Read Waltzing In Ragtime Online
Authors: Eileen Charbonneau
Waltzing In Ragtime (36 page)
“Gran was helping me, Possum.”
“To go on your spirit journey? To come back?”
“Yes.”
She regarded him curiously, then spun away, behind him. “Did you see my mother on your spirit journey?”
He looked out the cave’s blurred opening. “Almost. She was hiding. She liked to hide.”
“I do, too.”
“I know.”
She circled around, faced him again. She took his hand. “I’m hungry,” she said.
He offered it to Annie that night, as a gift for her loyalty, her patience with his slow recovery. She’d bundled him into his bed, where he stared into her fish soup. “I met your blamed outlaw,” he told her, “back when I had the fever.”
“My —”
“Says he’s waiting, that it won’t be long. And he’ll help you, won’t let you down this time. There.”
“Matthew.”
“I got a message back to him. He tricked me and I won’t forget it. I want a second chance to knock him off his feet. You tell him that.”
She reached to feel his forehead, but he pushed her hand away. “I ain’t fevered! Swear it!” he demanded.
“All right, Matthew.”
“I got to be the only man in creation bested by two grandfathers,” he groused.
“Joe? You saw Joe, too?”
“Yep. They both flattened me, sent me back to you. I hope you’re happy.”
“I am.”
“Well I ain’t. And give me something with a morsel of meat in it will you, woman?”
She trumpeted a sound that was a laugh and cry together. He took her arm, drew her in against his chest. “Gran. How did you stand it, losing all of them?”
“I didn’t, child. I only just salvaged what was left. Went on. Me and Joe, we thought we were not long for this world, the crush of losing the boys was so strong. Then you came back to us. You and Possum. You were our salvage, keeping us out of hell a little longer.”
He smiled. “Well, I don’t know where I was. But you’ll like it. It’s just like home.”
She looked out the double window, watching her great-grandchild chase the first fireflies of summer below.
“I love it here. I love my home, Matthew. I hope when my time comes to die, that I can get into my bed and die there. I don’t want to be any trouble to you or Possum. I want it to be a clean thing. I’ll have my bath and get into my shroud, then into my bed. There’s a good picture, ain’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed.
“But I ain’t going anywhere until you’re set up with that damned Yankee woman.”
He looked at the moon, winced as if its light were bright. “Annie, I think ’Lana and me, we must be finished now.”
“Why?”
“How can she forgive me?”
“Forgive what?” she demanded.
“That I couldn’t protect them. That I was holding Lavinia when — That’s all she’d ever see if she’d look at me. It’s all I ever see.”
He touched his clean-shaven jaw absently, grateful he’d asked
her to leave the mustache so that the face that stared back at him mornings was almost that of a stranger.
her to leave the mustache so that the face that stared back at him mornings was almost that of a stranger.
The old woman shook her head. “Do get yourself some sense, Matthew. I’m weary of this world.”
“What? Hey, where you going?”
“To get you some meat.”
JANUARY, 1906
Matthew sat in the small garden behind the house. He’d carefully cultivated the ground, and through its bounty found seasons. The fragrant Tamarack pine he’d planted when they’d first come was now taller than Possum. He ran his finger along the dark green bundle of needles. Stiff, strong. He looked to the trellis he’d built and mounted against the brick wall of a neighbor’s shed. The yellow roses were opening. There had to be something redeeming about a place where roses bloomed in January.The early morning fog hung tight and low. It was more steady, reliable than the patches that often darted about square blocks of the city, making dogs and horses skittish. He’d dreamed of that fog the night before, only it had turned to fire, sweeping down those city streets, destroying everything.
In the distance, he heard the early morning cable cars starting down Market Street. In an hour he’d be on one, heading for his small office on the outskirts of Chinatown. The cable cars were like the morning fog — predictable, even at breakneck speeds they traveled down the hills. He smiled to himself. There was something he liked about San Francisco. ’Lana might find that amusing.
He allowed himself one thought of her each day, usually during this silent time before dawn. All the other times he didn’t allow, though they came anyway, here in her city. Suddenly, his daughter was beside him, her nightgown glowing in the hazy predawn light.
