“Wes?” she asks.
But her voice is so far away that I’m not actually hearing it, in my ears. I’m just hearing it in my head.
“Wes!” she calls again, but the faint rosebud outline of her mouth doesn’t move. I only see the outlines of her eyes widen with surprise.
Wes.
“Wait!” I burst, reaching for her, and the librarian glances up at me with curiosity.
I grasp at nothing. The paper lingers in midair for only a second, as if figuring out that the hands holding it have vanished, and then with a soft sigh the letter begins to drift down to the tabletop. I scramble to get my hands under it, to catch it and keep it safe.
The letter settles in my gloved hands, and I stare down at it. The slip of browned paper, wrinkled with age and riddled with knife cuts, bears just one word, written in spidery old-fashioned handwriting.
CHAPTER 6
I don’t understand.
I’m staring down at the letter that Wes has put into my hands, so crisp and yellowed that I can’t conceive it’s the same letter that I saw stabbed into my front door only yesterday. It seems to have been folded so long it’s forgotten how to be unfolded, and the fragile, stubborn creases make it sit uneasily in my hands, like a dead leaf.
I’m trying to decide if I recognize the handwriting.
Slavemonger.
Why would someone levy that accusation on our door?
Why?
We don’t own slaves. We never have. Winston’s a freeman and gets his wages. I see slaves every so often, on the street or at the market, but Papa’s family never had them. And Mother’s didn’t, either—Mother’s from Connecticut. I’ve heard tell of what it’s like, in the Southern states. They publish stories in the papers. Sometimes they run away and try to hide amongst the freemen here, and when they’re caught, it gets ugly very fast. That Senegalese boy with the broken nose, he could be a runaway. There was fear, under his rage, I saw. Once I saw a black woman in the street, the top of her dress pulled down, screaming, being flogged by two sunburned white men, and the murmurs in the crowd told me that she’d run away and they’d come for her all the way from Maryland. But we’re not like that, here. I’ve heard Papa say they’re going to outlaw it, in New-York. It’s even part of his platform. Papa plans on being mayor, not that he’s ever discussed it with me, but I’ve listened at enough keyholes to know.
I finger the sealing wax, with the impressed outline of a spindle. What can that mean? What does a weaver want with us? Why would a weaver pin such a scurrilous lie on our door?
I stare at the hideous word, hard. As I stare, the word seems to twist and slither across the page like a garden snake. Slavemonger. I concentrate. The writing blurs, and I have to squint to see it.
“Wes?” I ask.
I’m on the point of asking what he thinks it means, when I glance up and observe a soft, gentle fog drifting into the library reading room. It creeps along the top of the card catalogue, oozing across the floor to the librarian’s desk, and pouring over its edge like a waterfall. It flows up the walls and streams across the ceiling, billowing like waves of smoke from a fire undiscovered.
“Oh no,” I whisper.
Fingers of fog trail across our table, coiling around my arms, swirling under the letter in my hands. I look at Wes, terrified, wondering if he sees it, too.
“Annie!” I hear him call my name, but it’s a distant call, the shout of someone in another room, or at the far end of a block, trying to make himself heard.
I can barely make him out, in the thickness of the fog. I see the outline of his cheek, and the soft mop of his hair, but I can’t see his face. The fog wraps itself around him like a blanket, pulling him into itself.
“Wes!” I cry out.
In my hands, the letter grows thinner, harder to see. Transparent, like a leaf caterpillar-eaten out of existence. I can no longer feel its texture in my hands, can’t register its weight. It fades until all I see is the last hovering outline of that horrible word, as if written on the air. Then, even that remnant vanishes, like a snake’s tail vanishing down a hole.
I bolt to my feet, flailing in the fog. My hands meet nothing. No table, no Wes. Nothing.
“Wes!” I bellow at the top of my lungs, but the noise falls dead on my ears, as though I’ve shouted into a void.
