I didn’t know what to do with the ring, so I stuck it to my chest with a bit of spirit gum to keep it close to my heart. When I put on my first dress for the evening’s performance, in a spangled blue gown I knew flickered gorgeously in the gas spotlights, I dressed right over it. Between the spirit gum and the tight fabric of the undergarment, I thought it would be safe.
My emotions were affecting me more than I wanted to admit. It was too much at once. My brush with death at the Iroquois. The horror of Ray immediately afterward. Regrets and uncertainties I couldn’t silence. Worst of all, the volatile situation with Clyde, who I needed as my rock. Everything was coming unmoored.
I could almost hold myself together. I knew every moment and every action so well, I only needed to let my body find the memory to carry me forward. We got through Light and Heavy Chest, Woman on Fire, the Magic Milliner, one bit of business after the next. But three-quarters of the way through the act, at a crucial moment of stage patter where I stood alone on the stage, things began to fall apart. I found myself reaching for a coin that, for the first time, wasn’t there.
Had anyone else been on the stage, I could have motioned to them for help. We had a set of prearranged signals for exactly this type of situation. But I was alone, with no one there to assist and a mind as blank as an unpainted canvas.
My choices were to invent a way out or to walk off. I invented a way out. It was all I had been thinking of for days, this ring, and while I didn’t usually do any ring illusions, I remembered the name of one I’d seen in Adelaide’s old notes. It was all I had to help me. I used it.
I reached into the front of my dress, freed the ring, and held it high to catch the light.
“The Ring in Danger!” I cried.
First I made it vanish inside a dainty flowered handkerchief, a simple palming with a misdirect, and it reappeared in the spot over my heart again. I strung it on a flowing crimson scarf, then cut the scarf in tiny pieces and brought it whole from my pocket, with the ring still threaded over the fabric. I used the spare charge up my sleeve from Woman on Fire to make it appear to melt in a burst of flame then pretended to find it intact in the most unlikely place, in the sock of a man in the fifteenth row, nowhere near the aisle.
The illusion was a success, but I felt no pride, only a flat and hazy relief.
After the act, I went to Clyde. I took off my sparkling gown and stockings and corset and underdress and hung them neatly so they didn’t wrinkle. I removed every layer, down to the bare skin. I still felt the wound on my thigh, but I knew what I felt was invisible—while I hadn’t healed, my body had. I scratched away the patch of spirit gum on my chest and left an angry red streak in its place. I tugged the ring off the finger where I’d kept it after the illusion and held it in the palm of my hand. I lay down next to him on the bed, raised myself up on my elbow, and gazed into his face.
He looked at me and said, “You have an answer for me, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not going to be the answer I want, is it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Go ahead and say it.”
“Beloved, I’m not going to marry you now,” I said.
He lay back with his eyes closed, his head against the pillow, and said, “I was afraid you’d say that.”
“I love you more than anything else in the world.”
“I know.” He reached out and stroked the side of my face. The feeling of his fingers against my cheek shook my resolve. He was offering me a kind of certainty. The chance to know that no matter where we were or what we did, that I had a person who loved me that much, who always wanted to reach out for me. Proof, or as close to it as one could ever have, that we believed this love would last. Linking just the two of us, forever.
But I couldn’t. It was a trap. He might not mean it as one, but that’s what it would be. I had no second sight, no magical power to see what life would bring, but all the same, I could clearly see our future. We were too strong-willed to be locked together in marriage, a permanent institution. If we tried to hold each other too close, it could destroy us. On some level, we would never trust each other. I was no longer trustworthy, and neither could I believe it of him. Even with the best of intentions, one of us would do the other wrong. It was only a matter of time and chance which one of us it would be. And if we married, my property would be his. My money would build his theater, whether or not I wanted it to. I hated to think that entered into his decision to propose, but I couldn’t be certain it didn’t.
And I couldn’t say any of that out loud.
Tentatively, I told him, “The timing just isn’t right. Maybe we can talk about it after this tour’s over. It’s only a few more months.”
His jaw tightened, tensed. “Fine. I suppose. I just wish we didn’t have to do everything your way.”
“We don’t have to.”
“Yes, we do,” he said. “I have suggestions, I make recommendations, but we always end up squarely where you want to be.”
“And is it so bad?”
“No, darling. I’m happy,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it, or was trying to. “But I think sometimes we could be happy if I got my way too. It would just be different.”
“I’m not ready for different.”
“All right.”
“Can’t we just keep things the way they are? For now?”
“Including your new trick, I suppose.”
I said, “Yes. I’m not going to back down on that, I think you know.”
“I was afraid you’d say that too.”
“And it’s not a trick.”
“Let’s go to sleep.”
***
The fame of the Halved Man grew. Some audience members were still shocked by the boldness of it, but more and more of them bought tickets because of, not in spite of, the illusion. We got more coverage in the papers, higher billing on the posters, more attention in every regard. Even the people who hated it couldn’t stop talking about it. They might even have been talking the loudest. And for every minister or temperance crusader who complained that the Halved Man was a travesty and a sacrilege, there were two or three more citizens who wanted a front-row seat for the hubbub.
