Gift of the Golden Mountain Page 2

  I heard the Cadillac as it turned the corner and began the laborious climb up the hill, its great engine grinding and complaining. The auto, like the small woman who would be perched on its rear seat, her gloved hand grasping the chromium handle, was of good, prewar stuff; both had been well tended over the years; each was, quite simply, old.

  The car and the woman and the driver had been coming to my cottage for more than thirty years, long enough to have developed a ritual. I considered trying to get up to go to the door, to be there when Sara arrived as I always was. I actually went so far as to move one leg—the good one—before giving up. Sara was ill and I was only mending, but it didn't matter. I couldn't move. Annoyed with the intransigence of my body, I leaned back on the pillows and tried to be content with imagining a scene I knew by heart.

  I listened as the car pulled up to the cottage, noted the full roar of the engine as Henry shifted into reverse to curb the wheels on the steep hill. Henry had been hired when Sara purchased her first "machine," as she called them, a Pierce-Arrow. A slow three-count and there was the solid thud of the driver's door closing; another six-count and he would have gone round to help Sara out of the back, holding her firmly with one hand while he closed the door behind her. Once, not all that long ago, Sara would have been out and up the steps before Henry could come around to open the door. I could not remember when Sara had started to wait for his help. Now I could hear them on the stair, and the soft, fussing sounds they made to each other. "Watch it here, Miss," Henry scolded, and Sara muttered something about him watching out for himself.

  And so they came: slowly, Sara's age and the heart condition she would not admit to, impeding their progress.

  "Faith?" Sara called out.

  "Back here, on the sunporch," I answered, shaken by a new weariness in her voice.

  Sara appeared in the doorway to the little sunporch, flushed from the exertion of climbing the cottage steps, looking so fragile it seemed a small puff might blow her away.

  "What's going on here?" she asked, her eyes scanning the leg cast.

  "My tap dancing debut has had to be canceled," I answered, determined to make light of it, then ruining the effect by blurting, "You shouldn't have come, Sara darling—but I'm so glad that you did."

  She grasped her cane with both hands and lowered herself into the chair beside the daybed. Then she held hard to my hand and said nothing. Catching her breath, she looked out to the garden.

  "Weeds are taking over," she offered with what sounded like a sigh of acceptance. "It used to be such a pretty place."

  Alarmed, and feeling a need to reassure her I said, "It will be again, Sara. It's not as tangled as it looks. You know my theory on gardens—planned disorganization. I'll have it set right in a few days, just as soon as I get back on my feet."

  "Yes," Sara said briskly, as if she had turned away from the business at hand and was now turning back, "and how soon will that be?"

  "The doctor says six weeks, maybe a bit more—it seems to have been a rather complicated fracture—before I can get around."

  "What does he mean by 'get around'?"

  I knew Sara in this mood; it was no good to put her off. "I think he means get around enough to do for myself. As far as my going back to the studio, that will be awhile."

  "How much of awhile?" Sara could be relentless.

  "Six months, probably." I coughed nervously, but made myself add what the doctor had said was more likely: "Maybe longer."

  "Then we have to find you a gardener, don't we?"

  I laughed, relieved. Sara had not given up, after all. I touched her face, and for an instant she seemed herself again: not old, not ill, but filled with plans. For a long moment we looked at each other, remembering.

  Sara allowed a contented silence to gather before proceeding. "How old are you, Faith?"

  "How old?" I repeated, as if it was the question I didn't understand and not the reason for it.

  "Sixty-one," I answered.

  "Sixty-one," Sara repeated with a small lament of a sigh and then, catching herself, she added, "Oh to be that young again!"

  I relaxed. We were on familiar ground now, having bridged the gap of time and events that had separated us for so many of the past months—Sara's heart trouble, my fall.

  "I came for a reason," Sara offered, holding to my hand, "I need to ask a very large favor of you."

  I nodded but said nothing, knowing that whatever she had in mind would be couched in terms of a favor to her. It was Sara's way.

