“I’ve made arrangements for us to dine there,” Beebe piped up, breaking my morbid reverie. He pointed to a well-lit building on the corner in front of us with several carriages outside. “It’s in the European style,” he added, a little uncertainly.
Despite my best efforts to remain generally unmoved, there are inevitably instances, not as infrequent as I might hope, when my fortifications crumble. Entering restaurants is one of those instances. Beebe did not help the matter by nervously straightening his cravat below me and removing his hat before we even neared the door. Go first, Beebe. Please go first. Beebe opened the door and gestured for me to enter. I fell immediately back into an old pattern of thought, one I’d hoped I had outgrown: I pretended I was going onstage. I would now cross the threshold and enter a fabricated environment. The audience would be surprised, of course, but they also knew exactly what they’d paid to see.
The restaurant had dark wood floors spread over with richly patterned rugs of variegated, though muted, colors. I was surprised, at first, to see that the tables were all of different shapes, some round, some square, and two long, rectangular tables with several different parties seated along them. Even the chairs were mismatched. Lit by cut-glass sconces along each wall, the restaurant was lively and somehow intimate, with everything cast in a medieval glow. A young man with a frosty-pink rose in his lapel led us to a table away from the windows and other patrons. Thankfully, he placed me in a sturdy chair without arms, where my back rested comfortably against the wall.
“Well, this is all right, then?” Beebe, dwarfed in a high, cushioned chair decorated with a needlepoint hart and hound, again struck me as a schoolboy. I often received this impression of men, but Beebe in particular. He nodded. “I haven’t been here before, actually, but one of my colleagues at the museum recommended it.”
We were given menus. Consommé Grand Duke. Radish salad. Potatoes Gastronome. I wondered briefly if Beebe could read. You can, can’t you?
“Ah,” he said. “Bridgeport clams. To remind me of home.”
“Tell me about where you grew up, then, Mr. Beebe.” Stuffed quail, demi glace. Would I dare order something in miniature? Loin of beef with mushroom sauce was more appropriate. The man returned, offering us claret in fluted glasses. Beebe ordered clams, I ordered consommé.
“Bethel Parish is a beautiful place.”
“And what did you do there?”
“Tended hogs, mostly.”
“Is that so.” Beebe, no! A hog farmer? But then again, am I not a fisherman’s daughter?
“It’s not a fancy place. Farms of all different kinds, though. It’s a fertile region. Abundant, I would say, in that regard.”
Around us, ladies sat with men who had obviously never been hog tenders. A couple accompanied by a woman who looked as if she might be mother to one of them took a table near us. The mother, her white hair elegantly swept up and accentuated by a necklace of cut garnets, glanced at me and smiled as she looked quickly at her plate. It was a smile, though, that told me she was not shocked, but gently amused, perhaps, that the city continually tossed wonders in her lap, and I was simply the latest and nothing more than that.
“I also grew up on a farm,” I offered, and then examined my menu as Beebe undertook the expected conversation: a comparison of crops, of fathers, of early frosts and late snowfall. A platter of clams and a bowl of broth arrived. Beebe tucked his napkin into his collar.
“But there was something extraordinary about growing up when I did, in the place where I did.” Beebe smiled. Small teeth, with rounded edges. He placed an empty clamshell on the tablecloth, despite the porcelain bowl he’d been given. He leaned forward dramatically.
“Because one of my friends was Phineas Taylor. We called him Tale, though, because his uncle was already Phin. We were neighbors.”
“Barnum?” I lowered my spoon without taking the bite.
“There were two fields between us, and a thicket, but still our closest neighbor. I know!” he crowed, seeing my surprise. “It seems hardly possible now that he’s … now that he’s doing what he’s doing. But back then, naturally, it seemed quite natural. He’s just one year older than me.”
“Mr. Barnum was your neighbor?” That Phineas T. Barnum was ever a boy seemed highly improbable.
“Yes!”
“He grew up on a farm?” Surely, not on a farm.
“Well, yes. It was his mother’s farm, really. And his grandfather’s.” Beebe gestured with his fork, and I observed droplets of clam broth fly onto his coat.
