The Museum of Extraordinary Things (30 page)

She shrugged off Maureen’s pleas and went swiftly through the hall, taking the stairs two at a time. As she slipped into her room, Coralie heard her father call out William Reeves’s name so that he might be interviewed for his season’s contract. She shifted the heavy horsehair mattress so that she could remove the blue coat she’d hidden. Clutching it, she went to her dresser. There, stored beneath her undergarments, were the tokens stolen from her father’s workroom table. Some hairpins, a small tortoiseshell comb, the gold locket on a chain, the black buttons that had fallen from Hannah’s closed hand. She swept these items into a handkerchief that she tied with a knot.

She prayed her case of nerves would not grow worse until her task was completed. It was then she heard her father’s raised voice. He was shouting at William Reeves, and Coralie feared if she had to pass him, his rage would be directed at whoever blundered by. She went to the window and signaled to Eddie, who looked up confused.
Leave,
she urged him.
Run away
. He grinned at her and shook his head, and made it clear he intended to stand his ground. Coralie knew he was not the sort to run, and that he would not forget her, though it would be best if he did. Mr. William Reeves was shouting at the Professor, balking at the deal he’d been offered and suggesting the Professor rot in hell for paying his workers such a pittance, before he slammed out the back door, his alligator under one arm as if it were a suitcase. Apparently, Reeves’s impudence and his demand for a more fitting wage had so infuriated the Professor, he followed the rascal out of the house and, in doing so, came face-to-face with the photographer in his yard.

SEVEN

THE WOLF'S HOUSE

**********

I
F THE WOLFMAN
had not disappeared from my life I would have made certain to question him further about Jane Eyre, the book he held so dear to his heart. I suppose I was studying love, and in my studies of this subject I could never understand the brutal love of Rochester. I did grasp why Rochester revealed his humanity only after he had been blinded and disfigured; like the beasts around us who reveal their natures because they have no access to artifice, he at last had no choice but to be truly himself. I wondered why he didn’t then realize how cruelly he’d treated the first Mrs. Rochester. Surely if he comprehended all he’d done to her, he would have locked himself in a tower to repent for the rest of his days rather than taking the sweet Jane as his wife.

As for Jane, I considered her to be a fool, but what young woman has not been a fool under certain circumstances? The blind aspect of love was of great fascination to me. Could a person not see what was readily before her? Did the heat of passion have the power to change one’s vision, so that what was false became true, and truth itself was nowhere to be seen?

I wondered how many women had come under my father’s spell, and if he had ongoing affairs of the heart that he kept secret from me. He came in late in the evenings. I often heard him groan as he climbed the stairs, and sometimes he carried the scent of a woman’s perfume on his clothes, along with the odor of the peculiar mix of tobacco he smoked, a black tarry substance. Perhaps if he’d been blinded as Rochester was, the best of my father might have surfaced and the future would have been written differently. Or perhaps there is evil in certain people, a streak of meanness that cannot be erased by circumstance or fashioned into something brand new by love.

Now that I was eighteen and thought so frequently of what drew one person to another, I pondered more often over my mother’s character. I imagined her to be a naïve girl who could not resist my father. Or it was quite possible that she was the opposite, a wild creature that needed taming. I wondered, too, if she knew about my father’s past, and if she’d learned, as I had from reading his handbook, about the half woman in his show who had accused him of mistreatment. Was it possible that, like Jane, she’d forgiven him his transgressions? Perhaps, like so many women, she thought she would be the one to change him.

