Under the Wide and Starry Sky

  When a letter came, it was from Katharine and proved to be a masterpiece of equivocation. Henley’s letter had been written without her consent, she claimed, though he had a perfect right to be astonished. If Fanny believed she had a right to the story idea, well, far be it from Katharine to disagree. As for her own feelings, she wouldn’t discuss the matter a syllable further. At the end of the note, she wrote, It is of course very unfortunate that my story was written first and read by people and if they express their astonishment it is a natural consequence and no fault of mine … I trust this matter is not making you feel as ill as all of us. Yours affectionately, Katharine de Mattos.

  It was the last words of the last sentence that stayed with Louis. All of us.

  That meant Katharine, and Henley, and Bob. Louis could imagine the three of them sitting together, the two men assisting Katharine in choosing just the right words to appease Louis without giving an inch.

  He found himself wondering if he had misunderstood something, if he had made a mistake in remembering the conversation about “The Nixie.” He wondered if Fanny deserved the blame Henley was hurling against her. Even if it were true that Fanny had made an error of judgment on that stupid little story, was it right that Henley attack her with such impunity? Were Louis’s loyalty and kindness nothing to him?

  Again and again he thought, What good is a man if he will not defend the honor of the woman he loves?

  And what did it matter, even if Fanny had overstepped propriety? They all knew Fanny well enough to know she sometimes steamed ahead and thought about a thing later. Surely they knew it wasn’t her intent to plagiarize the story.

  They were her friends, supposedly. Fanny had cared for Bob when he was depressed and broken. She had helped Katharine with her pitiful stories in the past, had put up with Henley’s remarks because he was Louis’s good friend. Wouldn’t a true friend let the matter pass? If Henley’s wife, Anna, had been accused of such a thing, even if she had been guilty of it, Louis would not have spoken of it to her husband. In fact, he would have tried to keep the information from Henley.

  Sick. Sick. Sick. Sick with regret that he had not spoken in Fanny’s defense against Henley’s rudeness to her before now. Sick that he hadn’t insisted she give up the idea of redoing Katharine’s idea. For nights on end he could not sleep, until he resorted to codeia. When he rose from bed, he was rested but tearful. For days he ached with regret, and then he was angry. He tromped through the woods for hours at a time, shouting the truth to her in his mind.

  You love an adversary, don’t you, Fanny? How powerful you must feel in your holy indignation! You enter the fray cocksure and fists flying. Who’d guess that a woman with your backbone would crack so easily for a few crumbs of praise?

  He was angry at himself that he had not told her frankly what he knew. You are trying to find recognition in the wrong place. Give it up!

  He stopped and watched his breath send clouds out in front of him. How galling it was to think of Fanny in California, apparently not suffering the way he was, if her letters were any indication. She had been having a wonderful time visiting with her sister Nellie and her old friends. I shall write an apology or something, she had said almost lightheartedly, among many tidbits of news about dining with Rearden and Dora and looking about to procure a schooner for a Pacific cruise. Was she covering her real pain? Was she wounded to the quick to have her moral character questioned? He didn’t know.

  That was the thing about Fanny. Her temper would flash like quicksilver and then disappear. Meanwhile, here he sat stewing, regretting that he had indulged her need by sending her story to his editor at Scribner’s.

  Ambition. That was at the root of Fanny’s foolishness. He had seen ambition often enough in a man who took leave of his moral compass in a fit of mad enthusiasm. He’d seen such ambition in women, though rarely so naked, which made it all the more unseemly.

  In late April, when Henley’s response arrived in Saranac, it trumped Katharine’s for insincerity. His original letter was not meant as an affront, he wrote, but merely as a “reminder.” He did not respond to Louis’s request for a retraction but offered instead a tepid apology, if he had offended their old “kinship.”

  Louis held the letter in his hands while new tears spilled from his eyes. How very rarely a man is called upon to give up his dearest friends for the sake of his wife’s honor. And yet that was what he understood must happen. “I’m finished with you,” Louis said to the letter. “I’m finished with Katharine. I hope to God I am not finished with Bob.”

