“But above all, among the rest,
There came a Genius who profess’d
To have a curious trick in store,
Which never was performed before.”
“Look at ’er!” It was the hoarse voice of an old man. “She’s red as a apple!”
“And tall as an apple tree!” a second voice responded to the call. The crowd then released an alarming amount of laughter. The sheer volume of it was more than I thought possible for a group of twenty people, and as I stood there, momentarily stunned by the wave of voices, I could hear each one individually: a woman’s cackle hovering above a child’s thoughtless squawk. And men’s voices, so many of them, all twisting together into a thick, ropy sound. Their vulgarity was a shame: The poem was actually very good, and funny, but they didn’t hear it.
Then I saw Beebe among them. He was looking straight at me, gently jostled by the crowd. He wouldn’t approach me, would he? Don’t make it worse, Beebe. As the din quieted, I realized he was clapping. My oppressors dispersed quickly, but Beebe remained, giving applause that I appreciated until it went on too long and I gestured for him to stop.
“Was that something you wrote?”
“Oh, no, and I hadn’t even gotten to the interesting part yet.”
“I’ve been wondering when I’d see you.”
“I’m not terribly hard to find,” I snapped, suddenly aware that I was standing in a glorified box. I could just nail up the front and save people the trouble of making a coffin!
“You know, tomorrow evening the choir is performing hymns. At Saint Paul’s.”
“Oh? What’s the occasion?”
“It’s the eve of Easter Sunday.” He appeared to be examining the Giant’s Rings.
“Is it Easter again already?”
Another familiar figure entered the gallery, leading what appeared to be a miniature army. Elizabeth Crawford, patron saint of orphans. She gestured her charges toward the balcony and, catching my eye, gave a little wave and swerved toward my booth.
“Oh, Miss Swift! How do you do?” She tipped her head, which had a tiny velvet hat upon it. Beebe responded with a barely audible Ma’am.
“Miss Crawford. Who have you got today?”
“They’re from the Bowery Boys’ Home. Most of them” — she lowered her voice — “are criminals.”
“Exciting,” I said.
“But I notice that even they, hardened as they are, have become quite pale in the presence of Pa-Ib.”
Miss Crawford had made it a habit to seek me out whenever she visited the museum, which was at least twice a week. She was always gracious and seemed genuinely interested in the trifles I came up with when she asked me how I fared. She curtsied gracefully and let two little boys jerk her deeper into the museum.
Beebe stood blinking at me, one of his hands jingling a handful of Giant’s Rings. “Would you like to come?”
“Where?”
“To Saint Paul’s. Our choir is quite good. And Easter is one of my favorite holy days.”
“Do you sing in it, Mr. Beebe?” Certainly, attending a church would be an abhorrent act, but the prospect of poor Beebe singing in a choir somehow melted me.
“Well, I’m not the star performer, but yes, I do my best.”
“Then I’d be honored to attend. Are you sure it’s all right with your superiors?”
“Everyone is welcome at Saint Paul’s, I can assure you.”
“I may not be able to sit in a pew,” I warned.
“Why not? There’s no rule that only Believers can sit down,” Beebe ventured.
“How do you know that I’m not a Believer?”
“I just assumed, but forgive me if —”
“I meant simply that I will not fit comfortably on a pew.”
“Ah. Oh. I see.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Beebe. The pew will be fine, as long as the concert is not terribly long.”
That evening, I was horrified to find the conjoined twins sitting at Maud’s whist table. Maud gave me a small shrug as I entered the room, and she gestured me to the chair opposite them. I should have expected that Maud would make them my partner, although the truth was, I preferred anyone to Olrick, who now sat across from Maud.
“I’m Jacob,” one of the twins offered, giving no indication, in gaze or gesture, of the debacle that had occurred not twenty-four hours earlier.
“And I’m the Angel,” said the other, nodding his head.
“Oh, come on,” his brother said. “He’s Matthew.”