I hadn’t found the nerve to go back to the cellar, though I often carried the keys I’d had made in my pocket. Instead, I looked around the house for further clues about my heritage. My parents seemed the greatest mystery of all to me. I longed to go backward in time, to catch a glimpse of them, if only for a moment or two, so that I might discover not just the character of the people I had sprung from but who I myself might become. The Professor’s bedroom was on the second floor, as mine was, but it was down a long narrow hallway, set off by itself. He valued his privacy, yet he was forced to survey the crowds of Coney Island. Whereas my room overlooked the garden, his had a view of the peaks of Dreamland’s towers. The electric lights must have infuriated him. He slept with heavy damask curtains drawn and a sleeping mask over his eyes. He kept his door closed at all times, for he was a reserved and meticulous person. But he liked his room clean and detested dust, which he said inflamed the lungs. And so, one day I suggested to Maureen that I tidy his room. She was busy with the ironing, a hot and thankless task made all the worse by the heavy black metal iron that produced sprays of steam turning her face sweaty and red. Without thinking, she nodded for me to go ahead.

Though it was my own house, and though I had permission granted to me, I felt like a thief as I made my way upstairs. My intentions were not pure, but they drove me on. I pushed open the door to my father’s room, which was at least double the size of my own small chamber. I first took note of the dressing table, where he kept cigars and pipes and tinctures, along with a decanter of rum. There were pots of the tar-like oily stuff that he often preferred to his pipe tobacco. Strewn about were books of tabulations and reams of bills. My father’s predilection for the rare had cost him dearly, and the creatures and artifacts on exhibit had not come cheap. Though I lacked accounting skills, I saw that the Museum of Extraordinary Things owed more than it earned. There were marks in blue, and more in red, all adding up to the steely truth of my father’s statement that I must be able to earn my keep.

I tugged open the drapes. The view from the window was quite lovely in my opinion, all sky and then the outline of the white and silver towers of Dreamland. From here it was possible to make out the edge of the sea, and the fishing boats and ferries. I saw to the linens on the bed and dusted the woodwork. When I reached the feather duster to the highest window sash, I spied a sword, a glossy silver thing, embossed with designs of stars and moons. It was the very same sword he’d used in France to cut a woman in half, for I’d seen sketches of it in his handbook. When I took it down, it was heavy in my hands, an enormous, ornate piece of cutlery. I noticed the blade was still sharp, but not before I unintentionally cut myself.

I gasped with pain, and it was my bad fortune that at that moment Maureen came bustling in, wondering why my task was taking so long. Surely, she immediately regretted allowing me entrance to my father’s bedroom. Blood was pooling in my hand. She grabbed the sword from me, a look of despair on her face. If only I had nicked the webbing of my fingers, but the cut was in the center of my palm.

“This is not a toy or some amusement,” she informed me. “I thought I taught you far better than this.”

She returned the sword to its rightful place, drew the curtains, and ushered me from the room. In the hallway she held me by my shoulders and shook me. “I had no idea I was raising such a fool” was what she whispered to me. I was stung by her words, surprised by the depth of her anger. Then I saw tears in her eyes and I understood. She feared for my welfare. I knew she would not have sat idly by if she had been aware of my father’s punishments, or of the way I earned my keep. I felt an apology upon my lips and longed to explain with a full confession of what my life had become. I wished to tell her how I ached to run away, as the Wolfman had done. I dreamed of climbing out my window to feel the rain upon my skin, and walk, if I must do so, all the way to Manhattan, where I could sift among the crowds unnoticed, and find the one man who might see me as more than a curiosity and connect to the soul I carried inside of me.

I yearned to tell Maureen all this and more, but I did not say a word. I could not bring myself to worry her or cause her any more pain than she’d already known. A few days earlier I had come upon her washing up after her day of work. She was at the sink with a pitcher of water and a washcloth, partially unclothed. I realized I had never seen her naked, for we were modest people. Now her muslin blouse was open as she rid herself of dust and grime. I saw that she had been burned not merely on her face but across her body as well. The splattering on her mottled skin convinced me that when acid had been thrown at her it had splattered, and had burned right through her clothes, for the blotches were everywhere.

On the afternoon Maureen scolded me in the corridor outside my father’s room, I told her nothing of my own distress. Instead I simply promised I would not touch the sword again. I took her hand and kissed it, and I think she believed me, for she brought me down to the kitchen and had me scrub out pots while she made us a lunch of toast and fried eggs with mushrooms she had unearthed in the garden, a special treat she knew was a favorite of mine.

