The Wives of Henry Oades (25 page)

“Thank you, no,” said Margaret.

Dr. McTeague poked at his instruments, looking dubious, as if he thought Margaret a big fool. Nancy thought her one. She’d take the offered relief without question. He examined a pair of forceps and then put them down again, leaning over Margaret. She stared up at him, her eyes big and bright, like a pig’s before slaughter. He inserted a huge thumb and forefinger inside her mouth. Nancy turned her back, feigning interest in a steel engraving hanging on the wall. She tried for lightness, making an attempt to distract Margaret. “Can you recommend a nice place for dinner afterward?”

“There’s a diner around the corner,” he said. “They serve a tasty steak, cheap, but on the tough side. Your lady friend here wouldn’t get far. We could do something about that, you know. I could fix her up with some fine teeth. Good as the real thing, better in some cases. It’s just a matter of extracting these last few, then taking an impression.”

Margaret whimpered, the smallest pitiful sound.

“I’ve done it hundreds of times,” he said.

“Something soft would be better,” said Nancy, not turning around. “Oysters, maybe.” Gertrude adored mashed oysters from Smith’s Chop House in town. Nancy wondered if her baby had noticed that her mother was missing today.

Margaret moaned. “We could stop here,” the dentist said, “and take some gas.”

Nancy looked over her shoulder. Margaret’s eyes were closed. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth, giving Nancy a light-headed feeling. “Do as he says, Margaret. Please.” Margaret shook her head, her features squeezed in emphatic refusal. Nancy turned her cowardly perspiring back again.

“Maybe you should try the Palace Hotel,” he said, grunting like a common laborer. There was a sickening odor now, a hot alcohol smell emanating from his pores. “You’d get your oysters there. Cost you a pretty penny though.”

“We don’t mind this once,” said Nancy. “Do we, Margaret?”

Margaret didn’t respond. Long minutes went by, with his heavy breathing, the scraping and clicking, filling the room. Finally he let out a little yelp. “Here we go, here it comes!”

Nancy turned around, relieved and smiling. Margaret’s face and arms had gone slack; her eyes were closed, her head cocked to one shoulder. The bloody handkerchief she’d been clutching lay on the floor. For a terrible moment Nancy thought she was dead. “What have you done to her?”

The dentist dropped Margaret’s bloody tooth into the receptacle at his feet. “She’s only fainted.”

Nancy patted Margaret’s ashen cheek, calling and cooing to her. “It happens when they don’t take gas,” he said.

Nancy looked him square in his beer-yellow eyes. “Don’t stand there like a big nincompoop. Bring me a cold wet rag. Make sure it’s clean and give it a good wringing.” She turned back to Margaret, half singing to her. “Wake up, now. Wake up, wake up, wake up. Margaret? Can you hear me?”

At the Palace Hotel

N
ANCY ORDERED
another bottle of champagne from the haughty waiter. The day called for it. Margaret needed cheering up. They both did. It had taken Nancy a good ten minutes to bring her around in the dentist’s parlor. What if Margaret emerged from her faint not right in the head? There were fates aplenty worse than death. And besides, Nancy was still enjoying herself. That’s the main reason she unhesitatingly summoned the man. She wanted to draw out the afternoon. The room was beautiful, with spectacular crystal chandeliers that grew more dazzling by the minute. She sat back, her shoulders heaving with woozy happiness.

“I’ve read about this place so many times in the
Chronicle.
To think I’m actually here in person!”

A twelve-piece orchestra played a moony waltz. Elegant couples danced extremely close, gliding past their table, looking as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

“Have you ever in all your born days been anywhere this fancy, Margaret?”

Margaret managed a wobbly smile. “Never.”

“You wouldn’t believe how many famous people have dined here,” said Nancy. “Presidents Harrison and McKinley, General Sherman, and the Emperor of Brazil. And let’s see. Oscar Wilde the poet came. And Sarah Bernhardt. I wouldn’t mind having her in my autograph book. She sleeps in a satin-lined coffin. If that doesn’t give a person the willies, I don’t know what does.”

Tears rose in Margaret’s eyes.

Nancy leaned in, raising her voice to be heard over the music. “Is it your tooth?”

Margaret shook her head, pulling the crumpled bloodstained hankie from her sleeve. Nancy brought out her clean spare and passed it across.

“Memories come when one least expects them,” said Margaret, recovering some. “I was reminded of a lovely lady who once saw Sarah Bernhardt in person, in Paris.”

“Lucky lady,” said Nancy. “What I’d give to see Paris, France.”

