We Five (23 page)

Maggie introduced her family's former maid to Carrie.

Carrie offered Mary Grace a boiled egg. Carrie had, only moments before, successfully sniffed out the three baskets of lunchtime provisions gathered for the photography party. “It's an absolute feast!” she marveled, flipping back the hinged top to one of the wicker baskets. Mary Grace whistled her own amazement in the presence of such an excess of culinary riches. Carrie excitedly itemized the contents, as if her two companions hadn't eyes of their own: “Eggs, crab salad—what are these—ham sandwiches—the devilish kind, it appears—and one—two—three—four different kinds of fruit.” Carrie plucked up a banana. “I just adore bananas. I'm a regular monkey. Oh, is this beer? Bottles of beer, oh my goodness!”

“Are you quite finished, Carrie?” asked Maggie through a scowl. “Because I'd like to talk to Mary Grace. I haven't seen her in years.”

“Don't let me stop you,” said Carrie, unpeeling a perfectly ripe banana.

As Mary Grace was undressing her hard-boiled egg and letting the pieces of shell drop daintily into the napkin Maggie had spread upon her lap, she said, “Miss Maggie, you spoke of you three girls. But you made no mention of your brother. Why is that?”

“Because I'm not sure there ever
was
a brother. Do you know something I don't know?”

“Your mother never said nothing about him?”

“She mentioned a son when she was talking out of her head one night with a high fever. I asked her about it later and she denied having said any such thing. Either she was imagining a boy she never had, or—I sometimes thought—perhaps there
was
a child who died at birth, and to lessen the heartbreak my mother and father agreed that each of them would simply pretend he'd never been.”

Mary Grace neither nodded nor shook her head. Instead, she chewed her egg in enigmatic silence.

After a long and trying moment, Maggie could no longer contain herself and erupted, “Well, is it true or not, Mary Grace? Because if there has been something deliberately kept from me for all these years, I would very much appreciate your setting the record straight.
Did
Octavia have a twin brother—as my mother mumbled that feverish night—and
did
he die shortly after birth?”

“Are those Uneedas? I do love Uneeda soda crackers and cheese.”

“Here. Take the whole damned box. Tell me what you know.”

Mary Grace, to Carrie's surprise, did not quail in the face of Maggie's sudden burst of temper—evidence of years of exposure on Mary Grace's part to employers and their families who attacked their servants either purposefully or collaterally without care or cause. “You are right, child. There was a baby boy. I was there at his birth. He came several minutes after his sister. The healthiest little newborn you ever saw. Could you open this package? I have arthritis of the fingers. Thank you. Squalling and kicking his little legs like he was eager to take on the entire world.”

“But then he died?”

“
Died
? That baby didn't die, Miss Maggie. It was sent away.”

“
Sent away
?”

Mary Grace nodded. Carrie produced a saltshaker. Mary Grace shook her head. “I have these salty crackers now. And this salty cheese. I'm well set.”

Some of the color had escaped from Maggie's cheeks. “I don't understand.”

“Your mother didn't want it.
Him.
They never named him but it was a healthy little boy, all right, all right. He came at the time when your father had taken to drinking so much after the death of the oldest one. I heard your mother say it to your father late of a night when the little babe was but a few days old. She said she didn't want a boy-child raised in the house what would only grow up to follow in his father's drunken footsteps. She said it was hard enough to watch what had become of your father; she didn't want to see it happen with a son. I surely would have thought that some day one of them two would have told you the truth about it all.”

Maggie didn't speak. Carrie did. She said, “May I say, Mary Grace, that what you just said is absolutely outrageous. You should apologize to Maggie this very instant for fabricating such a preposterous story.”

Mary Grace shook her head with casual indifference. “Wish I could.” She crunched a Uneeda Biscuit soda cracker. “It is every word of it the truth. It isn't in me nature to tell falsehoods.”

Maggie could scarcely release the words from her mouth: “So my parents just
gave
my sister's twin brother away? A snap of the fingers and he was gone forever?”

