Among the Wonderful (9 page)

“No apology is necessary,” I said. I arose, not without dramatic intentions, I’m afraid. I towered above her. “I won’t keep you any longer.”

Mrs. Barnum could not manage more than a short nod as she ushered me out.

But as I stood at the bleak window of my room, contemplating the bricks of the neighboring building and the small injustice at having no control over whose lives adjoined my own, I heard children’s footsteps in the hall. I was not surprised when they stopped outside my door. After all, I hadn’t said good-bye to Caroline.

“Miss Swift, are you in there?” Caroline chose to announce herself not by knocking but whisper-shouting at the closed door.

“Come in if you’d like.”

The girl peeped in, still with the absurd silk bow flopping over her forehead. A good round face. And then another little face below hers, this one pale with tiny gray crescents under its eyes and tight curls bobbing up.

“This is Helen.”

“Would you like to come in?” Momentarily shy, Caroline nudged her sister. Helen walked a little unsteadily, a four-year-old in a high-collared nightgown and woolen socks. Caroline followed.

Helen came close. “I didn’t get to meet you.”

“Here’s our chance.”

“We didn’t have any proper visitors up here,” Caroline said. “Until all of you began to arrive. We
adore
visitors.” Caroline had appropriated a sophisticate’s manner of speaking and aped it perfectly. It was not difficult to imagine her picking it up from Mrs. Barnum, although it was quite impossible to imagine the children’s dour mother
adoring
anything. “But where are the rest of your things?”

“These are all my things.”

“Five crates and a bag?” Caroline pointed at them.

“Yes.”

Caroline strolled to the foot of the bed.

“It broke,” I admitted.

“Yes. And these crates are making it crooked. What is this?” She read the labels on the crates. “Cocadiel.”

“Medicine.” I showed her the bottle.

“Are you sick?” Caroline looked at me skeptically.

“I’m sick,” Helen confided.

“No, just prone to aches and pains.” I smiled at the understatement.

The girls perched together on the chair, with Helen looking up at me with glassy eyes. They let out little oohs and snorts of delight as I pulled my things from the crates to show them. Gabardine skirts and a crinoline they could make into a tent. They hid behind my spoonbusk corset. Helen reached for my leather gloves. She held one in both her hands before fitting it on her head like a cap. The fingers fell down over her eyes. We sat together until Charity Barnum called them back. Children being the strange creatures they are, they each gave me a kiss, demanded one in return, and asked to be lifted up to the ceiling before they left.

If I hadn’t caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye, and if I hadn’t wondered what that movement was, I never would have stopped in that gallery on my way back to my booth, and I would have missed the show entirely. This one was smaller than the other galleries, a foyer for the theater and empty of visitors. It didn’t need a giantess. I reached the doorway and the flash of red movement turned into an usher, emerging from the theater doors. He set out a sign on a metal stand:
TODAY’S PERFORMANCE, THE HUMAN CALCULATOR, WILL COMMENCE AT TWELVE NOON
.

For the second time in one day I was invisible. The usher, in his brass-buttoned tailcoat and close-fitting cylindrical cap, propped open the doors leading to the museum’s theater. He disappeared, only to reappear and straighten the sign. This man tended to his task with a singular concentration; he did not even notice the giant standing in the doorway. I was about to turn away when the usher began to perform.

He positioned himself beside the theater door, facing away from me now. He straightened his jacket and hat in a somewhat exaggerated manner. Then he began to react to a great crowd of imagined people. He smiled. He gestured. He murmured words to the invisibles that I could not make out. I took a step back but I did not leave. There was a charm in what he did. He stepped kindly aside for an invisible guest, even extending his arm to assist what perhaps he saw as an
elderly matron bound for the show. His gestures communicated gentle concern as he pantomimed his duties; something in the slight hunch of his shoulders. He bowed and nodded continuously. The only time he ignored his patrons was when he took a moment to rearrange his shirt cuffs and adjust his cap.

