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.”
Still swaying, a look for his mother, then the quick proud glance at Edith: “Jimmie.”
“Jimmie?” she repeated, taken by surprise, and for an instant she was back out on the island, the day wrapped round her like an unwashed sheet and Jimmie crouching there before her with his warm wet mouth sucking at the flesh of her inner thigh as if he were trying to extract juice from an orange…
“Would you like one?” the woman was saying. “I’ve got a whole basket here. I’m taking them down to my mother. Go ahead, have one.”
It was then, just as she took the orange from the woman’s hand, that the door swung open for the hundredth time that afternoon. Almost casually, as if she’d known all along how events would unfold, she glanced up into the faces of her stepfather and the stranger in the high-crowned hat beside him, who, as it turned out, wore the six-pointed star just above his shirt pocket for a very good reason. She didn’t start, didn’t protest, just handed the orange back to the woman, took up her suitcase and walked quietly to the door.
The Stove
And so she was on a boat again, but it wasn’t a steamer and it wasn’t the Santa Rosa and it wasn’t bound for San Francisco. If there was a cruel irony in all this, she couldn’t begin to fathom it. She sat stiffly, staring straight ahead, her back pressed to the wall and her feet planted firmly on the floor of the cabin that stank of tobacco, bacon grease, fish leavings and sweat, men’s sweat, in the very seat her mother had occupied, and she might have been her mother’s ghost, dead and disembodied, caught between one world and the next. The men were above, in the wheelhouse, drinking whiskey, their eyes tense with excitement. “We’re going home,” her stepfather had crowed, slapping Adolph on the back as they hauled their provisions aboard, and Adolph, a sack of pinto beans suspended between him and Charlie Curner on the deck below, had given him his tight immutable smile in return. Charlie Curner grinned. It was a good day, with a fair breeze, and he was getting paid.
For her part, she refused to look anyone in the eye, refused even to lift her head, and she didn’t bother with a parasol or her stays or anything else, staring first at the planks of the pier, then the deck and the steps going down to the cabin, and she wouldn’t speak to anyone even if she was addressed directly — if they were going to make her a prisoner, she would act like one. She was mute and she might as well have been deaf too. The boat lurched. There were the waves, the gulls, the mainland that sank behind her like a stone.
It was mid-January, somewhere thereabout, anyway. She wasn’t even sure of the date, but what did it matter? The only thing she was sure of was that her will meant nothing, that she was captive, body and soul, no better than an animal in a cage. The man with the badge had searched her and handed over her money — and the ticket, the useless ticket — to her stepfather, who forbade her to leave the house till they were safely aboard the Evangeline, and he’d gone with the sheriff to the offices of the stagecoach, the steamship line and the railway to make sure of his prohibition.
“It isn’t fair,” she said. “You have no right.”
“Your place is with your father.”
“You’re not my father.”
“I am. And you’re a willful, ungrateful child, and if you don’t come to your senses I swear I’ll take off this belt and strap you till you do.”
“Never! I won’t do it. I won’t go.”
And suddenly the belt was in his hand, jerked through the loops with a snapping ominous hiss, and she turned and bolted across the room and up the stairs and into her bedroom before he could grab hold of her. She heard his heavy tread on the stairs and locked the door, but he put his shoulder to it and the door flew open and he stalked into the room, his eyes as cold as any murderer’s, the belt snaking from one clenched fist. “Will you listen? Will you listen now?”
She was on the bed, clutching at her pillow. Her mother was dead and there was to be no quarter between them, she saw that now. “Yes,” she said.