Sister Noon (17 page)

She could not find one of Jenny’s shoes, so she carried her to a park bench and held her there in the pale sunlight, listening to the mild griping of the mallards. The dog dashed about on the lawn, where, when next Lizzie looked, it had found something nasty to roll in.

It was not yet eleven in the morning and Lizzie was already exhausted. Each duck cut a small wake in the water, V-shaped, spreading open like a wing. The sun struck these waves so that the surface of the water was crossed with brief veins of gold. At the lake edges, the reflections of trees floated and undulated. It was all so beautiful. She shook Jenny again. “Ducks,” she said.

Jenny scarcely opened her eyes. “Not those ducks,” she answered. Even asleep, even drugged, she was not relaxed. She lay in Lizzie’s lap, curled up tightly, and one elbow dug into Lizzie’s thigh.

Lizzie had so many things to think about. She tried to impose some order on the recurring images of fog and red wallpaper, the spiral staircase, black passageways, a murdered girl in a yellow dress. She’d had an adventure, no doubt about it, and it hadn’t been pleasant. Ever since her first visit to the House of Mystery she’d chafed at her usual life. She’d been impulsive, discontented. She’d drunk daytime wine and been rude to dead people. She’d been the object of occult concern, and honestly, it was time to admit she’d enjoyed it.

But this morning she’d been frightened. She couldn’t
think of Malina Paillet without distress and she couldn’t think of Mrs. Pleasant with pleasure. The party was over, and all Lizzie wanted was her same old corner in the cinders. You can be anyone you want, Mrs. Pleasant had said, and what luck! Lizzie wanted to be her old, unintrusive self. Her magical juncture must be made to take her right back home.

She was done with Jenny. She was done with the House of Mystery. She had no curiosity over Mr. Finney. She was merely the treasurer, merely involved in donations, and these other matters would be well handled by other people.

Jenny’s breath was fragrantly medicinal, wet and warm on Lizzie’s neck as they returned to the buggy. Lizzie had never said they wouldn’t be going back to the Brown Ark eventually. Obviously there was no choice for it. She’d honored her part of the bargain by producing ducks. As she clicked her tongue at the mule she told herself that it was cruel to keep the staff in suspense when Jenny had been safely found. Besides, she was tired of staggering about Golden Gate Park with a drugged child in her arms.

Back at the Ark, their appearance was greeted with great relief, quickly mastered. Jenny was carried, still sleeping, to her bed. Dr. Kearney was sent for, to confirm that she’d taken no lasting harm from the adventure.

Nell remained with Lizzie to ask many questions. In the face of Lizzie’s evasions, Nell was persistent. She couldn’t understand how Jenny would have known the way to the House of Mystery, or how Lizzie had known to look for her there. She couldn’t understand how Lizzie could have been so careless as to lose one of Jenny’s shoes. “It
doesn’t matter that only one has been lost,” she pointed out. “Two will have to be purchased.” She took exception to the impulse to take Jenny to the park instead of bringing her back to begin her punishment. Truancy was not tolerated at the Brown Ark, and most runaways were not treated to outings. It wouldn’t help Jenny’s popularity when the other children heard. Lizzie had no children herself and no sense of how often a firm hand was required. It was easy to be too sympathetic; more mothers had ruined their children with indulgence than with neglect.

And while Lizzie was out larking, the Chinese boy had arrived. He could not be run off. He responded to any attempt to dislodge him by falling to his knees and praying loudly. It appeared to be the Lord’s Prayer, Nell was able to pick out a word here and there, but aside from that he seemed to speak no English. She did allow that he was very clean, still he must be sent back at once, and they were all depending on Lizzie to manage this, since it was Lizzie who’d encouraged him to come in the first place.

None of the scolding offended Lizzie; she imagined it was mostly on the mark. It made her miss her mother. She’d been far too hard on her mother recently. Lizzie was so lucky to have belonged somewhere and to someone. Sleeping in one’s own bed was one of the most agreeable sensations she knew. Sad to think how foreign it was to the wards.

