Chapter 8 May

8

MAY

W hat do you think of this?” May whispered. She held up a blue plaid shirtwaist, tailored with tucks around the high neck, wondering if it would be to Hal’s fancy. Faith turned around, her petticoat brushing May’s, and nodded.

Friday evening had finally arrived, and the girls stood close to each other in the trunk closet. They’d shut themselves inside, one candle dripping precariously into its dish on a rattan chair in the corner. The room stank of camphor balls. Faith had led May here ten minutes earlier, when May began fretting once more over what to wear. She’d nearly hugged Faith when she saw the shelves draped in gowns, skirts, hats, blouses, and gloves, all of which would soon be turned over to volunteers at Mrs. Van Cleve’s church.

May licked her lips. The air in the closet had grown stuffy. “How about this one?” She’d found a simple skirt in dark gray. “Will it match the plaid? It’s hard to tell.”

Faith held up a black cape to go with it: waist-length, trimmed in jet beads, with a matching pair of doeskin gloves.

May clutched the garments to her chest. “Perfect.” In these clothes, she just might fool everyone into thinking that she belonged with Hal, that she was on his level.

They smuggled their finds down the hall to their room and shut the door, giggling.

“Locked,” said Faith, as she turned the key in the knob.

As May and Faith spent more time in each other’s society, May had heard her roommate’s voice more, little by little. Mostly very brief answers, negatives and affirmatives, “Good night” or “Farewell,” in a musical, gentle voice, scarcely more than a murmur. May hadn’t told any of the other inmates; the gossips needed no more fuel for their fire.

She turned her back as she dressed, feeling Faith’s eyes on her. Since Constance’s departure, Faith had been like May’s shadow. She was the one remaining girl who’d allow Faith to sit close during dinner, the only one who’d talk to her.

Faith was like a sickness the girls in the home had caught, which was rapidly spreading.

All nonsense, of course, especially this latest business with Leigh, who’d woken two mornings ago to find that her hair had been chopped off with sharp scissors in the night. Her screams, histrionic in May’s opinion, roused the entire floor. Miss Rhoades had to do her best to even it out, leaving only a feathery cap.

Leigh had blamed Faith, of course. But the shears had been on her own nightstand.

May tucked the plaid blouse, which in better light revealed itself to be a rich weave of blue, teal, and green, into the skirt, and turned around. “How do I look?”

Faith smiled wistfully, her head tilted to the side. She’d been holding May’s black toque, which she presented with a flick of the wrists and placed gently on May’s head. As May did the hat pins, Faith wrapped her in the cape. She held up their small mirror so that May could see pieces of her getup and dab her forehead and nose with rice powder.

They sneaked downstairs to avoid anybody who might recognize May’s clothes. She could hear music in the parlor, and muffled laughter coming from one of the closed bedrooms. Friday evenings in the home were both lively and subdued. The children who lived in the cottage nearby—those who hadn’t been adopted as babies, and whose mothers were long gone—gathered in the parlor to hear the matrons tell stories. The babies went to bed early, as usual, and the mothers met in small groups throughout the building, playing chaste card games or reading aloud to one another. Normally, May listened to books; a cadre of women had been taking it in turns to read the serial installments of George du Maurier’s Trilby, and a piece of her was loath to miss tonight’s chapter.

They hurried down the staircase. The moon’s soft effulgence shone yellow through the transom above the front door. May’s heartbeat kicked into a gallop. She was almost there.

“May Lombard! Where on earth could you be going?” Pearl’s voice.

May froze, halfway out the door. Chilly air billowed around her. She turned to see Pearl standing with her arms crossed. Faith made sort of a fence between the two of them, her arms spread wide so that her shawl draped between them in a semicircle and Pearl, May hoped, couldn’t see what she was wearing.

“Shh,” May intoned. “Pearl, please. I’ll give you my breakfast in the morning.”

Pearl stood on her toes to peek at May’s outfit. “You’re all dressed up. Where do you think you’re running off to?”

May felt defeated. All her life, bad luck had followed her. Of course Pearl would hold her up, interrogating her. May could never escape. “I was going to a dinner party.”

Pearl’s eyes widened. Her mouth fell open, making her look young, vulnerable.

“Can I come?” she asked.

It was May’s turn to stare. She had never heard Pearl ask for anything.

Faith moved first. She wrapped one hand through the air and brought it under her chin. Slowly, theatrically, she blew something invisible in Pearl’s direction.

Pearl blinked, as though she’d gotten powder in her eyes. Then she backed away, three clumsy steps, and turned and ran.

May and Faith spilled out onto the front porch and shut the door behind them. “What was that?” May asked, turning on the top step to peer at her roommate. “When you blew on your hand, what were you doing?”

