The Swan Gondola: A Novel

by Timothy Schaffert

  And he would kill me next, I thought. In all my daydreams of vengeance, he fell at my hands. But I hadn’t expected this. He hated me as much as I hated him.

  I stepped forward and Wakefield put his hand on the handle of the knife he’d jammed into the wood of the bench. It seemed he might mean to stick me with it, but, no, his hand was on the knife to keep me from taking it and cutting his throat. But I had no interest in the knife. I’d stepped to the bench to take Oscar back. I grabbed my doll by the neck and walked back into the cold.

  • • •

  I STEPPED FROM the little play cottage, ducking my head around the gingerbread again, and stood in the wind, my collar snapped up, my hands in fists, my fists deep in my coat pockets. Oscar was missing a few more of his fingers, but the metal hooks were still screwed into his wrists, so I was able to carry him on my back as I always had. The familiar weight of him, my spine of bone against his wooden one, consoled me.

  In the house, I heard laughter. Down the hall, in the parlor, they’d quit with their séance, it seemed. They’d given up their ghost, which was just as well. I was desperate to leave.

  I then heard the sound of what they found so funny. A child’s squeals and hiccups. Doxie. My darling Doxie.

  I hid at the doorway, around the corner, in the curtain, and watched. Mrs. Margaret kissed Doxie’s neck and tickled her ribs, and Doxie threw her head back to giggle. Everyone swooned at the ring of it. They all sat around the table, the servants too, and they passed Doxie around, lifting her up, sweeping her away, swinging her. They cradled and rocked her. She loved it all and couldn’t stop laughing.

  Her fine, fair hair, which had grown so, and had curled into ringlets, had a little red to it now. It’d been so many months since I’d seen her last, her eyes were different, and her cheeks, and her chin. I could barely see the baby she’d been. And in her every gesture was the person she’d someday be—she had the charms of an actress. She had curiosity and amazement. She was filled with delight over every new discovery, and she discovered something new every second.

  I was about to join them all, and to beg Doxie to let me hold her, when a hollow voice echoed down from up the stairs. It was a song being sung through a horn, it seemed. The voice, a woman’s, shook and wavered, the music popped and skipped, and it sounded as if carried in through a distant window. I couldn’t recognize a single word, but it was something from an opera, I was certain.

  I followed the music upstairs, but once I reached the crooked hall of the second floor, the music seemed from somewhere else. It grew even fainter, and it seemed to be coming from the rooms I’d just passed. And the more I listened, the more it left me. I lifted my ear, cupped it with my hand. The opera I thought I was hearing fell apart, and the noise collected again into the rumble of a furnace and the whistle of wind.

  I was about to return to the stairs, when I tapped a finger against the doorknob to Cecily’s room. And something in just that little tip-tap made me think I should try the door one more time. I turned the knob, and felt the give. The door, somehow, had come unlocked.

  43.

  I PUSHED THE DOOR OPEN, into the room, and the rush of air stirred a small, white feather that had dropped on the floor. I closed the door behind me.

  The room was nearly pitch-dark, with only a thin stick of moonlight coming in from between the closed drapes. I stepped slowly toward the window, my hands at my knees to save my kneecaps from bumping the corners of tables and chairs.

  At the window, I parted the drapes. The moon was only a sliver away from full, and its light shone in, washing everything in a faint silver glow. I noticed swans in the pattern of the drapes—tiny swans lost among a design busy with plums and honeybees. I ran my finger along the curve of a swan’s neck, touched by the sight of it and by the thought of Cecily standing at this window, seeing these swans every day. Did you think of me then? I wondered. I looked more closely at the swan, the bluish-white thread of the embroidery unraveling a little. Had Cecily stood here, right here, running her thumb along the swan too?

  I could barely turn myself away from the swans, and from the notion to find each one, to count them all. Then I noticed a lamp on the table next to the window, so I reached to twist its switch. The brass base of the lamp was a swan too, the lamp’s workings wired through the swan’s bent neck.

  And when I turned on the light, and I looked upon the room, I saw swans everywhere.

