T. Boyle - San Miguel

“I’m no child. I’m”—she could lie too—“twenty-one years old.”

“Company policy,” he said. “You’ll have to bring a parent, your father or mother—”

She didn’t want to draw attention to herself, that was the last thing she wanted, but she couldn’t help it. “My mother’s dead,” she said.

“Then your father.” He spoke softly, sadly. He was already looking past her to the next person in line.

“My father’s dead too.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

When she saw he wasn’t going to give her what she wanted — he was immovable, a mule, an idiot — she swung round abruptly, glaring at the man waiting in line behind her, stalked the length of the room with her heels clattering and the suitcase flaring at her side and flung herself out the door and into the full blaze of the sun. She tried to calm herself, to think things through, but already her anger was shading into despair. She felt exposed. Helpless. Anyone could have seen her there, some friend of her stepfather’s she didn’t even know, some sheep magnate or deckhand or dry-goods merchant come down to meet the ship. She felt a small flutter of panic. Just then the blast of the ship’s horn racketed across the water and she looked up to see the boat riding just offshore, as big as a block of houses, its smokestack fuming. The planks of the pier shifted subtly beneath her. “Here she comes!” somebody cried.

For one mad moment her only thought was of stowing away, of following a family up the gangplank, pressing close to them until they were aboard — if she was going to be taken for a child, she’d act like one — and then hiding somewhere overnight, in one of the lifeboats, in a closet or the head or under a table in the saloon. She had money. She could buy herself dinner, tea, sit there as long as she liked, tell the waiter her parents were indisposed, seasick, green around the gills — anything, anything to get away from here — but she knew she was fooling herself. Very slowly, squaring her shoulders and taking up the suitcase and parasol, she turned away from the ticket office and began making her way back down the pier as if she’d just arrived, ignoring the men in carriages and the fishermen and all the rest of them with their pat stupid expressions and leached-out eyes.

By the time she reached the end of the pier, she knew what she was going to do, though it was risky, riskier even than the boat. She didn’t dare try to take a coach — that would be the first thing her stepfather would expect and there was no guarantee that the agent there would take her money any more than the idiot at the steamship office would — but the railway was another thing altogether. Anyone could take the train. Of course, rail service was new to Santa Barbara and she’d never been on the train herself, yet Becky Thorpe had and that was good enough for her. The problem was that the train didn’t go to San Francisco, it went south, south only. To Los Angeles. If she boarded the train, she’d be on her own, without a room or roommate or meals in the dining hall or piano lessons with Mr. Sokolowski or Miss Everton’s guiding hand, not that Miss Everton had ever guided her personally, but she was there, like a monument, in loco parentis, a buffer between the girls and the harsh hard world they all knew from Zola and Dickens. She’d have to find her way all alone in a city she’d seen only once, with her mother, years ago — she’d have to take rooms, but who would rent to her? And once her money was exhausted, how would she pay?

No matter. She strode into the station, went up to the window and booked passage on the next train for Los Angeles and the only question the agent asked was Will that be round trip or one way? and without hesitation she answered: One way . She took a seat on a bench in the far corner and settled in to wait. The train was at five-thirty and it would be past dark then. Her stepfather would be sure to come looking for her if she wasn’t home by dark, no question about it, but then he’d never imagine she’d try to get away to Los Angeles — to school, yes, to San Francisco, where she belonged, but not Los Angeles. Los Angeles was a place he scarcely knew. Still, it was just past one-thirty in the afternoon and who knew but that Ida would have sent up the alarm by now? She could imagine her stepfather sitting down to luncheon after a morning of laying in supplies against returning to the island — the big sacks of rice and beans and flour she’d come to loathe the sight of, farm equipment, tools — and saying Where the devil’s Edith got herself to? and Ida saying I haven’t seen her all day and I know she’s not in her room or the yard either .

She tried to read to pass the time, but her eyes kept jumping to the door, people going in and out, a garble of voices, inquiries about the timetable and fares and did the five-thirty stop at San Buenaventura? At some point she dozed off, the book spread open in her lap, and then the door slammed and she was awake again. She smelled boot blacking, coal dust, leather. The ticket agent was eating a corned beef sandwich and she smelled that too, hungry suddenly and wishing she’d taken more at breakfast. She started thinking of food, of the places along State Street where she could get cheese and bread or a hamburger sandwich, but she was afraid to leave her seat though it was only just four and the train wasn’t due for another hour and a half. Even so, she couldn’t risk being seen on the street in any case. They must have known she was gone by now. What would her stepfather think — that she was with Becky Thorpe, though she hardly knew her anymore? Out for a walk? Haunting the shops? But no, that wasn’t what he’d think at all. He’d know in an instant — he’d always been suspicious of her, of her relations with boys, though they were practically nonexistent, never satisfied, always maligning her — and it was only a matter of time before he came after her.

The thought frightened her and she shrank into herself. She tried to focus on the future, on the good things that surely awaited her. When she got back to San Francisco — and she would, she knew she would no matter what it cost her — she wouldn’t return to Miss Everton or Mr. Sokolowski or to lessons of any kind. She was grown now. She’d had enough lessons. No, she would go directly to the stage door and audition for every part in every play there was and though she’d have to start as an understudy or with one of the subsidiary roles — a walk-on — she would shine and people would take notice and soon, with hard work and luck, she’d be offered the leading roles, the ingénue, the princess, the young love of the count or senator. And when people called out to her, shouted acclaim from the balcony and in the lobby afterward, she wouldn’t answer to Edith. Edith was the name of no one she knew. She had a new name to go with her new identity, a name that had come to her in a waking dream after she’d rejected a dozen others, a name that was simple and direct and yet exotic too in the way that Edith Waters or even Lillian Russell could never be. Inez. They would call her Inez, Inez Deane.

At quarter of five the waiting room began to fill up. A woman with a wicker basket brimming with oranges sat beside her, along with her little boy, who kept saying “We’re going on a train” over and over and turning periodically to his mother for confirmation, “aren’t we?”

“Yes,” the woman said, “yes, we’re going to Pasadena. To see your nana.” She smiled at Edith. “Don’t mind him,” she said. “It’s his first rail trip.”

“Oh, he’s no bother at all.” Edith leaned forward, bringing her face level with his. “And what’s your name?”

He looked away, rocking on the balls of his feet, his shoulders swaying back and forth. “Go ahead,” his mother said. “Tell her your name.”