Thirty-three

I sat squarely on the pew with my tightened thighs supporting my lower half. Even so, terrible splinters of pain emanated from each of my spine’s compressed vertebra. You will not take me so soon, will You? The last time I’d been in a church it was in Pictou-by-the-sea, and I was a child of average height. I am meant to live longer than the rest of my kind. That is Your plan, isn’t it? An elderly woman in an unbecoming green hat gaped at me, and I narrowed my eyes at her. My belief in God had vanished as abruptly as my normalcy, and so wasn’t it nonsense to address him?

The service was an impenetrable tangle spewed forth by a man made virtually invisible by a voluminous white robe. He perched inside the pulpit like a dove in a cage, emitting bits of an elaborate song: the disciples’ sacred ignorance and the so-called key to the Kingdom of God. These words did not move me, except by spurring in me a desire to move away from this church and everyone in it. But I had accepted Beebe’s invitation to listen to his choir, and I intended to hear it. I shifted my weight as best I could and ignored the hag in the hat.

Outside, evening had darkened the sky to oxblood. The church was lit rather magnificently by hundreds of thick yellow candles. You know this is not my place. This is not my story. You must be mad to think I could believe in this pomp and posturing.

Did the gathered flock truly believe that a Jesus of Nazareth, citizen of a distant desert country so many centuries ago, would return, would not only walk among the living but also offer supreme salvation to all Believers? Must I always take the sour perspective, as Maud points out again and again? But really. If Jesus appeared in this city, I’d wager he would be selling something. I snorted. But it would have to be something useful to people during their lifetimes. The promise of salvation after death would be too simple of a hoax. The whole thing sounded amateurish. No one would believe him.

The rector’s twittering finally came to an end. The choir rose. I spotted Beebe in the first row in a scarlet robe, the hymnal held out in front of him. The organ blasted a frightening chord into the universe, as if the church were a machine grinding into life, perhaps rising on mechanical legs to lurch up Broadway toward heaven, or somewhere.

Arise, Sons of the Kingdom, indeed! The choir began their hymn as if their voices kept the sun on its accustomed track, each man’s mouth becoming a small black O, and then a line, each man’s body responding to the music as if all human life depended on it. I noticed Beebe’s blissful expression in particular as he leaned into the verses.

Without self-consciousness, Beebe sang with his brethren about the apparent imminent return of God’s only son. It was obvious he was actually singing to God. Eyes closed, even his hair popping upward, suppliant. This was his true face, and I found I did not want to see Beebe exposed in this way but I could not look away. The very thing that would sanctify him in another woman’s heart made me recoil. Would everything that brought him joy either irritate or amuse me?

When the service ended, Beebe walked directly to me with his robe fluttering out behind.

“Miss Swift! I was delighted to see you in the audience.”

“The church is beautiful. What a sunset.”

“We are blessed that our windows face west.”

“Blessed? It seems a purely architectural design.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“I don’t see how. One is divinely sent, the other created by the will of man.”

Beebe smiled. Patronizingly, it seemed. “God’s hand is evident in all our pursuits.”

“Even the murder that happened last night in Corlear’s Hook? That girl who had her neck slashed ear-to-ear?” I had not meant to slip, to spit this venom.

His expression intensified my regret. “I’m sorry.” But of course I could not control myself. “I just mean to say, it is the architecture of the church that we refer to. Exact measurements and angles. Foresight. And the sunset itself is a product of nature, the natural turning of our planet and the effects of shifting light, which operates without interference by any supernatural being. Our emotions are a reaction to this natural beauty.”

“It is God’s unbounded mercy that gave us this wondrous life,” Beebe said simply. “And it is our task while we’re here to live gratefully in the face of His many wonders.” He looked at me pointedly. “Wonders that arrive in all shapes and sizes.”

“Well,” I muttered, smiling. “That’s one way to look at it.”

Beebe stepped closer. “I would like to show you where I live, upstairs,” he whispered. “But we must wait until the congregation leaves, and the senior warden, too. Stay here until the congregation is gone, and then leave by the front entrance. Around the back of the church is another door. Wait there for me.”

“Is the secrecy really necessary?”

“Guests are not allowed upstairs,” Beebe confided. “Also no one knows that I work at the museum.”

“You’re keeping it a secret?”

“They wouldn’t approve. They don’t exactly understand my faith.”

I had to laugh. “Nor do I, Mr. Beebe. But so far the intrigue is quite entertaining.”

“Coming from you, I will take that as a great compliment.” He bowed playfully and stepped away.

I strolled the length of the church, avoiding the stares of both congregation and icon. Instead, I enjoyed being in a space whose proportions fit me comfortably, if not its contents.

