The Last Woman Standing (26 page)

“Had you baked before?”

“I’d eaten bread. I studied mathematics in the old country until my father yanked me out of school. I wasn’t bad at putting things together, but rolling dough was a different story. Still, I could learn, and I was no good at selling, so this seemed like a reasonable opportunity. Listen, it was an opportunity, so I jumped. I took my satchel and went. The baker and his wife owned the three-story house above the bakery, which was a big deal in those days. The couple, their children, her brothers and various ‘uncles’ all lived there. For a modest fee withdrawn from my wages, I moved in, too.”

“So, that was where you learned to bake.”

“And that was where I met your mother. The baker’s wife couldn’t sit still for fixing everybody’s life. She latched onto me, a bachelor without a wife back in the old country. I was in no rush to get married. I had a steady job and a little coin. I could have some fun on my nights off. This was America, and I could walk around without getting harassed or hunted. I was good enough looking, and I’d been raised with sisters: I liked women.”

“And they liked you.”

“Thank you for saying so. They liked me. I was in no rush to get married and add to my responsibilities. I began to relax, to play a little ball. I’d go see a baseball game in Corona, Queens, on my day off with the uncles. At night, we played cards and had a little schnapps. Not a big life, but a life.”

“What happened next? When did Mama enter the picture?”

“Thank the baker’s wife. If only she’d stuck to something she knew, like sticky buns. But no, every room in the house was filled, and there were more boarders to come. The wife volunteered at the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society. She met the beautiful widow Sophie and her bright-eyed daughter Rebecca there. She lamented that they were too good to be living on charity, sharing a roof with who knows what. She insisted she could use more help around the house, since there were so many men, and all she bore were sons. Couldn’t we find a place for Sophie? First, my landlady moved me in with her brothers, who were much older than me. Then she asked, ‘How would it look: a bachelor and a widow under the same roof?’”

“It would look fine.”

“Who cared? No one was looking at us. We were all
shleppers
. Sophie had a kid already, so she wasn’t doing any blushing. I liked Rebecca. She was bright and quick to learn. And her mother doted on her, even though she had a high opinion of herself, forever reading books. She was very observant. Me, not so much. Still, I thought I could do worse. I was tired of taking care of myself, Sadie. I was lonely with no family, no sisters, aunts, and uncles. I had been part of a big family at home, where being the quiet one had been a blessing for the noisy rest of them. Can you fault me that I wanted a little comfort? I didn’t have time for romance, and the baker’s wife wanted a wedding for Sophie. I didn’t understand the rush, but we stood under the
chuppah
right there in the living room, with the ‘uncles’ and the brothers and the kids and the neighbors and the rabbi from Shaare Zedek. My distant cousin was my only relative, and he had to work that day. Sophie only had Rebecca, who sat straight and sober through the entire ceremony. Eventually, I learned she’d been up all night with her mother, crying. Trust me: you never get used to it, the tears at night.

“Years later, your mother told me the baker’s wife entered her attic bedroom on the eve of her wedding and said, ‘Worst case: you’ll always have bread.’ I suppose it was a deal the landlady herself had made. I never saw her talking to the baker with any kind of love or affection. But she loved her brothers and her sons. That yenta filled the Henry Street house as if it was a boat sailing rough seas and she its captain. I can’t even remember her name. We make our beds. We lie in them.”

“We need a last drink to toast to that.”

“L’chaim.”
When we heard Mama’s footsteps on the stairs, we hid our glasses beneath the table. I couldn’t help myself. I giggled. Papa socked me in my arm. He whispered, “You should have seen the man from temple she had picked out for you. Some beauty he was, an accountant.”

CHAPTER 31

AUTUMN 1882

My sister Hennie and I sat thigh by thigh on the stoop. To protect our dresses, we parked atop the front page of the
San Francisco Examiner
; the papers lacked news about Wyatt in Arizona, New Mexico, or Colorado, but had reported that Virgil was in town, consulting a specialist to reset his arm. I didn’t visit, fearing Allie’s wrath.

After months together, the affection thawed between Hennie and me. We reclaimed our old secrets. We were sisters, something I hadn’t had in Tombstone. We were kin. Life had progressed in my absence. A gentleman had proposed. Hennie wanted to accept. Mama raised a roadblock because he was a gentile. But the enterprising industrialist seemed as serious as Hennie. At least he was not an unknown quantity hailing from the Wild West, but only the East Bay. I told Hennie that was in her favor. She couldn’t do any worse than I did, no longer a virgin and unmarried and back at home. But, unlike Rebecca, I’d had sex that I’d relished, not bartered to an anemic younger son from a proper German Jewish family.

