The Museum of Extraordinary Things

I wondered how many women had come under my father’s spell, and if he had ongoing affairs of the heart that he kept secret from me. He came in late in the evenings. I often heard him groan as he climbed the stairs, and sometimes he carried the scent of a woman’s perfume on his clothes, along with the odor of the peculiar mix of tobacco he smoked, a black tarry substance. Perhaps if he’d been blinded as Rochester was, the best of my father might have surfaced and the future would have been written differently. Or perhaps there is evil in certain people, a streak of meanness that cannot be erased by circumstance or fashioned into something brand new by love.

  Now that I was eighteen and thought so frequently of what drew one person to another, I pondered more often over my mother’s character. I imagined her to be a naïve girl who could not resist my father. Or it was quite possible that she was the opposite, a wild creature that needed taming. I wondered, too, if she knew about my father’s past, and if she’d learned, as I had from reading his handbook, about the half woman in his show who had accused him of mistreatment. Was it possible that, like Jane, she’d forgiven him his transgressions? Perhaps, like so many women, she thought she would be the one to change him.

  I hadn’t found the nerve to go back to the cellar, though I often carried the keys I’d had made in my pocket. Instead, I looked around the house for further clues about my heritage. My parents seemed the greatest mystery of all to me. I longed to go backward in time, to catch a glimpse of them, if only for a moment or two, so that I might discover not just the character of the people I had sprung from but who I myself might become. The Professor’s bedroom was on the second floor, as mine was, but it was down a long narrow hallway, set off by itself. He valued his privacy, yet he was forced to survey the crowds of Coney Island. Whereas my room overlooked the garden, his had a view of the peaks of Dreamland’s towers. The electric lights must have infuriated him. He slept with heavy damask curtains drawn and a sleeping mask over his eyes. He kept his door closed at all times, for he was a reserved and meticulous person. But he liked his room clean and detested dust, which he said inflamed the lungs. And so, one day I suggested to Maureen that I tidy his room. She was busy with the ironing, a hot and thankless task made all the worse by the heavy black metal iron that produced sprays of steam turning her face sweaty and red. Without thinking, she nodded for me to go ahead.

  Though it was my own house, and though I had permission granted to me, I felt like a thief as I made my way upstairs. My intentions were not pure, but they drove me on. I pushed open the door to my father’s room, which was at least double the size of my own small chamber. I first took note of the dressing table, where he kept cigars and pipes and tinctures, along with a decanter of rum. There were pots of the tar-like oily stuff that he often preferred to his pipe tobacco. Strewn about were books of tabulations and reams of bills. My father’s predilection for the rare had cost him dearly, and the creatures and artifacts on exhibit had not come cheap. Though I lacked accounting skills, I saw that the Museum of Extraordinary Things owed more than it earned. There were marks in blue, and more in red, all adding up to the steely truth of my father’s statement that I must be able to earn my keep.

  I tugged open the drapes. The view from the window was quite lovely in my opinion, all sky and then the outline of the white and silver towers of Dreamland. From here it was possible to make out the edge of the sea, and the fishing boats and ferries. I saw to the linens on the bed and dusted the woodwork. When I reached the feather duster to the highest window sash, I spied a sword, a glossy silver thing, embossed with designs of stars and moons. It was the very same sword he’d used in France to cut a woman in half, for I’d seen sketches of it in his handbook. When I took it down, it was heavy in my hands, an enormous, ornate piece of cutlery. I noticed the blade was still sharp, but not before I unintentionally cut myself.

  I gasped with pain, and it was my bad fortune that at that moment Maureen came bustling in, wondering why my task was taking so long. Surely, she immediately regretted allowing me entrance to my father’s bedroom. Blood was pooling in my hand. She grabbed the sword from me, a look of despair on her face. If only I had nicked the webbing of my fingers, but the cut was in the center of my palm.

  “This is not a toy or some amusement,” she informed me. “I thought I taught you far better than this.”