Faith smiled and shrugged, shaking her head.

“Just a bit of nonsense?”

Faith nodded. “But she believed it,” she said quietly. She rubbed her upper arms. “You don’t have much time. She may be telling Miss Rhoades.” The longest sentences May had ever heard her speak.

“She might.” May took a long, cool breath. The lawn in front of the home was empty; the children had long since gone inside. The swelling gibbous moon, the lamplighter coming slowly down the street to illuminate the growing darkness, Pearl’s unexpected plea—all of it was exhilarating, almost to the point of being too much.

May didn’t want to leave, she found. How nice it would be, to stay here grinning with Faith. Perhaps she was nervous to have dinner with Hal. “All right, then. I should go. I shall be home no later than ten o’clock, but please don’t wait up for me.”

Faith gave her a puzzled look. May took another step down. “What’s the matter?”

“He isn’t…isn’t your beau…?”

May’s scalp prickled in irritation. She shouldn’t get so angry, not when they’d just enjoyed such camaraderie, but she couldn’t help herself. Her blood boiled. Who was Faith to imply that Hal should have come to pick her up? He didn’t have a carriage of his own, from what she could tell, so why should she expect him to drive her?

Besides—May felt her face grow hot—asking him for a ride would have required her to tell him her address.

“Of course not,” she snapped. “I’m not a child, I can take the streetcar by myself. When you get yourself a beau someday, you can insist that he, personally, cart you around the city in a cabriolet, with him as the horse. See where that gets you.”

May’s voice had grown harsh, and loud, hardly her own voice at all, she thought in shame. She lowered her eyes so that she wouldn’t see Faith’s expression and hurried off to catch her streetcar.

—

The home of Mrs. V. L. Beecher, on Mount Curve Avenue in Lowry Hill, turned out to be a veritable mansion, a stone fortresslike structure with a round turret crowned in battlements and a red tiled roof. Party sounds greeted May upon entry, gleeful shrieks, bursts of masculine laughter, music that might have been playing live. The quiet clink of silverware as servants set the table. Reluctantly, she allowed a butler to take her cape—the best part of her outfit—and her hat. On the streetcar, she’d noticed a tear in the sleeve of her shirt, a stain on the thumb of her glove. She stuffed the gloves into the hat.

The butler indicated the tray of calling cards sitting on the rosewood table in the center of the room, before a large, winding staircase. A hothouse orchid mimicked the bend of the stairs, craning its neck down to the tray. May froze. She had no calling card.

This was it. They’d find her out before her boots left the foyer rug.

“And who, may I ask, is this?”

The hostess had burst into the grand hall. At least, May assumed this was Augusta Beecher. Every movement of her body suggested ownership: the broad sweep of her hips, her outstretched arms, the upward tilt of her chin. She was petite, with a tiny waist and minuscule hands, but the puffed sleeves of her gown and her high-piled hairstyle gave her presence. She looked to be in her middle forties, yet somehow youthful. Was this how women of a certain class were permitted to age? With soft skin and shining hair?

“Miss May Lombard. How do you do?” May attempted a curtsy on wobbly knees. “I’m a guest of Hal…” She still didn’t know his surname. What a complete fool she was. “Of Hal.”

Mrs. Beecher threw back her head and laughed, veins stretching in her throat. “So you’re the young lady our Mr. Hayward invited to accompany him! I thought I’d never see the day. Won’t the other gentlemen be pleased.”

Hayward, May thought. An elegant name. Mr. Hayward.

Mrs. Beecher took May’s arm. “Come, dear, we’re just sitting down for dinner. You’re in for a marvelous evening, full of surprises. The theme of the party is ‘Illusion.’ You see, I am a Decadent.”

“That’s grand, Mrs. Beecher,” May replied. She had no idea what it meant to be a Decadent, but she could hear the capital letter in the woman’s voice.

“Call me Gussie,” Mrs. Beecher said into May’s ear as they entered the dining room. A crowd had gathered around the table, holding drinks, waiting for the hostess to take her place. The noise lowered to whispers when Gussie stepped in with May on her arm. May gawked. Twelve place settings of gilt, linen, and crystal graced the enormous tabletop. The room was papered in green brocade, with bouquets of camellias and peacock feathers adorning the sideboards. Eighteen-inch lit tapers teetered in many-armed brass candelabras that resembled giant squids.

After the stark Quaker plainness of the Bethany Home, May’s eyes felt almost assaulted. At first, she couldn’t even pick Hal from the crowd of men, indistinguishable from one another in their white ties and mustaches.

