“I did, yes.”
He held his hat in front of his chest. His hair was thinning but neatly combed, and there were straight lines where the comb teeth crossed his scalp.
“Well, I can tell. Mighty fine,” he said again. “My name’s Joe Alton. My brothers and I own one-third of the boats down here. Alton Brothers—name’s getting to be known! We export mussel shells to New Orleans, where they make ’em into buttons. Here!” He pulled a pale paper wrapper as small as a child’s hand from his vest pocket and gave it to me. “Some samples. Buttons, not mussel shells!” He laughed easily, his cheeks and scalp turning the same shade of red. “You here tomorrow? You fancy a walk together ’long the river?”
I said we were not there tomorrow and he smiled just the same. “Next year, then. Don’t forget: Joe Alton! Alton Brothers Boats and Buttons,” he said.
Down in the green room I built up the fire and put the iron slugs on top of the stove to heat them. Then, turning up the gas lamp, I looked at the packet of buttons Joe Alton had given me, which were pearly white and perfectly even and smooth. I planned to sew them onto my good dress, a dark blue silk with small white polka dots—one of the dresses Mrs. Nedel had given me. The buttons were the same shade of white as the polka dots, and I thought they looked very fashionable, almost like tiny pearls but flatter.
From the window I could see the dark sky with ribbons of stars hanging like intricate embroidery stitched in by someone with no sense of design. Along the river, two or three musselers’ boats were docked alongside ours. They were no bigger than rowboats and had ropes strung across them end to end like clotheslines attached to poles. Snakes of rope hung down from the clotheslines where the men tied the mussels they brought up from the river so they could dry. They made a pleasant jingle when the wind blew against them, which I could hear as I sewed on the buttons. When I finished, I tested the iron slugs, which were now good and hot. I took one slug off the stove and fitted it inside the waxed iron, and then I sprinkled starch on my dress and began to iron.
By the light of the moon I could see a couple of musselers coming out to dive, so I figured it must be high tide. My iron grew cool and I replaced the slug with the hot slug still on the stove and put the cooled slug in its place. A few minutes later I heard Hugo calling in a low voice to Leo, who was sleeping as usual on his mattress on the stage.
“It’s time, my friend,” Hugo said.
When my dress was ironed, I hung it carefully over the back of the chair while I unbuttoned the dress I was wearing. I could hear Hugo out on the guard giving instructions, and then the boat began to move backwards away from the bank. I stepped out of my old dress and pulled the freshly ironed one over my head and began buttoning the white mussel buttons up from where they started at my middle. The new buttons were silky-smooth and smaller than any buttons I’d ever had, a novelty, a delight to the touch. I went over to the washboard and felt the collar that was hanging over it—my best lace collar, which I’d washed out last night before going to bed. It was dry, so I buttoned it onto my dress while looking in the long mirror fixed to the back of the door.
My face in the mirror looked very pale and somewhat ill at ease. I smiled, as if trying to console my reflection.
“Crooked river ahead!” I heard Hugo shout. That meant there were a lot of sandbars coming, which they would have to zigzag around. I pulled a chair in front of the window and sat down to wait, arranging my shawl over my lap and a blanket over my shoulders. The boat shifted and swayed as it avoided the sandbars, and through the window I caught glimpses of the southern bank, then the northern bank, and then back to the south, where the trees grew right down into the water.
I must have slept. When I woke it was fully light and I could feel the boat jerk a few times against the current as Leo tied it up. We had landed in Viola. Liddy, in her dressing gown, was standing by the chair, looking down at me. Her long hair was in a single messy braid.
“May! Did you sleep here all night?” she asked.
“Oh!” I said, confused. Then: “No.”
“What are you doing?”
I looked for my shawl, which had slipped off my lap. Liddy picked it up from the floor and handed it to me. “I’m meeting someone,” I said. “In Viola. I wanted to go into town as soon as we landed. I guess I fell asleep.”
“A man?” she asked. “No, that’s all right,” she went on when I hesitated. “You don’t have to tell me.”