  She returned the sword to its rightful place, drew the curtains, and ushered me from the room. In the hallway she held me by my shoulders and shook me. “I had no idea I was raising such a fool” was what she whispered to me. I was stung by her words, surprised by the depth of her anger. Then I saw tears in her eyes and I understood. She feared for my welfare. I knew she would not have sat idly by if she had been aware of my father’s punishments, or of the way I earned my keep. I felt an apology upon my lips and longed to explain with a full confession of what my life had become. I wished to tell her how I ached to run away, as the Wolfman had done. I dreamed of climbing out my window to feel the rain upon my skin, and walk, if I must do so, all the way to Manhattan, where I could sift among the crowds unnoticed, and find the one man who might see me as more than a curiosity and connect to the soul I carried inside of me.

  I yearned to tell Maureen all this and more, but I did not say a word. I could not bring myself to worry her or cause her any more pain than she’d already known. A few days earlier I had come upon her washing up after her day of work. She was at the sink with a pitcher of water and a washcloth, partially unclothed. I realized I had never seen her naked, for we were modest people. Now her muslin blouse was open as she rid herself of dust and grime. I saw that she had been burned not merely on her face but across her body as well. The splattering on her mottled skin convinced me that when acid had been thrown at her it had splattered, and had burned right through her clothes, for the blotches were everywhere.

  On the afternoon Maureen scolded me in the corridor outside my father’s room, I told her nothing of my own distress. Instead I simply promised I would not touch the sword again. I took her hand and kissed it, and I think she believed me, for she brought me down to the kitchen and had me scrub out pots while she made us a lunch of toast and fried eggs with mushrooms she had unearthed in the garden, a special treat she knew was a favorite of mine.

  NOW AND THEN, on afternoons when I dashed off to the market to run errands at the end of the day, I caught sight of the Wolfman waiting for Maureen. I myself had not spoken with him since the day he disappeared. He usually positioned himself in the shadows of two large cypress trees that framed either side of the fenced entranceway to a funeral parlor. He rightly assumed that people would rush by that cold address, not wishing to see what was eventually in store for them and their loved ones. He wore a hooded cloak and made himself all but invisible, but despite the distance and his disguise, I could see his aspect brighten whenever he spied Maureen leaving our establishment and heading toward him. Each time I saw them together I understood love a little more.

  I was on my way home from the fish market with a freshly caught haddock, one I chose for its bright pink flesh and silver skin, now wrapped by the fishmonger in a damp, wrinkled page torn from The Times. Black newsprint had seeped onto my white gloves, and I was thinking I was lucky that Maureen could wash away the ink with bleach and lye before my father discovered the mess. Before I knew it I had stumbled upon Mr. Morris, only steps away. He was very still, like a heron in the bay that waits for the shadows of fish to appear. He most likely would have let me pass without a greeting if I hadn’t spied him first.

  He was thinner than I’d remembered him, and I admit that his countenance gave me pause. I had grown unused to seeing him close up, and the ease with which I was accustomed to greeting his fierce appearance had dissipated. I may even have taken a step back, so like a wolf did he appear. Then I looked into his eyes and remembered who he was. He said hello in that kind voice of his, as he had when we first met. Years had passed since that time. I was no longer a little girl and he was no longer a believer tha
t the city of New York would embrace a man such as himself.

  “It’s a good thing I heard you had been hired by Dreamland, otherwise I might have fainted to see a man who’d vanished so completely from my life. I mourned you,” I said bitterly. “For no good purpose it seems.”

  “We thought it best if you knew nothing of my presence,” he told me. He seemed bashful now that I was a grown woman; perhaps he had seen me recoil when I first spied him.

  “I wouldn’t have said a word to my father.” I was still quite hurt that the secret of his presence in Brooklyn had been kept from me. Since I’d known he and Maureen were still together, I hadn’t made a single slip of this confidence.

  “Your father is a man who can figure things out without any words being said. We did it to protect you as well. That was our concern.”

  “And now he knows you’re here and will be working for our competitor.”

  Mr. Morris shrugged. “All men must work.”

