I met Esther later that afternoon at the Temple Zion, where her father handed me a hand-written chronicle of social activities for the summer. Idly, I wondered how I’d enliven it for the Crescent. Lately, I’d been taking undue license with my matter-of-fact reportage. My account of the Annual Fireman’s Ball became an exercise in hyperbole: “Festoons of red, white, and blue crepe paper dipped and swirled above the candle-lighted dance floor; and the theme of Springtime on the Fox River brought to mind dances of Cleopatra on her barge on the Nile, with garlands of lilac and forsythia strewn on papier-mache columns.” Sam Ryan, peeved, had edited it down to a serviceable line: “The theme of this year’s Annual Fireman’s Ball was Springtime on the Fox River. Winner of the dance contest was…” He warned me: I was not Frances Hodgson Burnett gushing out Little Lord Fauntleroy; perhaps I should read Rebecca Harding Davis’ grim reportage on life in the coal mines. As I blithely told Sam, facts bored me. They were, paraphrasing Cervantes, the enemy of truth.
“Maybe you should write fiction,” he countered.
I was telling Esther about Sam Ryan’s comment as we strolled down College. We dawdled in front of shop windows. I didn’t want to return to the city room, so I’d implored Esther to walk with me. In front of the Lyceum, I pointed at the old building. “I don’t want to write one more piece on the Elks Club fund-raiser,” I whined. “I want to be Juliet on that stage.”
Esther smiled. She’d heard it all before, of course. “Edna, Edna.”
“Theater is in my blood, Esther.”
She yawned. We’d played this scene many times in front of the Lyceum. Edna the tragedienne? Edna the comedienne? Camille? Portia? Lady Macbeth? Edna ingloriously tied to the tracks as a locomotive lumbered toward her. But this time Esther seemed to have forgotten her lines, which annoyed me. This was a play we knew by heart.
Suddenly I was overcome with the image of the hapless Frana proclaiming herself the belle of Broadway.
Theo, Houdini’s brother, walked out the front door, sat down on a bench in front of the theater, and lit a cigar. I knew he’d been visiting friends in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and was just back in town.
“Is Mr. Houdini at the theater?” I called.
Theo nodded. “Yes, but…”
“Could I say hello? I’m Edna Ferber, a reporter.”
Theo smiled. “Oh, I read your interview. Quite…romantic.”
That cheered me. “Well, I did my best.” But noting the sardonic tone of his voice, I wondered if he was really complimenting me.
“My brother is rehearsing. I don’t know if…”
Harry Houdini was suddenly standing in the doorway, waving to me.
“Come in,” he called to us. “Come visit. I’m rehearsing.”
Meekly, we followed the brothers into the quiet theater. Onstage behind a dropped curtain, Houdini had set up some new paraphernalia. “I’m experimenting with both a straightjacket and this farm harness Theo located. It seems designed to limit the movement of frisky animals.” He tapped his foot nervously. “The straightjacket I got from a madhouse in New York. Bedlam and me. I’m going to escape from the dangerous combination of a straightjacket reinforced with this iron harness. I’m escaping from the inescapable.” He glanced from me to Esther. “Do you want to watch?”
Theo helped his brother into the elaborate contraptions, tightening the cords, binding the clasps, buckling the straps. The iron brace looked sinister and deadly. I imagined some roving heifer locked into panicked immobility. While Houdini maneuvered his body into the gear, he kept up a stream of chatter, enjoying himself, showing off. He danced around, the class clown in front of giggly girls. As we watched, wide-eyed and a little nervous, Houdini shrugged and strained and fretted and sweated-and seemed unable to extricate himself. He was having trouble.
Finally he mumbled, “This is new for me. I gotta devise a way out.” Unmoving, he mulled it over, his broad shoulders shifting under the restraint, his torso heaving, the tendons in his neck swelling. No progress. Theo waited nearby, tapping his foot. Houdini toppled onto the stage, rolled over on his side, huffing and puffing. Sweat poured off his face.
I couldn’t resist. “You seem to be concentrating, sir, but you don’t seem to be using your imagination.”
