The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen

by Katherine Howe

  “It’s . . . it’s complicated,” he falters.

  “Try me,” I say, folding my arms over my chest.

  “The government,” he says. “They couldn’t put up all the money. You see? It’s a huge project, the canal. You can’t even imagine how big. No one’s ever attempted anything like it. It’s like . . . it’s like asking the governor to pay for a slingshot to send some argonaut to the moon. Who’d invest in such folly? Who’d explain to the people why their taxes should be spent on such things? Don’t even have enough to eat, most of them. The common man lacks vision, Annie. He can’t look any further than tomorrow. Sometimes not even that far.”

  “I don’t think that’s true, Papa,” I say.

  He smiles drily at me. “Of course you don’t. Oh, my dear. How young you are.”

  He moves away from the window, which has become blocked anyway by the back of a ragged woman begging with a child at her breast. My father crosses the room to me, and places his hands on my shoulders.

  “We formed a corporation, to solicit private investment. We had to raise the money some way, don’t you see?” He’s using his now-let’s-be-reasonable voice. Nothing drives me to greater distraction.

  “From whom, Papa? Who did you go to for money?” I demand, staring him in the face.

  “Why, from all sorts of people. Businessmen here in town. Some additional syndicates, as well. Syndicates from farther quarters.”

  “Southern syndicates, you mean,” I say. “Plantation owners. Slaveholders. They gave you the money.”

  He nods. Ever so slightly.

  “But what do they care for the canal?” I exclaim. “They’re hundreds of miles away!” I try to twist myself free of my father’s grip, but he holds me fast.

  “The grain, Annie,” he says. “The price of grain will plummet once the canal is open. Use your head. Slaves are expensive. They have to eat. Not well, I admit, but eat they must. No planter will let his stock starve to death. They’re expensive to buy, and expensive to maintain in bulk. But they’ll get cheaper to keep, fed on bread from grain moved on our canal. Have you any idea how cheap these goods will become, once our canal opens? How much harder they can then be made to work? How rich their trade will make this city? The cotton cargo coming through New-York will expand ten times over. Why, my bank alone holds mortgages on hundreds of slaves. We’ll triple our investment in a day!”

  “These goods,” I spit, and this time I do break myself free from his grip. “I thought you said you’d outlaw slavery, in the city, when you become mayor!”

  “And so I shall, my dear. The laboring classes will insist on it. Free white men need wages, or they’ll starve and riot in the streets. They can’t compete with slave labor. Look at this.” He gestures to the beggar woman outside the window, who’s waylaid a stovepipe-hatted young man who’s trying to shake her loose from his sleeve. “Can’t you see how they’ll benefit? And in any case, they vote. In this city, abolition is what the masses want to hear, so that’s what I sell them. And if cotton stays cheap, why, so much the better.”

  I’m so revolted by what my father’s saying that I fear I’m going to be sick.

  “But, Papa,” I say through the bubble of disgust quickening in my chest. “They’re not goods. They’re people.”

  He looks on me with pity, and shakes his head.

  “Not like we are,” he says with finality.

  The stovepipe-hatted man outside shoves the beggar woman off him and shouts loudly enough that we can hear it through the glass. She rains a hail of curses on him the likes of which are surprising, even for someone who’s accustomed to the Bowery.

  I start backing away, one foot at a time.

  “Come now,” my father says, seeing the horror in my face. “It’s all to the good, don’t you see? Tonight the entire city will celebrate. Some radicals may have tried to shut it down, but they’ve failed. This canal will bring all the country together, and into the future.”

  “No,” I whisper. “No, it’s not to the good.”

  “Annie, be reasonable. In any case, it’ll never be outlawed entirely, no matter what your mother’s ladies’ group likes to think. Your mother agrees with me. She knows how important slave money is to our enterprise.”

  Mother knows?

  But of course, Mother knows. And she doesn’t care, either. She just sees the money, and the political opportunity. She just sees what she wants to see.

