ANSWER:No.
QUESTION:Do you see my problem, Mrs. Hocking? The man you unlawfully wedded is in the habit of marrying women for their wealth and then, in at least one case that we know of, perhaps disposing of them. But you are not like the others. These other women cared for the man they thought they were marrying. You do not. They had wealth. You do not. You know who he is. They did not. Do you see the predicament I am in?
ANSWER:I told you already. I am not like him. I wondered, too, why he married me. He said it was to appear to be a successful insurance man blessed with a wife and child. But I soon knew that couldn’t be true, because no one related to his business ever saw me. For a long time I didn’t know the true reason, either. But I figured it out when I took Kat to Candace. And you listen to me, sir, about that. I took Kat to her mother because it was the right thing to do. It was also the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, because I love that child. I love her as if she is my own flesh and blood. But I did it. I brought her to her real mother. Candace thought she would die without seeing her child again. I cried with Candace and I held her and I cared for her just like I did with Belinda, becausethat’sthe kind of person I am.
QUESTION:One moment. You just said, for a time you didn’t know why Martin Hocking married you, but then you met Candace and it became clear, that you figured it out. Does that mean that now you do know why he married you?
ANSWER:Yes.
19
Oakland has become a teeming city of refuge, akin to Golden Gate Park on the first day of the fires. Boats of every shape and size have been ferrying people across the bay for the last three days. As we make our way from the landing to the street, I hear someone remark that hundreds upon hundreds of Chinese men andwomen and their children have flooded Oakland’s Chinatown. The place is swarmed; it can absorb no more. Other displaced San Franciscans have gone on to Berkeley, where the gymnasium at the university has been turned into a lodging house. Dozens of homeless slept on university grounds last night under the oaks.
Multitudes of others have headed to the telegraph offices, the doors of which are now being guarded by soldiers to keep people in line and in some semblance of order. Stacks of messages to be sent are piled high in the one telegraph office we can get to onfoot. Belinda had thought she would send a telegram to her friend Elliot to let him know we are coming, but I don’t see how we will get that message to him before boarding a train that will take us first south along the bay to San Jose and then north again to San Mateo.
“But there will be no one there to meet us at the station,” Belinda tells me when we turn from the long queue outside the telegraph office nearest the pier.
I assure her that after all that we have come through the last few days, we will surely find a way to get to San Rafaela from the station, which she says is three miles away.
We leave, only to stand in an equally long line for three train tickets. By the time we get to the counter, though, there are no more seats available on south-going trains for the day. We are given tickets for a train leaving midmorning tomorrow. We are told by a kind woman at the door that if we wish, we can take shelter in the First Presbyterian Church tonight, as they have turned their pews into beds and the women of the church are preparing food for as many as the church can hold. So this is what we do.
There is little privacy inside the church sanctuary, but we find a back-row pew that offers the most we can expect. I can’t help but watch as Belinda nurses the child once we settle in. It is such a beautiful sight. My own breasts ache with how beautiful it is. All around is chaos, but the baby simply does what babies do. She nurses in her mother’s arms while Belinda sits on a hard pew in a crowded church full of displaced people. The baby would do the same if she were in a palace. Everything is just fine in her tiny little universe, and she will have no memory of all this. While Belinda, Kat, and the baby rest, I wash out the few diapers we have under a spigot outside and set them to dry on the limbs of asquat hawthorn bush. Supper is stew and dumplings and apple brown betty for dessert, and, oh, how wonderful the simple meal tastes.
We awaken in the morning, where, on any other Sunday, the room would be filled with parishioners dressed in their finest, but today the reverend simply moves through the pews of grime-covered refugees, greeting us and offering a prayer over those who ask for it. We head to the train station an hour after breakfast and wait in the crowded terminal for our train to San Jose. I have never boarded a train looking like I know I must look. I’ve not bathed in a week or attended my hair. I am wearing the same dirty clothes I wore four days ago when we fled the pavilion. But I look around at the other passengers, and most look the same as me. Some look worse. There are a few paying customers who are clean and kempt, and they look upon the rest of us with pity.
We take our seats aboard the train car and I notice that someone has left a copy of the Oakland morning paper on the cushion. The front page contains story after story of the San Francisco quake and fire. More than six hundred persons are either known to be dead or missing. At least a thousand are injured. Most of these have been transported to hospitals outside the fire section, but some are still being treated at refugee camps like Golden Gate Park and the Presidio. Tens upon tens of thousands of evacuees do not have homes to return to, and five hundred city blocks—four and a half square miles—have been destroyed. I also read that San Francisco is not the only city damaged. North of the peninsula in Santa Rosa there is as much damage relative to the size of the city as in San Francisco, perhaps more. And at Stanford University the roof and ceiling at the memorial church collapsed. More than one hundred patients and hospital staff diedinside the destroyed Agnews State Hospital closer to San Jose. The movement of the earth was felt by people as far north as Oregon and as far south as Los Angeles.
