“You can lay a finger on me,” she said playfully. “It’s all right.”
He blinked at her. “But you just said—?”
“Don’t you want to?”
“Of course,” he stuttered.
“You don’t have to be gentle with me, you know. I’m not fragile.” She untucked his shirt. There was something exhilarating about hiding in the hallway of his family’s building. She had never done anything so daring. “I’m your wife, Harry.”
Harry brought her leg up around him. He clasped his hand over her mouth and held on to her thigh so tightly that she could feel the flesh bruising. No one had ever loved her this much. She felt she had lived most of her years numb, and had come out of a white snow burning with life. She wanted to feel every part of her life now; she wanted to feel all the facets of love, all its joys and agonies.
Certainly, she was breathing, but she could hear nothing. Around them, there was only quiet, that beautiful, abundant quiet.
Mrs. Rahner’s apartment was halfway down Driggs Avenue, in a decrepit building split into eight units. It was larger than the Weisses’, but there had been twelve of them living in it at one point. It was not, however, nearly as clean, and as they climbed to the third floor Bess noticed the rows of dead plants, the carcasses of gifts her stepfather had brought home after his many binges, bought with money they could not afford to spend. Harry would not hold her hand, and she realized when she took it anyway that it was because his palms were wet with sweat. It dawned on her that Harry Houdini—who pretended to be afraid of nothing—was terrified of this meeting. It was a revelation that made him seem suddenly more human.
“We’ll only stay an hour,” she whispered as they waited for someone to come to the door. “Don’t worry.” Despite everything that had happened with her stepfather, she still felt an allegiance to her mother. Mrs. Rahner had displayed little affection as Bess was growing up, but there had always been love there.
Inside, they could hear the cries of Bess’s younger siblings, and feet running across the wooden floors. Finally, the door opened, and Bess’s sister Stella, a full-figured blonde four years older than Bess, stood in the foyer.
“What are you doing here?” Bess threw herself into Stella’s arms.
“Mother’s got a terrible cold,” Stella said. “She’s run ragged. I came over to help.”
“Well, she’s not going to like what I have to say, then.”
Stella glanced at Harry, who was frozen in the hallway, his hands pressed against his sides. “You’re not . . . planning to move back in with Mother, are you?”
“No, it’s the opposite. I’m married. I’m not coming home again.”
Stella laughed.
“I am, really. This is Harry, and he and I are married.”
Stella gaped at her. “That’s ridiculous. How could you be married? You only just left for Coney Island a month ago.”
Bess thought back to Harry’s own tactics with his family. “I know. But we love each other.”
Stella stared at them for a moment longer, and her face softened. “Well, congratulations then. I’m happy for you.”
Bess looked past her into the apartment, but she didn’t see her mother. She had been inside the rooms only on Sundays since she had moved in with Stella two years earlier. “Darling, you have to tell her for me. I can’t bear to do it. You know how she is. Go in and ask her if she’ll see us.”
Stella wiped her hands on the dish towel she was holding. “Why are you so nervous about it? She wasn’t upset when I got married at eighteen. If you’ve had a proper Catholic wedding, you know she’ll be happy.”
Bess bit her lip. “Well, I didn’t have one, you see.” She hesitated. “Harry’s Jewish, for one, and—the other thing is, you see, he’s a magician, and we’re leaving next week for the show circuit in the South.”
“Oh, Lord Almighty,” Stella said.
“Please,” Bess begged. “Tell her for me and see if she’ll see us?”
“Wait here a minute.” Stella shook her head. “I don’t know what she’ll say.”
Stella retreated to the back bedroom to find Mrs. Rahner. The smaller children, hearing voices, came running to the door, and squealed when they saw Bess. They clung to her arms and legs.
“Why won’t you go inside?” Harry asked.
“I’ve got a frightful headache,” Bess said. “And I don’t want to get into an argument. I’d rather go back to Coney Island if there’s just going to be a row.” She paused, recalling Mrs. Weiss’s gentleness. “Your mother was so kind to me. You won’t understand mine. She won’t be as kind to you.”
