Mrs. Houdini(85)

This city came alive at night like noplace she had seen, short of New York. The electric lights blazed and the synthetic liquor flowed; women in coral chiffon dresses brushed past her, all the flaming youth of the era congregating in this carnival of color. But something about the scene bothered Bess; she wondered why Harry had lured her here, of all places, especially when he had always loved the quiet more than the crowds. As the Jazz Age swelled around him he had eschewed it, telling Bess he thought New York could sometimes be the loneliest city in the world. After he died, she had cloistered herself inside her huge city home, certain that if Harry were to appear to her it would be there. So why had he chosen this city of sin as their final meeting place?

Rushing down the pier, she could make out a few dim figures by the railing. Most were couples, their hands and arms intertwined, and a few were too young to be Harry, no older than teenagers. But she could see one man, standing alone under the lamppost, hatless, with his elbows on the rail, leaning out over the ocean. Bess caught her breath and froze. She recognized Harry’s rumpled hair, the wrinkled black pants he loved. She stopped a few feet from him.

“Ehrich?” she breathed. “Is it really you?” Her hands were trembling violently. She reached to touch his shoulder.

The man turned around and looked at her. He was old—much older than Harry had been when he died—and his eyes were egg blue. There were none of Harry’s dark European features in him. “Sorry,” he said, shrugging. “I think you meant someone else.”

Bess looked past him, as if the real Harry might be hiding on the other side of the rail. It couldn’t be . . . She searched the rest of the pier, but she couldn’t find him anywhere. The place was loud with laughter and voices and the muffled sounds of orchestra music. She blinked back tears. Certainly, she had interpreted the message correctly . . . hadn’t she?

Perhaps Charles had been right. Perhaps Harry’s message was Charles all along; maybe Harry had merely meant to come back to her through his son, and she was on a fool’s errand now, reading silly messages in photographs that were not intended to be messages at all. And she should be happy with this, she knew, with this man who was the closest thing to the family she always wanted. But still, she felt a sadness she could not shake. She sat down on a bench and put her head in her hands.

“Bess!”

She looked up and saw Charles and Gladys standing in front of her. They were both panting, drenched with sweat. They must have taken a taxi after she left and run down the pier.

“I didn’t find him,” she said, sobbing. “He’s not here.” Her na?veté became clear to her now; people didn’t come back from the dead. How could she have imagined that Harry would have proven himself the exception? And, moreover, that he would return to her at the scene of the most terrible day of her life—when she had kissed another man, and Harry had almost died?

“We know you didn’t,” Charles said, trying to catch his breath. “He’s not here.”

Bess frowned. “What do you mean?”

Charles held out a tattered piece of paper. “I found something after you left. It’s— Well, look.” His eyes were shining. “Well, it’s remarkable.”

Bess squinted down at the photograph. It was creased with age, and the figures on it were blurred. “There are no words anywhere on this.” It was a photograph of Harry’s jump, from 1905. In it, she could make out Harry’s tiny form hanging over the railing. “You were there,” she whispered, incredulous. “I had forgotten you said you were there.”

“My mother took me. I begged her to let me go.” He wiped the sweat off his brow. “She had bought me a Brownie camera, and I remember I climbed one of the lampposts so I could get a good picture.”

Bess could not believe Charles and Harry had come so close to each other. Suddenly it made sense to her why Harry had sent her to Young’s Pier; not only was it the day he thought his father had been with him in the water, but it was his singular lost moment, the one time in his life he had walked upon the same ground as his own son. It would have been the greatest regret of his life, looking back on it, that he had not recognized his own son in the crowd.

She peered at the image, looking for a smudge of a young woman holding on to a white hat in the wind, before she remembered that she hadn’t come outside until after the jump. Then she sighed, holding out the photograph. “But I don’t see what this has to do with my coming here. Look around. Harry’s not here.”

Charles pressed the paper back into her palm. “You didn’t look closely enough.” He reached into his pocket and drew out a small magnifying glass. He knelt down beside her and held the glass over the picture. “Look here.” He pointed to the crowd. “What do you see?”

Bess followed his finger. The crowd was pressed together, everyone staring intently at Harry hanging over the water, about to jump. It was a moment in time captured by a boy’s cheap camera, unaware of what the magician’s wife had just done, or what would happen to the magician, or what would happen to the boy himself, only months later, when he would be orphaned. Only the backs of the people’s heads were visible to the camera. Except, there was something strange. One man was not looking at the ocean; he was facing the other direction, his face turned upward, staring straight past the heads of the crowd into the camera.