  In a painting on the wall was a winter scene, a man and a woman bundled in fur, riding across the snow in a swan-shaped sleigh. And the wallpaper behind the painting was covered in swans swimming, every swan doubled, their reflections stretched along behind them. There were swans woven into the design of the rug on the floor, and swans in the plaster molding at the base of the chandelier overhead.

  Though the sofa along the wall had no swans in its silk—it was pin-striped pink and blue—the pillows had swans on them and a peasant girl feeding them. I sat down and clutched a pillow to my chest.

  This was the place she sat when she couldn’t sleep.

  The fact of her death stunned me just then, making my heart stumble, as if I’d only just been told of it. I felt so afraid for her. I trembled from the cold in the room. My teeth chattered again. I brought my hands to my face and tried to steady my breath. I tried to muffle the clack of my rattling teeth. I didn’t want anyone to hear me. I didn’t want anyone to come in and ask me to leave.

  I thought of Wakefield down in his cottage. I thought of him telling me that this room was only his and hers. It’s not yours, I wanted to tell him. It’s not yours. It’s mine. And it’s Cecily’s. The swans belong to us.

  And I wept with such relief. No matter where she’d been, no matter where she’d gone, Cecily had been always with me.

  • • •

  OPEN ON THE TABLE in front of me was a scrapbook, its pages plastered with newspaper clippings about the Fair. It looked as if Cecily had only just stepped away. A clipping had been cemented, but not pressed against the page. There was a pair of scissors open, as if in midsnip, and an open jar of rubber cement, and a roller next to it. Under the table was a stack of newspapers saved from over the summer and fall.

  And tucked beneath a doily of lace, as if hidden there, was a thin tin box, about the size of my thumb, in the shape of a book. Omaha World’s Fair, 1898 was engraved on its cover, and when you pushed at a hinge, a drawer swung out from the inside of it. The hidden drawer of this hidden book held slips of paper, and on the paper, on every tiny page, was Cecily’s handwriting again, but with the words so minuscule they were nearly impossible to read. I licked my fingertip so I could flip through, and I squinted.

  A picture of an actress on his cigarette card, she’d written on one page. And beneath that: He throws his voice.

  She’d written the swan gondola on the next page, and They call him Ferret. She wrote, Shoes with a nail that clicks in the heel so I don’t walk home in my stockings. She wrote, He carried Doxie. She wrote about waltzing with me on wires, about the rose I turned from white to red, and the henna in her hair. Cecily had devoted the whole book to our summer, telling our story in snippets, in glimpses. I keep this diary secret, she wrote.

  I thrust the box into my pocket, not wanting to risk having it out a second more, of getting caught with it, of having it taken from me. I’d never stolen anything more valuable in all my life. And the theft would inspire me. Before the night was over, I would take something even more precious.

  • • •

  LATER, whenever I thought of that room, I would remember even more swans, many that hadn’t even been there at all. Had the ink pot been swan shaped, a pen tucked into its green-glass wings? I seemed to remember a teapot with a swan-neck spout and a teacup with a swan-neck handle. I would go through the next several years noticing every swan object I passed—and I passed many. The world was ridiculous with swans—a hat, a soup tureen, a pincushion, a flowerpot, a perfume bottle, a flask. A lap harp, a saltcellar, a candy dish. A por
celain figurine for your vanity, where you kept your rings slipped over a swan’s fingerlike neck. I’d find myself collecting everything in my mind, in my memory, and it would all end up in that room.

  • • •

  I HEARD FOOTSTEPS on the stairs and I rushed to the lamp, treading lightly on the balls of my feet so as not to creak the floorboards. I turned off the light and closed the drapes and held my breath. It was Pearl, in the hall now, cooing at Doxie as she carried her to her bed.

  Had anyone even noticed I’d wandered off? Standing in the dark, listening for Pearl to return to the stairs, I wondered how long I could live there, hidden in that room. Maybe there was a swan-shaped chamber pot. I could just empty it out the window. I could sneak from the room at midnight to eat from the icebox, my noises scaring them all, keeping them hidden under their bedsheets. Eventually they’d be so afraid, they would deny my existence, and I’d sit right down with them at their supper table and eat the food off their plates.

