Mrs. Houdini(56)



Bess felt a sense of culpability that Stella had not been there right away; nothing good seemed to come out of Atlantic City. Fortunately, she had never spoken to John Young again. After the pier jump she had begged Harry to go back to New York, to Gladys and to Mrs. Weiss, whom Harry had moved into the house. She longed to see their tiny dog, Carla, who yelped when she spotted them, ran in circles and then jumped onto the bed.

But that night—their first night home in several months—as they had lain side by side under the thick feather duvet Bess had purchased during their travels in Europe, Bess was certain she heard someone whispering in the hall outside their bedroom. Lazarus, the voice said, come forth.

She’d sat up immediately and found she could not breathe. It was as if someone was holding her by the throat. She had grown up believing in demons that never appeared, and now, it seemed, they had come for her at last. In the corner of the room, the shadow of a man appeared.

She had touched Harry on the arm, and he’d woken immediately. “Harry,” she had said, her throat thick. “They’ve come for me.”

Harry had looked across the room and shouted. He’d jumped from the bed, throwing himself at the shadow. “Darling, no!” Bess had said. “He’s here for me!” She’d watched the two forms, Harry and the dark man, wrestling in the dark. Then she’d heard Harry yell again, and when she lit the lamp she saw that the shadow was not a ghost, it was a man, and he was wielding a razor blade, and he had attacked Harry, slicing through the skin of his neck.

Harry had managed to wrestle the man out the door and into the parlor, where Mrs. Weiss, woken by the noise, had already called the police. Harry gained control of the weapon, but the man had escaped before the police arrived. Bess had found Harry kneeling in the foyer in a pool of blood, breathing heavily. He had been taken to the hospital, where his wounds were found to be superficial. They’d never learned the identity of the intruder. Bess had been unable to shake the feeling that their lives were in danger now, physically as well as spiritually, that she had brought evil into their life, and like a black tar it covered everything.

Harry, despite having come precariously close to dying, had looked back on that weekend in Atlantic City with fondness. He had been entranced by the thick ocean air, the smell of chocolate fudge being mixed in huge stainless steel vats, the endless parade of lovers walking along the boardwalk, the women with their white parasols. He steadfastly swore he had heard his father speak to him when he was underwater. Years later, on the back of a photograph he had taken of her by the beach, she came across a note Harry had jotted across the bottom: Many a time I have looked at the silent remembrances of the past, and never have I forgotten the fact that life is but an empty dream. The experience had drawn his magic toward investigation of the paranormal rather than manipulation of the normal.

Even in the early days of his magic he could make mango trees bloom onstage, the roots bursting upward beneath a black cloth, the fruit flamed with orange, the black cloth floating to the floor and the crowd trembling with excitement. Once Bess had asked him if he felt like he was playing God. But even though his father had been a rabbi, Harry didn’t know where to find God. All he knew was that God wasn’t in his father’s books, and he wasn’t under the milky lights of the stage, and he wasn’t under the black cloth either. God was somewhere else.



On Tuesday afternoon, when Bess went back to her town house for the first time since leaving for Atlantic City, she was greeted by the sound of the dog sliding across the wooden floors toward her, and by George, white-gloved and nervous, in the foyer.

“Mrs. Houdini,” he began hesitantly. “There’s a gentleman in the library waiting for you.”

“A gentleman?” She rarely had guests at the house, short of Gladys and Stella, and preferred to do her entertaining at the tearoom.

“I wouldn’t have let him in, but he showed me a telegram you sent him.”

Bess’s pulse quickened. “Charles!” She rushed through the library doors. She had only telegrammed him that there had been an emergency, and she would get back in touch with him, but somehow he had found her.

He was standing by the staircase with his back to her, his luggage at his feet. He turned when she entered. “This is— I’ve never seen anything like this.” He craned his head to see the spiral stairs, which wound through all four floors. “It’s so grand.”

“You found me.”

His face turned red. “I found your address through the paper. Was it presumptuous of me to come? I didn’t know what had happened and I thought maybe I could offer some help.”

“No, no, it wasn’t presumptuous. It was my niece. She’s in the hospital, but she’s all right now.”

“Oh, that’s a relief.”

Bess nodded.

“I brought the photographs.” He gestured toward his luggage. “I brought as many as I could, but I simply couldn’t fit them all.”

Bess looked down at the leather case and felt herself become dizzy. She had hardly eaten a thing since Saturday, and hardly slept either. Her stay in the hospital at Abby’s bedside had stirred up feelings of loneliness she had buried for a long time, and it had called into question the importance of her fixation. Here was a real situation, right in front of her—Abby’s baby in danger, Stella’s family in crisis—and it made her hunt for Harry seem all the more imaginary, and silly. She simply didn’t have the energy or the willpower to sort through hundreds of photographs right then. She wasn’t even sure she believed in the message anymore.

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