Lila showed Saskia how a preserver, glass, and mat were all mounted over the daguerreotype to protect it and keep it in place. “You can tell the age of the daguerreotype by the texture and shape of the mat, and by the type of case and preserver,” she said.
“By the clothing and hairstyles, too,” Saskia observed.
Lila smiled at her. “Right. I’ve learned that the super proper-puritan look—like this lady is wearing—means the picture was probably made in the 1840s. The more fancy styles mean the picture was made later.” She handed the daguerreotype to Saskia for a closer look. The image had a mirror effect, depending on the angle at which it was held. Correctly guessing what Saskia was thinking, Lila said, “Remember I told you daguerreotypes are made on silver? Those silver plates are basically mirrors. That’s why they’re reflective. Sometimes daguerreotypes were called ‘mirrors with a memory.’”
For the first time, Saskia realized something that should have been obvious all along: her new friend was a full-fledged, unabashed, all-in daguerreotype nerd. Saskia liked her all the more for that. “Nice,” she replied, moving the image. “How are daguerreotypes made, exactly?”
“I only know the basics. There are eight steps involved: polishing the plate, coating it . . .” Lila took the daguerreotype out of Saskia’s hand and put it down. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
She led Saskia into an adjoining room. It had a couple of tables with stools, and shelves cluttered with tools, equipment, and supplies. There was a long counter with a deep sink on one side. In a corner, a few ancient-looking cameras stood on tripods.
“This is the workshop,” Lila said. She showed Saskia several wooden tools that were scattered on a table. “This is a plate box. And this one’s a buffing stick. I don’t know the rest. These were the things used to make daguerreotypes.”
“I thought Western Connecticut State collects daguerreotypes. It makes them, too?”
“Sometimes. My boss, Marlene, likes to experiment. Mostly this room is used for repair, though. We have to clean a lot of the images we get. They come in damaged. Sometimes the pictures are so faded we can’t even make out what they are.”
Lila crossed the room to the sink. Motioning to a shelf above it, she showed Saskia an assortment of bottles and tins and decanters labeled iodine, bromine, sodium thiosulfate, gold chloride, mercury, and more. “Here are all the chemicals used in the daguerreotype process.”
“No wonder my guy Cornelius had to be good at chemistry.”
Saskia watched as Lila took a glass bottle marked mercury from the shelf. She grimaced. Saskia associated mercury with thermometers and old paint. With fish that pregnant women shouldn’t eat. With the bad stuff they used to put in vaccines. The word toxic came to mind. She wondered what Lila was planning to do.
“Mercury has to be stored in glass because it reacts to other metals,” Lila said casually. She tipped the container and poured a few drops right onto the countertop. The drops moved as if they were alive, little beads of silvery water that bobbed and jiggled. “Did you know mercury’s the only metal that’s liquid at room temperature?”
Saskia shook her head nervously.
Lila bent over the droplets and blew on them like birthday candles. They slunk a few inches across the counter.
“My uncle played with mercury as a kid. He used it in school, in science class,” Lila continued. “The teacher let the kids touch it.”
“That was a bad idea,” Saskia said.
“I don’t know. My uncle turned out fine, no damage done.” Lila touched one of the quivering beads with her index finger.
Saskia flinched. “Don’t do that,” she blurted out. “It’s poisonous.”
“Not really,” Lila said in a calm voice. “I mean, yes, technically mercury is poison. But one little touch isn’t gonna do anything. Did you know people used to take it on purpose? President Lincoln used to take little blue mercury pills every day called ‘blue mass.’ Doctors said it helped with depression.”
Saskia chewed a fingernail. She was anxious but now also curious. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, fine, but we don’t have to touch mercury now.”
“Relax, Sask. We’re already exposed to tons of chemicals every day—in our food and water, on our lawns, in the air. All the adults have turned this planet into a toxic waste dump. Plus, we live near Arrivo, the worst chemical company in the state!”
Even though Lila was being too cavalier, Saskia suspected she was right. It seemed like every time Saskia read the news, there was another massive oil spill in the ocean, another fracking accident, another pesticide that caused cancer. Previous generations had already polluted the planet, endangering everyone; a little mercury wasn’t going to make much of a difference. With her mangled fingernail, Saskia gingerly brushed one of the blobs. It jiggled like Jell-O. She recoiled.
“What did it do? Bite?” Lila joked.
Frowning, Saskia tried again. This time she pushed two beads together. They coalesced into a single bubble. She didn’t want to admit it, but it was fun to join all the beads into one big blob, then divide them again. Almost like a game.
“If you’d told me I’d be playing with mercury tonight, I never would have believed you,” she said.
“And just think—we haven’t even gotten to the main event!”
“Cornelius?”
“Who else?”
Lila pushed the beads back into their bottle and led Saskia to a sink to wash their hands, and then the girls headed to the Collection room. After returning the daguerreotype of the puritanical woman, Lila retrieved the one they’d come for. She gingerly handed it to Saskia with a little smile.
