The Aviary (17 page)
“Well, Harriet, I’ve lived in this city half my life, and I’ve never seen a crowd like that in Lockhaven on a Thursday afternoon,” Ruby was saying as Clara entered the kitchen.
“Crowds?” asked Clara. “What for?”
“They’re showing a moving picture downtown,” Ruby told her. “They call it
The Great Train Robbery
. The old theater had lines around the block, and the trolleys are full!”
“Did you fear we were never coming home?” asked her mother.
“Oh, Mama,” answered Clara, “but you always
do
come home.”
Her mother seemed satisfied with this remark until something about Clara seemed to catch her eye. “Turn around,” she said.
Clara did, once.
“Whatever has happened to your hem?” Her mother knelt behind Clara and picked up the edge of her dress. “There’s a hole here big as a half-dollar.”
“Is there?”
“Yes,” she said. “Surely you heard it rip. How did you do it?”
Clara shrugged. “I can mend it myself.”
“I’m not concerned about the mending,” said her mother. “I’m concerned with how you managed to tear your clothing.”
“I can’t tell you how I did it,” Clara said evenly, though she could feel the heat rise in her cheeks. Today had already been full of too much novelty, and in her tired state Clara believed she might betray some emotion she would later regret.
Her mother bit the inside of her mouth, considered, and rose. “All right,” she said. “As long as you do mend it.”
Clara looked at her hands and hid them. Her nails were dirty, and she felt the dust of the boiler room clinging to her skin.
“It’s best you change out of those clothes before supper,” her mother said, looking her up and down. “And I think you could do with a bath as well.”
The days had lengthened enough to provide a dreamy, lingering twilight, and Clara loved delaying the lighting of lamps. Through the clerestory window above the tub, she
saw the sky turning dusky blue, then soft purple. It seemed like a good time to talk to Cenelia Glendoveer.
“Mrs. Glendoveer, I’m going to open your album tonight. I hope that’s all right, seeing that you did trust me with your locket and the key. I’m trying to help your children. Do you understand?”
No sign manifested from the departed, which made Clara feel a little silly. The world had so changed for her that she could find herself chatting up the air one moment and wondering about her sanity the next. However, no news was better than “no” itself, and Clara took extra candles to her room that evening, intent on poring over Cenelia Glendoveer’s secret book.
With some difficulty, she managed to work the tiny key in the album’s lock. When she lifted it to read, a litter of crushed blossoms crumbled onto her lap. Whatever these flowers were part of—a wedding bouquet, perhaps?—must have been important to Mrs. Glendoveer.
Carefully, Clara lifted her nightgown, gathered the dried stuff in a pile, placed it in a neat heap, and tied it in a hankie. On returning, she found the album had opened where it would—on the photograph of baby Elliot that Mrs. Glendoveer herself had shown her.
She could not resist tracing the child’s face with her finger. Everything about him was round—his eyes, his nostrils, and his little rosebud mouth. It was impossible for Clara to imagine him as a man.
On the next pages she found a watercolor of a train
engine spouting steam by young George William, a certificate of scholastic merit for Frances, a list for Santa from Arthur specifying a bow and arrow, tracings of Peter’s hands decorated as Thanksgiving turkeys, and a lock of Helen’s soft pale hair clasped in a pink ribbon.
“When you and Father come home,”
read one postcard,
“you will get a good report from Nanny on everyone but Arthur. He rolled his hoop in the parler and broke your Stafordshire spaniel, but now he regrets it and wants to buy one new before you return. He asks or would you rather have his dimes from Xmas?
“Arthur’s seckretary, GEORGE.”
The items were little things that mothers collect and cherish—bits from the everyday life of a happy household full of children. Clara was glad to be able to see these relics from the past and appreciate them for what they were, but she saw nothing that one might feel it necessary to hide. What could be the cause of Mrs. Glendoveer’s secrecy?
The last remaining item was substantial: a square green cardboard envelope with twine-and-button enclosures stuffed full. Opening it, she found a pile of yellow paper that she supposed might be correspondence. The edges of the paper were ragged as if ripped from a ledger. Attached to the front with a straight pin was a note.
At George’s request, I have destroyed all descriptions of his original work, their sketches, and detailed directions
.
He insisted that no one be privy to the secrets of his trade, not only because he was their legal proprietor but also because he did not wish to encourage young people who might try to follow in his footsteps. It may be said that he no longer believed in magic, but I think it is more precise to say he no longer felt satisfaction in producing amazements for crowds of strangers. Strangers had not been kind to him, and whatever magic he was able to practice was nothing compared to what had been taken from him
.
What remains here are his private thoughts, significant for me and perhaps for an heir who might be restored to us. We live in hope
.
Cenelia Newsom Glendoveer
The following page was dated November 29, 1855.
We have had one week at home, although I do not recognize it as the same place, for it has never been so silent. I cannot comfort Cenelia, who tears at my sleeve if I attempt to touch her shoulder. She blames me utterly, and I cannot convince
her that the suspicions she has harbored for so long are delusions
.
She has insisted that Woodruff never set foot in our house at Lockhaven again. I asked her, “What reason shall I give him?” He has been steadfast as a brother to me during this nightmare. His readiness to be of assistance with the newspapers, to organize searches—even to offer a most substantial reward for our children’s return—has not moved her
.
I could not, in my current state, have battled the rumors that came thick and fast when the children disappeared. Many assumed that because I made my living by “tricks,” I would not be above staging the stealing of my children to draw attention to myself. Some said I did so in order to save the European tour—as if we weren’t already adding appearances and turning audiences away. Why people invent these theories is beyond me, but Woodruff answered them, point for point
.
