Born of Corruption

by Teri Brown

  I might admire her if she wasn’t my mother.

  Jacques helps himself to another cup of tea and gives us a benevolent smile. “I will make the arrangements today. Are you and Anna ready for the big time?”

  Mother’s lips tilt upward. “Of course, I’ve always been ready.”

  Jacques turns to me. “And you, Anna?”

  “Anna was born ready.”

  My mouth tightens when my mother answers for me. As if I can’t speak for myself.

  She places another cigarette in a long black holder and leans forward for Jacques to light it. When the flames flicker, her eyes zero in on me. “Anna and I had the most interesting discussion last night.”

  I shift, my neck and shoulders tightening. I’m the one she’s going to punish for Jacques’s thoughtless comment.

  “Did you?” Jacques looks from me to my mother as if sensing the tension.

  “Yes. It seems our Anna is getting a bit bored with our private séances.”

  Bored? Bored doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about them. I hate bilking money out of grief-stricken, innocent people. But the moment I try letting my mother know how I feel—that perhaps we should give up the séances and just do the shows—this is what I get.

  Jacques frowns, his silky mustache drooping downward. “But I thought we’d all agreed that giving a few exclusive séances a month will give you extra cachet?” He turns to me and his frown deepens. “Between the shows and the séances, you stand to make a fortune.”

  We haven’t held a séance since we’ve come to New York, and I’ve cherished the break. Our first one is tomorrow night after our opening. The thought of it turns my stomach.

  “That’s what I told her, but children can be so ungrateful,” my mother says, staring at me.

  I lower my eyes.

  Jacques crosses his long legs and I focus on his striped trousers rather than meet my mother’s gaze. “Perhaps Anna is ready for a bigger piece of the profits?”

  I feel rather than hear Mother’s hiss of anger. My eyes jerk up to meet Jacques’s. “My mother knows better than that and if she doesn’t—she should.”

  Our eyes clash and a long, tense moment spins out between us.

  Then Mother breaks the silence. “Of course not. I share everything with her. Besides, Anna has been in charge of our finances since she was twelve. I trust her completely.”

  She doesn’t and we both know it. I don’t think my mother has ever fully trusted anyone.

  Jacques clears his throat. “Then perhaps Anna wants a bigger part in the show? That wouldn’t be surprising, considering . . .”

  He raises a brow and I shake my head, glaring. Considering who my father is, he meant. Or at least who my mother claims my father is. In spite of wanting to perform better tricks, I don’t want a bigger part in Mother’s show. I want . . . Well, I’m not sure what I want, but spending the rest of my life performing tired old magic tricks—the only ones she’ll allow—and being her assistant can’t be all there is.

  My mother’s smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Yes, well.” She gives another delicate shrug and my stomach hollows.

  I’m going to have to watch myself, but then again, being careful around my mother is a way of life.

  Three

  I stay in the next morning, sticking close to my mother . . . despite my lingering irritation with her. I’ve never had a vision about my own life before—they’ve always been about horrific events around the world. I don’t know what it means, but the memory of my mother’s terror is enough to interrupt my usual routine to keep a watchful eye on her.

  We spend the afternoon preparing. My mother likes to bathe and get ready in quiet, so I’m careful not to disturb her. By the time Jacques sends a sleek Lincoln Limousine to collect us for the show, we’re completely prepared. She’s dressed in an Egyptian-inspired beaded evening frock with short sleeves while I’m wearing a lovely silk drop-waist shift with caftan sleeves. As I do most of the real magic, long, loose sleeves are essential, as the sleeves not only cover up various props, they’re also distracting. Tonight, my mother insisted we both wear feathered headbands, and she kohl-lined our eyes to make them look larger and more mysterious.

  The fine leather seats of the car wrap around me and I ignore the nerves pinging in my stomach. Once I’m onstage, I’ll be fine, but tonight’s opening is important for us.

