“Is that compromise?” Marian says. “It sounds a little bit like procrastination. You don’t think you’ll go back to being how you were before, do you?”
“No,” he says thoughtfully, “but the worry is always in the back of my mind. I think worrying acts as a kind of brake. Anyway, I’ve been concentrating on painting. I’ve sold some in the club’s exhibitions. And there’s a photographer here, Flavian—he’s from Belgium—who’s opened a gallery and wants to sell my work.”
“That’s good.” She peers into her teacup. “This tastes like plants.”
“Tea is plants.”
“If you sell another couple paintings, could you move out of that place where you’re living? It looked like a flophouse.”
“It is one, basically, but I don’t know where else I would want to go. That’s the problem. I might as well stay where I am and save the money. This way I can afford my share in the studio, too.”
“Can we go there? I want to see what you’ve been painting.”
“We’ll go this afternoon.” He leans forward, lowers his voice. “But, Marian, what are you going to do?”
“I can’t have it,” she says again. “I would have gone to Miss Dolly’s—there’s someone there who could help—but Barclay would find out in no time. So I was thinking I’d ask at the brothels here until someone tells me where to go.”
When he thinks of Barclay, he feels the same fury as he had years ago, when he’d almost killed the boy who’d been throwing stones at that dog. The fury, logically, exists only within the confines of his mind, his body, but it seems so much bigger and stronger than he is, elemental, something that might break him apart from the inside. He imagines Marian knocking at brothel doors, being sent to some disreputable doctor. A dark room, a tray of rusted instruments. “Barclay would kill you if he knew.”
“I don’t think so. But even if I knew he would, it wouldn’t change anything.”
What can he offer her? He knows nothing about the secret doings of women. He thinks of the prostitute he visited in Gastown, can’t imagine asking her for the time of day, let alone help in procuring an abortion for his sister. Judith might know, but he wouldn’t trust her to keep a secret. Then a connection shunts into place in his brain so forcefully there’s an actual physical sensation. “I know someone—” He pauses. Does he know her? The sum of his knowledge is small but suggests she is capable and compassionate, invested in this kind of problem. What if she turns Marian away, though? Then Marian will do what she is planning to do anyway. What if she has Marian arrested? She wouldn’t—he thinks he knows that much, at least.
“You should go to Seattle,” he says. “I know someone there who might be able to help you. It’s better than not knowing anyone.”
Marian goes to Seattle by train, in an ordinary traveling dress bought for its ordinariness, an ordinary hat to cover her short hair, plain shoes. She carries a new suitcase containing another such disguise and also her old clothes, which serve as a talisman, a promise she will soon revert into her real self. She gives a false name when she checks into her hotel: Mrs. Jane Smith springing into existence.
“You’re just like your portrait,” Mrs. Fahey says. They are in a downtown bistro.
“Portrait?”
“Jamie drew you for us. I still have it. I’ll bring it to show you tomorrow. He did it from memory, which seemed extraordinary to me and even more so now that I see how apt it was.” She puts her hand on Marian’s. “I’m so pleased to meet you, even though I’m sorry the circumstances aren’t happier. I don’t know how Jamie knew to contact me. I’ve helped other girls in situations like yours, but I certainly never mentioned anything about that to him. He must have good intuition.”
“He does, usually, and he adored you and your daughters.”
Mrs. Fahey, perhaps hearing the exclusion of her husband, smiles and releases Marian’s hand. “He and Sarah in particular had a special friendship.” She stirs sugar into her coffee. “I’d like for you to meet her, but now might not be the time. How is Jamie? He didn’t say anything about himself in his letter. I’ve been imagining him at the University of Montana, but the postmark was from Vancouver.”
“He’s well.” Marian hesitates, wondering if this elegant woman, lifting her coffee cup so delicately by its handle, won’t find Jamie’s life strange or disappointing. “He’s trying to be an artist.”