I don’t know what kept me from saying it was my cousin. I wanted Comfort to know I had a new life, but if she came on board the Floating Theatre, or if someone like Liddy came with me to see her, I was half-afraid I would shrink back into my old self, the one who couldn’t talk to grocers and give out tickets. The one who lived in Comfort’s shadow, as Mrs. Howard said. I stood up and shook out the blanket I’d had around me, and then I draped it back over the couch, saying I would be back soon.
“Come here a moment first, will you?” Liddy said.
She moved me in front of the mirror and stood next to me. Her soft face looked like something still asleep, and it made me think of my mother’s soft face and her soft arms, getting softer as she got older. Taking the jar of lip salve from the shelf, Liddy found a little brush and painted some color on my mouth very lightly—not as much as she did on her own lips for a performance, but a little.
“Smack,” she said.
I rubbed my lips together and pulled them apart with a cork-freeing pop.
“Yes, that’s better. You look nice,” she told me. “How about some powder? Just a dab?” I nodded. She pulled out the powder puff and gave a few sweeps to my nose and cheeks and neck. “There.” She stood back so that now my face dominated the mirror. “You’re very pretty, May,” she said. No one had told me that before, and I wasn’t sure if Liddy was just being nice. She went to the couch and picked up her yellow purse, which I hadn’t noticed and which was probably the reason she had come down here in the first place. She was fine with secrets; she had secrets of her own. She held the purse against her stomach.
“When you enter a room,” Liddy told me, “push out your chest and pull in your chin. That will give you confidence.”
• • •
The town of Viola was very close to the river, without a thought to spring flooding, or so it seemed. At the public stable I scraped my muddy boot heel against a cobblestone and asked where the inn was; there were two, I was told. One was across the street—a sign I should have noticed—and the other a little farther up, close to where the merchants kept their houses.
There was no Mrs. Howard registered at the closest inn. The second inn, called the White Crow, was in a line of buildings designed to look like small manors but really housed mostly specialty shops. I could see how such a stopping place would appeal to Mrs. Howard, for it satisfied the outward appearance of money without being too costly—or so I guessed, since the inn, which was small, had no stable attached. From around back I could hear the clucking of poultry.
Inside, a man sat dozing in an armchair pulled over by the staircase. My only fear was that I would run into Mrs. Howard, whom I did not want to see. But I would have to leave that to chance. When I closed the door behind me, the man in the armchair startled awake and looked straight at me as if he’d been waiting for me all this while. He was dressed in a blue velvet coat with brass buttons, blue pantaloons, and dress shoes with ribbons—a sort of “footman-out-of-place” look, as I’d once heard one actor describe another.
“Yes, yes,” the man said to me, standing up. “What may I offer?”
“I’m looking for the innkeeper?” I asked, although I was pretty sure I had found him.
The man bowed his head in subservience—something else I guessed Mrs. Howard would like. “William Whitlock,” he introduced himself. He smiled and blinked—he was a man given to blinking—and then walked over to a spindly desk, took up a pen, and turned a page of the inn roster. “At my first inn, burned down now, I used to sleep by the stairs, you see, in case someone got it
into their head to sneak out. That was in a rougher town than this, clientele not as fine—it was almost a blessing it burned—and then my wife’s brother gave me a good rent on this place. But I got in the habit, you see, and now if I don’t sit upright in an armchair, I don’t sleep at all. Your name?”
“I’m not looking for a room. I’m looking for Mrs. Howard of Cincinnati,” I explained. “And her companion, Comfort Vertue. I’m Miss Vertue’s cousin.”
He lifted his chin to look at me, taking in the quality of my purse and my shawl, and then confirmed that, yes, they were staying here; might he knock on their door for me?
Alpha, beta, gamma. “Thank you, but I need to run a few errands first. I’ll call on my way back. Please don’t disturb them. I’d like my visit to be a surprise.”
