Page 18 of A New World for the Irish Daughter

“In any case,” she continued, “we can’t stay here even if Miss Jessie gives us our room and board for free. We’re not earning anything, and even with such things paid for, we need money for extras, and to save for something else. And,” she added meaningfully, “it’s not respectable. Not for the long term, at least.” She couldn’t do anything about the last two months, but she could try for a more decent future, one with possibilities.

“I’vegot money,” Danny replied unexpectedly. He lounged back a little further in his chair, his smile more of a gloat. “Ican pay six dollars a week. That’s pocket change, to me, so it is.”

Maggie arched an eyebrow. “Oh, is it?” she asked coolly. “And where’ve you been getting that kind of money, Daniel O’Halloran?”

Her brother’s grin widened. “Never you mind.”

“Danny—”

“Oh, leave your brother alone,” her father cajoled, smiling. “He’s a man now, isn’t he, and you don’t need to trouble yourself with what he gets up to, especially if he’s got the money he needs.”

Maggie stared at them both in weary despair. They were family, and she loved them, but she could not keep them respectable and honest, not on her own, anyway. “Well, I can’t afford six dollars a week,” she stated flatly. “And I don’t suppose you can afford the eighteen dollars for the three of us, Danny?—”

“Eighteen?” He sat back up in his chair, its legs hitting the weathered boards of the porch with a bang. “Not that much, no sir?—”

“SoI’llneed somewhere to go, at least,” Maggie explained, trying to sound practical rather than hurt. “And you, too, Da?—”

“Oh, Miss Jessie and I will find a way to work something out,” their father replied comfortably. “We always do. You don’t need to worry about me, Maggie, love.”

Maggie looked between them, shocked and more than a little hurt at how untroubled they seemed by her predicament. “All right, then,” she said levelly. “You two will rub along here, but what am I to do?”

Danny and her father exchanged glances before Danny shrugged. “You do as you see fit, you always do,” he said, while her father reached out and caught her hand.

“Ah now, Maggie, can’t you make up with Miss Jessie?” he pleaded. “If you’d some kind of set-to, well, an apology goes a long way, I find.” He grinned appealingly, revealing a missing incisor, his weathered face so familiar, so beloved… and so aggravating.

Maggie pulled her hand from his. “I don’t think that’s possible,” she said stiffly. “Not on this occasion.” And she had no desire or intention to do so, anyway.

“Then what about Brendan?” her father asked. “He could help out, couldn’t he? He’s got a little money saved, he said, and a soft spot for you, I’m certain of it?—”

“That’s not possible, either.” Maggie turned away to hide the hurt expression on her face. She’d once ached for her da to protect and provide for her, and now he couldn’t be stirred to offer anything more than a paltry suggestion they both knew wouldn’t serve. The worst part was, she wasn’t even surprised.

“I’ll find something, don’t you worry,” she muttered as she headed back inside, knowing they had no solutions to offer her… and she had none of her own, either. But somehow, she told herself, she’d find a way. She’d started over before, she could do it again. She would have to.

CHAPTER 11

“You’re healing very nicely, my dear, but I’m afraid going back to your… line of work for at least two weeks is completely out of the question.”

“Two weeks!” Jenny yelped in dismay while Dr. Brown gave her an understanding smile as she snapped her medical bag shut. “But I feelfine.”

“If you were to return any sooner, you would be likely to do serious damage to your insides,” the doctor replied, her tone gentle, although she eyed Jenny, still lying in bed, with a certain sternness. “And that would almost certainly inhibit your… future prospects of employment here, if that is what you are concerned about.”

Jenny subsided against the pillows with a discontented sigh, her straw-colored hair tousled about her freckled face. Maggie suspected she would not heed the doctor’s advice; Jenny was so fearful of being turned out, and it had been three days already. And considering how Miss Jessie was demanding her own imminent departure, Maggie did not put too much stock in the madam’s current generosity of spirit.

In the three days since Miss Jessie had given her ultimatum, Maggie had spent the afternoons once she’d finished hermending tramping the streets of the Barbary Coast and beyond, looking for work. There were plenty of jobs to be had, it was true—she could work as a washerwoman in one of the laundries, or at one of the garment sweatshops, or at the peach cannery on the waterfront, but none of those jobs paid her enough to keep a roof over her head.

The foreman at the cannery had come off the floor to tell her she’d be paid one dollar for a day’s ten-hour shift, and she’d have to buy her own apron and cap. At six days a week, that would only just pay her room and board at Miss Jessie’s, with nothing left over and no time to do the mending that would be required to pay that rate in the first place. She would be no farther ahead than she was now, and in many ways worse.

Yesterday, wearing her smartest dress and hat, Maggie had used her last few pennies to take one of San Francisco’s famous trolleys to I. Magnin, a prominent department store on Union Square. Walking among the elegant counters and high wooden shelves had given her a pang of yearning for the life she’d once had—back in New York, when she’d spent hours standing in front of the plate-glass windows of Arnold Constable’s or Lord & Taylor, studying their extravagant displays, and also in Chicago, when she’d worked behind the millinery counter of Field’s, selling hats. Now, near destitute and penniless, Maggie thought both lives had seemed like simpler, happier times, when she’d still believed dreams were possible, and more importantly, she’d had the determination, as well as the means, to chase them.

At I. Magnin, Maggie had inquired about a job,anyjob, and had been turned away the second she’d confessed she had no reference. It didn’t help, she supposed, that her dress was shiny with wear and you could still hear the Irish in her voice, or that she knew she seemed downcast and dispirited before she’d so much as said a word. She didn’t have the fire she’d once had,Maggie had acknowledged regretfully. And she didn’t know how to find it again.

She’d tried at the City of Paris department store on Kearny Street next but had even worse luck there; the store was one of the city’s most luxurious and, judging from the floor manager’s derisive sniff, she clearly hadn’t been considered high class enough to work there.

Despondent, Maggie had walked all the way back to Miss Jessie’s, her dress sticking to her back in the heat, because she didn’t have the fare for the return journey.

“I don’t see a need to return again unless you experience complications,” Dr. Brown told Jenny now. “But I don’t foresee that happening, since you’re healing up so nicely.” She held up a warning finger. “But you must have two more weeks of bed rest! It’s very important, and I insist upon it.”

Jenny gave her an unhappy smile, and Maggie feared she had no intention of obeying the doctor’s orders. She was just as fearful that Miss Jessie would not insist upon it, either.