Authors: Jane Smiley
they entered the front door, he said, "Can you type, miss?"
Lucy May shook her head and said, "Uncle Andrew, I can't do anything useful."
Andrew took her at her word and more or less overlooked her thereafter, but
Margaret was wooed and won. The girl's clothes were beautiful--Margaret couldn't resist
admiring them as she unpacked them and hung them in the wardrobe of the spare room.
Lucy May watched her, not helping, but talking away ("Mother said to tell you
everything, which I do plan to do, Aunt Margaret"). She was so lively and grateful for
what Margaret provided that providing was a treat.
But Andrew filled the house. When Lucy May's gaze roved over the piles of
books and papers and journals, Margaret's did, too. When Lucy May removed a stack of
drafts from a chair to sit down, or pushed the typewriter aside, or bumped into a box of
"the first volume," as Andrew now called it, Margaret registered the clutter and winced.
They had to go out, simply because the Franklin was comfortable and clean. They drove
around Vallejo and Napa, down as far as Oakland and Danville. Listening to Lucy gave
Margaret a view of the life she had not had, set right beside the life she had had.
"All three of those boys are wild as can be, especially Elliott, who was in the war.
Lawrence was the only steady one, Mama says."
Margaret said, "He was a darling boy."
"Father was offered a job in Philadelphia. Ellie and I wanted to go, too, just for a
change, but Mama wouldn't hear of it, even though St. Louis is so hot she has to lie in the
back parlor with a wet rag on her forehead to get through the afternoon."
Margaret said, "Oh, people have always prided themselves on living in St. Louis."
"I think you were lucky to get out. We could at least move farther west--all my
friends live past Gore now. No one lives where we do."
Lucy May found old age astonishing, having never been sent on charitable
errands to witness it, as Margaret had been. "Everyone at Mr. Bell's funeral was ancient,
including Mrs. Bell. She has a nurse. All they talk about is cats. Everyone tells her what
her old cats are doing as if they were still alive.
"Didn't you know? Uncle Robert is bald as a rock. Not even eyebrows.
"Everyone says that you are a saint, Aunt Margaret. A pure saint. And you seem
like the youngest to me. Aunt Beatrice is so fat, she doesn't go anywhere. She can't fit
into Uncle Robert's automobile." She said it again: "I think you had a lucky escape."
Margaret said, "But I miss all of them. I never got to know you until right now."
Lucy May could not resist a tiny shrug, as if these were small prices to pay.
One morning, over breakfast, she sipped her coffee and asked, "Did you really see
them hang Jesse James the day Mama was born?"
Margaret said, "Jesse James was shot in the head over by the Kansas border."
"But you did see a hanging?"
She said, "I don't know. I just don't remember. Your grandmother thought that
was one of my signal virtues."
"Aunt Margaret! You must remember something."
Margaret thought about it as she drove them toward Napa for a picnic later in the
day. The picture that came into her mind was muddy ground, flattened grass, and white
clover. The restless murmur of a crowd and the creaking of wagons. An old-time
Missouri voice saying, "Why, he's just a boy!" She said, "I think that hanging comes into
my mind sometimes, but I don't know if what I think I remember is maybe something I
read." She drove for another minute, then said, "I think his name was Claghorne." And
she did--that was a name she knew but hadn't heard in decades. "I guess he robbed banks,
or shot someone while robbing a bank. I don't know. I'll bet he was no older than you are
now."
"How old were you?"
"Oh, I was five. Less than."
"What was Uncle Lawrence like?"
"He was a quiet boy. He liked books and bugs. That was why everyone was so
astounded that he took me to the hanging. I'm sure Ben was there, too. He went
everywhere there might be trouble."
"Do you remember when Ben died?"
"I remember when they carried him home. Beatrice and I were playing in the front
room, and Mama looked out the window and gasped, and then she called out to our girl,
Lily, and told her to take us upstairs. I remember how his feet looked as they were
coming through the door, and then Lily stepped in front of me. I didn't see after that.
Your mother must have been two."
"Oh, Aunt Margaret! I don't know how Gran stood it."
"But when you were born, Lucy May, your mother hired a nurse named Agatha
from down around Rolla, and I gaped at what she told me, just the way you're doing
now."
"I can't imagine it." As Margaret glanced at her niece staring out the window, she
realized that what she couldn't imagine, though she had lived it, was never having gone
back there, never having had the will to insist to Andrew that his work could be put off
for a month or two, that a change of scene would be good for him. Then she realized that
her mother had known that very thing--that Margaret's will could never match Andrew's-and, further, that her mother had accepted that as part of the price to be paid.
Margaret took Lucy May to Mrs. Wareham's boarding house, now called the
Warrington Hotel, where the girl chatted with Mrs. Wareham and Cassandra and Naoko
as if she had known them all her life.
On the ferry to San Francisco, they met Mrs. Kimura, who was going to
Japantown. Because it was Lucy May's second-to-last day, Margaret had been planning
to take her to Gump's and the White House and buy her an outfit for Los Angeles, but
Lucy May chattered with Mrs. Kimura as if she were the child of Dora Bell, and they
ended up on the cable car, heading out Geary Street. Eavesdropping, Margaret learned
that both Joe and Lester would be moving to San Francisco--more opportunity as well as
more to do. And Lester was already working at the Pacific Trading Company and living
in a boarding house on Laguna Street, while Joe was finishing school in Vallejo and
deciding whether to apprentice himself to a dentist on Sutter Street or to try to get more
schooling. Mrs. Kimura herself came to Japantown two or three times every month. She
was a member of two community-improvement societies and a church, but Mr. Kimura
preferred to stay home and work in his garden. "How wonderful," said Lucy May. "How
interesting!"
Margaret smiled to herself.