  Outside the bedroom where he was holed up, he saw a crocus shooting through the snow. He thought of his mother and Lloyd sitting by the fire, imagining their improbable cruise, unaware of his true misery. They believed he was in here writing. During the agony of the past month, he had hardly paid attention to his real kinships.

  “What do you say we go down to New York for a while?” he asked them that evening over dinner. “I can call on my editor at Scribner’s. And McClure will be back from England with stories, I hope. And then on to see Will Low, perhaps?”

  After New York City, they did visit Will Low in New Jersey. It was May. They stayed at a hotel in Manasquan and amused themselves by sailing around in catboats. It was there that McClure, freshly returned from Europe, tracked him down. He and Louis talked for hours on the porch about the differences between the state of publishing in England and in America.

  At one point during their discussion, Louis left briefly. As he approached the porch again, he overheard McClure speaking quietly: “Do you know these people, this Henley and his literary circle?” he asked Low. Out of sight, Louis stood perfectly still, riveted. “Stevenson sent me to these people. I can hardly believe they are his friends. They diminish him so! They all say how dear a friend he is to each of them, and then they say, ‘Oh, but Bob is the real genius of the family.’ Or ‘Louis’s talent is overrated.’ Or ‘He’s wasting his gifts.’ On what, I’m not sure. An American audience? On his choice of subject matter?

  “And I get the distinct impression that they can’t bear his wife. Henley said she was … what was the word? Primitive. Said the woman was primitive! Now, tell me, who needs enemies with friends like that?”

  Standing in the shadows just beyond the door, Louis trembled. Who else besides Henley did McClure mean by “his literary circle”? Gosse? Surely not Colvin. This bloody nightmare will not cease.

  One afternoon, while he was dining outside with Will Low and the Fairchilds, a telegram arrived for Louis. He saw it was from Fanny and opened it, a little afraid something had gone wrong. She’d had to go into the hospital to have a lump removed from her throat, but the growth had turned out to be benign. Or had it? He glanced quickly at the message and then, laughing, handed it to Lloyd to read out loud.

  Can secure splendid seagoing schooner yacht Casco for seven hundred and fifty a month with most comfortable accommodation for six aft and six forward. Can be ready for sea in ten days. Reply immediately. Fanny

  Louis took out his notepad and scribbled a sentence for the messenger to return.

  Blessed girl, take the yacht and expect us in ten days.

  CHAPTER 58

  The front door of the Taylor Street apartment building was open when Fanny found the address. A pigtailed girl sat at the bottom of the heavy door, holding it ajar with her back. Fanny went into the hallway and looked at the mailboxes. Strong, 3rd Flr. She lifted her hem above muddy boots discarded on the steps. Going up, she smelled the ammonia odor of cat urine in the second-floor hallway. On the landing of the third floor, she leaned against a wall to calm her heart, which was racing like a hummingbird’s. There were four different apartments on one floor in this cheap-looking place. Which was Belle’s? And if Fanny could figure out the correct door, would her daughter even open it? Eight years it had been. Fanny heard a child’s chattering through one of the doors. She drew herself up and knocked on it.

  Belle’s mouth fell open. “Mother,” she ga
sped when she saw Fanny’s face. “I didn’t know you were coming. You didn’t write …”

  I gave up trying, Fanny thought. “I’m in San Francisco for a couple of weeks. I wanted to see you.”

  They stood apart and silent for a few moments. Belle studied her mother’s face and the feathered hat on her head. Fanny took in her daughter’s weary eyes and her upper arms, which were plump as sausages underneath her print dress.

  Belle glanced over her shoulder into the apartment, then turned back to Fanny. “Come in,” she said.

  In the threadbare parlor, a boy sat on the floor cutting paper with a scissors.

  “Austin, this is your grandmother.” The boy looked up, momentarily puzzled, then smiled openly.

  Fanny gazed into the eager, homely little face. He’d apparently just had a bath, for his hair was wet and combed back. It was blond, and the few strands that were dry were straight and fine as cornsilk. She longed to hug the boy but feared frightening him. He didn’t know her, after all. Seven years the child had been her grandson, and they didn’t know each other.

