Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders (10 page)

I
suppose, looking back, that Dr. Brumus may well have uncovered my forgery of Eppitt’s file and been aware that my file was missing an important page. But Eppitt was spared, and my file was never re-created.

I had unrestricted access to Brumus’s office after my father’s second abandonment—at least when Brumus was out, which he often was. His guilt gnawed at him. I’d catch him looking at me with a pity so deep it had to come from some loss in his own childhood. I never knew much about that, but he seemed to carry his own grief around. When he wearied of one secretary and was about to get another, he looked especially old and deflated. His new secretaries were a pump, filling him temporarily with air.

I spent most of my time in Brumus’s office clipping items from the newspapers that my father had subscribed to for me. Dr. Brumus, meanwhile, lent me a pair of durable scissors from the sewing room and a tub of office paste. His office was outfitted with a set of encyclopedias and a host of medical books. I read everything on nervous conditions—the kind my mother might
have—and mutism, hysteria, bleeding conditions. I concentrated on lungs for Eppitt’s sake, and on other ailments that might afflict the angels airing on the porches.

I looked into how to prevent pregnancy by investigating prevention’s opposite: fertility. Although I had never had sex with Eppitt, we did fool around in our spare moments under the Duck Porch, in the pump house, the empty barn stalls. I needed to know the boundaries. I wanted to have sex one day, but only for the express purpose of having children.

Mostly, however, I loved the newspapers—inky fingers, the tangy scent of paste. If the clippings I chose were your only historical source, you’d think of the world as endlessly odd and perilous. People were killed by random gusts of wind, cyclones of fire, church steeples, Far East fish eggs, and shattered wickets in croquet matches. Locusts fell from the sky and butterflies swarmed the Atlantic. I liked stories of gender confusion. Headlines read, “Violet, the Man in Skirts,” “Princess in Pants,” and “Lunatic’s Career as Duchess.” If I’d been a boy, my genius wouldn’t have been wasted.

I was interested in what people left behind. Two hundred and forty-four thousand items had been abandoned on New York City transportation: 42,000 umbrellas, 22,000 pairs of gloves, 20,200 handbags, and 12,000 tin hats; gas masks and rifles; plus a dulcimer, a case of beetles, a three-legged chicken, a woman’s leg—complete with laced boot and stocking—and, of course, babies. Babies were left in theaters, restaurants, bathroom stalls. Was I trying, with my interest in the left behind, to prove that I was lucky, like Mrs. Funk wanted us to believe?

When I think of my first book, I fall in love with my child self. The book became so full that it sprang open when laid flat—like something that wanted to fly. I told Eppitt about everything I learned, and together we fell more in love with the world
out there,
as my father had
put it. I walked around in a bruised, aching, transcendent state of lovesickness and homesickness.

Even now I remember the story of the Electric Girl, a “highly strung” eighteen-year-old who sent metal tea trays sailing through the air when she walked into a room. That’s how I felt when I saw Eppitt and thought of our escape. After clipping an article with the headline “Wolf Woman Shot,” I whispered to Eppitt under the Duck Porch that she made me cry—not just because I was Harriet
Wolf,
good old Hairy Wolf, and felt a kinship. And not just because of her tragic death. But because the shooting in some way must have felt like a relief.

Eppitt understood me. He said, “The Wolf Woman was alone but you’re not. We’re a family.” And when I told him about the locust infestations and butterfly swarms, I worried that we’d get lost and separated from each other, but he said, “I’d come and find you. I’d never give up.”

We held each other tightly. It wouldn’t last, but there would be another miracle. There are always more miracles.

This miracle was an accidental gift from Brumus’s libido—his cycle of deflation and repumping with new air. None of his secretaries lasted long.

I walked into the office one day, and the Owl was gone. Her chair empty, desk bare.