“Please, be seated. Oh, Mr. Hayward!” Gussie trumpeted. “Look who I found.” She deposited May on Hal’s arm, then hurried to bend the ear of one of the maids. May caught a snatch of their conversation—“The string quartet should be in here now, not in the salon.”

Hal kissed May’s cheek; he smelled of whiskey. “Aren’t you a picture,” he said, but then he had to let her go to find her seat. She would have been disappointed, to find him and lose him so quickly to the other half of the table, if she hadn’t wandered over to an empty chair between two gentlemen to see her name printed, not even by hand, but engraved, on a place card:

Mademoiselle Lombard

Pleasant heat rose to her cheeks. She belonged here. She’d been invited, expected. Would it be uncouth to save the card? She slipped it into her pocket, looking around rapidly as she did.

It was only too bad that Lombard wasn’t her real name.

The rest of the guests chatted idly as two servant girls poured a clear white wine to complement the first course. The soup, May thought. She was going to have a proper dinner, soup to nuts, as her father used to say. She nearly thanked the maid for pouring her wine, but then noticed no one else did.

The man on her left—Mr. Wolfe, according to his place card—greeted her cordially but did not seem happy to be here. He kept sneaking glances at a woman much younger than he was, whom May assumed was his wife, and who seemed quite happy to be seated between Hal and another man at the far end of the table. The chair on the other side of Hal was empty, which May was glad to see. She was staring at Mrs. Wolfe—dressed all in mauve, with her hair in a gorgeous twist—when the man on May’s right introduced himself as Johnny.

“Pleased to meet you,” she said, taking Johnny’s hand. He was the only man present who didn’t wear a beard or mustache.

“Prepare to loosen your belt,” Johnny told her with a wink. “Gussie goes whole hog.”

May smiled uncomfortably. There was something rather informal about all these people, despite their finery. A stink of cigars and alcohol, a looseness to the men’s ties and the women’s gazes. Maybe this was how the rich behaved. The man at the head of the table, opposite Gussie, didn’t even look to have combed his hair or trimmed his beard. The ragged ends of it trailed in his wine.

Johnny caught her looking. “That’s the entertainment.”

“The entertainment?”

“A magus, or trance medium, something. Gussie loves that sort of thing. She’s a widow, so she gets to host these parties and invite whomever she wants to sit at the opposite end.”

May looked at Gussie, her hand wrapped around the forearm of the young man beside her, glove unbuttoned and hitched to the elbow. To be a wealthy widow seemed a wonderful thing. The man seated next to Gussie, now that May studied him, seemed vaguely familiar. He looked up and caught her staring, and she turned her head, glad to see the first course being served.

The soup arrived in disguise. A cup of coffee on a saucer was placed in front of them, the milk swirled on top and dusted with what appeared to be cinnamon. “The evening’s first illusion,” Gussie proclaimed, and she lifted her soup spoon to her lips to signal that her guests could also begin. May tilted the spoon away from her the way her mother had taught her and lifted it to her lips.

Mushroom bisque. Creamy, savory, frothy soup, flecked with herbs and served piping hot. The richness of it made May want to close her eyes as she ate. It killed her to leave a polite puddle in the bottom when she was done, but she knew she must not tilt the mug to slurp it up.

“Where’s Kitty?” Gussie called out, indicating the empty chair, the steaming mug, at the place beside Hal. May gazed longingly at the untouched soup.

“Well, let’s see,” said Hal. “She had to pass Shaw’s, and who knows how many more faro tables on her way here, so that’ll have delayed her at least an hour…” He winked at May, though she had no idea what he was talking about.

“Hayward, there are ladies present,” Johnny called.

“Yeah, and what’s Kitty?” Hal replied. Their laughter left May feeling uneasy.

The servants hovered, ready to clear the table, but Gussie made a show of stopping them. “Ah-ah-ah!” she tsked. Everyone waited. “You may eat the mugs!”

The dinner guests, save for the medium or magician at the end, burst into delighted applause. The string quartet broke into a waltz. May and Johnny, laughing, picked up their mugs by the handle and clanked them together as if they were in a beer garden. This was, she decided firmly, the best night of her life.

She took a tenuous bite, and the mug crackled in her mouth. It tasted like a candy cane without sugar. A bit of it stuck in her teeth.

“This reminds me of saltwater taffy,” she said aloud. When she glanced up, everybody was looking at her.

“What’s that, darling?” asked Hal over the rim of his drink.

“Saltwater taffy,” she replied. “Candy made with saltwater.”

