“What happened?” I picked up her other hand; it was cold, and I was reminded of Minnie. But then she squeezed it, and I had hope. “Mrs. Bleeker! It’s me, Vinnie! Charles and I are fine—we were rescued from our room.”
She didn’t reply, although her eyelids fluttered; I looked over at Mr. Bleeker, who took a big, shuddering breath.
“She jumped—we both jumped from our room to a balcony about two stories below. I landed just fine, but Julia, she—she hit the fencing, the iron fencing, and her head—it just hit it. This big post. I was able to get her down a ladder, but—I don’t know, Vinnie. I just don’t know.”
“Oh!” There was no bruise visible on her face, but it was so deathly pale.
“I tried to get to you and Charles, I did, but it was impossible.” Mr. Bleeker now looked at me anxiously. “Gosh, I’m glad you got out. I was worried sick; so was Julia. She kept crying, ‘Oh, Sylvester, those dear little souls! How frightened they must be!’ But then—” And he couldn’t go on.
“I know. Don’t think about it.”
“That farm,” he said, a great tear rolling down his face.
“What?”
“That farm. She always wanted that farm up in Albany. ‘Sylvester,’ she said, but never in a scolding way—oh, no! ‘I surely would like to have that little farm.’ But I never gave it to her. I’m the one with the show blood in my veins, not her. But she never once complained, she always followed me, and now—”
“Shhh,” I said, for I believed Mrs. Bleeker could hear us, even if she couldn’t speak. “You’ll give her that farm, I know it. You’ll have all the time in the world.”
“Do you think so, Vinnie?”
I looked at him; his eyes were round with both hope and fear.
“I do,” I lied, as all at once, two men and a stretcher made their way through the crowd toward us. Much too roughly, they loaded Mrs. Bleeker upon it and trotted off toward a hospital wagon; Mr. Bleeker had to sprint to catch up, shouting, “Where are you taking her?” It all happened so fast, I didn’t get to say goodbye—to either of them.
I continued to pass out blankets until the sun rose high in the sky; it must have been noon before I realized I was still in my nightgown. But then, so were many other people. Eventually, policemen rounded everyone up and directed them to other hotels; we were told not to leave Milwaukee for at least two days, as they needed to take down statements from us all.
Somehow, I managed to get Charles more or less upright and moving again, and at my urging, over the next few days we gave two benefit performances for the victims of the fire. And we dedicated each performance to our good friends Julia and Sylvester Bleeker. It was the first time we had performed without them, and it felt wrong; neither of our hearts was in it, but we were happy to help a good many people, a number of whom feared being stranded now that all their money was in ashes.
After the benefits, Charles and I left for home, this time for good; there was no question of continuing the tour. And so, after traveling the globe, crossing the country countless times, traversing up and down and through rivers, deserts, and mountains, the General Tom Thumb Company came to its sad end in the ashes of a hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Minnie was gone; Nutt had died in 1881 of Bright’s disease.
And now, too, was Mrs. Bleeker taken from us; she died twelve days later from her injuries. After staying in Milwaukee to give testimony at one of the inquests, Mr. Bleeker retired to a niece’s home in Brooklyn—still agonized because he had not been able to get to Charles and me.
Although, oddly, many news reports and articles began to surface saying that he had—that he had saved Charles and me from the flames himself, depicting him as a grieving, but heroic, husband and friend.
And while I don’t know exactly how that rumor began, I could not help but suspect that an old friend of ours might have had something to do with it.
INTERMISSION
From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 11, 1883
It is not open to dispute that the Brooklyn Bridge is the most wonderful work of its kind on the globe.… There is no instance in the world save that afforded by the Brooklyn Bridge of a span of nearly 1,600 feet sustained entirely by cables.
