Hers the Kingdom
Authors: Shirley Streshinsky
WILLA
Beautiful, strong-willed, her husband's love for the Malibu would match her own, but she would find fulfillment in the arms of another.
LENA
Lovely, delicate, crippled from birth, she was a sharer of others' secrets, others' lives, until a sudden, explosive passion changed her own life forever.
OWEN
A Princeton graduate and heir to three million dollars, he would make his place in the business world of California, but he would lose what he loved the most.
CONNOR
A rugged Irishman, ranch hand on the Malibu, he would succumb to his hunger for Willa only to find that it would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Also by Shirley Streshinsky
AN ATOMIC LOVE STORY:
THE EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN IN
ROBERT OPPENHEIMER'S LIFE
AUDUBON: LIFE AND ART IN THE
AMERICAN WILDERNESS
GIFT OF THE GOLDEN MOUNTAIN
A TIME BETWEEN
THE SHORES OF PARADISE
TURNER PUBLISHING
200 4th Avenue North, Suite 950 Nashville, Tennessee 37219
445 Park Avenue • 9th Floor New York, NY 10022
Hers the Kingdom
Copyright © 2013, 1981 by Shirley Streshinsky
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Streshinsky, Shirley.
Hers the kingdom / Shirley Streshinsky.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-61858-021-4
1. Ranches--California--Malibu--Fiction. 2. Matrilineal kinship--California--Malibu--Fiction. 3. Family secrets--Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.T6928H4 2013
813'.54--dc23
2012041350
Cover by Gina Binkley
Designed by Glen M. Edelstein
Printed in the United States of America
13 14 15 16 17 18 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
From the Prairie To the Ocean, 1887-1892
Rancho Malibu y Sequit: The Early Years, 1893-1895
In the Shadow of the Hawk, 1896-1903
The Malibu: Women and Children, 1908-1912
For my mother
,
Edna Brinker Gaghen
and her mother
,
Lena Douglas Brinker
and her mother
,
Elizabeth Kerr Douglas
and her great-great-granddaughter
,
Maria Streshinsky
I believe that there exists deeply rooted in the nature of certain individuals some quality which inspires a natural liking for hawks.
—Gilbert Blaine,
Falconry
Los Angeles
December 29, 1939
You will want to know why I am writing this. I will tell you. It is not so simple.
The light this morning was searing and flat, California light. It bleaches the edges, obliterates all but the idea so that the palm I can see from my bedroom window is only the suggestion of a palm, the sort you might see in a mirage. After fifty years in California, I cannot adjust to the light.
I was beginning to dress when the postman's bell rang. My hip was hurting more than usual this morning, slowing me down. I hobbled into the hall to see Trinidad studying the envelope. It was the letter. I felt it.
A hot liquid surge slapped against my inner ear and threatened my balance. I steadied myself against the wall. Trinidad saw and put out her hand to help me. I could feel her eyes on me but I would not look at her. In her age Trinidad has become sentimental, her eyes fill too easily, and I had not the strength to comfort her. It
took all I had to reach for the letter, to take it in my hand.
I slipped the envelope into the pocket of my dress and held my hand against it. Then I made my way to the library where Willa would be waiting. I do not know how early she gets there. Very early, I think. She is always waiting when I arrive each morning at nine with the mail and the
Times.
It is our habit, my sister's and mine, to go through the mail together. Then I read the headlines to her, though this morning I did not take the
Times
with me, but left it on the hall table.
I slipped quickly from the glare of the hallway into the gloom of the library and for a few moments I could see nothing. I waited for my eyes to adjust, my hand pressed hard against the letter in my pocket. Slowly, the room came into focus . . . the high, dark oak, the deep red Persian carpets, Willa sitting behind the desk, her hands folded in her lap. She no longer pretends work; she has not for some weeks.
The heavy velvet drapes on the window behind my sister had not been fully closed, so that a shaft of light struck her diagonally in such a way as to illuminate her. I blinked. For the briefest moment I saw her as she had been, the girl. My heart began to race. I blinked again and saw my mistake even as I felt the stab of pain I knew to be disappointment.
"There is a letter from Kit," I said, short of breath.
"Yes," my sister answered, as if she had known.
I hobbled over to the chair beside the desk, as I did every morning out of habit, knowing that the habit was broken on this morning but seeking the comfort of it. I took out the letter and looked at Kit's small, square hand on the envelope, at the return address—the Cavendish, London. The letter was addressed to Willa. She nodded to me to read it. My hands were shaking, but I opened the letter.
"Dear Mother and Aunt Lena," Kit wrote, "wonderful news—Porter is going to be fine. The doctors assure me he will make a full recovery. He will not lose his leg."
