The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen (13 page)

“Get out of my HOUSE!” I scream at the top of my lungs, and I take hold of the table where they're sitting, grab it with both my hands and make ready to hurl it away, crashing it across the room in a righteous fury.

“Annatje?” someone says softly.

I look up, my eyes crazed with violence.

Mother is standing by the sliding door of the drawing room, her hand resting on the burled walnut that she chose for the wainscoting. She is giving me a curious look.

Panting, I look down at my hands, and find that they are resting on the card table that Mother left out from Papa's whist game last week. No one has been in the drawing room since then. There's a round stain where one of the corporation men left his sherry glass without a coaster. It looks dried and gray in the morning light.

“Is everything all right?” she asks me lightly.

I release the edge of the card table and smooth my hands down the front of my day dress.

“Of course, Mother,” I say with some difficulty.

“I thought I heard you shout, just now.”

I level my eyes at my mother's face and smile prettily at her.

“Shout?” I echo, as mildly as I can.

“Yes. I thought I heard you raise your voice, a moment ago.”

It's not like Mother to press the issue. Usually we maintain a tacit agreement that we will each pretend I do what I'm supposed to do, virtually all of the time. It's easier on both of us.

“I'm so sorry, Mother,” I say. “Perhaps you heard someone out in the street? A peddler? They're getting louder and louder, aren't they?”

She watches me for a long moment.

“Indeed they are,” she says after a time.

We stare at each other across the length of the drawing room, each wondering who is going to call me on my bluff.

At length she says, “Well. Beatrice is down. We're about to eat.”

“All right,” I say.

She's on the point of leaving, when she gives me a last long look and says, “Are you quite sure you're all right, Annie?”

Her unaccustomed use of my preferred name takes me aback, and I have to lean on the card table.

“I . . . I think so,” I say.

What I want to do is run to her, and have her hold me and tell me that I'm just having a bad dream within a bad dream. I want her to tell me that it's probably on account of my having too much Madeira, which I shouldn't have accepted from Mrs. Dudley at the corporation dinner, and it serves me right for indulging too much, and it's just this sort of thing that's made her consider joining the Temperance Society. I want to tell her that my cameo's missing, and beg her to help me find it, and I want to tell her that it was Herschel who gave it to me, and why.

“I think . . . perhaps, there's something the matter with my head,” I finish.

I bring my hand to my temple.

“Hmmph,” my mother sniffs, and her dismissal fills me with relief, as it is exactly what she would do, if we were really having this conversation. “In any case, there's coffee on the breakfast table.”

She whisks away down the hall, and I can hear the rustling of her skirts as she goes.

I lean myself ever so slightly to the left, so that I can see farther down the hall and confirm that she's really gone.

And then I grab up my skirts and run for the front door.

H
erschel,” I breathe as I blunder down the front steps of our town house and flop into the street. A carriage rattles by, and I throw myself out of its way. The horse, a bay mare with a grizzled muzzle, rolls its eye at me as it trots past.

I round the corner from First to the Bowery, into the morning crowds of the avenue. The traces of last night's revels have vanished, which is odd—I'd expected wet bunting and a stench of spoiled beer. Well, the stench of beer is there, but it usually is. Beer and urine and the salty smell of seawater, even though we're well inland from the waterfront. At least we're far enough in that it doesn't stink of fish.

Men stroll by in twos and threes, some women, too, and in front of the butcher shop a puppy steals a ham trotter and endures the abuse of a pigeon for his trouble. The day is cool and windless, and the sky is an unbroken palette of white.

“Hot corn!” a yellowish mulatta waif hollers to the men bustling by. “Hot corn, piping hot! Fresh out of the boiling pot!”

She's carrying a huge covered basket that smells enticingly of boiled maize ears. A few sporting bloods pause to notice her as she
strolls by. One gentleman in tight lacing and a tall hat lets his eye roam down her body in a frank, appreciative leer.

She stops, returning his look with just as much frankness.

“Hot corn, sir?” she asks him. She reaches into the basket, finds an ear browned in its husk, and holds it out to him.

“How much?” he asks, leaning nearer.

A knot of other men passes by, remarks on the exchange, and laughs. The tight-laced man straightens, red-faced, and lifts his hat to the passing men. Their laughter becomes an uproar.

The hot corn girl looks annoyed. They're going to cost her her business. After all, she's really selling two things. Already the tight-laced man is moving away as if they weren't in the midst of a negotiation.

“Here, I'll buy it,” I say to her. I'm hungry anyway.

The men all think this is a marvelous turn of events, and hoot and applaud like they're at a disreputable theater. A bright-colored woman in plaid happens by, an actress or someone pretending to be one, and joins in the merriment. One of the men puts his arm about her waist, and leans in to hear the price she whispers in his ear. It'll be more than the hot corn, I can tell.

“Fine,” the corn-selling girl says, ignoring them. I fish a penny out of my skirt pocket and press it into her palm. She hands over the ear.

