A City Tossed and Broken (4 page)

California is a place to start over. Maybe I’ll never go home.

I struck up a conversation with a man traveling with his family. I know he was a stranger, and you’re not supposed to speak to strangers, but boundaries tend to fall away on a train. He was telling his son about San Francisco and I couldn’t help but listen. I really don’t know much about it, and Bridget’s warnings didn’t help.

But he told me that it’s a grand city. With a great big park that sweeps out to the ocean, and a bustling downtown and a busy port with ships sailing to Japan and all through the Pacific. He said that it is a city of hills and valleys, and almost everyplace you walk there is a view. The hills are so steep they have to use streetcars that are pulled up on cables. There are nickelodeons and vaudeville theatres and grand hotels and a dish called a Hangtown fry, which is scrambled eggs and oysters, and he said it was the best dish he ever ate. There are two opera houses in San Francisco! Enrico Caruso, the most famous opera singer in the world, is scheduled to perform the very night we arrive. I have heard Mr. Caruso singing from the phonograph. I can’t imagine hearing that glorious voice in person.

Lily said a funny thing today. I was washing out her mother’s stockings in the sink. The water is so cold. My hands were red and I rubbed them on the thin towel, then rolled the stockings in it to dry them. And Lily said this:

“Doesn’t it make you think, traveling by train?”

I looked over at her. She was watching the landscape blur outside the window, flat and dry.

“You pass so many towns. And you can’t help but think there are so many ways to live. You can’t help seeing what a different life could be like.”

Then she looked at me. “You could do that. You could just get off at a stop and start over.”

“I hardly think so, miss,” I said, all proper. I just kept wringing out the stockings.

“You don’t know what it’s like to feel trapped.”

I kept my head down, because I couldn’t believe she was saying that to me. To
me.

I don’t know if rich folk can really see anyone but themselves, I truly don’t.

“All she wants to do is marry me off to someone richer than we are,” Lily said.

I got the nerve to look up then, and I think she was crying.

Before I could muster up a word she turned and went down the aisle toward the back of the train. After a minute or two I followed her, my conscience pricking me because I hadn’t comforted her, even with a word or two. Maybe I could ask if she’d care for tea. So I went to the back of the train and there she was, standing outside on the platform, her back to me. I started forward but I saw then that someone else was out there, a slender man in a derby hat, and I could tell they were conversing, so I turned right around.

Let her have her pleasures, the fresh air, the casual remarks of a stranger to pass the time. She was right, I suppose. Soon enough she’d be back in her mother’s web.

Maybe Lily is as alone as I am.

April 15, 1906

Sunday

6
A.M.

The snoring of the fat man across the aisle woke me up, but I don’t mind. Sunrise is pink and orange and you can still see the pale half moon.

I am homesick.

Sundays the tavern was closed. It was the only day my mother slept past five a.m. It was the day we had the tavern kitchen to ourselves. My father cooked breakfast and dinner, and taught me how to make sauces and stews.

Early in the morning my father used to wake me up and we’d tiptoe down the back staircase into the big kitchen.

Breakfast together. Just us.

He made eggs and grilled toast and bacon and put the egg on top of the bread with the bacon, too. It was the best breakfast in the world. Sometimes he would tell me about growing up in Lille, France, and sometimes he would tell me about his parents. His father was a chef in a fancy hotel in New York but lost his job. Then his parents were killed in a streetcar accident and he took off so that they wouldn’t send him to an orphanage.

I asked him how he got along, and he would just smile and say that there are always ways to make money for young boys who don’t mind a bit of trouble. He learned how to play cards, too. Which is what got
us
into trouble, I guess.

The last time we had our Sunday breakfast was a few days before he left. I knew that things were not right between my parents. I woke myself up on Sunday morning and found him on the back stoop, drinking the strong black coffee he liked. He had forgotten to wake me up, I accused him, and I remembered how he looked up, startled, and I saw the lines around his blue eyes and that his skin sagged a little on his cheeks.

