Forty-six

Finally, after scouring the Herald, the Evening Post, and most of the Subterranean, I found the listing. I saw it only because its small headline was posted underneath the death announcement of one Nicholas Willard. Nicholas, aged ten years, had recently met his end by leaping (for what purpose?) into a large bin of grain on his family’s farm in Newholm, Kentucky. Before he could leap out again, he was smothered to death by a fresh load from the harvester, operated by his father. Was he America’s youngest suicide? Or simply the victim of his own exuberance, killed by love of leaping? Was his father a murderer? Even if the law did not call him so, what did his own heart say as he lay in his bed at night? And how did the report of young Willard come to be listed in the Subterranean, a workingman’s newspaper whose aim was the glorification of the agricultural life, not its many perils?

After perusing the papers hour after hour, I had given up any hope of understanding the logic that governed their layout. Notices for the latest inventions in India Rubber ran next to announcements for a newly revised Atlas for the Geography of the Heavens, published by London’s Royal Academy of Sciences. The article describing street repair schedules in the fifth ward bumped margins with an editorial written by the mayor of the city in which he took on a peculiarly intimate tone to announce plans for a great municipal park that would not be finished for two decades.

The museum had been closed for three days. The first I spent celebrating with Maud and the rest of the residents of the fifth floor. Then, when we learned that despite the wording of our contracts, our “vacation” had no guarantee of recompense, the celebration turned sour. Jacob and Matthew had drunk themselves into a stupor in Maud’s parlor and no one but I could move them. In the morning they arrived for breakfast with bruises on both of their faces and they would not speak to each other.

I spent the second morning cleaning my apartment and airing bedding on the roof. I soaked my feet in the last of my salts and read the latest installment of Barnaby Rudge in the Herald, reprinted in honor of Dickens’ recent visit to America. While strolling in the museum after lunch I saw Beebe across the street, kneeling in the chapel yard. I watched him dig in the soil next to the chapel steps; no doubt he was transplanting some seedling or other now that the weather had warmed fully to spring. After a few minutes he saw me and came across Broadway. He joined me in the empty museum, and we walked together for a while. Our time together was slightly awkward; without the crowds wreaking havoc around us, with the museum so quiet it was almost invisible to us, what, really, did we have to talk about? But it was pleasant enough, this man beside me, although I wished he were taller.

That evening I joined a group in Maud’s parlor for our usual pastime. Thankfully, Matthew and Jacob had recovered themselves to the best of their ability and even indulged us after the game by singing a rather astonishing operatic duet from The Barber of Seville.

During this third morning, my time had been entirely consumed by newspapers. The listing that I now underlined with my pencil announced a meeting to be held tonight at Niblo’s Garden: The New York Alliance of Actors and Costume-Makers meets at its usual location for its biweekly gathering at nine o’clock, immediately following the half past six performances. I had never expected to find a giants’ guild, but I had even given up on finding an organization of acrobats, albinos, clairvoyants, or human anomalies of any kind at all. Until now, the closest match I had found was the button-makers’ alliance.

Since my confrontation with Miss Crawford, I had been thinking incessantly of how to remedy the issue of the Aztec Children. Maud and I alternated caring for them to the best of our limited ability. We had no way to fathom how deeply their minds were contaminated by illness; all we could do was gauge the patterns of emotion that flitted across their faces like cloud formations. They were unaccustomed to human kindness. They seemed most comfortable spending their waking hours sitting together, usually with their arms entwined around each other, rocking gently, sleeping, and occasionally communicating with each other using an invented language of clucked syllables and intricate gestures. We called the boy Henry and the girl Susan. They were a doleful pair. The only time I saw them smile was once when we brought them chocolate cake.

Thus far, I hadn’t found the solution to their dilemma. The only idea that had come to me was to have a talk with Barnum myself. I wanted to prepare, however, for such an encounter, and this Alliance of Actors seemed to be my best prospect.

It was hours until the meeting, and I was becoming impatient with the other residents of the fifth floor. I gathered up my True Life History and went downstairs to the aviary, for a change of view.

Even the birds seemed to sense that the routines of the museum were disrupted. The aviary was somewhat stuffy so I opened a window before slipping into the mesh tent. Most of the creatures were invisible among the potted trees, but occasional flurries of chirping gave them away, and a few sparrows hopped among the bark chips on the ground. I sat carefully on one of the wrought-iron benches and looked upward into the trees. Several nests were visible among the branches; life goes on and on, doesn’t it? No matter where you are.

Without their usual work, Maud and the others had fallen into a disappointing pattern. All they did was lounge around in their dressing gowns and sip spirits, smoke their pipes, and talk endlessly about the same subjects: aches and pains, people they once knew, one another, themselves. The fact that I was no different made it even more irritating to be near them. We had all chosen this profession in one way or another, even if our deformities made it seem like the only life available to us. Didn’t they all remember, as I did, the exact moment they chose it for ourselves?

