The Book of Speculation (30 page)

“About Alice…” I say, because I feel I should.

“She makes her own decisions,” he mutters.

“She’s worried about you. Go home, Frank.”

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, okay.” He repeats the word until he’s worn a rut into it, then walks back to his house and the women waiting for him. I should tell him that I haven’t said anything to Alice, that I won’t, but I still want him to suffer. I look back to the water.

The beach is packed not just with crabs, but people from the other houses on the cliff. There’s Eleni Trakos, I recognize her by her steel-gray bun and leathery skin, tanned to her body by decades of topless sunbathing. There are her grandkids, Takis and the other one. Next to her is Gerry Lutz from up the street, Vic and the cul-de-sac people, Sharon, the Pinettis. They cluster like it’s a crime scene, touching, whispering, talking.

Eleni and the grandkids have their toes right up to the edge. One of the kids picks a crab up by the tail and waves it around; the body arches at its hinged joints, exposed, blindly searching for footing, and flinging back and forth with each movement of its tail. I look at Eleni, then back up the beach to Gerry, Vic and Maggie Simms, Terry, Sharon and the other cul-de-sac people. It’s rare to see them all together. Weddings, maybe. I think the last wedding was Wyatt’s, Gerry’s son, and that was three or four years ago. And funerals, yes, everyone shows up for funerals. I can recall them all wearing black—suits, dresses with matching jackets, shiny funeral shoes. Eleni with just rings, no necklace.

At Mom’s service, Dad had been flanked by Frank and Gerry. Frank stood at my father’s side, mourning her too. Leah stayed with Enola and me. She put me in a too-big suit from the Presbyterian Church. Enola wore a black hand-me-down dress from Alice.

John Stedbeck paces by the boulder where Enola skinned her legs. Nervous and lanky, he shouts into a cell phone, bending and straightening, holding his arm out to search for reception. I borrowed his suit for Dad’s service. My father’s gray suit had been too wide at the shoulders and too short in the legs. He wore the black in the casket.

Faye and Sharon snap photos, Faye crouching as far as her knees allow. They brought us fruit pies, both times. Ted Melnick brought us a basket of oranges and handed it to me while apologizing. Gerry and his wife gave us lasagna, which Enola ate all of as soon as the house was empty. Eleni gave us baklava. “For the sweet in the sorrow,” she’d said. Though food poured from the doors and windows, though each of these people hugged us and begged us to
eat, eat, eat,
we tasted nothing.

The clicking and thumping of crab tails hangs in the air; a roiling wave, they clamber at the shore. The wind is full of crabs and the beach is filled with a funeral party.

*   *   *

Back in the house I try Churchwarry, but there’s no answer. Next to my keyboard is
Legends and Poems of the Baltic,
the other book I must return. Why did Mom fill my head with stories of kings under the sea and women who danced men into streams? I log on to my computer to find a short email from Anne Landry at Sanders-Beecher Archive. They’re still reviewing applicants, but would like to schedule a call at my convenience. There are questions about my willingness to move since they lack the capital to fund relocation. I tell her I’ll call in the afternoon on the twenty-fifth. There’s also a message from Blue Point. While they thank me for my interest, the previously listed position in reference has been eliminated due to budget restructuring.

In the middle of my inbox, hidden among the spam, is a message from Raina at Shoreham. She’s found Greta Koenig—rather, Greta Ryzhkova. My hunch was right, only she didn’t bear her mother’s name for long. It seems that her mother remarried, and Greta took her stepfather’s name. A Victor Mullins of New Orleans. In 1826. The Mullins name pings back a glut of hits. But why the remarriage? Katerina Ryzhkova was widowed. I flip through the book, running my fingers along the warped pages. Toward the middle, before the switch in handwriting, there is a delicate drawing of a boat—it looks like a rudimentary prototype of the kind of steamers that once crawled up and down rivers throughout the country.

I look up to see the light still on at the McAvoys’, and Frank and Leah’s silhouettes on their living room couch. This is how it’s always been. I’d thought it had been Leah watching us, but it was me on the other side of the glass, wanting in.

Then I begin the hunt. A hunt for a flood between 1824 and 1826, the kind that might swallow a troupe of traveling performers, perhaps a floating circus. The kind that might have killed enough people to imbue any objects left behind with a spirit of loss deep enough to cause a curse. I know in my heart this is poor research. Wild chases go against the fundamentals of good research. But the book found its way to me, which works against all logic as well.

Hours pass before I discover it. In 1825, the Mississippi River floods, inundating New Orleans. Katerina Ryzhkova remarried in New Orleans. It fits geographically and with the timeline.

I catch sight of a small sketch on the page opposite the little steamer boat. I’d seen it before but it hadn’t seemed important, just another absentminded doodle of a man prone to think through sketching. At the corner of a page, just above a quickly jotted note about oppressive heat and fog, is a delicate brown illustration of a horseshoe crab.

I shut the book and leave the house as quickly as my ankle allows. I need to get into the water, to clear my head. My foot and the stairs make for slow going. The bottom two steps have washed out, but someone installed a pool ladder on the bulkhead, so I’m able to tumble down. On the sand, crabs scramble around my feet and over each other. The tide has come up since the afternoon, hiding the thousands more horseshoes that lurk beneath. They seem to part, making way as I shuffle into the water.

Three deep breaths, in, out, in, out, in, out. One last deep sharp breath down, spreading the ribs wide, stretching each muscle and filling it with air, and then I am in the black relief of night swimming. Below is life, tails switching against shells, above is water, then sky—in the in-between there is only me. I swim farther into the dark.

I open my mouth for just a moment, tasting the salt.