“What’s the matter, darlin’?”
“Dreams.”
“Bad dreams?”
She nodded. “Gran hurting you. Here.” She ran her small finger along the knot of stitches in his throat. “Not hurt,” she reminded herself softly. “She cut you, so you could breathe.”
“That’s right,” he encouraged her.
She had seen more than he had that day and he was still as skittish as those draft horses caught in fog patches. Possum’s dreams were what Annie and the Amadeos had predicted, growing fewer since they moved to San Francisco. She would still not let Annie touch her, though she spoke with her great grandmother now, and ate her food, two things she refused for the first few months. Matthew knew Annie’s heart was broken, but she’d told him that it had so many scars she thought there must be room for another. Her patient understanding of his daughter stimulated his own. And he had someone to hold. That was more than Olana had.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, love?”
“Why do you look at the flower so hard?”
“To carry the beauty inside me all day.”
“Even at work?”
“Especially at work,” he told her ruefully. She laughed as his mustache twitched, making way for his smile. A miraculous thing, her laughter. Like roses in January.
“What was her name, the baby you sang for?”
He tried to say it without the catch at his throat, but as always failed. “Lavinia.”
“And that lady?”
“Olana.”
“You didn’t call her that unless you were angry. Are you still angry?”
“I thought you didn’t remember her name at all.”
“She knew string games. Will we go home soon?”
“After Mana and Farrell get back,” he promised.
At work Matthew found his desk cleared except for a copy of the
Gold Coast Chronicle
and a cup of steaming coffee. He looked up at the pleasant-faced woman in the doorway.
Gold Coast Chronicle
and a cup of steaming coffee. He looked up at the pleasant-faced woman in the doorway.
“Mrs. Fine. The first appointment?”
“Cancelled, sir, so have your coffee in peace before Freeman’s Shoe Shine Emporium and Nickelodeon comes calling.”
“Freeman’s —”
“You heard me correctly, Mr. Hart. Should make a lively enough start to your day!” She closed the glass-paned door, muffling the ringing telephone and blurring the swirl of skirts and activity beyond.
Thursday mornings were forming themselves into this pattern, Matthew realized, mysteriously cancelled first appointments and all. He sat in the swivel chair behind his desk and picked up the newspaper. It was the day the O. Lanart column ran, the day Olana took the city of San Francisco to task on its shortcomings.
He opened to the editorial page. She’d launched herself into the Hetch Hetchy controversy. San Francisco’s engineers wanted a site within the Yosemite National Park dammed for the city’s water supply. A bitter debate was raging between “misguided, hysterical nature fakers” versus “greedy, arrogant temple destroyers.” Olana’s deft, prose cut through the war of words and brought both sides to task for their pejorative caricatures of each other.
“Tell them, ’Lana!” He laughed and put his feet up on the desk, leaning back for his last swallow of coffee. He peered over the newsprint to see a diminutive black man, loaded down with papers and an intricately carved wooden box under his arm. He was shaking his head.
“A good grade of leather and fine fit — being ruined by poor maintenance. If I might be blunt, sir, those boots are exactly why the Lord has seen fit to place me on the good green earth!”
Matthew Hart kicked himself back from the desk and stood, thrusting out his hand. “Mr. Freeman, come in,” he invited, looking over the man’s head to the women outside his office’s doorway.
“There, see?” one whispered to another, “I told you that, South-bred or not, Mr. Hart would hear out even the loan request of a nigg — negro man!”
“Ladies, I need numbers,” Matthew admonished, closing the door.
By five o’clock his head was aching with numbers and he still had Sister Justina leaning across the big oak desk, laying siege.
“You have so much in common, I’m amazed you haven’t met her before, Matthew!”
“Met?”
“Lady Hamilton! Now you haven’t forgotten? You promised to come and have tea this afternoon, to meet her? You did forget. You’re not wearing the trousers I suggested, the ones with the thin stripes.”
He looked down at the worn weave of his brown pants. He wasn’t used to thinking about clothes. His mother had done that for him.
“Well, there is a nice shine on your boots at least!”
