There are still rumors about a creature in the Hudson. They say it was caught, and for a little while it was kept in a tank in Brooklyn, before that world ended in fire. While the fires burned, the creature dragged itself over the low dunes, searching for water. But others say that water was not the element it needed, and that it was searching for love, for love changes everything, and forces us into lives we never imagined we might lead.
In the village where we now reside, in a valley beside the Hudson, there are rumors as well. People whisper about a woman who swims in the deepest channels, one who can hold her breath for so long she seems to disappear. Where we are, the river runs silver and it is wider than I would have ever imagined. It seems to go on forever; the current travels only one way, to the south and the harbor of New York City. When darkness falls, and the sky sifts down into the river, the woman who swims in its depths holds on to the side of a canoe that drifts toward her. She pulls herself into the boat, where a tall man is waiting in the fading light, for he is an expert in matters of light and darkness, a master of seeing through shadows. He spies her every time, even when the sky is murky and she is invisible to all other men’s eyes. The water here in the north Hudson is so cold that it’s common knowledge no human can withstand it, only creatures of the deep, miraculous things that cannot be categorized or kept under glass.
I dream about the wondrous people that I knew, and the shelves that were laden with butterflies and bones. Most often, I dream of that extraordinary night flower I had the privilege to watch bloom. In my dreams the flower is alive, with a bloody, beating heart, all of its life lived intensely and with great beauty, over in mere moments, as I now believe ours is as well.
A lifetime is a lifetime whether it lasts one night or a hundred years.
I know we lived among extraordinary things but, perhaps more importantly, in extraordinary times. People may or may not remember the heroes and the villains of our day, but all that the brave among us did, and all that they were, remains with us still. We had a year in which everything changed, when the world shifted and became something new. We no longer expected cruelty or mistreatment. We expected more.
I give thanks that the Professor’s manuscript burned on our last day in Brooklyn. I often look up into the night sky and imagine that every spark that flew upward from the burning paper became another star, for the nights seem far brighter to me now and the sky is dashed with heavenly light. I know what he did to you. I will never mention it again, for it seems unthinkable that a human being could be so sinister in his actions and so evil in his intentions. It happened in the years of cruelty, when we didn’t know there was a better life. You were only a young woman when you met the Professor, and he had a side that could convince someone his approval was worth any price. I, more than anyone, can understand that. Perhaps this was his greatest trick, to be two people at the same time, the cruel person who betrayed those who came close, and the man who presented another world, one filled with miracles and books. Professor Sardie surely charmed you when you first encountered him; he made you believe in him, he was a conjurer, after all. You were ambushed by how brightly his attentions burned. When a star reaches for you, it is difficult to look away.
I cannot imagine the moment when you came through the door late one evening, detained by crowds on the streets, or by a slow shopkeeper, and saw him on the threshold with the vial filled with acid. I can’t imagine the words he said to you, or how you might have pleaded with him. He wanted to teach you a lesson for crimes you didn’t commit. He was jealous and he wanted to possess you, but you had never loved him. I know that. But I also know why you stayed. You resolved to have faith in the future, and to watch over me, and to teach me what the world was like. You taught me well. I know how to make preserves from ripe pears, how to plant a garden, how to love someone.
I will not write down all the Professor did to me, but suffice it to say he controlled me for a time, and I seemed unable to fight him. But then there came a day when I could. Perhaps I had been practicing to do exactly that for my entire life. In our time it was not difficult to make a woman feel she was not worth much, to convince her to be quiet and not cause a ruckus and insist she keep her thoughts to herself. But my father made one mistake when he raised me. In the past I thought his error was that he allowed me to be a swimmer, and that my abilities in the water gave me the resolve to defy him. But I was wrong in my estimation of how I managed to break away from him. The mistake he made was you. He should have kept us apart. He should have dismissed you before I could walk or speak or think. Every day that we spent together was a day I treasure. You taught me who I was.
I lived among miracles, but the greatest miracle of all was that you stayed for me. I would have drowned without you to watch over me. I think you knew that. I now understand there are a thousand ways to drown, and a thousand ways to rescue someone. I never properly thanked you for saving my life.
From reading the Professor’s notes, I know you arrived to ask for work the day after he found me in the yard. Whether that was pure luck or a well-drawn plan no longer matters. Whether you were the one who placed me on the porch steps when you were unable to care for me, or whether it was a woman I will never meet in this lifetime, matters even less. I remember how you stood outside the back door when my father made you leave. The light was fading, and I was soon enough locked away, but for one vivid instant I saw you and you saw me in return. I will always think of you as you were that day, for it is an image no other can replace. I believe we saw the edges of one another’s souls.
In the charred remains of the museum I found a burned letter you asked Mr. Morris to write to me, because you hadn’t been taught how to write out your thoughts. You had intended to present the letter to me someday, but that day didn’t come before our world ended. I hadn’t the ability to write either, although I have learned, and my handwriting is surprisingly fluid. Clearly a reader can become a writer, and for as long as I can remember I could read as well as anyone. If my father gave me anything, he gave me that. There were only a few words left in the remains of the letter, but I think I made out the word daughter. Whether or not I did, I see that word in blue ink. I hear it said by you.
