The Swan Gondola (13 page)

I shrugged, thinking I should keep my discovery to myself. But then I leaned in to whisper in his ear: “Want to know why I got beat up for trying to take Cecily's carpetbag?” I didn't want to start rumors—a husbandless mother didn't have an easy way around in the world we lived in—but I was anxious to tell somebody something. Anything. I wanted to talk about Cecily all night. I wanted August to promise me that Cecily
didn't
have a husband at all, that I'd be a good father, that the incubator exhibit was a fraud full of well-fed babies.

“Oh do tell me there's something gothic inside,” August said. He held tight to my arm and leaned against me. He spoke close, his breath hot on my cheek and smelling of cloves. “A mummified mermaid? A secondhand prosthetic leg?”

I turned my head, my lips at his earlobe. “A baby,” I whispered. August gasped, genuine. I said, “She keeps her in the incubator during the day.”

“Such skullduggery,” he purred. “From a carpetbag into an incubator? Then from the incubator to the carpetbag? I hope you're dreadfully suspicious. The baby could be a victim of a kidnapping. Or of scientific experiments in a country laboratory. Or maybe Cecily doesn't even come and go with the same infant—maybe she's some kind of handmaiden of death. Did you think of that? Maybe she and the automaton practice a nightly bloodletting in a terrible den of monsters. Like vampires in a penny dreadful. It could all be worse than anything you could ever imagine.”

“Yes,” I said, though I hardly listened. “It could be. She might be married.”

“Oh” was all August said.

But it wasn't the notion of a husband that worried me most. I already had so little I could give Cecily, what could I possibly give to a baby? Suddenly, I understood Cecily's hesitance.

As the anarchists playfully discussed how they might drown President McKinley in the lagoon, I put my hand to my chest, to the rich man's calling card in my pocket. I touched the corners of the card through the fabric. I had no true intention of selling Oscar, but I did consider his worth. How much might a man like William Wakefield pay?

W
HEN THE
C
HAMBER OF
H
ORRORS
started on fire the next day, smoke rolling through the pitch-dark corridors to choke us, I first suspected, not lightning but Zigzag the clown anarchist. But it had been raining all morning, heavy, fixing to flood the whole Fair and wash it downriver. Oscar, soaked to his wooden bones, weighed double on my back.

Not only did I hear the sharp crack of thunder but I could feel it like cold steel in my spine and joints. It startled Cecily out of character, and the executioner too, and they both grabbed at each other, clutching arms, their eyes meeting for a blink of sympathy. But in a moment, they returned their attention to the guillotine.

Cecily's neck went on the block, and they played out the beheading.

After the curtains closed and the others slogged on, the water squishing in their socks, I peeked through to the stage. “Cecily,” I called softly. “Cecily.” Cecily stepped forward with a candle in her fist. I handed her an envelope.

“What's this?” she said.

“I explain in the letter,” I said.

“What's the letter say?” she said.

I hesitated. I scratched my wet head. “I'd rather not say,” I said.

“Why not?” she said. “What's in it that's so terrible? Why should I read something that you don't want to say?”

“There's nothing terrible,” I said. “Nothing terrible at all. It's just that I agonized over the letter. I put just the right words in just the right order. You need to read it all in a letter. It's a confession, of sorts.”

“A
confession
,” she said. “What are you confessing?”

“Why can't you just open it and read it?”

“Ferret,” she said, sighing, “to read, I have to have my specs. Like an old lady.”

Finally, after taking a deep breath, I spoke. I kept my voice low. “I don't know if the automaton told you. Last night. I know about the baby. I saw the girl in the carpetbag.” Cecily lowered the candle, dropping the light from her face. “Please don't be upset,” I said. “I said it much better in the letter.” As if hoping to impress her, I added, “I write letters for a living.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she said.

I shook my hands with exasperation. “Because you
told
me to tell you.”

“I didn't tell you to tell me anything,” she said.

“You told me to tell you what was in the letter,” I said.

“But why did you write it in a letter? Why would you talk about such things?”

“Because you have to know that I know,” I said. “I want to spend time with you, Cecily.” I reached up to touch her hand, to raise it, to return the candlelight to her face.

“Oh, Ferret,” she said. “Please, please, please, you'd be so much happier with Pearl. I promise.” All her breathy
p
's made the candle flame sputter.

Before I could object, there came a clanging down the hall, and fast footsteps, and chaos, as someone ran through the winding corridor with a bell in hand, shouting, “Fire, fire, fire, fire!”

I helped Cecily from the stage—or more rightly, I caught her as she tumbled down, her legs tangled up in her endless petticoats and layers of satin skirts. As we rushed ahead, squeezing all the flounce of her gown around narrow corners, I put one arm around her waist to keep her from tripping. She leaned in toward me, complaining of the awful pinch of her tiny velvet shoes.