When all but a few stragglers had left the church, I made my way out, deftly avoiding the eager gaze of the rector, whose desire to convert the unbelieving apparently was not strong enough to overcome his fear of speaking to a giantess.

The rector did not see me angle around behind the trees in front of the church, perhaps the same trees to which Barnum had tied the banners that had lured Beebe to the darker side of Broadway. I walked along the mossy wall of the building and into a quiet graveyard that I had not even known was there. The names carved on the knee-high slabs were too far below to read as I moved among them. The grass was lush and swished against my skirts. Without the distraction of daylight it was easier to feel the bitter rise of spring, the acidic smell of soil parting for the blind thrust of life. In Pictou they’d be tilling, I thought, but who they might be I didn’t know; you are gone, and he left Pictou years ago. Even though some other family must surely inhabit it, I always imagined the farm decrepit, its doors banging in the wind during winter and bleaching when it’s hot.

I walked to the other side of the churchyard and saw the museum. It came into view slowly, like the SS Great Western powering across the Atlantic. In the dark, from this different perspective, the museum was a great living thing: Black shapes streamed into its gaping maw in a constant flow upward, its food and fuel. Like a hundred blinking eyes, the building glowed from every window, and from the rooftop, the ascendant beam of Barnum’s Drummond light presided over it all like a great, beckoning antenna. What was the museum signaling? What did it want from us?

“Miss Swift!”

I jumped at the sound, though it was only Beebe.

“They’re all gone,” Beebe whispered fiercely. “Usually the senior warden stays here at the chapel, but the rector called him to serve another congregation for Easter, so he’s off to Manhattanville tonight by carriage. Come in, come in.”

He stood in a disturbingly small doorway with his hair askew, still in his choir robe. “Follow me, Miss Swift.”

I squeezed into a stone passageway. I had to stoop and within ten paces knots of muscle along my spine vibrated in protest. Steps led upward, and I twisted my body around the tight spiral, my feet hanging off the edge of each step. I grasped the stone banister with both hands, in case the steps, which had supported decades of clergymen, gave way under the weight of the infidel.

In Beebe’s stone room, several lamps illuminated an unexpected jungle. Potted plants lined the sill of one large window and covered his small bookcase and bedside table, even spilling over much of the floor. His small desk, too, was covered mostly with clay pots, with only a small clearing for his brown leather Bible, whose cover was sprinkled with crumbs of dry soil.

“My primary duty here as junior warden is to care for the grounds,” Beebe told me.

I brushed my hand across the fine green blades in one pot. “This one appears to be grass,” I observed.

“Yes. The senior warden tells me it’s silly to keep it, but I’ll plant it outside when it gets a bit warmer. It was dug up for a burial last October and I hated to see it all die. I kept just a small amount.”

“Naturally. And this?” I looked into a pot with one ghostly white shoot coming up.

“A crocus. I mean to plant those by the chapel door. I have an apple sapling, too, that the rector approved for near the front gate. The rector wants the grounds to remain simple, but you’d be surprised how many different things come up out there, blown here or dropped by birds, even here, in the heart of the city. All summer I must pull them up, flowers, vegetables, even. I plant as many as I can in here and give them away.”

“Or keep them.”

“Yes.” Beebe turned this way and that, looking into pots and inadvertently dragging his robe sleeves across them. You are tangled with life, Beebe. You have one foot in the church, one foot in the museum, and both hands occupied by the fecund earth. And your heart? Could it be wide enough to hold a giantess?

I sat on the edge of his bed; the chair he’d offered would have snapped like kindling. “Tell me, Mr. Beebe, why you are working for Mr. Barnum.”

“Oh, oh I see. Yes.” He straightened up and brushed his hands on his robe, leaving dark smudges. “You’re probably curious.” He stood directly in front of me. “I would be, I suppose.”

I smiled. We could go far away from here, Beebe. West, to the Territories, and make a home somewhere on the prairie, where the skies are wide enough to dwarf me. We’ll watch the weather come across miles of open ground. If you like, we could even keep hogs.

Beebe clasped his hands in front of him, appearing for a moment like a failed saint in his disheveled robe.

“I was in the seminary, as you know. Here, in New York. But right away I knew it was no good for me. It might have been different, if I was anywhere else but this city. But maybe not. Maybe I would have thought the same thing if I was out in the country somewhere. You see, the life of faith cannot be separate from the commonplace. It won’t work for monks and clergy to be all the way over here” — he extended his left arm — “and the rest of humanity over here.” He extended his right arm. “That’s just not going to work.”

“What do you mean, work? Is there a specific goal for that kind of life?”

