Read Waltzing In Ragtime Online
Authors: Eileen Charbonneau
Waltzing In Ragtime (30 page)
“Afterward he brought us girls — his seven sisters he called us — down here to San Francisco, and did exactly what Lottie asked him when they married.”
“They married?”
“Now don’t you believe any of the gold digger stories! Matthew Hart was not taking advantage of a dying woman old enough to be his mama! It was Lottie asked him to tie the knot, on account of he was the only one she trusted with her money, to take care of us. And he did just exactly that, without taking so much as a cent!
“He brought us down here to ’Frisco, set us up, gave us our share of her inheritance, then disappeared until I saw him with you on his arm at your fancy ball last Christmas. Olana. I feel responsible for whatever happened between you. And I want to be your friend.”
“That would be … wonderful,” Olana realized as she said it.
“Good. Now, how far along are you, sweetling?”
“Along?”
“How many months?”
“Months?”
“I know you haven’t announced, but the physical changes —”
“What changes?”
“Your breasts. You’ve noticed they’re real full, more tender?”
“Yes, so is my —” She touched her middle and began to feel ill.
“Olana. You mean you yourself don’t know —”
She tried to hide her tears from this experienced, full-bellied woman. “Didn’t you ask someone the signs? Your mother?”
“No. I — I used to talk to Patsy.”
“Your maid?”
“Yes. But Darius stranded her — there in Japan. She and Mr. Selby, her husband. I didn’t know about it until we were already out of port. He tried to make it look like a mistake. I’ve felt so strange, so lost. But I don’t think I could possibly be … that way, Coretta. I mean, so soon. He was seasick the whole crossing, and in Japan he was so angry with me, for tending the sailors, for
thinking I poisoned him, we didn’t c-consumate until —
thinking I poisoned him, we didn’t c-consumate until —
“What a considerate bridegroom.”
“I didn’t mind being left alone all those weeks! It’s better than now,” she blurted.
“Moore’s hurting you, isn’t he? Shit, I know his kind! I could carve his precious manhood out! Now let’s put our heads together on this. When was your last flow?”
Flow. Matthew’s word. It warmed her toward this woman. “Why, before I got married. Two weeks before.”
“Olana, that was four months ago! And you never suspected —”
“I thought it was the strain. On the ship. In Japan. It stopped once before, when I was in the snow, with Matthew. I accused him, Coretta, of … you know, when I was sick, unknowing. He was so good, so patient with me, explaining that it can stop for reasons other than —”
Olana began to cry, not the silent screams of her nights with her husband, but a sloppy, blubbering, heaving cry from deep inside the little girl she felt like in Coretta Hunt’s arms.
“You’ll have to tell that idiot soon. Perhaps, when he knows, he’ll be kinder to you,” she offered.
Olana sat up, and took the older woman’s hands in a white-knuckled grip.
“If I’m as far along as … as four months, then I’m carrying Matthew’s child, Coretta.”
“Matt’s? Olana, did you and Matt —”
“Only once!”
“That’s all it takes, love! When?”
“The night before the wedding.”
“I knew it! Wagered Sidney on it, though I doubt he’ll remember, sober. I knew Matt would come back, try to stop you.”
“But I drove him away with my stupid —”
“Never mind. Don’t look back just now. You’ve got to take action on your future. Damn. Moore will figure out your baby’s not his if it comes early. But you’ve got time before —”
A cold fear invaded Olana’s heart. “No!” she cried out. “No
time. There’s a doctor, coming tomorrow. He’ll not have me a misshapen matron, Darius said, Coretta! What does that mean? Are there doctors who —”
time. There’s a doctor, coming tomorrow. He’ll not have me a misshapen matron, Darius said, Coretta! What does that mean? Are there doctors who —”
“He’d cut out his own. That son of a bitch.”
Olana felt suddenly giddy, lightheaded, and unbearably tired. “I can’t endure it anymore,” she whispered. “I don’t know how I thought I could.” She gripped Coretta Hunt’s arms. “Coretta, I can’t lose this child, it’s the only decent thing I have left.”
“You have friends, Olana. Who will help you. We’ll get you out. Tonight.”
His eyes were red-rimmed from the cigar smoke. He was very drunk. Still Darius Moore came into her room, locked the door. It would be quick, Olana told the panic rising up her throat.“You loosened your corset, after dinner.”
“I didn’t think it would matter. Weren’t the deals all made?”
“The deals? The deals? What do you know of dealing? What has that whore been telling you?”
“Why, Darius, Mrs. Hunt —”
He cut off her air with a grip around her throat. “Is a whore.” He knocked the back of her head against the bedpost. “Say it.”
“Is a whore,” she whispered.