She imagined Jenny, waking up this afternoon, or this evening, or sometime in the night, to find herself back in the Ark, and resolutely erased the image. Would Jenny even remember having seen the ducks? “I won’t be going to
the House of Mystery ever again,” she told Nell, who hadn’t asked and was, of course, made even more suspicious by the declaration.

“Well, goodness, why should you?” Nell agreed. “Why would anyone?”

J
enny continued to sleep. In her dreams she heard Maud Curry’s voice. “They found her in a Chinese opium den,” Maud was explaining authoritatively. “Kidnapped and drugged. At least that’s what she says. But who’d want to kidnap her? Me, I don’t believe a word of it.”

Jenny held very still. She kept her eyes closed. If she was going to wake up back at the Brown Ark, then she would just not wake up at all. She was curiously contented. She told herself she was still in the house with the woman so sad and so beautiful she was almost a princess. They were waiting there together for Mrs. Pleasant. You’ll see I don’t forget you, either, Mrs. Pleasant had promised.

The day passed, and every time Jenny opened her eyes enough to see where she was, she shut them immediately. A
bowl of potato soup was left for her, but she didn’t wake up to eat. Night came again and Maud was beside her on the bed, pinching her, shaking her hard. Her voice was so close Jenny could smell it, a boiled-egg and licorice smell. “You listen to me,” Maud whispered fiercely. “Little Jenny Ijub. Are you listening?”

She shook Jenny again. “I know where you really went. You ran away to old Mrs. Pleasant. And she didn’t want you any more than we do. Do you hear me?” She took the lobe of Jenny’s ear between her fingers and squeezed. “Say it,” she told Jenny. “Say out loud that nobody loves you.”

Jenny tried not to wake up, but Maud’s fingernails were cutting into her ear. At first it was an ache she could ignore, but it quickly grew sharper and more painful. The pain hooked Jenny like a fish, hauled her out of her secret contentment, gasping, into the open air.

L
izzie had looked in on Jenny that afternoon while Dr. Kearney was at her bedside. Dr. Kearney was a thin man, unusually tall, with almost no hair on his face. His shoulders were hunched, his spine permanently curved from years of leaning down to talk to people. He was considerably younger than Lizzie, but he was a man and a professional, so she never felt the advantage of it. Yet she was quite fond of him. For all his nervous energy and towering height, he was soft with the children. He read widely and with great enthusiasm, though never novels.

“No damage,” he assured Lizzie. “All serene.” He spoke past her. “Let the child sleep as long as she likes.” Lizzie turned to see Nell behind her in the doorway.

“The Chinese boy is in the kitchen,” Nell said. Dr.
Kearney was still talking, so Lizzie could pretend not to have heard. “When she wakes, don’t be surprised if she has no memory of this adventure at all,” Dr. Kearney was saying. “Don’t be alarmed.”

“
This
one has no memory of any adventure,” Nell said. “Or so she claims.”

“And entirely plausibly.” Dr. Kearney began to put his instruments back into his bag. “A German doctor has published a series of investigations on memory. I was just reading about it. A Dr. Ebbinghaus. He set himself the task of learning four hundred and twenty sets of sixteen-syllable lines. Unrelated syllables.
Völlig sinnloses Material.
A fatiguing investigation. All marvelously scientific.”

“I’m sure,” said Nell. She disappeared from the doorway. Conversations of this sort about studies of this sort were no doubt a very fine thing for those with nothing to do, she’d told Lizzie often enough on similar occasions. This was, of course, the category into which Lizzie fell.

“How interesting,” Lizzie said. She accompanied Dr. Kearney out of the room, inviting him to continue. It did interest her, but mostly she was using him for cover. She wished to escape from Nell without confronting the Chinese boy, since she saw no reason he couldn’t stay if he wished to.

And she certainly had no desire to communicate his unwelcomeness in some sort of extended charade.

Besides, Lillie Langtry had just adopted a small Chinese boy; they were all the rage in the more fashionable homes.