Everyone at the table, landlocked Minnesotans, looked dubious, so she kept talking. “My uncle Vin brought it back for us once. He used to take the New York Central Railroad all the way to the coast, and once he traveled down the shore in New Jersey and brought us back candy. The taffy came in pastel colors and tasted just a trifle like salt.” She could feel heat rising in her face with everyone watching her, even the magus. Yet she couldn’t stop herself. “Uncle Vin worked in leather goods with my father. He and my father would tan and dye and polish leather, then make it into shoes to sell in the Northeast.” She took a sip of her water. “My father’s name was George.”

No one said anything. They all avoided looking at her, discomfited by her little speech. Gussie looked mildly annoyed that no one was paying attention to her edible mugs. May tried to catch Hal’s eye. Why had she added that last part, about her father’s name? Just mentioning him had brought embarrassing tears to her eyes. But why had she said any of it at all? She missed her father, she supposed. It had felt good to be heard, to be seen, for just a moment—or it would have, if anyone had acknowledged what she’d shared.

“Aha!” Hal cried, saving her, rubbing his hands together. “The fish.”

“Bon appétit!” cried Gussie. She and Hal raised their glasses toward each other. Something was passing between them. Not, May hoped, a laugh at her expense.

The fish course seemed to be eel cooked in nutmeg and garlic but turned out to be sole, molded elaborately in a serpentine shape. It melted into butter in May’s mouth, helping her to forget how she’d humiliated herself. She glanced up at Hal just in time to notice the tall black-haired woman hurrying into the room.

“What’ve I missed?” the woman cried as she flopped into the seat beside Hal. She accepted kisses from Hal on both her cheeks, which sent a pang of jealousy into May’s chest. Then the woman caught May by the eye.

May swallowed a fish bone, as fine as a piece of hair. The latecomer was Miss Ging, the dressmaker.

Hal presented her from across the table. “Kitty, have you met my companion for the evening? This is Miss May Lombard.”

“How do you do,” May said, her voice hitching in her throat.

Kitty nodded back at her. “How do you do.” She shot May one more look, then turned a cheeky smile on the rest of the party. It seemed she wouldn’t let on what she knew about May, at least not now. Why had May thought it a good idea to tell her where she lived? The fish lost its flavor in her mouth. She watched Kitty mingle effortlessly with the crowd at Hal’s end of the table, as though they were all old friends, except for the mysterious entertainer at the head, whose threadbare elbows had been creeping steadily closer to the tabletop. He caught May staring at him with his watery gray eyes, and she snapped her head back toward Gussie.

She stabbed a hard black lentil, meant to look like a fish egg. Companion? For the evening?

Out of the corner of May’s eye she caught Hal whispering into Kitty’s ear. Why did Kitty get to sit beside him? It was an oddity of the formal dinner party, how far away they placed you from your suitor. May chewed hard in frustration, the lentil lodging itself inside one of her molars. If only she could have insisted upon sitting with the man who’d brought her here.

—

They broke apart by sex after the meal, the men to the cigar lounge, women to the solarium, which turned out to be a drafty room, tiled in white marble, with floor-to-ceiling windows and an assembly of tropical plants. May felt chilled. All the wine and brandy had made her feverish at the table, but now she wished for the cape she’d surrendered at the door. She longed, too, for Faith’s company as she watched the other women form whispering pairs, warm and familiar with one another.

“The boys’ll want to get to a faro hall after this,” said one of the women as she ran a fingertip over the grand piano. She inspected her glove for dust. “You know they like a chance to double their money. And I’ve brought the wrong hat for a carriage ride.”

“Let them go,” another scoffed. Johnny’s wife, May thought, based on the way he’d gone to her for a moment after the dinner. She was pretty, in a sense, with sharply sloped eyebrows that made her appear perpetually suspicious. “Maybe Gussie will let us stay and have a cocoa, like last time.”

All the others laughed. Clearly something had transpired over cocoa.

“I have to keep an eye on Thomas,” said the first woman. “He can get himself in all kinds of trouble in a gambling hall, and I’d rather go with him than have him delivered to me dead.”

“Dead I could handle,” replied Johnny’s wife. “It’s maimed I wouldn’t want to deal with. All that maintenance.”

“Hear, hear,” said Mrs. Wolfe.

May gaped at them as the others tittered. What a terrible thing to say, and about her own husband! Didn’t these women realize how fortunate they were?

“How do you know our Mr. Hayward?”

It took May a moment to realize someone was speaking to her. Beautiful, young Mrs. Wolfe, her mouth in a mauve pinch.

“I met him in church.”

“What was that? Speak up!”