Theo glowered. Esther threw me a look that said-Have you gone mad? Gustave Timm had walked onto the stage, observing Houdini’s machinations, and my comment made him shake his head. But Houdini burst out laughing, a high infectious cackle, his body rolling back and forth in the ungainly jacket and irons. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
“You’re too much, Miss Ferber,” he stammered. Then, to Theo, “Get me out of this.” Quickly, his brother released him and Houdini shook out his arms, exercised his stiff fingers, and rotated his beet-red neck. He pushed the contraption aside, and he smiled sheepishly. “I won’t get into a bind unless I know my way out. This one’s a puzzle. A few wrinkles.” He sized up the contraption. “This will be a sensation on stage. The straitjacket is no problem. I already do that.” He winked at me. “Assuming I use my imagination.”
“I’m sorry.” Though I wasn’t.
“You said what you were supposed to say.” He saluted me. “Like my wife Bess, you hurl the most cutting barbs when I’m trussed and chained.”
I started to say something, but Esther, who’d been quiet all along, suddenly spoke. “You know, sir, Edna’s dream is to become a famous actress. Like Bernhardt. She wants to perform on a stage like this.”
Said, the line seemed inappropriate, especially in the old, creaky theater and on that storied stage. Outside of my family, she alone knew my precious desire. Why would she say that now? Houdini raised his eyebrows as though Esther were joking; and Gustave Timm looked perplexed. Embarrassed, I didn’t know where to turn.
“Really?” Gustave Timm said. “I’m surprised. I picture you as a writer.”
Feebly, I sputtered, “It’s been my dream.” I breathed in. “Well, I love the theater. The Ferber family has survived dismal towns because there was always a theater nearby.”
“I know what you mean.” Gustave understood that. “Your father and I have had wonderful talks about it. He remembers seeing Edwin Booth in Hamlet, in fact. Even Nat Goodwin in A Gilded Fool. I find that thrilling.”
“So why is it surprising that I want to be an actress?” I avoided eye contact with Houdini.
Gustave Timm acted flustered. “I meant no harm, Miss Ferber. Of course, it’s just that given my profession”-he waved his hands around the room-“I hear a lot of such sentiment from many young men and women. People think of the glamour and the…the…” He looked away.
I kept still.
“Miss Ferber has dramatic flair,” Houdini jumped in.
“I find it strange myself,” Esther added out of the blue, and everyone looked at her.
“How so?” Houdini asked.
Esther’s face got red. “To be anything. Edna is a reporter. I just want to be a good wife. A mother to lots of children. I…I don’t know…” Her voice trailed off. It seemed a bizarre statement, and everyone waited for her to continue. She looked to me for help, but I was silent.
The men were staring at Esther, and I knew what they saw: the absolutely beautiful young girl with those dark ebony eyes and that alabaster skin set against that dark upswept black curls. Here was the stunning Rebecca of Sir Walter Scott’s imagination. And me: here, too.
Not happy, I was.
Theo flattered Esther. “You, my dear, should be an actress. Your beauty…Why your face is positively luminous.”
“You certainly are…” Gustave agreed, but he stopped, flushed, staring into my stony face. “Oh, I don’t mean, Miss Ferber, that you shouldn’t be…”
I drew in my cheeks. “I gather only beauty can tread the boards?”
I glanced at Theo, then at Gustave.
“I didn’t mean that.” Gustave nervously looked over my shoulder.
“And yet that’s what you just said.”
“I’m sorry,” Theo added. “I was just trying to be complimentary to your friend. I…”
“But not to everyone.” I was furious.
Houdini interrupted, laughing. “Now, now, Miss Ferber. Frankly I can see you as a hellfire Kate in The Taming of the Shrew. And I mean that as a good thing.”
Well, I’d made everyone uncomfortable. So be it. It wouldn’t be the last time I’d disturb the peace.
Theo hurriedly glanced at his watch, mumbled something to his brother, and told us all goodbye. “I’m off to meet a friend.” He walked off the stage.
Gustave Timm was sputtering some gibberish about my talent as a writer.
Hmm. The homely girl as wordsmith; the drudge as hawker for his melodramas. Cinderella’s stepsister turning pieces of coal into words of diamonds.
