City of Ghosts (A Miranda Corbie Mystery) (19 page)

But Catherine Corbie was used to that.

After a few months when the money was exhausted, she relented, returned to her family and her work with her child in tow. Her brothers opened a bar, sorely needed as San Francisco rebuilt itself, and the ladies who sat in big hats and fancy dresses, feathers on their shoulders, doted on the little girl while the mother worked, making food, waiting tables, sunrise to sunset and beyond.

Always dreaming of something better.

One day when Miranda was about two years old, a man walked in with an ebony cane and a large roll of bills, some of which he left Catherine as a tip. He sat back, teeth showing underneath a luxurious mustache, and told her she should be on stage.

He handed her a card with flowers and gold leaf, told her to see him at the Empress on Market Street. Lifted his eyebrows, eyes folded in a wink.

And Catherine looked at her little girl, playing on the wooden floor behind the bar with milk caps and empty rum bottles. And she walked three blocks down Mason Street to the Empress, where the man with the mustache took her into a room and lifted her dress, feeling her breasts and thighs, and made her spread her legs while he pressed her to a wall.

She played a matinee the next day, with one of the “8 Big Acts 8.”

Her brothers objected at first, but when they saw the money she made, the flowers and the tips, saw her progress from act to act until she was featured in skits, even singing an old Irish lullaby and headlining her own act … they stopped objecting. Her parents were coming out soon, thanks to Catherine, though she hadn’t told them how she’d made the money. She’d changed her name for the stage, called herself Maggie O’Meara.

There was Miranda to think of. She wanted her beautiful young daughter to have the things she never had, and she’d sing to her when she could, voice worn from the laughter and the smoke, sounding old at twenty.

She sang to Miranda, always.

Until February 17th, 1911.

A gentleman caller, that’s what he called himself, a Mr. A. O. Proctor, and he knocked at the backstage door of the Empress, Miranda sitting on a stool and crying for more oatmeal, Catherine hurriedly patting her face with rouge, spraying perfume on her décolletage.

He shoved the door in, holding a bouquet of wilted flowers, rye whiskey and garlic on his breath.

He claimed to know Catherine from her younger days, back when she was waiting tables and serving in her brother’s bar. He held a thick, pulpy hand up to her side and pulled her to him, his other hand groping under her dress.

Catherine was a professional. She kneed him in the groin and dumped face powder on his head, opened the door and called in one of the hands.

Proctor woke up and shook a fist, said he’d be back. She ignored him.

Curtain in five minutes.

That night, after the show, she stayed to clean up the dressing room she shared with the girl in the seltzer sketch. Miranda was quiet, eyes big, until she fell asleep, legs long for a four-year-old.

Catherine left the theater and headed down Sixth Street to the boardinghouse on Jessie. She was halfway home when Proctor lurched out of the darkness and seized her, his hand over her mouth. She kicked and bit, finally succeeding in freeing herself. He was drunker than he’d been in the afternoon, and his dim eyes lit on Miranda, crouched by a stoop, silent and still.

Catherine saw what he was staring at and flew at him, screaming, but he backhanded her and she fell, striking the pavement next to a construction site for a new house.

Proctor muttered words she couldn’t hear, and she watched as he lurched toward the little girl, hand on the buttons of his pants. Miranda froze, eyes big and fathomless, chest rising and falling in short gasps, auburn hair long and wavy like her mother’s.

Catherine felt the blood trickling from her lip, felt her hands, large, Scotch-Irish peat-picking hands, grasp a brick by the pile next to the fence.

Proctor was bent over Miranda, little girl in his shadow. Catherine tottered toward them, holding the brick high above her head with two hands. She crashed it into his skull as hard as she could.

They collapsed and huddled together, mother and daughter, until one of the neighbors, hearing no more screaming, ventured out of the house and found them.

They made it home to the boardinghouse, and she sent a messenger to her older brother, who lived above the tavern on Guerrero.

Police came in the morning. Newspapermen followed, and they made much of beautiful “Maggie O’Meara,” half calling her a murderess (actress-whore, slut, and harlot), the other half claiming she was justified in saving her daughter’s life.

Miranda, who’d been a voluble talker, would not speak. She clung to her mother or sat by herself in a corner, large brown eyes flecked with green, unfathomable and alone, legs drawn up underneath her.