How could I have resisted them? By the time Methuselah and Beatrice Jones stepped out of their filigreed carriage and came through our gate in Pictou, our sideshow had been shut down for eight months and Mother and I inhabited the farm like the ghosts of an earlier generation. It wasn’t even a farm anymore. Now we had enough to buy everything from the mercantile in town and we’d sold all the animals except three laying hens and let the kitchen garden go to seed. It was summer when they came for me; Father hadn’t been home in four days. At the height of the season he spent nights on one of the boats, which was just as well for us since he hated to see me, and Mother hated him for that. The changes, first mine, then his, had corroded her spirit and now she lurked around the empty farm pretending she could still care for me when it was obvious she had nothing left to give.

I remember I had shut myself away from the light. Even the oblique northern sun gave me horrible headaches, especially if I hadn’t had enough medicine, so I stayed behind drawn curtains, watching motes drift up and down in the narrow shafts that managed to angle in.

I watched the two strangers come across the yard and felt Mother watching, too. When we heard the gate we thought it must be Father; he would be coming home anytime now. Methuselah Jones’ beard was still dark then, and it tumbled down his chest in unusual curls. He was elegantly dressed in a violet vest and lavender cravat, all the rest black, as I recall. And it’s a good thing he was dressed well, because his finery just barely offset the fact that his black hair was blatantly unkempt, some of it even tangled into felted clumps. His mustache obscured his mouth completely, and his wide-set eyes held more than a glimmer of chaos. Bright blue and constantly flitting from one thing to another, Methuselah Jones’ eyes were probably the primary attractions of Jones’ Medicine Show. They were painted, in the manner of the Turkish evil eye, on all the carriages and even over the entrance gate.

Madame Jones tempered the effect of her husband exquisitely. Slim, just old enough to be trustworthy, and dressed in tawny shades of gold and amber that accentuated the blond hair swept back in a simple bun, she was his conduit into the realms of society. She walked slightly ahead of him toward the house, her arm already reaching for the bell and a charming smile spreading on her lips. I heard my mother’s hesitant steps toward the door and returned to my chair. I preferred to meet them sitting down.

“Hello, Miss Swift,” Mrs. Jones said as they came into the room. My mother parted the curtains, and both strangers bowed courteously. Mrs. Jones stepped forward. “You are surely aware, by now, that you are the only giantess currently working in the world?”

“Actually, no.” This took me by surprise. “But I am not actually working. I’m sure you saw the booth in our yard. It has been overtaken by brambles.”

“We are hoping to change that,” Madame Jones said bluntly. Methuselah Jones had faded into the shadows behind his wife. It was one of his many strategies. “I hope you will hear our terms.”

It was the subject that Mother would not dare to raise with me. It was totally beyond her scope to urge her only child (even if she was already twenty years old) away from home, especially a female child into a world of commerce. My mother left the room.

“Our medicine show tours six months of the year,” Madame Jones continued. “We employ all kinds of people, maintain a menagerie of animals from all six habitable continents, and additionally produce special exhibits and performances during winters from our permanent theater in Halifax. We are known worldwide, and have been in operation eighty years, since Methuselah’s father started his traveling menagerie. As our employee, you will see the world; every other year we take our best people and animals (of which you will be one, that we guarantee) overseas, to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Prague, and Saint Petersburg. All our accommodations are exquisite. You will have your own custom-built living coach while we travel on this continent, and private rooms in Halifax.”

I listened to her, already sensing Pictou slipping away. I had destroyed our lives here, the farm was gone and my mother worn almost entirely away. If I left, she would return to real life, wouldn’t she?

“The truth is, we are surprised you haven’t been approached already,” Madame Jones confided. “If there are special things you want, you must really let us know.”

I said nothing. Years ago now I had stepped out of one life, leaving the husk of a little girl behind like an abandoned cocoon to blow away in the wind. I would do it again.

She came closer to me, glancing quickly over her shoulder to make sure my mother wasn’t there.

“To really live, Miss Swift, you must expand yourself into many identities. You are constricted here, I can see.” She gestured to the shabby room. “This world is just one of many. Very many. You can belong to different worlds, Miss Swift. The Greeks! Folklore and fantasy are open to you. And there are so many others who could be a new family. You must try being with them. You will be independent. You will have money. For them.” She gestured toward the kitchen. “And for you.”

I nodded. “How soon can I go?”

Madame Jones clapped her hands. “Soon! We must talk terms, and then we’ll arrange your passage.”

Methuselah Jones then stepped into the light, leading with his eyes. “You come with us, miss, you quit the morphine. That’s part of the deal.”

I nodded. Outside, the gate creaked. He’d returned from the boats. I heard no welcoming footsteps from my mother toward the door. Methuselah Jones looked at his wife. She nodded. He stepped into the kitchen to meet my father.

“We have other remedies,” Mrs. Jones assured me. “Many others. You’ll see. We employ doctors of our own who are accustomed to the specific conditions of our employees. You won’t need the morphine, Miss Swift. I promise. A new world awaits.”