“We didn’t realize the fifth floor had a high society of its own,” said Matthew. “But now that we’re on the inside,” he whispered, “we won’t tell anyone else.” Jacob reached across their chest and dipped his hand into the far waistcoat pocket. Matthew slapped his brother’s wrist. “Get out!”
“Oh, they won’t mind if we have a little tipple, surely?” Jacob looked around the table.
“As a matter of fact” — of course Olrick would object — “I believe the museum is dry.”
“That’s what you think,” snipped Jacob.
“It may be best to refrain for now, gentlemen,” said Maud, shuffling the cards expertly. “But the night is very young.” She winked.
The twins and I took the first two hands, but they were unskilled and drunk. Olrick and Maud took the next three, and they eventually won the first game. Maud made tea. I wanted to get back to my room, to leave the dull company of my brethren for the dullness of my own thoughts.
“I have an announcement,” said Olrick, once he had a cup and saucer in his hand. “I’ve found a new manager in the form of Mr. Lawrence Bloom, who approached me several weeks ago.”
“Mr. Bloom. Where do I know that name?” Jacob said, leaning toward his brother.
“He manages Miss Luella at Vauxhall Gardens,” Matthew reported from behind his cards. “He’s got people in Philadelphia, too. At the Melodeon. We know him.”
“Ah,” said Olrick.
“Scoundrel,” muttered Jacob.
“Aren’t they all?” finished Matthew, looking into his tea.
“They are,” I confirmed.
“Well, I found him quite agreeable, with a contract for sixty dollars a week, which is ten more than Barnum offered. He guaranteed engagements not only in New York but also in Philadelphia.”
I tried to hide my surprise at the discrepancy between our salaries. I made thirty dollars a week. Olrick’s duties were significantly less than mine. He did not wander as I did. He did not even have a booth. He performed three times a week and twice on Saturdays, in the theater, in the company of General Tom Thumb and one of the professors.
“I am telling you this because Mr. Bloom has advised me to leave Barnum’s employ, and that is what I intend to do. He does not expect the museum to last another year.”
“But it’s only just begun,” said Maud.
“Barnum is on Mayor Harper’s blacklist. Mr. Bloom said —”
“That’s only because Barnum is making more money than the mayor,” said Jacob. “It’s only because Harper isn’t getting a cut.”
“That may be true, but there are lots of safer venues in the city. In terms of stability,” Olrick went on, a bit defensively.
“He has us living here, Olrick.” Maud was getting annoyed. I hadn’t realized her allegiance. “How much more stability do you want?”
“There are simply too many strange variables here. What about the beluga whale? It’s been three months since the museum opened and the tank still isn’t finished. It leaks, in fact. When is he going to finish it? Where is Barnum, anyway?”
“If he finished the beluga tank,” said Jacob, reaching successfully for the flask, “where would the Indians live? And what would happen to our privacy? We would have gawkers right outside our door. I much prefer it this way.”
“I’m not here to argue,” huffed Olrick, setting down his tea and rising to his full height. “I simply wanted to alert you to the possible danger of staying here. Mr
. Bloom said he wouldn’t be surprised if Harper makes some kind of action against Barnum. There. That’s all. I’m finished.” He stormed out the door, ending our whist game.
“Some people,” said Jacob, pouring a trickle of whiskey into his tea, “simply do not have the correct attitude for this business.” He raised his glass. “Here’s to the rest of us.”
Thirty-three
I sat squarely on the pew with my tightened thighs supporting my lower half. Even so, terrible splinters of pain emanated from each of my spine’s compressed vertebra. You will not take me so soon, will You? The last time I’d been in a church it was in Pictou-by-the-sea, and I was a child of average height. I am meant to live longer than the rest of my kind. That is Your plan, isn’t it? An elderly woman in an unbecoming green hat gaped at me, and I narrowed my eyes at her. My belief in God had vanished as abruptly as my normalcy, and so wasn’t it nonsense to address him?
