Chapter 16
“Maggie, a chroi!”
My heart, the endearment her father had always used. Maggie laughed a little tearfully as he embraced her, smelling of sweat and stale smoke and spirits, a combination that felt all too familiar, and yet her current life was a million miles away from it.
It had been over three months since she’d started the nursing program at the Children’s Hospital, and this was the first time she’d been able—or really, willing—to get away to visit her family…
and Brendan, although as Maggie looked around when her father had released her, she realized she couldn’t see Brendan anywhere, and she did her best to quash a treacherous flicker of disappointment.
There was no reason, she told herself, why he should seek her out.
“It’s been so long,” her father exclaimed, and Maggie gave an apologetic grimace.
It wasn’t, she knew, that she hadn’t wanted to see her father and brother, but more that with every passing day she’d spent at the hospital, her life back here among the dance halls and parlor houses of the Barbary Coast had felt like a distant dream she was unsure whether she wanted to revisit.
She’d meant to go, and yet with only one afternoon every two weeks off—and sometimes not even that—she’d struggled to find the time, as well as the will.
There had been so much else to do—her afternoons off were her only chance to see to any mending and the washing and any errands, and more recently, since her dinner with the Browns and Philip’s invitation to accompany him and his sister to a lecture, there had been far more pleasant entertainments to be enjoyed during those precious few free hours.
Philip and Adelaide had invited her to several other lectures, as well as a stroll through Golden Gate Park and dinner at the Cliff House, overlooking the city and the bay.
Once a remote roadhouse for hopeful 49ers, it was now one of the city’s finest restaurants, and she, Philip and Adelaide had dined on baked lobster and the newly created dessert, peach melba, before taking the private train operated by the hotel owners back down into the city.
Maggie enjoyed both of their friendships, as well as the robust conversations they had about everything, for it was clear both Philip and Adeliade certainly enjoyed an argument.
At the Cliff House, Adelaide had nearly sent her lobster flying off the table when she’d waved her fork to make a point about the importance of safety measures in the sweatshops.
“I know the sweatshops are firetraps,” Philip had replied with a faint smile on his handsome face, “but first you have to raise wages.” He’d turned to Maggie, one dark eyebrow arched. “Maggie, what do you think?”
Maggie still felt surprised every time either Philip or Adelaide asked her opinion and then waited for her answer, seeming so interested to know it.
She hadn’t felt so listened to in a long time, especially by those who were so clearly above her in station.
But Philip and Adelaide never made her feel as if she was beneath them, something that gratified Maggie even as she recognized, rather wryly, that they both had a distant observer’s fascination for the hard life she’d lived before starting her nurse’s training, the conditions she’d faced.
“I think there shouldn’t be any sweatshops in the first place,” she’d told them both as she’d taken a bite of lobster, savoring the taste.
“They’re unregulated in every regard, and as you’ve said, the conditions, as well as the wages, are dreadful and untenable, thanks to the whims of the owner who can do whatever he likes.
Far better to have a proper factory where both wages and working conditions can meet a proper standard—and be approved and inspected. ”
Besides her time with the Browns, Maggie had gotten to know some of the other trainee nurses.
Although they were kept busy all day on the wards, and then lectures in the evening, there was still some time to sit together in the residence’s sitting room, studying their textbooks or sometimes even singing music hall tunes around the old, battered piano—Wilhemina, one of the nurses, was a wonderful pianist and could switch seamlessly to a respectable hymn when Miss Caldicot was in earshot.
And although Maggie still felt a little set apart thanks to her humble background, her friendship with the Browns had elevated her in the other nurses’ eyes—some were impressed, others, Maggie suspected, envious.
Wilhemina, at least, seemed to accept her as she was.
All in all, it had been a busy three months, exhausting but happy, and as glad as she was to see her family, returning to Montgomery Street felt, Maggie acknowledged, like slamming back down to hard earth.
She could not suppress a pang of guilt as she embraced her brother, glancing around once more for Brendan, although, with a flash of disappointment, she couldn’t see him anywhere.
The last time they’d spoken properly had been before she’d started her training, when she’d thanked him for buying back her mother’s cameo and ring.
