Death Train to Boston (6 page)

Very Chinese,
he thought as he parked the Maxwell on the side of the street a few feet from the laurel tree. A breeze stirred, running through the wind chimes like cascading silver bells, lifting the streamers in twisting lines of color. He walked up a slate path to the front door. Aside from Meiling's additions, the small house
was unremarkable, a wooden box with windows and a door, not a single architectural ornament except for shutters, and those were false.

Answering his knock, Meiling opened the door and said, "Hello, Michael."

His black eyebrows rose as he stared, then hastily said her name: "Meiling."

She bowed her head slightly. Her long black hair swung forward with the motion. "Welcome into my home," she greeted him formally in Mandarin, which Michael understood.

After a moment's hesitation he bowed too, and responded, also in Mandarin: "I am honored to be your guest." He untied first one shoe and then the other, and left them at the door, donning soft black slippers from an assortment of sizes that Meiling had placed there for guests. Only then did he enter the room, which was just as well, because he needed a few moments to decide what to say.

The last time Michael had seen Meiling, she'd been wearing the latest American fashion, complete with corset (which Fremont refused to wear, ever) and hat (likewise, at least most of the time). When Meiling had left San Francisco after the Great Earthquake, moving to Palo Alto to attend Stanford as a special student, she had declared her intention to be simply an American woman who happened to have a Chinese name and a Chinese face. In every other way she was determined to be no different from any other female on the campus, whether student or faculty. But now . . .

Meiling stood a few feet inside the living room of her plain little house, which might once have belonged to a worker on a rancho in the Spanish period, or to a laborer on the railroads decades later. In other words, the room was unpretentious, not the least exotic. By contrast, Meiling herself would not have been out of place had she stood a few feet from the gilded gates of the
Forbidden City. She wore long, straight black trousers in a heavy fabric with the faint sheen of silk, and over them a long-sleeved tunic of black brocade trimmed in emerald-green satin piping. Her shoes were also satin, emerald-green, curving slightly upward at the tips of the toes. Her hair was unbound and hung to her waist like a shimmering curtain of ebony.

"I see I have surprised you," she said. Meiling was taller than most Chinese women, and her voice was deeper. Deeper, in fact, than Fremont's mellow alto, darker and richer than Michael had remembered. Certainly of a richer texture than it had seemed over the telephone only last night.

"Yes," Michael admitted as he came into the living room, "but it is a happy surprise. I'm glad to see you wearing the garb of your ancestors."

"I have had a change of heart, a revision of plans," Meiling said, and then smiled, a mischievous glint in her dark eyes. "But I have acquired a taste for coffee. Come, we will go sit in the kitchen, where the sun comes through the windows this time of morning. And we will talk of what to do for my friend, your partner and your lover, Fremont Jones."

The smell of soup brought me fully awake. I was using my elbows to work myself into a sitting position against the pillows, dragging my useless legs, before my eyes were even open. My stomach rumbled; I felt thoroughly starved.

"Oh my goodness, that smells wonderful!" I exclaimed, with the most enthusiasm I'd had for anything in quite a while. There is nothing like a serious illness, I was discovering, to teach a person what is truly important in life, and that is sleeping and eating. The rest, such as love and sex and all that, is just the frosting on the cake, very nice and certainly delicious, but possible
to live without. "Thank you," I repeated. "Is it Norma? Have I got your name right?"

"Yes, Carrie. I'm Norma."

She darted a quick glance at Father, as I supposed she would call him, while with one hand she steadied a tray beside me, and with the other helped to plump up the pillows behind my back. That male personage—I certainly wasn't going to call him Father—sat there like a useless lump, not bothering to offer his assistance. No, he was entirely occupied, it seemed, with staring off into the middle distance. Where perhaps, if it ever suited his purposes, he might someday claim he had seen another angelic vision. The ability to see and converse with invisible beings is no doubt a useful talent, if one is not overly concerned about mendacity.

