The Siren's Tale (32 page)

“
Not at all, please go ahead.”

“
I wondered if you might have something of hers I could keep with me, as a good luck token.”

“
Horatio, you astound me. You must have read my mind. It is the very thing I was thinking of myself!”

“
Really, sir?” the young man said, flushing red.

Nicholas reached
into his breast pocket and pulled out a gold locket on a simple chain. Inside the locket was a strand of red-gold curls. 

“
Hers?” asked Horatio breathlessly.

“
Yes,” said Nicholas, clearing his throat to rid himself of a huskiness that had collected there. “I would like you to have it.”

“
Thank you, sir. I will guard it with my life.”

“
I hope that won’t be necessary,” said Nicholas seriously. “Well, that is all, Horatio.  Good night.”

“
Good night, sir.”

Returning to his house, Nicholas found the guests gone
, except for a few stragglers. The joyful couple were readying themselves for the journey to their own home in Belle Fourche. After their departure, Nicholas sat down in his mother’s favorite chair, where he had not sat since her death. The chair reminded him powerfully of her. He could see her sitting, knitting basket in her lap, looking out the window, listening for someone to approach through the unlocked door with news from the town.  

Zelda Brighton had
been unnecessarily lonely for much of her life. She was too proud to admit how much she needed others. He would not make those same mistakes with his own life. He would be a good cousin and friend to Clare, Caleb, and their children. He would push himself to reach out to those in the community who needed help. 

The wayward physical impulses
he had given into in the past were now dwindling. Without fear of hypocrisy, he could speak out on simple principles he believed in, such as love thy neighbor as thyself. He might begin with one his mother had stood for staunchly. Honor thy father and mother.

He owed them that much.

On the Sun
day after Clare's wedding, an unusual event took place at the base of the Hat. Nicholas Brighton preached his first sermon on the very spot where Curly Drake had died. He stood gazing upon his fellow natives with those child-like hazel eyes, bare-headed and in workman’s clothes, and he began to speak. The crowd would continue to grow larger as the hour and the sermon wore on.   

He opened
with this line from the Gospels: “Jesus said, 'in my Father's house, there are many mansions.’” He wrapped up by telling his attentive listeners he would be speaking on matters of general concern on the first Sunday of every month.

His discourses would sometimes be secular, sometimes philosophical, sometimes religious, though espousing no particular creed, and his texts would be taken from all kinds of books.

He was as good as his word. When the weather was bitter cold or rainy, they were invited inside his barn, and he would preach from the spot where he had first met his wife (so he still considered Cassandra). His themes were simple ones—fairness, compassion, tolerance, and the elimination of superstition and intolerance from human affairs. He never resorted to brimstone or abstractions, even though the audience might enjoy the former and he the latter.

For
his growing flock, he drew word pictures of their own lives, telling parable-like stories about and for the people he knew, how they had struggled to exist in the recalcitrant land and how they heroically showed support for each other. Like Jesus, he used the magic power of storytelling to counteract ignorance and hate. Brighton offered the people forgiveness and compassion as an antidote to fear and death.

His n
ative listeners sat on lumpy patches of turf, chewed on a weed, and tossed pebbles down the slope, drawn there by the tone of his voice, which was rich, musical, and stirring, and his uplifting message.

Over the next years, Brighton also
became a famous essayist. His most famous piece, “Affirmations,” opened with a description of how a famous Lakota Sioux shaman fell into a practice he called “praise the day.” The shaman would get up each morning and first offer praise to the sun, moon, plants, and animals. Then he would go into each hut and praise the individuals there. He transformed his squabbling people into one happy tribe. “So,” wrote the author, “what we focus on is magnified. If we look at others with an eye to affirmation, we will help them grow in positive ways and ourselves as well.” 

As a political speaker, he traveled to
neighboring hamlets and the Indian reservations and, as time went on, to cultivated venues such as great universities, regional libraries and city halls. He also delivered speeches on wharves, barns, parapets of bridges, and market crossings.

Some said
his words were commonplace and he was a simpleton, while others said he was a genius and ahead of his time. Some took his ideas to heart, some did not. Some grew ashamed of what they had said about his wife. Others continued to defame her. But everywhere he went, he was admired and kindly received.

In time, a name
of respect was created for Brighton by the Indians. He became known far and wide as
White-eye brother-who-lost-woman-but-found-spirit-world.

Chloe stretches out her arms and looks over at Marlena.

“
And that, Lena,” Chloe says softly, “is the conclusion of Act One of Cassandra's adventures in Wyoming. It covers the shortest stretch of time, but its telling takes the longest. Are you still awake?”