  I grope for the ceramic base of the large palmetto plant in my aunt’s drawing room, bend double at the waist, and heave into it. My stomach is empty. Nothing comes out but bile. I spit, to get the awful taste of the truth out of my mouth.

  “Annie!” my father cries.

  Slavemonger. That’s what the note said. With a flourish at the end, like the tail on a snake. But maybe the flourish was really an S. SlavemongerS.

  I look up from the planter, my mouth hanging open, a rivulet of saliva hanging from my chin. My father is looking down on me with a mixture of fear and concern. He’s stopped just short of resting a hand on my back.

  I was in the library with Wes. And I read the note with that awful word. I was upset, desperately upset. And then . . .

  I glance up at my father’s horrified face, and I begin to laugh.

  CHAPTER 7

  Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God!

  She just disappeared! What the hell am I supposed to do?

  I look around in a panic, but it’s not like anyone is going to know that anything’s happened. I feel like I’m supposed to be doing something. Like I need to spring into action. But what? Who do you call when your . . . when your . . . when someone just disappears?

  I look back down at the note.

  Slavemonger. She seemed really upset by that. But why?

  “Is everything okay?” someone asks behind me, and I jump so hard I almost drop the paper, which would be bad since it’s, like, an antique and everything. The librarian is standing there looking at me like I’ve grown two noses.

  “WHAT? Oh yeah. I’m fine.” I try to cover how completely freaked out I am by the fact that this girl who’s been stalking my every waking moment has just literally disappeared into thin air.

  “You’re sweating,” the librarian points out.

  Gingerly I reassemble the note into its little origami square and place it back in the library box without meeting the librarian’s eyes. Yeah. I’m sweating. You bet I am. It’s all I can do not to barf right in this library box.

  “Yeah, well. It’s super hot out.” I give her a big fake cartoon character smile. “July in New York. Am I right?”

  The fact is, the air-conditioning in here makes it completely arctic. She’s even wearing long sleeves. The librarian gives me a funny look, and says, “Uh-huh. Just let me know when you’re done with those materials, okay?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I will.”

  She goes back to her desk, leaving me to try not to hyperventilate while I think about what I should do. I should figure out a way to get her back. Right? But how would I even start to think about doing that? What even brought her here in the first place? Should I keep looking for the cameo myself? Where in the hell is it? HOW SHOULD I KNOW?

  Listen, I reason with myself. She’s a . . . You know what she is. Right? So there’s a chance that, if she’s gone now, that’s the end of it. There’s no helping her. You have to just chalk this up to one of those experiences you never tell anyone about, ever, except when you’re an old guy in the home and no one will believe you anyway.

  But what if she comes back? I don’t want to let her down. She seems to come and go as she pleases. But no, that’s not right. She didn’t want to go. She called out to me. So she comes and goes, and she can’t necessarily control it.

  Where is she?

  I stand up at the library table, as though I’m going to leap into action. But I have
no idea what action to leap into.

  I sit back down again.

  Maybe I should wait. When she showed up in my room, she said, “I came right back.” Right? What if she comes looking for me here? I should make myself easy for her to find, if she can. Right? Yeah. In that case, I should just sit here and wait.

  But it’s not like she’d ever been to my room before. Maybe she can find me wherever I am. Maybe it’s me, not where I am in space, or time, or . . . whatever. In that case I should keep trying to figure out what happened to her, to help her. And trust she’ll just catch up with me whenever. She’ll come back for me. Right?

  She has to.

  She can’t just leave me hanging like this. This can’t be it.

  Gradually I become aware that I’m rocking back and forth in my seat, staring into space at nothing. I must look like a crazy person.

  A hand claps me on the back at the very second a young male voice says, “Hey, man,” and I’m so startled I actually shriek.

  “Dude!” Tyler exclaims, laughing. “Jumpy much?”