I turned my attention back to Norma, who made a more rewarding subject. Number three wife, I recalled; she was younger than Verla, the number one wife, and prettier than either Verla or Sarah, the number two, though Norma and Sarah might well be of an age. I guessed they'd be perhaps thirty, a few years older than I. Norma had hair so black it glinted blue, like a raven's wing, where she had pulled it tight against her skull. Her eyes were almost black too—but instead of the limpid, innocent, baby-animal appeal that many dark eyes have, hers were hard as marbles. Her complexion was of a golden rather than a pinkish cast, the type of skin that browns easily in the sun. She was a small woman yet not dainty; decisive in her movements; and her hands, like Verla's, had known hard work.

"I am so hungry!" I said avidly as Norma spread a napkin over my lap, then placed the tray there.

"Just don't eat too fast," she cautioned. "Can you manage alone?"

"Yes, I think so, and thanks again. You may be sure my gratitude is in direct proportion to my hunger," I said, picking up the soup spoon.

Norma folded her hands at her waist and addressed the man on the other side of my bed: "Shall I stay, Father?"

From the corner of my eye I saw his head jerk up. I was already too occupied with the delicious repast in front of me to care about anything else. The soup was a thick broth, laced through with shreds of beef, grains of rice, chopped onions and celery, and some green herbs for seasoning.

"No need to stay, thank you, Norma." He raised one hand, either in blessing or dismissal or both—it was an odd, formal gesture that I did not understand between husband and wife.

Perhaps,
I mused, breaking off a piece of soft roll and dipping it most inelegantly into the soup,
when a man has that many wives he finds it necessary to devise hand signals, like a traffic cop.

"Then may I bring you anything?"

This was interesting. She did not accept dismissal so easily. I dunked another bit of roll and watched Norma surreptitiously. I like a woman who does not immediately comply with what is expected of her, but takes her own time to at least think about it.

"No," he said quite firmly, "I do not require anything at this time."

To my utter amazement, Norma pouted. Her lips were nicely shaped, and even as I watched, her lower lip grew fuller. Slowly she turned away from my bed and walked toward the door; halfway there she looked back over her shoulder with those dark eyes glinting and asked, "Father, will we all be at table together for supper tonight?"

Melancthon Pratt let a pause gather in the air before he replied. I stopped chewing and swallowing because even I could feel the sudden, subtle charge in the atmosphere. "Nnoo," he said slowly, drawing out the word,
as if making his decision as he spoke, "I think not. I think you may lay a table for two in front of the large window. And tell the others they may go ahead and eat when they've a mind to."

Hmm,
I thought,
very interesting.

And then, because that was precisely what
he
would have said, I felt most dreadfully the pang of missing Michael.

Missing Michael did not, however, stop me from finishing the soup and bread. There was a sweet pudding for dessert. I tasted it, and decided to have it later. For my first real meal in a while, I'd already had enough.

Now that I was done with the food, something that had been bothering me asserted itself. As I folded my napkin and pulled it through the napkin ring that had come on my tray, I asked in a tone both casual and sincere, "Do you enjoy watching people eat, Mr. Pratt?"

He did not reply. His face took on a rather odd expression, as if my question had somehow hit him right between the eyes.

This pleased me quite a bit, so I decided to needle him a little more. Opening my hands in a helpless gesture, I looked down at my lap and then back up at him. "Would you take this tray? Eating has quite exhausted me and I cannot lift it. Please, if you'd be so kind."

"Humph," he said, but he rose to his feet, covered the space between the chair and the bed in two long strides, and snatched up the tray, which he then went to place on the dresser against the far wall. But that necessitated moving the pitcher to one side, which in turn meant he had to balance the tray on one hand, and that almost proved too much for the big man. The tray's contents slid . . . and slid . . . until at the last possible moment he righted it and set it down on the dresser.

"Thank you so much," I said, sagging back against
the pillows with unaffected languor. Certain sensations reminded me that I would have to take care of the necessary bodily functions before too long, and I wondered how much longer he intended to stay.

"Humph," the big man said. This syllable seemed to serve all purposes for him save exposition.