The fog creeps closer, and I stare at it, forcing my eyes to stay open. Maybe if I stare it down, I can make it go away.
The fog inches nearer the tips of my shoes, and I creep backward.
“Go away!” I shout at the fog.
Still it inches ever closer.
“Go away, I don’t want you! I want to stay here!” I shout.
A tendril of fog gently touches my toe, and I kick at it. The fog spreads and dissolves, but then re-forms itself and moves softly, smoothly over the top of my foot, sending a delicate finger up to the hem of my dress.
Tears spring into my eyes. Why must I be pulled away now? I just found the letter! But I don’t know what it means! What if this is the end, and I’m not going to be a Rip van Winkle anymore?
What if I never learn what happened?
I struggle to keep my eyelids open, refusing to so much as blink. I don’t know why, but I’ve decided that the fog can’t do what it wants to do if I’m watching it.
Softly, smoothly, the fog wraps itself around my legs, moving up to my waist. It doesn’t hurt. It feels nice, actually. The fog is warm and easy.
I catch my breath, only then becoming aware that I was holding it. I lift my arms over my head, on instinct, the way I do when wading into the Hudson with Herschel and the other children, putting off diving in until the last possible minute, relishing those last few minutes of dry hands before the inevitable water closes over me.
“Annatje?” Someone is calling my name.
“Is she awake?” another distant voice asks.
“Well, she should be, at this hour,” says the first voice, which I recognize as belonging to my mother.
“Is she quite all right?” the second voice asks anxiously. “It’s not like her, to malinger. Perhaps she’s come over feverish.”
A door opens and closes, and I twist where I’m standing, unclear where I am. The fog has formed itself into a dense mass at my back, pressing into me, lifting me up.
My eyes are burning from the strain of staying open. It’s no use. I have to blink. But what will happen then?
“Oh, she’s fine. It’s those books she reads. Reading too much thins the blood. And she’s always been a lazy girl.”
“Eleanor, really.” The second voice belongs to Aunt Mehitable.
“I’m awake!” I call. “I’m here!”
I press my lips together to give myself courage, and I close my eyes. The moment my lids meet, I feel myself falling, gently, softly, as one falls in a dream before starting awake.
I hear footsteps crossing a wooden floor, and then hands are pressing on my shoulders.
“Are you awake, dearest?” Aunt Mehitable asks. I can smell the lemon balm on her breath, which she chews to cover her tobacco habit. Mother thinks ladies using tobacco is undignified, but Aunt Mehitable never cared.
A soft hand pushes the hair back from my brow. I open my eyes a slit, and discover myself tucked in bed in the attic spare room of Aunt Mehitable’s house. The bud-rose wallpaper is just as it was, lit orange with morning light. Something warm and purring presses into my stomach—my aunt’s patchwork, mouse-hungry house cat.
I open my eyes fully and find the concerned face of Aunt Mehitable bending over me, with my mother looming behind, staring down her nose. You can see that they’re sisters, as they have the same sharp Yankee nose and pinched eyes. But Aunt Mehitable’s more sedate than Mother. She cares less for fashion. And by “less,” I mean she cares not a fig.
“Dearest?” my aunt says, fingerin
g the curls over my ears. “Are you awake?”
“Yes,” I say, but my mouth is dry. My eye travels down and observes that I’m in my nightdress. The cat yawns and gives me a knowing look.
“It’s late,” my aunt continues gently. “We were beginning to worry.”
My mother sniffs with disapproval and roams over to the mantel to wind the clock there, her back to us.
I sit up, rubbing my eyes. The cat leaps off me with disdain and wraps himself around my mother’s ankles before disappearing out the door.
“I’m sorry,” I say to my aunt. “What time is it?”
“After nine,” Mother says coolly from her vantage point by the mantel.
“Are you feeling quite all right?” my aunt asks, ignoring my mother. She picks up my wrist and feels my pulse. My aunt sometimes fancies herself a cunning woman. It drives Mother wild. “Your pulse is a trifle weak,” Aunt Mehitable announces. “I’ll have some licorice tea brought up. Help you get your strength back. Tone the blood.”