“She said she knows him from church—go easy.” Kitty had come into the room, later than the others. May scarcely had a chance to wonder where she’d been when she took May’s arm and led her, with no small force, around to the other side of the piano. They stood together against a tall plant with rubbery leaves. Up close, Kitty’s face looked older than it had in the muted light of her dress shop. May could see rouge settled into her skin’s pores. “You’re the girl who came into my store, aren’t you?”

She spoke quietly enough, but May could sense the others straining to listen, standing on tiptoe to see around the open lid of the piano. May nodded.

Kitty glanced over at the women. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said quietly to May.

“I beg your pardon.” May wouldn’t allow herself to be intimidated. All throughout dinner, Kitty had been laughing with Hal, whispering with him, cooing at his jokes, and slapping him playfully on the arm. Quite obviously, she wanted him for herself. “I’ve just as much right to be here as you do. I was invited. Hal invited me.”

Kitty closed her eyes as if she had a headache. She stood a few inches taller than May, which unfortunately gave the impression of a moral high ground.

“I know who ordered the dress,” Kitty said under her breath.

May’s mouth fell open a half inch. “Who?”

“Ladies, ladies!” Gussie strode into the solarium, a petite ball of energy. She’d put on a hat, a satin cap with a diamond brooch and an ostrich feather dyed peach. “Please, join us in the drawing room. The entertainment portion of our evening shall begin presently.”

Kitty mimed locking her mouth with a key, then followed the other women into the drawing room.

To May’s delight, Hal beckoned to her as she entered. She settled beside him on the velvet love seat. She would not think of the dress right now. The dress was Faith’s problem, and Mrs. Mendenhall’s. It really had nothing to do with her.

“Have you enjoyed the evening, darling?” Hal asked, handing her another brandy. Some of the others had grown red-eyed and blotchy-complexioned since dinner, but not Hal; he looked as fresh and clean as he did at church.

“Oh, yes, it’s been marvelous.” The arms of the sofa curved in, heart-shaped, and she scooted closer to Hal. Blood pounded in her temples as he draped an arm, the one not holding his drink, around her. She tried meeting Kitty’s gaze. Kitty sat with a few other women on the fainting couch opposite them, staring straight ahead.

“Just you wait,” Hal snickered, gesturing toward the strange man, the one from the head of the table, who now stood in front of the fireplace. “This should be good.”

The man did not move as Gussie’s servants went around dimming the gaslights and putting out candles, and the noise in the room lowered to hushed giggles and whispers. In a swift gesture, he raised his hands, then threw them back behind him, causing the fire to pop and spit and, for a moment, blaze green.

Everyone exclaimed at once, clapping and laughing, just as they had for the edible mugs. Hal took his arm away from May’s shoulders to lean over and whisper something to Johnny, who was seated on the floor. Kitty cut her eyes toward May.

“Copper,” the man said abruptly. His voice had a ragged quality, a bit slurred, though he did not seem drunk. His dark eyes were sharp below the shaggy eyebrows. “Do not clap, for this was no magic display. I threw copper powder into the fire. Any of you could do it. It is science.” May couldn’t take her eyes off him and had the sense no one else could, either. Hal had gone quiet beside her.

“Mesmerism…” the man continued. May held her breath, thinking of Faith. “…is also science. All animate and inanimate beings are connected by a web of invisible threads of energy. I tug on one and…”

With a jolt, Mrs. Wolfe sat forward, led by her chest. Her lithe arms flopped backward. Everyone else gasped. She looked around the room, laughing nervously.

The man crooked a finger and she rose to her feet, unsteady, arms out to balance herself, as though these feet now weren’t her own. He gestured, and she walked, quickly, to a chair beside the fireplace and fell into it as though dropped there. Muted laughter: everyone seemed to be waiting to see what happened next. May turned to see Gussie perched on the edge of a wingback chair, her feet propped on a stool, looking absolutely delighted.

The man stuck one hand out flat in front of Mrs. Wolfe, as though he held her there with an invisible force. He turned back to the room. “Have you ever wondered why asylums overflow during a full moon? The moon sends its own energy, which overtakes the mind’s good sense. Illness, of the mind or body, can come from anywhere and all directions.” He turned back to Mrs. Wolfe and stroked his gnarled beard. “You have an aching head.”

“I…I do,” she said. “A brandy can make me…”

“Would you like to know where your headache came from?”

“As I said, the brandy—”

He held up a finger and she quieted. To the rest of the guests, he said, “Shall we see just how far this misbegotten energy has traveled?”

“Indeed!” said Gussie, as a few of the men thumped the coffee table.

“We will not know until we hear the language.” The man went to Mrs. Wolfe and placed his hands an inch from the top of her head, grazing her chignon. Caressing the air, his hands went around the back of her neck and under her chin. He grasped the air in front of her mouth and began to pull, one hand in front of the other, as though he were a sailor raising an anchor lodged inside Mrs. Wolfe’s throat.

