The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen (14 page)

“Hey!” I shout. “What are you doing?”

The figure turns to stare at me with a start, stabs the knife into the wood of the door so hard it sticks, and flees down the stairs.

“Wait!” I yell, running after him. “Wait! Who are you? What do you want?”

Whoever he is vanishes into the dense wall of fog just beyond the circle made by the front stoop of my house. I'm on the point of following him, but I'm loath to step into the fogbank again. What if I get lost?

What if I can't find my way out?

I stare at the carved wooden door of our house. The knife jutting out from the door pins in place a folded paper fastened closed with a red smear of sealing wax. I mount the stairs to rip the offending paper off the door and observe that the seal in the wax is shaped like an old-fashioned spindle.

It's the note. The one we found on the door last week.

The same note.

Papa wouldn't let anyone see it when it came.

He crumpled it in his hand and cried, “Eleanor!” in a way that I had never heard him address my mother before. And more importantly, she'd come. They'd spoken not more than five minutes and then Mother had emerged from the drawing room, handed a folded paper to Winston to carry to Hudson Square and said to me brightly, “Well! Better pack.”

This is the note that sent us running to my aunt's house.

It's not the day after the Aquatic Celebration.

It's the week before.

My blood thuds in my ears. I slowly mount the steps of our town house and reach my hand forward to pluck the note from the knife.

But before my hand can touch the paper, something strange happens.

The door begins to melt.

It looks like the door is sculpted of mud, and a sudden hard rain has come up. The door dribbles down itself under my hand, the knocker and the handle and the carving sliding down the surface of it and pulling apart while I watch. In moments our heavy wooden front door is gone, and the note and knife vanished with it. The slurry runs into crevices in the brick, pouring down the steps and oozing around my feet. Speechless, I take a step backward and nearly topple off the top step. I catch myself by grabbing on to a cheap metal railing that wasn't there before.

Behind our door is a glass one that I've never seen. It has a metal handle, and I can see through it into what had been our entryway, but I don't recognize anything inside. Our wood floor has been replaced with some kind of odd-looking tile, and our curving stair is gone. Next to the glass door stands a row of little brass cubbies with names written on them. And to the right, jutting out where our front gated garden used to be, is a wall of glass, lit with that glaring white light I saw in our drawing room before, with the same little tables and stained mirror. Behind the tables I can see a long counter, with racks of pies covered in cheese. But all the people are gone.

“This isn't happening,” I explain to myself, and I'm pleasantly surprised by how reasonable I sound.

I turn around, keeping perfectly calm, and proceed down the steps with my head held high.

When I reach the walkway, I break into a dead run and flee into the fog. I run and I run and I run and I run, not caring where I'm going, not turning corners or looking, seeing nothing, until my chest is bursting and my stitch is back and I have to stop, leaning over, my hands on my knees, panting like a dog in summer.

The fog parts, and when I look up, I find myself back in front of our house again.

I roll my head back on my shoulders and laugh aloud.

“All right!” I scream at the top of my lungs. Screaming feels really good. I never get to scream. And none of this is really happening anyway, so why not?

“ALL RIGHT!” I bellow, and my voice echoes deadly off the face of my home. “I give up! Are you happy now?”

I don't know who I'm talking to. Myself, I suppose.

Chuckling with relief, I walk over and plop down on the stoop.

Obviously, one of two things is happening. One, I've gotten yellow fever and I am at this very moment lying-in in my aunt's house, out of my head with delirium. This is a distinct possibility, as yellow fever rips through Herschel's tenement in the Sixth Ward every summer. It's a wonder I didn't get it sooner, frankly. I probably danced too much at the Aquatic Display, and certainly drank too much, and the fever took over and I collapsed. In which case, this will all be over soon, because I will either recover, or I'll be dead.

The other possibility is that I've gone mad.

