Among the Wonderful (19 page)

I hadn’t left the museum in thirty-five days. It wasn’t so different outside, except that I wasn’t getting paid for provoking disturbances. The only relief was that I no longer had to wear a charitable countenance toward the passersby. I stood outside the museum entrance, my back against the marble façade, concerned that perhaps Mr. Archer had seen me since his office was just inside the main door. But surely a giantess dining with an usher wouldn’t be newsworthy, even to him.

Visitors streamed in for the evening performances, and Broadway was lit up like a stage. Somewhere above my head Thomas’ band emitted an insistent sonatina. I was too warm in my good gray shawl, but I kept it on. I was outside, after all. Outside. Does the street, the city, change me? Or do I change the street? This incessant dialogue between seeing and being seen exhausted and sustained me. Where was Beebe? I did not tell Maud I was leaving; she would have discouraged it.
Barnum
, she told me,
doesn’t like us to leave without telling him
. But Barnum was gone again. People said he was in Europe. Some even said California, but I didn’t believe that.

“Miss Swift!” Beebe dodged carriages across Broadway toward me. “Miss Swift. Good evening.”

I extended my hand. You’ve greased down your hair rather strangely, Beebe.

“Have you been waiting?”

“Only a few minutes.” I had never seen him without the scarlet uniform and the little red hat in his hand or on his head. He wore a dark blue frockcoat now, and even from my vantage point, which was rather more distant than average, I saw that it was shiny at the elbows and ragged at the lapel.

“I trust you are well.” He took a step back from me, but his eagerness flew forward. So eager, for what? You’ve shaved that feeble mustache, thank goodness. Do you have a sister, Beebe, or a mother advising you?

“Quite. Shall we proceed?”

“It’s a lovely night.” Thankfully, he did not extend his arm. We started down Broadway. I focused my gaze above the passing faces turning toward me like heliotropes toward the sun. He was poor. Of course he was. Is that flush in your cheek embarrassment at suddenly being a spectacle (perhaps for the first time in your life) or is it simply a consequence of keeping pace with me? Even the blacking couldn’t conceal the worn-out leather at the toe of his shoes. People exclaimed and whispered around us. Was it ever different from this? It was always the same, even in the distant past of my girlhood. The only difference is that when I was young I had known everyone who whispered. It was true there was a certain headiness on the streets here, from the sheer number of strangers packed into a small area. A claustrophobic freedom.

Beebe pointed out places familiar to him: the barber, a tiny establishment with a rusted sign; a public tavern, of a decent sort, he said. By the time we’d walked three blocks my heels felt as if nails were punching up through them, piercing the flesh all the way to my hips. Unfortunately, I was not made to roam the earth. If I had been, if my body were sturdy and strong, I would be somewhere in the forests of Nova Scotia, living on wild foods, traveling with the seasons to keep up with my appetite. I suppose I could still go there, in this creaking cage, this bone sculpture fragile as a house of cards, but it would be only to die.

“I’ve made arrangements for us to dine there,” Beebe piped up, breaking my morbid reverie. He pointed to a
well-lit building on the corner in front of us with several carriages outside. “It’s in the European style,” he added, a little uncertainly.

Despite my best efforts to remain generally unmoved, there are inevitably instances, not as infrequent as I might hope, when my fortifications crumble. Entering restaurants is one of those instances. Beebe did not help the matter by nervously straightening his cravat below me and removing his hat before we even neared the door. Go first, Beebe. Please go first. Beebe opened the door and gestured for me to enter. I fell immediately back into an old pattern of thought, one I’d hoped I had outgrown: I pretended I was going onstage. I would now cross the threshold and enter a fabricated environment. The audience would be surprised, of course, but they also knew exactly what they’d paid to see.

The restaurant had dark wood floors spread over with richly patterned rugs of variegated, though muted, colors. I was surprised, at first, to see that the tables were all of different shapes, some round, some square, and two long, rectangular tables with several different parties seated along them. Even the chairs were mismatched. Lit by cut-glass sconces along each wall, the restaurant was lively and somehow intimate, with everything cast in a medieval glow. A young man with a frosty-pink rose in his lapel led us to a table away from the windows and other patrons. Thankfully, he placed me in a sturdy chair without arms, where my back rested comfortably against the wall.

