The Secret Life of Anna Blanc (3 page)

Anna's room resembled her—dramatic, tasteful, but just barely. The carpets were plush and pink. Flowery paper from the orient climbed the walls, hand-painted with colorful birds. An imperious Louis XV bed draped itself in stiff, white velvet and the windows wore crepe curtains from France. Anna kindled a fire in the marble hearth, never mind it was seventy-two degrees outside. It was Tuesday, and on Wednesday Mrs. Morales would have the floors polished. Someone would be under her bed with a mop. She tossed another log onto the fire.

Raising the shade, she opened the window to cool the room. The outside scent of hot chaparral gave way to the wintry smell of chimney smoke. She could see Catalina Island. A hummingbird with opalescent green wings sucked at the feeder outside. Confused by the smoke, it whirled in circles before flying off.

Anna struggled out of her frock and flopped onto the bed in her chemise and two-piece drawers, sticky with the heat. She reached for a stack of books that sat near a glue pot on the marble nightstand—
Etiquette for Young Ladies
,
Little Lord Fauntleroy
, and other boring titles. She picked up a paring knife, stolen from Cook. She unsheathed the knife and placed the tip to a book spine; then, with a voracious rip, she disemboweled it. Slitting through binding threads, separating signatures from the cover, she tossed the paper onto the flames and repeated the process until the pages from every book were burning and the stiff fabric covers sat in a pile beside her.

When she had finished, she slid on her belly under the bed, emerging with dust on her corset and several more books—forbidden books by Doyle and Poe, books about crime, banned by her father specifically
because she found them interesting. Books the housekeeper should not find under her bed in the morning.

She slaughtered
The Curse Upon Mitre Square
—a salacious description of the hunt for Jack the Ripper—this time burning the cover and keeping the pages. She stabbed
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
through the spine. The sharpened knife slipped, slicing her index finger. Blood dripped onto the floor.

“Biscuits!” She held her dripping finger over an empty book cover, staunching the wound with her petticoats. The blood bloomed into a red hibiscus flower on the cloth and the cut began to sting. After a moment, she pulled away the bloody wad to observe the injury—an inch-long gash.

“Hmm.” She pinched it until it gaped like a mouth and released it. She did it again. How curious she looked on the inside. There was a knock at the door. Anna froze.

An efficient female voice, with a thick Mexican accent, rang from the corridor. “Miss Blanc, may I come in?”

“One moment.” Anna grabbed a silk coverlet and tossed it over book parts, knocking the glue pot. It rolled into the blood on the floor. She struggled into her gown one-handed, an attempt to cover the red stain on her petticoats. She unlocked the door, pressed her unbuttoned back up against the wall, and posed as if it were the natural thing to do. “Come in.”

The door opened to reveal the unyielding countenance of Mrs. Morales. Short, broad, and board straight, she came from an old Los Angeles family. She had run the Blanc household with a cool dignity since Anna was a baby. In a backhanded way, she'd run Anna.

Surprisingly, Mrs. Morales said nothing about the paste, the blood, the disordered coverlet, or Anna's strange posture, although she did sniff briefly at the fire. “A Mr. Wright called this afternoon while you were out.”

Anna looked blank. “Who?”

“Mr. Wright. He says you know him.” Mrs. Morales handed her a calling card. Anna took it and shook her head.

The housekeeper's face was neutral. “He said he's come from Boston and was sorry he didn't get to see you.”

Anna lifted her chin. “He must have the wrong house. I don't know him, and I've done nothing wrong.” She darted a hopeful glance at Mrs. Morales. “You didn't tell father, did you?”

“He left your father a note.”

“Well, that was a misstep. He'll never get to see me now. Next time, just tell him yes, I will marry him, whoever he is, and to meet me in the garden at midnight. Otherwise, I'm going to be an even older old maid. But, I don't suppose you care.”

“Miss Anna, I have other news.”

Anna was impatient for the woman to leave. “What?”

“Louis Taylor eloped.”

After a moment of silence, Anna said, “Oh.” She wrapped her arms around herself. It was only January. The ink on the annulment papers still dripped. “With whom?”

“It's not important. Good night, Miss Blanc.” She proffered no sympathy. Her condolence came in the form of ignoring the blood, the glue, the fire, and the strange posture—all clear evidence that Anna was up to something. As she left and closed the door, Anna wondered if Mrs. Morales loved her.

She threw a chair.

In an upscale millinery shop in downtown Venice Beach, amidst a sea of plumes in every hue, Anna tried on a shimmering peacock-feather headdress. She admired herself in a table mirror from several different angles. She was a vision and she knew it.

Anna's chaperone tried on a scratchy, straw hat adorned with multicolored feathers. She cocked her head, and then cocked the hat. She looked like a macaw. Her name was Miss Cooper. She had the slack-faced look of a mental patient. Anna resented her very existence. No other girls her age had chaperones unless they were courting, which Anna was not. Few men courted annulled girls, and all of them feared her father.

Anna plucked off the headdress and handed it to a sales woman. “Add it to my tab, please.” She began pinning her own chapeau back into place.

