The Mermaid
Page 14
“Everyone said—Taylor, and Levi, and all the papers.” One of her hands fluttered against Frances’s back.
“Yes,” Amelia said.
“Why . . .” Charity said, and trailed off.
Amelia thought she would never dare say whatever she was about to in the light of day. Charity felt protected by the darkness and their solitude and, most importantly, the absence of Barnum.
“Why would you come here if you could swim in the sea and be free?” Charity asked.
“I fell in love,” Amelia said.
“Yes,” Charity said. “But after he died, you could have returned to your own people. You could have had the life you had before.”
“I don’t think I could have,” Amelia said. “I left because I wanted something I didn’t have, and once I loved Jack and lost him, I wasn’t the same as I was before. Love does that. It changes you in ways that can’t be undone.”
“Yes, it traps you,” Charity said. “It puts you in a cage that you can’t escape.”
Amelia moved a little closer. She wanted to see Charity’s eyes, even if they were just a gleam in the darkness.
“You must have loved him once.”
“Of course I did. And he romanced me, you know, despite the fact that his mother did not approve. He was younger than I, and handsome, and determined to have me. He was a clerk in a shop, and I was a tailoress in Bethel, his hometown. He said that my face haunted his dreams the first night we met.”
Amelia had trouble imagining Barnum as a young lover. She could hardly imagine him caring about anything so ephemeral and unlikely to profit him as love.
“What happened to him, that’s what you’re wondering,” Charity said with a little laugh. “Marriage was an adventure for him, until it wasn’t. His mother didn’t think I was good enough for him, thought Taylor could do better than a mere tailoress. We married in New York City without her knowledge. He’d told her he was coming here on business and came home with a wife. I think part of the reason he loved me was the excitement of keeping the secret. Once you’re married, there are no more secrets, only staid respectability. I don’t think Taylor has ever really wanted respectability, else he wouldn’t be in the business he is in. And I keep disappointing him with girl children instead of boys.”
“Why is a girl less valuable than a boy?” Amelia asked. She’d heard this before and did not understand it. Did not women bear the next generation? Was not that power more profound than anything a man could do?
“Men like to have sons to carry on their name,” Charity said. “They aren’t men otherwise.”
“A girl can have her father’s name,” Amelia said.
“Until she is married. You know this,” Charity said with a touch of exasperation. “You took your own husband’s name. When you marry your husband you belong to him.”
“Because I did not have a human name of my own,” Amelia said. “Not because I became his property. Jack never thought I belonged to him.”
“Then your husband was exceptional,” Charity said, “and you were blessed. For I belong to my husband, who expects me to obey him in all things, and who feels free to disregard my wishes or to mock me in front of others. And I don’t believe my husband is different from most men.”
Amelia realized then that she had something Charity had never had—a choice. If Charity had not married P. T. Barnum, then she would have married some other man, or lived in the house of her father until she died. She would not have left her home the way Amelia had, or lived on her own, or traveled to a different city and put herself on display. She would have done exactly what was expected of her, always, as most women did.
“I am sorry for you,” Amelia said. She knew this wasn’t the correct thing to say, that one was not supposed to show pity and that Charity was particularly sensitive to it.
“Do not feel sorry for me,” Charity snapped. Then, more calmly, “I have my girls. Taylor may not value them, but I do. It’s more than some have.”
This seemed like a pointed remark on Amelia’s lack of fertility, and she was surprised that it hurt. Each time she thought Charity would open up or change her mind about Amelia, she’d been wrong.
“I will be moving to the hotel tomorrow,” Amelia said, stiff with politeness. This was the thing she must do—show gratitude to her hostess. Charity did not wish anything else from her. “Thank you for allowing me to stay in your home.”
Amelia went into her room before Charity could respond. She didn’t want to engage any further with her, and as she lay on her bed, she realized she’d only wanted something she’d never had before—a friend.
And because it hurt, because she hated the pried-open feeling of being vulnerable, she decided she would no longer try. What need had a mermaid of friends? Why become attached when her situation was only temporary?
After all, she knew very well she would leave New York City one day. And even if she didn’t, she was going to live a very long time—longer than Barnum or Charity, longer than Levi Lyman, perhaps even longer than little Caroline or Helen or Frances.
She did not wish to weep, so she turned her head into the pillow and pretended she did not feel the tears.
* * *
• • •
The next day Barnum arranged to have a coach take Amelia (dressed in one of her new dresses and wearing a bonnet to hide her bound hair) and her trunk to the Park Hotel.
The hotel was visible from the American Museum, and Amelia thought it absurd that Barnum pay for a coach—a thing he was sure to complain of later—to take her there when the walk was less than a minute long.
“No one must know you’ve been staying here,” Barnum said. “I’ve asked the coachman to drive north some way before turning about and coming back to the hotel.”
Amelia failed to see how he would guarantee that the coachman didn’t speak of this to the mobs of reporters that hovered outside the hotel, but then she saw the generous allowance he gave the man and realized he’d solved the problem the same way he did everything—with money.