The service was an impenetrable tangle spewed forth by a man made virtually invisible by a voluminous white robe. He perched inside the pulpit like a dove in a cage, emitting bits of an elaborate song: the disciples’ sacred ignorance and the so-called key to the Kingdom of God. These words did not move me, except by spurring in me a desire to move away from this church and everyone in it. But I had accepted Beebe’s invitation to listen to his choir, and I intended to hear it. I shifted my weight as best I could and ignored the hag in the hat.
Outside, evening had darkened the sky to oxblood. The church was lit rather magnificently by hundreds of thick yellow candles. You know this is not my place. This is not my story. You must be mad to think I could believe in this pomp and posturing.
Did the gathered flock truly believe that a Jesus of Nazareth, citizen of a distant desert country so many centuries ago, would return, would not only walk among the living but also offer supreme salvation to all Believers? Must I always take the sour perspective, as Maud points out again and again? But really. If Jesus appeared in this city, I’d wager he would be selling something. I snorted. But it would have to be something useful to people during their lifetimes. The promise of salvation after death would be too simple of a hoax. The whole thing sounded amateurish. No one would believe him.
The rector’s twittering finally came to an end. The choir rose. I spotted Beebe in the first row in a scarlet robe, the hymnal held out in front of him. The organ blasted a frightening chord into the universe, as if the church were a machine grinding into life, perhaps rising on mechanical legs to lurch up Broadway toward heaven, or somewhere.
Arise, Sons of the Kingdom, indeed! The choir began their hymn as if their voices kept the sun on its accustomed track, each man’s mouth becoming a small black O, and then a line, each man’s body responding to the music as if all human life depended on it. I noticed Beebe’s blissful expression in particular as he leaned into the verses.
Without self-consciousness, Beebe sang with his brethren about the apparent imminent return of God’s only son. It was obvious he was actually singing to God. Eyes closed, even his hair popping upward, suppliant. This was his true face, and I found I did not want to see Beebe exposed in this way but I could not look away. The very thing that would sanctify him in another woman’s heart made me recoil. Would everything that brought him joy either irritate or amuse me?
When the service ended, Beebe walked directly to me with his robe fluttering out behind.
“Miss Swift! I was delighted to see you in the audience.”
“The church is beautiful. What a sunset.”
“We are blessed that our windows face west.”
“Blessed? It seems a purely architectural design.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“I don’t see how. One is divinely sent, the other created by the will of man.”
Beebe smiled. Patronizingly, it seemed. “God’s hand is evident in all our pursuits.”
“Even the murder that happened last night in Corlear’s Hook? That girl who had her neck slashed ear-to-ear?” I had not meant to slip, to spit this venom.
His expression intensified my regret. “I’m sorry.” But of course I could not control myself. “I just mean to say, it is the architecture of the church that we refer to. Exact measurements and angles. Foresight. And the sunset itself is a product of nature, the natural turning of our planet and the effects of shifting light, which operates without interference by any supernatural being. Our emotions are a reaction to this natural beauty.”
“It is God’s unbounded mercy that gave us this wondrous life,” Beebe said simply. “And it is our task while we’re here to live gratefully in the face of His many wonders.” He looked at me pointedly. “Wonders that arrive in all shapes and sizes.”
“Well,” I muttered, smiling. “That’s one way to look at it.”
Beebe stepped closer. “I would like to show you where I live, upstairs,” he whispered. “But we must wait until the congregation leaves, and the senior warden, too. Stay here until the congregation is gone, and then leave by the front entrance. Around the back of the church is another door. Wait there for me.”
“Is the secrecy really necessary?”
“Guests are not allowed upstairs,” Beebe confided. “Also no one knows that I work at the museum.”
“You’re keeping it a secret?”
“They wouldn’t approve. They don’t exactly understand my faith.”
I had to laugh. “Nor do I, Mr. Beebe. But so far the intrigue is quite entertaining.”
“Coming from you, I will take that as a great compliment.” He bowed playfully and stepped away.
I strolled the length of the church, avoiding the stares of both congregation and icon. Instead, I enjoyed being in a space whose proportions fit me comfortably, if not its contents.
