T. Boyle - San Miguel

The man behind the ticket window at the steamship office said he couldn’t make change for a double eagle and so she had to wait for the bank to open and then the man at the bank wanted to know who she was and how she’d come by the coin. She didn’t see what business it was of his what she did with her own money or where she’d got it from, but she gave him her name and informed him that her mother had just died and she was taking the one o’clock steamer for San Francisco, where her school was, which would explain the suitcase at her feet. The man — he was wearing a green celluloid visor that took the luster out of his eyes — stared down at the coin where it lay on the counter between them. Then he glanced up at her again, considering, but he made no move to slide it across the counter and into the money drawer or to begin counting out bills. Or silver. Or asking which she preferred. “I’m a second-year student at Miss Everton’s Young Ladies’ Seminary,” she said, offering further evidence of her legitimacy — she was a schoolgirl, that was all, on her sad way back up the coast after burying her mother.

She tried to hold the man’s eyes, but she felt her confidence slipping, felt guilty, and she stole a glance at the window next to her, where an overdressed woman tottering under a hat the size of a birdbath stood chatting with the teller there. The woman gave a sidelong glance and Edith froze — she knew her, didn’t she? Wasn’t she one of the teachers at the high school? But now the woman had turned and was staring directly at her, and what was her name? It came to her in the moment she spoke it aloud: “Mrs. Parsons, how are you? Don’t you remember me — I was in Mrs. Sanders’ class the year before last? Edith Waters?”

Clearly the woman didn’t remember, but that didn’t stop her from chiming, “Yes, yes, of course. And how are you?”

The teller was watching her closely and so she just nodded her head, as if to say she was very well, thank you, then added, “I’m at Miss Everton’s Seminary now — up in San Francisco?”

“Oh, well… that must be quite a change from our humble little school.”

“It is,” she said, “yes,” and she was going to say how much she’d enjoyed the Santa Barbara school and how advanced it really was, but the teller was already counting out her change, so she merely smiled. She put the money carefully in her purse, taking up her suitcase and stepping aside for the man waiting behind her. “Remember me to Mrs. Sanders,” she said in her sweetest voice and made her way to the door.

She’d sat through dinner the night before and then breakfast in the morning, though she’d lain awake half the night, fighting with herself. As much as it appealed to her sense of drama to melt off into the night, an empty bed would have given her away and she couldn’t afford that, so she dressed and came down to breakfast. The parlor was quiet, the cat nowhere in sight. There was a vase of flowers on the dining room table, but they were wilted and they only reminded her of her mother. Her stepfather was already there, seated at the head of the table, a greasy plate with a half-gnawed bone on it set before him. He seemed bored and remote, hardly glancing up from the newspaper, his blunt battered fingers clumsy with the thin china handle of the teacup. He only brightened when Adolph came in, pushing back his chair to light a cigar and call out to the kitchen for more coffee.

All the while her suitcase was packed and hidden away in the back of her closet, the image of it glowing in her mind till it wasn’t a suitcase at all but a pair of wings, angel’s wings, to lift her up and out of this house and this life forever. Too wrought up to eat, she took only a bite or two of toast and a mouthful of scrambled eggs with catsup, sugaring her tea so heavily it was like a parfait and no one to notice or tell her different. She forced herself to bid good morning to Adolph, and even ventured a comment about the weather, but he just grunted and took his place beside her stepfather. Ida drifted in with the coffee pot and back out again and as soon as the door swung shut behind her, the two of them started in on the only subject that seemed to hold any interest for them: sheep. Sheep and the island, that is, and all the minutiae of their preparations for the move back. Adolph said it was a shame the way the Englishman was letting the place go to ruin and her stepfather just nodded his head and reiterated for the tenth time how now that poor Marantha was gone there was no sense in maintaining two separate establishments, no sense in the world. They barely noticed when she took up her plate and went out to the kitchen with it.

After that, it was easy — she didn’t let on to anyone about what she was planning, not even Ida, and she made sure no one saw her leaving the house. All she could think was that if she could somehow get back to her room at school her stepfather would relent — he’d have to. Either that or make the trip himself to reclaim her. There would be the question of board and tuition, she wasn’t fooling herself on that account, but once Miss Everton saw her there at her lessons with the other girls, in the dining hall, at the piano — saw how she belonged —she’d intervene for her, Edith was sure she would. And her stepfather would have to pay. He’d be too ashamed not to.

This was what she was thinking as she walked briskly back down the street to the wharf, one hand occupied with her parasol, the other with the suitcase, and she didn’t want to think beyond that. Her feet, buttoned tightly into her best shoes, had begun to chafe, but she ignored them. She was fixated on getting her ticket before the smokestack of the Santa Rosa appeared on the southern horizon on its way up from Los Angeles, and then losing herself in the crowd until the boat left the pier and she could breathe again, because there was no telling when her stepfather would discover her missing. Hurrying on, she scanned the glistening apron of the sea as it opened up at the base of the street and fanned out across the channel to the islands. Santa Cruz, the largest of them, was clearly visible on the horizon and not a cloud in the sky. Which meant that the seas would be calm — or calmer than on the way down. Or at least she hoped so.

And then she was in the waiting room, the benches full, baggage scattered about and everybody staring at her as if they’d never in their lives seen a young girl traveling back to school on her own. She took her place in line at the ticket window and concentrated on her posture — chin high, shoulders back, No slouching, Edith, take pride in yourself, her mother would nag if she were here, but her mother wasn’t here and never would be again. When she got to the ticket counter and presented the precise amount for a steerage ticket as it was listed in the schedule of fares, the clerk just stared at her. “I’ve gone to the bank for the proper change,” she said.

He was an effete little man, no bigger than Jimmie, and Jimmie was only a boy. She could see that he was trying to grow out his whiskers, his face splotched with reddish patches of hair that looked like open wounds at a distance and animal’s fur close up. “I beg your pardon?” he said.

“For the double eagle,” she said, pushing the money forward. “I’d like a ticket, please. One way to San Francisco, third class.”

“I’m sorry, miss, but it’s against company policy to issue tickets to unaccompanied”—here he hesitated, snatching a quick look at her face before dropping his eyes to the counter—“children.”

“But you said… you said you didn’t have change.”

He stiffened. “I didn’t,” he said, and the lie lay there between them.