He didn’t see me, so he performed for no audience. Even when, as I imagined would soon be the case, an actual audience filled his theater, it would not acknowledge him. Patrons would accept his courtesies without a thought, and yet here was this flushed performer with an embarrassing eagerness; he emanated a weird hope that even I, to whom hope was usually an uneasy abstraction, could actually feel. I wanted to look away from him, but I was entranced. Here was an optimist. They should put
him
in a cage.

As if by categorizing him I had somehow broken his concentration, the usher looked up, mid-gesture. His gaze swerved directly to mine. Because he was an employee of the museum and someone I would meet again, I decided to speak. As I approached, the usher, who was certainly taken aback not only to be observed but to be observed by me, gave me one of the most common surprised expressions. His face then deepened to a blush that matched his uniform. He recovered slightly, adjusted his lapel, and concluded his reaction by surprising me: He grinned.

“I’m not deranged, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Not at all. I had the impression you were … practicing.”

“Yes.” The usher blushed again. I thought he was young, maybe twenty-five, but the bright spots on his hairless cheeks gave him the air of a schoolchild. He had waxed the ends of his wispy mustache, and the resulting comedy could not have been what he intended.

His eyes darted up to my face again. He cocked his head, eyes squinting.

“Are you one of the …” Don’t say
exhibits
, Optimist. “Residents of the fifth floor? They told us to expect new faces and we’ve … all of the ushers, I mean … have been wondering.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re working now?”

“I am assigned to stroll through the galleries.”

“You’re just walking around the museum?” The usher took a gleeful look over his shoulder as if we were fooling everyone.

“It’s a good strategy, actually. I’ve noticed some people think I’m a visitor, like them. I should really carry a handbag and wear a hat.”

“I see.”

“But after a few seconds they usually talk among themselves and seem to decide I am not an innocent, though very tall, bystander.”

“They realize that you must be … what you really are.”

“Yes.”

“I am Samuel Beebe.”

He lifted his cap to reveal a high, square forehead. Someone had cut his curly fawn-colored hair into a triangular shape, with two ledges of curls at his ears that narrowed to a rounded apex on his crown. His eyebrows were perfectly straight lines and his eyes brown and round. It was the kind of face that would ask a worried question and then relieve you of answering with a foolish grin.

“Ana Swift.”

“Mr. Forsythe told us about the apartments on the fifth floor. Are there many? We’re not allowed to go up there. They told us to expect new people, whole groups of people. Employees. Performers. But Mr. Barnum has been out of touch, at least with Mr. Forsythe. Everybody’s worried about the new employees getting lost … before they even find their way here. Lost in the city before they even —”

“Surely Barnum has provided for them.”

“Did he provide for you?”

“I suppose he did, yes.”

“Then he probably has. He most possibly has. He generally does.” Beebe’s sentences crowded one another before trailing away. He gazed up at me, still with a querying expression.

“Where did
you
come from?” I deflected the conversation from returning to the subject of me.

“Oh, not far. I’m from Bethel Parish, Connecticut. This is better for me. A better type of feeling. Much more exciting, of course. In my experience. Which is much different from yours, if I may venture to guess.”

“You may.”

Beebe layered his words and phrases so recklessly I was tempted to retreat from him altogether, despite his pleasing features and somewhat winning manner. Strategies of avoidance and repetition usually annoyed me, but I was certain this Beebe was not conscious of any strategy.

“The performance begins thirty-five minutes from now, Miss Swift. I must prepare.” Again he gestured, this time toward the theater. “In there. May I venture … do you take meals in the Aerial Garden and Perpetual Fair?”

“Is that the roof?”

“The same.”

“I do.”

“Well, then.”

I didn’t see how this concluded our conversation, but Beebe ducked and bowed away, finally giving me a little wave as he disappeared through the theater doors. I enjoyed his exit but did not return his wave.

I continued through galleries, past pockets of visitors looking at the things they had paid to examine, myself included. I observed a tinge of pleasure as I replayed those moments when Beebe had cocked his head and squinted up at me, as if the sun shone brightly to my back. I enjoyed the sensation as long as I could before I scorned my hunger for it. Why did Beebe’s display attract, not repel, me? I wondered if the fact that I, certainly one of God’s more jaded creatures, had warmed to his innocence was one of the world’s more wicked jokes or one of its greatest gifts.