Hennie liked to hear about my adventures. That gave me a chance to relive them in the retelling. When she told me about her gentleman caller, I was unsure whether Hennie loved him, despite her protestations. Where was the passion? I didn’t see it. Perhaps it was projecting my own concerns on her, but I wondered if she was as infatuated with escaping our house as I was, even if it took a marriage license to make the getaway.

Boredom overcame me under a brilliant October sky. The air was full of hope, but I wasn’t feeling all that rosy. Lethargy was my enemy. I hated the routine and the pecking order. I wanted to break out and get back to my real life. I craved Wyatt at my side so that we could devour the world together. If he wasn’t coming, I had to formulate an alternate plan that didn’t include Johnny, or dancing. I didn’t know what that would be.

Given all the passing months, my concern for Wyatt only intensified. Only a week after Johnny visited, cowboy Frank Stilwell and his henchmen shot Morgan dead but failed to hit Wyatt, standing at Campbell and Hatch’s saloon watching his favorite brother play pool. I mourned Morgan as much for our friendship as the knowledge that this passing affected Wyatt like a branding iron to his heart. After that, I knew I wouldn’t see my man for a long time, following his vendetta against the murderers in the newspaper. I awoke each day in fear that the paper would report his death by gunshot or hanging, and that his reputation would be dragged further through the mud.

Despite that heavy angst, exile on Perry Street had improved. All it took was cash. My washerwoman days ended around April when I received my first wire from Mollie Fly. While I told Mama the funds were installments on a legal settlement for defamation, the photographer sent me royalties for the pictures she was hawking through agents in Paris, Berlin, London, and New York. That pleased me to no end: I could make money off my beauty without having strangers touch my flesh.

In May, a wire addressed to Mrs. Josephine Marcus Earp arrived at Western Union—and the funds from Wyatt came regularly on the first of the month from then on. These testimonies of spousal support came from Arizona and Colorado. Wyatt’s money should have reassured me that he was committed. Still, I worried that Mattie was also awaiting Wyatt’s return, her nails as bitten as mine. Was she living with his parents in Colton, California, with her sewing machine and her nerves, considered his wife by his kin?

Hennie and I people-watched. It was Friday afternoon and the fathers had begun to shuffle home from work. We awaited Papa’s return. He was bound to have a big braided challah wrapped in wax paper, and maybe cherries for Mama. It was hard to believe that I had been reduced to this, I who heard gunshots on Allen Street, who saw Virgil and Morgan and Doc bleeding outside Fly’s. Now the day’s excitement was awaiting Papa’s homecoming, with cherries or without. I came back to a city where people didn’t have a man for breakfast. They had a bun. I suppose that, as a baker, Papa benefited.

Meanwhile, the back door slammed. We both flinched at the sound of Mama stomping into the backyard followed by the whump of her paddle as she beat the carpets. Hennie and I stayed put, but I felt guilty. Hennie probably did, too. I thought Hennie nudged my arm to get me to go help. I elbowed her back—and then I saw why she poked me.

Wyatt climbed the steep hill. He stood out: a giant, a legend, unlike anyone else who’d entered the neighborhood. He wore his Stetson, the brushed black coat with the silver watch chain, a starched white shirt, and black leather pants. His pointed boots beat the sidewalk and, yes, he had pistols strapped to his hips. He’d grown older, I observed, sadder: Morgan’s loss, Virgil’s crippling, the ebbing of their Tombstone prosperity, the press accusations as a murderer and vigilante. But he came for me and me alone, my quiet man with the big presence. And I saw by Hennie’s awe that my Earp was the handsomest man she’d ever seen.

When I saw Wyatt, my first thought was:
I’m out of here
. And then came
I love you
and then,
I want you
. I rose, anticipating Wyatt’s approach. I relished his thoroughbred stride. I feasted on the slow smile that crossed his face and dawned in his eyes when he saw me on the stoop, as if I’d attended him every day at this time since my February arrival. I stood on the third step with my arms open so that, when he stopped before me, we could almost see eye to eye. I wrapped my arms around him with a tightness that showed I’d never release him again. He boosted me up as if I weighed nothing; we were weightless together.

