Pinkerton's Sister (50 page)

On really bad days she imagined that it was the late Albert Comstock performing in front of her, miraculously restored to life as an enormous small girl, dressed like a frilly marquee all ready for an especially lavish and well-populated circus. Even Phineas T. – “T” is for Tiny! “T” is for Trivial! “T” is for Tin-pot! – Barnum would have struggled to have filled this Colosseum-sized immensity of space. Three rings wouldn't do it; neither would four, five, or six.

– Albert Comstock unblushingly recited (it took a Coleridgean suspension of disbelief to cope with this line; rarely had poetic faith been quite so tested) –

On the worst days of all, Papa appeared alongside Albert Comstock, dressed in his music box ballerina dress, up on his points and wobblingly edging sidewise. He was looking straight at her.

She was an innocent 'ittle dirly dirl.

She was not going to play with her dollies; she was not going to stay in her nursewy.

She was going to walk out with Papa.

Evwy hour in the day she twied hard to obey.

Albert Comstock and Papa linked their hands and danced. This time the music was not “Narcissus.” It was – such a universal favorite – “The Dance of the Gigantic Cygnets” from
Swan Lake
. As this drew to a close – “Ahhhhhh!” from all points of the compass, including even south-south-south-west, they were so sweet as sweet could be in their cutest 'ittle fwocks – Papa (he did not forget the Mary Benedict simper) assumed the third position, the heel of his right foot pressed against the instep of his left foot. It was the position in which she imagined penguins sometimes stood when they were not being observed, feeling a secret need for grace in their posture.

“Third position!” he announced, for the benefit of those who were not devotees of the ballet.

It was the position assumed by well-coached children who were about to recite in public, the position of Sobriety Goodchild in his dimpled days of yore, the position of Max Webster, Serenity Goodchild, the position that warned you that something dreadful was about to be unleashed, and – hard luck! – it was too late to escape. Mary Benedict had seemed to expect applause just for assuming the position. No recitation followed as she posed, swayingly expectant. Then the
pirouettes
would be unleashed. She'd do this with the air of Dr. Moreau demonstrating the capabilities of the Beast People. Papa clasped his hands loosely in front of him, low down, as if he were about to demonstrate the correct manner in which to twiddle thumbs, or protect himself from Miss Stammers's enthusiastically sniffing dogs. An encore had been prepared, in the correct and confident assumption that an enraptured audience would insistently demand one.

“‘The Children's Hour' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,” he announced, in the special little voice of the sentimental public speaker, as if to demonstrate that he possessed a magical rapport with the special scenes of childhood.

She began to lift her hands to cover her ears.

(She could think of only …

(… only four of Shakespeare's male characters who disguised themselves as women – and three of these were acting parts in plays, if Ariel disguised as a water nymph counted as such – curious when they were written in a time when boys acted the rôles of women. Yet she could think of …

(She could think of …

(
Seven
of Shakespeare's women characters who disguised themselves as men or boys.

(Boys disguised as girls disguised as boys. You had to concentrate on this one, and Mrs. Albert Comstock was easily confused.

(In
Twelfth Night
Viola – shipwrecked off the coast of Illyria, and trying to believe that her twin brother had not been drowned – resolved to serve Orsino disguised as a boy, and sing and speak to him in many sorts of music …)

She could still hear Papa.

(In
As You Like It
, Rosalind …)

He did not begin at the beginning.

He leaped straight in at the eighth verse.

Odd that he should have opted for the spelling “mustache” instead of “moustache” when – later in the poem – he chose “moulder” and not “molder”.

Later in the poem …

He was leading up to the last two verses, the very worst verses.

The ninth …

The tenth …

The tenth was the worst of all.

His voice rose. He
was
going to recite the last two verses, and he was going to make certain that she heard what it was they had to say. He wasn't just an old moustache either. He was a Bearded One, his multi-fronded growth arranged like the foliage hiding the mouth of a pit dug in the forest, one of those innocent-looking traps whose floor was set with sharp-pointed sticks, and from which it was impossible to clamber free.

She couldn't abide either Max Webster or Serenity Goodchild, but she was intriguingly tempted to enter this Battle of the Cuties as it lurched on, out of control, flattening all in its path with its pink-frilled high-voiced weaponry, threatening death by terminal nausea, and she'd begin with Max Webster. It would be easy to organize a little mischief, and Mrs. Albert Comstock's birthday was only a few months away.

The next time she arrived at 11 Park Place, just before ten o'clock one Wednesday morning (assuming that she survived her imminent incarceration in the Webster Nervine Asylum, and assuming – a fairly safe assumption – that she'd still need the – er – gentle nurturing of Max's Papa after this), she'd go up to Max in the hall with a winning, conspiratorial smile. If Max wasn't there, Theodore was bound to be. One or other of the Ichabod Cranes – lank, narrow, dangling – was always there, furtively lingering in the shadows near the staircase, as if pausing contemplatively on his way to somewhere else. They loitered about during the school holidays, always keen to discover who the loonies were who came to see their father, to seek for guidance in The House of the Interpreter. This wasn't so that they could avoid them in future – you shouldn't get too close to a loony – but so that they would have something to laugh about together. It was rare to see an uninserted index finger in the neighborhood of Theodore or Max. If it wasn't shoved up the nearest nostril (you had to be careful not to get too close, or, easily confused, they might start rummaging about in the wrong nostril), it was sure to be vigorously employed in a thorough, thoughtfully luxurious, bottom scratch. If, however, they recognized an approaching loony, the finger would be pulled out – with an audible
pop!
like a bottle of (how incongruous) cheap champagne being opened – and pointing.

