The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen (15 page)

“Anyway,” Wes continues in a rush, breaking his gaze and turning back to his saddlebag for escape. “Here.”

He produces a funny little object that's like one of Mother's gilt pencils, only not made of wood. It's not made of metal, either. I weigh it in my hand. It's light, like a stripped quill, only without any ink. A pen, clearly, but of some kind I haven't seen.

“Sign?” I say. As if my signing anything would make any difference to anyone. Under the law, I'm not even a person. “But what is it?”

I must look more perturbed than I even realize, because all at once his gray eyes darken, and he looks around us quickly as though we're being watched. My scalp tightens with sudden anxiety. I think fleetingly of the contract signed in Marlowe's
The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus
. Typical, of a young girl being dramatic, I chastise myself.

“Seriously. Is everything okay?” he whispers in my ear.

I stare at him, baffled by this question. That word again.

“Is . . . everything . . . okay.” I try out the words for myself. “Oh. Kay.”

He presses himself nearer to me, and his skin feels warm next to mine. It feels good, having him here with me. Safe.

“Is it?” he insists. He puts an arm around my shoulder and gives me a squeeze, the kind of squeeze that would be too familiar if it were from almost anyone else. “You can trust me. It's okay.”

I don't know why, but this boy feels wonderfully necessary. He looks at me with such soft attention, and when he leans in close to me, I don't worry so much about the fog. I don't feel so lost. I don't even care if he's imaginary.

A smile spreads across my face and I say, “It caps the climax. Got any ink?”

Now it's his turn to look confused. My figment doesn't use idioms, apparently. It could be that my figment isn't very bright. “Um. What?”

“Ink?” I wave the stripped quill at him. “You want me to sign it, don't you?”

“Well, yeah, but . . . ,” he stammers, as if he doesn't know how to answer my incredibly obvious question.

“Annatje?” I almost hear someone call from inside the house. The faint sound, fainter than a leaf falling on the ground, sends a chill
across the back of my neck, down my spine, all the way to my slippers on the paving stones.

I sit stock-still, my ears straining to decipher if I really heard it, or if it's another game my mind is playing with itself.

“Are you—” Wes starts to say, but I can't have him talking to me until I discover if I heard my name. I make a hushing sound and silence him with my fingertips against his lips. They are warm and soft.

“Shhh,” I whisper. Obediently he stops, eyebrows raised with curiosity.

My ears ring with the strain of listening through the silence, and I stare hard at Ed's bedroom window upstairs.

The window sash is open, and the corner of a gauzy curtain drifts over the lip of the window and waves slowly in the air like a hand.

Inside the house, I hear the faintest sounds of movement. Footsteps, or the scraping of a chair across the floor. It's not even a sound, exactly, more a vibration. I can tell that they're inside. They're inside!

And then I hear it again.

“Annatje?” my mother clearly calls. I hear her through Ed's window, as though she's looking for me upstairs.

I leap to my feet.

“I'm sorry,” I stammer to my disappointed-looking figment. His eyebrows have risen higher and are meeting in a sorry little point above his nose. “I'm sorry, Wes, I've got to go. That's my mother.”

“Your—what?” He glances quickly at the façade of my town house with a look of utter confusion.

I'm already at the front door. It's as real and solid and wooden as ever it was. There's even a chip in the black paint left by the knifepoint, showing the raw wood underneath. But the note has disappeared. I have my hand on the knob, and it's unlocked, and I have one foot on the doorsill.

Wes has scrambled to his feet.

“My mother,” I explain, impatient. “I'm sorry, I have to go.”

“But—” Wes's voice breaks, and he reaches a hand toward me. “Hey. Listen. I'm sorry, look, I know you don't know me, but I really need your help with this.”

I pause, the door open, and it seems impossible that I can still be talking to him when I have to go inside right now and see my mother.

“Help?” I say.

“Annatje!” my mother shouts down the curve of the staircase, sharper and more urgently. “I need you right now!”

I glance up to where she'll appear on the stair any minute. It's clear something is wrong. It must be the letter. Papa's read the letter.

“Please?” wheedles my figment.

In a flash I'm angry with him. Can't he see that I have to go? But he's such a warm figment, and the corners of his eyes look moist and his eyelashes are trembling.

“I . . .” I hesitate, unsure what to do.

“Look,” he reasons. “If you have to go right now, I can just wait. Okay? You go do whatever, and I'll just wait down here. It's no big deal. I mean. You won't be long, right?”