“He made me!” Matthew protested.
“Who, dear boy?”
“A client. Demonstrating his business.”
“Really? How very colorful. We must tell Sister Gertrude.”
“I think you’d best send my regrets, Sister.”
“Oh, no. Gertrude has been baking all morning. Any regrets offered will come from you, yourself. I’ll not face her wrath!”
He smiled, overwhelmed by this woman. And her prodigious
energy doubled in the company of her fellow sisters of Dolorosa Mission.
energy doubled in the company of her fellow sisters of Dolorosa Mission.
He’d found lodging close to the mission to remind them all of home. Soon his daughter was skipping about within the old stone walls, delighting the sisters with her lively mind. But the sisters were not like the quiet, reclusive friars of St. Pitias. They were another order entirely, much more in the world.
“ … Matthew, are you listening to me or having a vision?”
“Ma’am?”
“You must have been frightful in school!”
“I never attended school, Sister.”
“Never?”
Shock. There. He had her stopped, at least. He decided to press his advantage. “I’m not sure I’ll allow Poss … my daughter Wesoma to continue at yours, either.”
She frowned. “Of course you will. God has placed a sweet, bright child in your care, Matthew Hart. And her formal education in ours at the mission. You don’t have to get testy. I was merely asking if you read Mr. Lanart’s column this morning, when you drifted off, lost in your own thoughts.”
He sighed, giving up all pretense of sternness. “I read it, Sister.”
“Was it peerless?”
He smiled. “Peerless.”
“Better, better. Yes, you’re ready.”
“Ready?”
She poked him with her umbrella. “Get your hat. Let’s not keep her waiting. Lady Hamilton has been almost as difficult to corral as you yourself!”
“Sister, if this duchess of yours doesn’t have any inclination —”
“She’s the wife of a lord, not a duke! She’s to be addressed as ‘your grace.’”
He frowned. “This here’s America.”
“Matthew, you must promise to behave. Lady Hamilton works just as diligently as you do for the children. Her benefits are
becoming legendary! Why, one performance of
Tosca,
the one you neatly avoided last month, garnered —”
becoming legendary! Why, one performance of
Tosca,
the one you neatly avoided last month, garnered —”
“If this woman’s so busy charming money out of society matrons, why —”
“You both have wonderful ideas about the mission school’s building plans. Some are in conflict. She thinks we need a new library building, for instance.”
“What?”
“Now, now —”
“Knocking out some partitions and closets in the downstairs classrooms will be much less costly to —”
“Wonderful ideas! Both of you! You should talk them over.” She touched his sleeve. “Matthew. We don’t want to lose you both over your differing opinions.”
He exhaled. “One hour. I will sip tea and be polite for one hour.”
“There’s the good fellow,” she triumphed.
Matthew closed his ledger and pulled off his spectacles defiantly, trying to be stern, trying to let the brown-caped woman know that she’d never do this to him again. She took his arm before he’d gotten to the hat rack to fetch his wide-brimmed Stetson.
“Sister Justina, I’m coming,” he said between his teeth.
“And I’m not letting you go until you’re in Lady Hamilton’s presence.”
The pedestrian traffic was snarled by the rainfall. Through it all the indomitable woman held onto his arm, even handing him her umbrella and chastising him for not carrying his own. He was peeved enough to hold it over her head only. She was still railing at him about catching pneumonia when they entered the vestibule of the convent.
“Why, I thought you under the wheels of some dreadful vehicle!” Sister Agatha called down the hallway.
“Dragging feet were more the danger, Sister! And look at
him — the fine Ulster coat we chose for him, soaked!”
him — the fine Ulster coat we chose for him, soaked!”
Sister Agatha pulled them inside the warm gray parlor, laughing. “That’s all right! Why Lady Hamilton has yet to —”
Sister Justina finally released her death grip on his arm. Matthew Hart had a peripheral sense of the two nuns, never at a loss for words, gone suddenly hushed. It was fleeting, overpowered quickly by the sight of a third woman, as rain-drenched as himself, more beautiful than on the best rose mornings, turning.
“’Lana.”
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