“What kind of child was he?”
“Oh, well, not terribly unusual.” Beebe relinquished his clams to make room for our dinner plates. He had ordered the quail, and I the beef loin. Beebe clutched his fork with one hand, his knife in the other. His table manners were awful. Could that be why people were staring at us? That would be something new.
“He had a knack for approximating. He could guess the number of logs in a woodpile, things like that. But I never saw him much after he went to work at the mercantile in town. Like I said, I stayed on the farm.”
“With the hogs.”
“Yes.”
“And then he gave you the job of usher?” I could picture it: Beebe in muddy boots, fresh from the marketplace, all his hogs sold, appearing at the museum, having heard that his old friend was making a fortune. Barnum frowning at the disheveled man, but feeling some obligation to find a place for him.
“Eventually, yes. It’s a whole other story.”
“I’d like to hear.”
“Well, I didn’t mean to tell you my life history.” He blushed, pinning his quail to the plate with his fork and taking a swipe at it with his knife. “But I moved here two years ago, to join the seminary.”
“You!” I could not contain a laugh.
Beebe looked up sharply. “Yes. Why is that funny?”
“Oh, it’s not,” I lied gently. “Just unexpected.” That he’d succeeded in surprising me so thoroughly was highly endearing. Now that he saw my smile, he clearly relished it as well.
“Eventually I found that my own ideas about how to live in harmony with the Lord did not exactly … fit with the church. So I am no longer in the seminary. But I am continuing my path of faith. I am a Junior Warden at Saint Paul’s Chapel. I live there and fulfill my duties as Warden, and also work in the museum three days a week.”
“That’s quite a pair of occupations.”
Beebe nodded. “I know, but it makes sense, it truly does. What’s funny is that I didn’t even know the museum was Barnum’s. I knew it changed owners, and I watched the outside of the building transform, you know, the red trim, all of that. But I didn’t know it was him until one morning, I looked outside, and there was a huge banner strung across Broadway. I remember it advertised a Russian clairvoyant and a collection of serpents. Well, the contents of the banner weren’t the problem. The problem was that on one side of Broadway the banner was anchored to the second-floor balcony of the museum, but the other side was most conspicuously harnessed to a tree on chapel property. You can imagine the difficulty. So I went across the street, of course, to speak with someone. And do you know, it was Barnum himself behind the ticket window! But I didn’t recognize him at first. We hadn’t seen each other in twenty years by that time. He pointed me toward the boss’s office. As I walked down the back hallway I tried to figure where I’d seen him before, but it wasn’t until I saw the name on his office door that I realized. I went straight back to the ticket window and there he was, smiling. ‘Beebe,’ he said. ‘Have you come for a job?’ And of course I hadn’t, but … well, you know how it turned out.”
“That’s quite a tale.”
He looked at his plate. Ask, Beebe. Ask me how it feels … to be me, and I’ll tell you. I’ll try to tell you. The opening is now. Ask, and maybe I can bear your guileless eyes.
“I thought you might enjoy it,” he said, picking up the quail’s leg and slurping the meat off the bone. “It is strange wher
e life delivers you.”
We finished our meal in silence. I was quite comfortable, but as the silence grew, Beebe became anxious. Coffee arrived in mismatched cups. Beebe scalded his mouth and tried, quite gracefully, I thought, to hide his discomfort. But when it came time to pay for our meal, all traces of grace vanished as he poured a small number of coins directly onto the table and tediously counted them out. My skin crawled. Around the room, people looked at us. Because of me? Or him. Several crumpled bills appeared next to the coins and he leisurely smoothed and counted. He even paused to sip his coffee! I felt my face ablaze.
Seemingly oblivious to the spectacle he’d made of himself, Beebe talked all the way back to Ann Street, about the quality of the night, the gradual warming of the earth this time of year. Partaking in such talk is usually abhorrent to me; when you spend each day observing humanity in a setting like the museum, there is opportunity to ponder the superficial habits of man (and the even more numerous superficialities of woman). It is habit, is it not, that keeps us quietly busy in a world whose rules, dictated by others, we don’t even question?