  “Nice to meet you, Austin,” she said. “I have a little something for you.” She fished around in her bag and pulled out a cloth sack filled with tin horses. “I brought them all the way from London. Each one is a little different.”

  “Thank you, “ the boy said, looking almost alarmed by his good fortune. “Thank you!”

  Fanny felt her knees go weak and buckle to the floor. “Come to me,” she said, stretching her hands out to him. “Will you come to your grandma?” The boy stepped gingerly over the toys on the floor and came close. She swept him into her arms and nuzzled her cheek against his damp hair. “Mmmm,” she said, “I love the smell of clean boy. There’s nothing better.”

  Austin laughed and wriggled away. Fanny stared in wonder as the boy’s hands set the horses gamboling around the floor.

  “Joe is not here,” Belle said. “He sent us over here when there was talk of a revolution in Hawaii.”

  “I heard that,” Fanny said, pulling her eyes away from the boy. “Dora told me.”

  Belle appeared to summon her dignity and gestured with one arm around the tawdry apartment. “We’re going back as soon as possible. This is only temporary.”

  “Why don’t I take you both to lunch?”

  “The lady across the hall is having a birthday party for her daughter, who is Austin’s best friend. Mrs. Grady will keep him until I return.” Belle looked down at her worn dress. “Give me a minute to change clothes.”

  “The boat is called the Casco,” Fanny explained. They were sitting at a table by the front window of a sunlit café. “It belongs to a doctor named Merritt who lives in Oakland. He has agreed to lease it to us for a six-month cruise, complete with captain and crew.”

  “Where will you take it?” Belle asked.

  “The South Seas—the Marquesas Islands first. After that, the low islands of the Paumotus and then Tahiti. Eventually, we will make our way to Hawaii. We’ve discovered Louis thrives when he is at sea.”

  Belle looked at her cautiously. “But you don’t. Six months?”

  “Ah, well. How bad can it be?” Fanny leaned back in her chair and felt her daughter’s presence wash over her like warm milk. “I’ve missed you so much,” she said.

  Belle dropped her head and began to cry. Fanny bent forward and wrapped her arms around her daughter. “The past is past,” she said. “I want you in my life. I want to be a proper grandmother to Austin.”

  “Where is Sammy?” Belle asked, blotting her face with a handkerchief.

  “It’s Lloyd now, remember? He’s here in town, helping me provision the boat. We’ve been running around like crazy people, laying in supplies. He wants to see you, but I needed to see you alone first.”

  “Is he going with you?’

  Fanny nodded. “So is Louis’s mother. And a French-Swiss girl who works for us. Valentine.”

  The corners of Belle’s mouth fell, as if she were crushed not to hear her own name in the passenger list.

  “How is Joe doing?”

  Belle hesitated. “He had a lot of commissions from wealthy people when we arrived in Honolulu five years ago. A big sugar baron hired him to paint landscapes of Hawaii. The king put him to work, too. We became quite friendly with the Hawaiian royal family, as you may have heard.”

  “Dora wrote to me about that.”

  “I am planning to go back soon. Joe is respected there …” Belle’s brave voice trailed off. She looked out the window. “His work is very spotty now,” she said softly. She pressed her fist into her cheek. “Some days I don’t know how we are going to get through.”

  Fanny breathed in, waited.

  “Do you remember at Grez how Bob Stevenson taught us to squint when we were painting a landscape?” Belle asked. “He said that if you squint, you can get the essence of a scene without being distracted by a lot of details. It helps you see exactly where the light is.”

  “I remember,” Fanny said.

  “I wish I could just squint at my life and see the light. I have tried so many ways to make things better. But I don’t know what to do anymore.”

  “Is Joe sick?”

  Belle nodded, choosing her words. “You never got to know Joe, really. When he is well, he is one of the kindest men on earth.”

  “So he’s drinking.” Fanny didn’t mention the opium smoking.

