Mrs. Houdini(15)

“His face—in the tray.” She stopped. In the mirror across the room, she saw it again—the same face she had just seen in the tray. She spun around to see a photograph of Harry, gazing at her, on the wall. It was a photograph she had hung there herself, when the tearoom first opened. His appearance in the tray had been nothing but a reflection of a photograph—something Harry himself would have laughed at her for mistaking. Not a visitation at all.

She had to step outside. She was embarrassing herself. She told Billy that she was going over to Thirty-Fifth Street to sort out the vendor problems. “You look out for Lou and Gladys while I’m gone.”

Apparently Billy had heard the commotion in the kitchen. “If you’re gonna fire the produce people, you could just call ’em. It’d be easier.”

“No, no. I like to do things in person. It’s the honorable way.” She turned toward the street, still shaken. She had never admitted to anyone her hope that Harry’s return would be more than the code revealed, more even than a message that followed—that when he came to her, he would appear physically somehow. She would see him, perhaps be able to touch him. She knew she was expecting more than death allowed; even the idea that he could reach far enough across the divide to communicate the code to her was preposterous. But she hoped. Harry had always managed to achieve the impossible.



It was already after four when she arrived back at the tearoom. The walk had served her well. After Harry’s death, she began to love the city. Its daily pandemonium was a relief from the chaos of her own mind. She loved the cathedral bells and the cramped alleys, the gold-tipped tops of the skyscrapers at dawn, the buildings lined up like army troops as far as she could see. And she loved the stone statues in the parks and the beaded dresses in the department store windows and the gnarled faces of the old men who sat on their stoops in the afternoons. She rarely went back to Brooklyn now, and only to visit Stella; she preferred Manhattan, its parade of colored taxicabs and wild energy.

The streets were crowded with gray-suited men and women walking briskly home from their offices. She could not imagine having lived a life that stuck her to a desk for eight or ten hours a day. Stella’s husband, Fred, had worked at a bank for many years, and she knew he came home every night stooped by the tedium of the business. Really, it was the business side of running the tearoom that was the most taxing. Her argument with the produce vendors had lasted half an hour. It had ended badly; they claimed the tomatoes had been perfect when they were delivered, and Bess had had no choice but to end their contract.

In the dining room, the remaining staff was clearing the tables and turning out the lamps. Gladys was sitting patiently by the window, her cane propped against the wall. Bess pressed her hand to her sister-in-law’s shoulder and sat down across from her, out of breath. “It’s me. I’m so sorry I’m late.”

Gladys shrugged. “It’s very peaceful here when it empties out.” She looked, as usual, calm and well; she had worn only black since her mother’s death seventeen years prior, but she cut a trim, stylish figure, and black seemed more fashionable than miserable on her. At forty-four, she looked ten years younger, and had a childlike innocence about her. But she carried herself with a Victorian composure that defied the flapper irreverence of the era. She wound her dark hair into a tight bun at the nape of her neck and sat straight, always, two inches from the back of the chair, her ears studded with tiny pearls and her vacant blue eyes staring.

Bess stretched her legs in front of her and reached for Gladys’s drink. “Is this gin?” She took a sip. It was water; Gladys, like Harry, almost always drank water.

“It was a terrible thing that they put in the papers this morning.”

Bess pressed her hand into Gladys’s. “But you know I didn’t engineer that séance.”

Gladys nodded reasonably. “Of course, you were tricked.”

Bess felt her face flush. She didn’t want to be the object of anyone else’s pity, especially not Gladys’s. They had always enjoyed a cool, levelheaded friendship. And for all her life’s difficulties, Gladys had never felt sorry for herself, and Bess would be damned if she would let some gossip get to her.

Gladys was the one person, besides Harry’s mother, who could do no wrong in his eyes. She had been almost completely blinded as a child in a gas lamp explosion, and when he died Harry had left her with a sum of money large enough for her to purchase her own small apartment and hire a sight companion, full-time. Bess had offered her a room in the town house, but Gladys had wanted to live on her own. The two women weren’t close during Harry’s lifetime, but in the years following his death their friendship had blossomed. Now they met every afternoon for cake and walked back to Gladys’s apartment together after four o’clock closing. It was the twilight hour—the tinkling spoons quieting as the room emptied out, the light settling into evening, the spring air cooling.

As Gladys and Harry’s mother had gotten older, Gladys and Mrs. Weiss had cared for each other; they had a symbiotic relationship that worked well, each doing the things the other could not—Mrs. Weiss still had her vision but was lacking strength, and Gladys had plenty of strength but no vision. But when Mrs. Weiss died it was like a light went off in Gladys. Only with their own growing friendship had Bess seen a change in her.

“I had a little shock this afternoon. You’ll think I’m mad, but I thought I saw Harry—here in the dining room.” She saw Gladys’s frown and added quickly, “Of course, it wasn’t him. It was a trick of the mind.” She looked over at the photograph she had seen reflected in the tray. It was one of her favorites; Harry was facing the camera with his tight, pursed smile. He looked very mysterious, which made it perfect for the tearoom, and she felt silly recalling her earlier panic. “But never mind that. What did you do this morning?”