Escape Artist Page 3

  Sitting with my father, I talked excitedly of my interview with Houdini, regaling him with anecdotes, imitating Houdini’s voice.

  When I finished, he clapped his hands. “Sam Ryan will give you a raise. I’m sure of it.”

  I got quiet. Not only were my days at the Crescent numbered, but, worse, I didn’t know what to do with my life. I liked being on the Appleton streets, ferreting out news. I liked being away from the house. I liked being away from, well…my father’s awful pain. For he was nearly totally blind now, only able to distinguish shadows, a hint of brilliant color or sunlight, maybe a dash of flashing movement as a horse trotted by. That was all. Save for the long harsh Wisconsin winter, he sat on the front porch day after day, losing interest in life, sometimes docile, other times irritable, and waited for me to return home—to take him for an afternoon walk or, at the end of my work day, to sit with him. At times a horrible debilitating pain would seize him, and though numb with fatigue, I would stand behind him, my fingers pushing into his tender temples, the nape of the neck, the center of his forehead, until, sighing, his skin grayish, clammy and wet, he closed his eyes, at peace.

  I watched him staring straight into the darkening street. A handsome man with a high, intelligent brow shielding dreamy, half-closed hickory-colored eyes; a man always dressed in his immaculate black broadloom suit with a gold watch fob, and the silk cravat one of the women in the household expertly tied each morning. To me, he looked East European sitting there; old world, son of a shopkeeper from Eperye, a village outside Budapest, a market town; a man now without a country, or, more horribly, in a country of no light, no hope. His dark complexion, a gypsy’s pallor as soft as vellum, suggested a man who hid from day-to-day rigor, but that was only now when blindness had marched its cancerous way into our home. The long slender fingers, a musician’s hands, had been intended for violins or lyric poetry, not the housewares he tried to peddle in the emporium downtown—My Store. The name always made me wince. My Store. Of course, now it wasn’t—my mother ran it. Her store.

  All he did was sit—the porch, the parlor, waiting for supper. Or summer. Or winter. Or the end of day. For me. He used to smoke pungent cigars but that had stopped. “I need to see the trail of smoke. Smell means nothing by itself.”

  I understood.

  In the long hot days of July and August, while the rest of Appleton sailed up and down the Fox River or strolled through Lovers Lane or picnicked at Brighton Beach on Lake Winnebago, I sat reading the Appleton Crescent to him. “The Lawrence Varsity Football team anticipates a successful fall program with the addition of Josiah Hunter, transferred from…” He’d yawn.

  “Tired, Bill?”

  “No. Keep reading, Pete.”

  “The Congregational Church will hold its missionary food drive on…”

  I wanted to talk that evening about Matthias Boon, about the silences in the city room, but I couldn’t. Houdini’s splendid shadow covered me, though Matthias Boon’s shadow kept intruding. I choked back a sob. In the gathering dark I reached out and touched my father’s wrist. It was cold and clammy, dead. I tightened my hold, but said nothing.

  Suddenly the silence was shattered by my mother’s booming voice from an upstairs window. “Ed, are you just going to sit there? The kitchen is in chaos. When did you get home?”

  “In a minute, Mother.”

  The window slammed down. I didn’t move.

  “You better go in, Pete.”

  “In a minute.” I didn’t want to move.

  “Your mother’s been in a mood since getting back from the store. And Fannie’s giving her trouble.”

  I sighed. “Now what?” My mother and Fannie, two strong, fierce souls; demonstrative, hard-nosed. Stubborn, I fought them daily. Julia Ferber, wiry and severe, moved in short, halting steps, tackling a world she thought cruel and random. And Fannie, the homebody, pretty and lithe, belle of the ball, dizzy with boyfriends—and the modish clothing she spent hours whipping up. And the apricot and plum preserves she conjured up in the kitchen. And there I was, the third woman of the household: also strong, but tiny; the ugly duckling in a house where Cinderella made her own Parisian finery and banquet delicacies and danced the night away. The plain sister sat by firelight reading Bleak House or The House of the Seven Gables for the eighth time.

  The window opened again. “For Heaven’s sake, Ed. Do something. Fan can’t deal with Kathe.” My mother’s voice was higher now, more frantic.

  My father was shaking his head. “Kathe, I gather, burned the roast.” Kathe was a high-school girl who helped with cleaning and cooking and was Fannie’s helper in fashioning the clothing she craved. She was always at war with Fan, who supervised with an iron hand.