I'm less persuaded by this possibility. People don't go mad all at once, do they? Isn't madness more of a gradual kind of thing? Maybe you wake up one morning not quite yourself, and the next morning you're even less yourself, and then before you know it you're not yourself at all. I've seen mad people, of course. They take them in at the almshouse, which is why most sane paupers would sooner live with eleven strangers in a wet cellar. They turn up in the street, too, roaming about, muttering to themselves, getting beaten with a walking stick when they steal a bread crust from a coffeehouse table in the open street.

Of course, if a body goes mad, perhaps one doesn't know it? Perhaps it's the persuasion of sanity that truly marks a madwoman. I muse on this idea for a long while, my fingers knitted over my knees, leaning back against the step and gazing up into the blank white sky.

If I am mad, in a sense, it could be fun. My parents will still have to care for me. They'd never cast me out, certainly not while Papa has his political designs. I won't be responsible for myself at all. I can do or say whatever I like. I can go see Herschel and not have to pretend I'm not!

At the thought of Herschel, though, my face darkens.

He'd never want to be with a madwoman. Who would?

Herschel's not allowed to be with me, anyway. His family won't allow it. They don't marry outside their
schul
.

I look down at my hands, at my naked finger where my cameo ought to be.

If I'm reliving the day the note was stabbed to our door, then it's the same day Herschel gives me the ring. Perhaps that's where my cameo is. Perhaps he hasn't given it to me yet. But how can he give it to me, if I'm trapped here?

How will anyone ever find me, in all this fog? If nobody ever finds me, what will happen then?

I shiver, huddling within myself and pulling my arms to my chest behind my updrawn legs. I sink my head down, resting my forehead on my knees.

I have to think.

I have to figure this out.

A long time passes, I don't know how long, before I hear a young male voice say, “Hey! Hi!”

I look up, my eyes dazzled with hope. I've been found!

“Herschel?” I say, my voice catching in my throat. My heart thuds twice in quick succession.

The fog has thinned just beyond the stoop where I'm sitting, and I can barely make out the figure of a boy slouching toward me. There's something familiar about him, but I can't see his face.

“Huh?” the boy says.

He pauses inside the thickest edge of fog, and I can tell by his movements that he's looking around to see who I'm talking to. I stare hard at him, trying to see him clearly. But it's not who I thought it was.

“Oh!” I exclaim, my heart sinking. I withdraw behind my knees for protection. If he puts his hands on me, there's nowhere for me to go. I can't run. There's no one to help.

“Hey, no. I'm sorry,” the boy rushes to say. I can admit that he sounds friendly. Jolly, even. And not in a sporting way. “I'm Wes,” he goes on. “From the other night. Remember?”

“Wes,” I say slowly.

He acts like we've known each other before. By now he's moved out of the fog and I can see him clearly. And it's true, there's something warm and familiar about him. Tall, much taller than Herschel. Taller even than Papa. Sandy-colored, with freckles. But he's in ill-fitting short pants, which is puzzling considering his age, and no waistcoat. He'd look like a beggar, in such clothes, if he weren't so clean. He's cleaner than me, even. The skin of his face is scrubbed and pink, beardless, and his hair stands up in a mop like Herschel's. I like it better than the oiled-down look that so many men affect. He's not even wearing a hat.

“Yeah. Um. I was here with that other guy? Filming the séance. Last week?” He looks into my eyes, hunting for recognition. He seems like he really wants me to remember. But surely I would remember, meeting this strange boy.
Film
is not a verb, first off. And I certainly haven't been to a “séance,” whatever that is. But it's hard to resist his certainty that we're already friends. I feel the pull of him and find myself wanting to remember. Unless of course, and this is a distinct possibility, this boy does not exist at all. In fact, there is quite a decent chance that this boy is a figment of my imagination, who I have conjured out of the mist because I am lonely, and that
he's familiar because he's just a part of my mind. If that's true, which it almost certainly is, then it's doubly rude to send him away. Not only rude, but foolish, since who knows if I'd be able to conjure up anyone else?

“The séance,” I repeat as though I know what he's talking about. Then I make my best show of remembering. “Oh yes! I remember. Of course.”