  When I first began working as Mother’s assistant, it was out of necessity more than anything else. We simply didn’t have the money to pay a real assistant. Plus, I’d been watching second-rate magicians practice for years, and sleight of hand came easily to me. More proof, my mother insisted, of my father’s identity. It couldn’t just be that I was talented. Good Lord, no. It always has something to do with my paternity.

  I shift in my seat and look out the window. The Newmark Theater is just off Broadway on Forty-second Street, and my excitement builds as we pass the flashing marquees. Mother sits silently beside me, primed and motionless, like a cat ready to spring.

  I’m not sure when I realized my mother wasn’t like other mothers. It’s hard to know what normal is when you travel all the time. But when I was nine, we stayed in Seattle just long enough for me to make a friend. Lizzie’s mother didn’t spend her evenings performing or going out for late dinners with strangers. Instead, she stayed in nights and made good things to eat. She hugged her children frequently and had a loud, hearty laugh.

  My mother, with her volatile moods and sharp tongue, was, and is, terrifying.

  The car stops, and I wait for my mother to get out before following her. She walks smoothly toward the theater, ignoring the line of people waiting for tickets. I can’t believe all these people are here to see us. Jacques has done his job promoting us well, I’ll give him that. The theater is a large sedate brick building, with white columns marking the front entrance. The marquee over the door has my mother’s name in giant letters:

  MADAME VAN HOUSEN, MEDIUM AND MENTALIST EXTRAORDINAIRE

  My name, of course, is absent.

  I have little of my mother’s poise and can’t help but gawk at the crowd, excitement rising in the center of my stomach. Couples stand in line, arm in arm, chatting, laughing, and smoking. The men in their black swallow-tailed coats seem somber, almost grim, compared to the brightly colored flappers in their sassy, short fur coats and their chiffon, net, and silk fringed dresses.

  Usually, none of the red velvet opulence of the front of the theater makes it backstage, and dressing rooms are notoriously dark and cramped. I’d been pleasantly surprised by the spaciousness of the room Jacques had led us to before our dress rehearsal. Once inside, an attendant brings me a basket of papers. Each of the papers contains a question from one of the audience members already seated in the theater. I glance at my mother, taking my cues from her.

  She removes her wrap and drapes it on a velvet settee. “Let’s do eight tonight. It’s our opening night.”

  I nod and go through the papers, marking a red X on the questions easiest for her to answer. Later, during the show, my mother will select a few “at random” and amaze the audience with her perception. The trick is so simple, it’s hard to believe people fall for it. But as Mother always says, the audience believes what they want to believe.

  Mother checks her makeup as I work. She’s always silent before a performance. My own anticipation is thrumming in my chest, but I try not to show it. I’ve never told her how much I love performing illusions, even tired old magic tricks. It’s a secret I hold close to my heart, half afraid it’ll be taken away from me if revealed. Sometimes I pretend that I’m headlining my own show. That the people in the audience are waiting in anticipation just to see me. I thrill at the thought of it but wonder what that has to do with living the quiet, stable life I also long for. I sigh. Sometimes I don’t know what I want.

  There’s a knock on the door and I answer it. It’s another attendant with a giant bouquet of red roses for my mother and a smaller white one
for me. They’re from Jacques, which dims my enthusiasm measurably.

  Mother fusses over the flowers until another knock sounds, alerting us that it’s time to go on. She turns to me with a disarming smile. “Are we ready?” she asks.

  She always asks this.

  I smile back. “As ready as we’ll ever be,” I answer.

  Whether we’re in a cheap, ugly hotel in a no-name town or in a ritzy theater, our preperformance routine is always the same.

  “Are we going to astonish them?”

  “We always do.”

  She reaches out and clasps my hand and together we follow the attendant down a narrow hall to the stage. I scan the darkened stage quickly, making sure our props are in place. The setup has already been checked by the stage hands and Jacques, but I always like to double, triple, quadruple check.

