Circled Heart (13 page)

“Apparently a third generation is continuing the family trait.”

I smiled. “I can’t argue. I am like them both in some noticeable respects, but my mother was a beauty and my grandmother is very wise, so there are significant differences, too.”

Mario appeared quietly at our side to whisk away our dishes and set a platter of fresh fruit and small pastries in the center of the table. He poured out small cups of strong coffee, asked if there was anything else we desired, and slipped away as unobtrusively as he arrived.

“I should have died, too. It was pure happenstance that I was invited to Dr. Hudson’s for a musical evening. He was both a reverend and a medical doctor, who ran a medical clinic in Tung Chow. Dinah, his daughter, was several years my senior but she was still my best friend, and they had a piano besides. We were all supposed to go, but Teddy came down with a fever and Mother wouldn’t leave him and Father wouldn’t leave Mother. I wanted to go so badly I cried like a baby from disappointment, and Mother had pity on me. She allowed me to go by myself and said I could spend the night. I remember how excited I was and how grown up I felt, sleeping away from home for the first time. And that was the night the Boxers came into our little settlement, murdered my family and all the Chinese who attended the school, slashed their way through the compound with knives and clubs and burned everything to the ground. When word of the massacre arrived at the clinic, all the yang kuei-tzu in Tung Chow were evacuated to Peking.”

At Drew’s inquiring look, I translated, “Foreign devils. I thought at the time that leaving Tung Chow for Peking would be frying pan into the fire, but I was wrong. We waited out the siege and afterwards, Dinah was commissioned to accompany me to America. I never went back to Cho Chou. Later Dr Hudson sent me some pictures and a few personal items that survived the flames, but just like that everything familiar was gone, everything except my one friend Dinah Hudson. And when Grandmother met us on the dock in San Francisco, she kindly but firmly assumed the total responsibility for my well-being and loaded me onto a train headed for Chicago, so even Dinah was gone then.” I paused, recalling that long train trip eastward and how desperately I had attempted to disguise my feelings of being totally lost and abandoned and how Grandmother had seen through me, even then. “That was over eleven years ago.”

After a silence, Drew said, “The vast majority of people live out quiet and uneventful lives, but in your young life, you’ve been in the middle of two historical and renowned tragedies.”

“And lived to tell about it,” I added with a faint smile.

“Which explains your temperament.”

“What about my temperament?”

“You come at everything full steam, Johanna, like a woman running out of time. Everything has to be done exactly as you say exactly when you say it. Mortality always seems to be nipping at your heels.”

“I know,” I admitted humbly. “Grandmother cautions me about the wisdom of moderation and my Aunt Kitty, less charitably inclined, says my headstrong impatience is a great and unbecoming fault.”

“Your Aunt Kitty sounds like a woman of no imagination. She’s completely and overwhelmingly wrong. I wouldn’t let her opinion bother me too much, if I were you.”

Looking at Drew Gallagher across the table, his fair hair burnished by the lights, a conspiratorial smile on his face and those warm, clear eyes meeting mine without a trace of affectation, I realized that I liked the man very much, blast it all. Mayville’s warning was becoming more and more prophetic as the evening progressed.

“I don’t. My Aunt Kitty and I have had different worldviews for as long as I can remember. To keep the peace we usually manage to avoid discussing anything more in depth than the weather.” As I reached for a delicate pastry, I inquired casually, “You now know a great deal about me, but I am still in the dark about the Gallaghers. Do you have family, Drew?”

“None. Well, that’s not exactly true. I have cousins on my mother’s side somewhere in San Francisco, but I couldn’t tell you their names. I was sent away to school on the east coast at an early age, and I never knew them.”

“Your parents are gone, too?”

“Yes. My father dropped dead at his office one morning and a few years later my mother died in the great San Francisco earthquake.”

“I’m sorry.”

“By the compassionate expression on your face, you’re sorrier than I ever was.”

I put down my cup. “What an extraordinary thing to say.”

“Johanna, between the two of us, could we agree to set aside the façade of society?” He looked unaccountably stern, frowning a little, the engaging man of five minutes ago completely gone.