For a moment, nothing happened. Instinctively, Mrs. Wolfe had opened her mouth; her eyes looked up at the man in a sort of terror. A log fell in the fire, causing a spray of sparks, faintly greenish. May felt, secretly, a little glad to see Mrs. Wolfe forced into a weak position.

“Siurrisa!” A shriek, perhaps a word, though not one May had ever heard before. It had come from Mrs. Wolfe and yet not Mrs. Wolfe. The voice did not sound like her own. A sprinkle of murmurs echoed through the company. Mrs. Wolfe looked as surprised as they did. The man went on tugging.

“Siurrisa teppanek brimightom vanishet kloor maniperrat!”

The words poured out of Mrs. Wolfe as the man leaned into pulling that anchor, his knees bent as if holding a great weight, and the fire in the hearth grew. The dinner guests shifted and glanced at one another and covered their mouths, unable to believe this strange language was really coming from Mrs. Wolfe. Her husband appeared truly disturbed. He stood, looking ready to put an end to the display, then sat back down and frowned when Gussie caught his arm.

The Mesmerist lowered his arms, and Mrs. Wolfe’s chin dropped to her chest. “That settles it. Mrs. Wolfe caught her ailment on the trade winds. There was a storm in the Sahara just days ago, bringing sands across the Atlantic. Her pains came from Morocco.” There were a few gasps. He went to her and picked up her chin in his hand. “Your headache is gone.”

Mrs. Wolfe faced the room, beaming. “It is.”

Everyone applauded, even May, although she couldn’t yet make up her mind about what she’d just seen. When Mrs. Wolfe stood, the color was high in the tops of her cheeks, but she beamed and curtsied, as though she’d just had a hand in this display. She went to take her seat on the divan as the man scanned the room for his next subject.

He held one hand out flat, like a butler with a serving tray. After the applause died down, he blew on his hand. Then he dusted off his fingers, as though Mrs. Wolfe’s headache had sat there on his palm just a moment ago, and now he’d officially freed her from it.

The gesture felt so much like what Faith had just done to trick Pearl that it made May squirm in her seat. A coincidence, she hoped.

“And who shall be the next beneficiary of my services?” The Mesmerist peered out at the dinner guests, rubbing his hands together as they looked at one another and chuckled nervously. May assumed he’d choose a man this time, but then his eyes landed on her. He crooked a finger. She didn’t move.

“A stubborn case,” he said.

Hal looked at her and gestured toward the fireplace. The next time the man summoned her, she rose.

The Mesmerist brought the chair to the center of the hearth, facing the room. May sat down, her heart pounding; eleven pairs of eyes were fastened on her, more if you counted the servants, who leaned with arms crossed in doorways and glared as if they saw right through her. May sat on her hands, her knees and ankles pressed tightly together.

The man walked in slow circles around the chair. “Something heavy weighs you down,” he said. He stank, slightly, of clothes left to molder. May knew the odor, that of a poor bachelor. It triggered memories that were better left untouched. She pinched her eyes shut.

“Very heavy, like lead, like iron,” the man said. He sounded as if he needed water, but he kept talking. She wished he wouldn’t. “I believe it is guilt.”

May opened her eyes, panicked, to look at Hal, to gauge his reaction. But his head was turned to the side. He and Kitty were exchanging a glance, full of meaning May couldn’t decipher. A mutual smirk.

“But who put the guilt here? Whose sins has this poor young woman swallowed? Whose energy has coiled inside her, waiting to be drawn out?”

May trembled so violently that she felt sure everyone present could see, yet no one moved, no one urged the man to stop. Her underarms felt both cold and wet. Hal looked on in bland amusement. She wished, fervently, that she’d stayed home tonight.

“I could make her levitate, above this chair, and allow the guilt to sink below her…”

“Yes, do!” called Gussie. May gripped the cushioned seat.

The man shook his head. “That is not the best remedy for guilt. Guilt stems from secrecy, and the best way to remove a secret is to give it voice.”

He began, again, with the invisible rope. One hand in front of the other, his filthy, hairy knuckles grazing the air close to May’s lips. She did not open her mouth to him. She wouldn’t. She would not let him offend and humiliate her any further. When his penetrating gray eyes became too much for her, she closed hers.