I fixed my mouth in a neutrally pleasant expression, adjusted first one shoulder and then the other against the pillows, ignored an itch that had begun on my left leg, and waited while he brought the chair right up next to the bed. He took my hand.

The voice I had internalized said,
Be docile.
I clenched my teeth and let him have the hand, although just that one contact, that seeming act of possession, made me feel even more entrapped than reason told me I already, truly was.

"Caroline James," said Melancthon Pratt, "the wives have taken to calling you Carrie. I prefer Caroline."

You would,
I thought, but I forced the corners of my mouth to curve up a little higher. "As you wish," I said. Then seizing the opportunity, I added, "I shall call you Mr. Pratt."

"It would please me if you would call me, as they do, Father."

"But I cannot do that, can I? First, because I already have a father. He lives in Boston, and as soon as possible I must let him know what has happened to me. Second, because it would be inappropriate for me to call you Father, as we have no children between us, which would be the only other reason I can think of for giving you that appellation."

"Ah," Melancthon Pratt said, smiling, "that is how I shall begin, then. I will tell you about the angelic vision that led me to you, and the many children that were promised me in that vision. Through you, Caroline. Through you."

Meiling Li's kitchen was a perfect blend of East and West; the black cast-iron cooking stove served as a good example. The body of the stove had been fitted with pipes and rings to convert it from wood-burning to gas. On the top burners a beautifully blackened wok occupied one side, while a percolator of some shiny, polished silvery metal occupied the other. The room smelled of coffee and spices; sun poured through the windows; flowers were everywhere, some in vases and some growing in pots.

"I am glad to see you, Michael," Meiling said, placing a large porcelain cup and saucer before him, "but I regret the circumstances."

"No more than I do, you may be sure." He gazed at the cup, which remained empty for the moment, and recognized the pattern, although at the moment he could not name it. The cup and saucer were very old, certainly valuable, possibly priceless.

"I am sure," Meiling said, returning with the coffee which she had poured into a serving pot whose handle and spout were intricately shaped and painted to resemble the curving neck, head, and tail of a red-gold dragon that had twined himself around a cobalt-blue ball. She set the pot on the table.

Michael watched mutely while Meiling, equally silent, moved about her kitchen. She took a plate from a shelf, opened a pot shaped like a large ginger jar, and stuck her hand inside. The cookies she brought out were shaped like stars; one by one she put them on the plate. Michael felt thoroughly shaken. He wondered how it could be that he had held up relatively well until now, not giving in to his grief or his fears, constructing the wall of reasoned faith in Fremont's survival that gave him hope. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to let it all out, cry, yell, scream, or at the very least get
stinking drunk—with Meiling, of all people. Why? How could he be feeling this way? It was despicable. He loathed himself.

Meiling brought the plate of star-shaped cookies to the table and silently placed them by the dragon-pot. She went away again. Michael clenched his jaw, ran his hand through his hair first one way and then the other, messing it up, smoothing it back again.

"You must be very upset," said Meiling. Her back was to him; she did not turn around. He didn't know what she was doing, but he was glad of it, because he didn't want to have to face her just yet.

"Hm," Michael said noncommittally. He uncrossed his legs and turned in his chair so that he could see out the window. Meiling had placed a temple-like structure on a pole in her back yard. It was filled with tiny birds of several different colors—yellow, pale green, purple, deep pink.

"They are finches," she said. He had not heard her return to the table. Now she too had a cup and saucer; she poured coffee into his first, then hers. "I recall you do not require either cream or sugar, but take your coffee black," she said.

"Yes."

"So do I."

The finches had a pert, twittery little chirp that was just audible through the glass. Michael liked Meiling's ability to sit in quiet companionship. Fremont was like that, he thought, she had been like that from the beginning. Such a remarkable woman.

And then he understood why being with Meiling had nearly undone him. "You and she are very much alike, you know," he said.

"I know."

"It doesn't really matter that you are Chinese born in San Francisco, and she is an American born in Boston."