  “In a minute,” I yelled. The window smashed down.

  A downstairs window opened. “Edna.” This time it was Fannie, frustrated.

  My father struggled to his feet, fell back into the chair. Though he turned to face me, he was staring over my shoulder, his clouded eyes scrunched in some feeble attempt at sight. “You’re in trouble, Pete.”

  I jumped. “What?”

  His face assumed its handsome proportions: the high cheekbones, the sliver of a moustache, the gentle jaw line. A beautiful man, my father. The flicker of a smile, seen so seldom now, with its curious power—it shifted the contours of his face until, well, I was reminded of a romantic stage hero, Edwin Booth maybe. Or James O’Neill.

  “I can read your silence.” He spoke quietly, the smile gone. “You talk of Houdini, but even in your excitement I can hear sadness.”

  I lied. I had to. I thought of Matthias Boon. “Just tired, Father.”

  Inside my mother banged something in the dining room, slammed a cabinet door. Kathe’s whiny voice apologized to Fannie.

  “And now your mother is angry with you.”

  These days my mother had little patience, especially with me. “Ed, do this. Ed, do that. Ed. Ed. Ed.” The truncated name made me tremble, cringe. I wanted to scream at my mother: My name is Edna, horrible though it is. The name of the ugly stepsister in, say, a Marie Corelli romance. After all, my mother had told me more than once that they had been expecting—they wanted—a boy. They planned to name him Edward Charles.

  Let Ed do it. Why is Ed late again? Ed, you…

  My father stood and carefully opened the door, but I didn’t move. I lingered out in the brisk night air. Inside was shrill gaslight; the clatter of ladle against soup tureen, the tinkling of silverware brushed and placed on the large mahogany table, the platter of roasted potatoes slathered with sour cream plunked down in the center of the table. And the ruined roast…My father had stepped through the door but now stepped back, closed it.

  “Edna,” he whispered, using my name and leaning down. “Sometimes your mother has no time for kindness.” He bit his lip. “And sometimes a blind man has only kindness to offer.”

  “What?”

  Again, the enigmatic smile, shadowy, oddly elegant. The impeccably dressed man who could not see his fingertips. “Well, the first can make a person hard and bitter. Be understanding, please.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you do.” He squinted. “And the second—kindness all the time—blurs the edges, blunts life. Neither person can see what he’s doing to other people.”

  He disappeared into the house.

  I sat there too long and stared across the dark yard, trembling.

  Fannie, confusion in her eyes, rapped on the window, her face tight. “Do you think you could join us, Edna?”

  ***

  At supper my mother looked harried because she had to return to My Store. The stock clerk Arthur Howe, a wisecracking Irish lad, had agreed to unpack a new hogshead of figurines just arrived from a Chicago warehouse, and she had to supervise. “Never a moment’s rest.”

  “Julia.” My father was ready to protest but changed his mind. Tonight, like most nights at our six o’clock supper, he mechanically spooned his beef marrow soup,
nibbled at his vegetables, bit into a slice of buttered homemade bread, each movement deliberate, tentative; a man afraid to slip, afraid of catastrophe.

  At meal’s end my mother folded the clean black sateen apron she’d carry to the store, nodded to us, and headed off. Kathe, who’d been cutting dress patterns in the back room, hurried to clear the dishes and mumbled that the burning of the pot roast was the stove’s fault, not hers. As I carried the soup tureen from the dining room, trailing after her, I got annoyed. She stood in the kitchen, hands on hips, lips tight, and pouted.

  I didn’t care for the pretty Kathe Schmidt, a girl in her last year at Ryan High School. A red-faced girl with blond, straw-like hair worn in little-girl ringlets, periwinkle blue eyes, a cupid’s bow mouth, and a curvaceous girl’s body, a little thick in the waist; a pretty girl, the daughter of August Schmidt, the shy janitor at the high school. I considered Kathe both vain and simple—two deadly sins, though being boring was the worst—even though she was a friend of my closest friend Esther Leitner, a relationship I could never fathom. Esther was bright, dimensional, witty, a stunning beauty herself; Kathe was plodding as a workhorse, as empty as an upturned butter churn. A girl with coarse good looks. Hired by my mother at Fan’s recommendation, Kathe had little use for me.

  The two of us alone in the kitchen, Kathe narrowed her eyes. “I ain’t to blame, Edna.”

  “You didn’t hear me open my mouth to accuse.”