“Um . . .” I can't tell how long I'll be. How can I know? I hear my mother's footsteps in the hall overhead, and the door to my father's study slam. Running feet in the hallway between my siblings' rooms. It's the day of the letter, and I have to go.

“Please?” Wes whispers to me. His eyes are yearning, his hand crumpling the paper that he was trying to show me.

I'm inside the front hall now, my hand on the banister, and the hall is just as it should be, with the hat stand and the carpet runner. Perhaps I won't be as long as all that. I have to go see Herschel before we flee to Hudson Square, because Herschel hasn't given me the cameo yet. If Wes walks with me, I'll be safer, in the street. And the truth is, I crave that stolid boy warmth next to me. That crinkling
smile of his. His funny wrong words. Is it wrong, to be escorted through the streets by one boy on the way to meet another?

“All right,” I whisper to him so that Mother won't hear.

The one time Mother spied me talking to Herschel, I spent two days locked in my bedroom and Beattie slept on the trundle in Mother's room. I still have a pale stripe on my left hip, from where the welt healed. I can't have her see me talking to some strange overgrown boy in short pants.

“Wait down there,” I say in my lowest voice. “I'll be back as soon as I can.”

“Okay.” Wes grins in a way both winning and foolish, like a puppy with a pullet in its mouth. I grin back. So maybe Wes shouldn't walk me
all
the way to Herschel's shop. Maybe he can take me 'til I'm a block away, and I can carry on alone thereafter. “Okay. I'll be right here.”

My feet newly light, I start up the stairs to where my mother is waiting.

“Wait!” Wes shouts, and I freeze where I'm standing and give him a deadly look. I can't have Mother and Papa knowing about him. He has to be quiet.

“I don't know your name.” The words tumble out of my figment in a rush of explanation and excuse. “What's your name?”

I consider the question, and then bestow on him my most excellent smile.

“Annie,” I whisper. “I'm Annie.”

I just have time to see his entire face break open in a dazzling grin.

Then the door slams behind me on a passing breeze, shaking the walls of the town house as I hurry up the stairs.

“Mother!” I shout. “Mother, I'm here!”

M
other's face is pale and drawn when she looks down at me over the banister. She's just come out of Papa's study.

“There you are,” she says, and her grip tightens on the handrail.

“I'm sorry,” I rush to apologize, but I don't know what I'm apologizing for.

Mother's eyes narrow at me, and when I reach the top of the stairs she takes hold of my sleeve and pushes me up against the wall.

“Listen to me,” she says in a voice so quiet it fills me with dread. “I want you to go into your bedroom and help your sister pack.”

“Pack?” I repeat, but of course I know exactly what she's talking about. She's talking about the letter. “Is Lottie helping her?”

“Lottie's gone home,” Mother says.

“Home?” I ask. “But for how long?”

Lottie is from a mean smattering of huts in the countryside far up the island, a hardscrabble village named Seneca. No one knows why it has an Indian name, since I don't think any Indians live there. I've never actually been, and Lottie won't tell me about it. She hates to go back home, though she'll never say why. Lottie doesn't like talking about herself with us as a rule. Winston is from there, too, though,
and goes home some Sundays, when Mother and Papa let him get away. Sometimes his wife's owner will let her and the children go there, too, but rarely. Winston gets a faraway look on his face, when one of those home-going Sundays is coming. He has a small parcel of land of his own, with a tiny house that he built, covered with wooden shingles that he split. Winston is free, and always was, as far as I know, but not so many freedmen can buy land. Even land no one else wants but the Irish.

“I don't know,” Mother hisses through clenched teeth. “Now hurry. Winston's going to drive us in half an hour.”

She shoves me through the door of my bedroom and then hurries down the hall back to Papa's study.

Beattie is nowhere to be seen, though there's a heap of finery and coats on our still-listing bed. I hear drawers opening and closing in Ed's room next door. I stand alone in the center of the room, my skirts in my hands, vibrating with indecision.

“Dammit, Eleanor!” an angry male voice shouts through closed doors.

My mouth goes dry.

I never knew what the letter said. But in this shadow version of my past, this bizarre reliving of a day that already happened, perhaps I can find out.

On silent cat feet, I creep out of my bedroom and down the hall, careful to avoid the creaky board at the head of the stairs. Papa's study is at the front of the house, overlooking First Street, next to Ed's room. I reach his closed door and, holding my breath, lean down until my ear hovers just next to the keyhole. One hand tucks my pigtail behind my ear.