I set the newspaper aside as the train chuffs away from the station. I don’t want to read any more about how terrible the quake and fires were. I know well enough what they did, and what I hope they did. The upholstered seats are far more comfortable than the pews we lay upon last night, and in no time at all, the four of us have fallen asleep.
An hour later I awaken as we are pulling into San Jose. There is evidence in its downtown of crumbled buildings and structure fires, no doubt caused by broken gas lines. But the burned-out sections are contained and small. San Jose’s firemen clearly had access to water. We change trains to head back up the peninsula to San Mateo, some thirty miles away. As we ease out of the city, the view outside our window changes from cityscape to rolling hills and pastureland. The sight of such simple, natural beauty is almost too much for the eyes after so many days looking at ruin and loss. I was annoyed that our only way to get to Belinda’s home was such a meandering, complicated process, but the pastoral sights outside the glass as we get ever nearer to her inn are calming.
When we enter San Mateo, I can see bits of crushed brick and stone at the foot of some buildings from fallen chimneys and fascia, and as we pull into the station, there is a wooden building off to the side of the depot that has caved in. All of this is evidence that the earthquake shook this town, too. Still, I am reminded a bit of Donaghadee as we step out onto the small platform. There isn’t the salty tang of the Irish Sea, but the feel of the town—peaceful and unhurried—is the same. Belinda told me minutesbefore that she went to secondary school here, and that it’s where everyone in San Rafaela goes to shop if not within the pages of the Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog. We step inside the none-too-large station, and out again to the street to see about hiring a carriage. Belinda has money at the inn to pay a driver, if he will just get us there. I still have found no implement with which to pry open the strongbox to see if there is cash inside.
Again we are reminded of how we must look as we approach a gray-haired carriage driver for hire. His eyes widen a bit, just like everyone else’s have as we’ve walked through the station, but he seems to quickly figure out where we’ve come from.
“Fled the fires in San Francisco, did you?” he says when he takes the travel case from me.
“Yes,” I tell him, grateful not to have to explain anything.
“More of you have been coming this way yesterday and today. No trains out of the Townsend station, I hear,” he says as he assists Belinda onto the seat. “We had a bit of damage here, too. Not like you had, of course. The jail and the railroad freight depot over yonder came down, and the orphanage is a heap. All the young ones got out, though. City hall and the library are gone.”
“What about San Rafaela?” Belinda says. “Was it bad in San Rafaela?”
Good Lord, don’t let anything have happened to her inn, I mutter to myself. Not after everything else she’s lost.
“Well,” the driver says, “I hear people lost their chimneys and some folks’ houses wobbled off their groundings. No one died there, though, I don’t think. Is that where you’re headed?”
“Yes, please,” I tell him as I help Kat in and climb in beside her. “The Loralei Inn.”
We set off, making our way quickly out of the little city andinto the countryside. We pass farms and orchards and country mansions that appear undamaged, at least from this distance. All is serene and calm, but I know Belinda is straining to see her home come into view.
San Rafaela is a small former mining town, with a mercantile, a feed store, a post office, a primary school, and a handful of other businesses on its single main street, and then houses large and small on side streets and out among groves of trees. After we pass the school, I see a carpentry shop and I wonder if it’s Elliot’s. Then off to our left is the road sign for the Loralei Inn. It’s painted white with tiny blue flowers and trailing vines and it’s swinging slightly on its hinges in a breeze. It’s not until we pass a huge sycamore blocking the full view that we can see that the structure is still standing.
Beside me, Belinda lets out the breath she’d been holding. I don’t think either one of us had considered that the earthquake might’ve wrecked the inn until we saw the damage in nearby San Mateo. I know without even asking her that the inn is more to her than just her livelihood, and I’m surprised anew that she has asked me to come live with her here. The inn is part stone and part wood; the stone no doubt played a role in its survival. The window frames are painted forest green and the rest of the trim and beams are polished redwood. It is three stories high and surrounded by trees except for a fenced patch of sunlight off to the side—Belinda’s herb garden. Two large clay pots of lobelia and white alyssum are stationed at the bottom of the porch stairs; one of them is cracked wide, a result of the quake, I am guessing.
We have no sooner pulled into the gravel approach than the screened front door opens and a young man steps out. He is tall and slender, with curly reddish brown hair. He is not handsome,but he has a kind face and gentle features. He stands there for a moment, head cocked, wondering, I suppose, if we’ve come about a room. I know without Belinda saying it that this is Elliot. I step out with Kat, and the driver assists Belinda and the baby out the other side. Belinda comes around the back of the carriage and I behold the second Elliot recognizes her.
The man is at Belinda’s side in seconds.