  Kathe grunted and hurried with the dishes. “I need to be somewhere.”

  Fannie walked in, for some reason having changed her dress—the workaday Empire house shift with the gray shirtwaist and flounced skirt replaced with a black satin tea dance dress with narrow black velvet ribbons and a red-taffeta Dutch square neck. A dress for a cotillion. Her newest creation, on display. She was showing off. “Did you forget something, Edna?”

  Kathe was mumbling something about leaving as she dipped dishes in soapy water. I needed to go to my room to change for the theater, but paused. “On the table?” All the dishes were carried in. I was sure of it.

  “No,” Fannie yelled. “You were supposed to bring home the dress patterns I ordered from The Delineator.” She adjusted the ribbons on her left sleeve.

  “Oh Lord, I did pick them up, Fan. I purposely stopped at Taylor’s Millinery, but forgot them at the city room.”

  “How like you,” Fannie hissed. “I asked a favor of you and…”

  Kathe dried her hands on her apron and watched, a hint of a smile on her rosy face. She’d seen these moments before, of course, but never seemed to tire of the fitful bickering of the Ferber sisters. Fire in her eyes, Fannie moved back and forth in the kitchen, banging the chairs, knocking a cupboard door, while I stood still, gripping a chair rail, implacable. We screamed at each other until from somewhere in the house the raspy sound of my father’s voice stopped us. “Girls! Peace.” A momentary pause; then Fannie and I, both breathing in, exploded. At that moment our mother walked in from the back porch.

  “I forgot my…” She stopped, her eyes darting from one daughter to the other. “Not a moment’s peace you two give me.”

  Fannie whined. “She forgot…”

  “I don’t care.” My mother’s voice broke.

  “Edna, perhaps if you weren’t traipsing up and down College Avenue,” Fannie snarled.

  I’d heard it before. “I don’t traipse, Fannie. I’m not a traipser. I walk. Do you hear me? I’m a reporter.”

  My mother closed her eyes. “A reporter,” she echoed.

  “That’s what I do.”

  “A young girl out there…in the world of men…”

  “Like you, Mother.” I breathed in. “Why do you always take her side? You’re a woman out there running a store by yourself.”

  My mother lifted the account book off a shelf, held it to her chest, and glanced at the back door. “It’s your father’s store, Edna. I have no choice. You know that. We have to eat, you know. Your father can’t do it. He just sits.”

  I looked to the parlor where my father sat. “Mother, please…”

  Fannie stormed out of the kitchen, slamming a hand against a wall. I closed my eyes and held onto the chair to keep from falling. My temples throbbed. Yes, we’d always fought, we two hardheaded sisters, coming at the world from different camps. Fannie, the easily bruised child, temperamental, a tongue-lasher; me, the tomboy, the battler, the bull in the novelty shop. But something had changed this past year. Since I’d started working at the Crescent, a note of real resentment, even anger—sometimes I even used the word poison—had entered our exchanges. My sister would never want the life on the Appleton streets, but she resented that I owned it. The night my first by-line appeared, she’d whispered, “It should say Edward Ferber. They wanted a boy.” So our battles became volcanic. Frowning on my new role, my mother at first had screamed her disapproval, but now she was slowly drifting into a silence that was, peculiarly, more frightening. Under the sway of an imperious mother, Fannie often felt trapped at home. I always felt trapped at home, but I left in the morning, enjoying the illusion of freedom.

  Kathe stifled a giggle.

  “You can leave now, Kathe. Thank you,” my mother said, annoyed.

  “I’m not finished, Mrs. Ferber.”

  “I say you are. Good night.”

  Kathe smirked at me.

  “Kathe,” I began.

  “No,” my mother said. “Edna, no.”

  Chapter Four

  Upstairs on the edge of my bed, hands folded into my lap, I swallowed a sob. I flashed to my moment in the street with Houdini—it seemed ages ago and unreal, the sense of new possibilities an illusion like his escapes.

  We fought over nothing because that was all we had to fight about. The bloody wars of headstrong sisters. Fannie the Pre-Raphaelite flower girl; Edna the Hogarth crone by the woodstove. Once again Kathe Schmidt would gossip to everyone that the Ferber household was filled with screaming women. The witches out of Macbeth, she’d whispered to Esther. My snide remark when the story got back to me, “I’m surprised she’s heard of the play.”

  I hurriedly dressed for the theater in a Persian silk dress with an Arab burnoose hood lined with red velvet. I dabbed powder on my blotchy face.