Saskia stared at the image, losing herself in it. In person, Robert Cornelius’s image was different from the versions she had seen online. It was lighter, more vivid and vibrant. The man himself seemed younger—closer to twenty than to thirty. There was another difference, too, although it took Saskia several moments to put her finger on it. Onscreen, Cornelius’s expression had seemed willful, but here it was slightly questioning. Almost as if he were asking the answer to a question that eluded him.
“He’s dreamy, all right,” Lila said.
“Is it weird that I feel jealous of his wife?” Saskia asked. “His dead wife?”
“Do you really need to ask that?”
Saskia giggled. She held the daguerreotype at an angle, observing its mirror quality. She looked for clues—clues to what Robert Cornelius might have been thinking. She slipped the picture out of its case and turned it over. The back read: “The first light Picture ever taken. 1839.”
Saskia shook her head. “Amazing,” she murmured.
After a minute or two, Lila began to shift on her feet. Saskia looked up. Her friend was clearly fidgety.
“It’s getting late,” Lila said. “And Marlene wouldn’t appreciate seeing us here, believe me.” She reached for the image. “Don’t worry, you’ll see your boyfriend again. We’ll come back another time.”
“I have a better idea. I’ll take him home,” Saskia said, clutching the daguerreotype to her chest.
With lightning speed, Lila plucked it away. “Maybe mercury does make people crazy,” she muttered.
Saskia swallowed. Strangely, she felt as if she were being deprived of something that was rightfully hers. “You promise we’ll come back?”
Lila put her right hand over her heart. “Swear on my grandmother’s grave.”
Back home, Saskia clicked off the TV and dumped the remaining Spicy Caribbean Chicken into the garbage. From what she could tell, her father hadn’t touched it. On the kitchen counter she found a note. Don’t forget to call your mom. She wants to hear from you TONIGHT!
Saskia crumpled it up and threw it away.
Upstairs, remembering the mercury, she scrubbed her hands with soap and
warm water.
Then she washed her face, noticing with a groan two new pimples on her forehead. She tried to get through her homework but was preoccupied with thoughts of Cornelius and daguerreotypes.
By the time she shut down her laptop, the alarm clock read 12:45. With a sigh, she slumped onto her bed. She didn’t even change her clothes or take off her shoes. She just fell asleep.
Saskia
Saskia was lingering outside a shop and gazing at the sign above the door, which read in florid, old-timey script: cornelius & co.
It was a gray day, with low-lying clouds and a sense of imminent rain. She wasn’t scared of getting wet, but something told her she should enter the shop. When she opened the door, she was surprised by the light. It came at her from all directions—bright and yellow and warm. The interior was such a contrast to the bleak day that she squinted, momentarily overcome, as if she were staring at the sun.
Cornelius & Co. could have lit all of Philadelphia. The huge, high-ceilinged store was crowded with sconces, candelabras, and more lamps than she could possibly count. But the most light came from the ceiling. Dozens of chandeliers, adorned with prisms, threw off dazzling refracted light. Saskia felt like she was in the most glorious ballroom in the world.
She wandered, trying to take everything in. The shop filled her senses. She touched elegantly cut crystal, veined marble, cool cast iron. She breathed in the fishy smell of whale oil, the tang of tobacco, and the undercurrent of something else. Cinnamon? No, peppermint.
There were only two other people in the store: a couple of men behind a counter. Their voices echoed faintly, muted and distorted. She tried to make out what they were saying as she studied the chiseled faces of bronze statues: Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Boone. These were scattered amid the lights, a motley cast of frozen characters.
She moved closer to the counter. As she approached, the men remained oblivious to her, lost in conversation. She couldn’t see the face of the younger one, whose back was to her, but she could tell the older man was upset. His body language was stiff, his expression annoyed.
“I’m skeptical about the whole proposition,” he complained.
“I’m not,” the younger man replied. He was tall and lean, with a head of dark, unkempt hair. “These new lamps are the future. I’m confident of that. In fact, I’ve already applied for a patent.”
“Ha! That’s only habit. You apply for a patent every other day.”
“And why shouldn’t I? You heard the bookkeeper: our sales increased fifty percent this year. We ought to be capitalizing on our growth.”
“Our growth is exactly why we shouldn’t change. Our customers like what we offer.”
“It’s our job to inform them of their options. If they knew they could light lamps with cheaper fuel, they would.”
The older man, who was heavyset, leaned his considerable girth against the counter. “No proper lady or gentleman wants to put kitchen grease and lard into their lamps.”
“Whale oil is getting too expensive. You can’t argue that.”
“No, I suppose I can’t.”
“If my new lamp will save them money, they’ll come around to using lard.”
The older man sighed. “What’s it called? Your newfangled contraption?”
“The solar lamp.”
The younger man reached down and retrieved something from below. At that moment, Saskia caught a glimpse of his profile. Robert Cornelius, without a doubt. She had to remember to breathe.
“See here,” he said, holding up a lamp. “This is one of two models I made. It’s not so bad, is it?”
Saskia thought it was quite pretty. The glass shade of the lamp was embellished with a flower pattern. Wide at the bottom and tapered on the top, it featured dangling spear-point prisms.
“Why, it’s the same as an astral lamp!” the older man exclaimed.