I can’t help but smile at my aunt’s solicitousness, given my circumstances. And hers, for that matter. But in this memory in which I find myself, I can at least enjoy her warmth, if not her licorice tea, which I loathe.
“I’m quite well, Aunt,” I reassure her. “Thank you.”
“Best get up,” Mother chastises me. “I shouldn’t have to remind you what an important day it is for your father.”
I look slack-jawed at my mother. It’s today?
It’s today. The meeting of the waters is today. Today, the city celebrates the official opening of the Erie Canal.
Tonight is the Grand Aquatic Display.
I only have one day of memories left. I’m running out of time.
My aunt gives me a wan smile and pats the back of my hand. “You’re pale, Annatje,” she says. “I’ll have the tea ready when you come down. Strengthen the blood. You’ll see.”
She gets up and leaves the room, giving my mother a long warning look.
When she’s gone, Mother comes over and yanks the quilt roughly off me.
“I don’t know what nonsense you’re up to,” she says to me in a low voice. “But I won’t have you ruining today with your histrionics. Now get up. Breakfast will be cold.”
I glare up at her and pull my nightdress down over my legs against the chill in the attic.
“Did they find who left the note yet?” I ask her in an accusing voice.
My mother looks surprised and displeased with my question.
“Never you mind,” she says. “We’re safe here, and everything’s proceeding as planned. Except for my lazy daughter oversleeping. Now get dressed. I’ve laid out your things in Beattie’s room.”
“Is Papa here?” I ask.
“Yes. For another half an hour or so. In the drawing room.”
Mother gives me one last glare from the doorway.
“What?” I ask her, defiant.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” she says. “But we need you to step in line. We’re a family. What’s good for one is good for all of us. Don’t you forget that.”
The door clicks shut behind her, and when it’s closed I stick out my tongue.
“What’re you doing that for?” Beattie asks.
She’s just wandered in through the connecting door to the other attic spare room that she’s sharing with Ed, and she’s chewing on something. It proves to be a stick of dried beef. She’s been dressed up like a fashion doll, the ones they display in the windows of expensive mantua-makers. Even her cheeks are rouged. It’s disgusting.
“Come here,” I say to her.
She comes over by the side of the bed, saying, “You want some?” and holding out the beef stick.
I shake my head, and roughly wipe the rouge off her cheek with a moistened thumb.
“Hey!” she whines. “Quit it.”
“You look like an actress, with that stuff on,” I say.
Beattie looks hurt. “Mother said I should look like a lady for the festivities. Why aren’t you dressed? Your dress is much lovelier than mine. Mine doesn’t have a ribbon.”
I can’t believe they’re going to trot my little sister out like a prop for Papa’s benefit. My vision goes red, and I leap out of bed, throwing a shawl around my shoulders.
“Where’s Ed?” I bark at her.
“How should I know?” Beattie shrugs.
I hurry across the room and fling open the door.
“Annie! Where are you going?” Beattie cries after me.
I gallop down the narrow stairs of Aunt Mehitable’s house. They’re so steep they’re almost like a ladder, and I’ve fallen down them more than once. My aunt’s house is one of the oldest on the Square, a dim and narrow clapboard contraption in the English style, with a sharp peaked roof and wooden shutters.
“Papa?” I call out.
Mother said he was in the drawing room. I have to catch him before he leaves. I have to ask him about the letter.
I tear past my aunt’s housekeeper, who gasps at my wraithlike aspect in white linen nightgown and shawl, curls flying. I land with a stomp at the bottom of the stairs and fling myself into the drawing room.
Startled, my father looks up from a newspaper in his hand and stares at me. I’m taken aback by his appearance. Papa looks thin and drawn, with purple rings under his eyes. Sallow skin hangs from his cheekbones with unfamiliar slackness, and his eyes look black and haunted.