  I had to rush or I’d be late. One of the pleasures of the job was my blue-coated cardboard pass to the Appleton Theater and Bertsehy’s Hall, the opera house on Appleton and College. But my favorite theater was the old Lyceum on College near the university. Appleton saw a wealth of touring drama and musicals and circuses—like Negro glee clubs, Swiss bell ringers, P. T. Barnum’s circus, and Wild Bill’s western extravaganza. I loved theater most of all. I saw Rosa Coughlin in Forget-Me-Not. Blanche Walsh in Tolstoi’s Resurrection. Mary Allibone in The Spendthrift. Alex Warden in The Fire Brigade.

  Tonight I was meeting Esther to see Hazel Wilde in A Taste of Winter, straight from Broadway, via Kalamazoo and Peoria. I scurried out, whispering a quick good night to my father who was slumped in his chair, dozing, and walked briskly to the Lyceum. Once again, Esther was late. I fumed in front of the theater with its magnificent white columns and its ivied red brick façade. I refused to walk in after a play began.

  On edge, craning my neck, I thought I saw Esther crossing College near the Masonic Hall, but realized, to my surprise, that it was Kathe Schmidt rushing past, turning onto Drew Street, her arms linked with her strapping hulk of a boyfriend. Hadn’t Kathe said she had to rush home? No, what she’d said was: I have to be somewhere. Somewhere was obviously the arm of the brawny Jake Smuddie, a boy happily placed into the freshman class at nearby Lawrence University. His enrollment, rumor had it, was the result of an intervention by his powerful professor father and not Jake’s scholarship. Jake pointed in my direction, but an uncharacteristically bashful Kathe grabbed his arm as they slipped out of sight down Drew Street.

  Curious.

  Esther touched me on the shoulder, and I jumped. “Father kept me. One of his lectures on female deportment
in the new century.” She giggled. “Rabbi Leitner on the Gibson Girl on the tennis court.”

  I mentioned seeing Kathe and Jake.

  Esther shook her head. “Kathe thinks the world is trying to steal Jake from her clutches.”

  “She treats him like he’s an over-stamped library book that she’s decided to keep.”

  “Oh, Edna, Kathe’s all right, you know. You just don’t like Kathe because she’s…frivolous.”

  No, you were going to say…because she’s pretty. A hothouse tulip, all glossy and crisp and blatant.

  I steered Esther inside the lobby of the old Lyceum, flashing the blue pass at the usher. Wearing a new dress, a pale green silk with wide puffy sleeves and a high-neck lace collar ruffle, Esther looked captivating in the way that some young girls always did, girls who never thought about their beauty. Esther never considered herself beautiful. Tall and willowy, dark complexioned with riveting hazel eyes, an oval cameo-struck face surrounded by lush, black cascading hair, she was a natural beauty. In high school a year or so back, she’d ignored the gasping swains, turning away from the breathless attention of the pimply, stuttering boys who dared approach her. She was waiting, I’d concluded, for a matinee idol. Such specimens—Arrow Shirt men, all square jawed and cobalt blue eyes—were in short supply in the Fox River Valley, land of chubby Teutonic boys, rarer at Temple Zion, where the watchful eye of her severe rabbi father followed her every movement. Quite simply, Esther turned heads. I got tongues wagging. Sometimes I wondered, flummoxed, at God’s unfair treatment of my own sex. Beauty and…well, not quite the beast. Perhaps beauty and the bleak.

  I breathed in the musty atmosphere of the old Lyceum Theater, a ramshackle mausoleum of nooks and crannies, vaulted ceiling, arabesques and curlicues, faded yet still gilt trimming, and a threadbare curtain. Worn red-velvet plank seats wobbled. Echoey walls, paint flecked and mildewed, whispered of legions of performers on that narrow stage. To me, this was Theater, capitalized. I thought of the old melodramas I’d seen there, widows tied to railroad tracks, maidens lured by black-clad curs under shadowy willows. The Drunkard. Tempest and Sunshine. Ten Nights in a Barroom. Father, dear Father, come home with me now, the clock in the steeple struck one— I’d seen them all. The histrionic gesture, the stentorian voice resounding to the rafters, the icy stare, the maudlin death scenes. The theater kept me alive. It kept my family alive—the Ferbers all enjoyed the stage. There was something about a curtain going up and the rush of piano crescendo. The shock of splendid scenery, a movement of bodies, the gripping plots.