Whose guilt was she carrying? Whose secrets? She forced her mind back, further back than the sins of her adulthood, back past Cousin Amelia’s house and the secret of Amelia’s abandonment, past dear Enzo and their nights of passion. May went all the way back to the day her cousin Anthony had gotten cross with her for refusing to let him look beneath her skirt. He was called Little Anthony to differentiate him from his father, but he was bigger than she was and had forced her down the cellar stairs and locked her in the dark. It wouldn’t have been so bad if his mother hadn’t sent the dog down there earlier to keep his wet paws out of the house. Lupino, that was the dog’s name, a big Irish wolfhound with long, yellow teeth. Now she wasn’t sure he’d actually bitten her, but in the pitch darkness, when she was nine years old, she’d been terrified as he pawed and scratched and barked, then knocked her to the cold floor into a puddle of his urine. All because she hadn’t given Anthony the simple pleasure of seeing under her clothes.

She opened her eyes. Mesmerism wasn’t real, of course, and half the people here knew it. She wanted to be one of them, exchanging knowing smiles. She didn’t want to play along, like stupid Mrs. Wolfe. She didn’t want to be like Dolly or Leigh or Constance, half hysterical and absolutely convinced that an ordinary girl with no power in any sense of the word could somehow control their every move.

But then May looked at Hal, who had his hands clasped, elbows on knees, concentrating on her. His blue eyes gleamed red in the firelight. If anyone here wielded an invisible influence, it wasn’t the bedraggled buffoon tugging the air before her. It was Hal. She wanted, more than anything, to please him.

She turned back to the Mesmerist and opened her mouth. She began to howl, hoarse and ferocious, like an Irish wolfhound.

—

“Thank you,” May said quietly, sometime later, as she accepted the jet bead cape and her hat and gloves from the butler. Her body felt exhausted, her eyes strained, as if she’d spent the last hour attempting to read very small text. She’d left Hal in the cigar lounge, where everyone had gathered after the Mesmerist left, talking intimately with Kitty. The two of them hadn’t even noticed May slip out.

She didn’t care if it was rude, if she should have thanked Gussie. She was glad no one saw her leave, that no one came after her now as she descended the brick front steps. The more bottles of wine and liquor they’d opened, the less attention anyone paid May, and the more they’d all been engaged in infuriating side conversations. The men, or at least Johnny and Hal, had insisted on paying the Mesmerist for his services, and had whispered and cackled as they assembled his fee between them. The women rolled their eyes and hissed behind their fans. No one shunned Mrs. Wolfe, but everyone had treated May as a kind of pariah after her turn with the Mesmerist. She couldn’t understand it. Hadn’t she given them what they wanted?

She felt tears well in her eyes as she passed through the gate of Gussie’s walled property. Her boots slipped on the cobblestones. Likely, she’d never see any of these people again, not even Hal. She could stop going to church. She could stop letting Pearl gouge her. Perhaps that would be for the best.

The doeskin gloves did little to protect her from the cold. The wind bit at her fingertips. She stuffed her hands into the cape and began walking down the sidewalk. They had sidewalks here. The rich really did have everything.

“May!”

She turned around. Hal, his jacket open and white tie askew, was coming toward her round the curved street. She let him catch up to her. Why must he insist on being so handsome? The effort of running after her had brought color to his face. His eyes looked glassy now; his intoxication must have finally caught up with all the others’.

He offered her his arm. Warmth radiated from his body. “Come, let me at least take you to the next streetlight.”

They walked in silence, following the waves of the appropriately named Mount Curve Avenue. Tangle towns, they called these: streets that twisted and interlocked in complicated braids meant to confuse outsiders. The mansions’ windows glowed yellow in the night.

She was surprised he hadn’t chastised her for leaving without a goodbye or asked why she’d left early. Finally, she said it: “Everyone was laughing at me.”

“No, darling, they weren’t at all, you were brilliant.”

“You were. You, and Kitty, and Johnny, you were all sharing a joke that I wasn’t part of.” She sounded like a child, but she’d had enough brandy not to care.

Hal ran a hand down his face, all the way to his chin. He’d left his gloves inside. “I’m sorry you thought that. We were laughing at the Mesmerist. We paid him in green goods.”

“Green goods?”

“False money. Greenbacks—they’re easy to counterfeit.” He shrugged.

“Hal, that’s…” Scandalous. Shocking. She couldn’t fathom him doing such a thing. “It’s illegal. Isn’t it?”

He laughed. “Of course it is. But the man’s a quack! I could’ve put on a better show of Mesmerism than he did. That old coot took advantage of poor Gussie. Rich woman like that, he knows he can charge an arm and a leg—just throw a little copper in her fire and she’ll rain gold coins upon him. It’s no sin to defraud a fraudster.” He guided May around a little pile of dog waste on the sidewalk.

“Poor Gussie? What about poor Mrs. Wolfe?” What about poor me? May wanted to add, but then she’d really sound childish.