We went into the kitchen and this time I made breakfast because he looked so tired. I cracked eggs and cut butter into flour and made biscuits and bacon and served him.

We ate without talking. When we were done he thanked me and said I was so grown up now and could take care of myself, couldn’t I. And I boasted that I could.

Why did I say that, diary? Why didn’t I say,
I’m not grown up, Papa, I still need you
? Was I giving him permission to leave me?

I asked him why he left us all the time and he said my mother had the most honest eyes in the world and sometimes it was hard to meet them. So he goes away, but then his heart is with my mother and with me and he cannot live without his heart.

Then he kissed me and held me against his chest. He called me his treasure, and then
ma poulette.
Which means “little hen,” diary. I said a hen is hardly a treasure and he said, “It is if you need eggs.”

That’s the last time we laughed together. It seemed to hurt him to laugh.

A few days later he was gone.

April 17, 1906

This was my first day in San Francisco, and I’m going to start from the beginning and remember everything I saw and every word I heard. I’ll have to write this in pieces, I know, because there is still so much work to be done.

Oh, the bustle of Oakland as we got off the train and onto the ferry! The crush of the people and the porters yelling and Mrs. Sump trying to push ahead.

But once we were on the ferry I got to stand against the rail and watch the city come closer and closer. It is a city of hills that spill down to the bay, and houses hugging those hills, clinging for dear life. I would like to live in a house like that, open to sea and sky.

It was a gray day, with a fine drizzle out on the water. A layer of fog lay on the water to the west. Everything was gray and silver and blue.

When we docked, there was no Mr. Sump. Mrs. Sump was furious.

Then a gleaming new Oldsmobile pulled up, and it was for us! It was so exciting! The driver found us and it turned out it was the lawyer Mr. Crandall’s car. Mr. Sump had sent it for us.

“He would have come himself, ma’am, but he figured you’d need the room for your bags and boxes and your maid,” the driver said, tipping his cap.

Mrs. Sump inhaled sharply, as if she’d smelled something awful instead of heard it. But she cheered up when she saw lots of folks looking enviously at the machine.

The rest of our things would come by cart. I ran back and forth directing the porter because Mrs. Sump couldn’t decide which she had to have in the car and which could go by cart, and all was confusion, especially when we lost Lily for about ten minutes. But we were finally settled. I’d never ridden in an automobile before. I got in the front next to the driver, and Lily and Mrs. Sump got in back with some of our boxes and bags and cases.

It was thrilling, diary. I can’t wait to write Mama about it, as soon as I’m not angry at her anymore. We couldn’t go very fast because we were on a street with streetcars and traffic — Market Street, the driver said.

I’m a city girl and not afraid of traffic or bustle, but this city is wild and noisy, with the hooves of the horses clanging on the streetcar rails and people dashing across the street just missing being trampled or knocked into next week. So many telegraph and telephone wires strung overhead, so many groups of men standing and talking as though the news was depending on what they thought of it. The driver pointed to a skyscraper known as the Call Building — eighteen stories, he said! All of us twisted and craned our necks to see the elegant Palace Hotel and to watch ladies sweeping by in extravaganzas of hats, out for a day of shopping and luncheon.

Then we turned a corner — going so fast, I was afraid I’d tumble out — and the driver pointed out a pretty square — Union Square, he said, and then past the St. Francis Hotel and, oh dear, we went straight up a hill so steep I thought we’d fall backward! I was breathless with it.

When we got to the top, the bay reappeared again, grayish blue, and beyond it were hills, round and huddled together like the backs of sleeping bears. Marin County, the driver said, with Sausalito nestled at the bottom, right on the bay.

“Is this Nob Hill?” Mrs. Sump asked, leaning forward.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s the old Mark Hopkins mansion there — now it’s an art league. And that big white building is the new Fairmont Hotel, opening soon. Here is the Stanford house, the Huntington house, the Floods . . .” and with every millionaire’s name you could see the satisfaction growing on Mrs. Sump’s face.

