Hers the Kingdom (86 page)

     "Yes, well . . ." She leaned into him, close so he could hear above the sounds of the surf. "I think she is afraid now, afraid to try to stop my being with you. Afraid I'll blame her, or hate her. I know she doesn't want to hurt me. She loves me, Connor. I know that. And you protected me tonight, you were the one who got me away from Thad before he could . . ." She stopped, unable to say what Thad might have done to her. "Maybe that had something to do with it, I'm not sure."

     He turned her to him, then. He smoothed the hair back from her face and looked at her for a long moment before he said, "I saved your father once. It was in the corral, at rodeo—a young bull got away and was charging him. I was there, I happened to throw the first rope. Could your mother have been thinking about that tonight?"

     Kit's eyes widened. "Oh, Connor, yes. Yes, she would have remembered. I don't believe we have her blessing, but now I feel sure we have her permission."

     "Is that important to you?" he asked.

     "Yes," she answered, "but not nearly so important as it is to you."

     They held hard together, then, on the moonlit beach—their bodies not distinctly two, but one in the translucent silver light, like survivors of some long-ago shipwreck by some miracle swept ashore, at long last, saved.

Sea Changes
,
1922-1939

I HAVE ALWAYS thought it strange how time is measured in terms of decades, separate blocks of years, each ten of which would seem to have a temper of its own.

     I am not at all sure that it is true. Yet, in retrospect, it is hard not to think of the third decade of the century as a time apart. More than that, the twenties were a bridge; the time between worlds. Machines had become a part of our everyday life, and they changed us irrevocably. The motorcar crowded horses off the streets in our cities. We talked to each other by telephone. Long journeys became jaunts, nothing was as it had been. In town, new buildings were rising in all directions. Business was booming. Hair was bobbed, dresses loose and short, all the old, tight Puritan rigidities were falling away. People danced and people sang, they drank and they laughed and only occasionally would the laughter stop and a sudden silence present an awful clarity.

     Perhaps there were those among us who understood the twenties to be a last, long sigh. I was not one of them. For me, the decade was, for the most part, a sweet time, filled with satisfactions.

     At five on the afternoon of December 21, 1922, Kit and Connor were married at Wildwood. Philip, in judicial robes, officiated. The ceremony took place before a bank of crimson poinsettias, in the drawing room. Porter and Sara and Dina Cameron were there. Arcadia, Joseph, Trinidad, Aleja, and I came up from Los Angeles and Sally Fairleigh made the trip from Washington to see Kit wed.

     Willa did not come, but her gift to Kit was eloquent: A Fortuny gown of sea-green Genoese velvet, printed in silver and gold designs—griffins and phoenixes. It fell in a straight line from shoulder to hem, a few inches from the floor in the fashion of the day, skimming over her small breasts and slim hips, accentuating the sweetness of her young body.

     Sara and I helped Kit dress: the opulent gown gave her the look of a Renaissance princess. "Mariano Fortuny would be transported if he could see you," Sara told her, "when you return from your wedding trip I want you to sit for me. You must look exactly as you look now, glowing with happiness . . ." She backed away and began to study Kit with an artist's eye. "I believe I will put the portrait of Rose in the background, you will be standing . . . it can be my wedding gift to Connor."

     "Sara," Kit said, twining her arms around her godmother's neck, "do you have any idea how much I love you?"

     Caught by surprise, Sara's eyes brimmed. She waved at me for a handkerchief, so her tears would not stain the silk velvet.

     Sara's were not the only tears of the day. I can think of no other time when our feelings, our affections, were so revealed. It would have been impossible to hear Kit and Connor repeat their vows—knowing what we knew—and not be touched by the breadth of their love.

     The tears gave way to toasts, the toasts to laughter, and the laughter was, at last, channeled into a convoy of limousines which delivered us to the gangplank of the Matson liner
Lurline.
We joined the newlyweds in their stateroom for champagne and more toasts. The send-off culminated in Porter's holding Kit high
in the air, refusing to allow her to set foot on deck again until she had promised to take Connor on a "Kanaka" swim in Hawaii. Between gasps of laughter, Kit finally managed to explain that eight years before—when Sara and I had taken them to the islands—they had slipped out of our beach house one midnight to swim with the native children—the Kanakas—quite without the benefit of bathing suits. It was the first Sara and I knew of this breach of discipline, and I could not help expressing my chagrin, no matter how late.

     "You might have drowned!" I wailed, at which everyone else burst into great peals of laughter.

     Philip commented, drily: "I'm glad you weren't worried about them catching cold, Lena."

     Sara added, "Do you know how much time Lena and I spent getting you those birds and bees books? And how worried we were that you wouldn't
understand?
"

     Connor hugged me to him and said, "You've done everything exactly right, Lena. Don't let them fool you."

     We were in high spirits as we left the
Lurline
and made our way to the train station in Oakland for the return trip to Los Angeles and on to the Malibu to spend Christmas with Willa and Thad.