From The New York Times, December 27, 1884
A BRILLIANT CHRISTMAS TREE—HOW AN ELECTRICIAN
AMUSED HIS CHILDREN
A pretty as well as novel Christmas tree was shown to a few friends by Mr. E. H. Johnson, President of the Edison Company for Electric Lighting, last evening in his residence, No. 189 East Thirty-sixth-street. The tree was lighted by electricity, and children never beheld a brighter tree or one more highly colored than the children of Mr. Johnson when the current was turned and the tree began to revolve. Mr. Johnson has been experimenting with house lighting by electricity for some time past, and he determined that his children should have a novel Christmas tree.
[ NINETEEN ]
Finale, or—the Curtain Comes Down
AND NOW IT WAS JUST THE TWO OF US—GENERAL AND Mrs. Tom Thumb, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Stratton. The perfect couple, a love story in miniature, the sweethearts of a country torn apart by war but united in good wishes for our happiness: we were never supposed to end up like this. Diminished, unnerved, hiding in the house I had been so determined to leave all those years ago.
Quite bluntly, Charles was never the same after the fire. Shaken to the core by his inability to save himself, humiliated by the manner in which he was saved, he refused to ever again appear in front of an audience.
“Charles, you’re being ridiculous,” I told him, time and again. “Can’t you just be grateful that we survived?”
“No.” He shook his head, his breathing even more labored these days, his body not merely large but puffy, his skin clammy to the touch. “I can’t forget the fireman hauling me down the ladder like that. I couldn’t do a thing to help myself, Vinnie! You don’t understand. You don’t know what that’s like!”
I pressed my lips together and shook my head. I did know what that was like—but now our roles were reversed. My husband was not inclined to look into my eyes for understanding or recognition. He was not inclined to look into anyone’s eyes, lest they see him for what he believed he was—a coward.
He was only forty-five, but until that night, he had never faced any real physical danger. The worst was probably the time when he was a child and Queen Victoria’s dog had tried to bite him, a story he told over and over to anyone who would listen. And his pride had suffered; this was the man who had stomped around with a tiny pistol in the West, confident he could slay any number of Indians with it. He had laughed along with everyone else at the notion, but deep down, I knew that he thought he could. He may have been imitating people all his life, but what made Charles such a gifted mimic was his conviction; he believed in every single role he had ever played—including that of husband.
And now he thought he had failed in that as well; suddenly he could not meet my gaze or even enjoy being in the same room with me. I didn’t have the courage to tell him that he was wrong; he had never been given the chance to succeed in that role. For hadn’t I made sure of that, long ago?
So he holed himself up in Mama’s parlor, where he read over old newspaper clippings and hauled out tarnished medals and yellowing citations, reliving his past instead of facing the future. Charles had been a Mason for years, attending elaborately secret meetings (I knew they were secret because he always made a point of telling me they were); soon after we were married he had been made a Knight Templar in the Bridgeport order. And now I often found him looking over all his various hats and plumes and swords from that organization; it meant a great deal to him these days. I think he felt it bestowed the last measure of dignity he had left.
We both slept badly after the fire; we moved from my old upstairs room to one on the first floor, and could not go to sleep unless one or both of us checked to make sure the windows and doors were unlocked, and there was a bucket of water close at hand.
And ne
ver again did I reach for him in bed, as I had that night; my desire had been quenched, along with the flames.
“Charles, I’m taking the train down to New York to see Mr. Bleeker,” I told him one morning in July. “Would you like to join me? I’m sure it would do him good to see you.”
“No, no.” My husband waved a plump hand in the air, as if brushing the very notion away.
“Charles, why won’t you see him?” I sat in one of our little chairs; we had moved what pieces of our miniature furniture that we didn’t sell into this house when we let out our own. It looked as if there were whole families of furniture living together, mother and father chairs spawning baby chairs.
“I just—I just can’t, Vinnie. That’s all.” Charles, who was seated upon the floor, paging through an old scrapbook, looked up at me; even that small effort seemed to tax him. His breathing was so rapid, I could hear it across the room.
“You don’t blame him for the fire, do you?” This suspicion had crossed my mind, as Charles refused to even write a sympathy letter to his old friend.
“No,” Charles said, too quickly.