“It’s the sister of an astral lamp. Same shape, but I’ve modified the font. It now accommodates lard—solid or liquid.”
The portly man took the lamp and examined it carefully, harrumphing under his breath. He admitted, finally, that it wasn’t terrible.
When he went to place it on the counter, he noticed Saskia. She felt the pressure of his gaze as he looked her up and down. His outright assessment made her clench up inside. She was always uncomfortable when men appraised her, although in this instance, he seemed more bewildered than lecherous.
But Robert Cornelius was a gentleman. He opened the flip door on the counter and came out to greet her, bowing slightly. “Good afternoon, miss. How may I help you?”
He was more expressive than in the daguerreotype. The corners of his mouth were turned up: a whisper of a smile. His eyebrow was cocked. Was he mocking her? No, Saskia decided, he was only trying to understand her. But what was it about her that confused him?
She glanced down, and that was when she realized her error. The men were wearing fancy suits—old-fashioned suits with waistcoats and cravats and watch chains. The older man sported a top hat. Saskia, meanwhile, was sporting the same T-shirt and shorts she’d been wearing all day. She must have looked ridiculous, not to mention inappropriate and immodest. They probably thought she was insane.
But that wasn’t the only troubling thing. She remembered that Cornelius had lived from 1809 to 1893. Slavery had been a reality of American life at that time—a bloody, brutal, unconscionable reality, but one that many white Americans accepted as normal, even necessary. Saskia knew that Pennsylvania, a Northern state, had emancipated the vast majority of its slaves by the mid-1800s, but that didn’t meant its white residents would welcome someone like her. Though she had no idea what Cornelius’s personal opinions were on Black people or abolition, she had to assume the worst. Acknowledging the long ugly shadow slavery cast on American history, both past and present, she’d be stupid not to keep her guard up. It was dangerous for her to be here—a mixed-race girl alone in his shop.
He took a step toward her. His expression had gone from bemused to concerned. The older man, meanwhile, looked increasingly contemptuous. Though she registered his sneer, she chose not to show it
“Pardon me, miss,” Cornelius said, “but you seem . . . lost.”
His eyes were warm, but even so, she wrapped her arms around herself. Goose bumps had risen on her skin. She didn’t know what to do or what to say. The only thing she was sure of was that she didn’t belong. The past was the past, and she had no business being in it. No business at all.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, meeting his eyes. She turned on her heels and dashed for the exit.
Only when the door had shut behind her could she catch her breath. It was raining now. She lifted her face to the falling droplets. She felt them, one by one, cool bits of comfort on her hot face.
CHAPTER THREE
Saskia woke up, still in her bed. She was drenched. Not just her face, but her hair and clothes. Everything soaked through.
From the rain? she wondered. But that’s impossible.
Her heart was beating so hard she could feel it hammering against her chest. She couldn’t recall ever remembering a dream in such detail. Such exquisite and alarming detail. If she shut her eyes, she could still see the lamps and statues. She could still smell the noxious odor of burning whale oil. She had memorized the exact color of Robert Cornelius’s eyes: green-gray, like the New Haven Harbor.
She tasted a bead of liquid that rolled off a lock of her hair. It was salty. She was covered in sweat, not rainwater.
It was only a dream, she told herself.
Suddenly, she realized the dream might have been a result of the mercury. Maybe she’d hallucinated. Panicking, she grabbed her cell phone off her nightstand and looked up the symptoms of mercury poisoning. Concentration and attention problems, anxiety, agitation, impaired motor function, tremors, slurred speech, hallucinations. There it was.
S: had weirdest dream. EVER. met Cornelius. woke up sweaty. mercury poisoning?!
She waited for Lila to text her back, to reassure her, but the minutes ticked by until a whole hour had passed. Lila must be asleep, of course. All reasonable people were asleep, Saskia told herself. She got up, trying not to make too much noise, and changed her sheets. After a quick shower, she wiped off the condensation from the mirror so she could look at her face. She saw worried eyes with smudges underneath, the two new pimples like a little pair of red eyes. She gave herself a pep talk, saying that everything was okay.
But she’d said the same thing to herself over and over these past few months. And the truth was, everything wasn’t okay. Barely anything was.
Back in bed, she couldn’t stop thinking about Cornelius. Much as the dream had freaked her out, she would have liked to see him again. Those eyes, silvered with light, were hard to get out of her head.
She didn’t know how long it took for her to fall asleep again, but when next she awoke, it was morning. She punched the snooze button on her alarm clock several times before sitting up. When she was finally lucid, she checked her clothes. Dry. She tried to conjure the details of the dream again and found that they were still fresh.
Yawning, she reached for her cell phone. Lila had texted her back finally.
L: U WERE NOT POISONED! was probably a fever dream
A fever dream? What was that? Saskia would have to find out, but not now. She was late.
On the ride to school, Saskia gazed sleepily out the window. She felt dazed and inert, still half caught in the fever dream or whatever it was. The early morning sun did nothing to rouse her. Clearly, she was spending way too much time on Cornelius.
Mercury Boys Page 3
