Among the Wonderful (11 page)

“Really, Ana. If I thought you would —” In two steps I had him by the arm. My nightgown fell to the ground. I took hold of his other arm and I lifted him into the air. His head hit my chest and I lifted him higher, shaking him now. I let my hands slide up to his neck. I could kill him easily. “How much money did he pay?” I jerked him from one side to the other. His eyes nearly popped out of his head and I wished they would.

“One hundred dollars,” he whispered.

I lifted him so high he was level with my face. “You hung that mirror just right, didn’t you? Probably before I even moved in.”

He grew redder and redder in the face, opening and closing his mouth, and uselessly prying at my hands.

I let him drop to the ground, where he crumpled. “I’ll be gone by morning.” I was already thinking of a steamer and the gray syrupy waters of Ontario widening the gulf between us, and the possibility of my body sinking into a place with no more breath, no more me, ever. Or else New York. “You can leave the one hundred dollars on the table in the library for me.”

I entered the world an average size; my mother, a missionary’s wife, held me easily in her arms on the deck of the ship that carried us to the jungled shore of South America, which was to be our home for as long as the Lord willed it. Safely under God’s wing, we had no idea what terrors we’d soon encounter, and what black magic would be incanted upon us
.

Or perhaps:

My father guided my mother down the gangway onto the rough-hewn pier that led into the jungle with one arm around her shoulders and the other gently touching her heavy belly. They were relieved that the baby had not arrived on the ship; little did they know that this gestation would be the longest the world had ever known; the birth of such a monstrous baby would be so gruesome that my father, the most devout soul in South America, would lose his faith in God. At my mother’s funeral he gave me to the black nurse who had attended the birth-murder. It was she whom I would call mother, and, after the mission burned and my father’s head rotted on a wooden stake beside the ruins of his church, it was with her that I fled to my second life in the jungles of Surinam
.

Horror sells, but maybe this was too much? I put down my pencil and rubbed my eyes. I should just hire someone to write it. I could speak to Barnum’s ad man. What was his name? He could recommend someone, and I would be rid of this terrible task. The True Life History nagged at me incessantly. Without a story, however full it was of nonsense, I was just an oversized body on display.

I sat on the north edge of the rooftop garden, half hidden in the shadow of the kitchen. Under low clouds that threatened rain, about a hundred museum patrons wandered the rooftop promenade. An umbrella vendor would soon appear, and some of the restaurant staff had already started to unfold one of the large tents that could stand over a section of tables. A crowd had gathered around a white-suited juggler wearing a harlequin mask, whom I could tell was a woman. She juggled well; her seven gold balls cascaded in a perfect circle. She was probably French. I scanned her audience, wondering if she worked with a disguised accomplice who gently robbed the enchanted crowd.

My first act on earth was to destroy my mother. By the time I could read I knew that most of literature’s lessons and pleasures did not apply to me. By the time I reached Womanhood, my punishment was fully realized: I was eight feet tall
.

A shadow crept over my paper, and I covered the scrawl with my arm.

“May I?” Thomas Willoughby, slouching and spectacularly unkempt, gestured to the seat next to mine.

“By all means. I’m just waiting for my lunch to arrive.”

Thomas sat heavily and crossed his grubby hands in front of him. “What are you writing, a letter?”

“Just a story to sell at my booth. About my so-called origins.”

“Fabricated?”

“Of course. But I’m tired of it.” I folded the paper and placed it under my water glass. “Tell me something about your origins, Thomas. Did your parents set you aside at birth to become a prodigy, or were you driven to it by some mysterious, possibly divine force?”

“Nothing like that.” Thomas Willoughby smiled. I had heard that he was widely known in Europe some years ago, and even here in New York, quite recently. I still had no idea why he was working for Barnum.

“I didn’t start playing until I was eleven, which is quite late. I would never have come to it on my own. One of our neighbors played, and it was because of her that I learned.
Mrs. Corbett.” Thomas smiled coyly and tapped his fingers on the edge of the table. It appeared that he was feigning shyness, which made me smile.