  For a long, breathless moment we wait, time spinning into an eternity, while the excitement in my chest bursts. As the red curtain rises, my mother releases my hand and steps forward.

  Make no mistake: There is only room for one star on this stage.

  Because of the stage lights, my mother’s silhouette is all I see as the velvet curtain makes its silent ascent into the darkness. The blinding spotlight looks like a sun rising on the horizon, and though I can’t see the people in the audience, the scent of perfume and expensive cigar smoke assures me of their presence, as does the excessively polite, well-bred clapping.

  That’s fine. By the end of the night they’ll be my mother’s devoted fans. Unlike other mediums and mentalists, she uses a mischievous humor during her performance that puts the audience off guard. While others rely on darkness, drama, and deception, Madame Van Housen does everything with a wink that asks “Can you believe this?” The audience loves it.

  “Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen!” Though her voice is projecting to every corner of the auditorium, it still sounds sweetly feminine. She stands until her eyes adjust to the glare of the spotlight, then glides forward so the audience can see her better. Her dark, delicate beauty unfurls like a blossom. “I hope you enjoy this evening’s show, but more, I hope you learn something about the spirit world. It can be a dark and dangerous place.”

  Mother pauses as the audience digests this and then an impish smile wrinkles her nose. You can almost hear the audience relax. Then she continues.

  “I’ve been gifted with the ability to read minds and foretell the future, as some of you will discover personally.” She pauses again and sways on her feet. My cue. I rush out of the darkness to steady her. She pats my shoulder and gives the audience a tremulous smile. “I’m sorry. I just had an overwhelming feeling that someone here is going to join the spirit world very soon.”

  Someone screams and rushes out of the theater. A plant.

  Mother waits until the slamming door reverberates through the auditorium. “Anyone else is more than welcome to leave if they feel uncomfortable.” She presses her hands together, eyes cast downward, looking like a grave madonna.

  No one ever moves a muscle. In all our years of doing shows, no one has ever left.

  She turns to me. “This is my daughter and assistant, Anna. She is going to entertain you with some magic while we wait for the spirits to respond to my presence.”

  Though she introduces me as her assistant, in reality, she is more my assistant than I am hers during this part of the show, which makes us both edgy and uncomfortable, though neither of us has ever said it out loud. Mother hates me being the center of attention, and I hate having to depend on her. I learned early on that my mother isn’t exactly the dependable type.

  I begin with easy magic tricks—making a cage of disgruntled doves disappear and reappear in different places, cutting a rope and making it whole again, plucking a scarf from a ball of flame. Mother is adept at keeping audience eyes elsewhere while I do the sleight of hand the tricks require.

  We communicate by gestures and eye contact. A wink means keep it up. A twist of the wrist means to skip the next trick and move on.

  The audience oohs and aahs in all the right places, and my movements get more dramatic as I warm up. Enthralling the audience is the best part, the part I love. I hate when people call magic trickery. What my mother does is trickery. What I do is entertainment.

  As I work, my senses go on high alert and a million details run through my mind: the location of the audience in relation to where and how I’m standing, my mother’s movements, even the collective mood of the people in the first row.

  Tonight the show goes well. My mind lights up with excitement. The audience has never been so attentive, the stage lights never so bright. When I finally stop, I’m breathing hard and my heart is pounding in my ears. The clapping is deafening as my mother steps beside me with a brittle smile.

  “As you can see, my daughter, Anna, is a very unusual girl.”

  The audience fades as reality settles in. My mother is furious. I can see it in the tautness of her jaw and the tense line of her back.

  Why? Is she angry with me for being good at what I do?

  “She reads muscles as easily as I read minds,” Mother continues. “Right now, we’re going to blindfold her and choose someone in the audience to hide a needle. Just by touching the person’s arm, my daughter will be able to find the needle.”

  The stagehand brings out a blindfold and my mother ties it, pulling far harder than necessary to show her displeasure.

  I hear whispering as the volunteer hides the needle.