  "Before she died," Sara began, "My dear Lena left all of her journals and her correspondence as well, in my care. There is quite a volume—letters she received from others, notably Porter and his father, and letters she wrote to them. Some are copies she made herself, others Porter gave me when he came back from the war, along with his papers." She paused, frowned. "He gave them to me for safekeeping, you see. Porter's the one who suggested I collect all the papers in what he calls 'the family archive.'"

  Suddenly, Sara's voice grew weak. Wanting to give her time to recover, I broke in: "I can still see Lena sitting at the little desk in your library during the war, the morning light flooding in from the east window . . . a perfect Matisse subject!"

  Sara smiled, reviving to the thought of Lena. "She did write wonderful letters," she said, braced by the memory. "She always chided me so for preferring the telephone."

  "So," she went on, "I have six boxes filled with all sorts of letters and papers and journals, and I must see to their safekeeping. Some are of historical significance, at least in California. Kit's father, you know, was a classmate of Teddy Roosevelt. They corresponded, and there are pictures of him at the ranch. In fact, there are at least six more boxes of photographs . . . the Reades were great picture-takers, and you have been photographing all of us for years now. They knew all sorts of famous and semi-famous people, and even a few who were infamous, as you will see from the papers.

  "Someday, perhaps, the descendants will decide to make them public, but I think that will not be for some time. Current history has made Father Hunt something of a heroic figure as one of the great railway barons of the West." Her eyes lit wickedly for a split second. "With this new material the historians should have some fun revising Father's reputation—I'm sorry I won't be around to cheer them on.

  "So," she said, "I have first to convince you to take on the job of keeper of these archives, and then we will have to settle on how this trove is to be managed."

  I could only stare at her. "I knew you had something in mind," I told her, "but I must say you've taken me by surprise. Have you spoken to Kit and Porter about this? Wouldn't one of them want to handle the family papers?"

  "I've spoken to both, of course. Porter has his hands and his mind full with all of the charges brought against him, and Kit is working so hard to help him—at the same time handling her own business interests—that she hasn't the time to do it, or the inclination either. To answer your question—both agree with me that you are one of the very few people in this world we could even consider asking to take on what is certainly a delicate job. They trust you implicitly, and so do I. You know that."

  "Then of course I'll do it, Sara," I answered, my mind racing, one question pushing out another. "The photographic file I can handle, but I wish I had some training as a librarian. I do have a friend at the Historical Society who is discreet and will help me." Then it dawned on me: "Could any of the papers in the archive be used against Porter?"

  Sara was blunt: "Certainly. That's why the papers must be hidden. Only Kit, Porter, I and now you know about them. That won't be forever, of course. There are some family secrets which need to be kept awhile longer. But to be honest it is May I'm thinking about. And something more I need to ask of you. Something quite . . . momentous."

  Suddenly I understood. For all of her long, good life Sara had been a gentle guardian to those she loved. And she loved Lena's granddaughter.

  "I don't know if you realize how strained
things are between May and Kit," she said.

  I had noticed, and said I was at a loss to understand the rift. Sara told me, "It seems to me it started at about the same time that the child insisted she be called 'May Reade.' That was what—about a year ago, when Porter started taking her to the hearings with him. At the time I thought it was because she wanted to have the same name as her father. Now I think it is something else."

  "What?" I asked.

  Sara, tiring, sighed. "She is such an intense little thing. Sometimes I look at her and see Lena. There is something in her that is so like her grandmother—the great sweetness, a quality of knowing. What troubles me is the anger I feel in the child, the resentment. I believe it has to do with her mother, I think it might be a rejection of that part of her that is Chinese . . . something like that."

  I patted her heavily veined old hand. "Does she ever ask about her mother?"

  "Never," Sara said, "not even when I try to move her in that direction. And that troubles me. Porter brags that she is ten going on thirty, and that bothers me, too. She shouldn't have to be so grown up. She is just a little girl."