Houdini obviously enjoyed the flash fire exchange, which bothered me. Was I overreacting? I was hurt, not only by Theo’s insensitive dismissal of me as a future actress but by Gustave Timm’s ready agreement with him, though perhaps he was just making idle chatter. A word came to mind, one to be added to my list of deadly sins: shallow. A cousin to boring and annoying. Pride and greed and lust and the other deadly sins were the stuff of literature-and classical theater. The niggling little petty vices were the ones that rankled and were thus especially unpardonable.
Gustave hurriedly changed the subject. “Miss Ferber, I saw you talking to that strange man who lives in my brother’s rooming house.”
“Mac?”
“I hadn’t realized you knew him-worked with him. He’s quite the oddity. He talks to no one in the house, even stares down the formidable Mrs. Zeller.” He mock shivered. “Everyone is quite scared of him.”
Well, so was I, but I declared, “He’s a highly accomplished printer.”
Gustave squinted. “Really?”
“We all have our idiosyncrasies, sir.” I waited a second. “Unfortunately, Mr. Timm, I overheard you squabbling with your brother while I was in Mrs. Zeller’s parlor. The walls are thin…”
He turned red in the face. “What?”
“I was surprised to learn that he’s planning on leaving the high school.” I spoke rapidly, purposely defiant, violating whatever tacit laws of privacy I believed in. I wanted to annoy now, to goad. Prick my vanity and I’m hell bent on revenge.
Good for me.
Gustave Timm looked lost for a minute. “That’s not definite, Miss Ferber…and not for publication. I’m hoping you’ll honor that.” He sighed. “What you heard was brotherly rivalry. My brother has been shattered by his wife’s illness and…and estrangement…and has been paralyzed. I actually took this job at the Lyceum to be near him.” His voice rose. “I’ve come to love Appleton. I have a life with Mildred now. And to spite me-it has nothing to do with his failed marriage-he says he wants to leave. He’s playing a game and…” He held up both hands. “Enough. What you heard was private. I don’t know why you have to bring it up now.”
Because I want to irritate you. “Well, you seem to want to provide a detailed explanation.”
He shook his head. “Touche, Miss Ferber. It’s a failure I have. My brother Homer is the taciturn one, the tombstone in the graveyard. I’m the chattering magpie, running on and on…”
“I was just curious.” I shrugged. “I’m a reporter.”
“Surely…”
“This is not news…Yet.”
“Homer is not leaving Appleton.”
“All right, then. But this is what the citizens of Appleton will want to know.”
“Please.”
For some reason Gustave glanced at Houdini. “I’ve said too much. I’m protective of my brother, even as we do battle.”
Houdini looked into the wings. “My brother Theo and I have our problems, I’ll be the first to tell you. He’s my shadow, you know. He even does his own show under the stage name Hardeen, but it’s a pale reflection of mine, and so…well…he runs off to talk about me with his friends…” He frowned. “While I yammer about him to you.”
I thought of Fannie. She was my sister and I would defend her, even though we argued. I did love her. She was my blood. I supposed someday, should we cross paths one time too many, especially with her frilly Cinderella posturings, I’d have to kill her. Deputy Moss would fumble with the leg irons…and wither under my tongue-lashing.
“We have to go,” I said. Esther had been frowning at my sniping at Theo and Gustave Timm. “I’m headed home. I promised my father a walk.”
“I’ll walk you both home.” Houdini moved toward me.
“Of course not. I’ve told you before…”
“There’s a murderer afoot in Appleton,” Houdini said, his tone a little too flippant. Esther and I gasped. Gustave Timm looked at him, befuddled. He sucked in his cheeks. “Oh, Lord, I’m sorry, that was careless of me. I choose the wrong words. My English is poor…Sometimes I speak…”
“No,” I agreed, “you’re right. But I walk the streets of Appleton all the time. People know me.”
“I only meant…” Houdini’s craggy face got soft. “I think of that poor girl. A girl just like you two. Young.”
No one knew where to look. Gustave Timm cleared his throat and checked his watch.
“Thank you.” I broke the awful silence. “But I can find my way home.”
Quietly, tension still in the air, we walked off the stage.