They were almost to the streetlight, its gas lamp flickering, and the little patch of grass that was Fremont Triangle. “Mrs. Wolfe is her own brand of fraud. As for you, you were a gem. Still, I’m awful sorry for putting you through that. It’s a fast crowd, I’ll admit. Too fast for you.”

“You seem to like them. You seem to like Kitty.”

“Kitty! She’s the worst of them. Kitty is my neighbor in the Ozark Flats. I love her, but talk about fast.”

May processed this. They had reached the streetlight; the road had turned into Fremont Avenue, and her motor stop wasn’t far. He loved Kitty—he said this in the way a brother might about a sister. He lived in the Ozark Flats. A block of apartments. This hadn’t been what she pictured. Maybe it put them on more even footing.

At the corner, Hal took her elbows in his hands. “Farewell, May. I won’t be far behind you. I should be getting to bed.” His lower lip came out in exaggerated penance.

“You aren’t going out to play faro, then?”

“Faro, me? Darling, I detest gambling.”

He came closer to her and tapped his finger on the tip of her nose. Her body responded to his touch, a quickening of the blood. “Is there anyone waiting up for you? There should be.”

She thought of Faith, whom she had specifically told not to wait up. Now she hoped Faith hadn’t listened. “Yes,” she replied.

“Thank heaven for that.” He kissed her hand through the glove. “See you in church.”

“Church,” she said mechanically. A throb of desire, fiendish, unbidden, pulsed through her at the touch of his lips. She wanted him to take off her glove again, to do more than that. She longed for him to ask her if she’d come with him to the Ozark Flats, even as she knew how wrong that was. Her face burned so feverishly she had to look away.

She let go of his hand and watched as he disappeared back into the shadows of Gussie’s curvy road. Quickly he was out of sight.

No one was around. The streets were empty, alerting May to how late it must be. Or how early. Wind whistled off buildings. Would the Bethany Home’s front door still be unlocked? She’d never been out this late. The home was still so far away, and she was tired, tired.

She crossed the road, normally a busy one but quiet now, lit sporadically by weak streetlights. The thick black cables of the electric streetcars snaked left and right on Douglas Avenue, but she didn’t need to walk far before she reached the tracks heading south on Bryant.

Her boots clicked on the pavement. Halfway there, she stopped and slowed. The streetcars had stopped running. She’d expected to be home by ten, but dinner had gone on for hours and hours. Now she’d have to walk the twenty or thirty blocks home. What a ninny she’d been.

She picked up her pace. One foot in front of the other. Eventually, she would get there.

Fremont Avenue was residential, tree-lined, with overlapping branches that must have been charming in daylight but created a canopy of darkness at night. She looked into the windows of the homes she passed, where all were sleeping peacefully, masters and mistresses nestled in down pillows, maids ready to shake themselves from bed at the first hint of dawn. She wondered if anyone would notice if she stopped to rest under one of their neatly trimmed shrubs.

She was at the middle of a particularly dark block when she heard footsteps behind her. Running. A man in a rush, she thought, and naturally she stepped aside to allow him to pass her on the sidewalk.

Instead, he barreled straight for her. She got a look at him before they collided: a horrible, ugly, pug-faced man with bulging eyes and a large mustache. Hands outstretched, he lunged at her, and she was too surprised to cry out before his thick fingers wrapped around her neck.

He pushed her down by the throat, pressing her spine to a low brick wall and hedge. She tried, in a frenzy, to hit him, but her hands flapped uselessly at the coarse fabric of his coat as he crushed her windpipe. The pain of it shocked her. All she could see were branches, and his wretched red forehead, beaded with sweat. Her vision began to cloud with bursting white stars. The man growled as he strangled her. He grunted, as if it took all his effort to do this.

Mother! Her mother would not know what had happened to her. Her sister. Her brother. Her cousin Amelia. Emmanuel.

She thought of her father, who perhaps could see her now. Oh, Father! How ashamed of me you must be!

Her vision nearly blacked out completely, she made one last weak effort to push the man away. Incredibly, he let go of her. She fell over, coughing, onto her hands and knees. Her eyes gushed with tears. She spat blood onto the sidewalk. A sobbing, keening sound came from her, outside her control.

“I’m sorry,” the man said in a hurry. He took off, running quickly for someone of his bulk, back up Fremont, the way he’d come.

And she did lie by the hedge, arms and head resting on the corner of the low brick wall belonging to some distinguished family who would not treat her kindly even if she cried out. She waited for she wasn’t sure how long, frozen in fear that the man would come back, swallowing saliva in a vain attempt to soothe the burning in her throat.

She closed her eyes and let the darkness overtake her.