He licked his already wet lips, not quite ready to let me go. “You’re her cousin? Must be proud! She’s a mighty speaker, Miss Vertue is. Gave a sample last night to me and my missus in the dining room. She comes from New York; I guess you know that, ha! Trained there, she tells me.” He lowered his voice. “Course, as a man of business, I can’t be seen to take sides. Plenty of Kentucky men ferry over and stop here after concluding their business.” He blinked and blinked. “But between you and me and the floorboards, I’m with you.”
To me he seemed like a man who would take any side offered at that moment. His eyes were very small and close to his ears, and he was altogether too conscious of the art of ingratiating himself. As I was turning to leave, he said, “Oh, ahem, you didn’t say where you come from? New York, is it? Like Miss Vertue? Your cousin, you said?”
I didn’t bother with my Greek. “Actually, we’re both from Oxbow, Ohio,” I told him.
• • •
I found a place across the road where I could watch the door to the inn, a small side yard attached to the farrier’s that was not, at the moment, in use. I spread my shawl on a very unevenly hewn tree stump and waited in the shadow of the building. Women went in and out of the herring shop just next door to the inn, and I hoped that Mrs. Howard found rooms on the opposite side of the building. Comfort was very sensitive to smell. Her lecture was set for eight o’clock that night and I wondered if we would lose some customers to her. I found myself thinking how she would ask, when she saw me, how it was that I was here instead of Oxbow. I was looking forward to telling her that I’d found a job and was making my own way. Doing what? she’d ask. I debated whether to gloat that I was still in the theater or if I should be sensitive about it, since she was no longer a working actress, although I didn’t know if she missed it. But in either case I could perfectly picture her initial surprise, culminating in an increase of her favor. Well, I’m impressed, she might even say. I had never before impressed her outside of something I did exclusively for her: made her a new dress, or found us a better seat on a coach. I am impressed.
None of that happened, however. I’d been waiting about three-quarters of an hour before I saw Mrs. Howard leave the inn wearing a large yolk-colored dress with a matching silk purse looped over her wrist. She paused a moment, looking up the street. And then, to my surprise, I saw her mute manservant Donaldson cross the street to meet her. Where had he come from? Like me, he’d been waiting for her. I wondered if he’d seen me and if he would communicate my presence in some way to Mrs. Howard. I’d never seen a slate on his person, though I suppose he could easily carry an inkpot and quill around in his pocket. But he was so distant, I could almost believe that he used a more ancient method of communicating, a spiritualist’s way of giving and receiving messages through the air.
Donaldson took Mrs. Howard’s purse for her and followed her down the road, a tight black umbrella over the crook of his arm like a gentleman’s cane.
“Oh, but you just missed Mizz Howard!” William Whitlock said, blinking at me when I came into the inn again. This time he was sitting at the desk. He pushed his pink tongue a little ways out to lick his wet lips like a frog or a young boy. I said that was all right.
“And earlier—you’ll excuse me—but I forgot to ask your name, if you please?”
I was beginning to think there was very little chance that my visit would go unremarked by him when Mrs. Howard returned, but that was the risk I had taken. Anyway, did it matter? Whitlock ushered me up the creaking stairs, past pictures of half-rearing horses and men in red coats—hung there, perhaps, for the Kentucky men he’d mentioned—and down the second-floor passage, lit only by a squat lamp on a squat table between two squat doors. Whitlock stopped at one of them and, bending so that his wet lips nearly touched the keyhole, shouted through it: “Visitor for you, Miss Vertue! A Mizz Jasper Sinclair.” For that was the name I had given him—Comfort’s old married name. That ought to get her attention, I thought.
There was a rustling, and then Comfort’s trained voice sang out, “A Mrs. Who?”
“Mizz—Jasper—Sin—clair!” shouted Whitlock through the keyhole. After a moment Comfort opened the door wearing a tangerine silk dressing gown and an incredulous expression. When she saw it was me, she raised her eyebrows dramatically.
“May!” she said.
For a moment she couldn’t do anything but stare. Her hair was down and her face looked very pink; probably she had just been doing her knee bends, which she liked to do every morning to stay limber. An ancient feeling of happiness swelled up in me, a feeling from childhood almost as old as I was. “Shall we visit Cousin Comfort today?” my mother would ask me, and then we’d walk the mile and a half into town. I remember the feeling of excited anticipation as keenly as I remembered the little blue dress I liked to wear with its pocket shaped like an acorn.