“Beebe, why did you invite me to dine with you?”
“Because I like you. Of course.”
“But you are a man of faith, and even in the Bible giants are condemned as a corruption on earth. They are part of the reason God sent the flood.”
“That’s a harsh way to look at oneself, isn’t it? The Bible inspires me to live righteously, it’s true, but I think for myself, and obviously you do, too. You’re a good person. Your perspective is unusual. I feel I can relate to that.”
Outside the museum, Beebe took my hand, forcing his own arm to crook up at a comical angle. He bowed.
“Thank you for this evening, Miss Swift. I hope you were not too disappointed by my humble origins,”
“Why of course not, Mr. Beebe,” I sputtered, startled that he’d guessed that I had been. “Thank you for getting me out of the museum. You’re right: It is a lovely evening.”
I watched him cross over Broadway and, true to his word, unlock the iron gate at Saint Paul’s. He paused to examine a patch of tilled ground near the church’s front step before continuing along a path around the side of the building. As he disappeared I felt a sturdy tug of affection that I couldn’t bear to dismiss.
Twenty-three
The whole morning was cast in a pall of foul humor. My legs ached from walking on cobbled roads with Beebe, and I struggled not to replay our dinner together too many times in my mind, which would quickly stale any remaining pleasure in it. I’d slept poorly and dreamed only of Pictou and the sea.
I’d always heeded you, Mother, hadn’t I? You made everything sound so poetic, as if my life’s scope were grander than anyone else’s because of my greater mass. Whenever I came home overcome with girlish passions, you turned from your task at the woodpile or in the kitchen: Love will not be easy. You were the only one to ever speak to me of love. Don’t look for it, Ana. Never. Do not demand what can only be given freely. You regarded me seriously despite my ugliness, my absurd shell. I never looked, Mother. I never did. Be content in solitude. Only then are you prepared to receive love.
But what of the trivial pleasures, the ones I observe over and over standing here? I appear as emotionless as a statue, but each couple who passes, each pair of clasped hands, each buoyant look is a dart pricking my skin, a rash spreading, itching to the point of distraction as I compulsively imagine all the rest, the hidden pleasures. Concern yourself with practical matters. Then love will surprise you. That is the joy of it as much as all the rest.
I felt for my bottle of Cocadiel’s Remedy in one of the hidden pockets of my skirt. I took a drink. I wanted to improve my life, expand my scope, but how? I looked over the heads of the museum patrons and turned to this lofty matter, hoping to banish the rest from my mind. I would not leave the security of my profession. But a civic life, something outside the business of spectacle, would provide a necessary balance. Serve somewhere, something larger than myself, if such a thing existed. Where? A hospital? What do people do? Or was I just being a fool to think I could have a life outside of … this? The inky waters of Lake Ontario lapped at the edge of my thoughts. To slough off this weight, this world.
“Ana!” Thomas’ fierce whisper saved me the stress of having no idea what a civic life meant, or how to achieve one. “She’s here! Did you see her? She must have passed in front of you. Which way did she go?”
Thomas hopped and whirled in front of my booth, his ragged jacket flapping as if he were a crow half caught in a trap. He paused for a valiant attempt to tame the unruliness of his hair before resuming his hysteria. “Am I presentable?”
I looked down at his upturned face. “In the name of God, Thomas.”
“It’s Mrs. Corbett.”
“Who?”
“She’s here. She’s much older! You must have seen her.”
“I see approximately eight percent of what passes in front of my eyes. And that’s when I’m feeling generous. Who is this person?”
“Mrs. Corbett. My teacher!”
“Fate knocking on the door?”
“Yes. Yes!” Thomas lunged toward the balcony, turned one hundred and eighty degrees, and made for the entrance to Gallery Seven. At the last moment he pivoted to the right and disappeared into the main hallway and stairwell.
Ten minutes later he bolted back into view, triumphant. “She’s up from Boston!”
