The Last Woman Standing (25 page)

A horseman in the street denounced us. Allie shook her fist at him and stood her ground. “Yes, Missy, you do have to listen now that you’ve gotten all twisted up in our business. I married Virgil, but I got five Earps. It was no bargain, five for the price of one. We’re fine when it’s just the two of us, but that hasn’t happened since you brought the sky down on us in Tombstone.”

Rage rose up in me. “I am not to blame.”

“Beauties like you never are, gathering the silver that working men mined. When you stepped off that stagecoach, I felt a shiver run through me. I had a premonition. I turned around, went home, and cut the cards in the middle of our bed to see the future. Out they came: all black, all spades. I’d never seen the like. There were five of them: a spade flush, ace high.”

“Isn’t that a lucky hand?”

“If you think a pile of death is lucky. That spade flush was the five brothers, all devilish handsome and doomed to die together. The cards don’t lie.”

“They’re just made of paper, you superstitious witch. Wyatt’s flesh and bone, and he’s all mine.”

By midnight that night, Tombstone was at my back—but Allie’s words haunted me all the way back to San Francisco.

CHAPTER 29

I found Mama alone in the concrete backyard behind Perry Street, a spot tighter and narrower than the vacant lot beside Fly’s. Settling my carpetbag on the back steps, I watched the white linen ballooning in the breeze and knew I’d abandoned the land of zephyrs and dust, where clean sheets hung out to dry were likely to come down dirtier than they began. I’d returned home with less baggage and more heartache. I desperately missed both Wyatt and who I was with him.

I watched Mama. Clarifying my emotions, I reckoned that I feared rejection and exposure. I considered hiding my pain so that Mama would not immediately see my vulnerability—and feast on it. She sucked two clothespins in her mouth, which added to her face’s determination. She had aged, the worry lines deepening above the prominent nose, canyons cutting at the corners of her lips. She held the clothesline and the linen in her left hand, and clipped with her right.

Despite the chilly weather, Mama lacked a sweater. Sweat stained her armpits. She worked against time, raising her eyes to the sky. Above, the clouds hovered and indicated no reprieve. Would the sheets dry before the rain came? She returned to pinning without looking forward, where she would have seen my face. She hung her head. I wondered if that had always been her posture and I hadn’t recognized it before, or if shame of my opprobrious behavior had bent her. Perhaps it was also the weight of constantly being submissive in the larger society, taking the load and not talking back to anyone who had power over her.

I approached and took two clothespins from the cloth sack hanging on the line within Mama’s reach. I grabbed a damp pillowcase—the easier task; she would have noted that—and hung it on an empty line. I returned again, taking clothespins, pillowcases, sheets. Whether or not she would acknowledge it, we pinned linens together.

Seen objectively, perhaps from a neighbor’s window, we were mother and daughter doing the wash. Except that I was in traveling clothes, my hair piled on my head and twined in tiny braids, my cheeks rouged, my eyebrows plucked. Tucked in my bag was a hidden photograph that captured the essence of me and my beauty, reclining in Mollie’s gaze—an image that would confirm every judgment Mama had mustered the day of my departure, and every day since.

There was too much linen for one small family. Mama was taking in laundry again. Resentment edged her movements. I hesitated among the sheet ghosts, my arms already weary from the unaccustomed menial task, and began the speech I’d prepared on the long train out of Benson. I spoke in an even tone, not attending an invitation that might never arrive. “I have seen enough death since last we were together to mourn loss, Mama.”

My mother continued hanging without pause. I said, undeterred: “I saw young men shot for pride and misunderstanding and drunkenness, lying together in cracker boxes. I have witnessed heroes shot to bits that would give anything just to be able to raise both arms and pin laundry.”

“Who told you to go?”

“It was my choice. I left alone and unprotected. You were right to be fearful.” I intended to be conciliatory, to ride out the hostility and prove that I was the bigger woman for it. “I discovered that families must stick together no matter the cost, a lesson I learned from Wyatt Earp and his brothers, Morgan, Virgil, Warren, and James. In that light, it strikes me as unjust to sit
shivah
for the living.”

Mama sniffed, not in sadness but disgust, clearly unimpressed.

I approached, faced her, and said, “See me? I am alive. I am your daughter. I am myself.”