NOW AND THEN,
on afternoons when I dashed off to the market to run errands at the end of the day, I caught sight of the Wolfman waiting for Maureen. I myself had not spoken with him since the day he disappeared. He usually positioned himself in the shadows of two large cypress trees that framed either side of the fenced entranceway to a funeral parlor. He rightly assumed that people would rush by that cold address, not wishing to see what was eventually in store for them and their loved ones. He wore a hooded cloak and made himself all but invisible, but despite the distance and his disguise, I could see his aspect brighten whenever he spied Maureen leaving our establishment and heading toward him. Each time I saw them together I understood love a little more.

I was on my way home from the fish market with a freshly caught haddock, one I chose for its bright pink flesh and silver skin, now wrapped by the fishmonger in a damp, wrinkled page torn from The Times. Black newsprint had seeped onto my white gloves, and I was thinking I was lucky that Maureen could wash away the ink with bleach and lye before my father discovered the mess. Before I knew it I had stumbled upon Mr. Morris, only steps away. He was very still, like a heron in the bay that waits for the shadows of fish to appear. He most likely would have let me pass without a greeting if I hadn’t spied him first.

He was thinner than I’d remembered him, and I admit that his countenance gave me pause. I had grown unused to seeing him close up, and the ease with which I was accustomed to greeting his fierce appearance had dissipated. I may even have taken a step back, so like a wolf did he appear. Then I looked into his eyes and remembered who he was. He said hello in that kind voice of his, as he had when we first met. Years had passed since that time. I was no longer a little girl and he was no longer a believer that the city of New York would embrace a man such as himself.

“It’s a good thing I heard you had been hired by Dreamland, otherwise I might have fainted to see a man who’d vanished so completely from my life. I mourned you,” I said bitterly. “For no good purpose it seems.”

“We thought it best if you knew nothing of my presence,” he told me. He seemed bashful now that I was a grown woman; perhaps he had seen me recoil when I first spied him.

“I wouldn’t have said a word to my father.” I was still quite hurt that the secret of his presence in Brooklyn had been kept from me. Since I’d known he and Maureen were still together, I hadn’t made a single slip of this confidence.

“Your father is a man who can figure things out without any words being said. We did it to protect you as well. That was our concern.”

“And now he knows you’re here and will be working for our competitor.”

Mr. Morris shrugged. “All men must work.”

I noticed he had a bouquet of spring flowers, white tulips mixed with red anemones. I gathered they were for Maureen, but Mr. Morris took me by surprise when he mentioned they were meant for Malia, the Butterfly Girl. Just then Maureen left our house, hurriedly making her way down the street, so I could not question Mr. Morris any further, though my face was hot with anger. Maureen was wearing her best dress, a green muslin with black silk trimming, along with a hat I hadn’t seen before, gray felt decorated with pale blue feathers.

When she saw me there with Mr. Morris, her expression darkened.

“I see your friend has returned,” I said to her. “But of course I’ve known that for some time.” I did not let on that I had often followed Maureen, but I suppose she knew, for she shook her head sadly, as if I was the one who had disappointed her.

“He was gone for two years, back to Virginia. He wrote letters, but of course I never received them, for they wound up on the trash pile as soon as they were delivered. Your father saw to that. When Mr. Morris realized he could not stay away, he came back to Brooklyn and we renewed our friendship. I thought it best that you not know that he’d returned.”

“You made that decision for me?” I responded bitterly. “Even when there were rumors he would be at Dreamland you said nothing to me. Less than nothing, for you lied.”

“Is the truth always the best remedy?” Maureen wondered. Perhaps it was a question she asked herself. As she thought this over, she saw that I had been to the market, and had tarried when I spied Mr. Morris. “You should be at home, miss. The fish must be put on ice immediately or it will go bad and I shan’t be able to make supper tomorrow. You wouldn’t want to be poisoned by a piece of bad fish, would you?”