Hers the Kingdom (67 page)

     I opened my eyes wide, took a deep breath.

     "It is decided, then? Everything is decided?" I asked.

     I knew the answer. It had happened. I had tried with all my might to think that it would not, I had pushed it away from my consciousness . . . even while I knew, I must have known, that it was to be. I could not let him go, I could not survive without him. And I knew that I could, that I would. That I must.

     "Why?" I whispered. "Why must you go?"

     He traced his long fingers up and down my arm, and in a voice meant to comfort, said, "Why, when I have a family here? Why, when I have happiness that I thought would be denied me in this life? Why, when I feel for a woman more than I imagined possible to feel for any being? Why, when she has given me a son who is beautiful in every way? Because of that, just. Because there is a greater need, greater than personal happiness, greater even than duty to family.

     "I believe," he continued, "in Sun Yat-sen's mission. It is my own. I need to take part in the struggle, the greater struggle."

     I tried not to cry, but I could not stop the tears. They fell softly, steadily. Soong spoke in lulling tones.

     "If I should stay, Lena . . . and you know this . . . one day my son would see me as Thad and Pablo do—as a servant, an inferior . . . as a Chinaman."

     "No," I cried out, "he would not. Not Porter."

     "Perhaps not," he said to placate me, "but he would hear the others, and there would be a day when he would grow embarrassed to find his old friend Soong's life had been spent growing vegetables . . . There can be nothing else for me here. Look at me, Lena. Listen. You know it is true . . . you see what is happening to Aleja. Willa and you are trying to make a place for her at your table, while her mother still serves that table."

     "Trinidad does not have to do that," I objected. "We don't think of her as a servant. . ."

     "Don't you?" Soong asked. And then he added, to ease the sting, "Even if you didn't, Trinidad herself feels more comfortable in that position . . . she has served for so long, it is how she thinks of herself."

     "What has she to do with you?"

     "Nothing," Soong answered, "and everything. If I remain here it can only be as a servant, and there is nothing you can do to change that, not ever. Our life together has been magic, but it is also secret. Willa believes that she will be able to stay here forever, sealed off from the rest of the world, but that cannot be. The Malibu will not always be a sanctuary. A day will come when all of us will have to leave . . . that day has arrived for me, Lena. I go on Sunday."

     "Sunday!" I gasped, "So soon . . . and you won't be able to return, once you've left. . . the Exclusion Acts."

     He pulled me to him, held me close. I closed my eyes tight and tried to imagine staying there forever like that . . . I wanted to remember everything . . . the smell, the touch, the sounds of his heartbeat.

     "I should like to think that my son will remember Wing Soong not as a servant, but as a man," he said. "One day, I believe, he will understand why I left . . . that there was a purpose to my life that was larger than the gardens of the Malibu, that I had a larger garden to tend than those on the Malibu. If ever he should
discover who fathered him, he will not need to feel shame."

     I could not speak. Words would not rise from the ache at my center. I could only cling to him and try to hold the moment.

     "You know," he went on in the same lulling voice, "it is why you could love me, why you could risk your life to bear our child . . . I have been, for you, a man. You cannot know, I think, the power that gives me. I have delayed as long as I can, Lena. The thought of leaving you, our son, pains me . . . I should like to see him grow to manhood. He will be extraordinary, our son. I feel it, I know it. But I must go, and you must help me. Joseph knows . . . I didn't tell him, he guessed. I did tell Sara, and I hope you can forgive me for telling her first, but she loves you almost as much as I do, and she has the capacity to protect you and Porter. Far more than I can, in reality. You have strong allies in Joseph and Sara. They will not desert you."

     I bit my lip and nodded into his chest, and I wondered if I would ever be able to breathe easily again.

On Saturday, Soong took Porter into the mountains. They were gone the whole of the day, returning only at sundown. I watched them part at the gate. They turned to each other, bowing slightly, it seemed, though in fact they may only have been talking . . . and then Soong did something that was rare . . . he raised his hand, once, and stroked his son's face.

On Sunday, before sunup, I rode with Soong down the beach road. We stopped short of the gatehouse, where he dismounted and handed me the reins to the horse he rode.

     Everything had been said. He looked at me, he bowed formally, he turned and walked away, down the beach.

     I watched until he was but a dark point on the beach, a tiny
mote against the sweep of the sand and the sea . . . and then I closed my eyes to hold that mote in my mind.

     The barley fields, that morning, rippled in the wind. Heavy, nearing harvest, they bent in undulating waves, showing the deep blue undersides. I rode slowly back to the ranch house knowing that a part of me—perhaps the best—was walking even now toward Santa Monica and the port, that now and forevermore my very existence would be separated. There would never be a day when I would not think of him, and miss him, and know that he, too, felt the connecting thread of our lives.