Mama looked back at me, sharp-eyed. “I see you. You are alive. You are my daughter, whoever that is today, and whenever that changes tomorrow.”

Her response fell like a weight on me. I reminded myself that it would take time to heal. Look how long it took Virgil to regain his strength. I must retreat and lower my expectations while I awaited Wyatt. I could not expect the kind of embrace from Mama that I felt I deserved; the kind she’d always withheld.

“You father has been in mourning since the day you left.”

“Is that because he misses me,” I said, losing my composure at the suggestion of his complicity in her religious charade, “or because I left him with you?”

“You talk like
that
to your mother?”

“It’s just words, Mama. I’m not pointing a gun. I’ve heard of plenty of people who got shot for less.”

“Is that why you came back?”

“I didn’t come back. I’m running, Mama, I’m running.”

I didn’t even feel like crying. My actions didn’t shame me. They shamed Mama. I’d staked out a life in the wider world. I had to walk the higher road because I had seen farther. I had to make peace with myself in this situation, not with Mama. We were, and nearly always had been, like two antagonists on a narrow stage. I had to make my exit or be consumed in our mutual rage. We fell into each other, fed on each other. Papa needed me at home to take the heat. He also needed my companionship in a hostile house where he earned the money but ceded control to Mama.

Feeling like a beggar, I asked: “Can I stay here with you and Papa?”

“Where else are you going to sleep?”

As if I were a polite stranger at an inn, I said, “Thank you.” And then I continued. “Thank you for marrying that sweet, sweet man. Thank you for the sisters and brother. Thanks for the sheets, the blankets, the schlepping and schooling.”

“Well, suddenly you’re grateful. I never would have known.”

“You’ve worked hard, Mama. Thanks for all the burdens you’ve shouldered.
But:
taking responsibility does not excuse the not-quite-loving. Your feelings need no excuse, but it would help if they were out in the open. I had an obligation to advance our fortunes in the Jewish community by marrying well. Instead, I served up shame.”

“You have no idea.”

“I think I do. I’m not your favorite child, or even your third favorite. I’m shallow, slutty, and vain, if you are to be believed. But I’m Papa’s favorite, and that’s more than enough love for me.”

“You should hear how your father talks about you.”

“I thought he didn’t talk since I left.”

“You think I don’t consider walking away? You think you are the only woman that was ever young and beautiful and wanted the world? I had Rebecca when I was your age. And her blessed father, the ginger from Poland, he did not die. I was never a widow. He was a Torah scholar, a rabbi’s son. He was a
goniff
who took me and left me pregnant. I was not good enough for his father. I was not of their congregation. I had no family. I found your father through the goodness of a neighbor, and he was too foolish to shun me, too much in love with my looks to see my pain. There is my romance. There is my love story. There is Rebecca, then Nathan, and you and Henrietta. There is
my
shame.”

I approached Mama, arms out, for a hug, to offer comfort. She was now crying, but her pointy jaw was tight. She swiveled away from me, plucked another sheet. “I don’t have time for talk. This wash won’t wait.”

Clothespins in her mouth, her cheeks red as if they’d been slapped, Mama moved from sheet to sheet. She stretched the crumpled bundles into wind-blown sails. Finishing one, she immediately bent for the next, her hips stiff. I raised the basket and followed behind, passing her fresh clips. This action suggested a truce. We moved together down one line and up the next. My back ached from my trip.

A raindrop landed on my cheek. Mama hissed. But there was only a drip or two.

Mama took the empty basket from me. She looked down with anger in her eyes and said, “You think you have seen death, have you? Have you seen shame? When my own daughter left my house on Shabbat for a gentile who refuses to marry her, it reflects on me. You think you have it bad? Look at me. I’m not young or beautiful. My life is a worn rug behind me and in front, wet wash.”

“How can I help?”

“You can dump the dirty laundry water down the drain.” Mama turned her back, mounted the stairs, and kicked aside my carpetbag. She disappeared into the house. I looked down at my stylish narrow wool traveling skirt, unbuttoned my lavishly decorated bodice, and stripped to my shirtsleeves. I approached the back of the yard to topple the heavy tub and rinse it under the pump.

My return to Perry Street was a homecoming, if not a welcome home. I had expected my mother’s response to be yes, or no. You can stay here or you can leave. You are my daughter or you are a harlot. But this would be another siege. Sleeping in the back bedroom and staying in the shadows so as not to magnify the
shonda
.