Yet Cenelia still insists that he does not have our best interests at heart. And now that the worst is known, she takes this as a confirmation of his iniquity
.
I wonder, how did I arrive at this
place? My house is now a tomb. My sweet wife (whose sympathies were once unfailing) now growls such odious words in her misery. And always with me are the images: our children’s bodies discovered and brought home in a wagon; their mother laying a hand on the sheet covering her son’s face. I was not the only one to hear her say:
“I hope I live to see
him
dead.”
The sergeant’s face went white, and the people with their coats buttoned over their nightclothes, standing on their toes to witness the horror, already started to whisper
.
I could not bring myself to tell them all that she was cursing Woodruff Booth. My wife had gone out of her mind with grief. Little did I know that through my silence, the infamy we had suffered would only deepen and spread
.
The words, now distorted, come back to us in scrawled anonymous letters, in poisonous questions from investigators. Witnesses have sworn they heard Cenelia declare: “I hoped to live to see them dead”—as if these vile murders were a fulfillment of a mother’s wish
.
These were our children, whom we loved beyond measure! It defies logic. And the accusations! My dabbling in black magic? Blood sacrifices to demons? The people who used to flock to see my magic have now let blossom every vile superstition and turned on us in an instant
.
I have no one living to console me or to console. Oh, that I were able to be with my own children, even if it required keeping company with the dead.…
G G
Clara took in every scene as George Glendoveer described it. Imagining Mrs. Glendoveer in anguish, viewing her children’s dead bodies while onlookers gossiped, was almost too painful to contemplate. But now to get a glimpse of George’s broken spirit as well? She wished she had been there to take his hand. Why had Mrs. Glendoveer cut her husband off from his closest friend and confidant? And how unfortunate for Woodruff Booth to be so vilified. Maybe, Clara thought, George Glendoveer was right: there are some sorrows so heavy, they make people come undone.
There were other entries where George wrote for pages without punctuation, trying to capture all the impressions of his children before they slipped from memory. Some of the writing was difficult to decipher. In places, it
was splashed with tears. As time went on, the record showed that he did his best to be patient with his distraught wife. When George stated that he was relieved to see his wife distracting herself with needlework during the sleepless nights, Clara felt the prickle of recognition:
Like the women in her family who came before her, Cenelia has dedicated herself to embroidering a mourning picture to memorialize our children. I am happy to see her employed in something that always gave her pleasure, but she has told me that when the picture is finished, she will lay down her needle forever
.
I asked her to remember that until we have proof to the contrary, we can always hope that Elliot will be returned to us. “If Elliot returns,” she said, “I will take him from this house and never let him leave the safety of my arms.” She said this, I thought, with bitterness toward me, but when I attempted once more to reach out my hand to her, she startled me by grabbing it and covering it with kisses. I knelt and held her. I do not know how long we lingered, clutching each other, shaking with tears.…
The embroidered picture of the Glendoveers’ tombstones still lay hidden in Clara’s drawer. She took it out and saw it with new eyes. The blue rectangle under the water might be Mrs. Glendoveer’s way of leaving room for baby Elliot. Apparently, she did not know whether to include him with the dead.
Clara thought about the birds outside sleeping in the moonlight. Even after their parents’ deaths, they held the hope of finding their baby brother. But what perplexed Clara was, why were these trapped souls still pursuing the quest to recover him? What could result from it? The family had been torn apart, betrayed. Nothing could be put back where it was, with George and Cenelia Glendoveer now in the crypt.
The birds’ urgency made Clara weary and sad. The time had long passed for mending, and she wondered how the Glendoveer children would ever find peace.
The next day, whenever Clara could steal a minute to herself, she would return to the green envelope with George Glendoveer’s writings. Because most of the pages were neither numbered nor dated, she couldn’t determine how large a portion of the diary Mrs. Glendoveer had destroyed.
George mentioned at times his absorption in study, but his notes were cryptic, referring to some text known only as
The Book of H
. On several pages, he had drawn out pictures in neat rows with
SPELL FROM THE PAHERI TOMB
written beneath. Clara could make out several birds and the figure of a reclining man, but many of the drawings looked merely like scribbles.
She started to feel she would need the assistance of a scholar to get even an inkling of what George Glendoveer meant. And then she found this page:
It is done. My forty-nine days have expired, and the souls can no longer be called back. As for the incantations, even if I were to consult every document available to me in the West, I wouldn’t know if the translations of
The Book of H
are faulty. I can only decipher the pictograms in English as they are presented to me
.
Have I succeeded in mastering
actual
magic? Until now, I have been an artist, a performer, a craftsman. I am a rationalist—or at least I was. Now afternoons find me sitting outside the aviary on my folding chair, waiting for the birds to give me a sign
.
On occasion, I think I glimpse my Frances. Of them all, she is most likely to show a spark, and I am borne up by what I imagine are attempts to speak. Her facility with languages was impressive, and the stirrings in her throat are such an odd mixture of vowels, such as I never heard from a bird
.
If I have saved the children in time, I hope also to save them
for
time. The soul of my youngest does not return, and I cannot fathom whether it is through some fault of mine in summoning him
,
or whether he still lives. I must impress upon Cenelia that the birds are to be cared for without stinting. She has put my words in a place where she shall not lose them. I’ve done my utmost, and as fervently as I desire our reunion, I cannot expect it. We shall see what comes of my work, or what does not come
.
Together always to the last
,
Our love shall hold each other fast
.
Delivered from the frost and foam
,
None shall fly till all come home
.
G G