Marlena
has all but disappeared under her bearskin afghan. There is a dreamy look on her face, as though she were in another world. But at Chloe's question, she instantly rouses herself, rubs her eyes, and sits up. 

“
California, here we come. I recall your mother used a stage name, Chloe. Nevada Carson. She pronounced it Ne-VAY-duh.”

“
Right you are.”

Long ago, Chloe had
home-schooled Marlena on a lesser-known bit of movie history. Back when Hollywood was little more than olive and avocado groves, more than half of the writers for the American motion picture industry were women. Chloe's mother, Cassandra Vye, was the best of those who worked in San Francisco.   

Of course a
udiences for the early movies were primarily female, beginning with Mina Edison’s Women’s Club of America. In 1891, members were the first to see a true moving photograph through Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope. Soon after, Jill Q. Public paid a nickel apiece to peep at moving images for twenty seconds.

Later, they lined up
by the droves for “chapter plays” (serials) or “actualities” (documentaries and travelogues, running as long as twenty minutes). The term “nickel-odeon” (theater for a nickel) evolved and stuck. Between 1905 and 1908, nearly five thousand storefront nickelodeons opened across the country, attracting two million customers a day. By 1910 a quarter of the population went to the movies at least weekly, which led a few far-sighted men, mostly of immigrant stock, to realize huge fortunes could be made. Soon thereafter, women were pushed out of the picture business. Despite recent advances on the directorial front for women, men have dominated the business ever since. 

Marlena
was fascinated to learn that during Hollywood's infancy period, women such as Alice Guy Blaché, Gene Gauntier, and Lois Weber constituted the majority of the creative pioneers in acting, writing, directing, and producing motion pictures.

None was more famous
, however, than Anita Loos. With Miss Loos, according to Cassandra's mother, there was “a loose” family connection. Kate would always make the pun, with apologies, when she told the story hearkening back to Saratoga Springs, before her mother bolted from her father to explore the romantic West. 

One day, Kate
Vye and Chloe Zanelli, who were bosom friends, were enjoying an outing at the Saratoga racetrack with their parents. The two youngsters literally bumped into a little girl, spilling their fizzy drinks on her pristine middy blouse. The wailing child turned out to be Mary Loos, the niece of Anita Loos.

After Aunt Chloe died of breast cancer in 1924, there was no one to relate the anecdote,
nor to add the interesting footnote that Kate's daughter Cassandra had met Anita Loos as an equal, on a stage-lot in Los Angeles.

Their friendship began
in the springtime of 1906, on the exact date of the San Francisco earthquake, and it continued robust through 1927, when Miss Loos was still basking in the glory of her 1925 novel,
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
. In that same year, another acquaintance of Cassandra, actress Clara Bow, played a winsome girl next door who went to war in
Wings
.

Cassandra died before she could read Anita
Loos' book,
Cast of Thousands,
which was published in 1977 and lay on Marlena's bedside table. 

It all would be pertinent this evening, as
Marlena was regaled with the second act of Cassandra's story…

The weather, on the day
I arrived in San Francisco, was a cold drizzle. However, it did not dampen my spirits. I was alone and terrified, but I did not lack for ambition and ideas on how to get ahead. Also, I had my siren powers to fall back on, if necessary.

I had
my faults, but cowardice and self-pity were not among them. I pictured myself as a young woman ahead of my time who had thrown over the traces and was bent on personal success. I hoped the people of San Francisco would see me the same way. My goal was to make myself financially self-sufficient within a year’s time, with no tricks.

Meantime, I had
the sum of money Caleb had lent me and some grandfather had wired me, despite my prideful note rejecting his assistance. Since childhood, I had mentally projected myself onto a stage career. My father had eked out a living through singing and acting. My lack of a safety net—that is, the protection of a man—might have concerned me, if I had been a normal female. Instead, I plunged ahead.

Along with the money Caleb Scattergood had lent me, he had provided a letter of introduction to his uncle, Ian Scattergood, and a letter of recommendation for employment. At first I scorned to use these crutches. One week after another, however, failed to yield an opportunity for theatrical employment,
while I used my funds to rent a small room and shared bath in a boarding house on Divisadero Street.

My
landlord, David McHowell, had inherited a ramshackle Victorian, and he leased the five bedrooms to other aspiring artists while he carried on his photography and lived in the attic. During the day he roamed all parts of the city, shooting candid shots of the most colorful locals. What little money I earned in the first month came from modeling for David. I also advised him on his work, as he sought out my reactions to his images. In his bed, David preferred young men, so I was not tempted to use sexual attraction to pay the rent. I had learned my lesson on that score.