A woman, presumably the infamous Mrs. Corbett, appeared behind him. She regarded Thomas with flushed attention. She was an impressive sight, her generous proportions wrapped tightly in a flame-orange gown. Her dark, oiled hair was piled into sea-froth wavelets around her face, which showed the first embarrassed melt of age. As a finale, pinned to her head was a silk hat with a tiny red parakeet perched upon it. The bird, I observed, could have been stolen from one of the museum’s own taxidermy collections. Mrs. Corbett stared at Thomas, who awkwardly introduced us before leading her to the balcony. Then he was back.
“She is here until one o’clock, when her husband will fetch her! I want to ask a favor. It is so crowded here.”
“It’s a muse —”
“Do you think I might presume to ask … it would be nice to have a quiet place to sit together. Even the rooftop will be crowded. And cold,” Thomas complained, looking at the floorboards. “Could we sit in your room for an hour?”
I glanced toward the balcony, where a fiery orange shape stood at the railing.
“Isn’t she marvelous?” Thomas breathed.
“Go.” I handed him my chatelaine with its single key. I waved him away.
The gallery filled up and emptied out again. Bright beams of light divided the room and then diffused. Similarly, my mind flickered with thoughts, some vivid enough to blind me to the passing crowd before snuffing out. Memory replayed itself endlessly and would have driven me mad if I were not adept in skimming above my mind’s meanderings with no fear of miring in the muck. At some point in the afternoon Thomas returned to his harpsichord and played an entire melancholic repertoire to the oblivious denizens of the street.
When the museum closed I went directly to the whist table, where Maud proceeded to interrogate me about the previous evening.
“What did you see?” she asked, with all the intensity of someone addressing a polar explorer.
“A whole room of bearded ladies,” I said.
“You are so sour, Ana.”
There had been no sign of Olrick the Austrian Giant at the whist table since the evening of Helen Barnum’s death, and Maud had managed, through sign language, to convince Mrs. Martinetti to bring her daughter as the fourth. The daughter, a long-limbed acrobat specializing in contortionism, sat straight-backed in her chair and stared at Maud and me. We dealt the cards.
I was partnered with Mrs. Martinetti the elder, and she spoke to her daughter in a conspiratorial tone throughout the first game.
“They could be cheating,” whispered Maud. “
Do you understand English?”
The women shook their heads.
“You don’t?” Maud reiterated. They shook their heads again. “But you understood that. Perfect.”
Mrs. Martinetti the elder spoke rapidly. Her daughter nodded and patted Maud’s hand, giggling softly behind her cards.
“It would be so much easier if English were required,” Maud huffed, studying her cards. “How are we supposed to have a decent game?”
I surveyed the Martinettis’ faces. A single, ripe idea arrived. I could teach them English. Why not? It would give me something to do other than make a fool of myself for money. And it was helpful. Was it a step toward a civic life? It was at least a diversion. I began composing the handbill as Mrs. Martinetti and I lost the next three tricks.
When the game finally ended, I rushed back to my room. ENGLISH LESSONS. WEDNESDAY EVENING, IN THE APARTMENT OF MISS ANA SWIFT {GIANTESS}. I would write up the bills, hand them out … but those who needed my class would not be able to read them. I resolved to write them up anyway. I walked toward the drawer where I kept a sheaf of paper, but halfway there I turned. I sniffed the air. I scanned the room. Some unfamiliar muskiness hung in the air. Vague unease tugged the edge of my consciousness and I suddenly remembered my dream of the night before, of wading over the tide flats of Pictou. Warm seawater around my knees, my toes sinking in the rippled sand, I was a girl, just like every other, walking among the driftwood and the empty clamshells. I smelled the stench of drying seaweed and snails rotting in tide pools.
My bed had been disrupted, rumpled. Even the multicolored chaos of my quilt could not disguise the fact that more than sitting had occurred upon it. The stagnant air smelled of sweat and unknown brine. I ran my hand across the quilt. Was that a touch of dampness? And then I saw the evidence, right in the middle of the bed: a bright red feather. I held it up between two fingers. It curled incriminatingly. I twirled the feather and brushed it along my cheek, seeing flame-orange skirts spread wide across my bed, ample flesh spilling from silken constraints, and the particular ecstasy of long-imagined coupling.
Among the Wonderful Page 15