  I wanted to turn on the light even at risk of getting caught. I wanted my brain swimming with swans. And what did it matter if Pearl knew I was there? She’d probably unlocked the room herself. I was her puppet, after all. From the moment she became Cecily’s ghost, writing a dead woman’s words, I’d fallen into step.

  I listened to Pearl’s silence, to her waiting in the hall, to her stillness. Soon enough, she would step in. And then what? What awful wails of grief came next?

  I heard Pearl leave. I heard her steps on the stairs. And I heard Doxie on the other side of the wall, kicking her feet against the end of the crib.

  • • •

  AFTER SNEAKING FROM the room and into the hall, I stopped at Doxie’s open door. She stood in her crib now, her wet eyes sparkling from the bit of moon that got in past her closed curtains. “Hey, love,” I whispered. She bounced in her crib, and she held her arms up.

  I walked over to her and I made a face to make her laugh, scrunching up my mug like a cranky old codger’s. I tickled her under her arms, and she squealed.

  “Muffle it, sis,” I said, giving her a peck on the cheek. “Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh.” I put my thumb in her hand to let her squeeze it, for old time’s sake. She brought her other hand to my mouth, to pull my lip. She dug her sharp little fingernails in, tearing at the dry skin. She then put her fingers all the way inside my mouth, and hooked them around my teeth. I pretended to eat them, smacking my chops with my tongue. She laughed some more.

  Doxie then brought both her hands to my neck, leaning forward to wrap her arms around me, trying to climb me, to get up and out of the crib.

  “Whatever you say, darling,” I said, and I lifted her and tucked her into the crook of my arm. We waltzed around the room, but the dancing didn’t please her. She began to whine, leaning toward the doorway, reaching out. “Doxie, Doxie, Dox, Dox, Dox,” I sang, rocking her in rhythm, yet still she fussed.

  I looked around the room for something to distract her. I picked up her little plush tam-o’-shanter of pale blue. When I put it on her head, I thought she might toss it right off. But she pulled it on tighter. She then reached toward the wardrobe, to where her coat hung from the knob. She wiggled her fingers at it.

  I felt my pulse speed up. I felt the sweat bead up on my brow and trickle its salt in my eye. Once the thought had entered my head—the thought of putting her in her coat and taking her away—I felt sick with it. I felt feverish.

  I moved forward without thought. I didn’t think how I’d get out of the house with her, or down the hill, or out of town. I didn’t think at all.

  I was Doxie’s father. The only father who’d ever loved her.

  I’d never been so afraid in my life. But I wasn’t afraid of getting killed. I’d heard tell of men shot for taking babies from cribs, and though that worried me more than a little, it wasn’t what frightened me most. I was afraid I didn’t know right from wrong anymore. I heard Wakefield’s voice in my head. As much as I hated him, his words rang true. What could I give a rich little girl but my poverty?

  That was the good angel on my right shoulder talking. When the bad angel over on the left spoke up, he got all my attention. Doxie belonged with me, not in this necropolis. I’d give Doxie such a life. The rich girl she might be would envy the poor girl I’d make her into. We’d have an act, for one thing. I’d finally become a master ventriloquist, my lips as still as a corpse as my dummy did all the talking. I’d follow Mrs. Margaret’s recipe for woodenness, draping Doxie’s face with cheesecloth and patting it with powder. I’d draw lines around her eyes to make her lids look hinged. I’d plop a ratty wig on her head. And she’d sit on my knee and pretend to be speaking with my voice, a lively contraption of strings and joints.

  I set Doxie on a stool and put on her coat. I then wrapped her in a quilt and held her close. I put my lips to her ears as I walked down the stairs. “Sh-sh-sh-sh,” I said, over and over, to keep her hushed. She played with Oscar’s fingers at my throat. I even took off my shoes and stuck one in each of my back pockets, so I could slip across the floor in stocking feet.