While Gustave locked up the theater, we lingered in front of the marquee that still bore Houdini’s name. A life-sized poster of Houdini filled the display case by the entrance, and I noticed Houdini checking his image. At that moment a plum-colored Victoria paused in front of the theater, the two majestic horses neighing noisily, and we turned to see Cyrus P. Powell, reins in hand, staring at us.
Gustave, flummoxed, dropped his keys, but Houdini half-bowed, European-style, ready to speak. Mr. Powell’s censorious eyes swept from me to Esther, then to Houdini, and he said through clenched teeth, “A private show at my theater?”
The rich man’s voice had a metallic, whistling timbre, so much like nails pulled across a school slate.
But in the next instant, he turned to his horses, and the Victoria moved away.
“He’s not happy with me,” Gustave mumbled.
“I doubt whether he’s happy with himself,” I chimed in, and I caught Houdini grinning at me.
Houdini said he was ready for a nap and planned to head back to David Baum’s house. Esther was meeting her mother at a friend’s two streets over, and began her generous goodbyes, which rivaled the farewell scene from some Italian opera. Houdini kissed her hand. I walked with Houdini and Gustave, but Houdini turned off at Oneida Street. Gustave and I continued on, and I purposely made peace with him, the two of us talking animatedly about Mabel Hite’s recent performance in A Knight for a Day. I thought her acting strained, the famous actress “underplaying the needed comedy.”
Gustave’s face brightened. “God, yes. You know, I thought the same thing.” I smiled at him; we were friends again. He added quickly, “I do think you should convince Sam Ryan to let you do theater reviews. I’ve read your news pieces. I’m not just saying that.”
“I’m lucky if I have a job next week.”
He seemed surprised and concerned. “Tell me.”
But suddenly Houdini was calling from behind us, returning. “Miss Ferber, let me walk you home.”
“I told you, sir, I’m safe in Appleton. This isn’t New York’s tenderloin district.”
“I need to ask you something.”
“What?”
“Let’s walk. It’s beautiful out.”
As the three of us walked along, Houdini wove an elaborate question about the differences between European and American audiences, and whether I thought-as someone who went to the theater regularly-he came off as a bumpkin with his rough accent, his boasting, and his faulty grammar. “You write for a living. Bess tells me to watch my speech. I just don’t know.” He looked me in the eye. “When you get famous, sometimes it’s hard to step backward to learn what you should have learned…” He faltered. “Sometimes I say ain’t and sometimes I say youse, and I know the audience thinks I’m a fool. In Europe it don’t matter. To them I’m a crazy American with my tenement-house gab. But here I notice people laughing. The other night, in my hometown, I said youse guys, and I saw some folks shake their heads.”
He didn’t wait for me to answer nor did he seem to care. His monologue was spirited and amiable…and a little insane.
I started to say something about elocution lessons and what he could do, how they’d given me confidence to speak before audiences, but he spoke over me. I got quiet and listened.
Gustave Timm seemed confused by Houdini. When he turned off at Edwards Street, heading home, he waved goodbye and shook his head, amused. Houdini talked on about his wife Bess and her attempt to correct his grammatical lapses, his egregious blunders; and of his brother’s mockery; and of the Russian and Germans and Hungarians and…and…
“Thank you for listening to me,” he said. “You’ve answered my question.”
“But…” I started to protest as we turned onto North Street. “Sir, I haven’t.”
“Oh, but you have.” He tipped his hat and bowed. He left me.
I continued on alone, smiling to myself. The international celebrity had walked me home, had asked me for advice. He filled me with wonder, this special soul, and for a moment I felt as if I owned the universe. When I reached my front steps, I turned to look after the departing handcuff king, a very strange man, indeed-but a kind man, a gentleman.
Houdini was no longer in sight.
Down at the intersection of North and Morrison a farm wagon passed, a horse neighed and stomped. A woman called out; a child yelled back. I saw a shadow by a grove of elm trees. I froze. I saw the quick movement of a man. Maybe. But there was no one there. Yet I felt a spasm of terror. In that moment I panicked. I was being followed. I knew it. Standing there, I watched the shadows. Nothing moved. No one moved. Nothing. Yet my spine tingled and my heart pounded. There was someone there. But where?