“Madam Flora succumbed to syphilis, God rest her soul. Too heartbroken to ever come back. Yours, Miss Amber.”
PRIZE AND CONSOLATIONS
(1911)
One month later the finest parlor joint in Seattle and the most orderly disorderly house in the Northwest had emptied. The Tenderloin’s fine brickwork, gabled ceilings, and ornate crown molding were now nothing more than a skeleton that had been picked clean by vultures. With the lien, the King County auditor’s office had called for a commissioned estate auction, which did away with most of the hanging artwork, the Turkish and Oriental rugs, the stained-glass lamps, and the French furnishings, all with the sound of a gavel. And then a foreclosure on the building by Hayes & Hayes Bank turned the remaining bones into soup as liquidators removed everything that wasn’t nailed down, including the carpets, light fixtures, and the nouveau chandeliers.
Ernest stood by, waiting for Fahn to return from a job interview, as the last of the statuary, a smooth, bare-breasted marble sculpture of the Greek goddess Calypso, was wrapped, crated, and then lugged out the front door. The upstairs girls had called that statue Madam Damnable, in honor of Seattle’s first madam, who ran the Felker House, a lifetime ago. Legend had it that when the rain forced the city to relocate the bodies from the old Seattle Cemetery up the hill to Lake View, the dainty old madam had turned to stone and her casket weighed two thousand pounds.
A very tall tale, Ernest thought. A heavy one too. But he understood the burden that was one’s personal reputation. Everyone associated with the Tenderloin now felt that weight, that pressure, that collective shame—which wasn’t really shame at all, just the consternation and condemnation from others.
The only item that had somehow been spared the liquidation was the Marmon Roadster. The shiny black automobile had never officially been placed in Madam Flora’s name, so to the authorities it didn’t exist. Mrs. Blackwell and Professor True had agreed that Ernest should have it. The Professor told him to keep the coachman’s uniform and use his experience to make a living. Ernest gratefully accepted.
As he went inside, he was sad to be leaving the people he’d come to care about, but he was more hopeful for whatever life he and Fahn could create outside of a world where people were bought and sold. He’d been charmed, for a while, but the illusion had faded. And deep down, Ernest knew that his angular life could never fit back into a traditional box. He recognized that as he watched Violet, Iris, and Rose emerge from the kitchen holding on to one another, a real-life frieze of the Three Graces that Madam Flora had taught the upstairs girls about. Though the faces of the maids were masks of sadness, melancholy, and apprehension, rather than splendor, mirth, and good cheer.
The servants would have the biggest challenge. They were leaving a house of ill repute, without a reference, turned out into a city that was undergoing a moral cleansing. The righteous, upstanding women who had forced Mayor Gill from office would hold no desire to hire domestics who bore the stain of the red-light district. And Ernest was sure the men who’d gladly partaken of the Tenderloin’s services would not be of help to the servants in finding placements. Ernest had known unkindness, he’d known outright hatred, but he’d never fully understood hypocrisy until now.
The servants had waited, hoping to eke out a few more days until the water and electricity were shut off. Now he figured that most of them would find menial jobs at poor farms or in flophouses. Mrs. Blackwell had found employment running the kitchen at the halfway house on Beacon Hill known as the Lazy Husband Ranch. Ernest knew, because he’d driven the old cook to her new job at the Municipal Workhouse and Stockade. He’d hugged her and then waved farewell.
As he embraced each of the maids and said goodbye, they promised to be in touch once they landed on their feet. But when they walked out the door, he didn’t hold out hope that he would ever see any of them again.
That’s the one consistent pattern to my life, Ernest thought. When people say goodbye, they mean it.
That’s how it had been with his mother and with Madam Flora and Miss Amber. He wished the same wouldn’t be true with Maisie. He hoped that their threads of happiness and sadness, joy and grief, would somehow intertwine again. But he also understood that his loss might have been her gain, and he struggled to accept his part of that equation.
Ernest thought about the good times as he wandered past his packed suitcase in the foyer to the empty salon and then the smoking room, vacant of everything but the scent of tobacco. He lingered in the library, now absent of books. And he inhaled the stale air of the formal dining room, which—stripped of the tin ceiling and the wainscoting—seemed more bare than any of the girls had ever been. The only things that remained were the piano and a smattering of cases, hatboxes, and steamer trunks that belonged to the upstairs girls.
Most of the older ladies were moving on to sporting houses in Tacoma, while the younger ones had found work on the Levee in Chicago. And Nellie Curtis, who dared to set herself up as Seattle’s next great madam, despite the chilly moral climate, had taken in a handful of the girls. She was already establishing a name for herself at the Camp Hotel on First Avenue, flouting the county’s new policies and Seattle’s new mayor, George Dilling. Word on the street, though, was that Naughty Nellie was all business and had no interest in helping the girls elevate their status in society.
“She’s not interested in the parlor life,” Professor True had grumbled, shaking his head. “She’s just running an ordinary crib.”
Ernest had bid each of the remaining Gibson girls farewell as they descended the grand staircase one last time. Their mournfulness, like their expensive perfume, lingered long after they’d departed. As Ernest hugged Jewel, last to leave, he knew that of all the upstairs girls, he’d miss her the most.
“And where are you off to?” he asked.
“Ladies’ choice.” She held up a stack of cards and letters, bound with a red ribbon. “I’m going to check into a fine hotel, order a bottle of wine, draw a nice long bubble bath, put my feet up, and slowly read all the marriage proposals I’ve received in the last year. One of them is bound to be a keeper. Though to be honest, Ernest, if you were a little bit older, darling—you’d be my first pick.”
“And if my heart were my own…” He smiled.
Jewel put a gloved finger to Ernest’s heart. “But it’s not, is it?” She planted a long, lingering kiss on his surprised lips. Then she kissed Professor True on both cheeks as he walked into the room. She smiled, grabbed her suitcase, and bounded down the steps.
“That one will do just fine,” the Professor said, fanning himself with his hat. “Give her enough time and she might get herself elected mayor.”
“She’s got my vote,” Ernest said.
“Mine too.”
The working girls will keep on working one way or another, Ernest thought. If not, there’s the White Shield Home in Tacoma, a refuge he’d suggested to Fahn. But she had other plans. Besides, she couldn’t bear to leave the neighborhood.
As sunset approached, Ernest helped Professor True and a group of colored men load the piano up a steep ramp and onto a flatbed hay truck, where they covered it with a canvas tarp and long stretches of heavy rope.
“Time for me to fly, young man—wish I could take you with.”
“And where might that be?” Ernest asked.