  My mother always has a sense of humor when choosing the volunteer. Sometimes it’s a handsome young man who makes me blush. Other times it’s a fat, red-faced gentleman with bad breath. Ten to one it’ll be bad breath tonight.

  We began doing this trick last year, after seeing it in a rival’s act. My mother tried and tried but couldn’t do it, and it gives me childish satisfaction that I can pull it off each and every time. It’s called muscle reading, and the perceptive person is supposed to be able to find the needle through the tension in the person’s arm as they lead you around the theater. My mother, as skilled as she is, just can’t seem to pick up the signs.

  I, on the other hand, have a one-hundred-percent success rate. Of course, my mother doesn’t know why.

  My mother leads me off the stage, then lays my hand on someone’s arm. I clutch it, letting all the sounds and scents of the theater fall away, reaching to connect with the person beside me. In my mind, it’s like a silver cord or thread stretching from me to the other person. For years, I thought everyone experienced the same thing when they touched—that everyone communicated on a level deeper than just words or actions. I figured that was why people shook hands when they greeted each other. But things didn’t add up. Why couldn’t my mother tell when our manager was going to skip out on us? Or that the nice woman at the boardinghouse was only gathering information for the sheriff? It all seemed so obvious to me. After a time, I realized that she couldn’t feel what I could—and that no one else could either. By then, I already knew enough to keep my mouth shut. My ambitious mother would happily turn me into a circus sideshow to further her own career. Or maybe in a fit of jealousy take me out of the show altogether. There’s no way to tell.

  Usually, the first emotion I sense while doing this particular trick is excitement at being chosen, quickly followed by doubt that I can really do it. This man—for it is a man’s arm I feel under my fingers—is different. He’s intensely curious about me. I sense a barely concealed anticipation. There’s also a low buzz of suppressed energy coming from him, as if he’s thrown up a dam that is barely holding. I’ve never felt anything like it. Puzzled, I let him lead me through the theater, trying to pick up on his other emotions. Normally, the guide becomes a bit agitated as we near the needle, but that doesn’t happen tonight. He seems calm, patient. But there’s also something else. An emotion I can’t quite identify. Panic assaults me and my heart accelerates. Surely it’s been too long! Will I just wander around the plush aisles of the theater until the
audience realizes I’ve failed?

  I probe again, my hand tightening on his arm, and beads of sweat break out on my upper lip. Then it flashes over me as clearly as if he’s whispered it. I stop short, a sly smile coming to my lips. “Tricky!” I say, projecting so everyone can hear me. “The gentleman hid two pins! One over there”—I point vaguely toward the center of the theater—“and one in his pocket. The one in his pocket is the one I was looking for. The other is a decoy!”

  Laughing, I whip off my blindfold.

  And stare straight into Colin Archer’s handsome face.

  His eyes search mine for a moment before he bends to formally kiss my hand. “Well done, Miss Van Housen,” he says in a low voice. “Truly impressive. You passed that test with flying colors.”

  Surprise at his words silences me on our way back to the stage as the audience claps wildly. Test? Did Mother know about this test? I wonder as I join her onstage. And what kind of test was it anyway?

  Woodenly, I curtsy and wave at the crowd. I have no time to ponder what Colin meant, however, as we move quickly into the next portion of the show. Now it’s time for my mother to amaze and awe.

  I bring her the basket of audience questions and blend into the background while she answers the ones I’ve pre-chosen for her. Then the lights dim as she calls up audience members, purporting to read their minds. They, too, were all prechosen. One of the bellhops was assigned to talk with the audience as they came in. Then he reported back to Mother. Jacques has also helped. He knows everything about everyone in New York society and sent out special invitations for the grand opening. Once he saw who would be in the audience, he fed us tidbits of gossip, which have now become a part of the act.

  I hide a smile as the amazing Madame Van Housen shares some new insight with a stout lady whose turban glitters with rhinestones as she moves. The audience gasps in shock and admiration at my mother’s perception.