I found my half-built booth adorned only with two carpenters nailing up its sides. The booth had not yet been painted. No façade provided color or interest, and only my name was sketched in pencil onto the wooden frame. I quite liked it this way. I passed my hand along the empty front counter. I would need a new set of lithograph portraits and a
new True Life History to sell. This was a good location, near the balcony so I could at least see the sky and receive the breeze. I surveyed the view: Glass cabinets lined the opposite wall, a mummy lay in the center of the gallery, two stuffed gazelles stood in the corner, poised as if they would leap through the balcony doors and out over Broadway.

The problem of my True Life History had bothered me since my arrival. I hadn’t brought any copies of my old one, an absurdly gothic melodrama that recounted my “early life” in the remote Hebrides, where I was apparently raised by a clan of druids whose tendency to use me as a centerpiece for cultic invocations partially accounted for my stature. Mr. Ramsay had spent days composing it, and the pamphlet sold well. The public must have souvenirs, and fabricated accounts of my origin seemed to please them very much.

There had been other True Life Histories before the Hebrides story, a new one every year or every time I changed managers. The only one I was ever particularly fond of was the first. The manager who wrote it was not an educated man, but he owned a copy of Tabart’s
Jack and the Bean-Stalk
and decided to invent me as the ogress in his own interpretation of the fairy tale. She was an awful character; he dressed me in rags and a yarn wig. My props included a hen and golden egg, a small harp, and, when he was available, a dwarf who agreeably played the boy Jack in our crude skit.

What new story would I now invent? I had never written a True Life History myself and I had to come up with something before my booth was finished. But the prospect of writing it irritated me in the extreme; it gave me the feeling that
I
was falling for some kind of prank, even though I knew it was those who would part with their money for the pages who were the fools. I recalled a History from several years ago in which I was cast as Anoo, a mighty South American Amazon. Despite its premise, the story lacked verve. Perhaps I could reuse it, this time embellishing it with details recently brought back with the latest expedition to Surinam.

“Will you join us on the balcony?” Elizabeth Crawford had appeared below me, and I was grateful for the distraction.
Miss Crawford and her friends now had a dozen little girls with them, and two nuns. “These are children from the Sacred Heart Girls’ Home. We sponsor a monthly outing for them, and today’s their lucky day!” Miss Crawford smiled down at the girl she held by the hand, whose eyes had grown to the size of chestnuts as she beheld me. “Come with us,” she urged.

I followed them out of doors, wondering if by doing so I was no longer officially working. On the other hand, my presence on the balcony might lure more business from the street.

The day was cold and bright; a group of twenty people was already gathered at the railing. The street rushed below in a jarring confusion of colors and noise, with a particular commotion coming down from the north. In one corner of the balcony, a man was playing a harpsichord, accompanied by a fiddler and an ophecleide player. They all had the look of street hawkers, in fingerless gloves and threadbare coats buttoned up to their chins. Miss Crawford and her orphans pressed against the iron railing near me. Up the street a carriage drawn by two white horses came into view. Accompanying it was a crowd of at least a hundred people. I noticed four men come out of the museum below us, each carrying a stack of handbills. Two men stayed on the museum-side of Broadway and two crossed the street. They waited for the carriage and the crowd to arrive.

“Is it a parade?” I asked.

“Yes, it is,” Miss Crawford answered, shaking her head. “I doubt you have this kind of parade in Canada, though.”

A lone figure could now be seen standing in the open carriage, wearing a white tailcoat and hat. He waved to the crowd and wore a strange smile that raised the hairs on my neck. The crowd cheered. All the little orphans laughed and clapped their hands. In an alarming gesture, the musicians on the balcony began a dirge. On an organ the tune might have carried some weight, but the harpsichord transformed it into a farce.

Miss Crawford saw my confusion. “It’s a gallows parade.” She used the same tone a resigned schoolmarm would use to correct a child.