“There was a family your minister knew about who'd been wanting a child. They couldn't have none of their own. They was mighty grateful over it, and there's the end to
that
story.”

Carrie shook her head slowly in disbelief. She looked at her friend Maggie, who was doing the same, although Maggie's look was deeply contemplative and inscrutable.

Carrie took a deep breath and said, “This doesn't sound at all like the Clara Barton
I
know. She has a kind and loving heart, just like the famous nurse who shares her name. I simply cannot conceive it: that she would give away her very own son, and for such a ridiculous reason.”

Maggie found her voice: “If you'd truly known my father during all those terrible years before he died, Carrie, you could half understand what would drive my mother to do such a thing, especially if she knew there was a good family in great need of a child. I don't excuse her, but perhaps I could find it in my heart to forgive her. Just as important, though: I must speak to the Reverend Mobry and find out if he knows anything of the family that raised my brother. I suppose they moved from San Francisco many years ago, or I would have heard
something
about them from someone before now.”

Mary Grace looked contrite, even as her hand reached for a jar of pickled pigs' feet she spied in the open basket. “I hope I haven't upset you
too
much, miss.”

“No, no, no, Mary Grace,” said Maggie, clasping the woman's hand, which seemed filled out and strong and hardly arthritic at all. “It was more than proper that I should know the truth, and I apologize for kicking the messenger in the shins.”

“Then we're all squared. That's fine. And that bottle you'd be holding, Miss Hale—may I have a wee swallow? I'm a bit dry in the throat.”

Mary Grace finished the entire bottle of beer in five or six pulls, while Maggie gazed absently at the browsing buffalo and thought about the possibility of meeting the brother she never knew, and Carrie meanwhile set off to find Mr. Holborne, for no other reason than his quiet company.

On their walk along sandy Ocean Beach to the join the others at the carriages, Pat noted how upset Molly had become after seeing the ambulance which was to take the unfortunate young man either to the hospital or to the morgue. “If I'd known that's what was in store for us once we'd reached the baths, I wouldn't have suggested we go up there,” he said apologetically. “But you said you'd never been to the baths, so I just figured we'd give it a look-see.”

Molly smiled. “It was very sweet of you to take me, and the view of the ocean from the Heights was just as lovely as you said it would be.”

The two walked on in silence for a moment, several paces behind Castle. Then Pat said, “Would you like some oysters?”

“When? Right now?”

“No. Some night when you're free. I know a place near Fisherman's Wharf where you can get the best fried oysters and boiled shrimps in town. Do your mom and dad let you drink beer?”

“I have no mother, and my dad hasn't a thing to say about anything I might want to do,” answered Molly with slight indignation.

“Corkers!” Pat exclaimed. “An
independent woman
!”

Castle turned. “Pick it up, little ones—everyone's waiting.”

Pat hurled back in full voice, “You give me the cramp, Castle. Why are you hustling us just for lunch? What say Molly and me skip the picnic and spend the next hour on our own little stroll back to the boathouse? For eats, we'll just filch a tamale or something along the way. I saw a Dago's cart over by the paddock.”

“Suit yourself,” Castle shouted back, “but have Miss Osborne at the boathouse and in costume by one fifteen prompt, or don't come at all, because you'll be out of a job.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” answered Harrison, uncowed. “You—you got me all aquiver, you mush-headed gazabo!”

Molly's hand flew to her mouth in surprise.

As Castle quickened his step, Molly and Pat could see his shoulders bouncing—an obvious indicator of immoderate laughter over the juvenile insult. Pat Harrison wasn't the best deliverer of put-downs among the clever ad-men with whom he worked (brash young men who had raised masculine verbal abuse to an art form). In fact, he was, as evinced by the aforementioned—which entailed being so obviously laughed
at
rather than laughed
with—
quite dreadful at it.

Pat halted up and Molly stopped alongside him. Pat turned to Molly, his face flushed with anger. “When they talk to me like that—like I'm some snot-nosed
inconvenience
—I'd like to knock their blocks off.”

