Hers the Kingdom (16 page)

     During my second September in California, I had my first experience of what Trinidad called a
Santana.
It was a dry, hot wind that blew from the desert, searing our eyes and our throats and fraying our tempers. It went on, hot and dry, one day and the next, until it seemed everything in our existence was hot and brittle. Owen had left for Eureka.

     I found Willa sitting next to the window in the front parlor, her fingers drumming on the desk.

     "Wennie is fussing," I said to her, "do you think it might help if I took him down to the beach—could I let him wade?"

     Willa looked up blankly at first, as if she hadn't heard me. I had started to ask again when she cut in.

     "You don't have to ask me every time you want to do something with the child," she said. "Make some decisions yourself, Lena.
You're old enough not to come running to me every time you have a question."

     "He is your child," I said, my jaws stiff, "and I think his mother might be interested in what might make him feel better in this awful heat."

     "Well, I'm not. So do what you want, and stop nattering at me."

     "Nattering?" I said, suddenly furious. "Nobody
natters
at you, Willa, and that really is too bad. Your spoiled child act would not be allowed at Porter Farm."

     "Act?" she hissed at me, "what do you mean, act?"

     "As if you really are the Queen of the May, the mistress of the mansion, the Lonely Lady of Seaside Avenue, pining after her absent love. Look at yourself, Willa. You have everything to be happy about—your health, a good husband, a healthy good baby, and still you sit here pouting. Owen goes away and you turn into a shrew."

     My skin was prickling—from the heat and the anger and, now, from fear. I had said too much.

     Willa's face was cold with fury. She pounded her fist on the table and rose, too fast, turning over a glass lampshade and shattering it into a thousand pieces. She tried to grab for it, but only managed to clutch a fragment that cut into her palm. The blood splashed out.

     "Oh," I cried, "Willa, you're hurt, let me . . ."

     "Stay away," she said, "I don't need your help and I don't need your opinions. You have been given a place in my home, but you have no right to judge me and I will not have it. Do you hear? I will not have it. You don't know what I feel."

     I watched the blood drip from her slashed hand, and felt I was drowning in it.

     I said nothing at all, but turned and went to ask Trinidad to help my sister. It would be two days before she came to my door.

     "Can I come in?" she asked.

     "It is your house," I answered, "you can do what you please in it."

     "I'm sorry, Lena, I truly am," she said. "I did not mean to say it."

     "Perhaps it is best that you did," I answered, hearing the weariness in my voice. "I need to remember my place."

     Willa looked as if I had slapped her. She leaned against the door, biting her lip.

     "Your place is as a member of the family," she said. "You have every right to say what you said. I was angry . . . You must forgive me. I won't be able to sleep unless you do, and it is hard enough to sleep with Owen away, and the
Santana
. . ."

     She sat down next to me and put her hand on my arm.

     "There is nothing to forgive, Willa," I answered truthfully.

     "My . . ." she searched for a word, ". . . melancholy," she finally said, "I do struggle with it, Lena."

     "You told me," I replied, measuring my words, "on the farm, that week when Owen first came and you decided to marry him, you said that you understood what it was he wanted of a wife . . ."

     She sighed. "I know. I do know, in my head. Owen has a grand plan, and nothing is going to change it. I suppose I don't want anything to change it. I also did not know how deeply I could feel about him, how I could long for him. Sometimes I wish he cared as deeply for me."

     "Willa," I said, in surprise, "Owen adores you . . . what more . . ."

     "What more do I want?" she cut in, "I don't know. That is what is so strange. I just have a feeling that there should be more . . .but I don't know what . . . and I know it is wrong, wrong . . ."

     "Ah, Willa," I said, as gently as I could, "what can I do?"

     She sat, shaking her head, unable to speak.

     We sat listening to the rumble of a carriage as it passed on the road below. Then it was quiet again, with only the low sounds of the ocean breaking the silence.

     "I must do something," she said. "I need to find the old Willa again."

     "I'd like that," I told her.

     "And you forgive me?" she asked.

     "I will forgive the old Willa, when she returns," I answered. "I fought with her all the time."

     "You never did!" she laughed, and then she hugged me to her and we both cried.

WEN, GROGGY FROM his nap, stumbled into the sitting room that connected his room to mine. He climbed onto my lap, snuggling his head—damp with the sweet perspiration of a baby's sleep—into a comfortable position against my breast. I held him gladly. He was almost three years old, and already resisting the hugs and kisses lavished on him by a household in which he was the only child.

     We heard the door push open. The high, excited voices of Willa and Arcadia Scott—pitched as if still out-of-doors, as if they were riding on the beach, sounded up the stairwell.

     "Miss Lena in the
alcoba
," Trinidad answered with her usual lilting mix of Spanish and English "
con
the
nene
."

     "I wonder if I'll ever be able to teach Trinidad English," I whispered to Wen, whose mouth was firmly stoppered by his thumb. I smiled down into his eyes, which were big and liquid brown like his father's.

     We sat very still, as if playing hide and seek, and listened as the women mounted the steps, talking as they always did when
they were together. Arcadia Scott had that effect on people: There seemed always to be so much to say when she was about.

     "Wennie, sweet boy!" she cried, her hands out to the child. "Come let me hold you, won't you please?"

     Wen clung hard to me and turned his face away, so that only a muffled "no" sounded from him.

     "He's just up from his nap, Arcadia," Willa said, "let him wake up." She smiled at her son and said, "Owen Two is getting to be a big boy now, and he doesn't much like us hugging and kissing him anymore."

     "Oh, well, then," Arcadia said in fun, "you'll just have to get another baby for us, Willa. I simply do not think I can manage without a little Wennie to kiss."

     Willa winced; I was sure of it. "Why don't you just find yourself a nice husband," I said to Arcadia in the same bantering tones, "and start having babies for us to spoil?"

