Mrs. Houdini (24 page)

She had to go to him. She could not leave him alone down there. She had been to the brink of a betrayal she could not come back from, but she had stopped herself, and if it took that to convince her that she wanted no one but Harry, then she had to think of it as a blessing. He was the love of her life.

She searched through her trunk and found a long gray skirt and blouse she could dress herself in quickly, and without any help to lace. She checked her hair in the mirror. Her watch now read four o'clock. Perhaps he would still be standing on the pier; ever the showman, he enjoyed watching the crowd's anticipation build. She raced down the corridor and over to the veranda at the end of the hall, which overlooked the edge of the pier. Flinging the doors open, she heard the loud cries of the crowd below. Then, like a fog rushing toward her, came the shrill voice of a newsboy: “Extree! Houdini dead! Extree! Houdini drowned in ocean!”

Bess fell to her knees. She could not breathe. It could not be possible. From the position of the balcony she could not see the spot of Harry's jump, only the crowd milling about in alarm and, in the distance, the ocean, angry and white with froth. She stumbled, as if drugged, down the stairwell onto the first floor, which led outside.

She could not look anyone in the eye as she pushed her way toward the front of the massive throng. She caught sight of John Young in the distance, leaning searchingly over the railing, and then vomited onto the concrete. Less than an hour ago, she had almost given everything to that man, and now she had lost Harry. How could she not have seen this? She had always thought of the bond between them as something fated, otherworldly—that if something happened to Harry, she would know it. But she felt nothing now but fear.

“Bess.” Someone spoke behind her, touching the back of her shoulder. When she turned, dizzily, she could almost make out Harry's form, blue and ghostlike, his hair and body dripping.

“Harry?” she choked in disbelief.

Before he could say anything further, the crowd rushed in on him, separating them, pushed apart only by the policemen and two doctors in white coats, with stethoscopes around their necks. Harry was draped in towels and ushered into the building, and then she couldn't see him anymore.

Harry's assistant, Jim Collins, put his hand on her shoulder. Jim was the first man Harry had hired, and the only person other than Bess he trusted with the workings of his tricks. “He didn't come up after two minutes,” Jim explained, his blue eyes soft with relief. “The rope man had to lower himself into the water and go down in search of him. After four minutes the physicians were of the mind that he could not have survived.”

“But the newsboys. I heard them—”

“They were dispatched with bulletins. You know how these things work. Call out the news now, write it up later. But after six minutes we saw the top of his head emerge from the water, then his arms, pulling himself in by the rope.”

“Six minutes.” Bess looked down at the water, stunned. “He's never held his breath that long.”

“It's miraculous.” She could see Jim still trembling slightly from nerves. He adored Harry, and she adored Jim in return.

She put her hand on his arm. “I have to see him.”

“Of course.”

Bess looked at John Young, standing by the railing, and caught his eye. Neither of them gave any acknowledgment of what had occurred between them less than an hour earlier. They both were married. Bess had almost lost her husband. John Young had brought in the towels. Nothing more.

Bess found Harry upstairs in their bedroom, immersed in a hot bath, one of the physicians sitting in a chair beside the tub, checking his pulse. She rushed over and seized Harry's hand. His grip was weak. The doctor excused himself politely.

“I thought I'd lost you,” she murmured.

“I got caught,” he said. “There was an old fishing net down there, and I got the cuffs off easily enough, but I couldn't get my legs free, and then I started losing air, and I couldn't tell top from bottom. I started to pray, and Bess, I swear I could hear my father's voice calling to me from somewhere down there. Then I saw the rope, and I managed to free myself and grab hold of it.”

Bess looked at him, surprised. Harry almost never talked about his father, and he certainly didn't consider himself a practicing Jew any longer. She leaned toward him and ran her fingers through his hair. “You think your father saved you?”

“I don't know. But I do know he was
there
.” His voice trailed off. “Somehow, he was there . . . It's the first time I've ever been alone but felt . . . not alone.” He closed his eyes and laid his head against the edge of the tub. “I'm sorry, Bess.”

Bess blinked. “Sorry? What for?”

“I scared you. I didn't do the trick right. I failed.”

Bess ran her hand over the top of his head. “Oh, no. It's all right, darling. You didn't fail me at all.”

Bess spent the next two days at Mount Sinai Hospital, at Stella's side, leaving only to check on the tearoom for an hour at a time. Abby had woken up that Saturday morning in a pool of blood, such a significant amount that the doctors immediately diagnosed a likely miscarriage. Abby was delirious with medication and grief; but by Saturday night, when Stella and Bess arrived, she claimed she could feel slight stirrings of movement in her belly. Stella worried she was imagining them, but by Sunday morning they were stronger, and there was no more bleeding; the doctors diagnosed her with placenta previa, in which, they explained, the placenta grows over the cervix; this was the cause of the bleeding. They ordered bed rest for the five remaining months of the pregnancy.

Bess felt a sense of culpability that Stella had not been there right away; nothing good seemed to come out of Atlantic City. Fortunately, she had never spoken to John Young again. After the pier jump she had begged Harry to go back to New York, to Gladys and to Mrs. Weiss, whom Harry had moved into the house. She longed to see their tiny dog, Carla, who yelped when she spotted them, ran in circles and then jumped onto the bed.

But that night—their first night home in several months—as they had lain side by side under the thick feather duvet Bess had purchased during their travels in Europe, Bess was certain she heard someone whispering in the hall outside their bedroom.
Lazarus,
the voice said,
come forth
.