  Doxie conspired with me nicely. “Sh-sh-sh-sh,” she said to me too, into my ear.

  They’d drawn closed the curtain at the doorway to the parlor and I could hear the faint ruckus of the séance resuming—it seemed the table might be trembling. I heard Phoebe, with her awful accent, calling for Cecily. Seeeee-seeeee-leeeee.

  And I stepped out the door and right to the coach that had brought us up the hill. The driver sat inside drinking something brown from a bottle. “Get me out of here!” I barked, and he jumped up and corked his bottle. “To the city!” He took his place at the reins, and we jolted and stuttered forward.

  I sat perched on the edge of the bench, careful not to bust up Oscar any more than he’d already been. The ride seemed endless, even just to get to the end of the winding road of the orchard. The gate to the estate had fallen off its hinges in the terrible winter, and it now lay in the bushes next to the wall, warping from its own weight. We rode on through, and picked up speed on the road down the hill. Doxie fell fascinated with the tassels of the curtain at the coach window, and she watched them swing, and she played with the fringe.

  “Where can we hide until we can sneak out of town?” I asked her. They would notice her gone soon enough, if they hadn’t already—Pearl and the servants could have easily heard the horse’s hooves and the creak of the coach as we’d pulled away. For all I knew, the police were not far off. Maybe there was even a new ballad being sung in some saloon—“Wakefield’s Latest Heartbreak.” Already I could be the worst there ever was, as far as the rest of the world was concerned.

  I would direct the driver to take me to August’s. There I could take a loan from the cash register and pay the driver to keep mum about where he dropped me off. And Doxie and I would hide in the basement.

  But then I began to worry, and when I began to worry, I became all the more befuddled. August’s might be the first place they looked, and I hated the idea of dragging him down with me. The Fair, I thought. We’d find a place at the Fair. We could build ourselves a yurt in a corner of an exhibit hall, and burn the broken columns of plaster and wood for heat. We’d have a crèche, with Doxie nestled in the straw of a fruit crate. It would do, until things quieted, and we’d make our way out to the Egan farm, to the places the maps didn’t chart.

  No. It was too cold to sleep outside. My mind stumbled over all kinds of rotten ideas. Seek the mercy of the evil nuns of St. Joseph’s? Check into the smallpox hotel, where no one would come near?

  The coach slowed before we even passed Wakefield’s shuttered resort by the lake. It stopped. I was about to lean out and yell, when the door was pulled open, Doxie was snatched from my lap, and I was dragged to the ground and punched at the back of the neck. I couldn’t tell if I was falling, or if I’d already hit the dirt. Everything up was down, and down was up, and all went black to the sound of Doxie crying.

  44.

  I WOKE IN A JAIL CELL ALONE, flat on m
y back on a moth-bitten blanket on the floor. Whoever had knocked me down had worked me over. There was pain in my ribs and in my neck, and both my eyes were swollen half-shut. I could feel the promise of a limp, like an itch, working up the leg I’d broken before.

  “Stand up,” a deputy yelped. “There’s a lady present.”

  My skeleton felt to be without gristle, all bone against bone as I tried to move my joints.

  “I said, stand up,” he said, and he banged on the bars with a club. “You’re not allowed any visitors, but I never could listen to a lady weep without getting my heart in a knot. So you show the poor thing some kindness. You tell her you’re no good and that she needs to find a man on the right side of the law.”

  I put a finger and a thumb to my one eye to peel it open. On the other side of the bars, standing in the corridor was the deputy, a homely young wretch with arms as thin as a broomstick, and next to him was a woman in an old-fashioned dress of wine-colored velvet. The dress was fat and frilly, the skirt of it looped and draped. There was fringe and tassel and buttons of gold. The deputy flirted, a sneer on his face, as he pushed a lock of the lady’s hair back behind her ear.

  But this was no lady. I would know August Sweetbriar anywhere, even with my blinkers knocked and bruised.

  “Is it today?” I said, my voice hoarse and sore in my throat. “Or tomorrow?” The cell was all brick, with no window.

  “Is what today or tomorrow?” August said.