He looks worried. The figment of my imagination is sensitive.

“Are you okay?” the boy asks.

“Okay?” I echo. What does that mean? Am I . . . what? “I was just waiting,” I correct him.

“I was actually hoping I'd see you again,” he says, moving nearer.

The figment of my imagination is also charming. I smile prettily at him. Silly figment.

“You were?” I say.

“Definitely,” Wes insists with what I imagine he thinks is great authority. “In fact, it was absolutely imperative that I find you. Did you know that?”

“Aw,” I say, lowering my lashes to let him know that I'm on to his tricks. “You're teasing me. You're not really here.”

“Sure I am.” He looks hurt.

As if to prove a point he comes over and sits on the stoop, his knees drawn up next to mine. His shoes are odd. I'm trying to figure out what makes them so odd when he interrupts me by digging his elbow into my ribs.

“See?” he says.

It certainly feels like a real elbow. I look at him warily. I'm not sure if I want him to be real or not. There's something disconcerting, about being so at ease with a boy I've just met. But then, if he
is
real, perhaps he can help me sort out what's going on. He doesn't seem troubled by the fog in the slightest. Fog does happen, from time
to time. And it can be very disorienting. Ships dash themselves on rocks all the time, when they get lost in the fog. What if nothing is wrong with me at all? What if I'm experiencing nothing more odious than the strange intersection of weather and Madeira after a night's revels?

A slender thread of relief unwinds inside me, as if he'd found the loose end and is pulling to unravel an ugly shawl in my soul. I laugh at the pleasure of it, and poke him in the ribs in return.

“So how did you find me?” I want to know. “Wes.”

I certainly haven't heard his name before. It sounds strange to me, or made up, but then a lot of the boys and girls in other neighborhoods have names that sound strange to someone whose family was English or Dutch. I'd never heard the name Herschel before, either.

“It wasn't easy,” he says, leaning in as if to draw me into a conspiracy. “Given that I don't know your name.”

Oh, figment. You think you are so clever.

“Wes,” I repeat, to let him know that I see through his transparent ruse. “Is that a nickname?”

“Maybe,” he replies, and waggles his eyebrows like the villain in a play.

I look him full in the face, smiling, not saying anything, letting him know in no uncertain terms that I expect him to tell me his real name before I tell him mine. But he's waiting, too, and looking back at me just as frankly. A long challenging minute passes with us staring into each other's eyes. The minute goes on too long, begins to make me nervous, but then we both collapse in laughter.

“So, listen,” he says. “This may sound really weird, but I did have to find you.”

“Weird?” I say, puzzled. I'm not used to hearing that word used so casually. Weird means magical, like the weird sisters in
Macbeth
.

He doesn't see why I'm confused, though.

“I mean. It's not a big deal or anything,” he continues, mollifying me. But his manner of speaking sounds odd, to my ears. I know the words he uses, but they seem wrong somehow.

He produces a funny-looking saddlebag, fastened in a way I haven't seen. He opens it and roots around inside. After a minute he produces a sheet of notepaper and he attempts to smooth out the creases before handing it to me.

“I just need you to sign this. I'm sorry. I should have done it when I was here before.”

I stare at the paper. It looks something like a bill of sale, not that I've ever had to sign one before. It uses the word “whereas” a lot, and talks about rights to “the image, now and in perpetuity, in any manner of storage or retrieval now extant or devised in the future.”

But the words aren't the strangest part.

The words are
typeset
.

Papa's bank contracts are well drawn by his clerks, but they're never typeset. And the paper is so smooth and white it doesn't look real.

I have no idea what it means. I look at him quizzically.

“I mean”—his cheeks are burning bright pink, which I find rather charming—“I'm just as glad I didn't. Remember to get you to sign it, I mean. Before. Because then I had to . . .”

He can't finish his thought, so caught up is he in staring at me. Herschel wouldn't like it, seeing another boy stare at me so. I shouldn't like it, either. But I do. I feel like I glisten when Wes looks at me like that. I wait, not sure what I should do.