Levi was to meet her in front of the hotel upon arrival. Barnum suggested that she not speak to or acknowledge the reporters at all.
“I think it’s best if we pretend that you can’t speak,” Barnum said.
“Why?” Amelia asked. They were at the breakfast table with Charity, who seemed more restrained than usual, as if she were sorry to have spoken so freely to Amelia the night before.
For Barnum’s part, he did not mention at all Amelia’s angry leaving. He went about with his morning and his business as though she’d never left.
“If you don’t talk, it increases the mystery,” Barnum said. “It will also keep them directing their questions at Levi.”
“And Levi is better at lying than I am,” Amelia said.
“To be frank, yes,” Barnum said. “It’s safer if we tell them you can’t communicate in any human language.”
“What will happen if they ask Levi how he convinced me to come here, then?” Amelia asked. This seemed like a fairly large flaw, in her eyes.
Barnum waved that away. “He’ll think of something. He’ll tell them he drew pictures to show you or some such thing. Really, the boy can generate the most outlandish stories at a moment’s notice.”
So Amelia was bundled into the coach and taken for a ride around the city, and then returned to the hotel at the prearranged time to find Levi as Dr. Griffin waiting for her, patiently taking questions from the reporters who each jostled for supremacy, shouting over one another in an attempt to have their questions answered first.
She watched from the window as he smoothly detached himself and strode to the coach, snapping his fingers for the hotel porter to take her trunk. The mob followed him like they were attached to his coat by string.
“Lady Amelia,” he said, offering his hand for her to take as she stepped out.
“Thanks to a type of sign language I have worked out with the mermaid, she can communicate only with me. I have determined, during our conversations, that she is a kind of princess among her own people. Given this, I believe I should honor her heritage,” Levi said.
Amelia wondered if Levi had thought of this fiction prior to her arrival or if he’d made it up on the spot.
She soon discovered that despite Levi’s insistence that she could not speak nor understand them, the reporters persisted in shouting questions at her.
“Lady Amelia! What do you think of New York?”
“Lady Amelia! Why did you come here with Dr. Griffin?”
“Lady Amelia! What do mermaids eat?”
“Lady Amelia! How many more of you are there?”
And on, and on, and on. There seemed to be no question too trivial, and her refusal to make a noise or even turn her head did not deter them. The hotel staff had to be engaged to keep the reporters from following her and Levi up the stairs; she wondered how much money Barnum had paid to ensure their cooperation.
Their rooms were on the fifth floor of the six-story building with a view of St. Paul’s across the street. Barnum had explained that the hotel had a strict policy of not allowing unaccompanied women to enter, but since she was there as a “guest” of Dr. Griffin, it was permitted. However, “for your own safety,” a guard would be posted outside her door at night. Amelia doubted very much that her safety was Barnum’s concern. Rather, it was a ham-handed attempt at keeping her from scarpering. She wasn’t concerned. If and when she wanted to leave, she was confident she could do so and that Levi would aid her in that quarter if necessary. Let Barnum gnash his teeth about the expense of the guard in the meantime.
The hotel was not, she noted, significantly quieter than in the museum. For one thing the intersection below was always filled with people; for another, when the window was open, she could hear the terrible band that Barnum hired to play outside the museum. The office of the New York Herald was also nearby, and doubtless half of the reporters lurking in the hotel would rush across to file their dispatches shortly.
The room, she supposed, was luxurious, but to her luxury simply meant there was too much of everything. Too many folds, too many fabrics, too many objects on tables and shelves. The windows were large but covered in long curtains. At least the windows allowed in some light and air, a quality that had been lacking in the Barnums’ guest room.
She was to leave the hotel almost as soon as she arrived there, for another “exhibition” was scheduled for the Concert Hall that day. Barnum had hired a contingent of twenty men to stand about the hall and at the doors. Though each was dressed respectably, they had a rough look about them, as if they’d been drafted from places where they regularly washed blood from beneath their fingernails.
The second performance went much as the first one did, with the exception that the audience seemed both prepared for the spectacle and wary of the looming guards.
Several people stood when she changed, craning their necks and pointing, but no one tried to rush the stage again. She swam in a few loops inside the tank, unsure what else to do. The rehearsals had always been concerned with the timing of her entry onstage and affirming that the change could occur inside the tank; no one had discussed what she should do after that.
She broke the surface to look at the audience without the warping of the glass between them. When she did several people clapped and oohed, and she felt she had done what was expected of her.
Levi reemerged from the wings to take questions from the audience. Amelia dove back into the water then, swimming in various patterns and wondering how long she was supposed to do this.
Her days quickly became a tiresome repetition of that one. She would rise in the hotel, breakfast, walk the gauntlet of reporters and lookers-on with Levi, climb into a coach to the Concert Hall, change into a mermaid, and swim in circles until Levi declared the performance ended for the day. Most days she took her supper in her room, for if she did not, she would be bothered throughout her meal by men in the hotel who wanted to speak to a “real mermaid,” and who would not be put off by any amount of glib replies from Levi.