“Morning, Miss Vertue!” Whitlock said, stepping back, clearly a little in awe of her, and I saw that she had him in her sway like so many others. Remembering Liddy’s instructions, I pushed my chest out and tucked in my chin as I walked into the room. It was nicer than I’d expected, with a decent red and green carpet on the floor, a plush armchair near one window, and a small round black table set for breakfast with a loaf of bread and a bowl of cherries the color of fresh dark bruises.
Comfort’s face still held the same look of deep surprise, and one end of her dressing-gown belt swung loose like a snake on her hip. She was not wearing slippers. She said good morning very cordially to Whitlock and then shut the door very nearly on his nose.
“May!” she said again, turning to me. “May!”
My chest deflated as she pulled me into a hug. Her hair, freshly washed, smelled like lemons and hay. The door to the bedroom was open and I could see two unmade beds pushed together, with Mrs. Howard’s necklaces hanging over one of the bedposts. When Comfort and I had roomed together, I always slept on the sofa or a settee in the sitting room, while she had the bedroom to herself.
She stepped back to look at me. “Don’t tell me you’re in trouble.”
“No, no, nothing like that,” I assured her.
“How did you get here? Steamer?”
“Yes—in a way. Well, not a steamer. A flatbed.” Her bare throat and bare feet disturbed me. “You’ll catch cold,” I told her, but she ignored that.
“A flatbed? Why?”
“A barge. A riverboat. I—” Now I was in a bit of a tangle and I tried to work my way back. “I got a job,” I said, “on a boat.”
To my surprise, Comfort burst out laughing. “What, are you a rouster now?”
“Of course not: as a seamstress. A costume designer. Well, that and other things.” I felt the old, familiar compulsion to tell the exact truth. “Selling tickets and putting up show posters . . .”
“What?”
“It’s a riverboat theater,” I said.
At this she cocked her head. “A riverboat theater?”
“We’re docked in town. I saw a notice that you were speaking.”
“You docked in this little town? At the same time I was here?” She looked me over again and an unbelieving smile crept over her features. “What a coincidence!”
“Oh, May. May. You’ve come all this way to hear me talk. Imagine!”
“I didn’t come from Oxbow,” I insisted. “I told you. I have a job on a riverboat theater. I make the costumes. We’re going to do a three-act play . . .”
“Well, now I know you’re teasing me! These little riverboat jaunts do only short acts, you know, singing and dancing, not three-act plays!” Now she was schooling me. She knew all about riverboat theaters, her tone implied, and I did not. Was it really more plausible that I’d come all the way down from Oxbow just to hear her speak, rather than that someone would hire me to sew for them?
“It’s true,” I said stubbornly.
“Oh, May, I don’t care, it’s just good to see you! And fancy you coming now, when I could use your help so particularly! Mrs. Howard really cannot sew,” she said in a lower voice, conspiratorially. “We stop at seamstress shops constantly. And just last night my lovely gray silk ripped when I was taking it off. Under the arm it doesn’t show, but if you could . . .”
My moment of happy reunion was gone. I looked around the room trying to regain my bearings, but it was all too unfamiliar.
“I didn’t come to sew. I came because of this,” I told her, holding out the notice that I’d found in Birchfield.
“What is it?” She looked down at the circular. As she read it a smile came over her lips. “Oh, dear,” she said. She shook her head almost laughingly, looked up at me, and then looked down to read it again. After that, she did laugh.
I was baffled by her reaction. “Comfort, this isn’t a joke! Those men mean to harm you!”
“Yes, yes. I know. It’s a dangerous game I play. Oh, dear. May, you should see it: it’s really quite a spectacle sometimes, these speeches. The way some men shout! And the more composed I am, the more they hate it. Flora says she’s never seen anyone as composed as I am. We have a laugh about it later.”
The Underground River Page 15