Harry seemed relieved to hear they might be leaving. He hung back awkwardly as Bess greeted the children.
“Do some magic for them,” she whispered. “Don’t just stand there.”
Harry seemed to relax at the suggestion. “Hey, look at this!” He reached behind one of the girl’s ears and brought a tiny paper flower into view. “Presto,” he said, waving the flower with a flourish. The children released Bess immediately and crowded around him instead.
From the back of the apartment, they heard a loud wail. Mrs. Rahner came out of the bedroom in her nightgown, brandishing a chain of rosary beads, Stella trailing after her. “You get out of my house!” she cried, in her heavy German accent, rushing toward the door. “Beatrice, you have condemned yourself! How could you? You’ve gotten yourself in league with the devil!”
The children scampered into the kitchen, laughing, but Harry stepped backward into the hallway, clearly startled. Bess just stared. Her mother’s green eyes were full of fear and rage, the skin beneath them paper-thin. Her face and body were thin, too, so that even in her assault she seemed frail as a bird.
Stella stepped in front of her mother and tried to calm her. But Mrs. Rahner grabbed a vial of holy water and began splashing it all over the foyer and in the doorway where Bess and Harry stood.
“What in the world is going on?” Harry said, as the water splashed over his feet. She could see his cheeks reddening angrily.
Bess grabbed his arm. “Oh, be rational, Mama. He’s not the devil. We just came to say good-bye before we leave.”
“If you’ve married this man, I don’t want to see you again. Do you hear me? You’ve gotten yourself into an unholy marriage, and you’ve put a curse upon yourself. Your father would be ashamed of you.” She broke into a series of vehement Hail Marys and Our Fathers.
“I don’t care!” Bess cried, losing her composure. “I love him!” Her heart was breaking. She had spent years both hating her mother for remarrying and vying for her love. After her father died, Bess had done everything she could to make her mother happy again, but nothing ever seemed enough. Now, she was being pushed out of the apartment for a second time. “Please, won’t you try to understand?”
“You’d better go.” Stella attempted to wrestle the water from her mother’s grasp. “Leave me your address and I’ll write you. Just give it time.”
Bess turned and ran down the stairs and into the white city sunlight, her chest heaving. Harry followed her and pulled her back before she could run into the road.
Bess was shaking. “She’s—a nasty woman,” she said between choked breaths. She vowed she would not give her mother the satisfaction of making her cry. “She treated you—so rudely.”
A shadow crossed over Harry’s face. “Don’t leave me because of this,” he begged, grasping her hand. “Come home with me. None of this will matter tomorrow.”
Bess was so surprised to see him overcome with worry that she regained her calm. “That’s ridiculous. We’ve only just gotten married. How could I leave?” The idea hadn’t occurred to her, but now she saw that, if she wanted, she could still be free of him; after all, they had not had a proper wedding. She could still return home, to Stella’s house and her mother’s cooking on Sundays and the rooms smelling of salt and perfume and the red-brick views outside her old bedroom window.
Harry took her by the elbow. Above them, th
e city sky was colorless, bisected by buildings whose shadows did nothing to cool the sidewalks. “It’s too hot out. Let’s have some dinner and go meet the train.”
Bess shook her head and pulled her arm away. “I’m serious, Harry. I won’t ever speak to her again. Your mother can be mother enough for the two of us. She was very kind to me, and she didn’t have to be. For all she knew I was nothing but a little hussy.”
Harry smiled. “Nonsense. You look far too young to be a hussy.”
He took her hand and walked her down Fulton Street, stopping at the shop windows and making promises of what he would buy her one day. Bess kissed him in front of a diamond cross but could not help hearing the voice of her soft-spoken Brooklyn priest, warning that a rich man can never be admitted into heaven. Harry’s fixation on money worried her. She wondered if there was some truth to her mother’s fears, and whether there were some of his tricks that were in fact not tricks after all.
