Back in April 1890, Lizzie waited at the mission. Sunlight came dimly through the yellow glass of the small windows, so the room was lit with a golden daytime dusk, but there was little heat. The sky was a ceiling striped with Indian dyes. The ground was worn tile. At the far end of the adobe room the altar glittered. This place never seemed to change. The city grew in all directions, but here was its eternal, damp, still-beating Spanish Catholic heart.
To Lizzie’s New World Episcopalian sensibilities, the room had a thrilling aura of overexcitement. Saint Ann clasped her hands together pleadingly. The Archangel Michael was dressed like a Spanish grande. Publicly, Lizzie disapproved of a religion that covered itself in thin gold leaf. It recalled the gorgeous medieval excesses of popery. Privately, if there’d been no one to see her, she would have fallen to her knees.
She sat on the hard pews in the cold cave of the church, wondering how long she would wait. On the wall to her right was a painting of the Last Supper. This suited Lizzie, whose mind was very much on betrayal. The waiting seemed a lenient penance. And better to find Mrs. Pleasant here than have to return again to the still, clogged air of the House of Mystery.
Mrs. Pleasant entered an hour or so later. She did not seem surprised to see Lizzie, though, to Lizzie’s chagrin, she did seem pleased. “I didn’t know you were Catholic,” she said. She crossed herself quickly and gestured for Lizzie to come outside. She wore a purple bonnet with a wide brim, and was wrapped in a purple shawl.
They went to the little graveyard, a garden of blackberries, brambles, and slabs. Mrs. Pleasant stooped over a marker. J Sparrow, whose epitaph was caught in a cage of twisted wrought iron. “There are three vigilante graves around here,” Mrs. Pleasant said. “James Sullivan, Charles Cora, and James Casey. Only I can’t remember right where. And any number of Indians. No stones for the hundreds of them.”
Mrs. Pleasant sighed. “When you get to my age you’ll find things that happened forty years ago are more clear than yesterday’s doings. Part of my mind is always in those splendid, dreadful years.” She shook her head, then straightened, brightened, and began to walk again. “Isn’t this a lovely spot, though? Nothing like the company of the dead when you need a bit of peace and quiet.”
This had never been Lizzie’s experience. “I’m even sorrier, then, to intrude on your peaceful time here,” she said.
“Have you ever given thought to your epitaph?”
“No.”
“No,” repeated Mrs. Pleasant. “Of course, you’re far too young. I’ve picked out mine. Known it for years.”
“What will it be?” Lizzie was genuinely curious. How could such a long and tumultuous history be encapsulated on a single stone? “‘She was a friend to John Brown,’” Mrs. Pleasant said. “That’s what I’d like.”
“I have something very difficult to say to you,” Lizzie told her.
They’d reached the obelisk of Don Luis Antonio Arguello. Mrs. Pleasant paused to admire it. “Then just open your mouth and let it come,” she suggested.
Lizzie took a breath. Sunlight dappled the leaves, twirled warningly in the wind. Something was corking her throat. She spoke anyway. “It’s my fault that Miss Viola was snooping last night. I put her up to it. Please don’t hold her responsible, since it’s all my fault. I’m more sorry than I can say.”
There was a silence. The shards of light, spinning like tops. Lizzie’s breath coming through her mouth, thin as thread.
Then, “You astonish me,” Mrs. Pleasant said. Her face was shadowed. Lizzie was glad not to see her eyes. He was frightened of those eyes, she’d once said, although Lizzie couldn’t remember about whom. “I thought you a lady and a friend.”
“I meant no harm to you. I certainly meant no harm to Viola. I just got it in my head that my father killed Malina Paillet. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I felt I had to know.”
“Who’s Malina Paillet?”
Lizzie told herself there was no way to offend Mrs. Pleasant more than she’d already done. No way back, in any case, only forward. “Mrs. Bell told me about Malina. The beautiful young girl in a yellow silk dress. Killed by a white man at one of your parties. Her throat cut.”
“There’s a Victoria Paillet has a place around the corner from us. Malina, I never heard of.”
“But Mrs. Bell said.”
Mrs. Pleasant turned. Her face was every bit as angry as Lizzie expected, deserved. The southern vowels hardened and shortened in her mouth. “Mrs. Bell says that she can fly. She floats over the bay to the Oakland estuary. The wind tells her stories. I love her dearly, but I don’t credit everything she says.”
“Oh,” said Lizzie.
“Are you much of a reader, Miss Hayes?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. Now, I’ve left books alone and studied people. You don’t have time for both. A woman like you will always go with the person who tells a story. You should watch out for that.”
This was so obviously true. “I’ll be more careful,” Lizzie said, more and more ashamed. And still she couldn’t stop. “Where is Jenny Ijub’s mother?”
“Buried in the sea. You society women. You always think everything’s about you. You think everyone else is only here to cook your meals or sew your clothes or be grateful for your charity or forgive you.”
Lizzie’s father had once said that very thing to Lizzie’s mother. “You think the poor are only here to provide you with a reason to be charitable,” he’d said. “So why are the poor here?” her mother had answered.
Had Lizzie’s moral position not been so compromised, she might have argued. If it’s not all about me, she might have said, why does everyone watch everything I do? Lucky she didn’t. Who would complain of this to Mrs. Pleasant, about whom the whispers never hushed? Mary E. Pleasant, who had only to touch a thing to turn it notorious. Mary E. Pleasant, Queen of the Galloping Tongues.
Lizzie tried to believe that Jenny’s mother was buried at sea. She owed Mrs. Pleasant at least this much, so she tried her best. Unlikely as it was.
“It does tire me sometimes,” Mrs. Pleasant finished, and Lizzie could see why: Lizzie was tired of Lizzie, too.
“I’m going to be different,” Lizzie offered, and she meant it; she was determined to be so, but Mrs. Pleasant walked away while she was speaking. Lizzie trailed behind, though there were no more gestures inviting her to do so.
“I have never been given to explaining away lies,” Mrs. Pleasant said. “And you can’t explain away the truth.”
Her voice was tight with hurt. Even so, Lizzie couldn’t escape the brief suspicion that everything she’d ever done had been entirely as Mrs. Pleasant wished. Hadn’t she produced all those signs out of her very own hallway, forced a magical juncture on Lizzie merely by asserting that she faced one?
An invisible bird sang in the blackberries, a fluttering, descending whistle, which stopped as they approached. They arrived at a large stone. Mrs. Pleasant pointed to the name—James Sullivan. And a prayer with an odd mixture of sentiments:
Remember not, O Lord, our offenses, nor those of our parents. Neither take thou vengeance of our sins—
Thou shalt bring my soul out of Tribulation, and in thy mercy thou shall destroy mine enemies.
Lizzie read the epitaph aloud. “‘Who died by the hands of the Vigilance Committee.’”
“That was never proved,” Mrs. Pleasant said.
The strings of her purple bonnet had come loose. She retied them briskly. Her fingers were long and thin, her creased face set. She did not look saddened or surprised or angry or vengeful. She did not look hurt so much as she looked like a person who could be hurt. She looked old.
“Now our acquaintance is at an end,” she said. “Be so good as to leave me here with my friends.”