My new life
was quite a contrast to the period of alienation I had imposed on myself in Alta. Our immediate neighbors were the Patrici family on one side of David's Victorian and the Schiappio family on the other, emigrants from Sicily and northern Italy respectively. As the families were too numerous, noisy, and cheerful for me to maintain any sort of distance, and their food was much too good to resist, we quickly became friends. Who with a nose could be standoffish when aromas of Old World dishes were wafting through the open windows? I had to be careful not to eat so much that I lost my girlish figure, as I soon developed a voracious appetite for their food. I learned the trick of scooping half from my plate into a handkerchief and carrying it back to my tiny room.    

Unless I had sexual prey in my sights,
I would go out with David and his friends in the evenings to a private dance hall pavilion on the Barbary Coast and dance the night away. Altogether, it was a lively, earthy, bohemian first month in San Francisco. But delightful as it was, I was not getting any closer to my goal.

I had another problem, equally pressing. I was carrying
Curly Drake's child. 

T
hree months after arrival, with no suitable work in sight, I capitulated to the course Caleb had suggested to me. Bearing his letters and wearing my traveling cloak (just in case), I sought out Ian Scattergood, whom Caleb had recommended heartily, both as an employer and a friend.

My letter of introduction was delivered from the front door by a washerwoman one cold
afternoon in late December. Then Ian himself came to the door and ushered me in. If he was amazed to see a young woman standing there, obviously with child and wet from a long journey up Nob Hill through the fog in an open conveyance, he was too courteous to express any surprise. He soon made me feel welcome in his sturdily furnished parlor. I found him to be hearty and thoroughly kind. I soon got straight to the point and directly asked him if he would consider employing me in the vacant place left by his deceased wife, who had managed his correspondence. I said I came with a letter of recommendation from his nephew in this regard. I did not give him a siren's stare.

With his customary speed in matters of business, Ian
read the second letter, explained the job, and put me to work the very next day. I immediately began to save half my salary to invest with Ian, who was a genius at it.

As I
soon discovered, Ian was the same sort of plain-spoken, fair-dealing, and discreet man his nephew was. Never once did he ask why I had left Nicholas, though every night for the first week I held my breath while we had an early supper together. Now, as my estranged husband had been Ian's dearest protégé, Ian must have been disappointed when he learned Nicholas had given up the assaying business to become a schoolmaster and had no intention of returning to San Francisco. However, he never uttered a disparaging word against Nicholas, and in later years, when the books began to come out, no one was more proud of Nicholas's publishing success than Ian. He bought them by the carton and circulated them among his Union Club friends. He could care less about who huffed and puffed over the controversial content.

Only once did I ever hear Ian express a less than positive opinion about my husband.
We were having dinner with his friend Carl, and when the men were well into their cups, Ian remarked that Nicholas was “a damned fool to have let a fine woman like Cassandra slip through his fingers.”

I was
also expecting to receive the Grand Inquisition from Ian about my pregnancy, but it never came. He did not ask me whose child I was carrying, and I did not volunteer any information, except that I would not keep it. He offered to help find me suitable parents out-of-state to raise the child. The adoption was soon arranged with a childless couple whose investments he handled. I was most grateful for Ian's help and support. In the tenth month, the child was born and given up for adoption.  

I was quickly back on my feet again. What my employer expected of
me was easily accomplished. I was his bookkeeper and household manager who handled his day-to-day affairs while he continued to make money, lots of money, with his investments.

I began using
the surname of Vye again. As there was no one to say me nay—Ian did not care one way or the other how I signed my paycheck—for all intents and purposes, I returned to my former single state.   

I
now had an unshakeable fear of Widow Brown's curse. I knew I was damned in my relationships with humans. Even when my intentions were to do no harm to those obsessed by me, the evil forces unleashed by the hexing seemed able to command otherwise. It would be best not to entangle my life with that of another human being, man, woman, or child. My child would never know who or where I was, for its own protection.

As to my great aim for a passionate love, even when a desirable man appeared--
which would surely happen from time to time-- I promised myself not to act on my desire, past a single episode to satisfy my appetite. Any unfortunate man who involved himself with me further than that might suffer deadly consequences. Only my grandfather would know of my whereabouts, as he had pledged his secrecy. As for my estranged husband, I wrote one short letter to Nicholas, asking that any remaining personal belongings be given to my grandfather and thanking him for his offer of financial assistance, which I could not accept. 

“
Please forgive and forget me, dear Nicholas. That will be best.”

One day I confided in Ian my desire for other challenges than handling his
bills and correspondence. Would he give me his blessing as to the career I had in mind for myself? With all the raucous city’s faults, including the large geo-physical one, Ian would not have recommended showbiz life to any female friend, but he could plainly see I had an appetite for it. Shrewd man of business that he was, he also saw there was a new way to make money in the world of entertainment—namely, in the nascent film industry. So, Ian made an introduction that would change my life again, which was to his fellow Union Club member, Carlus Von Volschwing. 