As I take it, I look at her. She's shorter than me, about Beattie's size, but I can see that she's older than Beattie. Maybe older than me, but not by much. Her cheekbones are so sharp I can see them clearly through her skin, and her eyebrows and hair are wiry.

“Thanks,” I say to her with a nod.

“Hmmph,” the girl grunts, uninterested in my charity. She turns away, and resumes her cry of “Hot corn! Piping hot! Hot corn!”

I peel the husk back and take a bite, wandering south on Bowery. It won't take long for me to reach Herschel's uncle's
schmatte
shop. I have money for thread. The corn is rich and sweet, and I chew
contentedly, pausing every so often to spit corn gristle into the sewer along the center of the avenue. I'm starting to feel better. It must have been the Madeira, honestly. I didn't realize I'd had so much. Mrs. Dudley kept refilling my glass over and over, teasing me about when I'd get married, and tickling me to make me tell her about my beaux, and I was so afraid I'd say something to give myself away about Herschel that I kept reaching for my wineglass so I wouldn't have to talk. And then it was time to dash for the dais, and . . .

I pause, looking at the overlapping posters pasted up on the brick wall of a haberdasher. Ads for theatrical productions, sheet music, lumber, cigars, rum, molasses, rewards for slaves run away, a notice for a political meeting. I take another big bite of my corn and chew, wiping my lips with the back of my hand as I look closer.

STOP THE MARCH OF TIME
, it reads. Underneath the heading there's a rough engraving of a barge in flames. Then there's a time listed for a meeting, and the signature of the notice reads
UNITED BROTHERH
OOD OF LUDD
—

The rest is torn off.

I frown.

“And how are you today, my dear?” whispers a voice in my ear.

I turn and spy a man with a huge round belly straining at the buttons of his waistcoat and spindle legs, his mustache growing into the hair on his cheeks. He's looking at my chest. All the blood vessels in his potato-nose have burst long ago.

With a sigh of disgust I throw my corncob into the street and start to walk downtown.

“Hey,” the man says, trotting after me. “I'm askin' you a question.”

I hunch up my shoulders to make my chest smaller, and walk faster.

“Hey! Girlie!” He's catching up. I can hear his breath huffing through his hideous nose.

“Leave me alone!” I shout, and a few heads turn from passersby noticing, and then deciding not to intervene.

“Look here,” he says, reaching for my elbow, but before he can get his hands on me I break into a dead run.

“Hey!” he hollers. “Why'd you walk so slow, if you didn't wanna talk to me?”

A few people scatter in the street, opening a path before me in surprise. A dog barks and nips at my heel, tearing away a mouthful of lace from my underskirts.

My arms pump, my breath coming hard and fast in my chest, and even though the cool autumn air whistles through the cross streets, mixing air from the river into the city miasma, a sheen of sweat beads on my forehead as I run, skirting rickety stairwells and wives out marketing and bands of frock-coated bloods lounging in the doors of victualing houses with oyster shells heaped at their feet.

Herschel,
I think, my eyes smarting with tears.
Herschel, I have to see you.

I run faster and faster, and the Bowery blurs around me, faces and horses and barrels and baskets and hanging hunks of meat for sale and theater marquees all smearing into an indistinct mass as I fly past.

I gasp for breath in the rhythm of his name,
Her
on the inhale,
schel
on the exhale, and as I run the pale morning sky descends slowly, transforming by degrees into a fog rolling up the streets. I almost trip over a rut in the cross street, my skirt ripping on the heel of my slipper when I catch myself, but I keep running. The fog coils thicker, so thick I can feel it against my face. Before long the path by the shopfronts is completely swallowed with mist, and the sounds of the street life have deadened.

I slow to a walk, my hands pressed to my ribs against the painful stitch that's digging into them. My breath comes in short gasps. The fog rolls nearer.

I stop walking.

There's no one on the street. I'm alone, completely enclosed in a veil of fog. I strain my ears, listing for the telltale calls of pineapple sellers, children scavenging the trash heaps for bits of rope and broken nails, peddlers' carts creaking past, black fortune-tellers selling numbers for policy, whores hustling the men coming out of coffeehouses.

There's nothing.

I rub deeper into my rib cage, frowning.

I'm surrounded by dead silence.

“Well,” I say aloud to myself. “If that don't beat all.”

I wait for what feels like a long time for the fog to lift. These fogs happen sometimes, though usually not this far uptown, and usually not this far from the wharves. This is oyster-selling fog. Ocean fog.

The stitch in my side finally subsides, and I smooth my pigtails back into place and wipe the sweat from under my eyes. Lottie will kill me, with the sweat stains I'm leaving on this dress. I bend down to inspect the damage to the hem, and find it not too bad. A roll and a few stitches, and it'll be too short for me, but Beattie can wear it. It's too small for me anyway, and we've let it out twice already.

I start walking again, with some care, as the fog is so thick I'm having trouble telling what direction I'm going. But I know the way to Herschel's store as well as my way to Hudson Square, or to the ferry landing, or the Battery. I know it as well as I know the path from our room to Ed's, or from the kitchen door to the privy. I'll find him.