In my memories I have set my life in Brooklyn between pieces of glass, separate from my current existence, and this has enabled me to move forward. The past cannot tie me in knots, nor can it reach for me and cause me to drown. And yet what is stored in glass belongs to me still. Each piece is a part of me: the hummingbirds, the locked doors, Mr. Morris in the yard, the pear tree, the woman covered by bees, and you. Especially you.
We have made our home in a small village. People here know our names and our business, as we know theirs. There is a market and a dairy, and we have a large garden in which we grow beans and squash. I have two sheep, Matilda and Mary, funny creatures who follow me as I do my chores.
I spin in the evenings, and I often dye the yarn with madder root, the very herb you used to heal me when I was in need of help. All of the yarn I sell is red and I do quite well. I have even garnered a small amount of fame. People say my yarn is the color of roses. As it turned out, I have a talent for knitting. My hands, hidden for so long, are more agile than most. I have never worn gloves again. Even in the depths of winter I prefer to have my hands free. The sweaters and scarves I stitch are sold in Manhattan, at shops on Fifth Avenue. I wait for my husband on the days he brings my work into the city, the knit work wrapped in brown paper and string. I stand at the crossroads of our village where there is an elm growing that is said to be one of the oldest trees in New York. The Lenape people met here as dusk bloomed, so they might climb as far as they could into the sky and in doing so be closer to the Milky Way, the path to heaven and to those they had loved and lost. Some evenings there are dozens of starlings perched on the branches of the elm tree. When I see them, I think of our liveryman, who had more troubles with the law, but has now gone off to fight in the war overseas and is said to be a hero. I think that peo
ple can surprise you in so many ways, both with cruelty and with kindness.
I stand at the crossroads until the dark sifts down between the leaves. My husband often brings back the most unusual items from the city. A present from the milliner’s shop on Twenty-third Street, where you bought your green felt hat. A book of his photographs, published in a beautiful edition. A wedding gift to us from his father, a fragile, old quilt that carries the scent of grass. Once, most surprisingly of all, he arrived from the city with two black dogs, haughty-looking beasts with matching haircuts that now love to roll in mud and run through the meadows with Mitts.
Every time I meet my husband beneath that tree, I insist we walk home slowly. It’s my way of making each day last a little longer.
It was an ordinary life I wished for, and that is what I have. Each time I swim in the river I am driven forward when I imagine my front door, the windows facing east and north, the dogs on the porch, my husband at his work, recording the beauty of the trees in the woods so that no one will forget them. I still have the portrait he made of you in our garden. It is the only thing I saved from that time.
I pray that one day we meet again so that I can properly thank you, for no one could have asked for a kinder, more devoted friend. I hope you know I was always loyal to you. I am loyal to you still. I do not know, and I may never know, if you are my mother, but, as I could wish for no better woman to have brought me into the world, I will consider you to be so. You are the one who taught me that love was never what we expected it to be and that it was all we needed. For that, and for a thousand other things, I send my gratitude.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
* * *
There are some years when everything seems to change all at once. 1911 is such a year. I have tried to do justice to this time and to New York City. Although I grew up on Long Island, I spent a great deal of my childhood in Brooklyn and in Chelsea and have lived in Chelsea on and off for most of my adult life. I have lived elsewhere, but at all times I have seen New York for what it is, a wonder of the world.
This book is dedicated to my grandfathers, Michael Hoffman and Chaim Klurfeld. One began his working life in a pie factory at the age of twelve, then became one of the first electricians to light up Brooklyn, before going on to help bring modern Chelsea to life during and after the Depression. The other was a union man, a member of the ILGWU and the Workmen’s Circle who was dedicated to the rights of working men and women. His writings, some of which were published in the newspaper the Forward, focused on the labor movement and on his childhood in Poland. Much like my character Eddie, my grandfather’s political conversion began in a single afternoon when he heard the factory owner’s children playing—in his case, swimming in a lake on a hot summer day beside the factory where he worked twelve-hour days at the age of eight.
I have tried to present the two fires that frame this book—the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and the Dreamland Fire—as best I could within a historical context while using imaginary lives and fates. Characters who are based on real people, including Monk Eastman, the gangster, and Abraham Hochman, the Jewish mystic, are real enough, and therefore their characters mirror the facts as closely as possible, but they, too, have been viewed through the glass of my imaginings.
A special thanks to Rob Linne from the Adelphi University School of Education, who first suggested I write an article commemorating the anniversary of the Triangle Fire. In doing the research for the piece, published in the Los Angeles Times, I was also beginning this novel and reconnecting with my own personal history as a New Yorker.