“If holy men are separated by the clothes they wear, the way they talk, where they live, then they are not going to relate to the common man, and therefore they will not touch them with the Holy Spirit. And if they don’t do that, then more people will be destroyed, who could be lifted to meet Jesus in the air. The Rapture will be swift as lightning.”

Please, Beebe. Go no further. But of course I had to know more: “So why did you choose the museum? You could have worked at any trade in the world. Was it simply because you knew Barnum from Bethel Parish?”

“The way I see it is this: To immerse oneself in the world of vice is to give oneself the best opportunity to walk in true faith and touch many with the Holy Spirit. It was God’s will that hung that banner across Broadway, Miss Swift, and brought me into the museum.”

I rose to my feet. The top of my head brushed Beebe’s ceiling. We will not go to the Territories, will we, Beebe? Thunderheads rushed away over a great, distant prairie.

“To declare that I am part of your world of vice is insulting in the extreme, Mr. Beebe.”

Beebe’s face crumpled in confusion. “What?”

“Vice, Mr. Beebe. Evil, degrading, immoral, wicked, and corrupt.” I spat the words down on him as he peered up, a chick in the nest discovered by a fox. “I see that I am simply your dare with the devil, and I have no interest in indulging your conceit any further.”

“That’s not what I meant. Miss Swift! Ana.” His voice hushed as he spoke my Christian name.

“Whether it is what you meant or not, you are still exposed.”

“You are not at all sinful in my eyes!”

“I will not be judged by you, of all people, with that ridiculous fairy tale you cling to so fervently.”

“Wait!”

I ducked out of the room and in a few strides was into the twisting stairwell. Even clutching the railing, my momentum was too great in the narrow passageway and I lost control, skidding down several steps before lurching backward to hit first my shoulder, then my head, against the wall. One leg flew forward, the other buckled, and I finally hit the stairs squarely on my bottom. I thought I heard the chapel’s foundation creak. Wedged in place, I held my breath as my twisted right knee exploded in pain.

“God damn it all to bloody hell,” I seethed. I opened my eyes and saw Beebe standing above me at the top of the stairs. He was shocked, frozen in place. “Don’t play the innocent with me, Beebe. Working at the museum your delicate ears have heard much worse than that!”

“Are you all right? My goodness, are you hurt?” He took a step and reached vaguely in my direction.

“Just get out of my way and I’ll be rightways up and out of this cursed tunnel.” Using the banister as a crutch I crawled endlessly upward, balancing my weight on my left leg. I braced one arm on each side of the passageway and hopped down a step. I squeezed my eyes shut against the ricocheting ball of pain shooting up my spine.

“Please, allow me to accompany you, to see that you —”

“Certainly not.” I hopped down another step, then another, and then I was around the corner and out of Beebe’s sight. “Don’t you follow me,” I growled.

“Miss Swift, please! You have misunderstood my —”

I let out an ugly laugh. “I assure you that I have misunderstood neither you nor your intentions. Just to be perfectly clear, I will never be converted to your faith. And how could we be … friends, if you think I am sinful?”

“I never said that!” His voice was fading. At least he had heeded me not to follow.

“You didn’t need to,” I finished, and emerged into moonlight.

I hobbled away from Saint Paul’s with my eyes upon the museum door, where the flow of visitors marched on. William the ticket-man saw me coming and hurried out of his booth.

“What in heaven’s name happened to you?” He passed his arm partly around my waist; by placing my hand on his shoulder I was able to alleviate some pressure from my right leg. “Gideon! Wake up, you scalliwag!” The bleary-eyed boy popped into view from behind the counter.

William escorted me across the waxworks and into the back stairwell, which, thankfully, appeared to be deserted.

“What happened, Miss Swift?” William was quite breathless beside me.

“I went to church.”

“Church? Whatever did you do that for?”

I sighed. “I don’t know, William. I made a mistake.”

Up and up we went, each step wrenching more of my spirit away. William, on his old man’s legs, tried his best to help support me, but it made little difference.

“Could you just go up to the restaurant and get the biggest pot of scalding water from Gustav, William? That would be such a help.”

“Of course.” He continued up as I made my way onto the fifth floor.

In my room, I drank half a bottle of Cocadiel’s Remedy. By the time the bitter syrup turned to blessed numbness in my veins, William had delivered the hot water and I’d shooed him away. I opened a jar of salts and dumped the gray crystals into the water. I shed my shoes, shirtwaist, skirt, and corset, pulled the steaming pot close to my bed, sat, and lowered my feet into it. I dampened a washcloth and pressed the hot compress against my shoulder, then my forehead. I pulled the quilt around myself. I won’t be able to walk my rounds tomorrow. I’ll need a suitable chair to bring to my booth. Perhaps there’s a large one in the theater, backstage? I’ll get Gideon to find one in the morning. Blast those steps! Both my legs throbbed gently in the water and I passed the damp cloth along them.