There is a cycle at work. My mother knew her mother drowned. My grandmother must have known the same. They must have feared, like every member of the Wallenda family who takes to the wire knowing the specter of death is a breath of wind away, until the wire becomes a curse. A combination of thought and tragedy makes it so.
Binding Charms and Defixione,
that bulky text Churchwarry sent, puts the source of curses as the written word, intent manifested through language. Below crab tails smack against shells, conjuring the image of Peabody’s drawing. The boat, too, followed so shortly by the water-damaged pages, as though the sketch itself called a flood. My stomach rolls with a cold undercurrent.

Curse tablets bore the names of their targets, sometimes little more. To name a thing is to set it apart—imbuing it with power, or steering it toward destruction. Bess Visser. Amos. Evangeline. Curse tablets were hidden, buried where they wouldn’t be discovered until long after the charm had done its damage. A discovered tablet could be smashed, breaking the charm, just as burning letters can exorcise old lovers. The book hid itself, through flood, finding homes with people interested in books and old things, people who wouldn’t dare destroy such an interesting piece of history. Until it found its way to me.

It’s ready to be undone.

I let my breath out and sink down to the sand bed, dangling my feet until they touch the smooth top of a carapace. It shoots out from under me, slick, and unknowably old. For the first time in days I feel like smiling, and almost gasp in the salt. By the time I emerge from the water, shivering, dawn has crept up.

I know what to do.

22

Peabody was elated at the prospect of Evangeline’s pursuit of fortune-telling; it solved the problem of Amos’s employment and afforded him the opportunity to exercise his creative capabilities. He spent days and nights sketching, searching through chests, and confiscating any errant piece of cloth or bit of ornamentation from other wagons—an intricate piece of ironwork from Melina’s door, a length of muslin Susanna had left out, a tin of silver dust that Nat had held onto from his days as a smith—all snatched, borrowed, wheedled, and cajoled away. He refurbished Ryzhkova’s wagon in what he deemed the highest style. Blue, yellow, and white paint on the exterior, trimmed with flourishes and fleurs-de-lis. Swags of cloth were hung inside the door and the interior was painted an eggshell blue typically reserved for women’s skirts. Peabody painted compasses and stars along the walls, and supplied cushions from his own wagon. When finished, he conceded that he’d transformed Ryzhkova’s lair into a passable replica of an ostentatious French parlor. His book noted the change. A single line scratched through
Mme. Ryzhkova, svc. Occult,
under which was written
M. & Mme. Les Ferez, svc. Oracular.
Evangeline became
Apprentice Seer,
and next to Amos’s name
Wild Boy
had been emphatically stricken and replaced with
Seer
; small changes that meant a wholly altered life for Amos and Evangeline. For purposes of record keeping they became Etienne and C
é
cile Les Ferez.

“Russians are pass
é
,” Peabody explained as he bestowed a costume trunk upon Amos. “
Les v
ê
tements,
” he said, dropping the box. It thudded to the ground, sending curls of dust into the air. “Think, Amos, all this time you’d been sleeping atop your future. Costumes from my last trip to the Continent.” When neither Amos nor Evangeline took his meaning he elaborated. “France, dear children.” He shook out an age-stained floral scarf. “
La France
. The very height of civilization, fashion, and art!”

Amos balked when presented with the trunk brimming with stiff white fabric, lace and ruffles. Peabody cleared his throat. “Changes are difficult, but ’tis this or
d
é
shabill
é
. I understood you were not well pleased with being a savage.” He sized a pelisse against Evangeline’s increasing girth. “Most concealing, most concealing,” he murmured. “The French are—how shall it be phrased? Accommodating to ladies of parturient condition.”

The voluminous garb of a Gallic bohemian well disguised Evangeline’s pregnancy when she sat, and she sat a great deal. In her new employment she found that, were it not for the occasional pain and sudden bouts of sickness, pregnancy was not the inconvenience she had feared, and that she liked some of the changes reading cards brought.

Peabody spoke at length on aristocratic attire, the elaborate coiffures, wigs, and powder. “Lice,” he chuckled, “the fiends are rife with lice.” Evangeline took on the task of dressing Amos’s hair in the heavy ringlets Peabody stated were fashionable. Each night she used a fine wooden comb to part his hair into sections, twisting each into a corkscrew, which she then tied with cloth scraps. While she combed, she practiced her accent, pursing her lips. By evening’s end her face grew tired from overuse and Amos looked like a dandelion. While Amos seemed at first embarrassed by the task, after a week’s time she felt him longing for the quiet moments and the simple pleasure of having his hair brushed. She would sit on a chest while he sat cross-legged on the floor, bracketed by her thighs, and gave himself to her ministrations. She watched his breath slow with each pass of the comb. It was good to care for another.

On first inspection of Amos and Evangeline in full costume, Peabody could not contain his delight. “Elegance, my lovely things. You shall be the jewels of our menagerie. Monsieur et Madame Les Ferez, we shall teach the lowly and the unwashed about refinement, their futures, and
style
.”

But first, Evangeline had to be taught the cards. She was a quick study, provided Amos did not grow frustrated with teaching, which required the use of exaggerated pantomime and steering Evangeline’s questions in directions he could answer. During demonstrations of the spreads, positions, and meanings, he was prone to break into conversations without signaling when a lesson’s discourse had ended. Evangeline suspected that he held back. She noticed that he hid particular cards when they appeared, changing their positions or removing them. A blur of brown skin, a blink of color, it was difficult to see what he’d done. He tucked away the darker cards—the Tower, the Devil, Death, but also Swords and more often Cups. He kept secrets from her, but she could raise no complaint, not while she carried her own shadows
.

If he withheld a piece of trust, she felt justified in having private places. In early morning, while he slept, she would swim. Though she did not miss her act or the leering eyes, she longed for water. As Amos dreamt of tobacco drying sheds and rabbit holes, she slipped from his side to walk into the river and wrap her arms in it.