Mrs. Houdini (21 page)

“We can lend you money—we don't have to give it to you.”

Bess shook her head. “Absolutely not. You need that money. You're going to have a new baby in the house.”

Bess recalled how much she'd adored Fred when he started coming to the house in Brooklyn on Friday nights, courting Stella. Bess was in high school at the time, and Fred had seemed so much older, so much more mature than the boys she went to school with. He was tall and handsome, and he used to put his arm around her shoulders, always protective of her. When he married Stella in the courthouse, Bess wore a blue dress and carried a bouquet of lilies and stood behind Stella. All these years later, he still loved Stella, and he still loved Bess as he would a sister.

Harry had often treated Fred poorly, however. It wasn't intentional; Harry had never had any close male friends, and he wasn't successful at making them. Perhaps out of a feeling of insecurity, he'd assumed a superior air around the tall, genial Fred. Harry kept making more and more money, and Fred kept making the same, plodding politely through his days at the bank all those years. But despite his success, Harry had always been envious of Fred. He never said so out loud, but Bess thought she knew why. It was because Fred was a happy man at heart. He never wished for more than he had. The oil investment, which had happened after Harry died, had come about quite by accident. Harry, on the other hand, was never satisfied. The money, the fame, Bess—none of it had brought him peace.

Bess looked at her watch. “You go on down to the beach, and I'll meet you by the bathing house at noon.”

Downstairs in the lobby, she asked if she had received any messages. The clerk checked her box and came back empty-handed. She took a sip of tea in the salon for energy but couldn't bear to delay any longer.

The news offices were adjacent to City Hall, set back a few streets from the boardwalk. It was midmorning, and throngs of men rushed back and forth across the green lawns with briefcases in their hands. Apparently, Saturdays were as busy as weekdays for newspapermen.

She entered the office lobby and was greeted by the clatter of two dozen typewriters. It was everything she had imagined—a room full of men in slim-cut suits and knit ties, calling over cubicle walls to each other, the air gray with smoke, the secretaries with their pretty bobbed hair and straight tailored suits. There was no reception desk, and Bess turned to one of the men rushing past her through the double doors. “Pardon me. Can you tell me if there is a Mr. Charles Radley in today?”

The man looked at her blankly for a minute, then waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the back of the room. She scanned the rows of desks but could not identify the top of his head among the dozens crammed into the corners. She removed her gloves; her hands were clammy from the heat. She did not remember there being so much news to write about when she had first come here with Harry. Back then, it had been a city that was still establishing itself. Now, she imagined, given its growing reputation as a symbol of the current age—all the excesses of luxury, crime, and sexuality—there was quite a bit of scandal to fill the pages of newsprint.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Charles, standing just inside the doorway, his glasses slightly askew, a leather satchel slung over his shoulder.

“Oh! You startled me!”

His face reddened. “Did I? I'm sorry.”

“No, no, it's all right. I was distracted. I was just . . . remembering.” She patted the sweat off her forehead with the edge of her glove. She noticed that a few of the secretaries closest to the door were glancing at them discreetly. He seemed like a lonely man; she was glad to make them think he had some famous friends.

“It's loud in here,” he said. “Would you like to go down to the water?”

She nodded, relieved.

“I have to tell you,” he said when they stepped onto the lawn, “I didn't expect to see you here today. But it's been on my mind all night. I can't imagine what it is you have to talk to me about.”

It was a white morning, and hot; she watched couples in rolling chairs being pushed down the boardwalk, the women inside fanning themselves languidly. The colors were magnificent, the whole city like a confection—the pinks of the taffy, the pale cream of the sand, the yellows of the billboards . . . The piers, too, were crowded with dancers in red taffeta costumes and brightly dressed showmen, trying to lure in tourists. Charles helped her down the ramp onto the beach, where long planks of wood led to the ocean.

“The thing is,” Bess said, “I don't think you'll believe a word I have to say.”

Charles looked at her strangely. “Why is that?”

“Because you never met my husband. If you had, it might be different.”

“But I did,” he said. “I met him once.”

Bess reached for his arm. Her heart was beating rapidly. “You did? You said last night that you'd never met him.”

“I said I never
knew
him. But I shook his hand when he came out to do the jump on Young's Pier, when I was eleven.”

Bess's heart sank.

“I was fascinated by your husband.”

Bess sighed. She appreciated Harry's fans, but they frustrated her at the same time. “Let me ask you something,” she said carefully. “Do you believe in magic?”

“I believed in your husband's magic when I was little. But do I believe in it now?” He laughed. “No.”

“Do you believe that after we die . . . we can come back somehow?” She and Harry had had elaborate conversations about what lay beyond death. He had rejected her Catholic notions of white mansions and eternal rest, the whole idea of “rising” to something else. He believed in a murkier afterlife, that the dead still walked beside the living, perhaps only on a different plane. Sometimes, these people were even visible, like gray strands in the midst of color. If you lifted the veil, he said, then you could see them. But how to accomplish that—he did not know.

Charles pressed his lips together. “I'm not sure.” He squinted at her. “Why are you asking me all this?”

They had made it to the end of the wooden walkway, and the white-crusted ocean stretched out in front of them, the shoreline crowded with splashing bathers. It was difficult to disguise her nervousness. She felt as if she were courting someone. “You know, as everyone does, that I've been trying to reach Harry. And I think he might be trying to contact me—through you.” She looked at him. “Is that . . . strange?”

Charles gazed at her sharply, as if assessing her sincerity. When she didn't crack a smile, his expression turned to one of bewilderment. “Why do you think that he would be using me?”