Although any historical errors are my own, I extend my deepest gratitude to the experts who were kind enough to read the manuscript and offer their comments. Many thanks to Suzanne Wasserman, historian, filmmaker, and director of the Gotham Center at the City College of New York for her support, her insights, and her knowledge about the Lower East Side. My gratitude to Annelise Orleck, author and professor of history at Dartmouth College, who took the time to carefully read the novel and offer suggestions and whose specialties in women’s history, political history, Jewish history, and the history of American radicalism made her comments invaluable. Last, my heartfelt thanks to Charles Denson, author and executive director of the Coney Island History Project for his thoughtful reading of the manuscript. As a great fan of his writings and the work he has done on behalf of Coney Island, I was honored to count him among my early readers.
To Nan Graham, my brilliant editor, and to Susan Moldow, my beloved publisher, who have both changed my writing and my life. I could not be more fortunate or more grateful.
Gratitude to Carolyn Reidy for her continuing support, which means so much to me.
Many thanks to Roz Lippel for helping me feel at home at Scribner.
To Suzanne Baboneau, publisher of Simon & Schuster UK, deep gratitude for championing my books in the UK, and for so much support, then and now.
Thank you to Whitney Frick for her sharp eye, attention to detail, and care taken in her reading of this novel. Thanks to Kara Watson for her kind help in readying the manuscript for publication.
Thank you to Susan Brown for her copyediting knowledge and insight.
Many thanks to Katherine Monaghan for her invaluable assistance before, after, and during publication. To Camille McDuffie, who has helped bring many of my books into the world, many thanks for her grace and good advice.
To Maggie Stern, for years of invaluable friendship.
To Tom Martin, for always being my first reader and the first person I turn to.
A most special thank-you to Ron Bernstein, dear friend and agent from the beginning, and to Amanda Urban, for her generous friendship and wise counsel.
Thank you to the Lyceum Agency.
To everyone at the Elaine Markson Agency, especially Gary Johnson, many thanks for many years of working together.
And to Elaine Markson, I offer my deepest gratitude and love. Words cannot express my thanks or begin to list all you have given me, as an agent and a friend. I would never have been here without you.
—Alice Hoffman
FURTHER READING
* * *
Further reading for those who wish to know more about the history explored in The Museum of Extraordinary Things.
Coney Island
Denson, Charles. Coney Island Lost and Found. Ten Speed Press, 2002.
Hartzman, Marc. American Sideshow: An Encyclopedia of History’s Most Wondrous and Curiously Strange Performers. Tarcher Penguin, 2006.
Kasson, John E. Amusing the Millions. Hill and Wang, 1978.
McCullough, Edo. Good Old Coney Island. Fordham University Press, 2000.
Lower East Side and Triangle Fire and New York City
Argersinger, Jo Ann. The Triangle Fire: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009.
Ballon, Hillary, ed. The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811–2011. Museum of the City of New York, 2012.
Benin, Leigh, Rob Linne, Adrienne Sosin, Joel Sosinsky with the Workers United (ILGWU) and HBO Documentary Films. Images of America: The New York City Triangle Factory Fire. Arcadia Publishing, 2011.
Ellis, Edward Robb. The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History. Basic Books, 1996, 2005.
Gray, Christopher, ed. Fifth Avenue: 1911 from Start to Finish in Historic Block-by-Block Photographs. Dover Publications, 1994.
Homberger, Eric. The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City’s History. Henry Holt, 1994; Holt Paperbacks, 2005.
Israelowitz, Oscar, and Brian Merlis. Manhattan’s Lower East Side in Vintage Photographs. Israelowitz Publishing, 2011.
Jackson, Kenneth T., and David S. Dunbar. Empire City: New York Through the Centuries. Columbia University Press, 2002.
Sanders, Ronald. The Lower East Side: A Guide to Its Jewish Past in 99 Photographs. Dover Books, 1980.
&
nbsp; von Drehle, David. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America. Grove Press, 2003.
Ziegelman, Jane. 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement. HarperCollins, 2010.
Photography
Bann, Stephen, ed. Art and the Early Photographic Album. Yale University Press, 2011.
Burns, Ric, James Sanders, and Lisa Ades. New York: An Illustrated History. Knopf, 2011.
Gilman Paper Company Collection. The Waking Dream: Photography’s First Century. Henry Abrams, 1993.
Lavedrine, Bertrand, et al. Photographs of the Past: Process and Preservation. Getty Conservation Institute, 2009.
Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present. Museum of Modern Art, 2009.
Newhouse, Alana, ed. A Living Lens: Photographs of the Jewish Life from the Pages of the Forward. W. W. Norton, 2007.
For more, please visit AliceHoffman.com.
ALSO BY ALICE HOFFMAN
The Dovekeepers
The Red Garden
The Story Sisters
The Third Angel
Skylight Confessions
The Ice Queen
Blackbird House
The Probable Future
Blue Diary
The River King
Local Girls
Here on Earth
The Museum of Extraordinary Things Page 34
