The Museum of Extraordinary Things (29 page)

“Oh, there’s no fee,” Eddie assured him.

“Then you’ve got a deal.”

Reeves was the first to pose, and once he’d agreed, the ice was broken. The others gathered round to watch the slight, wiry man lift the alligator over his lap, placing one hand on its gray-green scales. “I always wanted a picture of Arthur,” he said, for he called his creature by this name. “Do you want me to look solemn?”

“Whatever suits you,” Eddie recommended.

Upon hearing this, Reeves broke into a grin. “This is me, buddy. Happy go lucky. Arthur’s the one who’s glum.”

From the kitchen where she was helping Maureen with the fried dough, Coralie overheard a murmur of conversation, then bright laughter. When there was a round of applause, she was compelled to go to the back door to peer through the screen. She could hardly believe the sight before her. There was Malia, perched on the porch railing as if ready for flight, a beautiful half butterfly. And, far more distracting, there he was, the man from the woods, right in Coralie’s own yard, as if he’d been magicked to Brooklyn. He had beautiful hands, long and pale, like a musician’s. When his jacket constricted his movements, he shrugged it off and continued working in his white shirt and suspenders. He had a brooding expression, so concentrated on his subject he seemed not to take in a single breath
of air.

Coralie gazed through the meshing of the door, entranced as she watched him adjust the lens of his camera.

“Stay exactly as you are,” the photographer called to Malia. “This is perfect.”

The next batch of fritters sizzled in a pot on the stove, ready to be scooped out of the bubbling hot oil, but Coralie ignored her kitchen duties. This was the hand of fate. She was certain of it.

The photographer thanked Malia, then quickly began to set up his camera for another shot, removing one plate and inserting the next. The Durante brothers readied themselves for their turn, bending around each other in a fluid circle so perfectly round it seemed to defy the capabilities of the human spine.

Maureen had been pulled into the kitchen by the scent of fritters burning. She gasped when she saw the pot of oil, singed and turning black. “Here’s a waste,” she said mournfully as she quickly lifted the pot from the flame. She noticed Coralie at the door, a strange expression crossing her face. “I’d like to know what all the ruckus is about.” Maureen approached the back door, narrowing her eyes when she took note of the man with the camera. The brothers were cheerfully posing for him. “What does he think he’s doing? He’ll get a thrashing if he’s caught. We’ll all be in the shit.”

Maureen pushed open the door before Coralie could prevent her. “Stop what you’re doing this minute,” the housekeeper called sharply to Eddie. “This yard is private property and there are private lives being lived here.”

Eddie gazed up to see a beautiful red-haired woman whose extreme disfigurement was evident even across the distance between them. He felt humbled by the strength and authority in her tone. “Miss,” he said earnestly. “Forgive me for not asking your permission.”

Hidden behind Maureen, Coralie again felt the hook of her attraction to him. The pulse at the base of her throat was pounding. As for Eddie, he spied a shadow and nothing more. Though he placed one hand over his eyes to block out the streaming sunlight, he could see no farther than the threshold of the kitchen.

“I have no permission to grant,” Maureen told him, “so you’d better hightail it out of here, before the owner finds you trespassing. Then you’ll see what trouble is.”

“He’s only a photographer,” William Reeves explained to the housekeeper. “There’s no harm done.”

“I don’t care if he’s the King of Brooklyn,” Maureen said smartly to Reeves, before turning her attention back to Eddie. “Sir, I’m asking you to leave. Take my advice if you’ve got half a brain in your head.”

Eddie put a hand over his heart and pleaded, “Don’t send me away before I take your portrait.”

Maureen laughed dismissively, though she clearly found something charming in his actions. He appeared as a scarecrow might, with his baggy pants and long arms and legs and dark, handsome features. “Like that will happen,” she called to him.

“Let him do it,” Coralie urged the housekeeper from the shadows. “You’ve never had one taken before, and it will cause no harm.”

Maureen was puzzled, but when she turned to see Coralie’s look of fierce insistence, she understood the fellow in the yard was the very man her charge had spoken of, the one she couldn’t forget.

“If that’s him, he doesn’t look like much,” Maureen said thoughtfully. “Too skinny by far.”

“Go on.” Coralie gave the housekeeper a little push. “Go!”

