We decided the attic was the better place. Throughout that winter of ’07, Bobby found me. There was nothing stopping us now from being stupid-silly, or slow and patient, with our love.
And we made that trip to the beach. They’d fixed part of the line and we rode the Ocean Beach trolley to the end. We passed through Golden Gate Park and the Japanese Tea Garden and the Conservatory of Flowers, into the Sunset District, to the Cliff House and the Sutro Baths.
We had a picnic in the sand. Bobby thought to borrow a tablecloth from Tan, and we ate sandwiches and even chocolates. “Where’d you get these?” I asked. While the chocolate was in my mouth, he kissed me.
He’d never seen the Cliff House before. That seven-story white palace built for the city’s swells, perched on the rocks with views of the sunset.
“When we’re old or rich, let’s have tea there,” I said.
“Sure, but does it have to be tea?” he asked, laughing. Then his face turned serious and he said, “Do you really think we’ll grow old together?”
Well, I don’t know what came over me, but I started to cry. “I want to grow young with you, Bobby. Can’t we do that first?” Those days had been so very hard.
I don’t recall what else we talked about. Nothing of importance. Bobby, he wasn’t much of a talker. Then, neither was I. We looked, we touched, we knew, and that was the world—that was more than enough.
The seals were lolling on the rocks, hundreds of them, and we watched their antics as they took their leisure, napping in the sun.
We packed up slowly—reluctantly. The sun was setting beyond the cliffs. A gorgeous yolk of a sunset. We rode the trolley back and walked the rest of the way holding hands. We didn’t care who saw us. We were sweethearts.
Pie had been watching from the parlor windows. She ran to meet us as we came up the driveway.
“Rose is gone,” she said. “She took everything.”
It Isn’t Personal
“No one gets away with life,” Rose said. I’ve had many years to think about what she meant. I’ve decided that Rose was the exception. Rose got away.
Why, she even stripped the bed. She took the heavy silver and her perfumes and the Victrola. She took Mercy and Sophia; Lifang, LowNaa, and Tan. Whatever lived in the safe, she also took. As a final mockery, or perhaps as a sign of having packed in haste, she left the door of the safe open, so we could feast on its emptiness, the shelves bare where the gold and cash had been, the little empty cubbies that used to hold her jewelry. All that remained were some loose papers at the bottom, on which the bars had been stacked.
“Aw, darlin’,” Cap said, “you gotta know it isn’t personal.”
“It sure feels personal.”
Cap shrugged. “Johnny Law was coming for her. He was bearing down, and you know Madam Rose wasn’t likely to sit to. She needed to disappear and I expect she disappeared good.”
“Where do you suppose she’d go, Cap?”
“She wasn’t sayin’. She wasn’t saying nothin’ except get outta my way.”
Cap and Valentine took care of me. They put me in a hot bath, washed my hair and feet. I tried to resist but they knew what they were doing, cleaning me. I cried and they washed my tears. Cap said, “That’s right, darlin’, empty the bowl.”
Capability brushed my hair and dried me and put me in soft flannel, and sang me to sleep.
When I woke, it was the middle of the next day. Capability was rocking in the chair, the squeak of the wood a music to me.
“Darlin’ child,” she said, “I learned a long ways ago, no one can take from you what you don’t offer. You didn’t offer, then she didn’t take it. Capisci?”
I thought about that awhile. “Cap?”
“Yeah, sugar?”
“Why didn’t you go with them?”
“Let’s put it this way”—she sighed—“I’ve been the caboose on that train for a long, long time.”
“Cap?”
“Go on, now,” she urged. “Sleep as long as you can stand it. I’ll be here, holding the place.”
“The place?”
“That’s right. This very place.”
I hadn’t stopped for a single day. Not for the quake, or the fire—certainly not during the days that followed. Oh, I’d slept, I’d eaten, but I hadn’t stopped. I hadn’t let myself feel it all. But when I did, I fell down a hole that went to the center of the earth.
The next time I woke, Cap said, “You hungry? There’s a tray.”
On the floor by the cot. The tray had a pot of tea, a plate of hash, and an apple cut in thin slices and fanned.
“Who did this?”
“Who do you think?” Cap chuckled. “Tan, of course. He’s fussing awful that you won’t eat.”
“Tan’s back?”
“Why, sure. He took them to the station, said his good-byes, then drove his sorry self back.”
I ate everything on that tray, then fell asleep—for another couple of days. Valentine said Bobby demanded to see me, but they told him I had a fever and that he’d best stay away. That bought me time. They put the flowers he’d picked in a vase on the dresser.
I dreamed I was living on Francisco Street. The piano was where it was supposed to be, in the parlor. I heard the bells of the milk wagon and the butcher’s call. Mrs. Valdrone, the laundress, was there, hauling her cart to the rocks at Cow Hollow. Foghorns in the distance. Someone was chasing me.
Then the dream turned, and I was being beaten while Pie and Morie looked on. They were judges, dressed in robes. When I woke, I asked Cap, “Has Pie come up to see me?”
“Well, honey,” she said, choosing her words