I contemplated three ways to handle my unfortunate situation as I waited for Wyatt. The first was the route of my nightmares. I could regress to the claustrophobia of being my mother’s unloved daughter, sitting
shivah
for my true self. The second was the way of anger, the destructive force I’d frequently witnessed in Tombstone. This was fighting with my mother even if that meant breaking the family as collateral damage.

And then there was the third way, which required my higher self. I was bigger than this backyard, this house. I would reject my position as the lightning rod for my mother’s anger. She blamed me for having to take in laundry. If I’d accepted an arranged marriage, she would be better off. She had expected to trade on my beauty—how dare me for stealing the benefits of an advantageous match.

Mama raged against her situation and spat it out at me. I would not spit it back, but I would not let her tie me up in the backyard as her scapegoat. I would find comfort in Papa and my siblings, in the knowledge that Wyatt would prevail. I’d grown strong enough to defend myself, but feared lashing out when provoked and prolonging the bitter cycle of our mother-daughter drama.

Let it go,
I said to myself as I picked up my carpetbag and reentered my house.
I know love, and I can give love
. A stirring in the parlor gave me hope that we were no longer alone. Perhaps Papa had returned and I would get that hug I craved.

CHAPTER 30

MARCH 1882

A month later, I discovered my rising desire was no longer for physical congress, but the fetal position. I had surrendered to house arrest, mitigated by the company of Papa, Nathan, and Hennie. Rebecca’s husband forbade her from seeing me, as part of my shunning by proper San Francisco Jewish society. I’d never wanted to attend
shul
, but now Mama forbade me from accompanying her even though I was desperate to escape Perry Street—even if it meant attending temple. At home, she groused around the house as if she were the injured party, treating me as the scullery maid she might have gotten if I had been shrewd enough to marry well.

That morning, I had awakened early to bake a honey cake out of season for Papa and start the chicken stewing. I had cooked lunch, washed up, and laid out the dishes for the Sabbath meal. Now, two hours before Shabbat began, as the light softened, I still had piles of laundry to hang that would have to be left up over the following day. I wore an old skirt that I’d left behind, and a stained blouse. I hosted a blemish on my chin, and it was about to give birth to a brood. My hair, locked down in a single braid that pulled at my temples, had frizzed in the humidity of the hot water. My cheeks flushed from work. I smelled like a miner. And that was when Johnny Behan parted the sheets.

I hate to admit that Johnny looked dapper—hat, tie, tailored town suit, cufflinks, pocket watch and silver chain—but, after Wyatt, he also looked short, and sleek as a snake-oil salesman. Affection radiated from his eyes as if I was the most treasured woman in the world, the biggest beauty in Tombstone, if not Arizona and California both. My stomach flip-flopped, but I considered it merely a bodily betrayal, like gas, rather than a sign of something true destined for greatness. I’d had my itch for the wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing, the bad boy with the charming airs. I’d scratched it. I was lucky it hadn’t gotten infected.

Now, we were in San Francisco. A lot had changed. I pressed my chin’s flaming spot. It was still there. It might have swelled over the hot wash.

Johnny approached through the sheets, as if that was how he always wooed washerwomen. “How are you?”

“It’s getting better.”

“I’d hate to see worse.”

I shrugged. “Not quite the Grand Hotel . . .”

Johnny handed me a double bouquet of yellow roses. “These are your favorites, right?”

“I like roses,” I said flatly. They were lovely and extravagant and fragrant, even if I preferred red, or pink. I considered tossing the blooms in the wash bucket but instead dropped the bouquet on the remaining damp laundry (and thought of Delia with her room full of yellow roses, by now possibly out of Madame Mustache’s and a step down in a crowded brothel).

“How’s Albert?”

“He’s spending a lot of time on Geronimo. He misses you nearly as much as I do, and that’s saying something. Let me take you away from all this,” he said, his arms rising, the affection in his eyes dialed up to undying-love intensity. Placing his handkerchief on the ground, he kneeled. “Marry me.”

It was all I could do to keep from laughing, although having him on his knees was the most entertainment I’d had since I arrived in the city. “We’ve done this dance before, Johnny. You had me and you wouldn’t wed, as much as I begged. You had Wyatt as a loyal ally, and you fought with him behind his back.”

“Wyatt is over. He’s played out.”