Days later, there was a new Owl and she needed a new name. When she was with Brumus in the small room with the cot, she was silent. So I called her the Good Wheel. She never squeaked. Her sharp, pensive face was cupped by dark hair. Previously a nurse in the sick wing, she’d been bitten by a child on the meat of her calf and she limped. Human bites can be
dangerous, as I knew not only from medical texts but also from the many human bites at the Maryland School. They festered if not tended. Dr. Brumus looked at the bite himself, probably touching her leg tenderly. This was during the interview process for the Owl’s replacement. The Good Wheel got the job because she could prop her leg while doing secretarial work.

This wasn’t an easy time for me. True, I had access to encyclopedias, newspapers, the world—and I got out of a lot of labor. But some of the girls of Stump Cottage hated me for having been declared a genius. Susannah Traub rubbed it in, asking, “Hain’t your father come to pick you up yet?” She’d been left by a young couple from West Virginia at age eight, which is old enough to remember whether they loved you or not. She pinched my arms, spat in my water glass (she worked in the kitchen), and ratted to the guards that I had gone off with Eppitt. If the tattle made it to Brumus, we were never reprimanded.

She turned the other girls against me. Soon barely a female soul made eye contact with me. We grew to despise one another, but like sisters in some grotesque family. If I saw one of them now, we’d likely hug like two girls trying not to drown.

I missed the Owl terribly. I ran into her as she walked out, fitting a letter of recommendation from Brumus into her purse. She looked at me with pity and swollen pride, as all the nurses did by this point. They muttered, “That one there. A genius. But still here.” The Owl pulled me to her bosom, which smelled of sweet talc, and started to cry. “One day, one day,” she said. This meant that I would get out, surely. I might even have a normal life—just not yet. I hugged her so long that she had to pry me loose.

The Owl’s exit, however, is what brought me my freedom, in a roundabout way.

It was the secretary’s duty to notify local parents of the date when we’d celebrate all the birthdays that fell within that month. It was a catchall party, at which “Happy Birthday” was
sung once and cacophonously, as each family shouted out its own child’s name. I never had a parent present, and so during the clanging singsong of other children’s names, Eppitt and I would whisper each other’s, as appropriate.

Dear Harr-i-et.

Dear E-ppitt.

This parental notification had always been done by post, but the Owl’s departure had been so abrupt that this task popped up unexpectedly for the Good Wheel, forcing her to call those with telephones in their homes rather than sending a letter.

It was July, a full nine months since my picture had been in the paper, which I’m now sure my father had hidden from my mother. The Good Wheel knew that I was allowed into Brumus’s office when he was out and that I filled the room with the smell of paste. She didn’t know that the only number she should contact for the Wolf family was Mr. Wolf’s office number. When there was no answer, she slid her finger to the next number, for my parents’ home phone. There was a scribbled note beside the number, indicating that it was to be used only in an extreme emergency, but she missed it. Perhaps her leg bite was throbbing.

I try to imagine the scene that follows from my mother’s perspective.

My parents lived in the house I live in now, though it was more hidden by tall trees then and an overgrown hedge that blocked the front bay window. My mother, a near shut-in by this point, preferred the dark confines of her bedroom, as do I. She often mistook the house’s creaks and radiator moans for intruders, thieves. She didn’t know that her daughter had been stolen, and yet she had a fear of burglars. The house’s front and back doors were double-bolted at all times, the windows latched.

The phone rarely rang. But one summer morning before my fourteenth birthday, the phone sounded out. My mother didn’t usually answer. But there it was, so close, so loud and jangling—insistent.

She lifted the receiver to make it stop. And then, a reactive instinct, she said, “Hello?”

The Good Wheel explained that she was phoning from the Maryland School for Feeble Minded Children to see if Mr. and Mrs. Wolf would be attending their daughter’s birthday party, a small event that she’d be enjoying with the other children born that month.

“I have no children. Why would you say such a thing? Is this a trick?”

“No, ma’am, it isn’t a trick. I work at the school and I have your number on the birthday list. It’s printed plainly right here next to your daughter’s name: Harriet Wolf, July 11.”

Mary Wolf, my sweet mother, let the static fill the phone and then hung up. The phone’s ring was now in her head, a frantic echo. She hadn’t named me. Someone at the school had been given the duty. But the birth date was undeniably right.