“Well, this is all right, then?” Beebe, dwarfed in a high, cushioned chair decorated with a needlepoint hart and hound, again struck me as a schoolboy. I often received this impression of men, but Beebe in particular. He nodded. “I haven’t been here before, actually, but one of my colleagues at the museum recommended it.”

We were given menus. Consommé Grand Duke. Radish salad. Potatoes Gastronome. I wondered briefly if Beebe could read. You can, can’t you?

“Ah,” he said. “Bridgeport clams. To remind me of home.”

“Tell me about where you grew up, then, Mr. Beebe.”
Stuffed quail, demi glace. Would I dare order something in miniature? Loin of beef with mushroom sauce was more appropriate. The man returned, offering us claret in fluted glasses. Beebe ordered clams, I ordered consommé.

“Bethel Parish is a beautiful place.”

“And what did you do there?”

“Tended hogs, mostly.”

“Is that so.” Beebe, no! A hog farmer? But then again, am I not a fisherman’s daughter?

“It’s not a fancy place. Farms of all different kinds, though. It’s a fertile region. Abundant, I would say, in that regard.”

Around us, ladies sat with men who had obviously never been hog tenders. A couple accompanied by a woman who looked as if she might be mother to one of them took a table near us. The mother, her white hair elegantly swept up and accentuated by a necklace of cut garnets, glanced at me and smiled as she looked quickly at her plate. It was a smile, though, that told me she was not shocked, but gently amused, perhaps, that the city continually tossed wonders in her lap, and I was simply the latest and nothing more than that.

“I also grew up on a farm,” I offered, and then examined my menu as Beebe undertook the expected conversation: a comparison of crops, of fathers, of early frosts and late snowfall. A platter of clams and a bowl of broth arrived. Beebe tucked his napkin into his collar.

“But there
was
something extraordinary about growing up when I did, in the place where I did.” Beebe smiled. Small teeth, with rounded edges. He placed an empty clamshell on the tablecloth, despite the porcelain bowl he’d been given. He leaned forward dramatically.

“Because one of my friends was Phineas Taylor. We called him Tale, though, because his uncle was already Phin. We were neighbors.”

“Barnum?” I lowered my spoon without taking the bite.

“There were two fields between us, and a thicket, but still our closest neighbor. I know!” he crowed, seeing my surprise. “It seems hardly possible now that he’s … now that
he’s doing what he’s doing. But back then, naturally, it seemed quite natural. He’s just one year older than me.”

“Mr. Barnum was your neighbor?” That Phineas T. Barnum was ever a boy seemed highly improbable.

“Yes!”

“He grew up on a farm?” Surely, not on a farm.

“Well, yes. It was his mother’s farm, really. And his grandfather’s.” Beebe gestured with his fork, and I observed droplets of clam broth fly onto his coat.

“What kind of child was he?”

“Oh, well, not terribly unusual.” Beebe relinquished his clams to make room for our dinner plates. He had ordered the quail, and I the beef loin. Beebe clutched his fork with one hand, his knife in the other. His table manners were awful. Could that be why people were staring at us? That would be something new.

“He had a knack for approximating. He could guess the number of logs in a woodpile, things like that. But I never saw him much after he went to work at the mercantile in town. Like I said, I stayed on the farm.”

“With the hogs.”

“Yes.”

“And then he gave you the job of usher?” I could picture it: Beebe in muddy boots, fresh from the marketplace, all his hogs sold, appearing at the museum, having heard that his old friend was making a fortune. Barnum frowning at the disheveled man, but feeling some obligation to find a place for him.

“Eventually, yes. It’s a whole other story.”

“I’d like to hear.”

“Well, I didn’t mean to tell you my life history.” He blushed, pinning his quail to the plate with his fork and taking a swipe at it with his knife. “But I moved here two years ago, to join the seminary.”

“You!” I could not contain a laugh.

Beebe looked up sharply. “Yes. Why is that funny?”

“Oh, it’s not,” I lied gently. “Just unexpected.” That he’d
succeeded in surprising me so thoroughly was highly endearing. Now that he saw my smile, he clearly relished it as well.

“Eventually I found that my own ideas about how to live in harmony with the Lord did not exactly … fit with the church. So I am no longer in the seminary. But I am continuing my path of faith. I am a Junior Warden at Saint Paul’s Chapel. I live there and fulfill my duties as Warden, and also work in the museum three days a week.”

