Rotke broke away from me, pink-cheeked from more than just the cold. Naturally, I apologized profusely until she had recovered enough to say, simply, “I believe we should go back now.”
You warned that my passions would get the better of me, Cornelius.
Jake greeted us upon our return. He was in grand spirits, practically boyish. “We have our money,” he said, waltzing Rotke around.
I looked away. Once you’ve learned how, it gets easier to do.
Jake clapped me on the back. “This is the start of everything. And you needn’t worry: I’ll handle all the affairs. You won’t have to engage with the Founders Club at all. I’ve ordered champagne to be sent up to the drawing room. See if you can find Margaret, and meet me there.”
Jake wants money for his experiments and inventions in his quest to build an exceptional, unassailable America. Margaret, the victim of this country’s less shining side, wants to prove that all men and women are created equal. Rotke wants to understand the realm beyond this one as well as her own gifts. As for me, my ambitions are great but without form. I don’t know what I want, save for the one woman I cannot have.
This is far too immodest a letter, Cornelius. The champagne was a fine vintage, and I am quite drunk. It doesn’t matter a whit. You won’t respond to this letter, as you’ve not responded to any of my entreaties. Likely, you won’t even read this.
I hear from Lucretia, whom Margaret saw in the market when she visited the city last week, that you’ve had a troubling cough. I do hope your health improves.
Fondly,
Your prodigal son,
Will
Dumbfounded, Jericho put the letter down. Why had they never talked about any of this? After Jericho’s illness crippled him and his parents had abandoned him to the state, it was Will who’d stepped in as guardian. He had sheltered Jericho, fed and clothed him, and taught his ward what he could about running the museum and about Diviners. For that, Jericho supposed he owed him a debt. But Will hadn’t given Jericho the parts that mattered most. He hadn’t given himself. The two of them had never gone fishing in a cold stream early on a summer’s day and shared their thoughts on love and life while they watched the sun draw the curling morning mist from the water. They’d never discussed how to find one’s place in the world, never talked of fathers and sons, or what makes someone a man. No. He and Will spoke in newspaper articles about ghosts. They conversed through the careful curation of supernatural knickknacks. And Jericho couldn’t help but feel cheated at how little he’d gotten when he’d needed so much more.
Why was there so much silence between men?
“Jericho?” Mabel called, bringing Jericho back to the present. “Sorry, but I have to head home now.”
“I’ll be right down,” Jericho said, pushing the letters to the side. As he did, an odd scrap of paper fluttered to the floor. It was a very brief note in Will’s handwriting. There was no date. It read, simply:
Dear Cornelius,
You were right. I was wrong. I am so very sorry.
Sincerely,
Will
“Thanks for your help today,” Jericho said, easing Mabel into her coat. “It was a nice change. I’m used to working with Sam. Or rather, working around Sam.”
Mabel shifted from one foot to the other and back again. “I could come back and help you some more. If you want me to,” she said, agreeable to the end. The way she looked at him just then, with a mixture of curiosity, affection, and admiration, was rather nice. Maybe it would be nice to be adored for once.
“That’s okay. I can manage,” Jericho said after a pause.
“Oh. Sure,” Mabel said, trying to hide her disappointment. “I suppose you’ve heard the news about Evie and Sam,” Mabel said as they walked the long hallway. “I had no idea she and Sam were engaged. She never said a word. Did Sam say anything to you?”
“No,” Jericho growled.
Mabel knew she shouldn’t have brought up the topic of Evie. But now that she had, it was like a scab she couldn’t stop picking. “Well. I suppose we should be happy for them.”
“Why?” Jericho asked.
“Because…” Mabel let the rest of the sentence die on the vine.
Outside, the street lamps winked on, trying to do battle against the gentle gray of the late afternoon. A few snowflakes swirled in the blustery air. Mabel shivered as she stood uncertainly on the top step, wondering what she could say to prolong the moment. A Model T shuddered down the street, and Mabel remembered her earlier strange encounter.