“Annatje,” he says, as if reminding himself of my name.
I close the door behind me and walk up to him, pulling the shawl around myself. I stare my father in the face.
I don’t spend much time with Papa. Mother shoos us away from him so that we don’t irritate his nerves. That’s how she puts it, anyway—Papa has a bilious constitution, and we’re not to upset him. When we were small, we weren’t permitted under any circumstances to make noise while Papa was home. I don’t know that he’s really cut out for politics. His opinions are changeable, and he tires easily. But it’s been Mother’s plan for him for as long as I can remember.
“Papa,” I say.
“You’re not dressed,” he remarks.
“I don’t care about that!” I exclaim, stamping my bare foot.
There’s a falseness to my parents’ propriety that exhausts me. A refusal to acknowledge the encroachment of reality. To look at him you’d think my father never dove into the river off the docks as a boy, never bought hot corn and favors from those high-yellow girls in the alleys. You’d think my mother never wrung chicken necks on a farm in Connecticut. Who do they think they’re fooling?
A shadow crosses my father’s face.
“You’d best care about it,” he says, tossing down his newspaper. “Today’s an important day. We’re due on the dais after the corporation dinner at the governor’s house. And then the barge tonight.”
“I know that. Are you going over your speech, just now?” I ask, and the words taste bitter in my mouth.
Papa gives me a funny look. “Yes,” he says slowly.
I step nearer. “Going to tell all the people of New-York how wonderful the canal will be?” I prod him.
“Why, yes,” he says. He looks nervous. His eyes shift left and right, as if grasping for a means of escape from his wild-eyed daughter.
“Will it be wonderful, Papa? Will it bring us all into the modern age?” I ask, my lip curling.
“You know it will,” he says.
“We’ll be able to go into the wilderness in days instead of weeks. Take that rich land that should belong to us, instead of a few naked savages. Furs! Land! Grain! The whole of the west unfurling at our feet like a rich carpet, just waiting to be plundered!”
“Yes!” my father cries, slamming his fist onto the table. “Just so! Yes! It’d be madness to want it otherwise!”
&
nbsp; “Tell me, Papa,” I whisper, stepping nearer.
My father looks actually afraid. I’ve never made either of my parents afraid before, and the sensation is both sickening and exhilarating. My mouth draws into a wolfish smile. I lean close to his ear, and whisper, “Tell me why someone put the word SLAVEMONGER on our door.”
My father flings aside his newspaper and stalks to the tall window that looks out on the hubbub of Hudson Square. There’s no space between street and housefront to speak of, no pretense at sidewalk, and carriages and carts rattle by close enough for my father to touch, if he weren’t imprisoned by the panes of glass. In the window I see his sallow face reflected, a wasted shell of the man he used to be. Or the man I used to imagine he was.
“I . . .” He falters, not meeting my gaze in the reflection. “I don’t know.”
“You’re lying,” I marvel.
It’s not even the gentle lie of elision that adults are in the habit of inflicting on their children. Those lies I’m used to. I even echo them myself, sometimes, especially when talking to Ed, who is still after all very small. This is a lie of the bald-faced type. A lie with no honor.
My father’s shoulders sag. “Annatje,” he starts to say.
“Annie,” I correct him. I want none of his Dutch pretense anymore.
He turns and faces me, looking wan and desperate. “I don’t suppose I can expect you to understand,” he says.
“What won’t I understand?” I ask.
My father looks stricken, as though begging me to go back to being a little girl, uninterested in the sordid aspect of life that, I increasingly see, has been his purview all along. I suppose he wants to protect me. I can imagine a world where my father thinks his own compromised morality will keep his children safe from the truth.
My moment of triumph wavers. I realize with appalled recognition that I have no wish to see my father this way. I loved him. My banker father, with his noble Dutch roots and political aspirations. My father, who knows important men and discusses important things. I don’t want to know that he’s just a flawed man, like any other.
The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen Page 23