Above us, the overcast thickened. Museum visitors strolled among the flagpoles and potted trees, their shawls wrapped tight and jackets buttoned against the breeze that wanted to blow their hats toward the harbor.

“My mother and father didn’t own a piano. Neither did Mrs. Corbett, actually. I would meet her at the church. She was a widow. I was in love with her.”

“Of course.” With his rabbity nervousness, I wouldn’t have taken Thomas for a storyteller. Two plates of chicken salad arrived for us.

“A widow, but still young,” I goaded.

“Not very young.”

“But pretty.”

“Not so pretty. I adored her! She paced the church while I played. We were the only two people in existence. You know how it is.”

I did not.

“As if the church were some kind of ship and we were far from land! She would stop me in the middle of a movement and shout my name. ‘Thomas! Do you hear? Ludwig called that C minor chord
Fate knocking on the door!
’ She referred to composers by first name. By the time I was fourteen, she had stopped playing the piano herself.”

“Because your skill had far exceeded hers.”

“Yes. But she remained my teacher. She read things to me. Biographies. I was fourteen. I wanted to go home with her. She started giving me different, more powerful music. Music that held both love and grief. Primeval, we called it.”

Thomas was staring at the horizon with a bit of chicken grease shining on his chin.

“Good Lord, Thomas. You’re waxing quite poetical now.”

“I was in love with her, Ana. Surely you understand that!”

That I would know what it meant to be in love was not a fair assumption, but I kept quiet.

“She sent me away.”

“No!” I suppressed my laugh because Thomas looked so crestfallen in the retelling.

“She had written to Leopold Heinrich in London. A famous teacher. I don’t know what she did to convince him to take me. I was so much older than his other pupils. But he invited me to his school.”

“But not before you declared your love?”

Thomas shook his head. “I did not. During our last lesson she sat next to me on the bench. She said, ‘Counterpoint, Thomas, is two melodic lines diverging and intersecting. It’s how harmony is made. Think of it as a conversation of two voices, both contained by the piano.’ The way she said it to me … I can’t explain.” He was positively dreamy. “The next day I climbed into a carriage and never returned.”

“You never saw her again?” I set my wineglass down; a few crimson drops spilled onto the tablecloth. “How excruciating.”

“I spent twelve years in Europe, and then came here, to Manhattan. That was ten years ago now. But long before that, my mother told me Mrs. Corbett had moved away.” Thomas finished his tale with a flourish. “Gone.”

I did not trust myself to open my mouth; I was afraid I would mock him, and that would be cruel. I could not tell if the pianist regarded his love story as melodrama, so I commiserated while we finished our cake, and it wasn’t until I returned to my booth and subsequently heard three hours of a continuous fugue that I determined he did not.

Maud had found a fourth for the whist table in Mrs. Martinetti, eldest of the Martinetti family of acrobats. The ten-person Martinetti family, the Marvelous Monarchs of the Air, performed in the theater twice daily wearing orange-and-black winged costumes. They drew a huge crowd, mostly Italian immigrants, for every one of their shows. Out of everything in Barnum’s museum, I was sure the Martinettis made him the most money.

Though her furniture was not substantial, Maud’s room
was an Aladdin’s cave of richly patterned rugs and tapestries draped upon every surface. The table was made of two stacked trunks and lit by several standing lamps pulled close.

“Ana, come in. Everyone else is here,” Maud said when I appeared. I ducked under the frame and closed the door. Mrs. Martinetti looked more like a grandmother than an acrobat, apparently proving that the two occupations were not mutually exclusive. She perched on the edge of her seat, preposterous next to Mr. Olrick, the Austrian Giant, who immediately rose to greet me.

“Miss Swift, good evening. We’ve not yet had the pleasure of acquaintance.” His voice held no trace of an accent. “I met the other giant last night, the Chinese fellow. I wondered when I would have the pleasure of meeting you.”

“Mr. Olrick,” I returned. I suppose I could not ignore him forever. “I didn’t know there was a third giant in the museum. That’s an awful lot, don’t you think?”

“No one sees him very much. He stays shut up in his room,” said Maud.