  I noticed he had a bouquet of spring flowers, white tulips mixed with red anemones. I gathered they were for Maureen, but Mr. Morris took me by surprise when he mentioned they were meant for Malia, the Butterfly Girl. Just then Maureen left our house, hurriedly making her way down the street, so I could not question Mr. Morris any further, though my face was hot with anger. Maureen was wearing her best dress, a green muslin with black silk trimming, along with a hat I hadn’t seen before, gray felt decorated with pale blue feathers.

  When she saw me there with Mr. Morris, her expression darkened.

  “I see your friend has returned,” I said to her. “But of course I’ve known that for some time.” I did not let on that I had often followed Maureen, but I suppose she knew, for she shook her head sadly, as if I was the one who had disappointed her.

  “He was gone for two years, back to Virginia. He wrote letters, but of course I never received them, for they wound up on the trash pile as soon as they were delivered. Your father saw to that. When Mr. Morris realized he could not stay away, he came back to Brooklyn and we renewed our friendship. I thought it best that you not know that he’d returned.”

  “You made that decision for me?” I responded bitterly. “Even when there were rumors he would be at Dreamland you said nothing to me. Less than nothing, for you lied.”

  “Is the truth always the best remedy?” Maureen wondered. Perhaps it was a question she asked herself. As she thought this over, she saw that I had been to the market, and had tarried when I spied Mr. Morris. “You should be at home, miss. The fish must be put on ice immediately or it will go bad and I shan’t be able to make supper tomorrow. You wouldn’t want to be poisoned by a piece of bad fish, would you?”

  “It’s stinking already,” I said. “Unlike the flowers for Malia,” I continued, with a meaningful nod to the bouquet in the Wolfman’s hands.

  I didn’t wish to hurt Maureen but rather to protect her, for I worried that Raymond Morris might not be as trustworthy as he appeared. For his part, Mr. Morris stammered and said a few words about the splendor of flowers, quoting from Whitman, “A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.” This may well have been the great Whitman’s opinion, but I knew for a fact that Mr. Morris valued books above all other things. If he might misrepresent his high regard for books, he might be willing to lie about other issues. I wondered if I’d caught him in a clandestine relationship with Malia. Maureen, however, did not share my suspicions. Instead she turned on me, rapping her knuckles on my head, as she used to when I was a little girl and she found me misbehaving.

  “Do you think I don’t know who these flowers were meant for?” she said to me. “Are you trying to embarrass Mr. Morris?”

  She then hotly announced they were on their way to a wedding, even though Mr. Morris tried his best to hush her. The bride in question, she went on, before her companion could stop her, was none other than Malia.

  “That’s what you get for snooping around, miss,” she said to me. “The truth and nothing but.”

  “But why wasn’t I invited?” I had tried to befriend Malia from the start, when we were only girls. Despite my attempts, she had always been shy and somewhat standoffish. Still, I was surprised not to be invited to such an important event.

  “Don’t you understand? Your father can’t know—he doesn’t believe in such unions. The groom is a regular fellow. Your father would waste no time in letting Malia go. If you had known, there might be a situation.”

  I was hurt and mortified that I’d been kept in the dark. “A situation? Do you mean to say I would tell him and betray her?”

  Who were we to each other, after all this time? Did she not know where my loyalties lay? I glared at Maureen and briskly moved away from her, as though she were a stranger, for at that moment I thought perhaps she was. Now she was the one to look at me with a hurt expression.

  “You weren’t told out of concern for your welfare,” Mr. Morris stepped in to say. “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

  “Really?” I said, blinking back tears. “When you didn’t know the world, when you’d never spoken to a woman or walked down a street or stood in the rain, that didn’t hurt you?”

  Maureen approached and tried to make amends. “Please understand,” she said, but I did not. I was deeply wounded by yet another deception, having been treated as if I were a child who couldn’t be trusted. When Maureen attempted to embrace me, I shrugged from beneath her touch. I wouldn’t say good-bye, and watched sullenly as they went on their way.