After a weeklong engagement at the Concert Hall, Barnum took out an advertisement in the newspaper stating that he’d made an agreement with Dr. Griffin to bring the mermaid “at a most extraordinary expense” to the American Museum for the benefit of his “discerning public.” Despite the extra cost to him, Barnum made sure that it was known that the mermaid would be exhibited “without extra charge.”
Amelia was not permitted, despite this change of venue, to return to her small guest room in the Barnums’ apartment.
“How can you advertise the program if you’re not in the hotel?” Barnum said. “The museum show won’t begin for at least two more weeks.”
“I don’t think it’s necessary to advertise any longer, Mr. Barnum,” she said. “As you have hoped, the whole city has mermaid fever.”
“Maybe the whole country,” Levi said. “There were reporters from plenty of out-of-state papers today.”
They were meeting in Levi’s room in the hotel, it being deemed easier for Barnum to come in than for Amelia and Levi to go out.
Barnum laughed in delight. “Soon all the monarchs of Europe will cross the ocean to see you.”
Amelia did not particularly care who came to see her so long as the new tank that Barnum built inside the museum was larger than the one at the Concert Hall. If she must swim in circles endlessly, then she wished for those circles to be greater than the ones to which she was currently confined.
“Lady Amelia,” “Dr. Griffin,” and a select cohort of journalists were invited to tour the new exhibit in the museum prior to its opening to the public. A crowd of the curious gathered in two long rows between the hotel and the museum to watch Amelia and Levi and the reporters cross the street between the buildings.
Amelia had already spent many days with people gawking at her, but she never felt so foolish as during that promenade between the hotel and the museum. Her face was hidden by her bonnet and she abruptly felt the necessity of the parasol. When she opened it she had somewhere to put her hands, and the shade could be tilted to hide the size of the crowd if too much of it peeked through the brim of her hat.
Barnum waited at the entrance to the museum with his showman’s smile and a wave. He kissed Amelia’s hand like he was greeting true royalty. She was barely able to restrain herself from snatching her hand away from his dry lips.
The doors were securely locked once all the party had entered the museum, and two more of Barnum’s toughs were set outside to glare at anyone with thoughts of trying to follow.
The sixth saloon had been designated the “mermaid room.” This forced ticket holders to pass through many other exhibits first; Barnum didn’t want folk coming to the museum only to see the mermaid and then rushing out again. After all, he needed to sell programs, and the programs were useless if people didn’t enjoy the rest of the museum.
“Also,” he’d told Amelia earlier, “one day you plan on leaving me, don’t you? And I’ll still have to sell tickets to the museum. If everyone who comes to see you loves the other exhibits, then they’ll tell their friends that Barnum’s American Museum is worth their Sunday afternoon and a quarter.”
Once inside the mermaid room, they were immediately confronted with a large copy of the woodcut Barnum had used in the advertising pamphlets. This depicted three beautiful mermaids, one of which was seductively combing her hair. The copy had been printed on a long, billowing curtain that hung down from the ceiling.
This effectively blocked the rest of the room and, Amelia realized, created more anticipation. The effect was duplicated almost as soon as a visitor turned the corner. Before them was a large white sign with another pict
ure of a mermaid; next to this was text describing Dr. Griffin’s encounter with the mermaid in the waters of Fiji.
Below this, safely hidden under glass, was a small notebook with a leather cover open to a diary entry in which Dr. Griffin wrote of his marvelous discovery. On the next page was a small sketch of Amelia. Levi had done this himself, and Amelia was impressed with how well he’d captured her real likeness. She looked like what she was—a mermaid, an alien thing, not the lovely creature that Barnum used to sell tickets.
This notebook was entirely empty otherwise. Barnum had aged it by bending the leather and bindings and dripping salt water on the edges so they would curl up. It looked like a real naturalist’s notebook, but it was just another of Barnum’s humbugs.
Every turn of the exhibit had another display like this—one with a seashell necklace that was supposedly a gift from Amelia to Dr. Griffin, a copy of the letter Dr. Griffin had sent to the London Lyceum, and so on. The very last stop before visitors reached the tank (which was twice as large as the one at the Concert Hall) was the very dried-up mummy fish that Barnum’s friend Kimball had used to propose the mermaid exhibit so many months ago.
The thing was horrible, but all the reporters stared at it in fascination before asking Amelia how it felt to see one of her very own dead ancestors there. Despite her continued silence they never ceased trying to see if she would answer.
The result of all this twisting and turning was something like a maze that would force visitors through the saloon slowly. They wouldn’t be able to rush to the tank, for no one could even see the tank until they turned the last corner and reached the very end. And of course, there would be guards present to ensure no one got any untoward ideas, like trying to climb into the tank with her.
Amelia almost hated to praise Barnum, but he’d done an exceptional job of designing the mermaid room to maximize interest. Additionally, the constant press of people behind them would keep viewers moving through to the next room. No one would be able to stand indefinitely in front of the tank and block others from seeing her.