“Oh! I nearly forgot to tell you. I noticed something odd on my way in today. There were these two men in a brown car just sitting, watching the museum.”
Jericho craned his neck, looking up and down the street. He shrugged. “I don’t see anybody now.” He crossed his arms, pensive. “I suppose they could be taxmen.”
Mabel shook her head. “Those fellows don’t sit quietly in cars. They come right up to your door and turn out your pockets. These men reminded me more of Pinkertons, or Bureau of Investigation.” Mabel shoved her hands back into her coat pockets. “Well, see you at the Bennington.”
“Yeah. See you at the Bennington,” Jericho said, watching Mabel walking away in her deliberate fashion.
Why was he still pining for a girl he couldn’t have? Evie certainly wasn’t sitting around sighing over him. Apparently, she was out every night with Sam, having the time of her life. It was high time he did the same. If he’d learned one thing reading through Will’s letters today, it was that there was a whole world out there waiting to be explored, and Jericho was tired of caution.
“Mabel!” Jericho bounded down the steps after her. “Would you like to go to dinner or to the pictures sometime?”
Mabel’s face quicksilvered from shock to barely suppressed giddiness. “I’d love to. When?”
“Oh. Um. How’s tomorrow?”
Mabel grinned. “Tomorrow’s perfect.”
“I’ll come for you at eight o’clock, if that’s agreeable.”
“Very, very agreeable.”
Back in the quiet of the library, Jericho congratulated himself. “I have a date,” he said to the empty room. A date. That was good, wasn’t it? It was progress. He gave the Metaphysickometer a gentle thump and set about tidying up the papers nearby.
Under the glass, the needle gave a tiny jump.
Freshly shaved and smelling of soap, Memphis stood in front of the small mirror over the chest of drawers in the room he shared with Isaiah, buttoning his starched collar onto his crisp white shirt while Isaiah sat in his bed, drawing.
“Memphis, what does ‘P-NEU-MA-TIC’ mean?” Isaiah asked.
Memphis thought for a second. “You mean pneumatic?”
“’At’s what I said.”
“You don’t pronounce the P.”
“Still don’t know what it means,” Isaiah grumbled.
“Here.” Memphis handed him the dictionary that had been a present from his parents on his tenth birthday and sat on the bed to lace up his best oxfords. “Look it up.”
Isaiah made a face. “Why can’t you just tell me? You got all those words in your head already.”
“That’s right. And you know how they got there? I looked ’em up. Where’d you hear that word? School?”
“Saw it in a dream. Where you going?” Isaiah asked. He sounded like Octavia. Like accusation.
“That’s my business.”
“You going off with that Theta,” Isaiah groused. “Don’t like her.”
“You don’t even know her.”
“Why you wanna go with some girl, anyhow?”
“Because someday, I aim to get married and have my own house. With my own wife. No bumpy-headed brothers running around.”
Memphis expected Isaiah to protest the bumpy-head comment with a righteous “Hey!” He didn’t expect to hear sniffling, or to turn and see tears trickling down his brother’s face, over trembling lips.
“Ice Man? What’s the matter?
”
Isaiah wrapped his arms around his knees and drew them to his chest. He wouldn’t speak, and Memphis knew he was trying hard not to break down into a full-on cry. He waited him out, and after a minute Isaiah said in a soft, strangled voice, “You gonna go and leave me, too, aren’t ya?”
“Aww, Ice Man.” Memphis moved to the bed and pulled Isaiah into a hug.
“Everybody’s always leaving me behind.”
“Shhh, now. That’s not true.”
Isaiah’s head shot up. His teary eyes were equal parts pleading and challenge. “Promise me. Promise me we’ll always be together. Like Mama said.”
Memphis’s heart tightened. There was no question that he loved his brother. But Memphis was nearly eighteen, with dreams of his own. Dreams he kept having to push into smaller drawers inside himself under a label of “tomorrow.” He worried that he’d never see any of them realized: never set foot inside A’Lelia Walker’s grand town house with the likes of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen and Zora Neale Hurston, never see a book of his poems in the front window of a bookseller’s shop, never see the world outside Harlem. How could he ever get away when there was always some undertow of obligation pulling him back?