Her voice was shaking. “Can I trust you?” she asked. “I don't even know you.”

“You can trust me.”

He seemed so sincere, so genuine. She knew she had no choice but to tell him the truth, crazy as she knew it would sound. “You see,” she began, “in the past several weeks, I've come across two photographs which seemed to have a message embedded in them. The strange thing was, when I found out who took them . . . they were both yours.” She turned away from him, toward the ocean. “And I'm not sure why that would be, if he didn't have a connection to you. But I'm also afraid . . . I may have been searching for something that wasn't there.”

“I believe you,” he said softly.

“You do?”

“Yes.”

Charles removed his glasses and began polishing them with his shirtsleeve. “You know I'm a photographer at the
Press
. What I didn't tell you is that I've—” He hesitated, as if he were afraid she would laugh at him. “I've applied to the seminary.”

Bess blinked at him. “You're going to be a
priest
?”

“I'm not sure yet.”

“But—I saw you flirting with that woman last night!”

Charles stuck his hands in his pockets and squinted at the horizon, where the sea receded into the curve of the earth. “I'm shy. I've never even had a real relationship with a woman.” The words came out painfully. “I'd like to try to see . . . if it's possible. Before I make any decisions.”

“And the lie? About being a banker named Wallace?”

He blushed. “Sometimes it's easier for me to speak to people I don't know if I pretend to be someone else.”

Bess felt a twinge of sympathy for him. How many times had she, too, pretended? How many times had she wished no one would recognize her?

“Do you think I'm foolish?”

Bess shook her head. “People treat me differently,” she said, “when they know who I am. To the world, I am Harry Houdini's widow. It is nice sometimes to be judged for myself, as my own person.”

“Do you think that, possibly, Harry led you to me because of my spiritual leanings? Because he knew I would believe you?”

She considered it. “I've never tried communicating through a priest before. Harry was Jewish, you know. And he wasn't a good Jew. I certainly am not a good Catholic.”

“Perhaps it's because I'm
not
a priest yet. I think people who are in between the secular world and the religious world have the most open minds of anyone. Perhaps he thought I could be a link between the two.”

Even in her white straw hat she could feel the sun burning on her cheeks. It was the kind of brilliant, steaming day when she wished that she was anywhere else—somewhere like California, in a bungalow by the studios, with a little greenhouse on the property, waiting for lunch to be served in the garden, and for Harry to step out of his office to join her.

“What I think,” Charles ventured, “is that you are afraid because you don't know what happened to your husband after he died. You are afraid he had nowhere to go.” He looked down, at the sand. “I know because for a very long time I felt that way, after my mother died, when I was still a boy. And I couldn't bear the thought of her becoming . . . nothing.”

Late in Harry's career they had found themselves staying in the same hotel as Sarah Bernhardt, in downtown Boston. The great actress had had her right leg amputated a few months before and had sunk into a deep depression, and she came to watch Harry perform. Afterward, they'd shared an automobile back to the hotel. Bess recalled Sarah's heavy black coat, long to her ankles to hide her wooden leg, and her bursting confection of a hat, red and feathered.

“Mr. Houdini,” she had said to Harry. “You must possess some extraordinary powers to perform such marvels.”

Harry had laughed. But Sarah had gripped his hand in hers. “Won't you use it to restore my limb for me?”

Bess had realized, at the same time as Harry, that the question was not in jest. Sarah was looking at him eagerly, her eyes filling with tears.

“Good heavens,” Harry had said, aghast. “You are asking me to do the impossible.”

“But you
do
the impossible.”

“I'm afraid you exaggerate my abilities,” he'd said, and Sarah had studied him for a long moment, as if she were hoping he was testing her, before releasing her grip on his hand.

Bess recognized a glimpse of this desperation in herself now. She remembered Harry's own tears as he got out of the car at the hotel, leaving Sarah inside. He had never meant to deceive anyone. But what if he was deceiving her now, without even realizing it?

Still, a chill ran through her. “There's something about you . . .” she said to Charles. “Something very powerful. I'm not sure what it is.” She thought of her initial attraction to Ford, her certainty in his goodness. But those feelings, she realized now, had been tinged with lust, while what she felt toward Charles was more like a friendship.

Charles put his hand on her arm. “You know, nothing may come of your search.”

“I know.”

“So why did you still want to meet me today? When you found out last night that I didn't know Harry after all?”

“Well,” Bess said. “I suppose I was hoping I could see some more of your pictures. That maybe I would find something else.”

“You're welcome to see what I have. But”—he held his palms to the air—“I've been a photographer professionally since I was eighteen years old. There are thousands. I'm not sure I even have copies or negatives of all of them.”

“My sister is here with me. She thinks we're here for a vacation. But she's going back to New York tomorrow. I could tell her I want to stay on. Do you think we could meet then?”

“Of course.” Charles looked out at the ocean.

Bess bent down and slid a handful of sand through her fingers. Despite the heat, it was cool to the touch. “When I was younger, I dreamed of growing old in California, in a house with palm trees and lemon trees in the yard. But now there is too much holding me to New York.”

“People probably ask you this all the time. But do you really think your husband had a spiritual connection to something when he did his magic? That, while he was alive, he had some kind of foothold in the other world?”

Bess pursed her lips together. She thought of the eerie incidents that had befallen them over the course of their marriage, the indications that they may have had some kind of reciprocity with the other side that had never quite materialized. “If those kinds of powers could be accessed so easily,” she said sadly, “I wouldn't have spent all these years looking for him.”