Brendan had been curt, even dismissive, seeming almost annoyed that she was thanking him, or maybe that he’d bought them back at all.
They’d parted company in a most unsatisfactory manner.
“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?
” her father remarked as he led her past the drawing room—now in use for entertaining guests since it was afternoon—and back to the kitchen.
As Maggie walked down the hall, listening to the rumble of male voices and the answering trill of feminine laughter, often touched with desperation, she knew exactly why she hadn’t come to Montgomery Street before this—to avoid the glaring reminder of what this life had been like.
“Ah, Maggie, it’s good to see you, girl!
” Mrs. Adams exclaimed as Maggie came into the kitchen.
From the stove, where she was stirring a sauce, Evie gave her a sulky glare.
Nothing had changed there, Maggie thought wryly, but she hadn’t expected it to.
She should have made more of an effort with the girl, but it had been hard when every attempt she had made had been rebuffed.
“It’s good to see you too, Mrs. Adams,” Maggie replied. “I do hope we’re not in your way.”
“Not at all!” the cook replied cheerfully. “Let me finish dressing this lamb and then I’ll put the kettle on. Keep stirring that sauce, Evie, my girl, and don’t let it curdle!” With an exasperated shake of her head, she bustled about her business.
“Drink?” her father asked, proffering his flask with a wink, and quickly, Maggie shook her head.
“No… no thank you, Da.” She glanced at Danny, who was loitering in the doorway, dressed in the three-piece suit he’d bought back in Chicago. “You’re looking well, Danny,” she remarked.
He glanced down at his suit with obvious pride. “It’s smart, isn’t it?”
“Danny and I have been doing a little business as of late,” their father explained as he took a nip from his flask before pocketing it. “We’ve become enterprising gentlemen, don’t you know!”
“Oh?” Maggie tried to suppress the frisson of alarm such news instinctively caused her. She prayed whatever they were doing, it was aboveboard. “What kind of business?”
“Oh, just a little buying and selling down by the waterfront,” Danny told her breezily. “You don’t need to frown like that, Mags—I know what you’re thinking! It’s all perfectly safe and legal, I swear.”
“I wasn’t frowning,” Maggie protested with a laugh, even though she knew she had been. “I’m glad to hear it, at any rate.” Hopefully her brother was telling the truth.
“You don’t need to worry about us,” their father assured her comfortably. “We’re doing all right.”
“And Brendan?” Maggie asked after a moment, glancing around as if he might suddenly appear. “How is he?”
“Oh, same as ever, I suppose,” their da replied. “Keepin’ busy here, doing all sorts of errands for Miss Jessie. I think she’s fond of him, you know. Right fond.” He winked knowingly, and Maggie had to work to school her expression into something resembling nothing more than polite interest.
“Oh?” she asked, and she knew she sounded brittle. She felt a hot flare of jealousy she knew she had no right to feel.
“You ain’t jealous, are you?” Danny asked, a surprising note of sympathy in his voice as he leaned forward to clap her on the shoulder.
She would have expected her brother to tease her about any feelings she might have for Brendan, but the fact that he wasn’t alarmed her all the further.
Brendan and Miss Jessie must be serious, then.
“Not after all this time?” he continued, frowning.
“Brendan said the two of you were just friends.”
“We’ve only ever been just friends,” Maggie replied quickly. “Of course I’m not jealous.” She saw her father and brother exchange glances, and she knew she hadn’t fooled them—and not herself, either. “He and Miss Jessie…?” she forced herself to ask, unable to finish the question.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” their father said hastily. “As to any actual goings-on. But she likes him well enough, that’s for certain.”
“Well, he’s a likeable fellow,” Maggie replied lightly.
She could imagine what a breath of fresh air a man like Brendan, so friendly and kind, honest and goodhearted, was to the understandably jaded Miss Jessie.
He was so different from the rough sailors or oily businessmen whom she was forced to welcome to her parlor house.
It didn’t hurt that Brendan was a handsome man, either, with his light brown hair brushed back from his forehead, his hazel eyes that glinted so often with good humor.
“But we want to hear about you,” Maggie’s father insisted jovially. “Tell us all about your nursing!”
“Do you get do anything grisly?” Danny asked with interest. “Cut off a leg or some such?”