“We’ll always be together,” Memphis said. He held Isaiah a little tighter, as if he could will his love to overcome his resentment. “It’s late. You oughta be asleep.”
“Not tired.”
“That’s not what your eyes are telling me.”
Isaiah laced his fingers through Memphis’s. His anger was gone. He seemed frightened.
“What’s the matter, Ice Man?”
“I see things in my dreams.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Monsters,” Isaiah whispered.
“They’re just dreams, Isaiah. Dreams can’t get you. Only I can!” Memphis tickled Isaiah, who giggled, crying, “Stop! Stop!” happy as any ten-year-old.
“Ice Man,” Memphis asked as he tucked the blanket under Isaiah’s chin, “what do you remember from before you had your seizure?”
Isaiah blinked up at the ceiling, remembering. “Mr. Johnson was walking me home. He had a shortcut he wanted to take so I wouldn’t be late and get Octavia sore at me.” Isaiah paused for a second. “And I remember I was sad about Mama being dead and Daddy being gone to Chicago.”
Memphis felt the squeezing in his chest again. He hated knowing that Isaiah was sad. “What else you remember?” Memphis said, more gently.
“Mr. Johnson told me he could take that sad right out of my head if I wanted him to.”
“How was he gonna do that?”
“Don’t know. He was teasing me, I think.”
“Oh.”
“And then I had my fit. It was like I was underwater. I saw…”
It was right there on a high shelf of Isaiah’s mind, just out of reach. He had a glimpse of a strange man. But then the face became Bill Johnson’s, and then it was gone.
Isaiah shook his head. “I can’t remember nothing else.”
Memphis took a deep breath. He stared at the floor. “And when you were asleep after your fit, did you know I was right by your bedside?”
Could Isaiah remember Memphis’s healing hands on his arm?
“Huh-uh.”
“But after you woke up, you… you felt all right. Didn’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t feel sick or anything? Just felt like your old shrimpy self.”
“Ain’t shrimpy! Gonna be taller’n you!” Isaiah said, play-hitting Memphis. “Sister Walker said I’d prob’ly be taller than Daddy.”
“Well, now. Guess we’ll have to see on that.”
Isaiah’s lightness evaporated quickly. “Memphis. I miss going to Sister Walker’s house.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think she’s bad. She was too nice to be bad.”
“Lots of folks can seem nice,” Memphis said, but in truth, he’d always liked Sister, too. There was no proof that the work Isaiah had been doing with her, developing his powers, had anything to do with his fit. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he have had more of them? It troubled Memphis.
“She made me feel special,” Isaiah said. “But I guess I’m not special after all.”
“Don’t say that. That isn’t true,” Memphis said, putting his face near his brother’s like they used to on Christmas Eve when they’d try to stay up and catch Santa Claus, reasoning that he’d have to come to Harlem first; after all, Harlem even had a St. Nicholas Avenue.
“Memphis? Will you tell me a story? To help me sleep?”
“All right, then,” Memphis said quietly. “Once upon a time, there were two brothers, and they were close as close can be.…”
Isaiah reached out a hand and placed it on his brother’s arm while Memphis cocooned him with words, wrapping him tightly in the magic of a story well told. Just before he fell asleep, Isaiah murmured to Memphis. “I ’member something else from when I was sick. There was a man. A man in a tall hat…” Isaiah muttered, trailing off into sleep at last.
Memphis wondered if these nightmares were the toll that not using his gifts was taking on Isaiah—all that energy bottled up till it had to come out somewhere. Octavia might’ve believed that it was the Devil’s business, not the Lord’s, but it seemed to Memphis that if there was a God, it would be downright cruel of him to bestow people with certain talents and then expect them not to use those talents. People had to be who they were. And if that was true, why shouldn’t Memphis use his healing gift again? Why was he so afraid to explore his own power?
