Dangerous Neighbors

by Beth Kephart

  A carriage drawn by two chestnut horses with plumed harnesses discharges the first proper couple of the evening. The gentleman wears a silk hat and a white tie. His wife gathers her elaborate skirt and begins to ascend the wide stairs of the Academy. Someone has already gone ahead and lit the gas lamps, and now as more carriages arrive the Academy steps are overwhelmed, and Broad Street becomes a tide. Anna and Katherine, coral and dark, are swept up in the force of it. They’re up the stairs, through the doors into the lobby.

  It is another world inside. It is stone sheen, gold, and gaslight. “Oh, Anna,” Katherine says, and Anna presses her hand to her heart. Even then, even before she knows what will be stolen from her, even before she is aware of the possibility, Katherine wants every inch of this one birthday evening for keeps. She wants to lodge it deep, for all of time. She leads the way up the stairs and through the crowds and toward an arch and through a door and down the aisle toward their cushioned seats, holding Anna’s hand. High above is the crystal chandelier, and Anna won’t take her eyes off it; in Anna’s eyes it shines. It’s like the icicles that form on the edge of a roof when the sun gets trapped inside—a cascade of ice and sun.

  “Like sitting inside a jewelry box,” Anna whispers, and Katherine nods.

  Everything is tiered. Everything is solid. The Corinthian columns at the proscenium. The private boxes at the theater’s edge. The sapphire star in the hair of the woman seated directly ahead. For the moment it is forgotten that Adelina Patti has come to sing, that somewhere backstage she is transforming herself into Zerlina, but soon the curtain will rise. Soon. Though Katherine hopes that it will take forever. That Katherine and Anna will belong, from now on, to all of this.

  Katherine lifts her eyes to the balcony nearest the stage, along the east side of the Academy, which seems, like all the balconies, to float on air, like a bank of clouds in a gold and cranberry sky. The box is crowded with the well-dressed rich eager for Patti to take the stage—eight of them leaning and bending toward one another, two women with fans batting the air, one woman in black, the plainest woman Katherine has ever seen, even plainer than her mother.

  Beside her sits a man with a straight back and a preoccupied aspect, as if he’s come for obligation’s sake but is somewhere else entirely in his head. He leans forward for a moment, rests his chin in one hand, and when he leans back, Katherine sees a woman, perhaps forty years old, looking grim and lifeless—immune, it seems, to the anticipatory chitter, the starlit chandelier, the stone sheen and jeweled gold, the curtain that will soon reveal all. She is stern, unyielding, while the conversation around her goes on, the batting of the air with oversize fans. It’s as if the woman isn’t really there at all, as if it is, in fact, a cloud she is on, a height she has ascended to on her own. A distance she has forged and holds to and must, Katherine thinks, be interfered with, broken.

  Anna leans against Katherine and asks, “What are you staring at?”

  “That woman. There. Do you see her?” Katherine gestures.

  “Oh,” Anna says, for she’s Katherine’s twin; she understands all.

  “However does one grow so sad as that?”

  “Or so old?” Anna says, and she shudders.

  “She seems lonely, doesn’t she? Seems like she’s not really here.”

  “Don’t let me get old,” Anna says. “You have to promise.”

  Katherine turns and looks deep inside her sister’s green eyes. “I promise you,” she says.

  And now the lights are going down, the curtain rising. Now all of those who have gathered here turn their attention to the stage. Now the flower in Anna’s hair seems to open even broader, and Adelina Patti takes the stage.

  “She’s singing to me,” Anna says. “Do you hear it?”

  “She’s singing to both of us,” Katherine says.

  THE BRIGADES ARE GONE. THE SHANTYTOWN FIRE has been beaten to the ground. The rescued exiles of the Centennial are crossing the widest bridge ever built, headed home. It is night, it is dark, the battle’s over. The Schuylkill holds the reflections of the gas lamps on its back.

