The Museum of Extraordinary Things (36 page)

M
AY 1911

LATE IN
the afternoon, Maureen knocked at the door. By then the day was warm and Coralie’s room was stifling. When there was no answer, the housekeeper cracked the door open and peered inside.

“Even if you’re ill, you have no choice but to face the day,” she called.

Maureen bustled into the room, convinced she had a cure for anything that might plague her ailing charge. Coralie wished that for once the housekeeper had left her alone. She was in no mood for human interaction, and in no condition to face anyone, least of all Maureen, who had a talent for reading her emotions. Coralie shrank beneath her blanket, mute and withdrawn, as a tray of tea and biscuits was placed on her bedside table. She sank down further when Maureen went to open the curtains.

“Don’t,” Coralie pleaded. When Maureen threw a worried look over her shoulder, Coralie said, “My eyes burn with the light.”

She did not wish Maureen to spy the marks that had been left on her. There were two scarlet circles, fading in color but still quite evident on her wrists.

“Are your eyes the only problem?” Maureen knew her charge’s temperament so well she quickly guessed there was more at hand. She sat at the edge of the bed, then pulled the quilt down and spied the bruises on Coralie’s arms. She drew in a breath, then grasped Coralie’s wrist and traced a finger over the red impression left by the fishing wire. “What happened to you?” she asked, distraught. “Some man, I’ll wager. Don’t tell me it’s the photographer, for I told him I’d make him pay if he wronged you.”

“No. Not him.”

Maureen’s expression was fierce. She rose to her feet, frantic, as if she intended to find justice. “If it wasn’t him, then who? Where is this man who’s treated you so badly?”

“Far from here, I hope.”

Maureen and Coralie held hands and kept their voices low.

“Did he have his way with you?”

Coralie shook her head.

Maureen went to the kitchen and in a short time returned with a poultice of madder root and a thorny thistle, which she insisted would heal Coralie’s bruises. The thistle was common enough, but it often caused the death of stray dogs when they carried off stalks growing wild in the fields. “Your father needs to know,” Maureen put forth once the bruises had been treated.

“Do not speak to him of this! Do you hear me?”

Coralie was so firm in her assertion, and so grim, that Maureen grew ashen as a glimmer of understanding took hold. “Did he have a part in this?”

“It was a doctor he employed to see if I was still pure. The gentleman thought he might take it upon himself to ruin me.” Coralie was so emotional, she held nothing back. It was a relief to be truthful with Maureen as she now admitted to the night viewings she had always kept secret. “It was to be mere theater. A show like any other. And yet it ruined me in some way, more so than what this horrid man tried to do to me.”

Tears flooded the housekeeper’s eyes. “I haven’t allowed myself to believe it, but now I know you should never have grown up in this house. I wanted more for you,” Maureen said with yearning. “And you’ll have it.” She appeared resolved, though her face was wet with tears. “You’ll have a proper life, and when you do, you’ll see that love has nothing to do with what you’ve found under your father’s roof.”

Coralie could not help but think of the tattooed woman who had thought her to be a whore. “I doubt that any man who really knew me would have me after all I’ve done.”

“That’s not true, Cora. Look at me! Would you think a man of any worth would ever want me? Would he travel from Virginia and wait outside my door even though I have been ruined a hundred times over? Mr. Morris doesn’t see me from the outside. Men are men, with all their flaws, as we have ours, that’s true, but the best among them manage to discover who we really are.” The housekeeper lifted Coralie’s chin so they might look into one another’s eyes. “If we had no hurt and no sin to speak of, we’d be angels, and angels can’t love the way men and women do.”

“And what of monsters?” Coralie wished to know. By then her face was streaked with tears; her emotions were raw. “Can they love?”

Maureen tenderly ran a hand over her charge’s dark hair. “We know quite well they can,” she murmured. “For we know that they do.”

THE MUSEUM OF EXTRAORDINARY THINGS
failed to reopen. One or two customers rapped at the door, and, when their knocking went unanswered, they went away, puzzled but ready enough to find another entertainment. Professor Sardie’s announcement that he would allow free entrance into the museum if he were unable to produce the Hudson Mystery was a promise he couldn’t keep. At the present time he hadn’t the ready cash to pay his players or his bills. He had been drinking heavily ever since finding his workshop door ajar, the coffin containing the body of his fabulous creature vanished. He held the liveryman responsible; that unsavory character had never dared to return, and the Professor could be heard cursing his missing employee late into the night.

The last weekend in May was fast approaching, the beginning of the season marked by streets swelling with crowds, all searching for relief from the hot city and the brittle confines of their own lives. Soon enough Dreamland would reopen in all its revamped glory and beaches would be blanketed with visitors from Manhattan. All of the bathing pavilions, including Lentz’s and Taunton’s Baths, would be overflowing with customers. The New Iron Pier walk was busier each day, as all of the summer establishments prepared for the onslaught of visitors. The wooden horses at Johnson’s carousel were freshly painted. The steel skeleton of the Giant Racer Roller Coaster, that heart-stopping ride, was readied as well, with the empty cars sent up on practice runs that rattled the street below.

No announcements were made concerning the closing of the museum. The door was simply barred and padlocked from the inside. The Professor was already humiliated among his peers, many of whom said they’d never trusted him or expected to see anything resembling the Hudson Mystery. He was a known con man who relied on the naïveté of the masses, those inexperienced customers who might be convinced to believe in such things as mermaids and butterfly girls, when they were in fact being offered freaks of nature, harmless individuals dressed up to resemble the inhabitants of their nightmares or dreams. But if there was no Hudson Mystery, there would be no reversal of their downward fortunes. That was not fantasy but fact. Already the tortoise was being fed weeds rather than lettuce and fresh greens. The caged birds were pecking at crumbs.