There are times in a life when we live on the surface because the interior is too painful. The days and weeks following Soong's departure were like that for me. The surface of my days seemed smooth, without event, even dull in their sameness. We spoke of daily concerns. Women knitted and children played and grew. We tended to the small urgencies of living and we did not complain. And all the while, below that placid surface a cataclysm was taking shape, was forming, and we did not notice because of the very ordinariness of the days.

     The winter rains sent us indoors for long periods that year. Dry washes were turned into torrents. Hills drifted toward the ocean, so filled were they with water. Each day brought mudslides which closed off the beach road, sometimes for days on end. Willa, disgusted when the Pierce-Arrow got mired for a third time in almost as many days, had it put up on blocks in the barn to wait for the dry season.

     The
vaqueros
and their women were quiet, the rain damping their contentiousness. Willa was preoccupied with her court cases. When she was not plotting with the batteries of lawyers that came and went, she was roaming the hills, tracking a pair of peregrine falcons with Philip.

     The hawking was, I suspected, their excuse for spending time together. Willa was surprisingly touchy about Philip's attentions. It took me a while to discover why.

     One afternoon late, the two came back from a long ramble along the cliff, their faces high with color from the ocean wind. "We saw a wonderful chase," Willa said, removing her mud-spattered boots. "A young hawk made the most amazing stoop, careening down through the sky at speeds of, oh . . . what would you say, Philip?"

     "Close to a hundred miles an hour, I would think . . . terrific speeds. He hit the quarry, snapped its neck so fast it couldn't have known what had happened. All we saw was a flurry of feathers."

     When Philip left and we were alone, Willa and I, I teased her by intimating that Philip was more interested in her than in peregrines.

     "Don't be silly," she snapped, "Philip is a good twelve years younger than I. You know that."

     "I hadn't thought about it, really," I answered truthfully.

     "Well think about it," she said as she flounced out of the room. I did as she said, but all I could think was how strange that Willa should care about age. It wasn't like her. That, in turn, made me ask myself: What
is
Willa like? More often of late, she surprised me. She was preoccupied with the ranch. Or was it the ranch? I wasn't sure. What I did know was that the forces without were gathering. Los Angeles was growing. Santa Monica was growing. All the little towns that had once been no more than villages surrounded by orange groves were growing. The county was building a fine new road that would end at the entrance of the Malibu. Already Willa's name was appearing in the newspapers of the coastal towns, and they were not saying nice things about the woman they called "the Duchess of the Malibu."

     Months later, I would search my journals for some hint, some small clue, that might have been a warning. I found nothing. The entries for that time were as routine as our lives, enlivened only by
the messages I had begun to receive, with what would prove to be a lovely regularity, from Wing Soong.

     And yet there were indications, had I but been sensitive enough to notice. For example, early in December I wrote:

     "Sally complained that the twins had been allowed to witness a cruel game played by the
vaqueros.
The men bury a live chicken in the earth, then they ride on horseback—galloping at full speed—and the rider swoops down and plucks the chicken out of the ground. To win, he must not kill it. Thad did not understand Sally's objection, saying that the
vaqueros'
horsemanship is a rare thing, to be admired. His own feeling, he said, was that it should be a privilege to watch.

     "Sally would not give in. 'It is cruel to use a live animal,' she said, her chin up in its stubborn position. Unfortunately, Thad did not seem to notice. 'How silly,' he teased, trying to josh her, 'do you know how many chickens' necks get wrung around here in a single week?'

     "'I suppose you approve of cockfights, too?' Sally shot back at him.

     "It was Thad's turn to frown. He glanced at Willa, knowing that the cockfights were a sore topic. Surprising us all, Willa came to his defense.

     "'I've tried my best to discourage the cockfights,' she told Sally, 'but the Mexicans persist. They slip off into the hills and hold them. Sally is right, however, Thad. The children should not be witnesses to the cruel games the Mexicans will play.'

     "Nothing more was said, but the exchange had left us all in a bad frame of mind."

     Another journal entry, made during a sunny spell between winter storms, told of a "Play Day" Sally was planning for the friends she and Thad had made in Santa Monica. Strangely, this entry, too, had to do with games.

     "Sally today coaxed Aleja—dear, sedate Aleja—into trying out some of the games she is planning. The two have become such solid friends since Aleja joined Sally in the cottage. It would be
difficult to imagine two more different girls, but they are friends nonetheless.

     "Sally explained how the 'sack race' is run, with two people standing side by side, their inner legs in a single sack. For this, she had procured an old flour sack still dusty white. Kit and Porter drew the starting and finishing lines in the sandy stretch in front of the cottage. Sally and, with some difficulty, Aleja, managed to get one leg each into the sack—modesty causing Aleja to flush, while Sally kept up a steady stream of instructions.