I keep walking.

My feet carry me for a long time. I'm not sure how long, as the fog stays heavy, but I feel myself begin to get tired. And the corn hasn't held me hardly at all. I want dinner. I want Herschel to give his uncle some kind of excuse so that we can slip off a few blocks away and find a beer hall that serves cured ham. Course, Herschel can't eat ham.
Well, Herschel will have to go despite himself. Ham is what I'm hungry for. Or bacon! I should've stopped for some bacon before leaving. I don't know why I was in such a rush, only . . .

My ruminations on dinner are interrupted by the thinning of the fog, ever so slightly. I peer ahead, trying to make out where I am. I should be at Chatham Square by now. Or past it, even. Well past. I could have walked all the way to the water, by mistake, though you can generally hear the rigging and the seagulls and the ships creaking, between all the hubbub of the wharves and stalls and junk shops.

I can almost recognize where I am. I hurry forward, into the thinning patch that is opening before me.

It's the stoop of a town house, that much I know. There's no one about on the street. The block is deserted and silent. I squint, trying to make out more details of the house. I walk faster, picking my skirts up in my fists, then dashing up to the stoop to stare at the building's face.

It's my house.

“But how did I . . .” I trail off.

I spin about where I'm standing, but there's no one there, and just outside the periphery of the front stoop, the fog is just as thick.

I scratch in my curls.

“I got turned around,” I explain to myself. “In the fog, I got turned around someways.”

I stand on the stoop for a long minute, chewing my lip. The truth is, I'm feeling awfully tired. It was a long night, after all. All that Madeira. Perhaps it would be wiser to go inside and rest. Perhaps I should look for the cameo in my room, and rest, and collect my thoughts, and perhaps I can bribe Winston to carry a message to Herschel, to meet me at a theater we've gone to before, where we can sit in a corner and kiss and no one cares. Winston carries messages for me sometimes. Winston excels at never letting on, when he sees things. Willful blindness is almost as good as trust.

I mount the steps to the house and try the door.

It's locked. I don't have my key, of course, but someone's always home.

I rap on the door with my fist first, and when that doesn't work, I take hold of the brass knocker and give it a good loud
knock knock knock
.

I wait, listening for the telltale shuffle of Lottie's feet on the stairs.

There's no answer.

I try again.
Knock. Knock. Knock.

The house has a dead sound, as though it were completely empty, not only of people, but of furniture, and all hint of life.

“Hello?” I shout up to the windows. “Ed?”

My brother's room looks over the street, since my parents are less concerned with the modesty of an eight-year-old boy than with their potentially wayward daughters. If he's upstairs playing or at his lessons, he should certainly hear me.

“Ed! I'm locked out!” I scream at the top of my lungs.

The house makes no reply.

Muttering, I hurry down the front steps and around the side alley, through the gate to the kitchen garden in back. I exhale a long sigh of relief when I spy Winston chopping wood next to the chicken coop. Mother likes to keep chickens because it reminds her of when she was a girl, in Connecticut. But it'd be cheaper just to buy them.

“Winston?” I call out.

Winston doesn't hear me. He lifts the ax overhead with an air of barely restrained rage that even I can see, and seeing anything about him is difficult, as the fog is thicker back here. He brings it down with a grunt, and the log splits. Winston's saving up money to buy his wife, who labors as a housemaid for a man at my father's bank. She costs ninety dollars. So far he's saved seventy-one.

He hoists it out of the stump underneath, and lifts it overhead
again, and brings it down with a thwack. Over and over and over and over and over again. Like Sisyphus, pushing the boulder up the hill. The woodpile never seems to get smaller. The chopped pile never seems to get larger. The chopping of wood will never end for a man of all work with an indentured baby daughter and an enslaved wife.

“Winston?” I try again.

I edge nearer, and see that it's not the fog that's making Winston hard to see. Winston is hard to see because Winston almost doesn't seem to be fully there. He lifts the ax overhead, and I can see through the ax head to the fence beyond. He brings it down, and the curve of Winston's back blends in with the chicken coop beyond. My eyes widen.

As I watch, Winston seems to fade, like a newspaper bleached and curling in the sun. He keeps lifting and chopping, lifting and chopping, but with each blow he gets less visible, until even the sound of his chopping drifts away. Presently Winston retreats to the barest outline of himself, as if drawn in watery ink, and then on a passing breeze he blows away.

I stand for a long time in the kitchen garden, staring at the spot where he used to be.

I'm alone.

The vegetables are all gone. The fat gourds and pumpkins that we usually have in October are gone, the garden bricked over and desolate, interrupted only by the rustle of dead leaves.

I wrap my arms around myself, hugging tightly. The wind picks up, blowing my skirts against my legs and my curls into my mouth.

Slowly I turn and walk back down the alley to the front of the house.

As I round the corner onto the street, I spy a dark figure at the front door. He's young and slight, and I can't see his face, but he's holding a knife.