Now, t
he traditional arts establishment of San Francisco looked down its collective nose at the peep show parlors in the red light district, failing to see them as the dawn of an artistic revolution. However, there were exceptions to the rule. Foremost among those with vision for the future was an ambitious Austrian immigrant to the United States who had a small storefront nickelodeon on Market Street.

Von
Volschwing's storefront operation was an adjunct business of a larger one his Jewish brother-in-law was running in Hollywood. The entire outfit would eventually be swallowed up by Hearst’s International Studios.

I
n those early days, with customers sometimes coming in twice a day to his Vitascope parlor, Carl was constantly in need of more product than Hollywood could supply. The short films were sent from Los Angeles in a tardy trickle rather than the gushing stream he needed. There was not yet a system of film distribution. So, here was a golden opportunity for local production.

I was a very fast writer and needed no prompting on how to alter earlier scripts. It was not
long before Carl launched his own studio in San Francisco, with me as his primary talent. Two years and six months after arriving in town, I was doing well enough to become self-supporting and to terminate my employment at Ian's residence.

With tears in his eyes
, Ian gave me a very generous final check. “Don't be a stranger, Cassandra. You can count on my friendship through thick and thin.” 

F
ive years later, I was doing well enough for myself to buy a posh flat inside a sprawling mansion on Nob Hill. I also had an Italian agent and more work offers, both in writing and acting for the screen, than I could possibly handle.

By then
I was sporting a platinum-blonde bob. The new hairdo camouflaged the white streak at my temple and made me look more modern , though I missed brushing the fiery masses of hair that used to cascade down my back.

Finally, I decided I would change my name once more. As I
was determined to remain an invisible wraith to Alta’s native sons and daughters, I took a stage name. I was beginning to attract notices in the press, and there was always the chance the publicity might eventually bring me to the attention of former acquaintances. I became known as Nevada Carson, which was both stage name and nom de plume. This move had an unintended consequence, as will later be seen.  

Unlike Hollywood actresses, Nevada Carson
was not required to do strenuous stunts such as horseback riding, jumping from trees, gory suicides, climbing down ropes, and swimming in shark-infested waters. I was a quick study and my role was the vamp. Nevada Carson was San Francisco’s version of Theda Bara. My job was to appear dangerously alluring—second nature to a siren! I was also a prolific writer, and as there was an unending need for new product, when I wasn't acting, I was writing scripts.

By 1906, I was appearing in two pictures a week, in almost every scene, and writing two or three scenarios a week to keep up with the production schedule.
I was also fulfilling a lifelong dream by dancing professionally at the Scarlet Pimpernel, the most popular vaudeville hall on the Barbary Coast. On weekend nights, transparently clad in a full body stocking accented by big, colorful boas and glittering high heels, I was the lead dancer. Other than the amethyst ring I had from Nicholas, which I wore on my right hand, my personal jewelry was tucked away. I wore an armful of shimmering gold bangles and diamond bracelets, pressed on me by would-be lovers. 

Such
gifts were acknowledged with a good-night kiss, sometimes more, depending on how hot I got under the lights. Truth be told, I preferred the company of Ian or of David and his homosexual friends to misalliances with old bachelors and young married men. The affairs I had were transient, driven by sheer physical impulses. I had vowed never to do harm to another man with my powers, so there could be no intense involvement.

Did I ever miss the witty interplay with a lover, the emotional depths that go with yearning for him? I would be lying if I said I did not.
 

Though I had plenty to keep me occupied
in San Francisco, I would sometimes be sent on loan to Hollywood for a month or so to work with our Angelino counterparts. If San Francisco was busy, Hollywood was swamped by the explosive growth of the film industry. Though the financial tentacles were coming out of New York, the heartbeat was in Los Angeles. Talent was traded back and forth within California as business waxed and waned in the north.

On the first of April,
in 1906, I learned I would be on loan to International Studios for the entire month. I set out immediately, thrilled that I would be meeting two idols, Anita Loos and Lois Weber. Miss Loos was already famous. Miss Weber had been a street-corner activist before entering motion pictures in 1905. I was happy to go despite the great disdain in which I held Los Angeles, a dusty, ugly, and brutish factory town, with none of the cultural delights and European ambience of San Francisco.

As a result of my stay in Hollywood,
I escaped being present for the San Francisco Earthquake of April 18, 1906, and the Great Fire that followed it. It was stunning to realize that for a second time in my life I had narrowly escaped catastrophe. I recalled a famous quotation by Anita Loos: “Fate keeps on happening.”