“I know the feeling,” said Molly with a sympathetic smile.

“Maybe I shouldn't have suggested that—Would you rather—”

“I love tamales. I also love oysters.”

Pat smiled. “Swell.”

Molly glanced over her shoulder in the direction from which they'd come. A shadow of worry crossed her face. “Gee, I hope he's all right.”

“You hope
who's
all right?”

“The man at the baths who went down the slide and didn't pop up again. They really should be more careful.”

“Accidents happen, I suppose. Some people just have the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I'd like to tell you something, something I haven't told a single soul—not even my father. I want him to think I'm brave and strong, but sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I worry dreadfully about things.”

“What are you worrying about right now, Miss Osborne?”

“It's a silly thing, really, and I shouldn't have done it, but there's a woman in my neighborhood—she lives up the street from my father and me—a Mrs. Froda. She and her husband run a confectionery. Well, they
used
to. They just moved back east. To New York. That's where her husband's from. We've become friends over the last few years—Mrs. Froda and me—and I agreed to help her pack up her things in exchange for some candy. I do love candy, and I suspected she had great lashings to give away before she and Mr. Froda shuttered up their shop.”

Pat grinned. “And
did
you get candy?”

A smile peeped out from Molly's worry-darkened countenance. “Boxes of chocolates and caramels and nougats and bags of lemon drops and candied cranberries and orange slices. My father took one look at all my loot and accused me of planning to drum up business for him by distributing free candy to all the children of Polk Street!”

“Your father must be a dentist,” laughed Pat.

Molly nodded. She stopped walking and dipped her head. Pat stopped as well. “I had the opportunity to ask her about their move while we were packing things into boxes—she remarked how good I was and I said this is exactly what I'd been doing for the last six months at Pemberton, Day, which, thankfully, I'll not have to do again, thanks to my promotion—I asked her why she and her husband were leaving San Francisco. You see, they had been doing quite well with the confectionery, and it didn't make a great deal of sense to me why they'd want to go.”

“And the look on your face, Miss Osborne—it tells me the reason for their leaving is the thing that's upsetting you.”

“Of course, I
shouldn't
be upset by it. It's really quite silly. Mrs. Froda doesn't think it's silly, obviously, but I do. And
Mr.
Froda takes his wife seriously—seriously enough, in fact, to go along with her wishes.”

“You've now got me quite curious, Miss Osborne. You'll have to tell me.”

“I intend to. There's the tamale man, and I'm suddenly famished. It's about dreams, Mr. Harrison. Terrible, frightening dreams. She's been having them nearly every night for quite some time.”

“The same dreams or different ones?”

“The same. Always the same. About—about the end of the world. Well, at least the end of San Francisco.”

“Earthquake? Fire? Some comet shooting down from the sky?”

Molly shrugged. “She doesn't know the agent. She only knows the outcome. And it makes her wake up each night in a cold sweat.
Two
tamales, if you please. I'm very hungry.”

Bella's birthday bash was in full swing, but for the present, Molly Osborne and Pat Harrison had chosen to limit their own swinging to the gentle and decidedly more intimate sway of the Prowse porch swing.

“And how is it you can just stand there and and lissem to all that ma—larkey?”

“I can't pull myself away. She's right there on that street corner every day—ruh—right in front of Sister Lydia's new tabernacle. If you squa—squint and stand back far enough she—” Molly cupped her hand to convey a confidence in the manner of a back-fence gossip out of the funny pages. “—she looks just like Sister Lydia herself.” Molly giggled. She removed her hand. “Funny to think, that's exactly how the good sister started her ministry: evan-guh-lizing on the street corners. Although this woman—she isn't evan-guh-loozing. She's—she's—she's
what
?”

“She's doom-glooming.”

Molly nodded exaggeratedly. “That's it!
Doom-glooming
.”

“Say, did anyone ever tell you your eyelashes are the cats? Like they belong to some kind of—
hiccough
—storybook princess?”