Sister Noon

  More Extraordinary Praise for Sister Noon

  “In Sister Noon, Karen Joy Fowler re-creates a lost world so thrillingly, with such intelligence, trickery, and art, that when you at last put the book down and look up from the page it all seems to linger, shimmering, around you, like the residue of a marvelous dream.”

  —Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

  “Fowler’s prose is full of shimmering melancholy, and a ruminative irony that brings her characters and their world alive in the most unexpected ways—reading Sister Noon is like staring at early portrait photographs until the eyes begin to shine and your head is filled with voices that urge you to recall that these vanished lives, and your own, are stranger than you allow. A dazzling book.”

  —Jonathan Lethem, bestselling author of Motherless Brooklyn

  “A playful literary mystery.”

  —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Fowler has a voice like no other, lyrical, shrewd, and addictive, with a quiet deadpan humor that underlies almost every sentence.”

  —Newsday

  “Fowler’s lyrical prose and deft use of historical fact are a joy to read. She also exhibits a sly sense of humorž.ž.ž.žA strange and enchanting novel.”

  —The Oregonian

  Karen Joy Fowler, a PEN/Faulkner and Dublin IMPAC nominee, is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Jane Austen Book Club, and the New York Times Notable books Sarah Canary, The Sweetheart Season, and Black Glass: Short Fictions. She lives in Davis, California.

  More Praise for The Jane Austen Book Club

  “This exquisite novel is bigger and more ambitious than it appears. It’s that rare book that reminds us what reading is all about.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Karen Joy Fowler deserves every success this savvy, episodic but chamois-smooth novel can bring. Reminiscent in places of Carol Shields at her best, The Jane Austen Book Club amounts to a witty meditation on how the books we choose, choose us too.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “It’s natural to approach a novel titled The Jane Austen Book Club with caution, but Karen Joy Fowler’s funny, erudite novel proved to be a surprise and a delight, a tribute to Austen that manages to capture her spirit.”

  —The Boston Globe

  PLUME

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York, 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182–190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Previously published in a Putnam edition.

  First Plume Printing, June 2002

  Copyright © Karen Joy Fowler, 2001

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  The Library of Congress has catalogued the Putnam edition as follows:

  Fowler, Karen Joy.

  Sister noon : a novel/Karen Joy Fowler.

  p. cm.

  “A Marian Wood book”

  ISBN: 978-1-101-65984-7

  1. San Francisco (Calif.)—Fiction. 2. Women—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3556.0844 S57 2001 00-046025

  813’.54—dc21

  Original hardcover design by Amanda Dewey

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN PUTNAM INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

  For Marian and Wendy,

  East Coast angels

  I had, as always, a lot of help. Thank you, Debbie and Darcy Smith, Clinton Lawrence, Alan Elms, Sara Streich, Carter Scholz, Angus MacDonald, Pat Murphy, Michael Blumlein, Laura Miller, Michael Berry, Richard Russo, Sean Stewart, Nancy Ogle, Jonathan Elkus, and Jeff Walker.

  Most particular thanks to Kelly Link. I couldn’t have finished without you, Kelly.

  Thanks to Helen Holdridge for the Holdridge Collection at the San Francisco Public Library.

  And to the MacDowell Colony for time and space.

  Marian Wood and Wendy Weil.

  Hugh, too.

  Words were invented so that lies could be told.

  MARY ELLEN PLEASANT

  Table of Contents

  Prelude

  Visits

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Visitations

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Teresa Bell

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ti Wong

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  The Good Manners Club

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  The Ogre Mother

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  PRELUDE

  In 1894, Mrs. Putnam took Lizzie Hayes to the Midwinter Exhibition in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, where they both used a telephone for the very first time. They stood behind curtains at opposite ends of a great hall, with only their shoes showing from the outside. “Isn’t this a wonder?” Mrs. Putnam asked. Her voice was high and tight, as if it had been stretched to reach. “And someday you’ll be able to call the afterlife, just as easy. Now that we’ve taken this first step.”

  There was a droning in Lizzie’s ear as if, indeed, a multitude of distant voices were also speaking to her. But that was merely the thought Mrs. Putnam had put in her mind. Lizzie might just as easily have heard the ocean or the ceaseless insectile buzz that underlies the material world.

  It made little practical difference. The dead are terrible gossips. They don’t remember, or they don’t care to say, or, if they do talk, then they all talk at once. They can’t be questioned. They won’t change a word, no matter how preposterous. The truth might look like a story. A lie might outlast a fact. You must remember that, for everything that follows, we have only the word of someone long dead.