“Are you mad? What if your father sees?”

“I don’t care,” Coralie told Maureen. The kindness with which Eddie had treated his subjects in the yard had uplifted her. Here was an ordinary man who did not flee from what he could not explain but rather was drawn to what was different, not lewdly out of some sinister inquisitiveness, but due to sheer wonder. “I trust him,” Coralie said.

“Really?” Maureen murmured. “Shall I tell you what I think about trusting a man you hardly know? I’m proof of where that leads.”

“It’s only a portrait,” Coralie reminded her.

“Might I ask what anyone in their right mind would do with a portrait of me?”

Coralie took Maureen’s hand in her own. “Please. Do it for me.”

The photographer gestured for Maureen to enter the vegetable garden. The sky was without a cloud now, causing the shadows to be especially deep, black ribbons running through the grass. As Eddie worked to ready the camera’s plate, he thought about the apple trees in Chelsea, and the huge elms in upper Manhattan. He thought of the forest in Russia and the salty yellow wetlands he had crossed that very morning. The beauty of the world had been apparent to him through the lens of his camera, but he hadn’t known a human being could be as marvelous as a marsh or a tree or a field of grass. Maureen stood between the rows of lettuce and peas, staring straight at him, hiding nothing. She hadn’t even thought to take off her apron. Her face was beautiful and ruined and utterly devoid of artifice. When Eddie had finished her portrait, he went to her and got down on one knee. “My gratitude,” he said.

He knew he had taken his best photograph. Nothing he’d done before or ever would do again would compare to this one image. He wished Moses Levy were alive to observe the print when it was developed. Maybe he hadn’t been such a failure of a student after all.

“Don’t be an ass,” Maureen chided. There was the scent of cooking oil on her clothes. “As long as I never have to see that picture. I don’t even look in mirrors.”

Eddie rose to his feet, embarrassed by his show of emotion. Since the day of the fire, when he had photographed the dead, first on the street and then in their makeshift coffins, he’d been overly affected by his own passions. His eyes blazed with the fervor of a true believer, for though he claimed to have lost his faith, there was a jittery spark of it inside him. He clapped the soil from his trousers. Gazing up, he spied Coralie on the porch steps. Perhaps what happened next was influenced by the passionate state he was in, perhaps it was the intensity of her gaze. He fell in love with her in that instant. He had no idea what was happening, he only felt as if he were drowning, though he stood with his feet firmly on the ground. Coralie’s long black hair was gathered in a ribbon. She wore a simple black dress and a pair of old-fashioned cotton gloves, the sort most young women would have cast away on such a warm, seasonable day. The more he looked at her, the more beautiful she became. Eddie experienced an ache he hadn’t expected, immediate and undeniable, a rush of desire that might easily consume him.

“There you go.” Maureen nodded when she saw his reaction. “Now you’ve seen the treasure of the house.” She elbowed him to make herself clear. “Do her wrong and you’ll answer to me.”

Coralie came toward him, eyes shining. They greeted each other, then, after their introduction, they shifted into the rear of the yard without thinking, both wishing for privacy. The pear tree’s bark smelled sharp and fragrant. The tendrils of the green peas grew beyond the pickets of the fence in wild profusion.

“I saw you and your dog in the woods once, near the river,” Coralie confided, ignoring her shy heart. “I never thought it was possible that we would meet here in Brooklyn.”

The light was fading in the section of the yard where they’d paused, near enough to the trash pile for the ground to be ashy.

“I imagined you,” Eddie responded. “Or it might be that I saw you as well.” Coralie’s eyes were bright; a flush of color was rising on her throat. She hoped he might say
The world is waiting for us, all we have to do is run away,
but instead he murmured, “I’m here for the drowned girl.”

She came to her senses then. So this was his mission. Another girl entirely.

“You can be truthful with me,” Eddie went on. “To be honest, I know that she’s here.”

“And how is that?” Coralie wondered what the drowned girl meant to him. “Are you a mind reader of some sort?”

“Not exactly.” Although he had always prided himself on evaluating people’s thoughts and desires, this young woman seemed beyond his reach. He dropped his voice. “We share a liveryman it seems. The one who prefers birds to human beings.”

When Eddie spoke so intimately, Coralie’s attraction sliced through her. Still she remembered Maureen’s words of caution. “Is it your wife you’re looking for?”