The truth was, Memphis had liked healing. He’d enjoyed the shine it had given him in Harlem, the way the women at church praised him as “God’s special angel” and made sure he had the best piece of cake at their after-services suppers. He had basked in the silent approval of the men, who nodded and patted his back and told him he was setting a fine example for other young men, and who welcomed him to say the blessing at their various lodge meetings. When the girls fought to sit near him during Bible study or batted their lashes and asked shyly if they could bring him a cup of water, he’d loved that, too. Sometimes, he’d stood in his bathroom and practiced that winning smile of his, saying to himself in the mirror with all the sincerity he could muster, “Why, thank you, sister. And may God bless you.”
It was only Octavia who’d made Memphis doubt, the way she stared at him through narrowed eyes when she would come to sew with his mother some evenings.
“You trying to draw Memphis’s face in your mind, sister?” his mother scolded. They were sitting on the front stoop under a summer night filled with stars while a block party took place, all their neighbors dancing and singing and laughing, the good times bathed in the hopeful, buttery light of the brownstones lining 145th Street.
“Just keeping an eye on him,” Octavia said.
“He’s my angel.” Memphis’s mother had smiled at him like he was the only boy in the world.
“Sometimes angels fall,” Octavia said meaningfully.
Memphis’s mother stopped smiling. “God made my boy special, Tavie. You questioning the Lord now?”
Octavia turned her head slowly toward her sister. “Was it God you made a bargain with, Viola? Or somebody else?”
His mother’s eyes went mean. “Maybe you need to make your own children so you can quit telling me about mine,” she had fired back, slamming the door on her way inside.
“Pride goeth before a fall,” Octavia had whispered as she kept her eyes on the impressionistic street carnival to hide the injury Viola’s comment had inflicted, a wound Memphis knew that even he couldn’t heal.
Memphis had been plenty proud. And his fall, when it came, was as spectacular as the Light Bringer’s. From Harlem Healer to numbers runner and bookie. He’d lost his mother, his father, his home, his healing powers, and his faith. And now that his healing power was coming back, for reasons he couldn’t begin to understand, he didn’t want to make the same mistakes. br />
“Well, well, well. Smells like somebody got himself a date,” Blind Bill Johnson called out from his perch on the couch in the parlor as Memphis entered.
“Evenin’, Mr. Johnson.”
Memphis wanted to like Blind Bill. The old man was a real help with Isaiah, offering to walk him home from school most days. But the way Bill sat on Octavia’s prized couch just now, like he owned it, gave Memphis pause. Looking at Bill, Memphis could almost see the outline of the powerful young man he must’ve been. Those stooped shoulders had once been broad and thickly muscled, and his veined hands were still plenty big enough to crush an orange to pulp. Bill was fifty-five, maybe even sixty if he was a day. But lately, he seemed stronger, more virile, and Memphis wondered if it was Octavia’s attention that gave him a younger man’s shine.
Octavia came into the room carrying a plate of meat loaf. She’d done up her hair even though Bill wouldn’t see it, and she smelled of Shalimar, which she usually only wore to church. She gave Memphis a pursed-lip appraisal. “Where you going dressed like that?”
Where you think you’re going dressed like that? Memphis wanted to say back.
“To the pictures with Alma,” he lied.
“Hmph. That Alma gets up to no good,” Octavia started, and Memphis sagged, bracing himself for the lecture to come.
“’Scuse me, Miss Octavia,” Bill Johnson interrupted. “Nobody in this world could raise these boys better’n you doin’. But, if you’ll pardon an old man’s opinion, a young man’s gotta be about a young man’s business. Gotta be a man in the world,” Bill said with just enough humility to settle Octavia. He smiled and bowed his head slightly. “I don’t mean no disrespect, ma’am. I know I’m not the boy’s kin.”
Octavia looked over at Memphis with a bit more kindness. “I expect you’re right, Mr. Johnson.”
“Bill, please.”
“Bill,” Octavia said, preening. “Go on, then, Memphis. Bill, let me get you some milk to go with that meat loaf.”