The energy drained out of me, I could feel it going. I felt weak and sick with relief. All the fears of the past days and months rushed at me and I could hear myself sobbing. Willa waited. It was a long time, but she said nothing.
Finally I wiped my eyes and blew my nose and read on: "I have seen for myself," Kit wrote, "his wounds were serious but there will be no permanent damage, except for some scars which he can show to his grandchildren when he tells them stories of bravery, when he was fighting the Falanges in Spain." I could hear Kit, hear the tenderness in her low, husky voice.
I read on: "My stubborn twin brother is intent on saving this sad world, as you well know. My only intent, right now, is to save Porter . . . to bring him home again to recuperate. He has agreed to return with me as soon as he is able to travel, another fortnight, at least, his English doctors say. I wish I could bring him back to the Malibu. I wish the only road in was the beach at lower low tide, the way it was when you first went there. I wish we could close ourselves in and be safe on the Malibu. You used to say that wishing was a kind of dreaming, Auntie. If you were here in England now, you would know that this is not a world for dreaming. You would know that there are no safe places anymore."
My eyes filled again and I could not read on. I passed the letter to Willa.
"Thank God," I whispered.
"I know," Willa answered, and I knew that she did know.
"Thank God Porter is going to be whole again. Thank God Porter will not be a cripple . . ."
For a while the only sound in the library was the sound of my sniffling. Willa put on her reading glasses to finish Kit's letter. She did not read aloud.
Finally she said, in the tone of voice she might have used to discuss the dinner menu, "When they return, Kit will see to selling the Malibu."
I searched my sister's face.
She seemed to be studying the dust motes that floated in the shaft of light.
"It had to be, Willa," was all I could think to say.
"Yes," she answered, in the same flat tone.
I thought, then, what a clever girl Kit was. She would have made the decision to sell months ago, before she went to England. It was inevitable, we all knew that. But she had waited, waited until she had wonderful news—Porter would live and he would be well again. Only then could she find a way to say the words her mother had never wanted to hear—that the Malibu was lost.
I remembered then how, upon entering the library, I had been hurtled into the past, had seen Willa as a young woman, had felt the stab of disappointment even as I realized my mind was playing tricks on me. Until that moment I had not known how much I longed to hear her laugh again, to have her with me as it was, as it always has been . . . to have her back.
Then I saw the lilacs on the desk and I understood. It was the smell of lilacs that had sent me reeling into the past. In the springtime on the ranch at Malibu, when lilacs bloomed all about the house, Willa had always kept fresh bouquets in every room so that the scent sifted throughout the house. I wondered where Trinidad had managed to find lilacs so early.
Poor, dear Trinidad, I thought. Poor sweet simple old woman, to think of lilacs.
Willa sighed, a low, shuddering sigh.
"Take them away," she said to me, "I don't want to remember anymore."
I took the lilacs into the kitchen. Trinidad saw them and began to weep. I comforted her, holding her wrinkled old brown face in my hands, pulling her to me until her tears soaked through the fabric of my dress. I brushed the wet hair from her face and told her, as I would
a child, "Porter is going to be well again, Porter is coming home."
"Gracias,"
the old woman whispered,
"Madre de Dios, gracias."
All her prayers, all the novenas, all the candles burned in the past weeks were witness to her longing for something she could name: that Porter, the child she had nursed and cared for and loved, be spared. But the lilacs were witness to a longing she could not name and did not comprehend.
Trinidad had been eighteen when she came to work for Willa. That was fifty years ago. She has grown old with us.
We talked quietly for awhile, Trinidad and I, in the kitchen of the townhouse where we live, three old women together, in Los Angeles. We talked about the time when Porter and Kit would return. She would make for Porter her
colache
, she would make for Porter her
sopaipillas
, her
pescado empanado.
I did not tell her that the Malibu would be sold.
I picked up the
Times
from the table in the hall and took it to my room. I tried to read. The Russians had invaded Finland, Adolf Hitler stood on French soil on the Western Front on Christmas Eve . . . I would not read to Willa today. She does not want to remember, nor, I think, does she want to know.
Willa will be seventy-five this spring; the Malibu will be sold. Willa does not want to remember.
But I do. I knew that this morning, in the instant when the scent of lilacs had overwhelmed me. I want it terribly, I ache to remember. I need to know.
I am six years younger than my sister. Now that I know Porter will survive, I feel a new surge of energy. I need to be occupied, to have work.
Habit is the opiate of the aged.
Well, work has been my habit. I want to remember. I need to write down all that I know, and I know much.