Mrs. Houdini(63)

Mrs. Weiss looked awfully small, Bess thought, against the massiveness of the ship floating at the pier. She was dressed in black silk, as she always was when seeing Harry off, as a way of mourning his departure. She clung to Harry’s arm and shuffled beside him toward the gangplank.

Harry clasped his mother’s hand. “It’s only for a month,” he said. “John Sargent is going to look after you, and he can arrange for anything you need.”

“You know, I’m old,” she replied with a small smile. “Perhaps when you come back, I shall not be here.”

Harry laughed. “Nonsense. You only like to say those things so I will tell you I love you.”

Bess kissed Mrs. Weiss’s cheek. “Good-bye, Mother.” She picked up her bag quickly, before Harry could do it. Neither of them had told his mother of his kidney, and Bess didn’t want him to wince and give it away; it would only worry Mrs. Weiss. They had argued through the night after Dr. Stone left, and Harry had promised her they would take a three-week vacation after Copenhagen, and he would rest in Provence, on the condition that she keep the secret from his mother while he recovered.

Mrs. Weiss shook her hand free of Harry’s. “Go.”

Harry turned to the crowd that was watching them. “Look, my mother drives me away from her!” They broke out in laughter. Bess flushed; Harry was always the performer, even at the most inconvenient moments.

Bess envied Mrs. Weiss that she had a son like Harry; but at the same time she felt sorry for the woman. Mrs. Weiss was seventy-one already and increasingly fragile each day, and she had spent the majority of her life saying good-bye to those she loved—her husband, her oldest son, and even Harry, for months at a time, when he traveled around the world doing his magic. Bess, at least, could say that she’d been by his side every night since they met.

“Just go quickly,” Mrs. Weiss said, patting his hand, “and come back safely.”

Harry pulled Bess up the stairs onto the ship’s deck. The passengers were waving their hats and cream-colored gloves, shouting and crying. On the pier, the crowd of Harry’s admirers cheered and called his name. The passengers on the boat threw out lines of red paper streamers toward those on the dock. Mrs. Weiss caught Harry’s, and as the ship glided slowly away from the dock, Harry leaned farther and farther over the rail, the long wisp of paper dangling between him and his mother, until it snapped and the ends wafted into the murky water.

When the dock was out of sight he turned to Bess, his face already green with seasickness. “Strange how I am a grown man, and still it always feels the same to say good-bye to my mother.” He blushed.

“Let’s go to the dining hall before you become too ill to eat,” she replied.

Harry bowed to her ceremoniously. “What would I do without you to keep track of my meals?”

Bess laughed. “You may be weak on ships, but you’re quite strong in character.”

Harry smirked. “Now, we both know stubbornness is not the same as strength of character. It’s true, though. I’m helpless as a child without you.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist and helped him across the deck. The other passengers watched them, some of the men stopping to clap Harry on the shoulder or shake his hand. Some were amazed that a man like him could be made ill so easily by the ocean. What they didn’t understand was that, in all his feats, he was in control; but even his immense abilities were powerless compared to the mighty ocean, writhing like an animal beneath them. Yet this would be a different voyage from their first, years earlier; this time they had a spacious room with a large window, and a butler, and a bed layered in cream silk sheets. Never in her life had Bess imagined she would be quarantined on a ship with a former president of the United States. She imagined dining next to him at tables set with heavy silver.

“It’s going to be a helluva trip,” Harry said.

But Bess didn’t answer. She was staring into the water at the wake.

“Bess? Darling, are you all right? Don’t tell me you’re ill now, too.”

She turned to him with a look of horror on her face. “Look there,” she said, pointing. “Do you see it?”

He clutched his stomach and leaned over the railing, staring at the white crests of the waves. “Look at what?”

She leaned over again, this time her eyes scanning the water frantically. “It’s gone.”

“What’s gone?”

“I don’t—I don’t understand. I saw—”

He gripped her arm. “What is it? What did you see? Tell me.”

“It was strange. It was a vision of your mother, in the water. Like a reflection in a pool.” Bess craned her head so she could still see the dock full of waving onlookers, like toy soldiers saluting. “It’s probably nothing,” she said, seeing Harry’s terrified face. “Just my mind playing tricks on me.” She wondered if she was coming down with whatever malady Harry had and was hallucinating. Still, she couldn’t help thinking that the souls of the Titanic passengers were trapped somewhere beneath the trembling waters. One could not travel now without imagining what it must have been like to cling to the rails of the ship in that black night.

“Let’s go inside for lunch,” she said. “It’s terribly chilly out here.”