Mrs. Houdini(32)

Harry was horrified. “This is worse than Coney Island,” he said. “I thought we were here for something better.”

Bess took his hand and led him over to the bed. “This is fine,” she said, pulling off his soaking shirt and handing him a dry one. “This is all we need.” She smoothed his hair and kissed him. “We’re living simply, remember? We’re on the road life.” She tried to disguise her own nervousness—especially about the men living right on the other side of the thin wall—but she couldn’t bear to see Harry so hopeless, sitting beside her with his head in his hands.

“It will get better,” she added, although she couldn’t stop shivering in her wet dress. “Once we do the act and people start noticing us, there’ll be more and more money coming our way.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Bess wasn’t sure she did. But she nodded anyway.

“I’m afraid—” He lowered his voice. “I’m afraid I may have failed you already. And we haven’t even begun.”

“We have to start somewhere.” She nodded toward the wall. “And you better start by making friends with some of those men. They’ll tell you how things are run around here.”

Harry bit his lip. “How do I do that?”

Bess stared at him. “Haven’t you made a friend before?”

He shrugged. “Dash was always the social one, not me.”

Back in Coney Island, she had seen how his stage charm wore to awkwardness offstage. But she hadn’t realized the extent of Harry’s shyness until now. “When I met you, you were so confident. You have to be like that.”

“I’m always like that after a show. It’s the act—it stays with me for a little while.”

“Pretend you just got offstage,” she said.

But Harry only shook his head. “It’s not like that.”

“Well, I can’t make friends for you—” she began, then stopped herself. Or could she? She poked her head around the partition. The men were deeply engaged in their game. “Hello, gentlemen,” she called over the pounding of the rain outside. “Does anyone know where I could find an oven around here? I was going to make an almond cake in the morning if anybody wants some.”

The men put down their cards and looked up. One of them eyed her suspiciously. “Who are you?”

“I’m Bess.” She pulled Harry out behind her. She realized she must look a mess with her hair matted to her head and her dress dripping, but she forged ahead. “This is my husband, Harry. We’re the Houdinis.”

The heavy, bearded man at the head of the table pushed back his chair. “You’re the Houdinis?” He stood up and went to shake Harry’s hand. “I’m Eddie Saint. I heard you do some damn fine performing.”

Harry seemed to find his footing. “Well, it’s my wife, really, who’s the star.”

“He’s being modest,” Bess said. “He’s head billing.”

Harry shook his head. “Oh, no. You see, we have to tell everyone it’s me because Bess looks so young, Welsh would try to pay her as a child, and we couldn’t live off that.”

The men laughed and clapped him on the back. “I’ll take some of that cake,” one of them said.

Saint looked at Bess. “Don’t you have a towel?” He turned to one of the younger players. “Lenny, get ’em a towel, would you? Don’t you have any manners?”

Bess looked over at Harry and smiled.



Bess didn’t notice until the morning that there was a tiny window cut into the side of the truck. When she woke up Harry was gone, and the day was bright and warm; there was no trace in the sky of the storm of the night before. She hurried to get dressed, then wandered around the grounds until she found the breakfast area. Half a dozen long pine tables had been set up under one of the open tents, and there was a sour-faced woman cooking eggs and toast on the far side of the dining area, in the shade. Another woman, wearing a warm, crooked smile, came up to her as she stood hesitantly at the entrance to the tent.

“Come on, you’ll sit with me, dear,” the woman said. “You don’t want nothin’ to do with those men over there. Are you a Houdini?”

Bess nodded.

“I’m Mrs. McCarthy. I’m a juggler. We’ve been waiting for you. Heard you got a good show going on. And you see we ain’t got nearly enough women here.”

“Yes . . . I see that.” Bess looked around at the men who were shoveling food into their mouths, spilling much of it onto the tables.

“Did Welsh really put you in the trailer with the canvas men? Does he want you to up and quit before you even start?” Mrs. McCarthy led her into a smaller tent adjacent to the breakfast tent. “Come on. The performers eat in here. Breakfast is almost over.”

“They’re not so bad,” Bess said.

Mrs. McCarthy appeared to be in her late thirties, and she was dressed decently enough, in a cream-and-purple-patterned day dress. The performers’ tent was much quieter than the other. The men and women—there was only Mrs. McCarthy and one other woman—sat together, and the younger one flirted with a blond-haired man in low whispers. There was a sense of familiarity to it, almost like home. Here, in this Pennsylvania field, the grass dusted with the dew of last night’s storm and the veil of light coming through the canvas, everything seemed still; Bess wanted to hold this gleaming moment before it slid away.