  "You really have become May's grandmother, Sara," I said, moved by the affection and the pain in her voice.

  "I know that," she answered, picking up the photo I keep of Emilie's twins by the bed. "Your grandchildren are what—two now?" Before I could answer she went on, "I know that May is going to need me—perhaps next year, perhaps ten years from now—and I'm not going to be here. There are questions she has to ask, Faith. No matter how much the rest of us love the child, she is going to need to know why the woman who gave her birth left her behind. When she is ready, the answers are in the papers. They may not be the ones she wants. That is where you come in. May thinks of you as one of the family . . ." She gave me a searching look; her hand, grasping mine, began to tremble. "Do you see what I am asking?" she finished, in a weak voice.

  I did see, and it took my breath, the enormity of it. "I wonder if I am up to it," I said, weakly.

  She touched my face. "About that I have no doubts at all."

  We sat for a time, thinking our own thoughts, my mind reeling at the idea of even attempting to take Sara Hunt's place as May's friend and protector.

  Sara cleared her throat, "I had in mind a professional arrangement, to make everything legal and such."

  "I thought as much," I answered, teasing.

  Sara did not smile, but said quite deliberately, "I know you thought I was coming to offer you some kind of make-work job to keep you busy while you convalesce, and I know you were thinking it would be an excuse to make you take some of my money—of which I have far too much, thanks to my robber baron of a father—and you far too little."

  I tried to break in but she wouldn't let me. "Hush and let me talk while I've got the strength," she said. "I think you can see that I'm asking you to take on a task that goes far beyond money, and to be honest I don't know what I will do if you turn me down. There's no one else I can trust to do what is going to need doing. Lena's family is precious to me, Faith. I never had a family until Lena made me part of hers. And now May . . ." her voice broke and a small sob escaped, ". . . if she were close to Kit I wouldn't be so afraid for her, but she will have nothing to do with Kit." She had to stop to blot her tears.

  I started talking, to give her time. "I keep thinking of how Kit looked, the day May was born. It was so strange . . . she's always been so small and trim and stylish, but in those weeks she seemed to fill out, to be all pink and glowing, almost as if she were the one giving birth. And when Ch'ing-Ling left, I remember thinking that Kit was going to get a chance to be a mother after all. That seemed almost, well, somehow fair . . . she was so young when she was widowed, and she and Porter had always been so close. I really felt that if this had to happen—if all our pleas to Ch'ing-Ling could not change her mind—then at least May was going to have the very best substitute mother in the world."

  Sara nodded, dabbing her nose with a lace-trimmed, linen handkerchief. "Yes. It was what we all thought, Kit too. Dear Kit, this pains her terribly. But something went awry, and Porter hasn't been much of a help. He sloughs it off by saying it is just a phase, and then he drags the child to the hearings with him—she has to run that gauntlet of photographers. . . ." She shuddered.

  "Have you been watching that man McCarthy on the television?" I asked, wanting to distract her.

  Sara would not be distracted that day. She continued: "Porter has never wanted an inheritance, you know. Lena left him what she had, and Kit is taking care of his defense. So I am leaving the bulk of my estate to May. She will receive a yearly stipend until her twenty-fifth birthday, then she will have it all to do with as she wishes. By then I hope that—with your help—she will have come to terms with her past. If that happens, I believe she will also be able to come to terms with Kit."

  She was having difficulty breathing now, and I wanted to stop her, to make her rest, but she wouldn't. "My lawyers tell me we can set up an archive with you as administrator, with complete control. You will receive a salary. You've always been so stubborn about taking money from me, but surely you won't object now, knowing that I couldn't possibly pay you enough to do what I am asking of you."

  I pulled myself up on the bed, ignoring the shooting pains that shimmered up my leg, feeling nothing but a great warmth for this tiny woman. I wrapped my arms around Sara Hunt and held her close. "Yes," I whispered into her hair, and then I repeated it, softly, "Yes, Sara, I will. Never as well as you, but I will do my best."

