After the events of that night, I did not dare to look for the keys to my father’s workroom again. I was afraid to know any more of his past or his intentions for the future. At every turn, I held my breath. I knew I was on a precipice, and sooner or later I would have to make a leap. I did not tell Maureen about the nights when the Professor brought in men, and I certainly never confided any of the disgusting things they did while they watched me, nor did I disclose that several of them offered my father cash for me. In the echo of the water I had overheard nasty snippets of conversation, and I was aware of what they wished to do to me, how they would like to take me by force if need be, dragging me onto the couch my father had recently brought in so that they might be even more comfortable during their viewing.
None of what they did or said mattered; their boasts and vile notions turned to air, for these men did not exist. I always entered a dream when I was submerged in the tank. My dream was blue and I was alone in it. Still I did as my father said on those nights. When he left me a list of how he wished me to behave underwater, touching myself so that the men might become even more excited, acting in a variety of coarse, immodest ways, I did this as well. I continued to follow his directions.
Soon after, he hatched his new plan and I began to swim in the Hudson. It was there that I had the freedom to be truly alone. I fell in love with the Hudson; because of the nights I swam there, I no longer was forced to perform, and so I began to think of the river as my savior. I longed for it, as I soon longed for the man I had spied in the woods. I thought of him as a sort of savior as well, someone to whom I might reveal my truest self. I had felt the first pangs of love, and because of this I found my faith in the world, despite my current situation.
This changed after my last swim in the Hudson. The river that had always offered me solace had brought me grief in the form of the drowned girl. As we traveled back across the bridge to the museum, I thought again of the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre. The imprisoned Mrs. Rochester had burned to death before she could manage to flee. Wait too long, and you might be tethered forever, leaping when it was too late. On the night we returned to Brooklyn with the body of the young woman in the carriage, I was told to go directly to my room, and I did so. I looked out the window into the yard. I was shivering in my sodden clothes, my damp hair hanging down my back. But inside, my blood felt hot. I was burning up. It wasn’t fever but a slow-burning hatred. I saw my father and the liveryman carry the body down the cellar steps. In the morning the floor would still be wet with pools of dank river water that I would mop up without a word of complaint. All the same, on that night I was able to see the truth about my future and my fate.
I was born to disobey him.
APRIL 1911
THE QUIET of the off-season persisted, despite the emerging bloom of lilacs and the haze of green in the gardens of Brooklyn. Small leaves had begun to unfold on the plane trees, but the truest sign of spring was the mud seeping in between the slats of the wooden sidewalks. Even the wild area known as the Gut was quieter than usual, for all racetracks on the island had been closed down and gambling had been outlawed in the hope of lessening crime and vice, though certainly there were still illegal races along Ocean Parkway, often held by lantern light.
Fleets of fishing ships filled Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay, and before long wooden docks were strewn with catches of mussels from Coney Island Creek, along with bass and clams from the bays. The air was blue enough to glimpse the approach of warmer weather, yet the Museum of Extraordinary Things remained closed. A heron circled and considered nesting in the chimney, but when the wind blew cold from the sea, the ungainly creature was frightened off by the slap of a loose shutter banging against a window frame, and it heaved itself into the air. In any other year, carpenters would have been hired to unclasp the shutters, nailed closed in the winter to protect the exhibitions from light. They would have been at work repairing the broken stairs, and begun installing the wooden signs that invited customers to step inside. This spring the Professor had no time to order renovations. He locked himself in the cellar as soon as he awoke and rarely emerged. He refused proper meals and hadn’t bothered to change his clothes in days, though the fabric reeked of chemicals. When the stench was impossible to ignore, Maureen presented him with a clean, starched white shirt, which he grudgingly pulled on. He was distracted, and his gaze was fiery, as though he saw something beyond the confines of their house.
“He’s up to something,” Maureen worried. Though she knew nothing of her employer’s plans, she recognized the fever that marked an obsession. Clearly, some dark dream had taken hold of him. “The next thing you know we’ll have a bear sitting at the dining room table or a giant in one of our best chairs. I only hope there won’t be a snake in the kitchen sink.”