The Swan Gondola (22 page)

“The same?” Cecily said.

“He's Billy Wakefield with a
y
,” the sister said, “and I'm Billie Wakefield with an
ie
. He's William. I'm Wilhelmina.”

“You two don't look so much alike,” I said.

“Oh, we don't?” said Billie with an
ie
. “Are you sure? Well, that's strange. I always thought we did.” She pulled down her sleeve to cover her hand and held out a silver spoon and clawed at the air with it. “Now do I look like Billy?” she said.

“Not in front of the children, Pickle,” Billy said. “They aren't accustomed to your ugly wit.” Cecily and I paused, but then we laughed a little, because they weren't truly being cruel to each other. We both slouched deeper into the sofa cushions, and I daresay we could've stayed there for days. Wakefield was a man I could look up to. He was likely in his forties, and I admired him and his inventions, his novelty tornados, his giant miniature battleships. For him, entertainment was an expensive hobby, not a means of living. He could devote himself to his imagination.

And I admired the clutter of his crooked library—though the walls were curved like all the other walls of the strange house, the bookcases weren't. The bookcases, all different widths and heights, the tops of them stacked with even more books, overlapped in places, as if they'd been shaken away from the wall by an earthquake. And I could tell the books were read, not just collected, by the way they were shoved onto the shelves when not another book could possibly fit. Bookmarks and strings poked out the tops of them. Their pages were torn and stuffed back in, their covers were warped from having been left out in the rain. And the room had that rich, dusty, sweet smell of old pages constantly fluttered open, that cloud of vanilla and tobacco that watered your eyes.

“You know what you oughta do?” I said, feeling a little drunk. The old man had refilled my snifter too, and I'd shot the brandy back in one swift gulp. “You oughta put your cyclone in its own booth on the midway. Cecily could learn her way around it. She could be the star. The Girl Caught in the Tornado. She would get swept up in it and dance her way right back out of it.” Of course I never wanted Cecily within two steps of that tornado ever again, but I was happy I'd suggested it, as it seemed to please Cecily to picture herself in such a show. With Doxie nestled in the crook of her arm, Cecily looked up and off, the snifter of brandy at her lips.

“You're a natural-born humbug artist,” Billy Wakefield said. He sat in a wing chair by the fireplace. “Speaking of that,” he said, “let's talk about Oscar.”

“And with that I retire to my cold, lonely quarters,” Billie said, standing. She held her snifter out to the old man for another pour before leaving. “I mean no disrespect, Ferret, but there's nothing I despise more than a ventriloquist. There's just something quite unsettling about those dolls, wouldn't you say? It almost seems they can see out of those glass eyes. If you sell my brother your dummy, I will throttle you with my bare hands. Good night, children,” and with that little threat, she left.

•   •   •

I
DIDN'T WANT TO TALK
about Oscar either. I could see him in my head, sitting there alone in the hallway, slumped forward in the chair, waiting for my breath of life. There were indeed objects I'd grown attached to in my lifetime but only a very few: the letter my mother had tucked into my baby blanket when she'd abandoned me, the pipe that Cecily smoked onstage on the very first night I ever spoke to her. And Oscar.

The impulse to sell him suddenly seemed like a dark one. It was human nature to grow attached to a possession. In fact, it was
in
human to have no affection of any kind for the pieces of your life you carried around with you. I felt a kind of loyalty to Oscar. To sell him meant I put no value on my own personal history, my own memories. I wanted Oscar right there, always on my knee, until I looked as old and raggedy as he did.

“Oh look, the war,” I said, to steer the conversation off. The
Omaha Evening Bee
had been tossed onto the Persian rug. The news of our victory in Cuba had stirred the day's patriotism into a fever pitch. By not spending our day at the Fair, we'd avoided endless parades stomping over our feet. I read aloud the headline: “‘All warships but one blown up and are burning on the beach—pride of Spain's navy meets the same sad fate as the lamented
Maine.
'”

And even as I read it, I wished I'd kept quiet. I thought about Wakefield's toy ship on the lagoon, and I suddenly felt embarrassed for even having taken part in his Carnival. “This is independence?” I said. “Getting into fights just so we can win something? That's freedom?”

