Private Life (25 page)

boarders in the dining room, the three of them sat down to a table in Mrs. Wareham's

bedroom that was set with a selection of dishes: bacon, toast, some fried eggs, but also

green tea and small bowls of a Japanese sort of savory soup that they all liked. Dora had

never tried the soup or the tea before, but once she had imitated the way that they lifted

the bowls to their lips with two hands and sipped it, she was enthusiastic.

Mrs. Wareham told her it was called miso.

"And you have it every day?"

"Well, sometimes we have flapjacks."

They

laughed.

"Naoko has introduced me to quite a few things that I never knew existed. Or, let's

say, that they didn't have in Red Rock, Ontario."

Dora said, "In France, we had crepes, which are thin rolled-up flapjacks with

stewed fruit. Stewed! Well, in St. Louis, they have stewed fruit. In France, they have

white peaches simmered in brandy."

"Mrs. Early taught me to make those crepes," said Margaret.

Dora said, rapturously, "If you have managed to stay up all night, and you find

yourself on the Boulevard Saint-Germain very early in the morning, you may have white

peaches simmered in brandy, or strawberries dipped in creme fraiche flavored with oil of

violet." She sighed.

Mrs. Wareham said admiringly, "So lovely!"

Naoko came into the room to report that two new guests had arrived, looking for

lodging. Mrs. Wareham pushed her chair back and stood up, while Dora's attention fell

full upon Naoko.

Margaret viewed Naoko and Cassandra as a pair of young girls who were very

well behaved and did what they were told--a testament to Mrs. Wareham's system and

resolve as the proprietor of a respectable boarding house in a town that could be rowdy

and even dangerous--but Dora was more curious. Possibly she had never seen a Japanese

person before, or, at least, one who was trapped in the same room with her and obliged to

talk.

Naoko had been born in Vallejo and spoke perfect English, but she had what

Margaret thought of as a Japanese way about her--always retiring and graceful, always,

apparently, yielding to Cassandra, but, according to Mrs. Wareham, getting her way in

the end, "because Cassandra is so impulsive and inconsistent, I don't know that she

remembers what she wants from one moment to the next!" The family had a shop on the

edge of Chinatown, which in Vallejo was a small but wild place that Margaret had never

dared to walk through. Though Margaret never forgot that it was Naoko who stoked her

fire and kept the room warm while Margaret held Alexander in her arms and let her mind

drift about, that it was Naoko who was silent while everyone else was chattering

incessantly, the girl was too young for them to have achieved an actual friendship.

Dora said, "I read a book about Japan by Lafcadio Hearn...."

Naoko

smiled.

"I would like to go to Japan, and then cross China and Russia and visit Moscow

and St. Petersburg. Most interesting place on earth. I would dress as a boy."

Margaret laughed. "Your mother--"

"She would be happy, because I would bring home a Cossack husband who had

himself three other wives and was looking to import them all to St. Louis to go into the

beer business." She turned to Naoko. "So, Naoko, where do you live? Does your father

send home a lot of money to his parents?"

Naoko seemed a bit startled by this question, but still friendly. Margaret didn't

step on Dora's toe to remind her of her manners--Dora had made a success of having no

manners. Naoko said, "They live on Maine Street, near Marin Street. I, too, have thought

that it would be interesting to go to Japan."

One for you, thought Margaret. Naoko pointed to the soup. "My father sells

things. Miso. Rice. Rice noodles. Calligraphy brushes and paper. My mother is the
sanba

for the Japanese here."

Margaret said, "That's a midwife."

Naoko said, "My mother's mother was a midwife in their village in Japan. She

rode a bicycle and was much respected because she could read and write. When my

mother came here, she saw the same need in California."

"Do you like California?" said Dora, sounding idly curious, but with an

underlying eagerness to her tone, which demonstrated to Margaret that she was planning

to write something.

Naoko smiled politely and said, "I've never been anywhere else. But my mother

says that life is very luxurious here compared to Manchuria."

"I thought they were from Japan."

"My parents came here because my father's parents lost two sons fighting with the

Chinese. It appeared that my father would be next, so they found the money to send my

parents here."

Mrs. Wareham, who had come in in time to hear this last remark, observed, "I

always say, 'Don't go north unless they drive you there in a gang press, and even then,

better to get shot for escaping than to end up in Red Rock.'"

"Very practical," said Dora. She looked at Naoko. "I want to meet them."

Of course she did, thought Margaret.

"I'll prepare them," said Naoko. She smiled and ducked her head. Mrs. Wareham

said, "I suppose these new ones will be needing some linens, dear."

Naoko nodded and left the room.

"How old is she? She's not married," said Dora.

"She's planning to be a midwife as well," said Mrs. Wareham.

Dora's eyebrows lifted with glee.

When Margaret was accompanying her to the ferry a while later, she said, "I

haven't met Naoko's parents, except that once, a few days before Alexander died, her

mother came to see him."

"What did she do?"

"She held him and stared at him. I don't know what I thought. I thought she was

going to perform some magic that doctors and astronomers would laugh to scorn, but that

would work."

"And she didn't."

"No."

DORA was happy to gossip with Andrew, and he always sat longer at the supper

table when she visited. When she interrupted him, he didn't mind. One evening, she

stopped him mid-sentence and asked, "What about Tesla?"

"Ha!" exclaimed Andrew. "Nikola Tesla! There is some talent there, though he is

Middle European to the core! Have you met him?"

Dora

had.

"Very strange man. Very strange man. Talkative. Interrupts you all the time with

ideas of his own. Never actually listens to anyone else, even when that person might

perfectly well understand his ideas, and might even have a better idea himself. You know

about Edison, don't you?"

"Hmm," said Dora encouragingly. "I've met him, too."