All the creatures and fiends from the Chamber of Horrors ran from the hallway, and we were shoved along, out through the mouth of the dragon, into the storm. A devil looked up, and the deluge washed away the red paint on his face. The rain matted the wolf's whiskers and cleansed the blood from the Ripper's hands. A dark angel, a skeleton bride, a man with a noose hanging from his neck, a ghost in sheets and shackles, they all rushed for cover as they scattered along the midway, sliding in the mud. A cloud of black smoke rose overhead like a snort from the dragon's snout.

Just steps from the Chamber of Horrors, my umbrella's ribs got twisted and its silk ripped. Cecily's wig and costume wilted in the rain as I held the spindly umbrella over her head, all her overskirts and underskirts growing waterlogged and heavy, dragging her down. There was no keeping the bottom of her dress out of the mud, though I tried. With one hand I held the umbrella over her head, with the other I carried her train like a courtier. Within seconds she was a muddy mess, her dress a wreck. “In here,” she yelled above the storm and its locomotive roar. She gestured toward the Mirror Maze.

The building was closed for repairs, some drunk having tripped his way through, cracking every mirror he slammed against. I pushed aside the sawhorse blocking the entry and Cecily moved into the maze.

“You stay here, and I'll go look in on the baby,” I said, following her. A glass case seemed the worst place for an infant in a storm.

“She's not at the incubator exhibit,” Cecily said, panting and snuffling, as if she'd swum up from underwater. Cecily pushed the tall wig from her head and it fell onto her dress, rolled down the satin, and onto the floor. She began undoing the knots and ties at her waist.

“Then where is she?” I said. “Your baby.”

Cecily said nothing. She shook her hips, shaking off layers of the sopping costume. I was pleased to watch her undress even as I wondered if it would be more gentlemanly to look away. But she beckoned me forward to help her with yet more knots and clasps. “I want to see the broken mirrors,” she said. “Let's go get lost.” As we stepped forward into the maze, layers of her costume loosened and dropped, giving way to bodices, hip pillows, bustles, ruffles, pleats. She shrunk away, piece by piece, the wreckage of her gown falling off. She stripped to a long skirt of pink satin and a chemise as lacy as a muslin nightdress. She stepped lightly, her feet still in the too-tiny shoes so as not to step on shards of glass. I watched her every reflection, and the reflections of reflections, in the mirrors. A few shivers worked up her spine from the damp.

Cecily bumped along slowly in the dim maze, knocking her shoulders gently against the walls, feeling her way through. Eventually we did seem a little lost, every turn another twist, until we didn't know forward from back. If the skinny tip of a cyclone had hit us, we would have been sliced to ribbons as we spun around. But that didn't keep me from wanting to follow Cecily deeper and deeper into the maze.

We found the broken mirrors, shards and shatter still hanging off the frames, breaking our reflections into pieces. We walked past. We would dead-end here and there, caught in corners and wrong turns, and as we corrected and doubled back, we'd brush shoulders and touch hands, and it became something like a waltz, graceful and smooth. And every time we turned again, our touches lingered longer. I felt her breath, still shaky with her shivering, against my neck, and her fingers stepped along my open palm, tapping, tapping, tapping. I looked in her eyes every chance I got, and I got more and more chances as our little waltz began to slow down to nothing.

Cecily leaned back against a cracked mirror, the crack reflected, repeated, in all the other mirrors, casting the illusion that every mirror of the maze was broken.

She plucked the handkerchief from my pocket and turned to her reflection to scrub away the smeared powder from her face. “My baby's not sick,” she said. “So don't feel sorry for us.”

“I don't,” I said.

“The live-baby exhibit needed more live babies, and I needed somebody to watch her while I got my head chopped off every day. That's all. There's nothing more to it.”

I looked at her face in the mirror as she wiped at her cheeks. “Can I ask you something?” I said.

“No,” she said. “I don't like it when people ask me if they can ask me something. It always turns out to be something nobody wants to be asked.”

“I'm going to ask you anyway,” I said. “Do you have a husband, Cecily?”

“If I told you I did, would you leave me alone?”

“No,” I said. “I would just decide not to believe you.”

“Then why'd you ask?” she said.

I shrugged and winked at her. “Seemed the gentlemanly thing to do.” I took her elbow and began to turn her toward me. She leaned back against the cracked mirror again, and as she looked down at her sleeve, she traced her finger along the petal of a rose in the lace.