“There's one! There's one!”

They didn't run away, with shrill cries and loping gaits, rather in the manner that Mrs. Albert Comstock and Mrs. Goodchild fondly imagined the male youth of Longfellow Park would react to the nearness of a threatening Magdalene, but – on the contrary – came lumbering closer, for a good stare, activating their nudge-nudging elbows. They'd lean forward – it was a wonder they didn't carry binoculars and notebooks about with them like conscientious ornithologists – and gape, studying this specimen for giveaway signs of madness, whispering and sniggering, crusted pointy-pointy fingers all ablur. It was a little hobby they had. They were birders, specializing in just one species, the cuckoo.

“There's one!”

“There's one!”

In the crowded cloud-cuckoo-land of Longfellow Park, their right arms would be going up and down like a lone lowly sailor's, aching with saluting in a ship full of officers, as they permanently pointed.

Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
they'd blow into their bird callers. Allen's Improved Cuckoo Callers – …
the most natural toned, the easiest blowing, made of red cedar, silver mounted
… (nothing but the best for Theodore and Max) …
with silver reed which gives it perfect tone, the finest cuckoo call made, used in the field by all the best cuckoo shooters in America, and only $1 each –
would sound like a wallful of cuckoo clocks as they blew with reddened, ballooned-out cheeks, their guns held at the ready, all poised for potshots.

Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

“There's one!”

“There's one!”

Bang! Bang!

Two gun-toting Papagenos, they'd potshot the cuckoos as they sang, utilizing their best German accents – as taught to them by Mama – cramming their kills into the cages on their backs. What did you need with a Magic Flute when you had an Allen's Improved Cuckoo Caller, used in the field by all the best cuckoo shooters in America? Max's soprano reached eye-watering heights of piercing shrillness, and all listening men winced sympathetically, discreetly adjusting their garments with pained and thoughtful expressions.

The cuckoo catchers, that's what they were, always merry and cheerful, known to old and young throughout the land. They blew into their cuckoo callers intermittently, at appropriate moments, as if making knowing cultural cross-references to Beethoven's
Pastoral Symphony
. The Websters had culture at their well-clotted fingertips. Musical instruments were picturesquely positioned about their parlor, as if awaiting the attentions of a still-life artist.

Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

“There's one!”

“There's one!”

Bang! Bang!

It was a great shame that Serenity's family had set her up as the big rival of Max – she and he had a great deal in common – but this was the position in which they found themselves, the Romeo and Juliet of Longfellow Park.

“What's in a name?” Serenity should be bawling peevishly on a well-reinforced balcony, fists clenched, in characteristically belligerent mood. “That which we call a nose …” – she was generally recognized as having become somewhat
obsessed
with noses since Mabel Peartree had become her Sunday-school teacher – “… /By any other name would – er – smell your feet” (Serenity, like her Grandmama, had a way with words), and Max – both feet primed (
Phew!
) to illustrate her epigram – would leap out to astonish her. Ahhhhhh!

“Cooee!” Alice would call in the echoing hall of 11 Park Place –
Cooee!
not
Cuckoo! –
adapting the call of the Australian natives. “Cooee!”

She still felt – after all this time – oddly out of place and estranged in the realms of psychology, as if she didn't belong there, as if she had inadvertently wandered into hidden rooms, private quarters, a Masonic hall, a place where only men should be, men holding special implements, men arranged in strenuous symbolic positions like meaningful statuary. She'd plunge confidently into the center of the room – if it could be so called – that clouded antechamber to other rooms, where the secrets would be uncovered to the elected few. It was a world in which most of the vocabulary – these rooms possessed their own language, spoken like a private code to the initiated – had the sound of words not yet fully accepted into common usage. They were words to be spoken in the same way as Mrs. Alexander Diddecott employed the latest slang she conscientiously learned from her nephew, Valentine, not certain that she'd got it right. Implied quotation marks hovered in the air like fluttering wings not strong enough to remain upright. Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster dispensed with quotation marks. He was writing the book for the first time, and he quoted no one. He just adapted other people's words a little, tweaking the nouns, and shuffling the phrases, rattling off what he had to say like Dr. Wycherley in
Hard Cash
as he studied Alfred Hardie.

“
Therefore
” – Dr. Wycherley asserted, with emphatic italicized certainty – “dissection of your talented son would doubtless reveal at this moment either steatomatous or atheromatous deposits in the cerebral blood-vessels, or an encysted abscess, probably of no very recent origin, or, at the least, considerable inspissation, and opacity, of the membranes of the encephalon, or more or less pulpy disorganization of one or other hemispheres of the brain …”

Dr. Wycherley, like Andrew Jackson Davis – well, when you were a celebrated Seer (particularly one from Poughkeepsie) you could make up your own rules – was clearly (not, perhaps, the best choice of word in view of this speech) a man who made up his own words because those that already existed were inadequate to express the wonder of what he had to say. Richard Hardie, Alfred's father, had understood “talented son would doubtless reveal at this moment”; he had understood “probably of no very recent origin, or, at the least” and “or more or less,” and that – er – more or less, was it. Above all, however – and this was all that really mattered – Richard Hardie had understood “dissection.” This was the word at which he grabbed with considerable alacrity. He'd be all in favor of dissection, he'd wield the scalpel himself then and there, anything to get Alfred out of the way, and his hands on his money. “Hold him down whilst I hack!” that would be the order, all keen to get cleaving, a Mr. Bones, the Butcher keeping the cutting within the family, gleefully gutting Master Bones. He'd chop away, like Albert Comstock unleashed on a freshly killed cow.