Papa and Mother are both inside, with at least two other men.

“. . . let them threaten us like this,” Papa is in the middle of saying.

“Peter,” my mother says in her cold and reasonable voice. “Nothing has to change. The flotilla is underway. The celebration will go on. Nothing will stop it.”

“Do you know what the governor will do, if he hears the threats are escalating?” one of the unseen men says.

“There's nothing to do,” my mother insists. “The canal will open. The corporation will succeed. There's no stopping it, even if the governor wanted to. Which he does not.”

“I don't know,” my father says.

He sounds weary. There's a creak, as of someone sitting down heavily in a desk chair. Footsteps cross the room, and a shadow moves over my face where I hover, listening.

“In any case,” another male voice says, “they'll soon see it's for the best. These agitators act from fear. They're essentially ignorant.”

“Indeed,” my father agrees. A long pause wears by while we all wait to hear what he might say next.

“When they see how cheap corn gets, the violence will stop. It stands to benefit the paupers most of all, anyhow,” the other man remarks.

“We might tell the governor in any case,” my father says at length.

A thrumming of tension swells throughout the room.

“But, Mr. Van Sinderen,” the younger of the two men says. “We don't want to distract him. It's only your . . .” He stops himself, aware that my mother is listening to him with icy attention. He clears his throat. “I'm sorry, madam. But it's only your family that's received the threats.”

“What are you suggesting?” my father growls.

“Well,” the unseen man demurs. “It's possible that the . . . don't you at least think that perhaps . . .”

“Spit it out already!” my father shouts.

“He thinks it's a private quarrel, Peter,” my mother says, and the
timbre of her voice turns me to glass. “That this . . . brotherhood, or whatever it is . . . isn't trying to scuttle the corporation. They're trying to scuttle you.”

Another creak as my father rises from his seat and stalks across the room.

“In which case,” his young corporation colleague continues, “we see no reason to bother the governor. Provided your family's security is sure, of course.”

“Which we're prepared to arrange,” the other corporation functionary hastens to add. “At our expense. At least until the canal is officially open.”

“These crackbrains!” my father explodes, pounding his fist onto the roll-front desk with a thud.

“I've already sent a message to Mehitable,” my mother rushes to soothe him. “She says we can stay in Hudson Square as long as we like. And it's only another week 'til the celebration. Then we'll be out of danger.”

“Oh, splendid,” my father says, molassesey with sarcasm. “Mehitable, no less. She's as giddy as these dashed Luddites. Crackbrains all of them!”

“I'll add, Mrs. Van Sinderen, that the corporation's investigating the threats,” the authoritative young man says. “We'll find the culprits in ample time.”

“And what happens then?” Mother asks.

Papa laughs mirthlessly, joined by the other two men.

“Ragtag and bobtails,” my father mutters. “Sons of whores. What difference does it make?”

I catch my breath, and clap my hand over my mouth.

The figures on the other side of the door all freeze, listening. A moment of anxious silence settles on the second floor of our town house. We all lean in, listening to each other without breathing.

Without warning, footsteps rush across the study floor and the door flings open. I hurry to stand up and appear as though I were happening by on my way to Ed's room, but my mother's pinched face, pale with rage, tells me that my ruse has failed. Behind her I spy my father standing at a chaotic desk, purple-black bags under his eyes, flanked by two younger men in tight waistcoats, their hair slicked down where their high hats usually are. One of them is holding a knife. It's the same knife I saw the stranger use to stab the note onto our front door. They all look up at me, startled into silence.

“Dash it all, Annatje!” my father shouts. “You heard your mother! Get your things together!”

“We're going to Aunt Mehitable's,” Mother reiterates, her voice artificially calm.

“Yes, Mother,” I say.

I crane my neck over her shoulder, to see if I can glimpse the note. The young man holding the knife sees me looking, and hides the blade behind his back. My father catches up the note and stuffs it into his pocket before looking with lowered brows out the window.

“Don't forget the dress we picked for you to wear for the festivities,” Mother reminds me. “And your slippers. Tell Beattie. The newspapers will be there.”

“All right.” I hesitate.

Should I invent an excuse to leave? But what lie can I spin that would persuade her to let me go?

My eyes shift between her and Papa and the panic-faced corporation men. Papa turns his back to me, fingertips rubbing over his forehead, and one of the men whispers in my father's ear.