Mr. Olrick had a pleasant enough face: a softened rectangle creased at all corners. His lips were entirely obscured by a mustache of unfortunate proportions. A trademark, perhaps. He wore some kind of military uniform. I enjoyed the touch of an equal-sized hand for a moment, and even imagined what it would feel like against my cheek, gently, or else roughly clasped in passion. I could make a fortune if I married a giant publicly, of course. I despised the idea, just as I despised other giants, especially the men who must see me (as I also see them, however fleetingly) as a potential lover. Why is it assumed that I belong with others of my kind? Why double something that is already enormous? No thank you, I will stay firmly away.

“We were discussing this rain,” said Maud. She gestured me toward a less-than-substantial chair. “But now we can dispense with trivialities and get down to the business at hand. Mr. Olrick has limited experience —”

Mr. Olrick huffed. “I’m sure I can hold my own, my dear.”

“Ana, I’ve paired you with Mrs. Martinetti, whose skills we have not yet determined, as she does not have English.”

“Fine.” I rested gingerly on the seat across from Mrs. Martinetti.

“Ana, will you oblige us with the first deal?” Maud picked up the deck, which was emblazoned with a gold-and-scarlet coat of arms. The cards gave a satisfying snap and hiss as I shuffled. Mrs. Martinetti cut the deck and I dealt out the hands, turning the last card face up.

“Diamonds trump,” I announced and the game began. Maud led with the queen. Mrs. Martinetti followed with a three, and Olrick quickly played the king.

“Mr. Olrick!” Maud gasped. “Have you played this game before?”

“Well, yes,” he sputtered, reddening. “But it has been some time.”

“You do realize that I am your partner?”

“Yes, of course. Ah, I see my mistake now. I apologize.”

I finished the trick with a five. Olrick led the next with a nine.

“Actually I haven’t played since my convalescence.” He directed this remark to me as I won the trick with the ten. “My mother and I had eleven months together, while I waited for my bones to strengthen.”

Of course he had to bring up his
convalescence
.

“We played all kinds of card games, and then in the evening when my brother and father were home, we played whist.”

“You were ill?” Maud played the ten of hearts.

“Some giants” — I interjected, with a clear inflection of boredom — “have a period of time, usually around the age of twelve, when the skeleton grows faster than the body can support. I’m surprised you haven’t heard this story before, Maud.”

Olrick continued to prattle about his virtuous mother nursing him into Monsterhood, and of course I remembered my own bed rest, but I would die before mentioning it aloud.
A full year flat on my back was nothing to share with others, a full year longing to peel myself out of the thick skin coat that fit less and less as the weeks marched on. People from town sent crate after crate of books, and I read them all and asked for more. One day my mother came home with a set of three volumes wrapped carefully in a sackcloth with the corners folded like an envelope. She handed them over and stood there, her eyes boring holes into me with an expression I didn’t want to understand.

The Giant in History and Literature
. I never did find out from whom those books came or what it took to procure them. But for good or ill, the Titans became my great-grandfathers, roaming the earth to make war with the gods. Goliath. Gilgamesh. From behind the misty curtain, Ohya and Hahya stepped out of the centuries as my distant sisters. But in the second volume, on page one hundred and seventeen, a hateful prophecy was delivered:
Through time it has been observed that Giants seldom, if ever, live to see their fortieth year. Earthly forces pull their organs to premature deterioration; their frames, though massive, are brittle and precarious, not meant to bear the weight with which they have been endowed
.

At first, still trapped in bed, I masked my horror with noble thoughts: As an example of this ancient and powerful race, I must gracefully bear this strange sentence. Rise above, so to speak, the inevitability of this verdict.

But when you came into the room, Mother, with a cup of broth steaming in your hand, you rushed to me.
What ails you, daughter?
My thin veil of dignity instantly dissolved to tears. You pulled the book from my hand. You took the whole set away, as if that could erase what I had already read. As if my aching bones, each throbbing step, each time I massaged a leg or shoulder or saw myself reflected in a window was not a reminder that my body is nothing but a death cage.

Mrs. Martinetti proved an attentive player but not much of a partner, since she barely looked up from her hand and never uttered a sound. We played on, with Maud and Olrick taking the next two tricks.