“Not from what I’ve read in the papers, and not in my heart. Are you taking advantage of his political weakness to visit me? Or are you on the prowl again? Is this your game—propose to as many girls as possible to see who’s dumb enough to believe you? Now you say that you
really
want me, and you know I
really
want out of here.”

“True, that’s not quite the red dress I saw you in last time you visited me. You were a stunner that night. I was an idiot for letting you go.”

“I was the idiot, not you. I won’t be fooled again.”

“If you don’t trust me, let’s go to City Hall right now.”

“There are worse places than hanging sheets under house arrest. I watched a mob demand a human hanging, for one example; sharing a bed with Curly Bill is another.”

“Are you going to hold a practical joke against me?”

“If it was at my expense and involved seeing Curly Bill naked, then I guess so. Tell me, Johnny, am I just one stop on the old-girlfriend circuit? Did you woo your way through Contention, Tucson, Prescott, and Los Angeles before you found me here?

Johnny rose and shook the dust from his handkerchief. “I’ll make this perfectly clear. There’s only one woman for me. It’s you.”

“You’re selling. I’m not buying. What are the odds some lonely girl will return your smile and sacrifice her security?”

“That’s crazy talk.”

“How much of your pursuit today is to snatch me from Wyatt while he’s fighting for his life and livelihood?”

“Maybe I could see where you’d end up: abandoned. Look in the mirror, Josephine. Have some self-respect. Put some witch hazel on that thing. Aren’t you ashamed of how you’ve let yourself go?”

“I am not ashamed of how I look today. I regret how I looked at you.”

I lied. I
was
embarrassed. I looked like hell. I did occasionally glance in a mirror, but less frequently than before. Meeting my former flame looking my worst humiliated me. I admit that vanity, and I am not alone in it. Couldn’t he have sent a note first?

Wretched at being ambushed in this condition, I surrendered—I was a scrawny, unkempt washerwoman under siege, awaiting a rescue that might never occur. I wanted a night of lovemaking, and the sleep that followed in my lover’s arms. I wanted a restaurant with Champagne and items in French on the menu. I’d do almost anything to get it—except take Johnny back. I could reclaim my beauty, but I knew Johnny could never regain his integrity.

As angry (and lonely) as I was, I returned to hanging sheets, setting the roses aside. Let him see the sweat stains, damn him. “I don’t regret running off to Tombstone with you, Johnny. How else would I have met Wyatt?”

“Wyatt isn’t coming.”

His certainty flattened me, but I held on to my mistrust. “You don’t know that.”

“It’s too hot for him in Tombstone, but he’s too stubborn to sell out and leave.”

“I’m sure, as sheriff, you’re doing everything you can to protect him and his family.”

“I’m not battling Wyatt, here. I’m fighting for us.”

“You shot that horse months ago, you hypocrite. You have blood on your hands even if you did not hold the gun and shoot that afternoon on Fremont Street. You fanned the flames and perjured yourself. Now, before my mother flies out and flogs you with her broom, shoo, and stay shooed. You are nothing to me but Albert’s father. His mother was right: he deserved a better man than you.”

Johnny walked over to gather his roses, and I said, “Leave them. Buy more for your next date.”

Johnny disappeared behind the sheets as he’d come, and I almost wondered if I’d imagined it all—except for the yellow roses at my feet.

As I entered the kitchen with the empty basket, I registered the anger in Mama’s eyes. She’d seen Johnny from the window, and she would have no bitten tongue for dinner. “Who was that?”

“John Harris Behan.”

“Was that your fancy man from Arizona with his big gold watch? What did he want?”

“It may surprise you, but he wanted me.”

“He took one look and left.”

“I took one look and chased him off.”

“That was a long look, then. What did you discuss?”

As drained as I was, I knew I had to draw a line in the kitchen. I didn’t want my anger at Johnny to upset the delicate balance I was trying to achieve with Mama. If I lost my temper and expressed my conflicted emotions to her, who knew what upsetting confessions she would make to me about her own rage and sadness. I had to protect myself, so in answer to her question, I said: “We discussed the weather. It rains and then it doesn’t.”

I put the roses in water in a milk bottle, and gathered with my family at the dining-room table. I noticed that the big mantel mirror was gone, so I couldn’t see myself reflected as Johnny saw me. I took my place beside Papa as Mama lit the Shabbat candles, her cracked hands gracefully circling over the flame three times. I noticed that the candleholder was new and brass; the silver one was gone, probably sold.