When the living wonders arrived in the yard on what they had thought was opening day, they were greeted by the stench of the rotten fish, for the giant striped bass had been lugged onto the trash pile and set on fire. Bits of scales rose into the air, and it seemed that silver wasps were soaring into the clear May sky. Maureen spoke to the employees through the screen door, too embarrassed to tell them face-to-face that they were no longer needed. She made her voice as stern as she could, for, given the circumstances, no one would benefit from sentiment. Malia, who had been a feature since the age of seven, wept in her mother’s arms, and the others clustered together in disbelief, for they were suddenly without the means to support themselves. The season was about to begin, staff had been hired everywhere else, and it would be difficult to find work in even the lowliest museums and entertainment halls.

“Is this any way to treat us?” one of the Durante brothers called. “After so many years?”

“No,” Maureen said. “But it’s his way.”

“Let him rot in hell,” Malia’s mother cried, surprising those who hadn’t expected she knew any language other than her native Portuguese. “For hell is where he belongs.”

Coralie wanted to apologize, but Maureen stopped her.

“This is your father’s decision. Next season he may hire them back. The world is unpredictable.”

“And when he no longer has any need of you, will he do the same?”

“He has already.” Maureen dropped her voice to a hush. “I’ve been dismissed.”

Coralie was confused. “And yet you’re here.”

The housekeeper admitted she was there only as long as it took for Coralie to pack her belongings. She insisted there was no way that Coralie could stay in this house, and suggested she take as little as possible, for haste was the most important aspect of their departure.

Coralie understood the danger and therefore rushed upstairs to fill her cowhide satchel with her most precious possessions, clothes and books, along with the strand of pearls left to her by her mother. She hurried downstairs, but once in the parlor she suffered pangs of regret for all she was leaving behind. She had the urge to take the cereus plant, whose woody stalks had suddenly turned a ripening green, to liberate the tortoise, whose shell she rubbed with oil in the winter months, to free the hummingbirds from their cages. Perhaps it was this moment when she tarried that allowed her father to discover Maureen lingering in the kitchen. She’d been told to vacate the premises, yet she had disobeyed him. His dreadful mood was intensified by a good portion of rum. Coralie heard her father’s raised voice and then the murmur of Maureen’s rational tone as the housekeeper did her best to assuage his anger. The Professor refused to listen to her excuses; he began thrashing her mercilessly. Coralie could hear the rising tide of their emotions as they struggled.

“I should have known I had a thief in my own kitchen,” Sardie shouted. “How many times do I have to teach you the same lesson? How stupid can you actually be? I thought I taught you your rightful place long ago.”

“You have no right to speak to me so anymore. I’m no longer your employee.”

Coralie came to stand outside the kitchen door. When she peered inside she saw that Maureen held a frying pan up for protection as the Professor beat her. He’d cornered her beside the stove and now grabbed the frying pan to use it against her. Maureen could do nothing more than bury her face in her hands. Coralie ran and threw herself against the Professor. He nearly turned on her, the cast-iron pan raised high, before realizing it was his daughter who grasped his arm. “Please,” she begged. “It was my idea to leave. Maureen has nothing to do with it.”

“Are you conspiring to leave?” His anger had been entirely directed at the housekeeper; now he realized Coralie’s intentions. “What other conspiracies have you been a party to? Why would I believe anything about you? Was the report about your physical condition a lie as well?”

“You need to go,” Coralie urged the housekeeper, doing her best to hold Maureen’s gaze with her own, all but pleading with her to run off before the Professor did any more damage.

The housekeeper’s complexion was so chalk white that the random burns stood out in bunches, as if rose petals had been scattered across her skin. There was a fresh gash in her scalp, and dark butterfly-shaped bruises were forming on her chin and cheek. Still, she stood her ground until the Professor grabbed her, pulling her to the door. He locked it after he’d cast her out, pleased with himself. The housekeeper didn’t give up but came to bang upon the window glass, calling for Coralie to be set free. Their eyes locked, and in their glance was an attachment that could not be broken, even though the Professor was already guiding his daughter down the cellar stairs.

“I had no plan to leave,” Coralie protested. “I misspoke.”

“That’s what every liar says,” the Professor told her. “I no longer have faith in you.”

Coralie looked at him coldly. “Nor I in you.”

“Silence will be the best teacher.” Sardie opened his workshop door. Once Coralie was inside, he closed the door in one swift move. The room was dark, but Coralie found candles and a lantern, along with a box of wooden matches. She searched and found water in a jug; though it smelled rusty, she washed her face and cupped her hands so she might drink. She felt a shiver of pleasure knowing Maureen had gotten away, and that she had helped in her escape.

That night Coralie slept on the floor. The boards set over the windows made the room exceptionally dark, but she could hear the crowds on the pier. A shimmer of excitement was rising, for the new and improved Dreamland was set to open on Saturday. In the morning Coralie’s eyes adjusted to the pale light that filtered around the planks of wood nailed across the windows. She found some dried fruit and seeds to eat, and relieved herself in an enamel pot. Then she gathered tools that might prove useful—a small shovel, an awl, and a hammer. At last, she opened the drawer where her father kept his journal. She grasped the book with a sense of rebellion, then sat upon the earthen floor with the book in hand.