His anger, his violence toward her had been quiet, subversive. Olana’s mind reeled, trying to figure out how to protect herself and her child from his new, explosive ranting.
“Displaying her sin proudly,” he continued, “with her cuckold husband standing by, as if that whore’s bastard were his! Damned blind fool, he loves her.”
“Yes,” Olana whispered.
“I don’t love you!”
“I know that,” she said.
“You don’t know anything! You don’t know the years of patient, calculated waiting, before your father loosened his hold on you. You don’t know the flattery, the idiotic, chaste court I paid your mother! To gain control, to have control, the way I never could in the damned army, in business, in any whorehouse. You’re stealing it, Mrs. Moore. Because I can’t control the way you make me feel! No. It’s not you, it’s only this, your hair.”
He yanked pins and combs, then held her braid around his fist as he rifled through her drawers. Olana’s eyes stung with tears but she did not cry out. He’d awakened the servants, she was sure, but she could expect no help from any. They’d been selected by him, for their discretion. The metallic flash, reflected in the lamplight, paralyzed her, the way the glint of Matthew Hart’s knife had, long ago. She was safe then, only thinking herself in danger. With Darius Moore she’d thought she’d be safe. Now both she and an innocent were in danger. Scissors, not a knife. He yanked her hair harder. The cutting was a relief. Still, Olana cried silently for the loss. You don’t need your hair, a sassy, practical voice, one like Matthew’s grandmother’s, told her. What you need tonight is your legs.
Matthew learned to handle the attacks on his own, stumbling into the sea caves nightly for relief. But his suffocating nights made him more reclusive. He never left the farm.
Then the worst night came. Moonless, cold. If a night could be forsaken, this one was, he remembered thinking as he stumbled along the wet sand. The wind howled to match the severity. It deadened his call to the women when he realized he might not make it to the caves without their help. Would he die here of his phantom illness then? He’d always wanted to die here, on the beach. But not like this, confused and helpless. Not with a small daughter to raise, the women depending on him, even that small help his physical strength was. He slipped on the rocks, and fell into the pounding surf. Then rose, lurched into the cave. There his breath returned with a surge of strength.
When his eyes adjusted to the dim light he saw Olana, huddled against the wall, her ragged clothing wet and gleaming like scales. A bright green scarf was matted around her head, over her shoulder. Her eyes were unworldly bright. When he held out his hand, he thought she was going to will herself into the gleaming rockface of the cave.
“I need Annie, Vita.”
“I’ll take you to them.”
She stood slowly. Her ill-fitting clothes could not disguise her pregnancy. The scarf slipped off, landing in a briny pool. She got on her knees, groping for it. Failing, she found the ends of her hair, hacked off just below her ears. She pulled. Harder, until he thought his heart would burst.
“’Lana! Stop it!”
She obeyed him, covering her mouth. Something broke inside him. Something useless. A burden. But he mourned it anyway.
“Matthew?”
“Yes?”
“Why are you crying?”
“I … I’m so glad to see you.”
“We’re friends, then?”
“Sure.”
“He took my hair.”
“It will grow back,” he promised.
“My shoes are ruined.”
“I’ll carry you.”
Matthew picked up the scarf from the glassy pool, offered it. She took the scarf, the tips of his fingers, then his hands.
“You’re safe now,” he said, lifting her, trying to block the wind as he walked, trying to lend her and her child within all the heat his body could give. In return he felt assurance that his night wanderings for air and sanity were over.
Once he’d given her over to the women a blinding rage filled up Matthew’s need to hold her. He shoved bullets into chambers of his rifle to relieve the rage. He put the cartridge belt over one shoulder, strapped his rifle over the other. His grandmother
blocked the back doorway. He walked past her. Off the porch, into the pale quarter moon’s light. She followed.
blocked the back doorway. He walked past her. Off the porch, into the pale quarter moon’s light. She followed.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to kill him.”
“You won’t have a chance. The powerful, they surround themselves with protection.”
“Take care of her.”
“You trust the women and orphans you’ll leave behind?” she hurled at his back. Sense. Damnation. It would not prevail against his need. He walked toward the barn. Annie Smithers didn’t follow, but he knew she was not yet through with him. Faster. He had to be faster.
He only wanted to look back at the house, but it dimmed behind the three of them, three women in white. His mother’s keening wail made his hands shake. He mounted. He’d never get past them. He turned Little Coy for the beach. The wail came again. The horse reared, throwing him. She ran riderless along the Pacific shoreline.
“Spooks, these women are spooks,” Matthew muttered, hauling himself to his feet. Olana stood before him, out of breath from running and the burden that widened the flowing pleats in his mother’s nightgown. Her hair haloed her pale face. Her eyes looked frozen in a nightmare. But she spoke with a strength that amazed him.
“Matthew. Don’t make me regret coming here.”