I can slip out. Lottie's already left, and Winston won't say anything. If I pretend I'm going right to my room, they'll stay in the study hatching their schemes, and I can get away to see Herschel.
Just for a minute. If I've lived this day before, as I'm increasingly certain I have, then I have to find a way for him to give me the cameo.

I ache for it.

For the cameo, and for how he stares at me beneath his studied brows, and for what he says when he slides it on my finger. His eyes look soft, when he stares at me. Like Wes's eyes, I think in passing.

I arrange my features into a semblance of filial piety. Mother glares at me. She knows me too well.

“I'll tell Beatrice,” I say, keeping all excitement out of my voice. “We'll be ready.”

“Good girl.” Mother dismisses me and then shuts the door in my face.

The conversation recommences the moment the door is shut.

I slip back to my bedroom and find Beattie digging through the pile of dresses and underthings that she left on the bed. An open trunk has been dragged over next to it, and the trunk vomits stockings over its edge and onto the floor.

“There you are!” Beattie breathes. “Did Mother tell you?” Her eyes shine bright with impish excitement.

“That we're going to Aunt Mehitable's? Yes,” I say, darting from shelf to mantel to dressing table, grabbing the odd item to toss into the trunk so it will look like I've packed to anyone curious.

“Did she tell you why?” Beattie singsongs, dancing by with a scarf wrapped around her head.

“I saw. Papa got a note.”

“We're all going to be killed!” Ed chirps from the doorway between our rooms. His arms are full of sweaters and he's beaming at me from behind them. “We have to flee. Papa said.”

“What?” I freeze, my hand wrapped around a spool of thread from
Herschel's shop. It's a pale dove gray. I like the color so much that I keep the spool on my dressing table, where I can see it every day. No one knows why. I won't let Beattie touch it.

“It's true,” Beatrice says, stuffing the scarf into the trunk. “I heard Mother and them talking about it, before she made me come pack.”

“Is Papa still in his study?” Ed interrupts, cramming the sweaters into the trunk and then flopping on his back on our bed. “I want to ask if I should bring my speller.”

“Killed? Are you sure?” I repeat.

They wouldn't have let Beattie see the note, certainly.

“Mother thinks it's a ruse,” Beattie says in her eminently reasonable way.

“A ruse for what?”

“To scare Papa.” She shrugs.

A missing glove is hunted up and then Beattie lays the pair atop the sweaters with care.

“But why would anyone want to scare Papa?” I ask.

“How should I know?” Beattie says. Which is a good point.

I frown, thinking.

“You should pack,” my sister says mildly. “Mother said we're leaving in half an hour.”

“Yes,” I say, staring off into space.

My siblings watch me, waiting for me to leap to attention and start hurling dresses into the trunk like I'm expected to.

“I . . . ,” I start to say, and then trail off.

What are Luddites? Could they really mean to kill us?

Does the note say when?

I shake myself awake and smile at Beattie.

“Annie?” she asks, looking curiously at my face. “Are you quite well?”

“But of course I am,” I say. “I'm just going to have a quick word with Winston. I'll be right back.”

“With Winston?” My sister looks confused.

“Can I come?” pipes my brother from the bed.

He's been expressly forbidden from bothering Winston, as for a period of three months he trailed on the poor man's heels every hour of the day, until one Sunday Ed announced he was going to go live in Seneca and be one of Winston's children instead. Mother put a stop to it then. He's been banned from below stairs without Beattie or me to watch him.

“No,” I say. “You have to stay here and help Beatrice. Here, you can be in charge of making sure my evening dress is packed. The one with the puffed sleeves and the velvet flounce.”

“Me?” Ed lifts his head. He likes being put in charge of things.

“Yes,” I say. “Beattie will show you which one. It's in the wardrobe. Don't forget, it needs the right drawers and stockings, too. So it's important you pay close attention. I'll just run and ask Winston something, and I'll be right back. You won't even miss me.”

“All right,” my sister says uncertainly.

Ed has already leapt to his feet and climbed into the wardrobe, his two feet sticking out behind him as he roots through the clothes inside.

“I found one shoe already!” he cries in triumph, voice muffled by layers of cotton and wool.

Beattie raises a hand as if she were going to stop me, but I shake my head once, firm.

With a look of silent commiseration at my sister, I vanish out the door of our bedroom as quietly as I can go.