“I’m hired to find her by her father, who longs to have her back, no matter her condition. I assume the body was taken for some vile purpose?”

Coralie lowered her eyes. “So vile you could not begin to comprehend.”

“I might. I’ve worked with criminals for the newspapers. I think I would understand.”

She yearned to tell him, but because of where such intimacies might lead, she felt a rising fear. She had entered a country she’d never visited before, though she stood in the ashy earth of the yard she’d known all of her life.

Up on the porch, William Reeves was sitting back in his chair so that he might recite a list of the massive amounts of food his alligator needed each morning: two chickens, three bunches of lettuce, a large haddock, bones and all. That, he announced, was just for breakfast. He intended to inform Professor Sardie that a larger salary was to be expected if he was to join their troupe for the season, for though he’d inked his name on the roster, he’d yet to sign a contract. The very idea of asking for more incited the museum’s employees, and a lively discussion began concerning the possibility of a fair wage, something no one had dared to imagine before. Eddie and Coralie paid no attention to this debate. They didn’t hear the clatter as plates and cups were carried off, marking the end of tea, nor did they recognize the passing of time.

“It’s dangerous to look into things you don’t understand,” Coralie advised. “You haven’t seen the half of what there is in this world.”

“Perhaps you’re one of the extraordinary things I don’t understand. I’ve heard you’re something of a mermaid.”

“Have you?” The very word sent a shiver down Coralie’s spine. It called up images of nighttime performances, mortifying scenes of flesh and wanton desire. “Whoever told you that knows nothing.”

Eddie felt a chill directed toward him. “I don’t mean to offend you. There’s a hermit camped out in the woods who’s spied upon us both. He said you’re a grand swimmer, and that you did your best to rescue Hannah. That’s her name. Hannah Weiss.”

Coralie now understood why the body she’d left sprawled in the weeds had been discovered with her hands folded on her chest, her head placed carefully upon a grassy pillow.

“Can you take me to her?” Eddie asked.

“She’s locked away, and my father is present so I cannot. But even if I could, she’s no longer among the living. Should we not simply forget her?”

“Can you forget what’s lost?” Eddie furrowed his brow, a sort of outrage passing across his features. “If it’s such a simple thing to do, you must teach me, for my mother died when I was a child, yet I mourn her still.” His words clearly touched Coralie, so he went on. “Should I go back to Manhattan and tell an old man to forget his daughter? Not to dig a grave or have blessings recited for her soul?” Eddie’s glance held hers, and he dared to speak his innermost thoughts. “And should I forget you when I leave here on this day?”

“You should,” Coralie insisted, for they had gone too far in words, and words, Maureen had always warned her, were soon enough followed by deeds. “Absolutely.”

“
Should
is what you don’t want to do, but do anyway. That isn’t me.”

A smile played at Coralie’s lips. “No. I’m sure it isn’t.”

“Nor is it you, I’d wager.”

Coralie shaded her eyes and gazed up into his. They were a deep brown, flecked with gold and black.

“I can get you her belongings.” She did her best to keep her voice even. “Would that help?”

Maureen had come outside to wave at them, gesturing in no uncertain terms for Coralie to send the tall young man away. Coralie had been so caught up in their conversation she’d failed to notice the living wonders had already gone inside one by one to greet her father and sign their binding contracts for the season to come. The porch had emptied, with only Reeves and the alligator remaining.

“It would help greatly.” Eddie’s back was to Maureen. Most likely he would not or could not gaze away from Coralie.

“Wait for me. I’ll be as fast as I can.”

Coralie hurried to the porch, where Maureen was waiting to usher her inside, nearly faint with relief. “Thank goodness you’ve come to your senses,” the housekeeper remarked. “Have you not seen me signaling for you to be rid of him?”

“Don’t let my father find him,” Coralie instructed her.

“You don’t know where this will lead,” the housekeeper warned.

All the same, Coralie could not be dissuaded. She could see Eddie through the screen door, out in the yard, whistling to himself, as he had in the woods. She didn’t intend to deny or disappoint him. Whitman’s poetry had been her schoolroom, and most of what she knew of life she’d taken from its pages.
Why should you not speak to me / And why should I not speak to you?