“That’s absurd. Mr. Bleeker tried to come to our aid—remember, I told you? But for pity’s sake, Charles, he had his own life to save, and that of his wife! We were not Mr. Bleeker’s responsibility, you know. Why can’t you be glad that we’re alive?” Suddenly furious with him—as I was so often these days; I suppose he was not the only one changed by the tragedy—I ran to him and took his hands in mine. “We must get out of this house—we must get back to work! If we don’t, we’ll—we’ll—we’ll simply rot! We don’t know any other life, the two of us. It’s all we have.”
“Vinnie, I just can’t. I can’t face anyone.” Charles pulled his hands away; he wouldn’t meet my gaze.
I sighed. There was only one other thing I could think of to try; there was only one person I could think of who might be able to talk some sense into him.
“I might stop in Bridgeport on the way back,” I said, keeping my voice casual. “To see Mr. Barnum. Wouldn’t you like to come with me, then?”
Charles hesitated; I could see the struggle in his once-merry eyes. But then he shook his head violently. “No.”
“Well, why don’t I stop to see if he would like to come to you, then? It’s been such a long time since he’s been to Middleborough.”
Again, that hesitation; again, his negative response. “No, no—why won’t you leave me alone, Vinnie? For pity’s sake, that’s all I want—to be left alone, finally! All my life I’ve been surrounded by people! Leave me in peace, for once!”
I sighed, then rose—stiffly, my right hip uncooperative. “Well, maybe I’ll just stop in on my own!”
“Do whatever you want.” Charles shrugged. “Take your time. Enjoy yourself.”
“I’ll give Mr. Bleeker your love. And Mr. Barnum, too—that is, if I do decide to stop in Bridgeport. I haven’t made up my mind.”
I turned to go, but Charles abruptly cried, “Vinnie!” before I could leave.
“What? What is it?” I spun around in alarm. He had jumped up, his arm full of clippings, a morose figure in his dressing gown and worn slippers. The shades were drawn, but I could still see the stumps of cigars in every ashtray, the papers and photographs and citations and ribbons and, above all, memories; remnants of memories, threadbare, worn almost to shreds from a lifetime of use, lying in tatters at his feet. The room smelled like sadness, like stale breath and cheap cigars and musty papers that hadn’t seen light in decades. It reminded me of a deserted, desolate circus tent long after the crowd had gone.
“You’re not mad at me, are you?” He looked so pathetic, his soft brown eyes almost quivering with tears.
How easy it would be to tell him I was not—I considered it, for a tempting moment. My approval was the one thing left that I could bestow upon him without guilt. But then I realized that approval would do him no good this time; indeed, it would probably harm him. He needed to be shocked out of his torpor. He needed to be reminded that he was lucky he wasn’t dead, so that he could get back to living.
“Yes, yes, I am,” I said briskly—coldly. “I’m quite mad at you, if you want to know the truth.”
Then I turned to go, before I could see the effect my words had on him. I didn’t want to be late for my train.
THE TELEGRAM ARRIVED AT MR. BLEEKER’S HOUSE THE NEXT morning. We were having breakfast in his niece’s narrow dining room; it was odd, just the two of us. I wasn’t sure we had ever taken a meal alone together before.
Mr. Bleeker’s sad face was even sadder; it was only now, with his wife gone, that it was obvious how much warmth and light she had given him. But he was not like Charles; he did not live in the past. He was doing his best to enjoy life with his niece, who had two small sons, and for the first time, I wondered why he and Mrs. Bleeker had never had children of their own.
“Julia couldn’t,” he said frankly, over toast and eggs. “I think that’s why she enjoyed traveling with you all, even though she did long for that farm. But you and Minnie, especially—you were like daughters to her. You were our family.”
“Odd, isn’t it?” I sipped my coffee—the cup was large for me, so I had to use two hands.
“What is?”
“We all pretended to have children we didn’t, in a way. Except for Minnie. She wasn’t like us; she wasn’t content just to pretend.”
“Yes, except for Minnie. She would have been a wonderful mother.”