My family had sacrificed to rescue me from Johnny. Although I’d begun to send money home before I left Arizona, it never replaced that first $300 that bought the house. Maybe Mama wanted to know if Johnny had brought money to repay me. I hadn’t even considered asking. I could have told Mama that Johnny had taken so much from me that cash was the least of it. The harder truth was that I’d given so much freely and without coercion. Although I was a sucker to offer my affections to him, young girls can be asses. I discovered I had something to offer: love. It was a powerful emotion that was not exclusive to those with beauty.

After Papa blessed the bread, I served the meal, rising to clear the plates after each course, and bringing in the next. Mama met Papa’s comment that the soup I’d prepared was especially tasty, with a grunt. Otherwise, no one talked; no one made eye contact. Papa retreated into himself. I stewed in my choices: rebuffing Johnny, waiting for Wyatt. I tried to model my patience after his. I had to wait this situation out, and Perry Street was as much of a safe haven as I had at my disposal. I had to convince myself that this was not a step backward but a way station. I had to avoid the electric current of my mother’s rage, knowing that once unleashed it would scorch my heart and zap my strength. It was not an easy battle within me, but I tried to find oases of contentment in this small house with no privacy—and that was my time with Papa.

After washing the dishes, storing the leftovers, and scouring the countertops, I rolled down my sleeves. I would be able to rest until sundown the next day. I carried the flowers and a footstool into the parlor, past the last flickers of the Sabbath candles. Papa sat alone with his glasses and his newspaper, reading the sports scores. I placed the milk-bottle vase atop a
schmatte
on the scratched oval table in front of his secondhand gentleman’s chair. I plucked a pillow from the mismatched settee and made Papa shift forward. I placed it behind the small of his back, which tended to ache from standing all day. He sighed with pleasure as he crossed his ankles on the footstool I placed at his feet.

Before I sat down beside him, I went to the sideboard and brought over two small glasses and a decanter filled with golden liquid that I’d sent a neighborhood boy to the store to buy. I poured a dram for Papa, and one for me, and plopped beside him on the worn ladies’ chair.

“What’s this?” he asked, holding the glass and squinting.

I raised my glass and motioned for him to clink the pair together.
“L’chaim.”

He sipped carefully, then smiled broadly. “That’s not wine.”

“No, it’s whiskey.” I leaned in conspiratorially, like the image of Queen Esther pleading with the Persian King Ahasuerus for her people’s freedom. “Drinking it is pleasurable, not medicinal. Pretend it stinks or Mama will come down to see what we’re doing and accuse you of being a
schicker
.”

“We wouldn’t want that.” We downed the first glass and poured the second. Papa returned to his paper, and I began to undo my braid in companionable silence. It was so tight that it took me a while, combing with my fingers as I went, until I could shake it entirely free. “Ahh,” I sighed, scratching my scalp. “Another?”

Papa raised his glass. I filled it. He shook his head and said, “That honey cake was delicious.”

“Too much salt, according to Mama, and God forbid you make a honey cake when it’s not Rosh Hashanah.”

“Thank you. It was a treat.”

“I knew it was your favorite. Why just have it once a year?”

“Leave it to your mother to look a gift cake in the mouth.”

We laughed together and, yes, I poured another wee dram for each of us. It was Friday night, after all, and though he had to work the next morning (another
shonda
) this would help him sleep.

“Mama wasn’t always so tense.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Have I ever told you where I lived on the Lower East Side? It was in a tenement on Hester Street. We men had the fifth floor because we could manage the stairs and the rising smells. We were eight to a room, hiking down to the docks, scrounging a day’s work. You slept in your socks so that nobody would steal them. I kid you not.”

“It sounds like the mining camp in Tombstone.”

“I can see that. I had one distant cousin in New York. It took him three months to answer my note. I didn’t blame him: the crossing was hard on everybody. In a world where putting food on the table was a challenge, sharing wasn’t so easy. But once my cousin got his bearings, he told me there was an opportunity at a bakery. If I wanted it, I’d better hurry. It was near Congregation Shaare Zedek on Henry Street. The owners were from Poland, which could have meant anything, but I took my satchel and found my way to their shop.”