The Ladies’ Relief and Protection Society Home occupied a lot on the corner of Geary and Franklin. There wasn’t a tree on the property, just scrub and sand, so storms hit hard. The Home was familiarly called the Brown Ark. Though blocks from the ocean, it had a shipwrecked, random air, like something the tides had left. In this respect, it matched the fortunes of most of its residents. During the year of 1890, the Ark housed a total of two hundred thirty-nine women and children, many only on a temporary, emergency basis.
The motif of randomness was carried up from the basement, with its kitchen, laundry, and schoolrooms, all the way to the bell-tower cupola. The furnishings had been donated, and represented the worst taste of several decades. The parlor, into which Mrs. Pleasant had not been asked, contained a clock face painted with clouds and trapped under a bell jar, a handmade mantelpiece decoration of gangrenous velvet, pinned into tufts with brass studs, and an old set of stuffed chairs that crouched before the fireplace like large, balding cats. The effect was little offset by the posting of embroidered quotations intended to uplift and edify. “He who loves a friend is too rich to know what poverty and misery are.” And “Some flowers give out no odor until crushed.” And “The true perfection of mankind lies not in what man has, but in what man is.”
The last had been gleaned from the deplorable Oscar Wilde. In 1882, Wilde made a visit to the city and was absolutely undone by the vulgarity of it. He said so in public lectures addressed to the badly dressed perpetrators themselves. “Too, too utter,” he said, though they all felt this described him far better than them. His observation on the parlor wall of the Ladies’ Relief and Protection Society Home was unattributed.
The Bell place was only a few blocks away, on the corner of Octavia and Bush. It was known throughout San Francisco as the House of Mystery, although there was a second House of Mystery, out on the beach at Land’s End, owned by the Alexander Russells. Mrs. Russell, despite her increasingly vehement denials, was widely believed to be the center of an Oriental cult whose disciples all called her Mother. Soon there would be a third House of Mystery, the Winchester house, but that would be down by San Jose.
The Bell House of Mystery was the occasional home of Thomas Bell, his reclusive wife, Teresa, an indeterminate but large number of children, servants, and Mrs. Mary Ellen Pleasant. Mrs. Pleasant was the housekeeper, although everyone knew she was too rich and too old and too famous to be a servant. This was part of the mystery. In the 1890 census she listed her occupation as “capitalist.”
Mr. Bell had another house on Bush Street where he sometimes stayed. Mrs. Bell had a house in Oakland. Mrs. Pleasant had a house called Geneva Cottage on the San Jose Road, and properties on Washington Street and in Berkeley and Oakland. She was currently thinking of buying a large country ranch in the Valley of the Moon.
The Octavia place was a thirty-room mansion shadowed by blue gum trees. It had a red mansard roof, a southern mood. The interior was stuffed with hidden passageways, spiral staircases, statuary, and gold-veined mirrors. Rock-crystal chandeliers dripped from the ceilings. Every Saturday, even in winter, cut roses were arranged in vases with ferns and peacock feathers. The rooms smelled faintly of old bouquets. Mrs. Pleasant had chosen the decorations, many of which were imported from Italy. She had a fondness for vaulted ceilings and also for the gilt cupids that were so liked by everyone.
Lizzie Hayes was seriously considering walking from the Brown Ark to the House of Mystery. The distance between the two was not best measured in blocks; the Bell home was simply not a place one visited. Lizzie had never even passed by it. But she’d recently suffered a series of devastating headaches. Though she’d had headaches before, had them all her life, these were particularly rough going. The night after she dropped Jenny’s doll, she’d had a vivid dream in which both her hands were encased in a block of ice. She tried to free herself by raising the ice and dashing it against a stone. Her hands broke off at the wrists instead. She could see them dimly through the scarred surface, floating, with the fingers widely separated and streaming off like jellyfish tentacles. She woke terrified, and although the feeling subsided, it did not disappear. The next day, the headaches began in earnest.
It occurred to her that nothing would be more natural than to go to Mrs. Pleasant and offer a report on Jenny’s settling in. Dress with care and behave with the same. It would be a courteous attention and would show Mrs. Pleasant that Lizzie was a good-hearted, respectable woman.
Part of her recoiled from her own plan. She did not believe in voodoo and would not be governed by superstition. Good-hearted, respectable women did not visit Teresa Bell in the House of Mystery, much less Mrs. Pleasant. “How does Jenny like her doll?” Mrs. Pleasant was bound to ask, and then what would Lizzie say? Plus there was the matter of Lizzie’s card. This wouldn’t be a social call, but it would take place in Mrs. Pleasant’s home. Would Mrs. Pleasant expect her to leave her card? If she did, would Mrs. Pleasant feel compelled to return the visit? If she didn’t, mightn’t this merely compound the original rudeness?
Besides, Lizzie didn’t really know how Jenny was settling in. With sixty-two children now in residence, she could scarcely be expected to keep track of them all.
She rang the bell for Nell Harris. Nell took some time arriving and appeared impatient when she did so. “Yes?” she said.
“Little Jenny. Jenny Ijub. How does she get on?”
“Well enough.”
“Has she settled? Does she eat heartily?”
“She’s not much of an eater, I’m afraid. I believe I told you as much the first day.”
“Does she get on with the other children?”
“She’s not entirely truthful. The other children naturally resent it. And the dress she came in. It was turned. I don’t think she’s as wealthy as you hoped.”
“Has she said anything about her home and family?”
“Not a whisper. She claims to remember nothing about it. But then, she’s not a truthful child.”
“But she seems content?”
“She thrashes at night. Her bedclothes are a rat’s nest by morning. Miss Hayes, I’m dishing supper. If there’s nothing further…”
Lizzie had a sudden memory of her own dining room table many years before. Her mother at one end. Her father at the other. And she between them, balanced unsteadily on two cushions, her legs dangling. No one was allowed to speak at meals, so she could hear her father swallowing his soup, her mother rustling a napkin under the table, out of sight.
It must have been a special occasion—she was never permitted to eat with her parents. It might have been her birthday. Lemon ices were to be served. But then Effie had been summoned to carry her off. “I simply cannot have you thrashing about,” her mother told her. Lizzie could still feel the bewildered humiliation of it. She would have said she was sitting still as stone.
“Thank you,” said Lizzie to Nell.
It was not the report she had wanted. But was it, after all, such a bad one? An imaginative little sprite, Lizzie could still say to Mrs. Pleasant. She so entertains the other children with her fanciful tales. An active, spirited girl.