“That’s quite a pair of occupations.”

Beebe nodded. “I know, but it makes sense, it truly does. What’s funny is that I didn’t even know the museum was Barnum’s. I knew it changed owners, and I watched the outside of the building transform, you know, the red trim, all of that. But I didn’t know it was him until one morning, I looked outside, and there was a huge banner strung across Broadway. I remember it advertised a Russian clairvoyant and a collection of serpents. Well, the contents of the banner weren’t the problem. The problem was that on one side of Broadway the banner was anchored to the second-floor balcony of the museum, but the other side was most conspicuously harnessed to a tree on chapel property. You can imagine the difficulty. So I went across the street, of course, to speak with someone. And do you know, it was Barnum himself behind the ticket window! But I didn’t recognize him at first. We hadn’t seen each other in twenty years by that time. He pointed me toward the boss’s office. As I walked down the back hallway I tried to figure where I’d seen him before, but it wasn’t until I saw the name on his office door that I realized. I went straight back to the ticket window and there he was, smiling. ‘Beebe,’ he said. ‘Have you come for a job?’ And of course I hadn’t, but … well, you know how it turned out.”

“That’s quite a tale.”

He looked at his plate. Ask, Beebe. Ask me how it feels … to be me, and I’ll tell you. I’ll try to tell you. The opening is now. Ask, and maybe I can bear your guileless eyes.

“I thought you might enjoy it,” he said, picking up the
quail’s leg and slurping the meat off the bone. “It is strange where life delivers you.”

We finished our meal in silence. I was quite comfortable, but as the silence grew, Beebe became anxious. Coffee arrived in mismatched cups. Beebe scalded his mouth and tried, quite gracefully, I thought, to hide his discomfort. But when it came time to pay for our meal, all traces of grace vanished as he poured a small number of coins directly onto the table and tediously counted them out. My skin crawled. Around the room, people looked at us. Because of me? Or him. Several crumpled bills appeared next to the coins and he leisurely smoothed and counted. He even paused to sip his coffee! I felt my face ablaze.

Seemingly oblivious to the spectacle he’d made of himself, Beebe talked all the way back to Ann Street, about the quality of the night, the gradual warming of the earth this time of year. Partaking in such talk is usually abhorrent to me; when you spend each day observing humanity in a setting like the museum, there is opportunity to ponder the superficial habits of man (and the even more numerous superficialities of woman). It is habit, is it not, that keeps us quietly busy in a world whose rules, dictated by others, we don’t even question?

“Beebe, why did you invite me to dine with you?”

“Because I like you. Of course.”

“But you are a man of faith, and even in the Bible giants are condemned as a corruption on earth. They are part of the reason God sent the flood.”

“That’s a harsh way to look at oneself, isn’t it? The Bible inspires me to live righteously, it’s true, but I think for myself, and obviously you do, too. You’re a good person. Your perspective is unusual. I feel I can relate to that.”

Outside the museum, Beebe took my hand, forcing his own arm to crook up at a comical angle. He bowed.

“Thank you for this evening, Miss Swift. I hope you were not too disappointed by my humble origins,”

“Why of course not, Mr. Beebe,” I sputtered, startled that
he’d guessed that I had been. “Thank you for getting me out of the museum. You’re right: It is a lovely evening.”

I watched him cross over Broadway and, true to his word, unlock the iron gate at Saint Paul’s. He paused to examine a patch of tilled ground near the church’s front step before continuing along a path around the side of the building. As he disappeared I felt a sturdy tug of affection that I couldn’t bear to dismiss.

The whole morning was cast in a pall of foul humor. My legs ached from walking on cobbled roads with Beebe, and I struggled not to replay our dinner together too many times in my mind, which would quickly stale any remaining pleasure in it. I’d slept poorly and dreamed only of Pictou and the sea.

I’d always heeded you, Mother, hadn’t I? You made everything sound so poetic, as if my life’s scope were grander than anyone else’s because of my greater mass. Whenever I came home overcome with girlish passions, you turned from your task at the woodpile or in the kitchen:
Love will not be easy
. You were the only one to ever speak to me of love.
Don’t look for it, Ana. Never. Do not demand what can only be given freely
. You regarded me seriously despite my ugliness, my absurd shell. I never looked, Mother. I never did.
Be content in solitude. Only then are you prepared to receive love
.