When all but a few stragglers had left the church, I made my way out, deftly avoiding the eager gaze of the rector, whose desire to convert the unbelieving apparently was not strong enough to overcome his fear of speaking to a giantess.
The rector did not see me angle around behind the trees in front of the church, perhaps the same trees to which Barnum had tied the banners that had lured Beebe to the darker side of Broadway. I walked along the mossy wall of the building and into a quiet graveyard that I had not even known was there. The names carved on the knee-high slabs were too far below to read as I moved among them. The grass was lush and swished against my skirts. Without the distraction of daylight it was easier to feel the bitter rise of spring, the acidic smell of soil parting for the blind thrust of life. In Pictou they’d be tilling, I thought, but who they might be I didn’t know; you are gone, and he left Pictou years ago. Even though some other family must surely inhabit it, I always imagined the farm decrepit, its doors banging in the wind during winter and bleaching when it’s hot.
I walked to the other side of the churchyard and saw the museum. It came into view slowly, like the SS Great Western powering across the Atlantic. In the dark, from this different perspective, the museum was a great living thing: Black shapes streamed into its gaping maw in a constant flow upward, its food and fuel. Like a hundred blinking eyes, the building glowed from every window, and from the rooftop, the ascendant beam of Barnum’s Drummond light presided over it all like a great, beckoning antenna. What was the museum signaling? What did it want from us?
“Miss Swift!”
I jumped at the sound, though it was only Beebe.
“They’re all gone,” Beebe whispered fiercely. “Usually the senior warden stays here at the chapel, but the rector called him to serve another congregation for Easter, so he’s off to Manhattanville tonight by carriage. Come in, come in.”
He stood in a disturbingly small doorway with his hair askew, still in his choir robe. “Follow me, Miss Swift.”
I squeezed into a stone passageway. I had to stoop and within ten paces knots of muscle along my spine vibrated in protest. Steps led upward, and I twisted my body around the tight spiral, my feet hanging off the edge of each step. I gr
asped the stone banister with both hands, in case the steps, which had supported decades of clergymen, gave way under the weight of the infidel.
In Beebe’s stone room, several lamps illuminated an unexpected jungle. Potted plants lined the sill of one large window and covered his small bookcase and bedside table, even spilling over much of the floor. His small desk, too, was covered mostly with clay pots, with only a small clearing for his brown leather Bible, whose cover was sprinkled with crumbs of dry soil.
“My primary duty here as junior warden is to care for the grounds,” Beebe told me.
I brushed my hand across the fine green blades in one pot. “This one appears to be grass,” I observed.
“Yes. The senior warden tells me it’s silly to keep it, but I’ll plant it outside when it gets a bit warmer. It was dug up for a burial last October and I hated to see it all die. I kept just a small amount.”
“Naturally. And this?” I looked into a pot with one ghostly white shoot coming up.
“A crocus. I mean to plant those by the chapel door. I have an apple sapling, too, that the rector approved for near the front gate. The rector wants the grounds to remain simple, but you’d be surprised how many different things come up out there, blown here or dropped by birds, even here, in the heart of the city. All summer I must pull them up, flowers, vegetables, even. I plant as many as I can in here and give them away.”
“Or keep them.”
“Yes.” Beebe turned this way and that, looking into pots and inadvertently dragging his robe sleeves across them. You are tangled with life, Beebe. You have one foot in the church, one foot in the museum, and both hands occupied by the fecund earth. And your heart? Could it be wide enough to hold a giantess?
I sat on the edge of his bed; the chair he’d offered would have snapped like kindling. “Tell me, Mr. Beebe, why you are working for Mr. Barnum.”
“Oh, oh I see. Yes.” He straightened up and brushed his hands on his robe, leaving dark smudges. “You’re probably curious.” He stood directly in front of me. “I would be, I suppose.”
I smiled. We could go far away from here, Beebe. West, to the Territories, and make a home somewhere on the prairie, where the skies are wide enough to dwarf me. We’ll watch the weather come across miles of open ground. If you like, we could even keep hogs.
Among the Wonderful Page 20
