Love and Other Consolation Prizes(78)

Setback? Ernest thought. He was grateful she had seen only her mother resting in the hospital, not her collapse in the street.

“Maybe tomorrow we should bring her buckwheat udon from Maneki? Ma always loved that place,” Hanny said to Rich. “She even worked there as a hostess once upon a time, long before the war. She used to tell us stories of how all the women would read poetry and sing folk songs to homesick Japanese boys, who called them nihonjin tori. Ma was one of those Japanese birds who raised enough money to fund the Japantown library.”

Ernest checked on Gracie, who was still napping as their daughters reminisced about their mother volunteering at the Betsuin Buddhist Temple and the Japanese Community Center, how she used to lead dances in the street during Obon each summer.

Meanwhile, Rich was busy exploring the tiny apartment, examining the faded prints on his walls, the books in Ernest’s bookcase. He tilted his head as he read the titles: America Is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan and Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone; romantic novels by Longus, Chéri by Colette, and Henry De Vere Stacpoole; and volumes of translated poetry by Li Bai and Cao Xueqin. Ernest listened as Rich read the title of Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets.

“Seems like your apartment is nothing but books,” Rich said.

“A terrible habit.” Ernest smiled. “Picked it up in my youth.”

Rich furrowed his brow. “It’s like books are your religion.”

“Well, my mother was a Confucian, and I believe my father was a Methodist,” Ernest answered with a shrug. “But I didn’t see either one again after I was four or five.”

Rich nodded and clicked his jaw. He seemed to consider this as he drifted to Ernest’s makeshift kitchen, examining photos on the refrigerator of Hanny and Juju as little girls, playing in a plastic swimming pool, drinking from a garden hose.

“What’s the story with this morbid-looking thing?” Rich held up a picture postcard of an oil painting that stood out from the black-and-white smiles of the photographs. The postcard’s flat colors depicted a woman with a book and a cigarette. A sad, partially decorated tree, surrounded by faceless women, haunted the background.

“Let me guess, Matisse?” Rich asked.

Ernest shook his head. “That’s Edvard Munch.”

“The Norwegian guy who painted The Scream?” Juju asked.

Ernest nodded.

“So what’s it called then?” Rich raised his eyebrows, unimpressed. “Boring Lady in a Bar Painted by a Second Grader?”

Ernest sighed and ran his fingers through his graying hair. “That particular piece was created when the artist was somewhat down on his luck, and drinking too much. Hanging out in low places. He titled that painting Christmas in the Brothel.”

Hanny glanced toward the kitchen as she lit a cigarette.

“Like that Tenderloin place where you and your wife grew up?” Rich asked.

Ernest nodded. “Sort of an inside joke, if you will, from an old friend.”

“From Uncle Paz?” Juju asked.

Ernest shook his head as he regarded his old typewriter.

The stack of blank pages, layers of onionskin. He’d tried writing something—anything, weaving memories together for Gracie’s benefit, but the few mottled pages he’d typed were little more than awkward attempts, rambling sentences filled with typos, imperfections that had been corrected with Liquid Paper, leaving bumps on the smooth surface that stood out like benign tumors.

Rich turned the postcard over. He touched the stamp, which had been postmarked in North Seattle. He read the back and casually looked up. “So, who’s Margaret Turnbull?”





FADED


(1910)



Ernest opened his eyes as a sharp, metallic ring jarred him awake. He mistook it for another fire alarm before he realized the sound was coming from the telephone in Miss Amber’s room. He heard the ringing again and again as he sat up. His first confused, panicked thoughts were of Fahn.

Ernest had parked in the alley and carried her in through the Tenderloin’s servants’ entrance—much to the shock and bewilderment of Mrs. Blackwell, who’d frantically found Professor True. Together they’d managed to get Fahn, barely conscious, to her old bedroom. Meanwhile, the Tenderloin’s customers were streaming out of the building. The upstairs girls leaned out the windows, watching the commotion up the street, wary of the blaze spreading in their direction. Fortunately the rain and the new pump engine were able to contain the fire.

Iris, Violet, and Rose helped get Fahn into a hot bath, washing the smoke and soot from her hair. They dressed her for bed, bandaged her feet. Ernest had made elderberry tea, and Mrs. Blackwell heated a bowl of beef bone soup with onion syrup.

Fahn had begun running a fever and said very little as they tried to feed her.

“I just…wanted…to say goodbye to Maisie,” she had murmured. She had said even less after Mrs. Blackwell gave her a generous mug of warm brandy.

“The girls found marks on her arm,” Mrs. Blackwell had whispered as Fahn drifted off to sleep. The stout cook pointed to a spot on her own sleeve near the pit of her elbow. “Some kind of poison, I tell you. Probably a morphine gun. Some cribs do that. I hope she burned every last one of them along with that wretched place.”

Ernest heard the telephone ringing again. He squinted at the morning sunlight streaming through the windows. He regarded his chauffeur’s uniform, now terribly wrinkled, then trundled down the hall in the direction of the sound, knowing that most of the upstairs girls would still be in bed.