Maybe to remove the specter of Beebe as he stood at the top of the stairwell staring down at me, or to reassure myself after our disconcerting altercation, I pulled the True Life History from the bedside table to my lap and took up my pen.

If only I were not burdened with the memory of a life before I grew monstrous, I would not be touched by the affliction of hope.

Hope? Visible on paper, the word lay exposed as evidence of what had been lurking in the back of my mind. I had spent years of my surely abbreviated life as an entertainment, observing the disappointing ignorance of men (and myself) that keeps us chained to the charade of our habits, the affectation and infinite pettiness of daily life. There is no pleasure in viewing a disembodied arm in a jar of alcohol, a savage from a distant country, or a deformity such as myself, except the most fleeting vulgarity. Was it hope for a different life, then, that had urged me out of this museum and into a life with someone like Beebe? Or was my hope merely a perversion, since I cannot actually leave the spectacle of my body no matter where I go, except by suicide?

I am certain my hand would not falter in discharging my final exit, if that is the way I chose, except that a problem arises in the thought of my body left behind, helplessly vulnerable to unknown humiliations. The idea of someone pacing my length, scratching his head and wondering how he’ll transport the body, and someone else lifting my cold arm to press his tiny hand to my lifeless paw, even these mild images unleash the most sublime terror in me; I could never let that happen.

If only I were not burdened with the memory of my life before I grew. The sunlight of Pictou suddenly bathed my face. I sat behind my parents, safely dwarfed in childhood, facing the way we’d come, my little legs dangling off the end of the wagon. We bounced behind the mule’s uneven trot, through ribbons of sunlight, between boughs studded with blossoms. They laughed together as we drove away from the harbor, away from our farmhouse, across wild meadows that were the most beautiful, seething colonies of life.

Clutched in my hands, a glass jar with cheesecloth for a lid. Tufts of drying grass lay at the bottom of it with a few leaves and the tiny branch that bore a gently swinging cocoon. Every few minutes I examined this pea-green jewel, to make sure I had not missed the butterfly coming out.

“You hang on tight, Ana. The hill’s coming up.” My father’s voice. Lost to me for all these years, yet there it was. But I would not put down the jar to hold on. Instead, I lay back among the damp nets, my family laughing again as we went up, up, into the bright sun.

I stayed in the wagon while my father unhitched the mule and let her loose to graze in the pasture. He came for me, then, even let me bring the jar with us. He lifted me up; I was a pretty feather in his arms, and I can smell his sweat and the sea in the memory.

“Here’s a butterfly,” he said, swinging me lightly in the air before setting me on the ground. He took my hand and we walked together to where all our friends had gathered near the church door.

If only he’d known what a bizarre metamorphosis we would undergo, maybe he could have prepared himself better. Within six years neither he nor I went to church anymore. She was the only one who did, hitching up the mule and riding up the hill alone as if nothing had changed. As if a line halfway to our neighbor’s house did not form every Saturday at our farm, as if she did not walk the length of that line selling muffins and homemade peanut brittle to the strangers as they waited for their chance to see me in a homemade booth in back of our barn, out of sight of the road. It was his idea: one day a week for a couple of years, until we could pay off the boat. But he couldn’t bear to see it with his own eyes. He always went fishing on Saturdays, leaving it to us and Fletcher’s brother, who came up from Halifax each weekend to manage it.

They are fascinated by God’s many wonders, she told me as I stood frightened in my first booth, smoothing my dress and crying. They long for the extraordinary. Don’t we all? Not me, Mother. I would have known true happiness if only you had sewn me that dove-gray velvet dress for no other reason than to just make me feel proud (I would never say beautiful) with all those folds of dense, expensive fabric and matching ribbon flowing around me. But that dress was my first costume. I wanted to love it; I hadn’t ever worn or imagined such finery, but how could I? I hated it as much as I hated facing him when he came home evenings, quietly asking how much money was in the box.

In a year, we decided on two days a week, then three. By the time I was nineteen, we’d paid everything off and bought two new boats. Father had two skippers working for him and six crewmen. The path to my booth had been worn to a gulley and we hired men to fill and cobble it. Each month I received a package of morphine from Boston, and because I was usually filled with it, that whole period of time was wrapped in warm layers of gold, rose, and purple, with only a tinge of darkness encroaching from the edges. If I had not had the medicine, I’m certain I would have found a way to die after the first hundred people viewed me.

Back in the museum, my pencil still hovered above the mostly blank page. I’d managed only the one stilted sentence. My leg throbbed and I had nothing for it. I slammed the book shut and threw my pencil across the room.