Sometimes after Doctor Willy had left and Erika and I had gone to our rooms, I would mimic him, thickening his accent, wringing my hands as he did, even making my eyes grow wet with sentimental tears. Erika laughed and so did I, but my laughter was a noise to cover shame. I was ashamed of fooling such a nice man. I was ashamed of feeling ashamed, which I saw as weakness. And beneath the shame was despair, for if what I was doing was proof of there being meaning to life, then clearly life had no meaning.
Life had only … a little more comfort than before. We lived in a fine house and ate good food. Mrs. Robertson insisted that we use her charge accounts to buy clothes. I kept to my silk pajama suits, using her accounts only when Christmas came, buying gifts for Sophie, Erika, and Father. I also bought cuff links for Norman, although I knew he would not appear until after Christmas, which he always spent with his wife. We used the Robertson’s box at the theater and the opera freely. We used one of their cars for long day trips with Sophie and Father. Except for the private sittings with Doctor Willy, I held sittings only three times a week, usually in other, even more luxurious homes. More and more calls came from journalists who wanted to interview me. I refused to see them, as I continued to refuse to be photographed. Erika and I agreed that there was more to be gained now by being exclusive, even reclusive. Admission to my sittings was carefully restricted and screened, which, of course, increased the curiosity and rumors about me.
In January of 1914 Doctor Willy had been traveling for over three years. “It is time,” he said, “to go home and write my book.” We took the ferry to Oakland to see him off on the train going east. For once my tears were genuine as I waved from the platform. As soon as he was gone, Erika took his gifts to a dealer and raised a little money.
A few weeks later Norman phoned. He would be in San Francisco for at least a month and had taken a room at the Fairmont. I could meet him there or at Sophie’s flower shop. Erika drove me to Nob Hill but did not come in with me. It was a bright, blossoming February day. I had worn my blue cloak and had stuffed its big pockets with toilet articles, for I planned to stay a few days.
I told Norman about Doctor Willy and showed him some letters I had already received from London, where he had settled to work on his book, which he promised would make me “famous around the world.”
“Yes, I know you’re becoming quite an item, at least here,” said Norman. “A reporter friend called me in Seattle, asking how I’d managed to get that interview and did I know you. I pretended I couldn’t even remember doing the interview. So we must be even more careful about being seen together.”
“But no one knows what I look like,” I said. “I still have never been photographed.”
Norman laughed, pinched me, and reminded me that descriptions of me in silk pajamas and a long cloak were known widely.
We made love, joked, laughed, read the papers, ate, slept, talked and talked. Norman was especially tender, especially witty, and when he told a joke and watched to see if I was amused and entertained, his black eyes shone so that he seemed more handsome than ever. Yet, several times after we made love, he lay with a still, preoccupied look, until he caught me watching him and made another joke.
On the third day I went back to the Robertsons for a sitting. Then Erika drove me to Sophie’s store, where Norman met us, carrying bags of Chinese food. We had a party, and I gave him his cuff links, which I had forgotten to bring to the hotel. The next day we took a ride in the country.
For the rest of the month my brief sittings produced no very satisfying phenomena because I was usually too tired from our parties or excursions. There was something uneasy about our fun, something almost frantic in Norman’s laughter. At the end of the month he told me why. “My wife is pregnant. What warned you about is happening. I’m going to become a family man now. My brother’s not well, so I’ll be taking over more of the business, staying home, learning to be a real husband and a good father.”
I said nothing, but I was desolate. Now I would not even have the occasional visit of Norman to look forward to.
The day before Norman left I received a telegram from Doctor Willy. A wealthy couple was eager to meet me, willing to pay the steamship fare for both Erika and me, and he had plenty of room in his London house to put us up for as long as we would like to stay, a few months at least while he finished his book. As soon as he heard from me, he would arrange for train and steamship tickets.
After Norman’s farewell dinner in Sophie’s shop, I read the telegram aloud. Everyone expressed an opinion. My father said, “No one is civilized who has not seen Europe.” He rambled on, telling of his “grand tour” when he was my age, until Sophie interrupted to say I would surely drown at sea. “Remember the Titanic!” Norman murmured, “They’re talking about war in Europe,” but Erika laughed, “They’re always talking about war in Europe. Can’t you all see? Are you blind? This is May’s chance. After a few months there she’ll come back famous, legitimized, like an opera singer. You know all she needs is a small success in Europe to make every-one here fall all over her.”
I said nothing, letting the others argue late into the night. Then we drove Norman to his train. We said our final farewell very briefly in the car so thati would not be seen on the platform. “You’re going, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I told him. “I’m going to find that rich husband and marry him and settle down in Europe and never ever do another boring seance!” I was almost shouting so that I would not cry, but at least I no longer felt completely alone, deserted. I had something to look forward to.
On the first of May the Robertsons gave us a grand send-off, hiring a ferry boat to take us across the Bay, toasting us with champagne. Sophie was kept busy stopping Father from drinking all of it by himself. Other people on the party boat included some regular clients and, to my surprise, Miss Harrington. It seems she had gone to the same exclusive eastern girls’ school as one of my clients and had often been invited to my sittings. She had always refused, accusing her old schoolmate of “exploiting the poor for your amusement.” My clients, who considered her attitude part of the same eccentricity which kept her working among the poor at Hunters Point, invited her as a joke and were surprised when she accepted.
On the ferry she stood silently at the rail watching the water. She was even more silent when we encountered a group of reporters waiting at the train station. I turned away, pulling the hood of my cloak over my head to thwart the cameramen while Erika told the hovering reporters we were bound for “a tour sponsored by the most powerful monarchs of Europe.”
It was in that brief moment that Miss Harrington stepped forward and took both my hands. Her grip was strong, almost hurting, and her pale, lined face was set. “This may be your chance to get out of all this, Mei-li. Take it!”
1914–1919
The train was new, cleah, luxurious; in the dining car, meals were served on real china with coffee poured from silver pots and sherry served before dinner. The scenery—even the long stretches of plains that came after the Rockies—fascinated me. Roaring through some tiny stop where nothing but a dozen wood shacks stood between the track and vast, flat open space was as mysteriously exciting as puffing and grinding through complex, crowded railroad-yard approaches to big cities. The wheel-clacking, shuddering rumbling of constant motion began to feel like a part of me, like the sound of my own breathing night and day, waking or sleeping. Then, when the motion became so much a part of me that I could balance a glass of wine without spilling a drop on the tablecloth, it was suddenly all over. We had reached the end of the line, where my father had started.
We took a large ocean liner from New York. We were traveling second class, and our cabin was an inside one, cramped and stuffy, but the second class deck was pleasant. Many of our fellow passengers were cool toward us, some in response to my race. Others had heard the quickly spread rumors of my profession. A few were intrigued, friendly people who spoke to me in a loud voice with exaggerated gestures until they realized that I spoke English as well as they. (Better, I thought, since San Franciscans