“The brothers Houdini, who for years have mystified the world with their mysterious box mystery, known as ‘Metamorphosis,’ are no more, and the team will hereafter be known as the Houdinis. The new partner is Miss Bessie Raymond, the petite soubrette, who was married to Mr. Harry Houdini this month. First and final show in Coney Island tomorrow evening.”
Bess held up the page she had torn from The New York Clipper and frowned. “They got my name wrong.”
Harry took it from her and read it again. “That’s all right,” he said. “It’s a splendid article. Raymond, Rahner, it doesn’t matter what you were before. You’re a Houdini now. This should draw us a big crowd. It’s not often people see a husband and wife performing together.”
Bess lay back on the bed, fanning herself with the rest of the newspaper. “How do you think we’re going to manage in the South? It’s supposed to be sweltering.”
“You’ll like it,” Harry said. “People are dignified there, I hear.” He pulled his cardboard suitcase from under the bed and began sorting through the clothes he’d thrown around the room. “When I am rich,” he said, “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. We can go to California if you’d like, and buy a swimming pool, and hire a servant who’ll spray you with water all day, and you’ll never be hot again.”
Bess smiled. “Don’t pack all your clothes yet,” she cautioned him. “Save something nice for tonight.” Doll and Dash and some of the other performers were giving a party for them. “And please don’t wear something that’s wrinkled.”
Harry surveyed the room. “Everything I have is wrinkled.”
Bess wet a cloth and leaned toward him, sticking the fabric inside his ear.
Harry jumped. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Your ears are filthy. Don’t you ever clean them?”
Harry thought about this and then sat down on the bed. He winced as she finished the job. “You’re not still upset about your mother, are you? She’ll come around.”
Bess shook her head. “She won’t, but I’m not upset.”
Downstairs, they heard the loud thumping of a bed against the wall. Another married couple had moved into the apartment directly below them, and it seemed as if they spent half their day in bed. Bess blushed.
Harry heard the thumping, too, and pulled her down with him onto the pillows. “Kiss me,” he said.
She did. He was a confident kisser, and he had the most wonderful, strong hands. But he still seemed unsure of himself at times.
“I want to try something,” he murmured, struggling out of his clothes. He pulled her hand down his stomach, between his legs. He gasped when she touched him, and she held him in her hand, her own body throbbing. “I want you to put your mouth . . . down here,” he told her. “I want to see what it feels like.”
Bess snatched her hand away and sat up. “I will not!” she said. “That’s—that’s a whore’s behavior.”
Harry sat up beside her, his voice livid. “And what do you think making love in the hallway of my mother’s apartment building was? That certainly wasn’t a lady’s behavior.”
Bess slapped him hard across the cheek. Harry sat back, startled.
For a moment, she was afraid he was going to hit her back. She threw her arms over her face. Harry yanked them away. “Who do you think I am?” he demanded. “Do you think I’m the kind of man who would strike his wife?”
“I’m not sure what kind of man you are,” she said slowly, realizing it only as she sounded out the words. She had fallen in love with his love for her, with the certainty of his devotion. “I don’t really know you.”
Harry stood up in disgust and pulled on his clothes. “Get dressed,” he ordered. “We’re going to be late for our own party. I’ll wait for you outside.” He paused in the doorway. “Sometimes, you look at me like I’m not a good man,” he said sadly. “And it’s not fair.”
They were met with cheers in the beer hall, where Doll and Dash waited to greet them with beer and flowers. The other performers, crowding the hall, raised their glasses, calling, “Hooray for the newlyweds!”