"That was a bit of a brouhaha."

Dora sat up. "Do tell," she said.

"You know that Edison hates Tesla and Tesla hates Edison, don't you? Tesla said

that Edison promised him fifty thousand dollars if he solved a problem or two; then,

when Tesla did the work, Edison said, Ah, it was just a joke! Americans talk big, didn't

you know? Tesla ended up digging ditches for Edison Light there for a while. Adding

insult to injury." Andrew shook his head.

"I interviewed Edison once," said Dora. "Down in Florida."

"The both of them always get talked up for the Nobel, but I can't see it. The Nobel

Committee can't stand a fracas of any sort. That's why they always give the thing to the

nice boys. Slow and steady wins the Nobel, you know. For example, my theory about the

moon will be far too innovative for them. I already understand that."

He shook his head and leaned forward. He said, "But to my mind, that's not the

interesting thing about Tesla. The newspapers always grab the stick by the wrong end.

Inventors are a dime a dozen. You take a boy and you put him in a room with a stick and

a ball of twine, a couple of rocks, and a piece of wire, and he'll invent something. But

Tesla did something else, and the newspapers didn't touch it, and now it's ten-year-old

news, but he got signals from Mars and Venus."

"Signals?" said Dora.

"Yup," said Andrew. "You know he had that lab in Colorado Springs for a few

months around the turn of the century. Some Europeans funded it. A man of science is

always having to go hat in hand to somebody with money. That's the real scandal, if you

want to write about something." He pursed his lips. "Anyway, he was testing the

transmission and reception of radio signals over long distances, and he was receiving a

lot of them, as you may know. The universe is a noisy place. And when he pointed the

receiver toward Venus and Mars, he got clicks. Clicks in twos and threes, sometimes

fours. Never got that from anywhere else, either. Noise is noise. It's random. That's why

it's noise. But clicks are clicks."

"Do you think there were communications from Mars and Venus?" exclaimed

Dora.

"Well," said Andrew, "at the time, I wondered. It's a seductive idea. What else is

God, really, but an extraterrestrial Being? But, finally, I decided not from both of them.

That's the flaw in the whole idea. If you're getting signals from both, then it's the

equipment. He's mad, of course. He told me one time, in Washington, that he was born at

midnight in the middle of an electrical storm, and that lightning struck at the moment of

his birth. Oh, I had a laugh over that, but Tesla was dead serious."

Dora and Margaret laughed, too.

Andrew smoothed down his mustache and chuckled. "Megalomania, I call it."

"How were you born, then?" said Dora.

"My dear, there are no legends to that effect, but perhaps, if I am to become

famous, you could make one up for me."

"I might," said Dora.

"But he's never shy about Einstein. He shows Einstein up to be a fraud, and

people listen to him, as they should." Andrew had begun talking about Einstein only that

fall, but already the man was lodged in Andrew's head. "If Einstein's looked through a

telescope, I'll eat my hat. It's all very well to imagine the universe was this way or that,

but if you have never looked at the heavenly bodies, what good would such imaginings

be?"

Though it was late when they finished gossiping, Andrew accompanied Dora to

the Vallejo ferry on his way to the observatory. Dora felt comfortable anywhere, and at

any time of the day or night. She needed little sleep, and she felt no fear of wandering the

streets, either in San Francisco or in Vallejo, which was a lively, tough town, full of

sailors and shipbuilders and foreigners. "Well, darling," she told Margaret, "I have a little

something in my pocket. A last resort. Never had to try it except one night in Rome, with

a gang of boys. They ran off in the end. If I need it, I will use it." Margaret was sure this

was a pistol of some kind. A Missourian never minded a pistol, even a woman from St.

Louis.

THE moon book had been a failure, according to Andrew. Yes, it had been

published, and yes, it had been reviewed, mostly favorably, in
The Astronomical Journal

and
Scientific American
, and in
Science
, itself, as well as an obscure German journal and

three newspapers. But the Attraction Theory had failed to displace the flaming-cucumber

theory. "Drama is what they want, my dear," said Andrew. The Attraction Theory had not

gotten him off the island and over to Berkeley or down to Pasadena or back to Chicago,

and he was restless, day and night. Another thing Margaret did not say to Dora was that

their grief, hers for Alexander and Andrew's for his moon book, did not make them more

sympathetic to each other, but less. Their lives were mostly private now, lived side by

side as necessary, but whatever there had been for them both--in the earthquake or the

moon book or their hopes for Alexander--had dissipated the way certain qualities of light

did. The reason she didn't mention it was that Dora would have said, as the ladies in her

knitting group would have said, what did she expect? Did she not know what marriage

was? But she didn't, did she? Except from listening to Lavinia's tales of those early days,

when she had only sons and no daughters.

Andrew published another article in
The Astronomical Journal
, the first since the

article about the craters. It was nothing about the moon--rather, he had rustled up his sets

of double-star observations, made in Mexico so long ago, and he had attempted to

coordinate these with observations made by other astronomers before and since, and to

use the observations to propose a universe in which double stars were more common than

single stars. The solar system, he thought, might be the remains of the sun's former

double. Although the mass of all the planets and their moons and the debris between

Mars and Jupiter that had been (Andrew was certain) a planet was less than the mass of a

star that would have equaled and balanced the sun, the difference could be accounted for

by time and attrition. All of this sounded plausible to Margaret. Everyone knew the sort

of effort it took to maintain a stable partnership, and why should stars be different from

married people?

On the whole, the reception of this article was positive, and two or three

astronomers, plus a Mr. Akenbourn in South Africa, wrote him admiring letters.

Then, one day (it was July, because Margaret was in the kitchen making

strawberry jam and thinking about Lavinia, who had died at Christmas, and whom