  Sara Hunt died two months later on the afternoon of the Fourth of July. That night I watched the fireworks exploding over the dark waters of San Francisco Bay and told myself they were a fitting tribute to the dearest of women, the best of friends, and then I shifted under the weight of the mantle she had left me.

  ONE

  August 1965

  IT DOESN'T MATTER, I don't care. She rested her head on the back of the chair, turning her face so that she was looking out of the window and over the wing to the wisps of clouds flashing by, and repeated the words to herself, over and over again as a distraction, a litany to occupy her mind, to keep from thinking. It doesn't matter, I don't care. She could not have said what it was that didn't matter, or why she didn't care, and at that moment in the sky over Chicago, she would not have recognized those words as residuum of her childhood, would not have remembered the nights when she would bury her face in her pillow and tell herself that it didn't matter and that she didn't care.

  The big plane banked and turned, lurching as it lowered itself clumsily through the layers of summer storm clouds that billowed over Lake Michigan. She looked out the window and caught glimpses of the city sprawling below through breaks in the clouds.

  A steward intoned: "For those of you who are continuing with us to San Francisco today, we will be on the ground at O'Hare for fifty minutes."

  She rummaged through the pocket of the chair in front of her, found an OCCUPIED sign and put it on her seat, then she made her way to the end of the line. She would go into the terminal, buy a newspaper, a magazine. A young woman pushed in line behind her. "Looks like rain," she offered in a twanging, mid-western accent.

  Suddenly, the plane seemed close, the air hot and thin. The girl behind her in line chattered on. "These can be something, these August storms. Real honest-to-God cloudbursts where it rains little frogs." The girl laughed and asked if she was from around here.

  "No," she answered, attempting a smile, and then she excused herself and pushed her way back to her seat.

  The door was open now and the line began to move out of the plane. She had to tug to get her carry-on bag from under the chair; it came free and she made her way out to the boarding lounge. Then she was walking, walking fast and in long strides, though impeded somewhat by the straight cut of her linen dress, her shoulder bag bumping against her hip in the hurry. She made her way around clusters of travelers, who turned sideways to let her push by. Their eyes followed her.
She was someone to watch in an airport—elegant in an unstudied way, the thrust of her body, the straightness of her spine, the mix of grace and determination. Her hair, long and dark and perfectly straight, rested precisely on the shoulders of the yellow dress, and stirred slightly in the breeze she made. Those who make a habit of watching people in airports might have concluded that she was late, that there was some kind of emergency. They might have thought she was meeting a man, or that she had decided not to, or that she was trying desperately to extricate herself from some romantic entanglement. She had a look about her that was almost mysterious, exotic yet efficient, too. Softly shaped eyes lined in kohl, the only makeup she used, prominent cheekbones, skin clear and smooth. A face that was hard to figure, a face that required study.

  She stopped at a bank of telephones, dropped the bag to the floor, and began rummaging in her purse.

  The phone rang five times, six. She closed her eyes and tried not to think.

  "Yes?" a man's voice answered.

  "Karin," she said tentatively, then, "Is Karin Rolofsen there?"

  Karin came on the line before he could answer, her voice filled with alarm. "May? Where are you? What's happened?"

  She exhaled, steadied by Karin's voice. "Nothing has happened. I'm in Chicago, I just got in. Listen, I'm going to stop over . . ."

  "No," Karin interrupted, "No you aren't, May. Don't do this, not now. You were supposed to be here last week, now finally you're on your way and you tell me you are stopping in Chicago. May—this is insane . . . Why didn't you get a nonstop? Why . . ."

  "Calm down, Karin," she said, trying to sound in control. "Listen to me. I promised a man I met in Paris—a physicist—that I would stop over and see him on my way to San Francisco. He's in a place called Batavia, a little town just west of Chicago, on a project of some kind and . . ."

  Karin cut in, "Don't tell me stories. There's no French physicist or you would have told me about him. You're making it up, it's just another excuse. God."