Mrs. Houdini(59)

“She kept company with all the wrong people. She was shot by a man she loved. He worked with her, in the circus, and one night after a performance they all got drunk and he accused her of being with another man, and he went crazy, and he shot her.”

Bess’s shoulders stiffened. “Your mother was in the circus?”

“Yes. She performed with snakes. I remember that. She used to keep all kinds of snakes in cages. Most of them were poisonous, too.”

Bess’s breath caught in her throat. “What was her name?”

“Eva.” He looked at her strangely. “Why?”

“Evatima?”

“Yes, but no one ever called her that.” His voice turned sharp. “How would you know that?”

“I—knew her. When Harry and I first started out, in Coney Island.”

Charles stared. “I think I’m getting the chills. This is all becoming too strange.”

Bess had not known Evatima well, but still, she was brought back to those early days, when she and Harry were young, when they lived by the beach. She pictured the woman, alone, cast off by the circus, a single mother with a baby, and Charles, a tiny, tortured boy, sent west on one of those filthy trains she had read about in the papers, brought to a house of strangers to be their son. She was overcome with sadness for all of them, because Evatima was dead, and Harry was dead, and she herself was alone, and Charles was alone. Perhaps, she thought, she and this thin, thoughtful man were more alike than she had first imagined.

Charles cleared his throat. “I think I’m getting too sentimental now. I must be absolutely jagged.” He went back to sit at Harry’s desk and lay his head in his arms.

Slowly, and then quickly, like a wave, it crashed upon her. The porter coming to inform her that the train was arriving in New York, a tall young man standing in the narrow corridor, his black cap rimmed with red. She was alone, and in tears; and Harry had sent her away, proclaiming their marriage over. She remembered flirting with a man at the beer hall, and across the room, Harry’s hand on Evatima’s thigh. It was just after they had married, in June, and the train was crowded with sleepy couples with their heads on each other’s shoulders, returning from a weekend at the beach. She did not have enough room to think, but rather a narrow seat in second class and a heavyset woman in and out of sleep next to her. And all the way to her sister’s she could not get the image of that smoke-filled room out of her head, the flash of glasses on the tables, and Harry’s hand stroking the top of Evatima’s dark-stockinged thigh.

She had arrived, sobbing, at her sister’s door, and Stella had given her a glass of whiskey, and put her to bed. Bess had crept past the babies’ room on the way to her own, and seen through the cracks in the doors the tiny forms sleeping under embroidered white sheets, their closed eyes protecting dreams deep as oceans. She had cried herself to sleep because she would never have children with Harry, now that he had left her. And then he had appeared at Stella’s door in the middle of the night, full of remorse, and taken her back to Coney Island, to the marriage she thought he had given up on.

She could barely speak. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably. “When—when were you born?” she choked.

Charles looked up at her. “In 1895. Why?”

“It’s not possible.” When she looked at him all she saw was Harry’s son. How she could have overlooked it, before, she did not know. Maybe the glasses had masked Charles’s most prominent features. But he had a round chin, she saw, and pronounced cheeks, and these were the chin and cheeks of Ehrich Weiss.

She realized that in the hours after Harry had taken her to the train station, he had gone back to the beer hall, back to the beautiful, exotic Evatima Tardo, and he had made love to her. He had laid his naked body across hers, and put his mouth against hers, and he had given her himself. And a child. The child he could never give to Bess.

She could not think clearly. She stood up and went over to the fireplace. Charles followed her. He put his hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

“This can’t be,” she whispered.

“What can’t be?” Charles frowned.

Harry had sent her to Atlantic City, of course. He had sent her those messages, through the photographs, and led her to Charles. But why would he do such a thing? To hurt her? She had expected his message from the grave to be a profession of love, of reassurance, and instead he had brought her to the doorstep of this man—this boy, really—to confess to her that their marriage had been nothing but a lie.

Perhaps, if she had been able to have children of her own, the blow would not have been so fierce. She had never forgiven herself for those moments with John Young. But—she hadn’t gone through with it, in the end. She had been faithful to Harry. And for what? For her whole life to culminate in his indiscretion?

She wondered how long he would have known. Evatima must have sent him that photograph of Charles as a boy. So why had Harry never acknowledged him? Why had he never told Bess, especially after Evatima died, when he knew how desperately she wanted a child? It was cruel, and so unlike the Harry she knew. But then again, it was possible she hadn’t really known him at all.

She looked at Charles. She could not help seeing the betrayal in him, Harry’s hypocrisy when he had demanded her own loyalty with such forcefulness. She thought back on all the moments of tenderness they had shared and wondered if he had ever really loved her. Or had he simply been trying to assuage his own guilt with gestures of affection? And why had he made her promise to keep looking for him after he died? She had given up three years waiting for him to reach her, only to have dredged up a secret she wished had remained buried.