     "You—both of you—should understand by now," she said, as if we were a bit dense, "that I cannot get married because Willa has taken the only
perfect
man in southern California, and I certainly couldn't settle for less. I suppose I'll just have to do without a husband altogether." She heaved a theatrical sigh, pretending not to have noticed that Owen had entered the room.

     "Not necessarily," he said, putting one arm around Arcadia's shoulders and the other around Willa. "We could all move to Utah and become Mormons, then I could have as many wives as I want—" his eyes on Wen, his arms out to him—"And dozens and dozens of little brothers and sisters for Wennie to play with."

     The child ran into his father's arms. "Tell me," Owen said to the women, "how was the ride? What did you think of the coast to the north?"

     "Are you really going to buy it?" Arcadia blurted.

     "I am," Owen said, nuzzling Wen, "I have." He was looking at Willa, waiting for her to answer his question.

     "Owen, it is truly beautiful," she told him. "We rode all the way
to where the creek washes into the ocean. I think I've never seen such a magnificent sweep of beaches—and the mountains. It was just . . . but can you get clear title to it?"

     "Oh, Willa," Arcadia interrupted, "surely you know about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Good, dear old Guadalupe! The Señora still prays to him, I believe!"

     Owen grinned. "When California became part of the States," he explained, "a treaty—Guadalupe Hidalgo—was signed that said all Mexican property must be 'inviolably respected.' Which meant that all the great Spanish land grants, and that was something like a fourth of all the land in California, must be honored. The papers I signed this morning with Mr. Henry Kellar make me the legal owner of the Rancho Malibu y Sequit, all twenty-two miles of it."

     "You bought it from a Mexican named Kellar?" I asked in mock surprise.

     "Who speaks only French," Owen answered.

     "Truly?" Arcadia wanted to know.

     "His father was old Don Mateo Kellar, one of those flamboyant Irishmen who became Mexican citizens and who, one way or another, managed to amass quite a lot of property. He bought the Malibu from the original grantees, a family called Tapia. Or no, I believe there was another owner in between. At any rate, Don Mateo paid ten cents an acre for it. I just paid ten dollars an acre."

     "That's all?" Willa said, her eyes wide.

     "That's all," he answered, enjoying her surprise. "I bought it from Don Mateo's only son, a chap named Henry who was sent to France to be educated, and who hasn't the slightest intention of ever coming back to what he calls
'ce pauvre pays'
because, as he put it so elegantly,
'il n'y a rien ici.'
He was so blatantly prejudiced against Americans that I drove a much harder bargain than I had intended—with the help of his agent, a young fellow named Charlie Rich. I think Charlie figured the fatuous young fool deserved to be fleeced. Anyway, when Henry turned up his nose at my offer, Charlie Rich took him aside
and told him that he could get a better price, certainly, but it would mean staying here for months, maybe a year, because there weren't all that many people with Mr. Reade's resources, that it would not be easy to sell the rancho intact . . . and that did it."

     "Hooray for Charlie Rich," Arcadia said.

     "Remember to buy from him, not have him sell," I put in, and Owen nodded to me in agreement.

     "Except," he said, "to give Charlie his due, he did say that he hoped to do business with me again. After all, French Henry is going to disappear from these shores forever, and the Reades should be around for generations."

     Owen paused to work a top for Wen. When it was spinning across the floor, he went on. "When the papers were finally signed I told Mr. Kellar—in my flawless Bostonian French—that I had visited Italy, and that if ever a road goes through along the Malibu coast, I feel it would rival the Corniche. I also said that in my humble opinion this coast is every bit the equal of the Riviera."

     "And what did he say to that?" Arcadia asked.

     "He said,
'Ce n'est pas vrai.'
"

     We all laughed. "How perfectly, arrogantly French," Arcadia put in, "just to say it is not true. What a boor."

     "Bear?" Wen asked brightly, having found a word that interested him. The sturdy little boy looked surprised and pleased to have made everyone laugh.

     "There haven't been any grizzlies in the Malibu for thirty years," Owen told his son, "but there may be a very small bear, a very nice little one just your size, Wennie, on our new ranch. Would you like to go camping there with Papa? Me and you in a nice big tent?"

     "And me?" Willa asked over Wen's whoop.

     "And Auntie," Wen insisted, already seeing this as his party.

     "Well, not me," said Arcadia, "I'm going home now to tell La Señora that I am moving to Utah to become a Mormon."

     Willa and Owen, their arms linked, went to see Arcadia to the door, the three of them chattering easily like the friends they were.

It was never possible that Owen would not have arranged to meet the Señora: Arcadia Stearns. Arcadia Bandini Stearns Baker, but Arcadia Stearns, nonetheless. The old lady was part of the very fabric of the place, part of the secret. A relic, beautiful and polished, her fingers long and slender still, the orbs of her nails pale against the olive skin, her hands as still as her face.

     She was a Californio, a Bandini, one of the important Spanish families in the days before the Yankees. More important for the fable that was her life, she had been the bride of Abel Stearns. He was forty-three when he saw her, she was fourteen and a promising beauty; already she held herself in such a way as to draw the attention of Abel Stearns.

     Her father, a gambler, was pleased to have Stearns as a son-in-law. The Yankee was a man who made things happen, who set things right: gambling debts, marriage banns. The good padres accepted Don Abel's generous contributions and failed to post the marriage banns which his detractors, and there were many, might use to accuse him of being a defiler of children.

     A long scar ran from Abel Stearns' cheek through his upper lip, lifting it cruelly, a reminder of his own precocious childhood. Abel Stearns had run away to sea at the age of twelve. He had been many places, had done much, and carried the scars of old encounters on his face. He was called "Caro del Caballo": Horseface.