She called her husband at work and he answered—he was back from lunch now. In fact, he’d missed the Good Wheel’s call by mere minutes. “Who is Harriet Wolf?” my mother asked him.

My father coughed. “What? Who?”

“Do I have a living daughter at the Maryland School? Do I? Tell me.”

He tried to divert her. “Why would you say that? What would possess you?”

She told him breathlessly about the phone, its ringing, how she had answered it and the voice on the other end of the line—what words were spoken.

“It must be a hoax,” he said. “The way you’re boarded up in that house, you’re a target for such awful play.”

But she persisted. “Tell me. You must tell me. I’ll drive out there myself!”

“You don’t drive!”

“I will get in a car and drive there! Tell me what I already know!”

Finally he admitted it. “Yes, darling,” he said. “Yes, you do.”

She said, “I could feel it!” I imagine that she felt it in her body—like the Electric Girl. A pulse buzzing throughout her chest, her limbs.

Mrs. Funk found me making my bed, tucking the blanket under the mattress with a straight hand. “Dear girl, they’re coming for you!”

“Coming for me? Who?”

“Your parents, of course!”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re coming now to take you home!”

“I don’t understand. My father
and
my mother?” The idea of seeing my mother was a new thrill. I could barely speak but finally blurted, “Now?”

“They’ll be here shortly. In an hour or so!”

It was a Tuesday afternoon. Eppitt would be waiting for me under the Duck Porch after dinner. What if I didn’t show up? What if he heard that I was gone? Just like that! Without him!

“I have to tell someone,” I said.

“Dr. Brumus knows,” Mrs. Funk said. “He and your father are old friends.” I knew that they were acquaintances, but old friends? It felt like a betrayal, a collusion.

“No,” I said. “I have to find someone else.” I walked toward the door. “Excuse me.”

“Harriet!” Mrs. Funk said. “Where are you going? You have to pack your things.”

I started running then, down the wide set of stairs, through the bare foyer, across the lawn. I knew that Mrs. Funk might be watching me from an upstairs window and I slipped around the far side of the administrative building. Once out of view, I slid along the wall to the edge of the Duck Porch and crawled underneath it.

Eppitt wasn’t there. It wasn’t our time to meet. Did I expect him to know, deep down, and show up? The ground was damp. It had been raining off and on for a few days.

I was desperately happy—they were coming to bring me home! I was terrified. This was the only place I’d ever known. And I was heartbroken because I’d be leaving Eppitt behind, wouldn’t I? I tried to keep my crying quiet, but it was no use. The sobs contracted my ribs and forced loud barks from my throat. I picked up a handful of dirt and put it in my mouth. I tasted it, crunched the grit in my teeth, and bore down on it.

I saw a pair of suede lace-ups, hemmed pant cuffs, a fat hand in the dirt, and then Brumus’s face. He squinted into the dark. He saw me there—tear-streaked, snotty, my mouth smeared with dirt. “Jesus, Harriet!” He reached out his hand. “Come on out.”

I shook my head.

“Harriet, you’ve got to get washed up. Your parents are on their way.”

I muttered, “Eppitt Clapp.”

“What’s that?”

I said it again.

“That boy from King’s who does the washing?”

I nodded miserably.

“Harriet,” he whispered. “I hope you haven’t ruined yourself on his account!”

“I want to see him.”

“Harriet,” Dr. Brumus said. “You’re going to live a completely different life. A beautiful one. The one you were always meant to have. There’s no place for a boy like Eppitt Clapp in that life. Be reasonable.”

“I want to see him,” I repeated.

“There’s no time. Look at you!”

“A note,” I said stubbornly, my cheeks still laced with dirt.

“You want to give him a note? He can’t read, darling. You know this.” He was speaking to me very sweetly.

“Yes he can. I taught him.”

Brumus looked at me doubtfully. “Fine. You can write him a note. I’ll see that Mrs. Funk delivers it.”

And then Mrs. Funk’s shoes appeared, square-toed, boxy with the meat of her ankles puffed around the tight lacing.