She'd sat up immediately and found she could not breathe. It was as if someone was holding her by the throat. She had grown up believing in demons that never appeared, and now, it seemed, they had come for her at last. In the corner of the room, the shadow of a man appeared.

She had touched Harry on the arm, and he'd woken immediately. “Harry,” she had said, her throat thick. “They've come for me.”

Harry had looked across the room and shouted. He'd jumped from the bed, throwing himself at the shadow. “Darling, no!” Bess had said. “He's here for
me
!” She'd watched the two forms, Harry and the dark man, wrestling in the dark. Then she'd heard Harry yell again, and when she lit the lamp she saw that the shadow was not a ghost, it was a man, and he was wielding a razor blade, and he had attacked Harry, slicing through the skin of his neck.

Harry had managed to wrestle the man out the door and into the parlor, where Mrs. Weiss, woken by the noise, had already called the police. Harry gained control of the weapon, but the man had escaped before the police arrived. Bess had found Harry kneeling in the foyer in a pool of blood, breathing heavily. He had been taken to the hospital, where his wounds were found to be superficial. They'd never learned the identity of the intruder. Bess had been unable to shake the feeling that their lives were in danger now, physically as well as spiritually, that she had brought evil into their life, and like a black tar it covered everything.

Harry, despite having come precariously close to dying, had looked back on that weekend in Atlantic City with fondness. He had been entranced by the thick ocean air, the smell of chocolate fudge being mixed in huge stainless steel vats, the endless parade of lovers walking along the boardwalk, the women with their white parasols. He steadfastly swore he had heard his father speak to him when he was underwater. Years later, on the back of a photograph he had taken of her by the beach, she came across a note Harry had jotted across the bottom:
Many a time I have looked at the silent remembrances of the past, and never have I forgotten the fact that life is but an empty dream.
The experience had drawn his magic toward investigation of the paranormal rather than manipulation of the normal.

Even in the early days of his magic he could make mango trees bloom onstage, the roots bursting upward beneath a black cloth, the fruit flamed with orange, the black cloth floating to the floor and the crowd trembling with excitement. Once Bess had asked him if he felt like he was playing God. But even though his father had been a rabbi, Harry didn't know where to find God. All he knew was that God wasn't in his father's books, and he wasn't under the milky lights of the stage, and he wasn't under the black cloth either. God was somewhere else.

On Tuesday afternoon, when Bess went back to her town house for the first time since leaving for Atlantic City, she was greeted by the sound of the dog sliding across the wooden floors toward her, and by George, white-gloved and nervous, in the foyer.

“Mrs. Houdini,” he began hesitantly. “There's a gentleman in the library waiting for you.”

“A gentleman?” She rarely had guests at the house, short of Gladys and Stella, and preferred to do her entertaining at the tearoom.

“I wouldn't have let him in, but he showed me a telegram you sent him.”

Bess's pulse quickened. “Charles!” She rushed through the library doors. She had only telegrammed him that there had been an emergency, and she would get back in touch with him, but somehow he had found her.

He was standing by the staircase with his back to her, his luggage at his feet. He turned when she entered. “This is— I've never seen anything like this.” He craned his head to see the spiral stairs, which wound through all four floors. “It's so grand.”

“You found me.”

His face turned red. “I found your address through the paper. Was it presumptuous of me to come? I didn't know what had happened and I thought maybe I could offer some help.”

“No, no, it wasn't presumptuous. It was my niece. She's in the hospital, but she's all right now.”

“Oh, that's a relief.”

Bess nodded.

“I brought the photographs.” He gestured toward his luggage. “I brought as many as I could, but I simply couldn't fit them all.”

Bess looked down at the leather case and felt herself become dizzy. She had hardly eaten a thing since Saturday, and hardly slept either. Her stay in the hospital at Abby's bedside had stirred up feelings of loneliness she had buried for a long time, and it had called into question the importance of her fixation. Here was a
real
situation, right in front of her—Abby's baby in danger, Stella's family in crisis—and it made her hunt for Harry seem all the more imaginary, and silly. She simply didn't have the energy or the willpower to sort through hundreds of photographs right then. She wasn't even sure she believed in the message anymore.

“Charles,” she said, “what would you say if I invited you to a party tonight?” The bespectacled man Gladys had been conversing with at Niall's party had become a full-blown romance, apparently. The man, Lloyd, a stockbroker, was having people out to his country estate.

“Tonight?” Charles blinked, surprised.

“You don't have to go back right away, do you?”

“No, no. I can stay. I just thought—you were so eager to see these photographs.”

“I am.” Bess's voice caught in her throat. “I am just so tired. And it sounds counterintuitive, I know, but nothing seems more relaxing to me right now than a fun party, full of strangers.” She usually spent so many hours in her tearoom, playing hostess and entertaining other guests, that the idea of simply being part of a crowd seemed liberating.

“I'm just not sure—”

Bess gripped his hands. “Please join me. I could use the company.”

Charles sighed. “Where are we going? I'm not much for parties.”

“I actually don't know the fellow. I've only met him once, but he's got a house out on Long Island. Harry's sister, Gladys, is in love with him I think.”

Three hours later they were standing on the lawn of Lloyd's estate, staring out at Long Island Sound. Across the expanse of green grass, Bess could see Gladys, wafting over the grounds on Lloyd's arm, in a yellow dress, as if she had never been reclusive at all. Bess could hardly believe the change in her.

“What do we do now?” Charles asked, fidgeting. The place was swarming with people. A group played croquet, drunkenly, near the water. “Do we approach anyone?”