Germany tried to enlist Mexico against the U.S., and California turned out to be, at least in Margaret’s imagination, very close to the front lines, Dora received permission to go to Europe—first England, then France, then who knew? Her column was to be called “In Another Part of the World.” Margaret was shocked. For the entire autumn, Dora had talked to Margaret admiringly about Pete, and though she hadn’t actually spoken the word “wedding” or the word “marriage,” there was an intensity to her feelings for him—he had brought her an orchid in a pot made of a coconut, he had taken her to the Cliff House for oysters. Remember the way he had accompanied her to Fresno to interview that man in jail named Osmond Jacobs who had a powder burn on his cheek the day after the bombing and anarchist connections? At the jail, Pete had helped her conduct the interview in French.
When they came to the island for two suppers, they sat close together and finished each other’s sentences. He took her to meet the editor of a famous poetry magazine, and the two women gossiped like old friends about Ezra Pound. Pete promised to introduce Dora to Emma Goldman, and Dora talked about writing a book.
But then she had her ticket—on the Norfolk, through the Panama Canal, thence to Southampton. She was to leave in ten days.
DORA made one last trip to the island, by herself. With her she brought some things of Pete’s—a scroll and two screens, all wrapped in various layers of silk and paper. Pete had disappeared. Dora said she didn’t know where to, but Margaret suspected that she did. Margaret was reluctant to take the artworks, because she was sure they were valuable, and Quarters P was a monument to disarray. But evidently she had to—there was nowhere else for them as safe as the island. More important, Dora herself looked to Margaret petite and easily damaged, all the while laughing and excited for her new adventures. And then, on the very Monday after she set sail, a letter arrived for Andrew from an editor at the Examiner, inviting him to serve as science correspondent for the paper. The editor said that he had heard that Andrew was “one of the foremost astronomers in the world” and “entirely up to date on every new scientific development” and “one of the smartest men in California” and “a prolific writer.” He would be paid a penny a word.
It was a shock, but once war was declared, shocks came every day—one day they heard that the Germans blew up one of their own ships as it was being boarded by marines. Within a few days after that, San Francisco Bay was being blockaded against enemy ships, a destroyer was attacked off Long Island, Field Marshal Haig, the British commander, was advancing first one mile and then another against the Hindenburg Line, and killing thousands of civilians while doing so. But even so, for the first while, Margaret could not help seeing the whole thing as the wreck of her own life and her own plans—she thought about Dora every day while she was out with the other naval wives who lived on the island, gathering provisions or charitable contributions, while she was sorting clothing and medical supplies to be sent to Europe, while she listened to herself talking about harvests and factories as she had never done before (although she could hardly imagine what it was they were talking about—wheat, barley, oats, workers, bosses, pig iron, output).
AND then spies blew up a powder magazine over by the bay one morning around breakfast time. The explosion was a body-shaking roar followed by a brilliant swoosh as that building and several others around it went up in flames. Margaret grabbed the edges of the table, the dishes jumped, her glass of water fell over, and Andrew’s cup of coffee rattled in its saucer. It was much more frightening than the earthquake had been, or the small explosion that had welcomed her to the island so many years before.
Andrew leapt from the breakfast table and left the house. Margaret went out more slowly, first to the stoop, and then to the walk. Everyone on the island was outside, either running toward or staring at the biggest fire any of them had ever seen. She got her shawl and bag without giving Dora, or Pete, or their “marriage” a thought, and ran to the hospital. Her friends were there—they