“You don’t know the sort of trouble you can get into. You take a step too far, and you’ll find there’s no coming back. Promise me you’ll stop sneaking around.”
I was surprised by the worry in Maureen’s expression. We could hear my father in the museum, making the last announcements before he closed the doors for the day. There were very few people in attendance. The crowds were already waning, and evening shows had been canceled. We knew autumn not from the change of color in the foliage but by the empty streets and the thinning crowds, who would not return until the following season.
“All right,” I agreed. “I’ll stop.”
Maureen did not appear convinced. “I’ll be the one keeping a watch on you now.” She studied me carefully, lifting my chin so she could stare into my eyes. “Have you had your monthly bleeding?”
I admitted I had.
“I thought as much! And you never said a word.” She was clearly disappointed to find I hadn’t confided in her. “Then you’re a woman and must act like one.” Our heads were close together, but she lowered her voice further due to the intimate nature of our discussion. “When you leave here against the Professor’s wishes, you’d better do so with no thought of returning. We’re not like other people, Cora. They would never understand us.”
As evening fell I sat alone in my room, gazing out my window, thinking over Maureen’s advice. I saw Malia the Butterfly Girl making her way down Surf Avenue, her mother’s arm drawn protectively around her. They passed by the tintype photo gallery on the corner, where an individual could be photographed against cardboard cutouts of the seashore. Malia had left behind her orange costume. Her face was no longer decorated with makeup. The kohl eyeliner and rouge painted into the pattern of a monarch’s wing had been washed off at the pump in our yard, and her face was pretty and plump. She wore a plaid cloak that hid the fact that she’d been born without arms. From my vantage point, both mother and daughter looked ordinary as they disappeared into the crowd.
I could not have been more envious.
One night the door to my bedroom opened. There was my father. He’d been at a tavern, and he carried the smell of rum, which reminded me of formaldehyde. It was not a pleasant odor, and afterward I could never drink rum, even when it was disguised as buttered toddy in the holiday season. I had been reading by candlelight, and I quickly hid the volume under my quilt when I heard his footfall upon the stairs. I couldn’t trick my father however. He reached beneath the bedcovers and brought forth the book. Fortunately it wasn’t Poe or Brontë but the tragedies of Shakespeare, great literature of which my father approved. That is not to say he wasn’t angry with me. He told me he had been walking down the street and had seen a light in my room. He’d run the rest of the way. He quickly snuffed out the flame of the candle between his fingers. When he told me I must never burn a candle while in bed, I thought and hoped his speed in coming home was because he feared for my safety. But that wasn’t his worry. He scolded me terribly, telling me I would burn down the museum if I weren’t careful. I could destroy everything just by being a selfish, thoughtless girl. I needed to pull my weight, to work harder, otherwise the museum would not survive the onslaught of newer, more modern entertainments. He took my wrists in his hands as he berated me. I couldn’t help but think of the trick for which he was most famous. In my thoughts I gave thanks to Maureen for her warning to stay at home. I was grateful it was not a bundle of clothes my father had discovered in my bed. As it was, there were bruises on my wrists the next morning.
I stopped going to Dreamland. It was the end of the season anyway, and the crowds at the hotels and the parks were beginning to disappear, leaving behind the local residents to get through the dreary autumn and the winter, isolated from the rest of the world. But at night I still dreamed I was walking along Surf Avenue. I walked through the gate of that wondrous park my father feared would make us poor, and once I did the whole world was before me, strung with a thousand lights. In my dreams I took off my black shawl and my gloves. I stood in the center of the ballroom and listened to music. There was no one to tell me everything I did was wrong. When I woke from these dreams I lay in bed in the dark. I told myself only foolish girls cried. Sometimes I crept downstairs, hoping to catch the night-blooming cactus in our parlor in flower. I thought I would then believe in miracles and find some sort of faith. I sat in the dark in an overstuffed chair, but nothing marvelous happened. There was nothing but sticks before me.
I had already begun to doubt the truth of my father’s tales.