Twenty-three
The whole morning was cast in a pall of foul humor. My legs ached from walking on cobbled roads with Beebe, and I struggled not to replay our dinner together too many times in my mind, which would quickly stale any remaining pleasure in it. I’d slept poorly and dreamed only of Pictou and the sea.
I’d always heeded you, Mother, hadn’t I? You made everything sound so poetic, as if my life’s scope were grander than anyone else’s because of my greater mass. Whenever I came home overcome with girlish passions, you turned from your task at the woodpile or in the kitchen: Love will not be easy. You were the only one to ever speak to me of love. Don’t look for it, Ana. Never. Do not demand what can only be given freely. You regarded me seriously despite my ugliness, my absurd shell. I never looked, Mother. I never did. Be content in solitude. Only then are you prepared to receive love.
But what of the trivial pleasures, the ones I observe over and over standing here? I appear as emotionless as a statue, but each couple who passes, each pair of clasped hands, each buoyant look is a dart pricking my skin, a rash spreading, itching to the point of distraction as I compulsively imagine all the rest, the hidden pleasures. Concern yourself with practical matters. Then love will surprise you. That is the joy of it as much as all the rest.
I felt for my bottle of Cocadiel’s Remedy in one of the hidden pockets of my skirt. I took a drink. I wanted to improve my life, expand my scope, but how? I looked over the heads of the museum patrons and turned to this lofty matter, hoping to banish the rest from my mind. I would not leave the security of my profession. But a civic life, something outside the business of spectacle, would provide a necessary balance. Serve somewhere, something larger than myself, if such a thing existed. Where? A hospital? What do people do? Or was I just being a fool to think I could have a life outside of … this? The inky waters of Lake Ontario lapped at the edge of my thoughts. To slough off this weight, this world.
“Ana!” Thomas’ fierce whisper saved me the stress of having no idea what a civic life meant, or how to achieve one. “She’s here! Did you see her? She must have passed in front of you. Which way did she go?”
Thomas hopped and whirled in front of my booth, his ragged jacket flapping as if he were a crow half caught in a trap. He paused for a valiant attempt to tame the unruliness of his hair before resuming his hysteria. “Am I presentable?”
I looked down at his upturned face. “In the name of God, Thomas.”
“It’s Mrs. Corbett.”
“Who?”
“She’s here. She’s much older! You must have seen her.”
“I see approximately eight percent of what passes in front of my eyes. And that’s when I’m feeling generous. Who is this person?”
“Mrs. Corbett. My teacher!”
“Fate knocking on the door?”
“Yes. Yes!” Thomas lunged toward the balcony, turned one hundred and eighty degrees, and made for the entrance to Gallery Seven. At the last moment he pivoted to the right and disappeared into the main hallway and stairwell.
Ten minutes later he bolted back into view, triumphant. “She’s up from Boston!”
A woman, presumably the infamous Mrs. Corbett, appeared behind him. She regarded Thomas with flushed attention. She was an impressive sight, her generous proportions wrapped tightly in a flame-orange gown. Her dark, oiled hair was piled into sea-froth wavelets around her face, which showed the first embarrassed melt of age. As a finale, pinned to her head was a silk hat with a tiny red parakeet perched upon it. The bird, I observed, could have been stolen from one of the museum’s own taxidermy collections. Mrs. Corbett stared at Thomas, who awkwardly introduced us before leading her to the balcony. Then he was back.
“She is here until one o’clock, when her husband will fetch her! I want to ask a favor. It is so crowded here.”
“It’s a muse —”
“Do you think I might presume to ask … it would be nice to have a quiet place to sit together. Even the rooftop will be crowded. And cold,” Thomas complained, looking at the floorboards. “Could we sit in your room for an hour?”
I glanced toward the balcony, where a fiery orange shape stood at the railing.
“Isn’t she marvelous?” Thomas breathed.
“Go.” I handed him my chatelaine with its single key. I waved him away.
The gallery filled up and emptied out again. Bright beams of light divided the room and then diffused. Similarly, my mind flickered with thoughts, some vivid enough to blind me to the passing crowd before snuffing out. Memory replayed itself endlessly and would have driven me mad if I were not adept in skimming above my mind’s meanderings with no fear of miring in the muck. At some point in the afternoon Thomas returned to his harpsichord and played an entire melancholic repertoire to the oblivious denizens of the street.
When the museum closed I went directly to the whist table, where Maud proceeded to interrogate me about the previous evening.
“What did you see?” she asked, with all the intensity of someone addressing a polar explorer.
“A whole room of bearded ladies,” I said.
“You are so sour, Ana.”
There had been no sign of Olrick the Austrian Giant at the whist table since the evening of Helen Barnum’s death, and Maud had managed, through sign language, to convince Mrs. Martinetti to bring her daughter as the fourth. The daughter, a long-limbed acrobat specializing in contortionism, sat straight-backed in her chair and stared at Maud and me. We dealt the cards.
I was partnered with Mrs. Martinetti the elder, and she spoke to her daughter in a conspiratorial tone throughout the first game.
“They could be cheating,” whispered Maud. “Do you understand English?”
The women shook their heads.
“You don’t?” Maud reiterated. They shook their heads again. “But you understood that. Perfect.”
Mrs. Martinetti the elder spoke rapidly. Her daughter nodded and patted Maud’s hand, giggling softly behind her cards.
“It would be so much easier if English were required,” Maud huffed, studying her cards. “How are we supposed to have a decent game?”
I surveyed the Martinettis’ faces. A single, ripe idea arrived. I could teach them English. Why not? It would give me something to do other than make a fool of myself for money. And it was helpful. Was it a step toward a civic life? It was at least a diversion. I began composing the handbill as Mrs. Martinetti and I lost the next three tricks.
When the game finally ended, I rushed back to my room. ENGLISH LESSONS. WEDNESDAY EVENING, IN THE APARTMENT OF MISS ANA SWIFT {GIANTESS}. I would write up the bills, hand them out … but those who needed my class would not be able to read them. I resolved to write them up anyway. I walked toward the drawer where I kept a sheaf of paper, but halfway there I turned. I sniffed the air. I scanned the room. Some unfamiliar muskiness hung in the air. Vague unease tugged the edge of my consciousness and I suddenly remembered my dream of the night before, of wading over the tide flats of Pictou. Warm seawater around my knees, my toes sinking in the rippled sand, I was a girl, just like every other, walking among the driftwood and the empty clamshells. I smelled the stench of drying seaweed and snails rotting in tide pools.
My bed had been disrupted, rumpled. Even the multicolored chaos of my quilt could not disguise the fact that more than sitting had occurred upon it. The stagnant air smelled of sweat and unknown brine. I ran my hand across the quilt. Was that a touch of dampness? And then I saw the evidence, right in the middle of the bed: a bright red feather. I held it up between two fingers. It curled incriminatingly. I twirled the feather and brushed it along my cheek, seeing flame-orange skirts spread wide across my bed, ample flesh spilling from silken constraints, and the particular ecstasy of long-imagined coupling.
I saw my own reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall, the red feather against my cheek, and also a scarlet blush rising there. My expression was unforgivable: slack-lipped and misty-eyed.
“You!” I growled at the image. “Always watching, aren’t you? Is this what you want to see?” I lunged across the room and ripped the mirror from its hooks. I threw it as hard as I could and it exploded against the wall.
In the silence that followed, I knew Maud and everyone else was listening closely; they wondered if the mirror was the beginning of my rampage, or whether a single act of self-annihilation would suffice this time.
In front of me, cupped gently on the air, the red feather drifted sideways. I lunged for it, but the draft from my body whisked it away.