  Over shoulders, between satchels, through the windows of passing carriages, Katherine strains to find him. Down the smoldering alleys that break south off of Elm, she turns. The investigators are already stomping about. The tavern owners are spent, dazed, culpable, gaunt. The fat lady lies in a heap beside the still-standing Titusville well, as if waiting for someone to sign her up for a new show. The guests of the Globe and the Trans-Continental are pacing the streets, confused and undecided, their best worldly goods in their hands. A cook runs about with a silver bowl inverted like a hat upon his head. But where is William, and his mutt?

  The end of the day has become the certainty of night. The stink of the dead fire is overwhelming. Katherine has circled around, has circled back. Someone calls to her and asks if she is all right, but she doesn’t dare to answer. For right then, from a distance down Belmont, Katherine hears the barking of a dog, and something tells her—a hunch—that it’s that mutt. Lifting her skirts to her knees, she runs—past the Globe toward Operti’s, where there is no music in the air, only the evening’s aftermath, the sizzle-pop.

  The moon is high and lights her way. The sound of the mutt draws nearer. Katherine hears the thwack and thwack of the mutt’s sooted tail, and sees the dog at last. Now she looks past it, toward Operti’s, which has miraculously escaped the wrath of the fire. On Operti’s steps sits the girl—her gold cage in her hand, empty.

  “Honey,” Katherine calls to her, breathless. “Honey, what happened?”

  “I can’t find my bird,” the girl cries out.

  Katherine throws her arms around the child and sits. She presses her cheek against the child’s cheek, trying to assess the situation, to imagine where the child’s father has gone, how an entire orchestra has vanished. The fire began before Signor Giuseppe Operti could have ever lifted his baton. But where are the musicians? And where is the bird? And where is William?

  “Birds fly,” Katherine tells the child. “I’m sure your Snow is all right. Safe somewhere in a tree.”

  But the girl can no longer hold back her tears. She crumbles inside Katherine’s arms, buries her head in Katherine’s shoulder. She lets the gold cage topple onto the ground, and the mutt, hearing the clatter, comes closer, barks again.

  “Snow’s my best friend,” the child murmurs.

  “I understand,” Katherine says.

  They sit in the dark on those steps, and the mutt barks and chases its tail. Katherine is sure the child’s father is out there, looking for his girl—panicked, too, over what seems lost, over all that will always be lost until and unless it is finally found. Katherine remembers the day on the river, the sight of Bennett sprawled out, plunging his hand through the portal of ice. He would have gone in after Anna. They wouldn’t let him. He’s lived with that. She must forgive him. She must forgive herself.

  “What if Snow doesn’t come back?” the child asks, and Katherine says, “Then you will always have Snow in your heart,” and now the child sobs harder, and Katherine, too, allows her own tears to fall. Anna in her heart, she thinks. Katherine living, staying alive, so that Anna lives within.

  Just then, the mutt turns, moans, stretches low—reaches its filthy front paws toward the shadows of Belmont’s opposite side. The ears shoot up straight on its shaggy head, and Katherine looks to where the dog is looking, waits for the shadows across the way to break. Then the mutt leaps forward and William appears—his hands held out before him and clasped, as if he is holding a globe. He stops when he sees Katherine, takes a long step back. The mutt jumps high, pushes his paws against William’s chest. “Get down now, boy,” the young man says, but says it gently. “Fragile, boy,” he warns. “Back down.”

  “Darling,” Katherine says to the child. “Look up.” For she knows at once what William has found; she hears the sound of the bird singing.

  “Found her huddled on a window ledge,” William says at last, look
ing up, catching Katherine’s eyes with his own, which are the color of a river at night. “Took her a little time to decide to trust my hands,” he says.

  Katherine feels the warm weight of the child peel from her—sees her running down across Operti’s steps. “Snow!” the child says, and William opens his hands slowly—reveals the undiminished whiteness of wings.

  “Down, boy,” William cautions the mutt. “Down, boy. Let the bird be.” And now he transfers the bird to the girl’s open hands, and the bird spreads its glamorous wings; it settles. The child leans in close toward her bird, and gives it a kiss on the beak.

  “You’ve come home, Snow,” she says. “You really have.” She is astonished and grateful and hasn’t got the words to express either feeling.

  “Thank you,” Katherine says for them both.