To stoke the flames, I decided to make the illusion even more shocking. I did so with the help of our prop assistant who had staged dozens of battles at a Shakespearean theater in Philadelphia and knew all there was to know about fake blood. Eagerly we worked out the best position and the best moment. At the next performance, the blade of the saw pierced a thin membrane, and bright red blood seemed to pour from the severed body, completing the illusion that a man was dying right onstage in front of the audience’s wide, hungry eyes.
And as dark and disturbing as the Halved Man seemed to the world, it made me happy. It made me regain my joy in performing. The fear that had crept back into my life was banished. I could enjoy the applause again, revel in the audience’s amazement. When I bowed low and heaved the blade of the saw through the cabinet, I was fully the Amazing Arden, without even a trace of the Ada I had been. Afterward, once I had shown them I had full dominion over life and death, I raised my arms and drank in their admiration. I’ll admit I enjoyed the power. I think anyone would. Suddenly I was an overnight success, half a dozen years in the making.
I even got a card from Adelaide. She didn’t sign it. She didn’t need to. She only wrote, “Well done. —A.” and I knew I had finally brought myself up to her standard. She was, at last, truly proud of me. That gave me a warm thrill of satisfaction I sorely needed while the other person I most cherished was deserting me inch by inch. Seething. Pulling away.
***
In New Haven, Clyde and I finally had the fight we’d been spoiling to have for weeks. He’d signed me up for a very close-in circuit, New York and Connecticut and New Jersey only, never more than a three-hour train from
New York City. The show was starting to command high prices, the kind of numbers that had seemed out of reach when we conceived our plan, what seemed like a lifetime ago. He wanted to make the particular people who ran this circuit happy, for business reasons. It was a favor to them. It was also easier on me. I didn’t ask him which reason weighed heavier.
Clyde was preoccupied with business in New York, and he didn’t say exactly what, but I was fairly certain I knew. He was talking with investors who might help him build the Carolina Rose. If he built the theater, it would be time to bring me back to New York as we’d agreed. If I became his headliner under exclusive contract, the act would still be mine in name but his behind the scenes. He had swallowed his pride for the time being, because I was so inflexible about the Halved Man, but I knew he wasn’t truly at peace. He went along because he had to. There was a distance about him, a tension in his muscles. We made love as usual, and his motions were the usual motions, but he didn’t look into my eyes, and I knew exactly what that meant. He hadn’t forgiven me.
What made it even more evident was the mark he made in my book. While paging through my copy of As You Like It, I found that he’d turned down the corner on a single page and underlined a short passage with a few sharp strokes of the pen. I expected it to be the line about fleeting the time carelessly, but it was another mention of Arden:
Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I; when I was at home, I was in a better place: but travelers must be content.
In New Haven after the act, I climbed into the railcar, traded my silk gown for a cotton shift, and poured myself a finger of brandy. My body ached. It didn’t look it, but the Halved Man was an intensely challenging physical illusion. It wasn’t just about the speed and the gestures, which so many of my illusions were. Raising and lowering the knife with precision required very careful control, and the saw itself was remarkably heavy. I was starting to think maybe I should reengineer the opening, so instead of pushing the box into place myself, I’d have one of the assistants push it, but I was reluctant to cede even that much control. My complete power over the box was one of the things that made the illusion so remarkable. I had designed it without spectacle on purpose. There was nothing else to look at but me, the box, the man inside, and the weapons I would use to cut him apart.
There was a noise at the door, and I started, but then recognized the sound of the key turning in the lock, and since only one person had that key, I raised my brandy to welcome him with a smile.
“I wasn’t sure you were coming tonight,” I said.
“I wasn’t sure either,” Clyde said. “But here I am.”
I raised my lips for a kiss, but he didn’t respond, and I knew he had something to say.
“Tell me,” I said.
Without preliminaries, he said, “I want you to stop doing the Halved Man.”
I laughed.
“Don’t laugh!” he said, wounded, angry. “I’m serious.”
“I know you are! I’m sorry. But it’d be ridiculous to give it up now. This is what we’ve worked for all this time. Enough success to give us our dreams.”
“I don’t like the trick,” said Clyde.
“Don’t call it a trick.”
“It’s a trick,” he said, sitting down on the bed, resting his head in his hands. “More than anything else you do, it tricks people. It makes them think something other than what they want to. Your illusions, the rest of them, they make people believe in a better world. This trick makes them believe in a worse one.”
“I’m not changing the world. The world is what it is.”
“I think it upsets people.”
“They love it!”
“You love it. Maybe too much.”
“What are you saying?”
“It scares me,” said Clyde. “To be honest? I’m a man, and to see you cutting a man in half, it makes me worried that you might want to do that to me.”