  In 1852, while on his way from Valparaiso to San Francisco aboard the steamship Oregon, a clerk named Thomas Bell met a woman named Madame Christophe. Mr. Bell was an underling at Bolton, Barron, and Company, a firm specializing in cotton, mining, and double d
eals. Madame Christophe was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, very tall, with clouds of dark hair and rosy, satiny skin. Her most remarkable feature was her eyes, for they didn’t match. One was blue and one was brown, and yet the difference was subtle and likely to be noticed only on a close and careful inspection and only when she was looking right at you. She did this often.

  One night they stood together at the rail. The stars were as thick and yellow as grapes. There was a silver road of moonlight on the black surface of the ocean. Thomas Bell was asking questions. Where had she come from? Madame Christophe told him she was a widow from New Orleans. Where was she going? Who was she? Whom did she know in San Francisco?

  She turned her eyes on him, which made him catch his breath. “Why do you look at me like that?” he asked.

  “Why do you ask so many questions?” Her voice was full of slow vowels, soft stops. “Words were invented so that lies could be told. If you want to know someone, don’t listen to what they say. Look at them. Look at me,” she said. “Look closely.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “What does that tell you?”

  Mr. Bell couldn’t look closely. His vision was clouded by his ardor. But he saw her shiver. He rushed to his cabin for a wrap to lend her, a green and black tartan shawl.

  They debarked in San Francisco. In the crush of people, she got into a carriage, and he lost sight of her.

  She should have been easy to find. There were so few women in San Francisco. Fewer still were beautiful. He sent inquiries to all the hotels. None had a Madame Christophe registered. He asked everyone he knew, he spoke of her everywhere, but could say only that she was a widow from New Orleans, that her eyes didn’t match, and that she had his shawl. He was forced to depart for Mexico, where he would conduct negotiations concerning the New Almadén mine, without seeing her again.

  In the 1850s, most of the people who made up San Francisco’s society had once been or still were distinctly disreputable. In 1855, when Belle Cora, a popular madame, inadvertently caused the murder of a United States marshal simply by assuming she could sit in that part of the theater occupied by respectably married women, it was not always so easy to explain why one person was top-hole and another was not.

  But Mrs. Nora Radford’s case was simple. Her husband had died owing everyone money. Her conversation, she overheard young Mrs. Putnam say, was interesting enough, only there was too much of it. This observation was as hurtful as it was inaccurate. She had always been considered rather witty. Mrs. Putnam and everybody else knew that she was more surprised than anyone by her husband’s debts.

  She refused to blame him for any of it. In fact, she was impressed. How clever he must have been to have fooled them all.

  And she was touched. How hard he must have worked to give her such a sense of security. Much harder than if he’d actually had money. Forty years of marriage and he’d never once let it slip. She moved into rooms and missed her husband hourly.

  Her new home was in the country, overlooking a graveyard. This was not as dismal as it might sound. She had a curtained bed and a carved dressing table. The cemetery was filled with flowers. On a warm day, the scent came in on the sunshine. The boardinghouse was called Geneva Cottage.

  Her landlady was a tireless southern woman named Mrs. Ellen Smith. Mrs. Smith took in laundry and worked as housekeeper for Selim Woodworth, a wealthy San Francisco businessman. It was Mr. Woodworth who had suggested the arrangement to Mrs. Radford. Mr. Woodworth was a prominent philanthropist, a kind and thoughtful man whose marked attentions to her after her husband’s death, in contrast to the disregard of others, vouched for his quality. “My Mrs. Smith,” he said warmly. “She works hard and makes canny investments. I don’t know why she continues on as my housekeeper. Perhaps her fortunes have been so vagarious, she can never be secure. But she is a wonderful woman, as devoted to helping the unfortunate as she is to making a living in the world. That’s where her money goes.” He tipped his hat, continued his way down the little muddy track that was Market Street. Mrs. Radford hoisted her heavy skirts, their hems weighted with bird shot as a precaution against the wind, and picked her way through the mud. She took his advice immediately.

  Mrs. Radford’s initial impression of her landlady was that she was about thirty years old. In fact, this fell somewhat short of the mark. But also that she was beautiful, which was accurate. The first time Mrs. Radford saw her, she was sitting in a sunlit pool on the faded brocade of the parlor sofa. In Mrs. Radford’s mind she always retained that golden glow.

  “You’ll find me here when the sun is shining,” Mrs. Smith told her. “I never will get used to the cold.”

  “It seems to get colder every year,” Mrs. Radford agreed. The words came out too serious, too sad. There was an embarrassing element of self-pity she hadn’t intended.

  Mrs. Smith smiled. “I hope we can make you feel at home here.” She looked straight at Mrs. Radford. Her eyes didn’t match. There was a shawl of green and black plaid on the sofa.