  “William,” he says, introducing himself.

  “Katherine,” she says. “We’ve met before.”

  “Of course we have. I remember.”

  She doesn’t have to say when, or apologize for it. She doesn’t have to explain, though someday she will. Someday when she and William are walking by the river, she will tell him her whole story. She’ll unspool the memories that she has of Anna—all of them, an entire life of them. But not yet. Not now.

  “Quite the day at the Centennial,” William says into the silence.

  “An accident,” she tells him. “All of it.”

  Katherine lifts the cage from the ground and carries it to the girl, holds the gold door open. Carefully, the child delivers Snow onto its roost. She closes the bird in, then looks up again to Katherine. “My father,” she says, “will be worried.”

  “We’ll take you home, then,” Katherine says, offering the child a hand. To William then she offers her other.

  He bows a little, as if accepting a dance. He smooths his wheat-colored hair, his borrowed trousers, which have charred, Katherine notices, with the fire. He settles his shoulders like a gentleman and yields his hand to Katherine’s.

  “There’s the start of a breeze,” she says, and she stands a little straighter, holds William’s hand a little tighter, so that she might, for all of time, remember this.

  SOURCES

  Late-nineteenth-century Philadelphia is, for me, a place of endless fascinations. Among the many sources that I turned to throughout the writing of this book are the following: The Illustrated History of the Centennial Exhibition: Philadelphia 1876: A Collector’s Reprint (James D. McCabe); Within These Walls: A History of the Academy of Music in Philadelphia (John Francis Marion); Dressed for the Photographer: Ordinary Americans and Fashion, 1840–1900 (Joan Severa); Designing the Centennial: A History of the 1876 International Exhibition in Philadelphia (Bruno Giberti); Forgotten Philadelphia: Lost Architecture of the Quaker City (Thomas H. Keels); A Century After: Picturesque Glimpses of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania (Edward Strahan); A Book of Remembrance (Elizabeth Duane Gillespie); What Ben Beverly Saw at the Great Exposition: A Souvenir of the Centennial, by a Chicago Lawyer (John T. Dale); Tommy’s Folly: Through Fires, Hurricanes, and War, the Story of Congress Hall, Cape May, America’s Oldest Seaside Hotel (Jack Wright); Preschool Education in America: The Culture of Young Children from the Colonial Era to the Present (Barbara Beatty); Images of America: Center City Philadelphia in the 19th Century (The Print and Photograph Department of the Library Company of Philadelphia); Images of America: Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition (Linda P. Gross and Theresa R. Snyder); “Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States by the National Woman Suffrage Association, July 4th, 1876” (The Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Papers Project); “A Sennight of the Centennial,” Atlantic Monthly, July 1876 (William Dean Howells); “In and About the Fair,” Scribner’s Monthly, September 1876 (Donald G. Mitchell); Visitor’s Guide to the Centennial Exhibition and Philadelphia: The Only Guide-Book Sold on the Exhibition Grounds (J. B. Lippincott & Co.); Free Library of Philadelphia The Centennial Exhibition Digital Collection (http://libwww.library.phila.gov/CenCol); Free Library of Philadelphia Centennial Scrapbook (Print and Pictures Collection); Digital History: Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia, 1876 (http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/learning_history/worlds_fair/

  centennial_resources.cfm); The New York Times (assorted Centennial articles); Public Ledger (assorted Centennial articles); and The New Century for Women (assorted Centennial articles).

  Throughout the writing, I have held as true as possible to the facts. I did, however, take liberties with Adelina Patti, the celebrity soprano, who sang at the Academy on many occasions between December 1859 and November 1903. She was not, however, in town during the evening described here.

  END NOTES

  On May 10, 1876, the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the nation was celebrated by the Centennial Exhibition—a World’s Fair of unprecedented proportion that brought upwards of 10 million people to fairgrounds just west of central Philadelphia during a six-month period. With exhibits on display from thirty-seven nations, with exotic plants blooming in Horticultural Hall and the ghost of George Washington rising from water fountains and coins, the Centennial signaled, most of all, the mounting preeminence of American technology.