  The librarian looks at me with an I’m-about-to-call-security face.

  “Sorry!” I call to her. “Sorry,” I say to Tyler, between trying to catch my breath. “Jesus. You scared the crap out of me.”

  “I guess! Sorry about that. What’s up?” Tyler drapes himself over the back of a library chair and gives me a lopsided smile. He looks happy. He’s even wearing less eyeliner. Oh no, wait. It’s just blue today, instead of black. Daytime eyeliner. My mistake.

  “Oh, man,” I say, leaning my head in my hands. “I’ve had the weirdest of all possible days.”

  Should I tell him the truth? He’ll think I’ve lost my mind. But, so what if he does? If he thinks I’m crazy, then who cares? I’m going back to Madison in a week anyway. I never have to see Tyler again if I don’t want to. I can vanish. Forever.

  “You look like crap,” Tyler says helpfully while pulling the box over for a look. “What’s all this stuff?”

  “Oh,” I say. “Nothing. It’s for a project.”

  “You need a release, if you want to shoot in the library,” he points out. “I know. I checked.”

  “Not that kind of project,” I mutter.

  Tyler’s already moved on, picking up my bag and pulling my camera out for a look. “So what’s the problem with your camera?” he says, taking the lens cap off and powering it up. He plants the viewfinder in his eye and looks at the library through a digital lens. “You said the focus was messed up?”

  “Yeah,” I say, leaning back and staring up at the ceiling. “I was shooting some more footage for Most, and I couldn’t get the focus to hold. I don’t know why.”

  More acoustical tile divots. Too many to count.

  “More footage? Of what?” he asks me with interest.

  “You remember that girl? The one you needed a release for? In Shuttered Eyes,” I say.

  “Sure,” he says, swinging the camera onto me and grinning.

  “So, I got together with her.”

  “What?” Tyler’s grin spreads, and he drops the camera from his face. “You mean, got together got together?”

  “God! No.” I wave him off.

  “Pfffft.” Tyler laughs, bringing the camera back up. “Eastlin’s so right about you.”

  “Listen,” I say. “This is serious.”

  “I’m listening. Go on,” Tyler says.

  “Are you finished with this?” a voice interrupts us.

  It’s the librarian, gesturing to the open box of Van Sinderen ephemera. I glance at all the unlabeled photos and letters and birthday cards and things. Generations of Van Sinderens that Annie never knew. I feel like I should have gotten more out of it. More than one word on some star-cut letter.

  “I guess,” I say.

  “Find what you need?” she asks me. She’s probably wondering what two film guys are doing messing up her archive. She’s probably ready to get rid of me.

  “Sort of,” I say, unable to hide my disappointment. “Actually, no. Not really.”

  “What were you looking for?” she asks. She sounds like she really wants to know. I’m surprised. Tyler swings the video camera onto her face. “And I’m letting you play with that because I can tell it’s not recording, for the record,” she adds.

  Tyler pulls the camera out of his face, waggles his eyebrows at her, and then puts it back. Like me, he prefers seeing the world through a filter.

  “If I wanted to look at really old newspapers, how would I do that?” I ask.

  “Like how old?”

  “Old. 1820s,” I say.

  “Sure,” she says, like people ask her that all the time. “Microfilm room downstairs.”

  Tyler groans. “Oh my God,” he says. “Microfilm.”

  That’s rich, coming from Mr. 16 millimeter guy. But whatever.

  “Or,” she says. “You can just check the historic newspapers database.”

  “There’s a database?” I’m stunned.

  “Of course there’s a database.” She smiles at me. “What do you think this is? 1977?” She beckons me to follow her to her desk. “You can do this at any terminal,” she remarks, fingers flying over the keyboard. In less than a minute she swivels the screen around to face me.

  New York Times. Boston Globe. And a bunch of ones I’d never heard of, that probably went out of business. Everything. It’s all there.