  Mrs. Radford thought of her friend Mr. Bell. She couldn’t remember the name of his vanished shipmate, but she was sure it wasn’t Ellen Smith. Something foreign, something Latin. Mrs. Smith’s beauty was darkly Mediterranean.

  She stood and was surprisingly tall, a whole head above Mrs. Radford. “Take a cup of tea with me.”

  The kitchen was an elegant place of astral lamps and oil chandeliers. There were golden cupids in the wallpaper, and a young Negro man who swept the floor and washed the dishes while they talked. Mrs. Smith filled her cup half with cream, heaped it with sugar. She stirred it and stirred it.

  “I can’t quite place your accent,” Mrs. Radford said.

  “Oh, it’s a mix, all right. I’ve lived a great many places.” Mrs. Smith stared into her clouded tea. She lifted the cup and blew on it.

  “I lived on the hill,” Mrs. Radford said, coaxing her into confidences by offering her own. “Until my husband died. I’m quite come down in the world.”

  “You’ll rise again. I started with nothing.”

  Mrs. Radford had often been embarrassed at how much beauty meant to her. At the age when Mrs. Radford might have been beautiful herself, she suffered badly from acne. It pitted her skin, and her lovely hair was little compensation. At the time, she’d thought her life was over. But then she’d made such a happy marriage and it had hardly seemed to matter. God had granted her a great love. And yet she had never stopped wishing she were beautiful, had apparently learned nothing from her own life. She would have been the first to admit this. It would have hurt her to have had ugly children, and this was a painful thing to know about herself. As it turned out, she had no children at all. “You had beauty,” she said.

  Mrs. Smith raised her extraordinary eyes. “I suppose I did.” The day was clouding. The sun went off and on again, like a blink. Mrs. Smith turned her head. “My mother was beautiful. It did her no particular good. I lost her early. She used to fret so over me—what would happen to me, who would take care of me. She told me to go out to the road and stand where I would be seen. That was the last thing she said to me.”

  It had been just a little back lane, without much traffic. The fence was falling into ruins; she stepped over it easily. She could see to the end of the road, shimmering in the distance like a dream. There was an apple tree over her head, blossoming into pink and filled with the sound of bees. She stood and waited all morning, crying from time to time about her mother, until she was sleepy from the sun and the buzzing and the crying, and no one came by.

  Finally, in the early afternoon, when the sun had started to slant past her, she heard a horse in the distance. The sound grew louder. She raised her hand to shade her eyes. The horse was black. The man was as old as her grandfather, who was also her father, truth be told.

  He almost went by her. He was half asleep on the slow-moving horse, but when she moved, a breath only, he stopped so suddenly that saliva dripped from the silver bit onto the road. He looked her over and removed his hat. “What
’s your name?” he asked. She said nothing. He reached out a hand. “Well, I’m not fussy,” he told her. “How would you like to go to New Orleans?” And that was how she moved up in the world, by putting her foot in the stirrup.

  “I was ten years old.”

  “Oh, my dear.” Mrs. Radford was shocked and distressed.

  Mrs. Smith put her hand on Mrs. Radford’s arm. Mrs. Radford had rarely been touched by anyone since her husband died. Sometimes her skin ached for it, all over her body. Where did an old woman with no children go to be touched? Mrs. Smith’s hand was warm. “It wasn’t the way you’re thinking. He turned out very kind,” she said.

  Mrs. Radford adjusted to country living as well as could be expected. The laundry was a busy place. The cemetery was not. She especially enjoyed her evenings. She would join Mrs. Smith. The parlor would be brightened by a lively fire. They would drink a soothing concoction Mrs. Smith called “balm tea.” “Just a splash of rum,” Mrs. Smith assured her, but it went straight to Mrs. Radford’s head. In these convivial surroundings, she told Mrs. Smith how she had planned once to teach.

  “I had a train ticket to Minneapolis. I had a job. I’d only known Alexander a week. But he came to the station and asked me to marry him. ‘I want to see the world before I get married,’ I told him. ‘See it after,’ he said. ‘See it with me.’”

  “And did you?”

  His actual language had been much more passionate—things Mrs. Radford could hardly repeat, but would never forget. His voice remained with her more vividly than his face; over the years it had changed less. It pleased her to speak of him; she was grateful to Mrs. Smith for listening. “I saw my corner of it. It was a very happy corner.”

  In her turn, Mrs. Radford heard that Mrs. Smith’s original benefactor, a Mr. Price, had taken her to a convent school in New Orleans. She spent a year there, learning to read and write. Then he sent her to Cincinnati. She lived with some friends of his named Williams. “I was to go to school for four more years and also to help Mrs. Williams with the children. She made quite a pet of me, at first.