The waiter appeared, a foreigner of some kind, good-looking and seemingly very aware of it. He swept up the platter of empty oyster shells, asking in his provocative accent if they’d like some more.

“Please,” said Nancy. He lifted the tray to one broad shoulder and turned to go.

“Don’t forget the champagne,” she called after him. “I’ll have some explaining to do at home,” she said to Margaret. “Henry probably thought we’d have our meal at a ten-cent diner.” Margaret frowned. “I’m not saying he’s a cheapskate, just watchful, you know. Oh, what am I saying? Of course you know.”

“I cannot imagine him denying you a thing,” said Margaret.

Nancy swallowed the last of the warm wine in her glass, blushing. “I’m sure he was the same with you.”

Margaret shook her head. “He wasn’t. Ours were straitened circumstances.”

“Well, he was young then, just starting out.”

“True,” said Margaret, with a prim shrug.

“I don’t have permission to spend like there’s no tomorrow,” said Nancy.

“It’s none of my affair,” said Margaret. “Please let’s change the subject.”

“Don’t be like that, Margaret. Did I say something wrong? I thought we were starting to have a good time for a change.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

Nancy slapped the table. “There you go again. You don’t need to be so all-fired polite. There’s no reason to live in fear of me.”

“I don’t,” said Margaret.

“I think you do a little,” Nancy insisted.

“I’m at your mercy,” said Margaret, her eyes hard now, the watery nostalgia gone from them. “If that’s what you mean to say.”

“You’re no such thing!” The waiter came up with the second bottle. Nancy reached for her glass before he finished pouring, brushing his hand and knocking over the vase of peony roses. He gave her such a look.
Clumsy drunkard
, she imagined him thinking, or however the insult translated in his language. Nancy laughed out of embarrassment, out of clumsy drunkenness. He busied himself tidying the table, and then went away testily, saying the oysters would be served shortly.

Nancy sighed. What did she care about his poor impression? She’d never see him again. A couple waltzed by, the young lady flushed-faced, clearly taken with her clean-shaven beau. It used to be said that unmarried ladies should not dance the waltz at all, in public or in private, as the dance itself was too loose a character.

On impulse, Nancy lifted her glass to Margaret, toasting modern times. “We’re at the dawn of the twentieth century! You’re at no one’s mercy, leastwise not mine.” Margaret touched the rim of her glass to Nancy’s, her hand aquiver.

“It’s kind of you to say.”

“I want us to get along,” said Nancy. “I mean it sincerely, Margaret. Do you think we ever could?”

Margaret lowered her gaze. “I’m not quite sure what you mean, really.”

“You’ll always have a place in our home. I hope you know that.”

Margaret looked up. “Thank you, Nancy.”

They sat back, saying nothing more for a while. The words had just popped out of her. Nancy didn’t altogether regret making the offer; but neither could she picture themselves years from now, two old grannies, still sharing the same kitchen.

They picked at the second platter of oysters when it came. The taste was off now, Nancy thought, a little rancid.

Margaret turned her attention to the dance floor, wondering aloud if Henry had ever learned to dance. “He suffered two left feet when I knew him,” she said.

“I’ve never danced with Henry,” said Nancy. The fact depressed her. Why hadn’t they danced at least once? They were still young enough.
She
certainly was anyway. “We didn’t have much of a courtship, you know. There was Gertrude.”

Margaret seemed not to hear. The orchestra had started up a lively polka. She was watching the dancers. After a long silence she said, “Did you mean what you said, Nancy…about our truly being welcome in your home?”

Nancy hesitated half a moment before yelling over the accordion coda. “Yes.”

A crash of cymbals brought the deafening number to an end. “Suppose we went elsewhere then, the lot of us,” said Margaret. “Suppose we left wretched Berkeley and its wretched Daughters of Decency altogether? I worry,” she said, more to herself.

“The marriage certificate will come soon,” said Nancy. “The Daughters will go on to other causes. You’ll see. A farm isn’t disposed of that easily,” she added, quoting Henry directly.

Early on he’d sat her down to discuss his will, providing her with a list of bankers and managers to contact upon his death. Nancy wasn’t to
give
the farm away. She was to wait for the right time and hold out for a fair price. The property would fetch income to last her days if she didn’t lose her head and sell too hastily, he said. The proceeds were to be put in certain stocks, an eighth here, a quarter there. Nancy didn’t remember what all. It was too confusing. She didn’t imagine holding out very long in any event. The farm was nothing but hard work. She’d never told him, but given a choice, she’d leave tomorrow and set up housekeeping in town, have the butcher’s boy deliver wrapped sausages and chops to the door. The move would be good for Henry. His disposition turned pitch black on slaughtering day. Nancy often thought he should return to accounting and leave farming to the less tenderhearted. “Where would we go?” she asked.