  “Wow,” Tyler says, peering over my shoulder. “I’ve figured out your focus, by the way,” he says to me.

  “Great,” I say to him. To the librarian, I say, “And this will show me the actual newspapers? Like, I can read them this way?”

  “I’ll do you one better,” she says, smiling. “What’re you looking for?”

  “I want to know if some kind of accident happened a long time ago,” I say. “Or an assassination, maybe. Something bad.”

  “Date?”

  “October twenty-seventh, 1825.”

  Tyler lowers the camera and stares at me. “You in a history class I don’t know about or something?” he asks. “No wonder you’re so stressed out.”

  “No,” I say, irritated. “I’ll explain in a minute.”

  “Okay,” the librarian says, typing so fast it’s like magic. “Ooooo! The opening of the Erie Canal! Very cool.”

  “Boring,” Tyler singsongs. “Come on, man, let’s go. I’ve got tons to tell you.”

  “Wait a minute.” I wave him off. To the librarian, I say, “Yes, right. There was this big party for it. On the water. The Grand Aquatic Display. Is there anything about that? Something bad during that.”

  “Let’s see.” The librarian frowns at her screen, paging through various results. “You know,” she remarks. “You’re more than capable of doing this yourself.”

  “I know,” I say, sheepish.

  “Hmmmm,” she says. “Oh! Yep. Here we go.”

  She clicks the mouse, and clicks again.

  “What?” I say, bouncing on my toes the way Annie does when she’s excited. “What happened?”

  “A fire,” she says.

  Her printer fires up without warning, deafening in the silence of the reading room, spitting out a few pages in quick succession. She plucks them from the top of the printer pile and hands them to me.

  I shuffle through them, frowning. She’s printed out, like, four different articles, all about some kind of explosion and fire on a barge. One reports that it’s happened, and then there are a couple follow-up articles about them trying to figure out why.

  “Wow,” I say, impressed. “This is awesome. Thank you.”

  “No problem,” she says. “Lucky for you, it’s slow in here today.”

  I move away from her desk, hunting through the still printer-warm pages for any mention of Annie.

  “Dude.” Tyle
r plucks at my shirt. “Come on.”

  “Wait, wait!” I exclaim. I want to read the articles. I have to find out what happened.

  “Wes. It already happened, right? They’re not going anywhere. Come on. I’m starving, and I want to tell you about what’s going on with Gavin Brown.”

  “Tyler! Will you just wait one goddam minute? I need to read this.” It comes out louder than I intended it to. I can tell, because Tyler’s eyebrows shoot up.

  “Sure. Jeez. Have a stroke about it, why don’t you.” Tyler wanders over to the table and flops back into a chair to fiddle more with my camera while I scuttle to a corner by a bookshelf to read the articles away from prying eyes.

  Unfortunately, they don’t tell me all that much. They’re written in this weird, overblown old-fashioned style. Basically, there was a huge party, and they spend about a million years listing all the civic groups who were there. Finally, they get to the good part. The governor poured a bunch of water from different rivers all over the world into the harbor, and all these fireworks went off, and while that was happening, one of the barges went up in flames.

  There was screaming. They could hear it all across the harbor, under the sound of the flames. At first no one did anything, because they thought it was part of the fireworks show. But then people onshore noticed the silhouettes of people on the barge, running back and forth, jumping into the water with their clothes on fire.

  I swallow. Hard.

  The Canal Corporation won’t comment—that must be Annie’s dad’s company—and the harbormaster thinks some bunting caught fire by accident. It was a great tragedy, the only mar on an otherwise triumphant day.

  “God,” I whisper, haunted by the soot crawling up Annie’s arms and face when she reached her hand into the sunlight by that tiny, awful park that’s not really a park.

  I can’t think about it. I can’t.

  One of the articles has a strange coda. It says that the United Brotherhood of Luddites has claimed responsibility for the fire on the barge.

  Maybe it wasn’t an accident.