“I most certainly would, Miss Blanc, but…your father hasn't paid for the five hats you bought in December.” The sales woman smiled apologetically.

Anna's eyes widened and she flushed crimson. No one ever refused a Blanc credit. “Well then,” Anna said. She put on an air of carelessness and spun around, passing two rich ladies, who were staring, and clipped toward the door. In her beaded clutch, where money should be, there was nothing but a few calling cards, her keys, and a handful of stolen Lucky Strikes.

The shop lady followed obsequiously. “Why don't I save it in the back for you? Then you can straighten all this out and come back tomorrow.”

Anna lifted her chin. “No, never mind. I don't like it.” Bells tinkled as she swung out the door, through the stone arches onto Windward Avenue. Miss Cooper replaced the straw hat and scampered after Anna.

Outside the shop, the air was tangy with ocean smells, dust, and steaming horse manure. The street swarmed with people baking under hats and parasols or seeking the cool shade of the colonnade. Like Anna, they had fled the even hotter city and taken the train to spend a day at the beach.

A rumble of distant voices hummed under the crashing of waves and the regular noise of the crowd. Cops in black leather helmets loitered, sweating in wool uniforms. Anna ignored it all, knocking on her forehead like it was a door and she wanted in
now
. Her new lack of credit foreboded bad things. Why was she in the doghouse this time and, more importantly, what had given her away? Had Mrs. Morales found Anna's contraband books?

Anna peered at Miss Cooper, hoping for a clue. “Father didn't say I couldn't buy clothes. It wasn't part of my sentence. He must be angry at something new.”

The chaperone, who knew little about anything, shrugged and fanned herself with a limp handkerchief that stuck to itself in two places.

Anna no longer felt like swimming, bowling, or being rowed in a gondola through the Venice canals. Even the musclemen had lost their appeal. “Let's go.” She strode toward the Pacific Electric red cars that would take her back to Bunker Hill.

The crowd's noise was distilling into a singsong of female voices. “A ballot for the Lady! For the Home and for the Baby!” Anna turned to look. Hundreds of women came marching around the corner from the boardwalk carrying banners that demanded, “Votes for Women.” They wore dull, dark skirts and a variety of hats, none of them nice. It put Anna's own clothing crisis in perspective. Her countenance brightened. “Jupiter!”

Bells tinkled as people emerged from shops to gawk. A woman in a tricorn hat and knee britches handed out pamphlets as she marched. “No taxation without representation!” Anna took one. The tract featured Paul Revere riding his steed. He had bosoms.

“I think the suffragettes are wonderful, even if they are poorly dressed,” Anna said.

Miss Cooper blew her nose on the handkerchief before mopping her head with it.

Anna continued. “I don't know why I've never supported them. No one I know goes to meetings, but why shouldn't I? Besides that father wouldn't allow it. I should be able to vote. Don't you think so?”

Miss Cooper scrunched up her face, trying to think and failing. “I'm…not sure.”

Anna assessed the scene with wide, interested eyes. Under the shade of a candy-striped awning, swirled iron chairs clustered around little tables. Anna gestured toward them. “Dear Miss Cooper, it's so very hot. Why don't you rest here and have a Coca Cola while I follow the march? I'll meet you back here as soon as…”

Miss Cooper scowled. “Do you think I'm a fool?”

Anna did, but thought it impolite to say so.

She wanted to join the parade. “Goodness me! Look over there!” Anna pointed past Miss Cooper's shoulder. The chaperone turned. Anna lifted her skirts and bolted, flying down the sidewalk, quickly putting distance between herself and Miss Cooper. She disappeared among the sweating bodies of pedestrians. Miss Cooper blundered after her. “Miss Blanc!”

Unfortunately, Anna's progress was hindered by her good breeding. The sidewalk buzzed with pedestrians that she couldn't very well shove aside. She greeted each one before darting around them. “Hello. Good day. Excuse me.” Miss Cooper, faced with the possibility of losing Anna and thus her position, had no compunction about shoving people out of her way like a fullback at the Rose Bowl. At a furious waddle, the dumpling was actually gaining on Anna, which was humiliating and disheartening in the extreme.

Anna had all but lost hope when, having reached a particularly impassible clump of old ladies, someone yanked her against a store front and hid her with a sign that declared, “We Demand Amendment!” Miss Cooper barreled past, through the babbling biddies and on down the street toward the beach.

“Is that your mother?” asked her savior, a girl with a smile that was
half sympathy and half smirk. She was young, one of the masses, but pretty in a practical way. Twin boys hung off her skirts and, like most children, were whining and making gaseous smells. One pinched his sibling, who in turn, clobbered him with a lunch pail.

Anna extricated herself from behind the splintery wooden sign. “I'd rather not talk about it, thank you.”

She turned to go back the way she came, when the woman asked, “Are you marching? Because I could use a hand here.”

Anna looked at the girl with the ungainly sign and grimaced at the urchins. It was a shocking request, given the social distance between them, and Anna aspired to be so impudent. She smiled uncertainly and lifted one end of the sign. “All right.”