  Belle drew in a deep breath. “Last I saw him, yes. Ultimatums don’t work. Back home in Honolulu, he’s gone all night and sleeps all day. It’s an affliction.”

  “Sometimes the only thing to do is go away.”

  Belle met her mother’s gaze. “I am away at the moment, and that’s not the answer.” Her voice was cool now. “We have a child. Austin adores his father.”

  They fell silent. Fanny glanced at the table next to them, where four women were having lunch. They leaned forward as they spoke, sharing confidences, laughing at once. She’d never had much of that—lunches with women friends. It struck her that she and Belle had served as each other’s best friend for many years. Why had she let the estrangement from Belle go on so long? Pride? Distance? How absurd it seemed now. All the demands on Belle’s part for money, and the withholding of it on Fanny’s part, seemed to be much less about dollars and much more about a desire for love and respect.

  “You poor little soul,” Fanny said, stroking her girl’s hand. “Come down to the Casco, Belle, what do you say? Lloyd so wants to see you.”

  Belle’s breathless enthusiasm, the girlish prattle she fell into when she was excited, returned the minute they reached the dock. “It’s practically new! Ninety-five feet? It looks even bigger. And the brightwork!” On deck, Belle reached out to touch one of the freshly varnished spars that gleamed amber in the afternoon sun. Inside the cabin, she ran her palm along the brass fittings, the velvet curtains and cushions.

  Fanny introduced her daughter to the crew working on deck. It was thrilling to watch them polishing and scrubbing and scrambling around the magnificent two-masted schooner.

  “It’s too nice to be taking out on the ocean,” Belle observed.

  “Don’t be misled by the trappings,” Fanny said. “Louis is gambling every nickel he has on this trip. He believes it’s his last hope to avoid the undertaker. He has been deathly ill for—”

  “Belle?” Lloyd’s deep voice came from behind them. “Is it really you? Because it looks like you from the back.”

  Fanny watched as her daughter turned and jumped at the sight of her twenty-year-old brother. Belle flung her arms around Lloyd, who lifted her up off her feet. “You’re such a big thing now,” she said, sobbing again. “And you talk British.”

  After a while, they sat together at the table in the cabin and studied a map. Lloyd showed Belle the route to the Marquesas. “June twenty-sixth we depart. If all goes as planned, it will be four weeks before we see land again.”

  “You’re going to Hawaii?”

  “At some point
,” Lloyd said.

  “I should be back there by the time you arrive in Honolulu. You’ll need different clothes, Mother,” Belle said. “It’s blazing hot in the islands. I know a tailor.”

  “Belle has next to nothing.” Fanny lay with her head on Louis’s shoulder. She had gone up by train to Sacramento the day before to meet him and his mother and Valentine. They were all ensconced in the Occidental Hotel, waiting for the moment when they would depart.

  “You expected that.”

  “I stocked her kitchen while I was provisioning the boat. How long will that last, two weeks? She should stay in California and divorce him, but I can tell she’s not going to. She’s too proud.”

  “Did you give her money?”

  “A little.” Fanny sighed. “Although it just sustains the disastrous marriage, I’m afraid. But I can’t bear to see her so down.”

  Outside, a trolley car squealed past the hotel.

  “I gave money to someone else, too,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Paulie, Sam’s wife. She came by the hotel a week ago. She’s almost stone deaf and poor as a church mouse. He left her with nothing when he disappeared.”

  “Is he dead or just gone?”

  “Who really knows? But do you know what she said to me? ‘You were right about that man, and I was wrong.’ I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, and I kept thinking, If it weren’t for Louis, I would be in her shoes right now.”

  Fanny lifted her face to look at his. “I love you, Louis Stevenson. Even if you forget wedding anniversaries.”

  He rolled over on his side and propped his head on his hand. “I know a man is supposed to remember his wedding date. I remembered, and then I forgot again.” He ran a finger along the ridge of her nose. “The truth is, other days stick better in my mind. Such as the day I looked through the window at the Chevillon and saw you sitting there. That was the day I nailed my colors to the mast. It was twelve years ago. Shouldn’t that be the real anniversary day?”