His grandmother took his rifle, his mother removed the cartridge belt from his shoulder. Olana gave herself back to the women’s care. They led her to the house and left him to find his horse on her path to the sea.
“I’ll take care of this house’s defense,” his grandmother informed him later, in the hearth room, as she put the steaming cup of chickory root coffee in his hands.
“What’s my place then?”
“Help us.”
“You don’t understand, Gran. I feel a steel cold need inside me. I got to kill him.”
“Now who’s the spook?” she accused. Then she sat beside him, taking his hand in hers. “Matthew, listen to me. I know you’re pulled that way, but putting a bullet in a man don’t take half the courage it does to tend the living. We got a big job ahead. All of us.”
He doubted his grandmother’s words every time Olana flinched at any unexpected sound or sight of him. He took to rising before dawn and tending to crops, fences, and apricots for them and the friars of St. Pitias until after she was bedded. Sometimes his only look at her all day was as she slept.
Olana changed his routine just as he was realizing it was one. He was deep in the cloistered recesses of the mission, mortaring a chink in the friars’ walled garden.
“I want you to come home, Matthew.”
“How did you get in here?” he wondered, knowing that this was the most restricted part of the monastery besides the sacristy itself.
“I asked,” she said.
“You must have a way with words.”
He lost himself in her lovely, blossoming form, in the pink health returning to her cheeks. The frightened look was tamed by a new light in her eyes. Was she happy? He wiped his hands on the rag in his pocket and dusted off the stone bench. “I don’t mind it here,” he said softly as she sat.
Her brows came together. “Possum misses you.”
“She brings me dinner. And we meet at the beach every afternoon for —”
“It’s not enough.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“Matthew, please try again. To tolerate my presence.” Her head bowed, her request was like a prayer from a madonna.
“I thought it was you tolerating me,” he whispered.
“In your own house? Among your family? Even I was never that presumptuous.”
“Then why —” he said, reaching his hand for hers. She yanked back. “Hey,” he whispered softly, “you afraid of me, ’Lana?”
“No.” She turned away. A dark silence came between them.
“I thought we were friends,” he tried.
“We are.”
“Friends can talk. Touch.” His finger swiped her elbow.
“Don’t!”
“Talk to me, ’Lana. Please. I can’t come home to your silences. Not even for Possum.”
“Then I’ll go.”
“Stop that. You are a guest of the women.”
“I don’t expect you to understand.”
“He raped you.” A steel rod rode up her back. He took a deep breath. “I hated being touched, for a long time after,” he whispered to her, the stones, the budding flowers of the friars’ garden. She turned back to him.
“After what?”
“After. W-when I was a boy —” Say it, he willed himself. It was so many years ago, say it. He received help in his stumbling efforts from the most unlikely source possible.
Olana touched the tips of his fingers with hers. “The ship, the one that shanghaied you out of San Francisco. Did someone —”
“Several.”
“Oh, Matthew.”
He struggled to keep his eyes on hers. “It wasn’t my fault,” he said gruffly. “It wasn’t yours.”
“You warned me,” she whispered.
“When I should have —”
She shook her head. “No, no shoulds. Only now. It’s hard enough, hour to hour, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Matthew. When will the pain go away?”
He smiled sadly. “I’ll let you know.”
He looked out toward the ocean. He felt her hand come to rest in his open palm. He smiled, but didn’t dare to look at her.
They sat for a long time in silence, their fingers loosely twined.
They sat for a long time in silence, their fingers loosely twined.
“Come home,” she urged, finally. “Make peace with your little girl.”
“Will you come with me?” he asked. “After I put away the tools?”
She smiled. “I’ll help you.”
The sun shone brightly, a taste of summer as they walked. Matthew worried, though she was steady, and the women had provided her with a wide straw hat. Olana stopped suddenly, and an otherworldly look gentled her face.
“My,” she said.
“’Lana?”
“I must sit.”
He led her to a grassy spot where she watched the waves beat the shoreline. Her fingers hovered above the light merino wool of her loose gown.
“I thought it was my overindulgence in the stewed apricots this morning, but now … I believe … Matthew, the baby is moving.”
Instinctively his hands went to her middle. Resting, then probing. He looked up at her shining eyes. “There?”
“Yes! I have — what is it Vita and your grandmother call it — ‘quickened’?”
“Yes.”
“Alive, then? The baby is alive?”
“Yes, darlin’.”
She stiffened. “It’s not yours, Matthew.”
“That don’t matter none,” he said.
“It doesn’t?”
“Oh, right,” he corrected himself, “Doesn’t.”
As she shook her head Matthew delighted in the way her free, short curls brushed her neck. God, it would be hard to watch them grow without touching her. “Child’s an innocent,” he tried assuring her.
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