It was our first kiss in San Francisco: two sets of lips wedded to each other, ravenous and patient, pure escape and absolute grounding. We traveled together through that kiss and, while passions do fade, that kiss never did. It was as if Mollie had captured it in a photograph. It stopped time. There was before that kiss, and after. I would return again and again to that moment that liberated me to be my wildest, truest, warmest self and freed me to meld with the man I loved. Oh, and he loved me back.

I took a breath. “Jesus, you feel good.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, stranger.”

We kissed again. I wrapped my arms around his neck. His hands encircled my waist. If I’d pressed myself any closer to Wyatt, I would have been standing behind him. That was the kind of kiss that kept you from straying, that sealed the emotion: this love is true.

Wyatt was more than my darling—he was a hero on the Western stage. He sliced right from wrong, and I was
all
right in his eyes. That fortified me, making me strong enough to defy convention. When Wyatt had something to say from his heart, he turned to me. He knew I’d be loyal. Some may consider it a blind spot, but I never envisioned anything but the best in him. He returned to me with blood on his hands and a heavy heart after riding the range as a deputy US Marshal, seeking vengeance for Morgan’s murder and Virgil’s shooting. Along the way, joined by Doc and his brothers, James and Warren, they killed Frank Stilwell, Francisco “Indian Charlie” Cruz, and Curly Bill. I knew those outlaws, and I knew Wyatt, and I knew Johnny perverted the law. My faith in Wyatt never wavered.

When we pulled away from our kiss, I said, “Sorry about Morg.”

“Let’s leave that for now. Good?”

“Good.” We held hands as I turned to introduce him to a red-faced Hennie, who had never seen such a public display of affection. “Wyatt, this is my sister Henrietta.”

“Pleased to meet you, Henrietta.”

My sister went dumb.

“Normally, she can speak, Wyatt. She’d do anything for me but break the Shabbat—right, Hen?” My sister remained stunned, as if everything I’d told her had been a self-justifying fairy tale, and suddenly here was the prince to reclaim Cinderella.

“Let’s go inside, Sadie. It’s time to meet your folks and do this thing proper.”

I let that fall. I supposed if he could handle Curly Bill and the Clantons, he could handle Mama. It wasn’t easy for a boomtown love to survive the home front. In a world in flux, the Earp brothers rooted themselves in one another. So did the Clantons and the McLaurys. I saw my future as an Earp, but the summer had proved I was a Marcus, too. Navigating a way to remain connected to Hennie and my family was nearly as important as my desire to put miles between us. Well, that was an overstatement. Still, there was strength in those roots. I was a Jewish immigrant in a country of choice and opportunity.

When I think back, I know I didn’t run away from home. I ran to Wyatt. He caught me, not because I was some lost sheep but because he needed who I was as much as I needed him. When the smoke cleared in Tombstone, he ran to me.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

When we were deep in the quicksand of the developmental edit, my brilliant believer of an editor, that book-loving feminist Danielle Marshall of Lake Union, e-mailed me: “Good Writers. Good Books.” If only it were that easy. First, it took a Good Agent. At Victoria Sanders & Associates, there was Victoria, who saw the kernel of my idea and believed in the journey. Bernadette Baker-Baughman guided me through the process with grace and support. Victoria introduced me to editorial coach Benee Knauer, who rode with me through every page and character quirk, never blushing, ever generous. And another Good Editor: David Downing rolled up his sleeves and, during the developmental phase, asked questions I’d never considered but most readers would. The words assembled in the right order, the Lake Union team—including Tyler Stoops, Dennelle Catlett, Shasti O’Leary Soudant, and Gabriella Dumpit—herded cats to bring the novel to market. And then there were the Good People, the
menschen
who make my writing a life: Dennis Dermody, Galen Kirkland and Natalie Chapman, Hilton Caston and Robin Ruhf, Paula Bomer, Caryn James, Carla Stockton, Bari Nan Cohen, Nicole Quinn, Nina Shengold, Melissa Leo, Patricia Clarkson, Mark Ruffalo for believing in poetry, Rajendra Roy, Anne Hubbell, Amy Hobby, B. Ruby Rich, Jeff Hill, Jane Rosenthal, Amy J. Moore, Elisa Kleven, those heroes of WAMC Joe Donahue and Sarah LaDuke, my local bookseller Suzanna Hermans at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck, Jacqueline Kellachan at The Golden Notebook in Woodstock, Lina Frank and Clare Anne Darragh, the powerhouses of Frank PR, Julie Fontaine, Sibyl Goldman, Jada Marie Sacco, and Jill Goldstein. And to all the amazing stories out there of women who dared to want more than they were served up by society’s stuffy waiters.