Fortified by the brandy, I decided I needed to answer him. There was something that had been tickling the back of my brain, another reason the illusion appealed to me, and it was another part of the truth. I couldn’t just tell him the Halved Man was meaningless. I couldn’t tell him what Ray had done to me or what I’d done to him. But I could tell Clyde the alternate meaning, the one that was his anyway.
“Now don’t be scared by this,” I said, “but in a way, I do.”
“How do you suppose I could not be scared by that?” he shouted, springing up.
I sprang up too, holding my hands up, barely noticing when the empty brandy snifter fell on its side. “No, no, no. I don’t want to harm you, not at all. If anything ever happened to you—it would wreck me. I love you more than my own self. Believe me.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“If I could—not cut you apart, no, but if I could, I’d divide you. I’d have part of you with me every day on the road, lying down with me, loving me. And I’d have part of you back in New York keeping the books and building both our careers. You understand? I’m sure you wouldn’t mind dividing me too. Making me two separate people. Your business partner, and the woman you love.”
He leaned in then, placing his forehead on my shoulder, and I wrapped my arms around him, tight. I could feel his heartbeat, his breathing, the heat of his skin. He was my love, my whole love. He was not divided.
I asked tentatively, “Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
I said, “You’re my world, my golden world. I need you. If I can only get half of you sometimes, that’s what I’ll take.”
“You’re right,” he said, cradling my cheek. “It’s not fair. I want to be with you too, all the time. My whole self.”
“We can’t have the impossible.”
He said, “Someone will have to compromise.”
I tried to think of what else I could do, but I didn’t know how to fix it. Finally Clyde was the one who spoke.
“Then I’ll come with you,” he said. “We’ll find someone else to settle the apples.”
I hadn’t expected him to say it, and at first, all I could think of were reasons why not. “But you’re the best. I don’t know who else I could trust.”
“I’ll still be responsible. You’ll still be in my hands.” He smiled at the double meaning. “But I know a young man who needs an opportunity, and he can answer the telephone calls and balance the accounts. We’re established enough I don’t need to go knocking on doors anymore. Our door is the one getting knocked on.”
I had to ask one more question. “And what about your theater?”
“It can wait a little longer,” he said. “I don’t want to be divided anymore. I want to be with you.”
“Thank God,” I said and held him forever.
***
He booked me on the Beauregard circuit, a guaranteed three months of shows, one last act as my business manager to settle our future, undivided. At night, our safe little self-contained world, our movable home, rode the rails through the dark from Kalamazoo to Grand Rapids, Gary to Richmond, Charlotte to Charleston. We played to sold-out crowds. Local dignitaries, mayors and governors, attended in seats of honor. On the second night in Washington, DC, there was a rumor that a well-disguised President Roosevelt entered Ford’s Theater and watched the show from the back of the orchestra level, and whether or not it was true, it brought us all great joy.
If I thought that the weeks of my life where I stopped traveling and spent my days with Clyde were wonderful, it was even more wonderful to have him with me all the time. He was there with me when the sun first began to peek through the curtains in the morning. He was there when we arrived at each dark, empty theater and transformed it into a thrilling place of magic, a carnival of color and light. He shared in that tense moment in every performance after the first flourish—ta-da!—when you hold your breath for what seems like an eternity, waiting f
or someone, anyone, in the audience to begin applauding, praying this won’t be the time when the entire crowd just stares at you in hollow, awful silence. Most importantly, he was there with me, to wrap his arms around me, when I donned my nightgown and crawled under the covers to sleep. The bed in the railcar was small, and there was always some part of us that hung off. One arm or another, sometimes my feet, sometimes his head. But we managed. We were in love.
It was that simple. At least, I hoped it was.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Janesville, 1905
Half past four o’clock
“You said you wouldn’t marry him then.”
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“But you married him later?”
“That would be reasonable. But you know not all of this story is reasonable.”
“To say the least,” he says wryly. It all seems so plausible, and she tells it so smoothly. Reasonable, no. Believable, yes. But is it true? Now it seems he will never be sure. But his decision isn’t about that anymore. Whether he believes her innocent is less important than what she can do for him now. It’s the simplest of all trades: a life for a life. If she saves him from the bullet, she will save him from everything. He’ll keep what he has, what he treasures. That’s all he wants.
He says, “And now I want to ask you for that favor.”
She doesn’t look at him. Her eyes are downcast, modest. She says, “Virgil. You don’t have to ask.”
“Yes. I do. Very much.”
“That’s not what I mean. I know exactly what you want.”
“All right then, tell me.” The situation is so absurd but so vital that it starts to make him light-headed. This can’t be happening, yet it will change the course of his life. He lets himself be a little sarcastic. “Give me your second sight act, Madame.”
“Not like that,” she says. “You’ve all but said it. The bullet.”
“Yes,” he admits. He can feel his pulse quicken at the mere thought. “The bullet.”
“You want me to heal you. To put my hand on the small of your back, make a wish, and draw that bullet out. Science has failed you, so you need magic.”
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