“I’m not sure what you mean, but you certainly don’t have to stand on ceremony with me. What façade exactly?”

Drew didn’t answer my question but said, “My family life was nothing like yours, Johanna. My father was a man with a head for business, who generated a fortune as a relatively young man and preferred his office to his family. He made two sons with my mother, enough to continue the family name and be sure the money didn’t go to strangers, and after that he had very little time or need to be home. My mother fulfilled her wifely duty quickly and with little fuss, bore two sons, and spent her remaining time filling our very large house on Nob Hill with items she didn’t need. When the earthquake hit, she refused to leave her house and in a poetic sort of way died under a pile of very expensive rubble. I ceased caring about either of my parents at a young age. My father was cold and my mother pretentious.” I thought that as I shared a private memory, so had he, and we were now even.

“I don’t know what to say,” I responded carefully. “Were you glad to be sent away to school then?”

“I was sent away because I was incorrigible and neither of my parents knew what to do with me. Douglas was the son who played by the rules, applied himself to his studies, and graduated with honors. He was focused and responsible. I, on the other hand, never graduated, and I’m proud to say I was expelled from some of the finest schools in the country.”

I studied him wordlessly a moment, then remarked, “I don’t think you’re really proud of that fact, Drew, regardless of what you say, any more than I think that you really stopped caring about your parents. You can’t shock me and you don’t have to try. In my life I’ve seen some terrible things, so a rich and self-indulgent young man rebelling against his parents doesn’t have much of an effect on me. It’s normal for parents and children to love each other, of course, but I know that doesn’t always follow. If you really didn’t love your parents, it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s your fault. Is that why you were always in trouble?”

“Some kind of desperate plea for affection, you mean? You’ve been reading too much Freud, Johanna. I was lazy—still am, for that matter—and disinterested in anything that did not taste good, look good, or feel good. As a younger man, I learned to enjoy variety in women and that hasn’t changed either. I’ve never contemplated a wife with anything other than horror. Because money had no meaning for me, I spent every cent I had and much that I didn’t have on carnal pursuits, a perfectly happy and unapologetic prodigal. Douglas scorned my bad behavior, but he always bailed me out of trouble and debt. Every time he did so, he made me promise to behave myself, and as soon as he was out of sight, I was back in trouble.”

“But why?”

Drew gave a graceful shrug. “Why not, Johanna? Who created the universal rules of behavior that I was expected to follow and who was I hurting by breaking those rules? It did no good to cite religious or moral codes to me because none of that made sense to me then any more than it makes sense to me now. Why shouldn’t I be able to do exactly what I want?”

“An interesting philosophy,” I responded mildly, “which explains why you were thrown out of several institutions of higher learning.”

“My father gave up earlier, but Douglas kept cleaning up behind me until Yale.” I popped a small cream puff into my mouth and wordlessly raised my brows in question. He went on, “The school officials took a dim and disapproving view of the woman in my room. A working girl from the city was not what I was supposed to be studying. We made a spectacle of ourselves that only the two of us appreciated and enjoyed.”

“I told you you can’t shock me, Drew, so you don’t have to use a euphemism like working girl. I presume you mean a prostitute. You hired a prostitute and got caught with her in your room. Is that what happened?” His eyes darkened at my curt, slightly amused tone and the sense of sharing he had demonstrated disappeared.

“Yes. That’s what happened,” said abruptly with clipped words.

“I just wanted to be sure I understood. I hate to burst your bubble, but you may have been the only one enjoying the spectacle the two of you presented. Prostitutes do what they do to make a living, to keep from starving, to keep from being beaten by the men they work for, and to put food on the table for their children. I doubt very much whether there was much pleasure or appreciation on her part. You may have been expelled, but she probably went to jail. Did she?” I could tell he had never considered my question before because it took him a moment to answer and when he finally did so, it was with an obvious reluctance.

“I don’t know.”

“Ah, of course not. You had other things on your mind than what happened to that woman. Well, she’s probably dead, anyway, so why bother considering her now? Prostitutes have a short life span compared to the rest of us. But it does give another perspective to your questions about why you shouldn’t be allowed to do exactly as you please and whom you hurt by doing so, doesn’t it?”