“War is necessary to the national temperament,” Billy Wakefield said.

“Then why aren't we all too sad to do anything today?” I said. “Why doesn't it wreck our temperament every time a soldier gets himself riddled with bullets?”

“Because the military man dies for his love of country,” Wakefield said. “He dies as an American soldier, not as a civilian like you and me. We celebrate him as a hero. And we show our respect for the family by letting the widows, the children, weep alone.
Respect
. We allow them to be prideful in their private grief. When a widow, shrouded in black, crosses your path, you feel the full weight of her sacrifice. You and me, Ferret, we couldn't begin to understand it all. We're not soldiers. We're not even soldiers' wives. It's a different heart, a different love. We can't fathom it.”

“Oh,
I
understand it, every bit of it,” Cecily said, stretching her arm to hold out her empty glass for the old man. Doxie held her arm out too, reaching for the glass herself. But Cecily was already slurring her words, and Wakefield shook his head discreetly at the servant, and the servant stayed still. “War is all about
men
acting like
kings
,” Cecily said, bringing her empty glass back to try to get one last drop from it. “And we women get to worship, is all. When a man loses a wife, he marries again in a few months.” I looked to Wakefield to see if he might be offended by Cecily's mention of a dead wife. But he didn't flinch. He didn't move at all. I knew that Cecily knew about Wakefield's tragedies—we'd only just spoken of them on the long streetcar ride. I pinched her leg, hoping to remind her. “For a few weeks,” Cecily said, “he wears a black hatband. But a woman loses somebody, she's hat to boot in a black weeping veil for two years. And you can't just mourn a husband; you gotta mourn every old uncle and cousin too. And your cousins' cousins. My mother was from a sickly family, and she started wearing black when my daddy died too young, and she'll go to her grave in black. Not me, boy. If I married a dead soldier, you'd see me out in that parade, proud of my man.”

I still had some brandy in my glass, so I poured a few swallows of it into Cecily's. I kissed her cheek. “I'm sorry about your daddy,” I said.

“Miss Cecily,” Wakefield said, “it is because women have such strength that they must mourn for us. If a man is allowed to indulge in the pain of loss, he's ruined for all else. When a man loses his wife, he
must
marry again, or he'll be lost forever. Blessedly, my sister has been my strength. Man is weak. When we see a widow in black, we know that love is constant. And it's that privilege of love we fight battles for. For Americans, war is not waged by the bloodthirsty. War is a sentimental endeavor. For all our bluster and brutality, we are fighting for what's in our hearts.” He began to drum his silver fingers on the arm of his chair, and he said, “You children make a very spirited debate. I guess this is why we send the young men to fight, while the old men ponder the inevitabilities and make the sensible decisions.”

“I don't mean to argufy, Mr. Wakefield,” I said, and I did wish I hadn't brought it all up. What did I know from war and peace? I'd spent much of my life taking things and having things taken from me. If there was anything I should know inside and out, it was that some men had some peculiar notions of decency, and you had to fight to keep things in line. “But there's just something about
this
war,” I said. “We're fighting it because we like the
idea
of fighting it, don't you think? The blood's not even spilling in our own fields. Nobody's going to really remember the
Maine
.”

But before I'd even finished my sentence, Wakefield threw his snifter at the fireplace, and it shattered against the andirons. “Enough!” he barked, and it so alarmed me, I lost my breath. Cecily jumped and I feared Doxie might cry. The old servant stepped forward, having produced from nowhere a dustpan and brush, but Wakefield shooed him away, waving his hand. “Leave it, Morearty,” he snapped. “For God's sake, just leave it be for now.”

Morearty sniffled and nodded, and stepped back. The old servant shuddered with weeping he tried to hide. “Oh, Morearty,” Wakefield said, “I'm not angry at you. I'm simply . . . embarrassed. Now sit down, my dear friend, and pull yourself together. Pour yourself a snifter of that brandy.” And the old man did just that, though none of it seemed to ease his weeping. He sipped the brandy as he dabbed a tea towel at the corners of his eyes.

I stood. “I apologize, Mr. Wakefield,” I said. “I'm not a very polite guest. We'll be going.”