Margaret glanced about as tactfully as possible while Mrs. Kimura greeted several
people. Most of the shops were the sort you would expect anywhere--cleaners, tailors,
grocers, hotels--but full of Japanese people, the way the shops in Vallejo were not. The
hotels, too, looked like hotels everywhere, except for the Japanese characters on the
signs, above or below the English ones. Only the restaurants were decorated to look
exotic. Lucy May peered in doors and windows--Margaret was glad that Mrs. Kimura did
not seem embarrassed by the girl's curiosity. They went into a bookstore, a larger one
than any in Vallejo (and Margaret had been to them all); the books were in Japanese. The
only thing she could do with them was heft them in her hands and flip through, feeling
the paper, but this turned out to be a pleasure, for the paper had a softer feel and rougher
texture than the paper she was used to. The people in the bookstore watched her and Lucy
May with curious politeness. Each time she put a book back on the shelf and picked out
another one, they seemed to be wondering what on earth she could be looking for. In the
meantime, Mrs. Kimura retrieved the proprietor from his office, and very soon he took
Lucy May into a separate room, where he kept portfolios of prints. Margaret followed
them.
After some discussion in Japanese with Mrs. Kimura, the man found two folders,
then brought them over and laid them on a table beside a large window.
He opened the first one. The colors were brilliant and flat--curving fish, ferociouslooking men, women in brightly patterned kimonos, monsters, uplifted swords, corners of
houses or doorways leading outdoors, with mountains or water in the background.
"Scene from drama or story," said Mrs. Kimura. "I like. Woman leaving house.
Her child reaching for her. She halfway out door. But look." She pointed to the upper
left-hand corner, where the translucent wall of the house was depicted. "Here is shadow
of head. As she leave house, she change into fox." It was striking and clever, but it made
Margaret uneasy. The proprietor kept turning, Lucy kept looking. There was a man with
red stripes painted over his face, a cat sitting in a window, a stooped old man with a bare
chest carrying a pack on his back.
The second portfolio was truly strange, and Mrs. Kimura said to her, "I do not
think you like these, but Mr. Obata very proud of them."
Mr. Obata bowed toward her, and opened the portfolio. The first was of a viper of
some sort, coiling itself down from a box, around what looked like a cup. Mr. Obata said
something, and Mrs. Kimura said, "This is malicious gift--some nice present on top of
box, and poisonous snake hidden inside."
Margaret said, "The snake is very realistic."
Lucy May reached out and traced the outline of the snake's head with her
fingernail, then said, "When I was a child, my grandmother told me a story where the
bones of all the animals slaughtered on a farm rise up and dance, then chase the farmer
into the woods."
Margaret said, "My mother did tell that story."
Mrs. Kimura related this to the proprietor, and they smiled.
He closed the folder and glanced speculatively about the room. After a moment,
he set another folder on the table, and opened the cover. The top print was in shades of
green, orange, and yellow. It depicted three men passing a waterfall, which boomed over
the whole left side of the picture. The men were very small figures, their faces hidden by
wide hats as they looked up at the cascade. They stood on a bridge. Dark-blue water ran
beneath them in a foaming torrent.
"This Hokusai," said Mrs. Kimura. "Very famous, and has made many, many
prints. Some people say style show madness."
"I love that one," said Lucy May.
Margaret paid fifty dollars, about as much as she had spent on all of her clothing
in the previous year. The proprietor of the bookshop wrapped it in heavy paper and
Margaret handed it to Lucy May, who hugged her and kissed her on both cheeks, and
then kissed the package. Then they went to a restaurant and drank tea and ate bowls of
soup, noodles with pieces of shrimp and chicken in broth. Lucy May could not get over
how delicious it was. When they left Mrs. Kimura in Japantown and got on the cable car
to go back to the ferry building, Lucy May kissed Mrs. Kimura and embraced her, and
Margaret didn't know how she was going to give up the girl when she left on the next part
of her journey, and it was true--though she managed to put Lucy May on the train south
with some dignity, as the train pulled out she found herself calling, "Come back! Don't
forget to come back!" in a way that made the other people on the platform turn and look
at her. That was why she returned to Japantown a week later and bought the snake print-thirty-two dollars. She didn't exactly like it, but she found herself staring at it, tracing the
outline of the snake with her fingernail as Lucy May had done. It depicted, she thought,
something that she had never seen in a picture before--that moment just before the
recipient of the gift realizes the evil intentions of the sender.
ANDREW'S generosity in allowing her to spend so much time with Lucy May
was much on his mind after the girl left. It seemed to Margaret as though she was typing
or mailing things or cooking almost all of the day now, and into the evening. He even
resented her weekly knitting group, but she put her foot down when he suggested once
that she skip it. Her only breathing space was that, every morning after breakfast, she
took the Franklin across the causeway for the newspapers, which took about forty-five
minutes. Sometimes she found herself typing letters to the editors of these papers,
especially the
New York Times
, and one morning, Andrew discovered that one of his
letters was published. He had responded to a piece about a fellow named Dr. Harlow
Shapley, whom the
Times
declared to have "newly revised estimates of the size of the
universe upward by a thousand times." Andrew's letter contained a list of estimates of the
diameter of the universe--including two million light-years by Herschel and four and a
half million light-years by himself. Nothing about that young fellow Shapley was new,
according to Andrew. "That's the thing that sticks in my craw the most," he exclaimed to
her.
A similar letter to
Science
had been rejected, further proof of the conspiracy
against him, but now, he felt, he had impressed a higher authority (with a much larger
circulation). He said, "One scientist after another betrays the great ones to embrace the
new and unproven. Who in our day can stand up with Herschel? Or Newton? And yet
there's this insane rush to throw them over the side and try anything that is new. My dear,