Mrs. Houdini(22)

“If you’ve married this man, I don’t want to see you again. Do you hear me? You’ve gotten yourself into an unholy marriage, and you’ve put a curse upon yourself. Your father would be ashamed of you.” She broke into a series of vehement Hail Marys and Our Fathers.

“I don’t care!” Bess cried, losing her composure. “I love him!” Her heart was breaking. She had spent years both hating her mother for remarrying and vying for her love. After her father died, Bess had done everything she could to make her mother happy again, but nothing ever seemed enough. Now, she was being pushed out of the apartment for a second time. “Please, won’t you try to understand?”

“You’d better go.” Stella attempted to wrestle the water from her mother’s grasp. “Leave me your address and I’ll write you. Just give it time.”

Bess turned and ran down the stairs and into the white city sunlight, her chest heaving. Harry followed her and pulled her back before she could run into the road.

Bess was shaking. “She’s—a nasty woman,” she said between choked breaths. She vowed she would not give her mother the satisfaction of making her cry. “She treated you—so rudely.”

A shadow crossed over Harry’s face. “Don’t leave me because of this,” he begged, grasping her hand. “Come home with me. None of this will matter tomorrow.”

Bess was so surprised to see him overcome with worry that she regained her calm. “That’s ridiculous. We’ve only just gotten married. How could I leave?” The idea hadn’t occurred to her, but now she saw that, if she wanted, she could still be free of him; after all, they had not had a proper wedding. She could still return home, to Stella’s house and her mother’s cooking on Sundays and the rooms smelling of salt and perfume and the red-brick views outside her old bedroom window.

Harry took her by the elbow. Above them, the city sky was colorless, bisected by buildings whose shadows did nothing to cool the sidewalks. “It’s too hot out. Let’s have some dinner and go meet the train.”

Bess shook her head and pulled her arm away. “I’m serious, Harry. I won’t ever speak to her again. Your mother can be mother enough for the two of us. She was very kind to me, and she didn’t have to be. For all she knew I was nothing but a little hussy.”

Harry smiled. “Nonsense. You look far too young to be a hussy.”

He took her hand and walked her down Fulton Street, stopping at the shop windows and making promises of what he would buy her one day. Bess kissed him in front of a diamond cross but could not help hearing the voice of her soft-spoken Brooklyn priest, warning that a rich man can never be admitted into heaven. Harry’s fixation on money worried her. She wondered if there was some truth to her mother’s fears, and whether there were some of his tricks that were in fact not tricks after all.



“The brothers Houdini, who for years have mystified the world with their mysterious box mystery, known as ‘Metamorphosis,’ are no more, and the team will hereafter be known as the Houdinis. The new partner is Miss Bessie Raymond, the petite soubrette, who was married to Mr. Harry Houdini this month. First and final show in Coney Island tomorrow evening.”

Bess held up the page she had torn from The New York Clipper and frowned. “They got my name wrong.”

Harry took it from her and read it again. “That’s all right,” he said. “It’s a splendid article. Raymond, Rahner, it doesn’t matter what you were before. You’re a Houdini now. This should draw us a big crowd. It’s not often people see a husband and wife performing together.”

Bess lay back on the bed, fanning herself with the rest of the newspaper. “How do you think we’re going to manage in the South? It’s supposed to be sweltering.”

“You’ll like it,” Harry said. “People are dignified there, I hear.” He pulled his cardboard suitcase from under the bed and began sorting through the clothes he’d thrown around the room. “When I am rich,” he said, “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. We can go to California if you’d like, and buy a swimming pool, and hire a servant who’ll spray you with water all day, and you’ll never be hot again.”

Bess smiled. “Don’t pack all your clothes yet,” she cautioned him. “Save something nice for tonight.” Doll and Dash and some of the other performers were giving a party for them. “And please don’t wear something that’s wrinkled.”

Harry surveyed the room. “Everything I have is wrinkled.”

Bess wet a cloth and leaned toward him, sticking the fabric inside his ear.

Harry jumped. “What on earth are you doing?”

“Your ears are filthy. Don’t you ever clean them?”

Harry thought about this and then sat down on the bed. He winced as she finished the job. “You’re not still upset about your mother, are you? She’ll come around.”

Bess shook her head. “She won’t, but I’m not upset.”

Downstairs, they heard the loud thumping of a bed against the wall. Another married couple had moved into the apartment directly below them, and it seemed as if they spent half their day in bed. Bess blushed.

Harry heard the thumping, too, and pulled her down with him onto the pillows. “Kiss me,” he said.