Most important, Nell would not manage to send him away herself. She was more softhearted than she sounded,
and better able to delegate unkindness than to deliver it. If Lizzie could avoid her now, then Nell would simply wait until the next time she saw her. If that didn’t happen for a week or two, if it could be delayed until Ti Wong was no longer making his first unfavorable impression, then Nell would be just as content to keep him. Lizzie had only to lie low, keep her head down and wait for this happy result. The first step was escaping the Brown Ark unnoticed.

“Dr. Ebbinghaus found that he could impose a rhythm on his syllables as a memory aid,” Dr. Kearney was telling her. “Actors learn the words of many plays over the course of their careers. I’ve seen mention of monks in the Dark Ages who couldn’t read, but could recite the entire Bible. I don’t think it was uncommon. I myself could recite poetry by the bushelful when I was a boy. ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree.’”

“‘Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,’” said Lizzie encouragingly. They were approaching the front door. “‘Through caverns measureless to man.’”

“‘Down to a sunless sea.’”

It was her father’s favorite poem. Perhaps her father had also imagined himself inside Xanadu; perhaps he responded only to the music. He had a sentimental side, little as Lizzie had seen of it. But now the words reminded her of her own recent wander through the darkness. Less grand in the flesh. Less grand when it didn’t rhyme, didn’t sing that song with the vowels. Less grand when cut to fit
her.

Lizzie wished Dr. Kearney would keep his voice down, but his enthusiasm for Ebbinghaus was growing with every sentence. He reached for the doorknob. “‘Obliviscence’ is Dr. Ebbinghaus’s term for forgetting,” Dr. Kearney said
heartily. “Don’t you find that’s often the more interesting topic? Isn’t ‘obliviscence’ a lovely, drowsy word?” and then they were finally outside, walking through the sand, with only steps to go.

He untied his horse, gave Lizzie a lift in his rig to the streetcar. “How I do carry on!” he cried in apology as they parted, but she assured him she wouldn’t have him any other way. She caught the streetcar home and slept all afternoon. She spent the next few days calling on donors, determined not to return to the Ark until she was sure the Chinese boy was well settled in.

T
hat Wednesday, Lizzie called at the Putnams’. Odd Wednesdays were Mrs. Putnam’s regular at-home days and Lizzie was resuming her regular, pre–magical-juncture life down to the tiniest particular. Erma was visiting from Sacramento with the new baby, and Mrs. Mullin, like Lizzie, was obligated to attend. Lizzie was eager to show everyone her same old self, boring as ever, and keeping quiet about her real thoughts, just the way they liked her best.

She sat in the Putnams’ conservatory, a fashionable room with a terra-cotta tile floor and curtains of dotted muslin. A fern grew in a bronze planter at the end of the sofa next to Lizzie. It was so large that one frond tapped her shoulder whenever she moved her head.

Outside, the sky darkened. A light rain flicked against
the windows, giving the room a contrasting coziness. The baby fussed. Mrs. Putnam took him from Erma, bounced him on her thighs, floated him on her fat, rustling skirts until he quieted. “Isn’t he precious?” she asked, and Lizzie supposed that another time he was bound to be. He hiccoughed, his heavy eyelids flying open, startled, with each spasm. “Isn’t he the precious man?”

“He is just so precious,” Mrs. Mullin said. “Erma, he’s a little rosebud!” Mrs. Mullin was wearing a dress of gray wool, with a white collar that sprang up around her thin neck. From certain angles her head seemed suspended above it like an impossibly balanced egg.

Blythe appeared, pushing a cart with their afternoon tea. Blythe was a widow with two adult sons who’d worked for the Putnams fifteen years now. When she left the room, Mrs. Putnam would say that they thought of Blythe as one of the family. Mrs. Mullin would add what a charity it was to keep her on, when a Chinaman could be got for so much less. Cheap Chinese help was one reason wives in San Francisco society were considered so spoiled.

Lizzie’s own contributions were equally unvarying. “How are the boys, Blythe?” Lizzie asked, just as she always did, as if they weren’t, in fact, grown men.

“I’ve no complaints, Miss Hayes,” Blythe said, but in her absence, Mrs. Putnam would know better. The boys were badly behaved, shockingly extravagant. They would be the ruin of poor Blythe if not the actual death of her.