We crested the hill and started down the other side, and that’s when she got to fidgeting. The driver pulled up in front of a big house with bay windows and turrets and four white columns in front. There was a stack of slate in the yard. An empty barrel lay on its side, and a shovel leaned against it as though it had been tossed aside and just left there in the middle of a job.

“This,” Mrs. Sump said, in her iciest voice, “cannot possibly be it.”

And of course the driver said yes ma’am and Mrs. Sump’s nostrils flared like a horse’s, and that look came on her face like she’d like to kick you if she was allowed.

“Is this still Nob Hill?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am, milady,” the driver said. He sounded so nervous, like he didn’t know what was wrong but knew it would get blamed on him. I know that feeling from waiting on Mrs. Sump. “Just a bit on the down slope, is all.”

Mrs. Sump turned pale. “The
down
slope?”

And then the door opened and out came Mr. Sump, his matchstick legs sticking out from under his big belly, and his smile wide and uneasy.

“My dear!” he said.

He came toward the car with his arms out and I thought he was going to help her down but he reached toward her feet instead, and came back with the green case. So the driver had to help her out, and she didn’t like that one bit.

Nothing like starting out on the wrong foot.

She complained about him not being there, and he told her there’s an explanation, but she should get settled first and see the house, and he kissed Lily’s forehead and smiled at her fondly and ignored me. I curtsied but he didn’t see.

The driver took all the cases and things inside and then drove off, no doubt glad to get away.

They went in front of me into the house and I couldn’t believe Mrs. Sump didn’t stop for a minute just to look at how pretty it was, so different from the dull brick of their town house back in Philadelphia.

The view was of downtown on one side and the bay on the other . . . your thoughts fly away just looking at it. I had to hurry to catch up with them.

I walked into the house and just stopped for a moment. I tried not to gawk, but it was hard. The hall was high ceilinged and was more like a gallery, for it ran the length of the house, all polished wood, floor and ceiling. Through an archway I glimpsed a parlor magnificent with gilt and marble and paintings and tapestries. There was a big marble mantel over the fireplace and a carved wood ceiling. I walked a little farther to see the grand curving stairway with the stone banister.

There was so much carving and gilt and draperies and tapestries and marble and stone that I felt overstuffed, like I’d eaten a supper of lobster and duck and roast beef and finished it all off with cream puffs.

They stood right in the grand entrance, and Mrs. Sump asked where the butler was. That’s when Mr. Sump told the story.

Jiminy, you never heard such an explosion with the two of them shouting over each other. I didn’t even have to eavesdrop, big as the house is, I just had to stand still in the hallway and I heard it all.

First of all, all the servants Mr. Sump had hired have been hired away! He has a business rival, it seems, who wanted to get back at him for something. (“Something trifling,” Mr. Sump said, “after all, this is business, what is the man thinking?”) So he blackballed him from the Pacific Union Club, whatever that is, and then hired away all the servants just this morning, doubling their salaries. So they just walked out! It’s almost enough to make you laugh, these two rich men squabbling like bullies in a playground. But it means I’m the only one here to fetch and carry. So I’m not laughing.

I heard Mr. Sump tell Mrs. Sump that San Francisco has been built on bribes and he doesn’t mind paying his way but he doesn’t believe in being taken advantage of.

But she wasn’t listening, so she took on a full head of steam like a locomotive charging up the Sierra Nevada, so angry about the lack of servants and the fact that the house isn’t on the crown of the hill. No matter that there wasn’t a parcel to buy, he should have made it happen. Offer a person money for his house and then knock it down and build something better! Isn’t that how he made his fortune?

And he said that they have a magnificent home on Nob Hill and nothing he does ever satisfies her. I saw Lily drifting back and finding a doorway to disappear into. But I was stuck. If I went forward they’d see me, and my back was to the front door so I couldn’t leave.

Mrs. Sump sat down with a crash on a spindly piece of furniture and said how can she be satisfied when she doesn’t even have a cook or a housekeeper, and don’t he be thinking he can hire those godless Chinese.

And he said many of the houses use the Chinese and they make good workers. And I’d have to agree with him because didn’t they build the railroad?