Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 32

In the early-September sunlight, Fanny stood on the wooden sidewalk in front of the house on Alvarado Street and watched for Louis. She knew his route. He would take a train from Oakland  to  Salinas  City,  then  transfer  to  the  narrow-gauge  train  that  dumped  its passengers rather unceremoniously a few miles outside of Monterey. There he would get a wagon to bring him into town. Exactly when this would happen was anybody’s guess.
Alvarado was the main thoroughfare in a town with only three real streets, and these were paved with a top coating of beach sand. At street corners in either direction, Fanny could see the old Mexican cannon barrels that had been plugged upright, like cigars in spittoons, to serve as hitching posts. The air smelled of horse droppings and fried beans wafting from Adulfo Sanchez’s saloon. The seaweedy odor of the ocean was there, too, and when the horse tra?c quieted, the sound of the crashing breakers could be heard. Alvarado Street was alive with tra?c at this hour, with vendors, shoppers, children walking home from school, and the occasional vaquero seated on a fancy-tooled saddle, riding by too fast.
Fanny didn’t know everyone in town, small as it was, but she was beginning to recognize faces—the local restaurateur, the newspaper editor, the neighborhood women who nodded when they passed, the handful of stupi?ed men who stumbled out of Sanchez’s bar in the late afternoon. She knew personally some of the bright lights in town, including Adulfo Sanchez himself, who was o?cially engaged to her sister Nellie. Adulfo was a sweet man from an old Mexican family with deep roots in Monterey. Nellie had met him at one of the town’s weekly public balls.

Another  local  character  was  Jules  Tavernier,  a  rather  well-known  landscape  painter. Early on in Fanny’s stay in Monterey, Sam introduced her to Tavernier, whom he knew from the Bohemian Club, and took her to his studio on Alvarado Street, where she found some local  “artists” lazing on Persian rugs, drinking whiskey, and talking about French Impressionism.  One  of  these  reclining  idlers  was  Joe  Strong,  the  young  man  who  was already sni?ng around Belle. Joe had jumped up and spoken respectfully to Fanny, but in that moment she felt the essential wrongness of him. Even then she could see he was the kind of young man who would burn himself up early and become an albatross for some girl when  his  bohemian  ways  lost  their  charm.  Fanny  re?ected  now  that  she  should  have shipped Belle straight back to Indiana at the first signs of their affair.

“Fish! Fish!” A Chinese youth with a bamboo pole over his shoulder passed in front of Fanny, and she hailed him. She had purchased from the boy before and was fairly certain that “?sh” was the only English word in his vocabulary. Examining the catch inside his net, she pointed to a shad, and he held up six ?ngers. Fanny reached into the small purse at her waist and paid him six cents.

She went inside the house, where the thick walls kept the room cool. For two days now she had bathed, dressed, and perfumed herself as if expecting company. Each day they waited for Louis to arrive. Sammy behaved like someone with Saint Vitus’s dance, so jumpy was he with the secret. As the dinner hour approached, Fanny cut onions into a frying pan, then went outside to watch one more time. The fog from the sea was already rolling in. Carpenters carrying tools walked along Alvarado, and some of the drinkers from Sanchez’s bar exited noisily through the doorway. One of the men coming toward her had a familiar gait. He was a wraith of a fellow, with dark hair and … Fanny squinted. It was Louis.
She let out a cry, and then he was standing there before her: Louis Stevenson, looking as if he had lost one half of himself. His features, always so lively, were strangely still, as if his eyes and mouth were too weary to dance. He was wearing the blue serge suit he had bought in London to call upon publishers. The jacket was a wrinkled mess that hung o? his bony shoulders as if from a wooden hanger; a belt cinched at his waist kept the gathered pants aloft. Her face went slack as fear raced through her chest.

Louis did not touch her. “It’s good to see you, Fanny,” he murmured. The sweetness of his Scottish accent was the only thing about him that seemed intact.

“Where is your baggage?” she asked.

“I’m happy you’re up, Fanny. I expected you’d be in bed.”

“I’m better, Louis.” She looked up into his face again, prepared now not to gasp. “I was afraid you’d be …”

He put out his hand to hold hers, and when she grasped it, she saw his wrists were covered with red welts. She pulled her hand away. “What is it?”

“Ah, the emigrant’s curse,” he said. “The itch. I need to get some medicine.” “Is it all over you?”

