Love and Other Consolation Prizes

Ernest knew that Amber and Flora would be leaving by train soon after the party ended, for New York City, followed by the journey by sea to Europe. And as some of the men began to ascend the stairs with their girls of choice for the evening, it became obvious that they knew as well, as they wished the grande dame bon voyage.

Ernest stood by as the rest of the upstairs girls hugged Maisie. They whispered in her ear, and Ernest could only imagine their congratulations, condolences, words of advice perhaps. Maisie smiled and laughed.

And then the downstairs servants took their turn near the door, forming a makeshift receiving line, though the Mayflower wasn’t a bride.

Mrs. Blackwell, Violet, Iris shared a toast of purloined champagne in servants’ teacups, all but Rose, who barely restrained her sobs, as though she somehow knew that Maisie’s departure foretold the ending of an era.

Ernest, who was drifting in the barrel of his imagination, toward the lip of his own emotional Niagara Falls, had almost forgotten that the end of Maisie’s childhood was almost too much to bear for everyone else as well. For a moment, he wondered why there had been so much vested emotion for Maisie but not for Fahn. He worried that they all knew something he didn’t, that Louis Turnbull was some kind of sadistic creature. Then he realized that in the minds of the downstairs help, if Maisie was leaving, Madam Flora must truly be lost, and no one knew when she’d ever come back. The big heart and little soul of the Tenderloin were both leaving within one sweep of the clock hand.

Ernest stood at the curb and put Maisie’s small overnight valise into the trunk of the roadster. He warmed up the car and watched as Maisie slowly descended the steps. He got out and held the door, helping her inside, offering her a blanket, which she gratefully took to ward off the chill. She sank into the plush leather and closed her eyes, as if leaving had been the hardest part of the evening.

Ernest honked the horn and waved goodbye to a tearful Mrs. Blackwell.

In the rearview mirror he could see that Maisie was smiling but also dabbing at the corners of her eyes with the lace fringe of her long sleeves.

Ernest hesitated and then asked, “Did you say goodbye to Madam Flora?”

Maisie shook her head and composed herself. She took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out slowly. “No need. I’ll see her when she returns. And it wouldn’t matter right now anyway.”

Ernest turned north toward the Turnbull estate. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

Ernest glanced over his shoulder. “Last chance,” he said soberly. “Just say the word and we’ll light out for them hills. I could be Wild Bill Hickok and you can be Calamity Jane. We’ll search the cribs until we find Fahn, we’ll rob a few banks, and they’ll never bring us back alive.”

Maisie smiled back, but said nothing.

After that, Ernest didn’t say another word. He drove in silence, his feelings of love, loss, regret, and remorse drowned out by the roar of an eighty-horsepower engine.

He could see Lake Washington in the distance as they entered Windermere and passed the massive marble gateways that led to stately mansions with names like Lochkelden, Summerport, and Islesworth. Beyond the gates were long drives through manicured gardens where lamplighters had kept the roads illuminated.

But the largest home, a sprawling gaslit mansion in white, with endless balconies beneath the high arches of a black-tile roof, was the home of Louis Turnbull.

No sign or demarcation was necessary. The five-story manor known as Speedwell was by far the largest house in the area, and it adorned the highest hill, with a commanding lake view. Ernest took special care not to graze the sculpted topiary that lined the road as he wended his way up the long, serpentine driveway. He finally pulled into a grand porte cochere. The Italian architecture, the fountains, the shrubbery trimmed into the likenesses of soaring birds and leaping fish made the opulence of the Tenderloin look like a secondhand store in a shantytown.

A butler must have noted their approach, for he stood at attention at the top of the steps near the rear entrance. Ernest idled the engine as a pair of uniformed footmen also appeared. One was quick to hold the car door open for Maisie, while the other attended to her small linen suitcase on the other side and that bottle of wine from Miss Amber.

Ernest looked in the rearview mirror, waiting, as Maisie sat with her eyes closed. He silently hoped, begged for her to close the door and ask him to drive away. But then she seemed to awake and took the footman’s hand without so much as a glance in Ernest’s direction. She didn’t say a word of goodbye, and maybe it was better that way.

“Someone will call in the morning for you to come and pick her up,” said one of the footmen. Ernest watched her walk toward the manor, the hem of her dress skimming the wide marble as she ascended the steps. Maisie became a silhouette in the glow of the open door, and her long shadow seemed to reach out to him as the light of a chandelier emanated from the entrance of the mansion. Then the wooden sway closed.

Just like Fahn, Maisie was gone too.

Ernest loosened his collar and surrendered an aching sigh, his throat so tight he found it hard to swallow. He chewed his lip and shifted gears and felt the rumbling engine as he slowly began to motor back down the long, winding driveway. Then he heard a shout over the pistons. He glanced back toward Speedwell and saw a light between the hedges. He couldn’t turn the roadster around on the narrow road, so he slammed on the brakes, opened the door, and stepped to the pavement. He saw a figure in white—Maisie, it had to be—running toward him in stocking feet, her blond hair cascading off her shoulders. Ernest removed his chauffeur’s cap as she threw her arms around his neck, nearly tipping him over as she kissed him on the lips. She tasted like lipstick and sparkling wine. He held her tight, pressed so close that he could feel her heart racing through their layers of silk and cotton and sticky sateen. His hand found a soft spot at the nape of her neck, and he heard a sigh float away on the breeze. And when he finally, reluctantly let go, it was only to exhale his surprise.

“You deserve that more than anyone,” she whispered as she hugged him again, clinging to him, and then letting go. “I’m sorry that’s all I have to give.”





CROSSROADS


(1910)



A first kiss means everything.

Those were the words that echoed in Ernest’s mind as he drove home in a fresh downpour, to the sound of speeding tires on wet pavement, the growl of automobile engines, and the lonely bell of a late-night trolley.

Ernest touched his lips. He felt torn, twisted, pulled between his perpetual longing for Fahn, who knew him better than anyone, and Maisie, who had just surrendered a part of her heart. And yet he couldn’t be with either girl.

He turned the car south, toward the center of the city, and folded the front window down. As he drove into the cold night, he wanted to feel the wind, the chill; he wanted to feel something—anything to assuage the enormous vacancy in the roadster’s passenger seat, the cavity in his chest. But all he found was the dank smell of horses leaving their marks on the muddy streets, the stench of low tide and rotting fish.

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