Mrs. Houdini(55)

She had to go to him. She could not leave him alone down there. She had been to the brink of a betrayal she could not come back from, but she had stopped herself, and if it took that to convince her that she wanted no one but Harry, then she had to think of it as a blessing. He was the love of her life.

She searched through her trunk and found a long gray skirt and blouse she could dress herself in quickly, and without any help to lace. She checked her hair in the mirror. Her watch now read four o’clock. Perhaps he would still be standing on the pier; ever the showman, he enjoyed watching the crowd’s anticipation build. She raced down the corridor and over to the veranda at the end of the hall, which overlooked the edge of the pier. Flinging the doors open, she heard the loud cries of the crowd below. Then, like a fog rushing toward her, came the shrill voice of a newsboy: “Extree! Houdini dead! Extree! Houdini drowned in ocean!”

Bess fell to her knees. She could not breathe. It could not be possible. From the position of the balcony she could not see the spot of Harry’s jump, only the crowd milling about in alarm and, in the distance, the ocean, angry and white with froth. She stumbled, as if drugged, down the stairwell onto the first floor, which led outside.

She could not look anyone in the eye as she pushed her way toward the front of the massive throng. She caught sight of John Young in the distance, leaning searchingly over the railing, and then vomited onto the concrete. Less than an hour ago, she had almost given everything to that man, and now she had lost Harry. How could she not have seen this? She had always thought of the bond between them as something fated, otherworldly—that if something happened to Harry, she would know it. But she felt nothing now but fear.

“Bess.” Someone spoke behind her, touching the back of her shoulder. When she turned, dizzily, she could almost make out Harry’s form, blue and ghostlike, his hair and body dripping.

“Harry?” she choked in disbelief.

Before he could say anything further, the crowd rushed in on him, separating them, pushed apart only by the policemen and two doctors in white coats, with stethoscopes around their necks. Harry was draped in towels and ushered into the building, and then she couldn’t see him anymore.

Harry’s assistant, Jim Collins, put his hand on her shoulder. Jim was the first man Harry had hired, and the only person other than Bess he trusted with the workings of his tricks. “He didn’t come up after two minutes,” Jim explained, his blue eyes soft with relief. “The rope man had to lower himself into the water and go down in search of him. After four minutes the physicians were of the mind that he could not have survived.”

“But the newsboys. I heard them—”

“They were dispatched with bulletins. You know how these things work. Call out the news now, write it up later. But after six minutes we saw the top of his head emerge from the water, then his arms, pulling himself in by the rope.”

“Six minutes.” Bess looked down at the water, stunned. “He’s never held his breath that long.”

“It’s miraculous.” She could see Jim still trembling slightly from nerves. He adored Harry, and she adored Jim in return.

She put her hand on his arm. “I have to see him.”

“Of course.”

Bess looked at John Young, standing by the railing, and caught his eye. Neither of them gave any acknowledgment of what had occurred between them less than an hour earlier. They both were married. Bess had almost lost her husband. John Young had brought in the towels. Nothing more.

Bess found Harry upstairs in their bedroom, immersed in a hot bath, one of the physicians sitting in a chair beside the tub, checking his pulse. She rushed over and seized Harry’s hand. His grip was weak. The doctor excused himself politely.

“I thought I’d lost you,” she murmured.

“I got caught,” he said. “There was an old fishing net down there, and I got the cuffs off easily enough, but I couldn’t get my legs free, and then I started losing air, and I couldn’t tell top from bottom. I started to pray, and Bess, I swear I could hear my father’s voice calling to me from somewhere down there. Then I saw the rope, and I managed to free myself and grab hold of it.”

Bess looked at him, surprised. Harry almost never talked about his father, and he certainly didn’t consider himself a practicing Jew any longer. She leaned toward him and ran her fingers through his hair. “You think your father saved you?”

“I don’t know. But I do know he was there.” His voice trailed off. “Somehow, he was there . . . It’s the first time I’ve ever been alone but felt . . . not alone.” He closed his eyes and laid his head against the edge of the tub. “I’m sorry, Bess.”

Bess blinked. “Sorry? What for?”

“I scared you. I didn’t do the trick right. I failed.”

Bess ran her hand over the top of his head. “Oh, no. It’s all right, darling. You didn’t fail me at all.”





Chapter 10


LONG ISLAND


June 1929


Bess spent the next two days at Mount Sinai Hospital, at Stella’s side, leaving only to check on the tearoom for an hour at a time. Abby had woken up that Saturday morning in a pool of blood, such a significant amount that the doctors immediately diagnosed a likely miscarriage. Abby was delirious with medication and grief; but by Saturday night, when Stella and Bess arrived, she claimed she could feel slight stirrings of movement in her belly. Stella worried she was imagining them, but by Sunday morning they were stronger, and there was no more bleeding; the doctors diagnosed her with placenta previa, in which, they explained, the placenta grows over the cervix; this was the cause of the bleeding. They ordered bed rest for the five remaining months of the pregnancy.