  I hated to be thought of as my father’s daughter and nothing more. I might have flounced off, but curiosity had always been my downfall, and now it bloomed inside my breast. I left behind the fish I’d bought for some street cats, then followed Maureen and Mr. Morris down Neptune Avenue to Ocean Parkway. It was a long walk. Their destination was the Church of the Guardian Angel, an imposing Gothic stone building. I had never been to a Catholic church before, and this one had rows of beautiful pine pews and carved fittings. It was a space that could accommodate more than three hundred worshipers. Today there were perhaps fifteen attendees, half of them people I recognized from the museum. The Durante brothers, wearing stylish black suits, stood up in place of Malia’s father, a man she’d never known, and walked her down the aisle. There was the moody scent of incense, and dozens of candles were aglow. If an angel were ever to come to earth, I thought this would surely be the place he would choose for his arrival.

  I ducked behind a column so that I might remain hidden from view during the service, not that anyone would notice me. All eyes were on Malia and her betrothed, both of whom stood like wondrous statues at the altar while the priest recited prayers in Latin. The prayers were like music, a river of words I didn’t understand, though I recognized them as a blessing. From where I was concealed, Malia looked nothing like the Butterfly Girl, that marvelous creature who perched on a wooden swing in the Museum of Extraordinary Things, resplendent in her orange and black costume, wings fashioned of silk and wire strapped in place of the arms she would have had if she’d been another girl. Now she wore a white taffeta dress, and a stunning veil of Portuguese-made lace tumbling down her back. Her groom stood beside her, a man of average height and appearance, love-struck, unable to take his eyes from his bride. He was a completely ordinary individual, not handsome or tall, and from bits of murmured conversation I overheard, I learned he was a streetcar driver. That was how they’d met, on a streetcar Malia and her mother had taken on an outing to Brighton Beach.

  Many people cried during the ceremony, Maureen among them. She downright wept, and I was surprised to see her so emotionally wrought. Afterward, the guests rushed to congratulate both bride and groom before heading off to a small celebration at the groom’s family’s house. By then, I was halfway home. Because I couldn’t bear to go back to my father’s house, I went to the shore instead. I sat on a bench and breathed in the salt air. My gloved hands were folded on my lap, and the cotton fabric felt as if it had been spu
n from shards of glass. I knew what was inside of me: the green tendrils of jealousy. I wanted nothing more than to be an ordinary girl with the man I’d seen in the woods in love with me, though this seemed a more impossible occurrence than swimming out into Gravesend Bay, across the Atlantic Ocean to my father’s homeland of France.

  When Malia came to work the following day, I nodded a greeting. I did not offer my congratulations or ask why she appeared so radiant. I pretended I had never stood behind the column in the church to witness her joy. I noticed that she, too, went about her business as if nothing had changed. Because she could not wear a ring, her husband had given her a simple gold necklace, which was clasped around her throat. She acted as if she had always had this lovely ornament, and made no mention of it. She gracefully slipped on her costume and chatted with her mother in their pretty, birdlike language. If she felt my gaze upon her, I assume she was accustomed to being stared at, just as I was used to wanting what I could not have.

  But all things changed, or so it was said. Maureen once told me she believed she was the last person in the world who might find happiness. She believed she didn’t deserve it, she said, and had many times thought of throwing her life away, for it did not serve her well. Perhaps in the great scheme of things, another, more deserving person would be granted her time on earth. But each time she had considered ending her life, she’d had second thoughts. Who would have made your breakfast? she said to me. Who would have met the Wolfman when he first came into our yard, wearing his cloak, beaten by the world? Love happens in such a way, Maureen told me. It walks up to you, and when it does, you need to recognize it for what it is and, perhaps more important, for what it might become.

  MAY 1911

  THE OFFICERS had tramped through the garden, paying no attention to the runner beans, or the rows of lettuce, or to the huge bottle-green leaves of the squash plants, soon torn from their tendrils. The police in Coney Island could be hired as a personal squad for those willing to pay the price, and the Professor was among those who regularly made a donation on his own behalf so that he might run the museum as he pleased, unmolested by the authorities. It was a common enough practice, not just for reputable businessmen but for those with a more criminal intent, a world of con men and thieves. There were theater owners whose clientele had come to watch private shows of dancing naked women, only to be given knockout drops and robbed. Gambling houses where games of chance were rigged to ensure any and all players would lose. All of these establishments paid for the protection of the sheriff’s men.