planned to. I had Rose’s note in a mesh bag dangling from my wrist.
I held on to Hank’s elbow as we pushed through the doors, into a blinding haze of photographers’ flashbulbs. The actress Sarah Bernhardt had just