“I know. It’s been five years,” I said softly, wonderingly. “Almost exactly—it was July, I remember it so well. Five years, too, since I last spoke—well, five years.”
“Vinnie, what happened between you and Barnum?” Mr. Bleeker asked, and I was reminded that no matter how sad his face was, his eyes were ever sharp, ever perceptive. “I’ve always wondered. Goodness knows plenty of people have fallen out with him over the years, but I never thought you would.”
“I—that is, it’s hard to put into words. We both said things that hurt, and—that whole baby business.” I shook my head. “It was the one thing my parents warned me about when I first met him. They warned me not to get caught up in one of his humbugs. Well, I did, and I brought Minnie along with me, and see what happened? Minnie’s gone. I can’t forget that.”
“Just like I can’t stop thinking that I was responsible for Julia,” Mr. Bleeker whispered. “How do we live with that? How have you gone on?”
“By being so angry with Mr. Barnum, I sometimes forget to be angry with myself,” I replied, smiling ruefully. “But ever since the fire …” I stirred my coffee and shrugged.
Ever since the fire, I had not stopped thinking about him.
That horrible moment when I thought I was about to take my last breath and form my last thought—it had been of him. I knew I wanted to see him one more time. I knew I wanted to tell him things—just what, I couldn’t say. But inside my soul, in addition to the great burden of guilt I carried with me about Minnie, was a greater burden of things unsaid.
“Ever since the fire?” Mr. Bleeker prompted.
“I’ve been thinking it would be good to see him again.”
“He is in Bridgeport now, I understand,” said Mr. Bleeker, ever the organizer, ever the manager.
“I was hoping he was,” I replied, wondering if I should wire him that I was going to stop on my way back. Or should I simply surprise him? He always did like surprises. Maybe I could stop into a shop and buy a stuffed elephant to bring him—he would like that; he would laugh, throwing back his head, and then motion for me to pull up a chair and sit with him.
Or maybe I should wire, after all. What was the best way to end a rift like ours? I smiled, thinking that if it were left to him, he probably would take out an ad in The New York Times proclaiming his apology and selling tickets to our reunion for twenty-five cents each.
And so it was that I was thinking about someone else, his moods, his quirks; wondering how I might reach out to him again
over the morass of all the years, memories, and misunderstandings—
When the telegram arrived informing me of the death of the man whom I constantly had to remind myself to think about. The man whose name I eagerly took but whose heart I had never wanted, in the first place.
* * *
CHARLES STRATTON, BETTER KNOWN AS GENERAL TOM THUMB, died of apoplexy, some said, the inevitable conclusion to a lifetime of cigars and rich foods. Others said he never recovered from the devastation of the Newhall House fire, of witnessing the tragedy of so many unfortunate souls.
They were all mistaken; I knew better. I knew he died of shame. He had played the hero, the leading man—the perfect man in miniature—onstage for as long, literally, as he could remember. The realization that he was not built to be a hero in life was too much for him to bear; he could never play that role again, and so he simply—stopped. Like a child’s windup toy, used too often, the spring finally broken.
We buried him in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the town of his birth. Years before he had done a benefit for a brand-new cemetery, and had arranged his own plot at the time; he had even posed for a statue he wanted placed upon his monument—a life-size statue.
Ten thousand people attended his funeral. He would have been so pleased—a packed house! I smiled, safely veiled in my widow’s weeds, thinking of how he would have shaken the hand of every man and kissed the cheek of every woman here. Charles did so love to meet people.
Two plumed Knights Templar stood at attention at the foot of his casket; upon the lid was his own small, plumed Knight Templar hat and miniature sword. Among those in attendance were Astors, Vanderbilts, and Bleekers; also the tattooed man he became quite fond of while touring with the circus, and many, many children, which would have touched him immeasurably. Queen Victoria sent a wreath, as did President Chester A. Arthur. The largest floral display of them all said, simply, “Friend”; it was given by Mr. P. T. Barnum, who sat several rows behind me in the church.