Catherine blamed herself. Others followed, the School Board (why is your child not enrolled, Madame?), Matrons and Mothers Leagues. No mother, that Maggie O’Meara, or whatever she calls herself. Just another slut with a bastard, actress-whore.

Irish slut.

She stopped singing the lullaby, almost as silent as her daughter.

A sympathetic reporter from
The
San Francisco Call
wrote about the actress Maggie O’Meara, not using her real name, about her brief life and upcoming trial, about how her brothers had mortgaged the business to get her out on bail, about the little girl who wouldn’t speak.

The oldest brother thought hard and sent the article to Professor Harper. The child needed someone, and Catherine was falling apart. Only twenty years old, and she looked forty. No names had been mentioned in the story, and if he could see his way to helping them out of the predicament, no names would ever need to be mentioned …

The parents exchanged their train tickets for a third-class berth on a freighter traveling to Limerick. The brothers explained to Catherine what she must do. The courts of their adopted country wouldn’t understand. Proctor had owned a grocery store, had a common-law wife who was riding the publicity for all it was worth. Catherine was Irish, and beautiful, and an unwed mother. Above all, she was an actress.

Actress-whore. Irish slut.

They vowed to follow their sister, to move out of San Francisco, to go back to Ireland with money and their name restored. And they promised her they’d look after Miranda.

Catherine wept, holding her knees, her long auburn hair flowing like a river down her back.

They smuggled her out at night into San Francisco Bay, and Miranda held tight to the edge of the boat, still silent, eyes still blank and empty. Catherine had insisted the little girl go with them, wanted one last look at the Earth-Shaker, as she called her, the child conceived during God’s anger at the city of San Francisco.

She held her close, as the brothers and the Irish captain held a lantern, rocking, light dancing on the dark, turbulent water.

“Be strong, little one,” she whispered, salt water stinging her skin and eyes. “Strong and brave. Your last name is Corbie, no matter what he tells you. I named you. I’ll never forget you. I love you, Daughter.”

I’d rock my own sweet child to rest …

She stepped out of the rocking boat, the men from the freighter in thick sweaters and dark caps, holding out hands to catch her and pull her up the ladder.

Sleep, baby dear, sleep without fear …

She was singing the song. Miranda could hear it, could follow the movement of her lips, even in the dark and the fog and with the lantern yellow and dim, the men cursing the Bay waters that she loved to smell and watch and play in.

Her mother was singing.

I’d put my own sweet child to sleep …

The men lifted Catherine Corbie into the freighter for the final few feet, and she turned around, gasping, hair blowing the cape from her face, searching for the tiny figure in the small boat huddled under a blanket.

She held up a hand. Miranda could still hear her voice.

Sleep, baby dear, sleep without fear …

Mother is here with you forever

“Good-bye, Mama,” the little girl whispered.

Seventeen

She was silent for a few minutes, Baby Ben alarm clock ticking from the bedroom. A foghorn bellowed from below the Golden Gate, signal for the mass of gray clouds to move eastward, swallowing orange bridge and blue and yellow cars, wrapped like a manacle around Alcatraz.

She was rubbing her right hand with her thumb, over and over. Her legs were shaking.

She asked slowly: “How much of this is guesswork?”

Rick inhaled the Camel, nostrils blowing smoke. “Some. Not a lot. The
Call
article was detailed enough. That’s what linked Maggie O’Meara to Catherine Corbie … a daughter named Miranda, same age, same circumstances. Your mother fled before she could stand trial, and her real name never got in the papers. After she disappeared, she was yesterday’s news.”

“What about her brothers? Are they still alive?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, Miranda. Maybe. I put this much together by making a trunk call to New York and asking a pal to poke around some immigration records. That’s the Ulster connection. I’ve got names, the name of the bar they owned—which is still there but has long since changed hands, especially during Prohibition—and that’s about all. There will be more in the police records.”

He bent forward on the couch, tapping the stick in the tray, and glanced upward, still finding it difficult to meet her eyes.

“I was hoping the little I told you would spark your own memory. I figured you knew more than you thought, remembered more. Did it help?”