He sighed. “Unfortunately.”

“We can go to the pharmacist right now, Louis.” “I need to sit down for a wee bit, is that all right?”

“Yes, yes, come in.”

When they went inside, they found young Sam standing near the table. His head tilted slightly to one side when he looked at the man with his mother.

“Sammy,” Louis said.

The  moment  the  boy  heard  Louis’s  voice,  he  stepped  partly  behind  Fanny.  Stunned, mother and son ogled the apparition that had collapsed on a chair.

“I have all the makings for a ?sh dinner—just what you like,” Fanny said, forcing cheer into  her  tremulous  voice.  She  bustled  about  ?nishing  supper,  while  Louis’s  dazed  eyes followed her. No clever quip came from his mouth, only a rattling cough.
“What are you going to do?” Nellie whispered when Fanny went into the hallway. “Send him over to the boardinghouse. Will you go to Adulfo’s and ask him to bring Louis’s
bag? He left it there, he said. I suspect he’s too weak to carry it.”

“Weak?”  Nellie  said,  grasping  her  sister’s  hand.  “Honey,  that  man’s  half  dead.  Who knows what that rash is. What are you going to do?”

Fanny knew what Nellie was asking. This is the man you want to make a life with, the man who is going to support you? Are  you insane? Through all the turmoil of the last months, during the battles with Sam, during all the letters from home condemning her for even considering divorce, Fanny had clung to Louis’s memory. She had prayed for this moment, but now that it was here, everything felt wrong. Looking into the front room from the hallway, she saw an emaciated creature she didn’t recognize, a tall man weighing perhaps 115 pounds, a thoroughly sick man.

“I don’t know,” she said soberly. “I thought I knew, but now … “

By noon the next day, Louis had recovered some strength. He came by the house to collect Fanny. “Do your parents know you are in America?” she asked when they went out onto the street.

“They do now. I had a brutal letter from my father in New York. He told me to stop this ‘sinful enterprise.’ He’s cut me off, and do you know? I’m relieved.”

“Do you have any money left?”

“Not to speak of. Colvin owes me. He wrote that he would send some as soon as he is able.”

Just then Jules Tavernier emerged from his studio onto the sidewalk. “Mrs. Osbourne,” he

called out.

“Mr. Tavernier,” she said, composing herself, “this is Robert Louis Stevenson, a friend of mine, and a great Scottish writer, I might add. He is in this country on a lecture tour.”
“Well,” the man said, appraising Louis none too subtly, “will you be speaking here?” “Oh, no,” Fanny interjected. “He’s just down from San Francisco for a little respite.” When  they  had  walked  another  half  block,  Louis  asked,  “Where  can  we  go  to  talk
freely?”

“To the beach,” she said.  “It’s a small place, this town. People do not speak kindly of each other behind backs.”

“I don’t give a tinker’s damn.” “I still have to care,” Fanny said.

They walked down Alvarado Street to the soft sandhills that ran between the town and the ocean. She tried to cheer him as they walked, but he would have no part of small talk. The sound of the booming waves echoed like cannon reports in her ears.
“It was not an easy trip,” Louis said when they reached the beach. “I can see that.”

“I was afraid you were in grave danger when I got the telegram. People die of brain fever.”

“Nellie sent it. She shouldn’t have frightened you. We don’t know what it was, but it passed.”

Louis stopped walking and turned to her. “Where are you in the divorce proceedings?” Fanny caught her breath. “I haven’t begun.”

Louis looked at her incredulously. “Don’t tell me that, Fanny. You asked me to come.” She looked at her feet, half buried in the sand.  “It’s not that I haven’t talked to Sam
about it.”

“And?”

“And he’s resisting it, despite everything. The truth is, I have been under siege from my family, too. Everyone is opposed to it. They’re like your father, Louis. They think it’s a sin.” “What  do  you want,  Fanny?  Not  what  do they  want,  for  Christ’s  sake—what  do you want?”

Fanny set her chin, looked into his eyes. “I want peace in my mind.” He kicked the sand. Whether from anger or the rash, Louis’s neck was ?aming red. “Are

you going to marry me or not?”

Fanny put a hand over her mouth and stared out at the ocean. Her mind raced as minutes elapsed. When she did not answer, Louis walked away, up the beach, and she turned back toward town.