“No,” Wakefield said, “no, please. Please.
I
should apologize. I should apologize especially to you, Miss Cecily. It's undignified for men to talk war and politics in front of a lady.”

Cecily shrugged, easing the tension with her pretty smile. “Ah, well,” she said, “as far as ladies go, I'm not much of one.” When she kissed Doxie's forehead, I then realized Wakefield hadn't made a single gesture in the baby's direction all evening, despite all the mewling and gabbing she did. He hadn't cooed at her. He hadn't tickled her chin. He hadn't even asked her name. I respected his tragedy, the loss of his young son, but how could anyone not be charmed by Doxie's beauty?

When Cecily squeezed my elbow, I knew she meant for me to hurry her away.

“Thank you for the brandy, Mr. Wakefield,” I said.

“No, please,” he said. “We haven't finished our business, have we?”

“We don't have any business,” I said.

“You let me buy your dummy, and I'll buy you a new one for your act,” he said, in a rush of words. “I know a buyer at Brandeis; I'll put him to the task of finding you the finest one ever made. I'll even pay for him to go to London—or Bora-Bora—or wherever the hell the best dummies are.”

“No,” I said. I wanted to ask him why, if he could pay anything for a dummy, he was so smitten with mine. But before I could speak, he stood with a happy stamp of his boot, practically bouncing up from his chair.

“Ferret,” he said, smiling. “Miss Cecily. Come with me.” He picked up the brandy bottle in his silver hand, patted the still-weeping Morearty on the back, and stepped into the hall.

“Let's leave,” Cecily whispered in my ear. “I have an awful headache.” She took my hand and brought it to Doxie's warm forehead. “I always get a headache whenever Doxie gets a fever. I always know it when she's sick. I feel it in my own blood. I want to go home.”

As we followed Wakefield, I gave our regrets again. “We really do need to be getting back,” I said.

“And how are you doing that?” Wakefield said, without turning to look at us, without slowing a step. “Getting back, I mean.”

“The same way we got here,” I said. “All the streetcars keep late hours this summer, for the Fair.”

“If you spend a minute or two more with me,” he said, “I'll send you back with my own driver, and you'll still get home much sooner than if you take the streetcar, with all its stopping and going, going and stopping.”

“Sir,” I said, “Cecily has a little bit of a headache.”

This stopped Wakefield midstep. He turned slowly on his heel, and he gave us both a good looking over. “Oh?” he said.

“I think you poured too much booze in me,” Cecily said, and I noticed her cheeks were as red as Pearl's often were.

“I'll have Bugsy bring the coach around,” he said, and he slipped around a corner. We heard the cranking and bells of a telephone, and the hollow echo of his voice as he summoned the driver. We heard his footsteps go farther down the hall, and the squeak of a door. When he returned, he handed Cecily a bottle. The glass was dark blue and the label bore a doctor's name in elegant print. “Take a few swigs now,” he said. “Then a few more when you get home. But no more than that. Your ache will leave your head.”

He reached into his trousers pocket for his hinged dragon, and he spoke to me without looking in my eyes. He looked at his bills, ran his thumb along the edges. Each bill was a big one. I had never seen so much money in one place. “And I'd like to finish up business with you, Ferret, before you leave.” He hesitated, then held out the cash, dragon and all. “The dragon is twenty-two carat,” he said. “It's yellow gold from China. The eyes are diamonds. The nostrils are rubies. It's meant to be clipped to a lady's dress.”

I might not have taken it from him had he not let go, letting the dragon fall. I caught it. I ran my own thumb along the edge of the bundle. I looked at Cecily. She looked at me. I thumbed through it again, keeping track of the sum, but kept losing count of the bills. I was distracted by the wealth I held in my hand.

And I put the dragon, and the money, in my own pocket. I traded Oscar for Doxie.

I couldn't help but think about all the things I could buy that little girl. She could sleep in a bassinet with a new mattress. She could go to a doctor when she needed to—her head did feel a touch too warm. I could buy her new dresses, and new dolls with dresses that matched hers, with wigs woven from her own hair clippings. In a booth in the Manufactures Building of the Grand Court, there'd been a girl's wardrobe on display—a fur coat and muff of Russian squirrel, a nainsook slip trimmed with lace. The more I pictured her, the richer she got.