Drew Gallagher’s face tightened, smile gone, mouth turned up slightly in a semi-polite sneer that expressed his scorn. I thought he was as angry as he had ever been in my presence, and I almost wished I hadn’t been quite so blunt. I enjoyed the Drew that had been there ten minutes ago and hated to lose him.

“I had no idea the missionary’s daughter was an expert on prostitution. I hesitate to speculate on the source of your knowledge.”

“Oh, speculate away. The truth, however, is much less titillating than your imagination. Part of my nurse’s training in London was spent working with the human refuse of the east end. Miss Nightingale was adamant that her nurses not be spared any of the truths of real life. And at the Anchorage right now is a twelve-year old girl who may never recover, either physically or emotionally, from her experiences on the street. Granted, your knowledge of prostitution may exceed mine in quantity, but I believe I make up for that in the quality of my understanding.”

“You are a preachy woman.” He snapped the words, intending them as insult, his tone mocking and purposefully hurtful.

Without thinking, I leaned forward and responded in kind, equally as blunt. “And you are an immature and selfish man.” I stared back at him, our eyes locked across the crystal fruit platter. After a moment unbroken by word or blink, a corner of his mouth twitched.

“No fair,” he murmured, “I used only one adjective.” I sat back in my chair, the tension of the moment broken.

“You’re right. Pick another one, then, and let me have it. I always fight fair and I never ask for concessions.” I could see him pretending to think.

“Annoying.”

“Preachy and annoying then. Fine. Now we’re even.”

“No, we’re not even.”

I examined his face, trying to understand his meaning. “You just said—”

“I know what I just said, Johanna. I’m not talking about trading insults. We’re not even because you’re right and I’m wrong.” I was so taken aback that I must have stared at him. “Don’t give me that skeptical look. I’m able to admit when I’m wrong, and I was wrong—wrong in my cavalier attitude, wrong to respond as I did to your observations, wrong to try to wound you.”

I wanted to say something appropriate to the moment, tell him he was the most maddening, contradictory, thought-provoking, and attractive man I’d ever met, say that no man had ever admitted so humbly to being wrong in my presence and I found him completely adorable for doing so.

Instead of making such an unwise admission, however, I picked up my coffee cup and took a small sip before I responded, “Not so immature after all, then. I guess I was wrong, too.” I gave him as open and clear a smile as I could and took another sip of coffee. We finished the meal in peaceful coexistence.

Later, sitting next to him as we drove home through the dark streets, Drew said, “I’ll see you in a week or so and let you know if I can do anything for your Betsy. I’m not making any promises.”

“I know that. I didn’t ask for promises.”

“No, I don’t imagine you’re very interested in promises, only in the follow through. I’ll bet that’s how you read a book, too. Skip the wordy parts and get straight to the action section as quickly as you can.” He laughed to himself and I said nothing. He was too close to the truth to comment.

When we arrived on Hill Street and stopped at the curb, Drew came around to my side, took my hand, and helped me out of the vehicle. For what seemed like too long he continued to hold my hand and we simply stood there facing each other, the auto’s motor purring quietly beside us. I was conscious of being smaller than he and felt oddly feminine, a sensation with which I was not very familiar. Finally I pulled my hand free.

“You were right, too,” I told him. The night was lovely and warm, and the moonlight illuminated the clouds in a way that made them look lit from behind by an incandescent bulb.

Strolling up the walk beside me, Drew stated, “It’s about time you finally admitted it.” He paused. “What was I right about exactly?”

“I am preachy and annoying,” I answered meekly, “and I shouldn’t have reacted as I did. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that particular accusation made about my character. You have a right to your own opinion, and I’m sorry if I was rude.” By then we reached the porch. Because I stood on a step above him, we were almost at equal eye level.

“Don’t do that, Johanna.”

“Do what?” I tried to read his expression but his face was in shadow.

“Back down. Apologize. Look and speak so humbly. I don’t like it.”