It appeared they had been waiting for some time, and almost everyone was already drunk. Bess looked around at the group of them, her friends—Billy the strongman, and Doll and Anna and the other musicians, and Tony the fire-breather, and the comedians. She had known them for only a month, but she would miss them if she and Harry made up and went south after all. Bess took a yellow flower to match her skirt and put it behind her ear. She was wearing one of the outfits Mrs. Weiss had given her, and she felt older and more like the kind of woman who could do such things, even if they were in a beer hall. It was all anyone could afford, but she hated the place—the waiters with their stained white aprons and the smell of stale tobacco and the constant influx of drunken sailors, who spat lewd, drunken comments at the women. She imagined the kinds of places she would frequent if she were wealthier—tearooms papered in pink and white, quiet except for low voices and the tinkle of porcelain cups. Working in the restaurant at Siegel-Cooper had spoiled her; she had seen how it was possible to live. She had carefully observed the dress and mannerisms of the women who came for lunch, admiring their flowered silk gowns and egret plume hats. Of course, she couldn’t imitate their polished behaviors with her own friends—they would only laugh at her—but she filed the memories away for later use.
She and Harry parted almost immediately—he toward a group of men in the back and she toward the excited chatter of Doll and Anna. They had found a new performer for their group, who would be joining them the following week, and they had given up their short-lived grudge against Bess for abandoning them.
“What is it like to be married?” Doll asked. “Do you feel like a different person?”
Bess shook her head, tears pooling in her eyes. Doll grabbed her hand. “What’s wrong? Did I say something?”
“We had an argument,” Bess said. “Harry and me. Just before coming here.”
Anna laughed. “Oh, is that all? Darling, married people argue all the time. It’s nothing.”
Bess covered her face with her handkerchief. “This was different.” She wanted to tell them what Harry had asked her to do, but she was too embarrassed.
“That’s what everyone says. I know my fair share of married women—I’ve got six married cousins, you know—and they all say that.” She handed her a heavy glass of beer. “Drink this. It will make you feel better.”
Bess took the glass and swallowed the contents in four gulps. It was thick and bitter, and she almost retched it back up. “This is the worst beer I’ve ever had,” she said.
Anna shrugged. “Of course it is. We’re in the Gut.”
“Champagne tastes better.” Her mother had forbidden alcohol in the apartment—an order her stepfather never tolerated—but she would not forget the champagne Harry had opened after their wedding, the sensation of the bubbles popping against her tongue.
“Of course champagne tastes better,” Doll said. “What a silly thing to say.”
Bess looked across th
e room at Harry, who was seated at a far table with his legs stretched out in front of him, laughing. Evatima Tardo, the snake charmer, was seated beside him, her hand on his thigh. She was a strange, black-haired Cuban beauty, who spoke English with a heavy, seductive accent and performed a miraculous act—she enticed rattlesnakes to bite her bare shoulder and was able to sing beautifully as dozens of pins were pushed into her face. She had a mysterious tolerance for pain and poison that Harry envied. She claimed she had been bitten by a poisonous fer-de-lance as a child, which had immunized her, but Harry was certain she was lying and was always trying to entice her to tell him her secret.
Now she was brazenly flirting with him, leaning into him and saying something that was making him laugh. She had the tiniest waist Bess had ever seen, and Bess watched as Harry reached out and placed his hand on her hip.
“Bess.” Doll put her arm around Bess’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about them, love. He’s just trying to make you jealous. He’s your husband.”
Behind them, Bess heard a cork popping, and she turned to see one of the sailors holding a bottle of champagne over his head, the white froth pouring down the sides and onto the table.
“Where did you get that?” Bess asked him.
He grinned at her. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” When she shrugged he said, “We just got back from a haul, and I’ve got a stash of money. Want a glass?”
Bess nodded. “I would, please.”
“You’ll have to do a little something to get it.”
Bess blushed. “I don’t think so. I’m no chorus girl.”
“Nothing as bad as you’re thinking, you dirty girl,” he said coyly, holding up an empty beer glass. “You see, I only have this one glass to drink out of. Just come sit on my lap for a few minutes, and we can share it.”
Bess looked over at Harry again; his arm was still around Evatima’s waist.
“All right,” she said and moved cautiously to the sailor’s table. He was actually quite handsome, and clean, too—unlike most of the men she encountered in the beer halls. He looked about Harry’s age, and had similar dark features and a rounded chin.
Mrs. Houdini Page 7