While Maureen went to hang laundry on the line, Coralie crept on her hands and knees, pressing her ear to the wide planks of pine flooring in an attempt to eavesdrop. Her thoughts were consumed by the drowned girl, but there were no telltale sounds rising from the cellar. Still, she knew her father’s urgency to present a monster to the world. He’d insisted this was the only way he could turn their fortunes around. “Do you think I’d have you swim for those fools if we weren’t desperate for the money?” he’d said to her, as if that explained the dreadful things he’d had her do. “We need a real success!”
Coralie would have preferred to live like a mouse, on crumbs and crusts, rather than be subjected to those evenings. “Is there nothing else we might do to change our fortune?” she pleaded.
“There’s worse,” he said darkly, and left it at that.
They had grown poorer, left with only soup and bread for their meals. Maureen complained she could hardly buy groceries with her slim allowance. Coralie wished she could tell the housekeeper about her father’s intentions, but it was as if those wicked evenings in the museum had left her bewitched and mute. She made certain to dispose of liquor bottles and cigar stubs in the mornings that followed her humiliations, tossing bits of evidence into the trash pile. Once a week, it was set on fire. Maureen always encouraged Coralie to come inside on these occasions, for bright cinders snapped up into the branches of the pear tree and smoke swooped above them. But Coralie sat on the porch steps, unmoving. She watched it all burn.
IN TIME, Coralie had come to wonder if the housekeeper had just as many secrets as she did. A house of secrets is like a house of cards, falling in on itself. The more you knew, the more you had to know, and Maureen’s private life nagged at Coralie. The housekeeper had never spoken of where she came from, nor had she mentioned a family.
One day Coralie blundered upon a hint that her suspicions had been correct. She spied Maureen on Neptune Avenue, on the other side of the trolley tracks. It was Sunday, the housekeeper’s day off. The air was bracing due to the spring fog that hadn’t yet lifted. The haze turned the world into a mist, and within that mist Maureen appeared beautiful, her long auburn hair wound up with tortoiseshell combs. Shrouded in the hazy air, her damaged face seemed perfect, as it must have been before she’d been assaulted by her jealous lover. She had no photographs of herself in her earlier years; she insisted that photographs were for the rich. But trust me, she was always quick to say with a grin, I made heads turn.
On this quiet Sunday, Coralie followed the housekeeper to a building where many seasonal workers boarded. She trailed her inside, up to the third floor. When Maureen turned, as if she’d heard footfalls, Coralie darted into the stairwell. At last she dared to glance out, only to find she’d lost sight of Maureen. She went along the hallway, listening in at the doors, her ear pressed close. At one set of rooms she thought she heard the rise of Maureen’s voice, but she couldn’t be sure.
Nearby, a door opened and an old woman peered into the corridor. Coralie had no choice but to pass by on her way back to the stairwell. The hallway was poorly lit, but Coralie could tell the woman gazing out had worked at a carnival or a sideshow, for she was covered with tattoos. Living wonders looked down upon those whose attributes weren’t natural, and the old woman may have felt she was an outcast. Her expression was coarse and bitter. She wore a heavy wool cloak, a hood over her head. When Coralie drew near, it was possible for her to see a mask of flowers and vines on the woman’s aging face, a scrim of blue and red inked around her narrowed eyes.
“What are you doing here?” the tattooed woman wanted to know.
Coralie said she was looking for a Mr. Morris.
“Who are you?” the older woman asked. “His whore?”
Coralie felt the sting of outrage. “Of course not!” She calmed herself and went on. “But I think there is a woman who stays with him. As for him, you’d recognize him—he’s quite covered with hair.”
“Every beast can find a woman. It’s so unfair, for what man would have a woman like me? You can barely bring yourself to look me in the eye, but if you’d like, you can come inside my room. I’ll show you everything, if you have the nerve to look. These pictures cover every bit of me, even the most private parts that were sweet once upon a time.” The old woman gestured for her to come in. “One whore knows another, darling. It’s written all over our faces.”
It was a wretched thing to say. Stunned, Coralie ran down the stairs, her heart pounding, the callous comment still cutting her as she fled. She couldn’t help but wonder if the old woman had a talent as a mind reader, if she’d somehow intuited what had happened on those wicked nights at the museum. Coralie ran home, unaware of the world around her. Once safely in her room, she bolted the door and stood before the mirror. She was a plain girl, nothing more. There were no flowers, no ink, no signs of her true nature. Then she looked down and saw that in her hurry to follow Maureen she had forgotten her gloves. Her deformity had been there for the old woman to see, her own dyed skin, the webbing between her fingers, the mark of who she truly was.