“You might want to take that hat off. It shouts your name. And by the way, I'm Mrs. Eve McBride.”

“Oh, yes. You're right. I'm Miss Anna Blanc.” Anna inclined her head and nodded. She removed her hat, praying she would not freckle, and pinned it against the sign with one hand. They joined the marchers in the dusty street.

A red-haired man in a boater's hat darted in front of them and snapped their photograph. He had a long, curly mustache and a pockmarked face. “Dilly of a picture! You beauties are going to make the front page!'” He jogged along backward.

“I decline to be on your front page. Ask someone else,” Anna said curtly, swishing in step.

“It isn't up to you, Cinderella.” He grinned. “I can see the headlines. Rags and riches.”

Eve rolled her eyes.

Anna bit her lip. This was very bad. She had thought that if she returned by dinner, her father would never know she'd joined the march. Miss Cooper certainly wouldn't tell. But if her transgression were plastered across the front page, she'd be in the soup.

Anna's eyebrows came together, forming little wings. “Please! If you run that photograph, I'll be disowned. Thrown out into the streets.”

The photographer tossed back his head and laughed. “We wouldn't
want that, pretty thing.” He trod backward through fresh road apples, changing out his film. “I'll tell you what. I won't submit that picture if you'll wink at me. In fact, I'll send you the picture as a memento so you won't forget me.” He winked and attempted a rakish smile, but only looked ridiculous.

Anna raised one eyebrow. “And if I don't wink at you?”

“Then I'll be heartbroken and you'll be famous. You have my word. Here, give me your card.”

Anna dug in her purse for a calling card and, frowning, extended it to him pinched between two fingers. He had to tug it out of her hand.

He read it and grinned, camera tucked neatly under his arm. “That a girl, Miss Blanc. Pretend you like me as much as I like you.”

Anna scowled. “I don't even know your name!”

“Tilly. Bill Tilly.”

“Enchanté,” she said flatly. She winked and was blinded by a flash from the man's second camera. Her eyes widened in disbelief. She sucked in breath. “You, you, you rat! You, you cad! You cad rat!”

Tilly chortled. “You're a dandy girl, Miss Blanc. Votes for women!” He shook his fist in the air and disappeared into the crowd.

Eve slapped her thigh. “I could've told you he would do that.”

“Then why didn't you?”

She laughed. “Don't be mad, sister. Have a sense of humor.”

Anna found nothing funny in the situation but consoled herself that her cause was noble and her hole could not get any deeper—not without breaking through to China. Her father had already taken her allowance and her credit and shackled her with Miss Cooper. Though there were endless ways to be naughty, he was fast running out of punishments.

The march concluded in a grassy plaza at the midway where an all-woman brass band oom-pah-pahed from a grandstand draped with red, white, and blue bunting. A rollercoaster rattled on its tracks, and vendors sold sugary puffs of fairy floss—the good, cherry pink kind that melted on the tongue. Glistening musclemen lifted barbells along the boardwalk, turning their backs to their admirers so they could watch the ladies playing instruments. Beachgoers were being drawn by the music, abandoning
plans to catch the next train back to Los Angeles. Soon the plaza was thick with people. A woman in spectacles took the podium and the music stopped. She lifted her hands. Her voice carried like that of a Baptist preacher. “This government is not a democracy…”

Many in the crowd—men and even some women—pulled sour faces or sniggered and heckled. Eve and Anna held up their heads and clapped feverishly at all the right times. As the oration progressed, the crowd along the shore-side of the midway began to simmer. Anna turned to look. Someone was throwing overripe vegetables. She saw a tomato hit “Paul Revere” in the face. “Jupiter!” Anna said, as unhappy policemen began migrating toward the conflict.

Eve tugged Anna's sleeve. “Let's go.” Anna wanted to stay for the fight, as she was good at lobbing tomatoes, but she liked Eve and let herself be led away.

Anna checked her watch. “It's five o'clock. I'm amenable to capture. Miss Cooper has my money for the train.” She plopped on her plumed hat and pinned it into place. “Do you know, marching today was the most important thing I've ever done? What could be more meaningful than championing the cause of women? After all, I am one, and I've been sorely abused.”

Eve smirked. “Hah! Tell me how you've been sorely abused.”

“Besides not getting to vote? There's involuntary old maidenhood for one, an inconstant husband, an embarrassing chaperone, a revoked allowance, hat-shop bills that remain unpaid. I'd like to give a speech about it.”

Eve grinned. “Your passion is inspirational.”

“From now on, whenever I can, I will make statements.” With a wicked smile, Anna reached into her clutch and pulled out two Lucky Strikes.

Eve raised one scandalized eyebrow and laughed. “I guess so!” Anna offered her a cigarette. Eve took it. “Thanks. I'll smoke it later.”

“Chicken,” Anna accused. She lit up and pumped her lips, blowing an impressive series of smoke rings.

Anna became aware of a shadow alongside hers. She turned around, glowering, expecting Miss Cooper, or perhaps the hateful photographer.

It was an officer of the law.