  Visitors from around the world gawked at such oddities as the typewriter and telephone, a lunch warmer, a stocking darner, a Pullman palace car, a stool with wheels designed for ambulating infants. They honored an eagle by the name of Old Abe who had been a mascot of a Wisconsin regiment in the Civil War. They were awed. And every day, without fail, the fourteen churring acres of time-saving machines in Machinery Hall were powered into action by the Double Corliss, a vertical engine of colossal proportions that was described by one observer as “an athlete of steel and iron,” and which drew the close attention of Walt Whitman, who was found sitting at its feet.

  Directly across the street from the Centennial stood Shantytown, where entertainment of another sort went down in taverns, alleys, and back rooms, and where, one discontented visitor avowed, one couldn’t move “without unpleasant elbowing from low forms of vice, and contemplation of the worst forms of suburban ugliness.” Brick kilns and tented saloons. Salacious dens and clapboard shells. Sea cows and educated pigs, gymnasts and prostitutes, intrigue and ale, always ale: this was the place.

  It was during the course of my research for Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River that I began to dream, novelistically, about this Centennial year. About twin sisters and a boy who rescued animals. About a mother so preoccupied with the future that she could not see, or protect, the present. About a river with a mind of her own.

  Stories like this one go through countless iterations. They require, above all else, a gritty faith. I needed others to keep me going. Among those dear souls are Ivy Goodman, Kate Moses, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Buzz Bissinger, Elizabeth Mosier, Alyson Hagy, Jennie Nash, Jan Shaeffer, Jane Satterfield, Anna Lefler, Adam Levine, Kate Wilhelm, Liz Rosenberg, Mandy Stanley, Vivian Mahoney, Melissa Walker, Sherry McIntosh, the brave librarians of both Radnor Memorial Library and Free Library of Philadelphia, and Lori Salganicoff.

  My agent, Amy Rennert, and her assistant, Robyn Russell, were trusted readers of early drafts, smart provocateurs, and most essential enthusiasts. My father, Kep Kephart, listened to my stories and traveled with me, on a rainy day, to the Centennial grounds, while my husband, Bill, accompanied me through the streets of West Philadelphia on a day of sun. Jill Santopolo read this book twice and helped me think harder and better about what it could be. My son, Jeremy, gave me room to talk about structure and voice; he took an abiding interest; he loved me when I failed and when I didn’t; he taught me, as he always does, something new about heart.

  And then there is Laura Geringer, who invited me, one early spring day, to share this book with her. She read it almost at once. She wrote a letter to which I will always return, when things seem bleak or dark. Laura spoke with me, at great length, about my dreams. She brought Dangerous Neighbors to a stunning publishin
g house called Egmont USA, where the publisher, Elizabeth Law, took generous interest, where Greg Ferguson gracefully steered things through, where Nico Medina and Kathryn Hinds paid exquisite attention to every line and fact, where Mary Albi and Robert Guzman oversaw the marketing effort, and where the incredibly talented Neil Swaab was brought on board to design the (to my mind) exquisite cover. Laura launched my career in young adult novels, and she gave me Dangerous Neighbors as well—making it not just an infinitely better book, but one that I might hold in my hands. For many years, I dreamed of holding this book in my hands.

  I am unspeakably grateful.

  BETH KEPHART is the author of a dozen books, including the National Book Award finalist A Slant of Sun; the BookSense pick Ghosts in the Garden; the autobiography of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River, Flow; and the critically acclaimed novels for young adults Undercover, House of Dance, Nothing But Ghosts, and The Heart Is Not a Size. Beth Kephart’s acclaimed short story “The Longest Distance” appears in the May 2009 HarperTeen anthology No Such Thing As the Real World. She is a winner of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fiction grant, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Leeway grant, a Pew Fellowships in the Arts grant, and the Speakeasy Poetry Prize, among other honors. Kephart’s essays are frequently anthologized, she has judged numerous competitions, and she has taught workshops at many institutions, to all ages. Kephart teaches advanced nonfiction at the University of Pennsylvania and served as the inaugural readergirlz author in residence.