“A sizable city might be best,” said Margaret. “It wouldn’t matter really, as long as no one knew us. We’d introduce ourselves as Henry’s wife and his sister, the maiden aunt from England, come to help out.”

Margaret’s concession both surprised and shamed Nancy. There was no telling what she might do in Margaret’s position.

The waiter approached. “You think me preposterous,” said Margaret.

“Not entirely,” said Nancy. “Henry’s the one you’d need to convince.”

Margaret was like most any other relative in need, she guessed. At worst, they take up too much room and you can’t stand them. At best, they take up too much room and begin to grow on you. Either way, they’re here, and you live with it. Those weren’t his exact words. But that’s more or less what Uncle Chester said to Nancy when she arrived in Berkeley.

A B
ROMO
S
ELTZER
would have been Nancy’s salvation, but was not on the menu at the Palace Hotel, according to the sarcastic waiter. She tipped him, anyway, leaving the dime by her plate as she’d originally planned.

“Thank you, madam,” he said, without a trace of gratitude. She had half a mind to snatch up the dime and leave a penny instead. She would not be returning. That much was certain. They would take their business elsewhere next visit. There were plenty of fine restaurants in San Francisco; that was but one advantage of a city so large.

They found a druggist a block away, who sold Nancy a packet of Bromo Seltzer, and gave her water at no extra charge. “Have you always had the desire to live in a big city?”

“Not when I was younger certainly,” said Margaret. “I think now the anonymity might be preferable. And you?”

“Well,” said Nancy, taking a bitter sip. “There’s the disease to consider. And the pickpockets. They’re everywhere, I hear.”

“One might choose their company over certain Berkeleyans,” said Margaret.

Nancy watched the pharmacist mash something yellow in his sieve. Francis loved mixing and concocting. His hands had never smelled the same two days in a row. “Flowery sometimes, not like medicine at all.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Margaret.

Nancy emerged from her fog, aware now that she’d spoken out loud. “Never mind,” she said, laughing a little. “I took a trip back in time. You know how it is.”

“If only one could pick and choose the memory,” said Margaret, “and erase the rest.”

J
OHN
O
ADES
was on hand to meet them at the fish-stinking Berkeley docks, as expected. He approached with a serious look on his face. Margaret rushed him. “What is it? Is it one of the girls?”

“It’s Father,” he said, and Nancy’s knees buckled.

“Oh, sweet Lord, no.” She pictured Henry laid out in his Sunday suit, Francis’s jar and pedestal moved to make room for the coffin.

“He’s all right,” said John. “It’s the cows. Four good animals were charged with consumption and taken in.”

“Is that all?” said Nancy, breathing hard. “Thank God.”

Mrs. Potter was in the yard when they arrived, hanging patched sheets on the line, and looking like a hobo’s sweetheart. She turned with pegs in her mouth and flapped a wave. Margaret and Nancy waved back.

“Thank you, Nancy,” said Margaret, “for all you’ve done.” She climbed down and started up the overgrown path to the door, gathering her shawl about herself.

Nancy called after her. “It won’t be much longer.”

The ride home took nearly two hours in the one-horse rig, sufficient time for John’s fitful account. The health department had had the advantage of surprise. Earlier that day, around noon, five armed men showed up. Two held Henry, John, and Titus at gunpoint, while the others inspected the herd.

“It’s not right, Mrs. Oades. It’s just not right.”

“Settle down, John,” she had to say more than once. “It’s not the end of the world.” As it surely would have been had she lost Henry Oades. She hadn’t loved him at first crack; but she did now. She especially loved the tender way he said, “I love you, Nan.” It was a strange thing to realize at this particular moment, and while talking about sick cows. Nancy thought of Francis then, the loss more than the man.

At home she found Gertrude in the bedroom, asleep in her crib. The baby had been fed, as had Henry and the girls. Josephine had seen to it all. She made flapjacks at her father’s request. “Dad wasn’t in the mood for meat.”

“I don’t know what the family would do without you,” said Nancy.

Josephine’s ears colored with the compliment, her mouth flicking with something close to a smile. The girl was beginning to thaw some.

Nancy and Henry retired early, undressing in the expiring amber light, getting under the covers. They lay faceup, not speaking until he turned his head on the pillow and said, “Did she do all right at the dentist?”

“He pulled her tooth cold,” said Nancy. “She refused to take gas. I can’t decide if she’s brave or just plain obstinate.”