He tried to change the subject. “Miss Amber is a bit of a porcupine, but beneath that outer layer, she doesn’t seem all that bad…”
Maisie snorted a laugh and wiped her cheek. “You know, Mrs. Blackwell once drank too much kitchen wine and let it slip that Miss Amber had spent a year down in Lakewood at Western Washington Hospital—it’s an insane asylum, you know. That’s where she got the idea for the bicycle. Mrs. Blackwell said that they sometimes treat madness with exercise. But we can’t let the great dame, the all-important Madam Flora, be seen on the street like this, can we? They’d lock her up for sure.”
Ernest sighed.
“For a while I assumed Amber had worked at the asylum,” Maisie continued. “But then I heard how she’d been a patient instead—diagnosed with what they called a diabolical obsession. They said that she was somehow ‘inverted.’ I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but I figured her condition out later. She’d been given the electric cure and later forced to have relations with all the men there, including her doctor, until she declared herself well and was finally released. I don’t know if that’s better or worse than what I heard they did to the diabolical boys.”
Ernest winced when she made a scissor-cutting gesture with her fingers.
“I have never understood what my mother saw in her,” Maisie said. “But I think I understand now. What do you think?”
Ernest hesitated. “I don’t understand much…” He chose his words the way a man on thin ice chooses his footing. “But I understand how sadness can make some people bitter, or angry.” And he was starting to understand Maisie’s mistrust of men in general and him in particular.
Maisie looked at him, and he wondered for a moment if she somehow knew what he was thinking. She smiled, sadly.
“And I definitely don’t know anything about Boston marriages,” Ernest said, “or Seattle marriages, or arranged marriages, or plain ol’ normal, I-pronounce-you-husband-and-wife marriages, for that matter. But I know devotion when I see it.”
They listened to the silence, together.
“I wish I knew what that felt like,” Maisie said. “Because as much as Miss Amber cares about my mother, she doesn’t care a whit about me—I’m just extra baggage most days, a haversack full of rocks. And my mother isn’t getting better. She’s only getting worse. The mother I used to know, that person is going away. The woman who proudly told the world I was her baby sister, I think she’s going away too. And the stranger who’s left, the great Madam Flora…that person hardly recognizes me anymore.”
STROLL ON THE PAY STREAK
(1909)
The next time Ernest saw Madam Flora was on the following Saturday. She swept into the servants’ dining room during breakfast, elegantly dressed, hair lofted high into a cascade of curls, fingernails freshly manicured. She acted as though nothing unusual had ever happened beneath her roof, though Ernest knew that she and Amber had abandoned the Tenderloin for a while, leaving everyone, especially Maisie, to wonder and worry all week. There had been speculation about doctors’ visits, special treatments, and miraculous remedies.
But now she was back, and despite the gossip, Madam Flora beamed and grandly announced, “Good morning, everyone. You’ll be pleased to know that we’re closing our doors for this evening. But we’re not locking up our wares—you fine ladies, I mean—because we’re taking everyone to Hurrah Day at the fair!”
The servants—Iris, Rose, Violet—and even Mrs. Blackwell whooped and cheered. Were they celebrating Madam Flora’s return or the day off? Ernest couldn’t tell. But as Fahn elbowed him and smiled, he realized that today’s closing of the AYP would draw an enormous crowd and that the Tenderloin would practically be deserted anyway.
This was splendid news indeed. After 138 days of festivities, fireworks, parades, races, and grand hoopla, the great Seattle World’s Fair was coming to an end. And their glamorous benefactor seemed to be healthy again.
Madam Flora smiled and said, “Everyone, even Miss Amber and Professor True, will be going, just as soon as my Gibson girls finish getting properly dressed for the occasion. And we’ll stay through the closing ceremony.”
Ernest watched as she delighted in handing out passes along with envelopes containing ten dollars each, a celebratory bonus to their monthly wages.
Ernest looked at the money, which was twice his weekly salary, and examined the strange cardboard admission ticket—a punch card, barely used.
“Don’t worry,” Fahn whispered. “We’re not working the fair. Madam had girls running the Klondyke Saloon at the AYP during opening week, but the joint got shut down a month later. We might as well put the passes to good use.”
Forty furious minutes later, everyone had assembled at the nearest streetcar stand, beneath an enormous world’s fair pennant that had faded in the sunlight. Ernest noted that the servants all wore simple black and white dresses. Fahn stood apart, wearing a plum robe over her high-collared shirt, which drew whispered comments and sideways glances from the Gibson girls.
“Good morning,” Ernest said, admiring her outfit.
“Ohayo gozaimasu to you too,” she said, twirling proudly. “Do you like it? I bought it in Japantown.”
He nodded and then noticed that the Gibson girls looked stunning, as always, each in a high-waisted, floor-length skirt of rose, yellow, powder blue, or periwinkle, squeezed into a tight bodice, dappled with ruffles and rhinestones. They’d be walking advertisements for the Tenderloin as they toured the fair.
Professor True looked elegantly handsome as well, in a checkered waistcoat. And Miss Amber wore a light blue wig that matched Madam Flora’s dress.
The standout, though, was Maisie May, who’d been growing her hair longer. Ernest had never seen her in a corset before, and he wondered what battle had been fought to get her into one of those spoon-billed contraptions. He imagined an angry, feral, six-toed cat, with long claws and no tail, hissing while being dunked into icy water.
He said, “You look absolutely—”
“Don’t say it.”
“I was just going to compliment you on your—”
She smacked him with her parasol. Then she pulled back like Honus Wagner, ready for a second turn at bat. “Don’t make me swing for the fence this time.”
Ernest wished there had been a photographer nearby. He would have loved to keep this image forever. They looked like some kind of crazy family, part elegance, part circus, off on a weekend outing.
—
AS ERNEST WALKED from the streetcar terminus to the fairgrounds, he had a magnificent view of the grand arch of the main gate, and a platoon of uniformed ticket takers who stood at attention beneath a row of flags. The Stars and Stripes was interspersed between dozens of banners, every other standard representing one of the nations that were attending the fair. Ernest noticed that there was no Chinese flag, probably because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. But he and Fahn quickly found the Japanese standard, swaying in the breeze.
Madam Flora led the way, pointing with her bumbershoot as her peacock feather rose above a sea of hats by Chester, Knox, and Stetson. The Gibson girls followed, a parade of ducklings in lace-fringed petticoats. Ernest, Maisie, and Fahn kept up, trailed by the other servants, while Professor True and Miss Amber lagged behind, acting as a suspicious-looking rear guard.
Ernest noticed that the soldiers were gone from when he’d been raffled off in the summer. And the remaining policemen looked less serious, more joyful—except for a tall lummox with a wide mustache who had roped off a half dozen boys covered in mud. Ernest recognized him as the plainclothes officer who had broken up the spat between Madam Flora and Mrs. Irvine earlier.