     Sally, Aleja, Porter, and Philip waved us off. Sally and Aleja were to stay on at Sara's. Philip would return to Sacramento, and Porter had found a part-time job as a fledgling reporter for the
Oakland Tribune.
Although nothing had been said, it was understood that Sally would not go on to the Malibu, that she should not see Thad. If Willa had been protective of Thad before, she was doubly so now and she knew it would not be good for him to see Sally. To this end, she had gone so far as to suggest that Aleja stay behind after the wedding, to spend the holidays in San Francisco with her friend Sally. It was an agreeable solution all around.

     For my part, I prayed there would never be an occasion when Sally would confront Thad. She, at thirty-two, was trim and almost pretty. Her hair was tamed, her carriage stately. She was vibrantly
a woman now, her success in her work lending an air of dignity. By contrast, Thad seemed even more pathetic. His hair was thinning, his shoulders slumped, he walked with a slight shuffle, his eyes were often unfocused. It was difficult to remember the young man who had looked with adoring eyes at Sally ten years ago.

Not long after our return to the Malibu, I received the long letter Porter had promised. He wrote: "After we saw you off at the train station I took Aleja and Sally back to the city to my favorite restaurant in North Beach. Yes, Auntie, the one with the fifty-cent special. That particular night it was tagliarini with plenty of red wine. After all the champagne I could have fed them pickled pigs' feet and they would have thought it tasted fine. Sally said it was the perfect ending to an elegant day. She may even have meant it.

     "I have seen them twice since, and I've had a chance to talk to Sally about the work she is doing in Washington. I had seen her in action, you remember, that year after I graduated from high school, so I am not surprised that much of what she was working on then has borne results. Child labor laws have been passed in many states, in no small part because Sally and her team made sure the lawmakers got accurate information on the abuse of children in the work place. She is now embroiled in the struggle to establish a minimum wage and that promises to pay off, too—if you will pardon a poor pun. She will be traveling to Sacramento to speak to some of the people who are working for a minimum wage in California. Philip is going to get an earful, you can be sure. You should have heard the speech she gave him at the wedding. It is exciting to me to see how intensely Sally feels about these issues, and how she translates that intensity into action. It makes me feel that people who are totally convinced, who know what is right and stick with it until they can make others see, are the ones who will change the world.

     "I had a notion that newspaper reporting would be a good way
for me to begin. After three months on the job, I am not so sure. So far, the only thing the job has taught me is that I can write. I know I don't want to be a newspaper writer—at least, not as a lifetime occupation. It's too slipshod. You have to do too many stories that are foolish or that mean nothing at all, and that takes time from the important stories.

     "To give you one very good example—last week my editor sent me out to report on a fracas on the docks. I talked to the owners of the ship in question. I talked to the men who were complaining about a speed-up that they claimed was the cause of an accident that injured three men. Then I had to rush back to write the story without ever really sorting out the whole thing. It was superficial. In fact, it made me feel sick so I asked the editor to let me follow through, go back and dig and get the real story. He said that wasn't what I was hired to do. Then he sent me out to do a story on a bunch of fraternity boys whose idea of a good time is to see how many of them can jam into a Ford. Some fun.

     "I decided to do the digging on my own time, hoping that if I came up with something the editors would reconsider and let me do a bigger story on the trouble on the docks. What I learned was that in 1919 the employers managed to destroy the union—the Longshoremen's Union, that is—by making people believe the Wobblies and other so-called radical elements were taking over. All anyone has to do is mention the Bolshies and totally rational men cannot seem to think straight. Anyway, since then the only union on the docks has been the 'Blue Book' and it's run by the employers. They have their own men in as hiring bosses and they hire the men who will do as they're told and never complain.

     "Most jobs go to 'star gangs,' as they're called—about a thousand stevedores who follow the rules and hand back part of their pay, which isn't much in the first place. The other three thousand longshoremen—the 'casuals'—get what work is left. There's plenty of grumbling and a lot of discontent, but so far no rebellion. It is amazing to me, to see how far men can be pushed.
And these are good men, not scared of anything much but losing their jobs. They put up with blacklists and speed-ups where they are pushed to work twice as fast so a boss can make a schedule. It's not only back-breaking work, but they don't get paid any more for it even though they do twice as much. They don't get paid for overtime, either. Most men work ten hours for eight hours' pay. But I believe there is a limit to how far they can be pushed, and one day there will be hell to pay. I want to be around when that happens. That's a story I will want to write.

     "Unfortunately, my editors are not nearly so interested. They have nixed my doing another story about the docks."

Sara returned to San Francisco in time to spend the last week of Sally's visit with her. I had half a mind to go along, and I would have had not Willa seemed so blue. I knew why. She was missing Kit terribly; more than that, she knew that her time with her daughter would be limited now, and it made her sad. She and Kit had been so close, those years before Connor came back into our lives. Sara could see how Willa felt, so she didn't press me to return to San Francisco with her. Instead she said she would telephone me after Sally left, so we could have "a good, long chat."

     Sara and her "good, long chats" on the telephone! She knew I didn't like talking on that infernal machine, especially the long distance between San Francisco and the Malibu.

     "I'm going to call you," she said, lecturing me as she did these days, "and I don't want you to keep trying to cut me off. I can afford to talk just as long as I like, and I much prefer it to writing those long letters."