“Her name's Dorothy,” Cecily said. “My little girl. But we all call her Doxie, for some reason.” Cecily lifted the watch from my pocket. She messed with the watch's stem, watching the hands spin on the dial. She returned the watch, but it now told the wrong time. “She's with Mrs. Margaret, the witch in the booth on the midway. When it looked like it might storm, we kept Doxie home. Mrs. Margaret is
very
protective.”

“I noticed,” I said.

“She's been like a mother to us.” She gave me a squint, and furrowed her brow. “Can I ask
you
something?”

“Well, that happens to be my
favorite
question,” I said, laying it on thick, intending to be comical. “Ask me anything at all.”

“Did you used to have a mustache?”

I buttoned a button of her chemise, a little one at her wrist. “Yes,” I said.

Cecily squinted again, and she reached up to run her finger under my lip, tracing the ghost of a fancy, twisting mustache unlike any I'd ever had.

Before I could lean in to kiss her, a spark of sunlight distracted us. The glimmer bounced from mirror to mirror, glinting in my eye. It was only then I noticed I couldn't hear the wind anymore. “The sun's out,” Cecily said, and she took my hand. Hand in hand, we wove back through the maze, winding our way out easily, following the slant of sun. At the wreckage of her costume, Cecily picked up some silk and wrapped it around her shoulders like a shawl but left most of the dress behind for someone else to gather later.

Out on the midway, the sun seemed even brighter than before. People stepped from the buildings and from under the eaves, peeking out from beneath their umbrellas and blinking at the sky. Rainwater rolled down gullies in the muddy road. The barkers went right back to work, shouting and beckoning, begging people into their booths. “Chiquita's spirit can't be dampened by a summer storm! Come watch her dance on her little two legs!” A camel roamed without a rider, stopping to nibble on the thatched roof of a hut in the Filipino Village.

But the ruins of the Chamber of Horrors were the real attraction. The fire was out, but smoke billowed. A fire wagon emptied its tank on the building, and the arc of water made a faded rainbow above the dragon's head. The pale colors sparkled in the sun.

The show was over. Word traveled among the chamber's performers as they gathered in the wet road, and a few of the actors wept, even the Big Bad Wolf who disemboweled Little Red every day and night. “I don't have another job,” he said, returning his mask to his face to hide his tears. Even if the building could be repaired, it wouldn't be for days.

Cecily didn't seem to mind. As a matter of fact, she seemed happier than I'd ever seen her. “Good-bye, Ferret,” she said. She whispered, “I'm going to go get ol' Dox and spend the rest of the day with her.” But before she'd skipped away entirely, she returned to me. “Hey, just take Pearl out for an hour or so, please, please, please,” she said. “You really will like her quite a lot. Just an hour. Or two.” I nodded, though not at all politely. She could sense I was irked, so she smiled at me, then stuck out her lower lip to mock my pout. Then she kissed me on that pouty lower lip of mine—just a quick peck. She ran away, stepping lightly through the mud, and I could see from her limp how those little shoes pinched and pained her. I couldn't bear the sight of it.

I kicked off my own shoes, took off my socks, and I ran after her. I called her name, and when she stopped I knelt at her side to take her ankle in my hand. She steadied herself with her hand on the top of my head as I removed her peacock-blue shoe and replaced it with mine. “Ferret,” she protested, but I wouldn't listen. “Chivalry is
dead
, already.” Her foot on my knee, I tied the laces as tight as they'd go.

“Don't let them trip you,” I said, standing. “They're too big for you, but they're better than those pretty little traps.” I'd left her blue shoes footless in the mud. I kicked them away. “Mine won't leave you hobbled, at least.”

Cecily cast me a skeptical glance, an eyebrow lifted. “So you're going to go around in bare feet like a heathen?” she said.

“I was born barefoot,” I said, winking. “I grew up barefoot. I've always hated shoes. I could walk in a ditch of needles and not feel a thing.”

Cecily lifted her petticoat higher up, above her ankle, and studied the shoes. She playfully tapped her foot against my naked toes. She bit her lip, like with melancholy, and she looked up. “Ferret,” she said, then paused. “Ferret, you're a very nice man—”

I interrupted, as I knew this compliment wouldn't be going anywhere I wanted it to. “Bring Doxie to the swan gondola tonight,” I said. “Just the two of you. After the Fair closes.” I tapped my toe against the toe of her shoe. “Please?”

She looked vexed by the invitation, but then said, “Do you promise to go see Pearl? At least walk her home from work? This evening? I have a good eye for these kinds of things, you know? I think you two could fall in love without even trying much.”

This time I wasn't insulted by the suggestion. It was beautifully halfhearted, at best. I smiled and nodded, and this got me another quick kiss on the lips before she turned and headed toward home.