She nodded, eyes faraway. A church bell tolled the hour, and Miranda started, eyes wider, green coming back to the brown. She stood up from the chair.

“Thanks. I need to get ready now.”

He pushed himself up from his knees like an old man. Reached for the bent brim of his fedora and shoved it on his head.

“Don’t worry about tonight. I’ll be watching over you.”

There’s a somebody I’m longing to see …

“You—you’re a good friend, Rick.”

His voice was curt. “No, I’m not. I’m a poor bastard in love and useless to himself and most everyone else. And I’d rather take a bullet in the gut than hurt you. I was serious about the army, Miranda. I don’t know how much longer I can stand this—whatever it is we have.”

“Rick, I—”

“Don’t say anything.” He rubbed a hand down the side of his unshaven jaw, mouth lined and weary. “I’ll be there tonight. But afterward … I don’t know. I just don’t know.” He looked up at her sharply. “Go on, get ready. My masquerade is over … yours is just beginning.”

Blue eyes, naked, in pain. No crinkles at the corner. No half-Irish bullshit lilt.

She placed a hand on his arm. “Be careful. I … I couldn’t stand to lose both of you.” Miranda reached up and kissed him gently on the lips, shutting the door on Rick’s surprised face.

*   *   *

The foyer closet smelled of old wood shavings and clothes, lingering scent of Je Reviens and L’Heure Bleu. She brushed a cobweb from a wardrobe trunk and dragged it halfway out of the closet until it landed with a loud
thunk
on the floor.

Dusted off the latch. Opened the trunk.

Dresses, shoes, a menu. A handwritten note on a cocktail napkin.

Souvenirs.

Je Reviens and a flask on her leg, Mills College and boys from Berkeley, hair slicked with grease, feet moving faster than hands. Black bottom days, new and fresh and possible, smoky jazz played on wind-up Victrolas, long cigarette holders and high back kicks to the Texas Tommy, Joan Crawford in
Our Modern Maidens,
breathless sex behind the steamed-up windows of a LaSalle. Taped-down breasts and long strands of pearls, whispered password for speakeasy-smuggled Scotch.

Three years, maybe four, close to happiness then, running, always running, either to someone or away from someone else, forward and back to the movement of the Charleston, gay, shrill laughter at the Cafe du Nord, sleeping through economics class, working at Joe’s place, hatcheck girl, cigarette girl.

Newfound power. Newfound freedom.

Before she learned that nothing came free.

Miranda riffled through three dresses before finding the one she wanted.

Shining red beads over a cotton sheath, plunging back line, short with the waist at her hips, attached silver lamé bow. She fingered the label.

Yvonne of Paris, handmade in France.

She’d eaten liver and onions for three months to save up for it.

She held up the dress, heavy with beads. She’d taken care of it all these years, first in storage at Bekins, then finally here, once she had her own apartment.

Only fourteen years ago. Fourteen years, and already a fucking costume.

She sank on the couch holding the dress, legs trembling.

Too much to think about, Jasper and Hart and her mother and Rick, Great Flood of Memory, drowning everything in its path, and no ark to save her, no two by two, not for Miranda Corbie, forty days and forty years, no man, no child, no family, I ain’t got nobody, the song said, nobody and nothing.

Except memory.

Memory, good or bad, the only goddamn thing left, and it hurts, Mama, it hurts, searing, burning, hold it until we die, best friend and enemy, and we grapple it to our souls with hoops of steel, never parting, never ending, afraid to let it go.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

She raised her face to the ceiling, finding faces in the plaster patterns.

Catherine Corbie.

Johnny.

Rick.

Miranda reached for the Chesterfield pack and stood up awkwardly.

I’m afraid the masquerade is over …

*   *   *

She checked her lipstick in the mirror, grabbed the small opera bag with the gold cigarette case and its hidden Baby Browning, and looked at her watch.

8:20. Fashionably late.

She climbed out of the Packard, long, silk-clad legs drawing eye-popping looks from a fat-bellied businessman walking out of a cigar shop on Stockton, disapproving head shakes and a few derisive squawks from a gaggle of matrons flocking back from Union Square. She posed, hand on her hip, bare head held high, bobbed black hair shining, red sequins glittering in the waning sun. A car horn honked loudly at a man gawking in the street.