Alice Hoffman - The Museum of Extraordinary Things

Though Eddie was rising from the blackness, he could barely gather his thoughts. He heard Mitts barking like mad and imagined he would be hit again before he could rise. He gritted his teeth, but there wasn’t a second attack. He heard shouts. Dazed, he forced himself to his feet. He could feel the heat of his own blood as it matted in his hair and dripped into his collar. His vision was blurry, but when he squinted he could make out the figures of two men fighting. The barman from McSorley’s had sensed trouble and followed them. He wrestled with Eddie’s attacker while Mitts lunged at the man, latching on to his leg. The thief went at the dog with his club but was unable to drive him off.

Eddie ran and took hold of Mitts. “Enough,” he said, but the tendencies of the dog’s fierce breed had risen, and Mitts refused to let go of his quarry. Eddie shook him, then drew his jaws apart. The stranger scrambled to his feet, a stream of blood sopping through his torn pants leg. He grabbed his bully stick and took off toward Second Avenue, though he did so with a limp. Eddie and the barman watched the attacker vanish into the crowd.

“You said you don’t like trouble,” the barman remarked. “But is it possible it likes you?”

Whatever the thief had stolen had been flung to the ground in his attempt to make his getaway. Eddie collected his change and his watch. He held it up to find that the glass face had cracked. When he listened he discovered it was still keeping time.

The barman from McSorley’s came to inspect the damage. “That was what he was after. Without a doubt. That’s what you get for owning a rich man’s watch.”

That night Eddie slept upright in a chair, still in his clothes, his head throbbing. He dreamed a woman was making her way down Twenty-third Street, soaking wet. She was naked and beautiful. He had yearned for certain women, but the way he wanted this one was something more. He began to follow her. The entire street was awash in water, as if the river had flooded Tenth Avenue. Just as he was about to rush over to the woman he so desired, someone came up behind him and stopped him. You can’t have what doesn’t belong to you, a voice said.

Mitts put his head on his master’s knee. Eddie rubbed the dog’s skull, discovering that the dog had a lump similar to the one that had risen on his own head.

“He got you as well,” he murmured to Mitts.

It was early, and the light in the room was dim. The building hadn’t been wired for electricity. No one in city government thought this address was worth the bother, so Eddie lit a candle. He took his watch from his jacket to study it. He’d have to return to the watchmaker’s and have the cracked glass replaced. He thought of Harry Block, and the expression of outrage on his face when he saw what had once belonged to him in another man’s possession. Eddie then had a strange sensation, a bit of memory floating up like a firefly. He had seen the man who had attacked him before. Quickly, he sifted through the pile of photographs from the library gala until he found the one he wanted. There he was, the man in the black coat, a faithful employee who stood behind Harry Block only minutes before Eddie had revealed the stolen watch to his old enemy. The man in the heavy coat gazed away from the camera, as criminals often did, for none wished to divulge too much about themselves, or to have their features caught and recorded, so that they might later be identified. This man, however, was not a common thief at all but one of Block’s trusted employees, clearly sent to the Lower East Side for the watch.

Eddie felt himself flush with anger. How dare Block come after him, and think himself above the law? He had half a mind to go down to the Chelsea police station and report the incident, and he might have done exactly that, but he thought of the watchmaker’s suspicions that the watch was not his. He had allowed his outrage to obscure the truth. All at once, it struck Eddie that he himself was the thief. He was the one in possession of stolen property.

He wondered if every criminal saw himself as the hero of his own story, and if every thankless son was convinced he’d been mistreated by his father. Nothing was constant, he understood that now. Even Moses Levy’s photographs of the trees in the forest were shifting, fading from the very light that had created them. And in that hour of dim morning light, Eddie admitted that he no longer understood who he was, a hero, a nobody, a thief, a son who’d been mistreated, or one who had wronged his father so profoundly he might never be forgiven.

IBEGAN to defy my father the year I turned fifteen. They were minor infractions to begin with, secret transgressions no one would notice. But each time I broke the smallest rule, I felt I had committed a crime. In truth, nothing much had changed except the way I felt, but in time I have come to wonder if that isn’t everything after all. Perhaps my conversion from dutiful daughter had begun on the night I went into my father’s workroom and read the first few pages of his handbook. Often I wished I had continued reading, but I’d been too frightened to go on. Was it because I feared being caught red-handed? Or was it that I dreaded what I might find in those pages? At those times when I worked up the courage to go down the cellar steps, the locks were always bolted. I put my ear to the heavy wooden door but heard nothing, only the beating of my own pulse at the base of my throat.

I passed a locksmith’s shop on my route to the fish market, and one day I veered from my usual path and stepped inside. I said I had lost a key to a cellar storeroom where jars of jams and jellies were kept cool. I thought I must certainly look like a liar—my cheeks were flushed and hot, and I stammered over my words. I wondered if the sheriff’s office would be called and I would be arrested on the spot, but the locksmith treated me as if I were any other customer. When I said I could not afford to have him come to change the bolts, he assured me he had a skeleton key that would work on any lock. He took my money, but as it turned out what he gave me was a worthless loop of metal. When I reached home I slipped the skeleton key into the first lock, where it twisted and stuck fast. For a few panicky moments I feared I wouldn’t be able to remove it, and would be found out when my father returned to his workroom. At last I managed to retrieve the key, pulling it out with all my might. I then ran to toss it into the heap at the rear of our yard, where we burned our trash once a week.

That experience didn’t stop me from puzzling over my father’s past. My curiosity became a stone in my shoe. Whenever I had the house to myself I examined the volumes in my father’s library as if they might reveal his secrets. I read all manner of medical texts and books about the natural world. I went through the cabinet where he stored whiskey and aperitifs, and tasted a green liquid that reminded me of the mint that grew in our garden. I took a spade so I might dig in the earth beside the back door, where the liveryman dragged specimens through the weeds. There I searched for bones or pieces of gold but discovered nothing more than a hill of stinging ants. And then, one evening, I found the keys. My father had gone out and forgotten his waistcoat jacket. I randomly searched the pockets. There were some coins and hard candy in one pocket. In the other, the keys.

They were small, one fashioned of iron, the other of brass. They burned in my hand. I stood at the cellar stairs thinking over what to do next. I admit I was afraid. I wasn’t prepared to go against my father’s wishes to this extent. But perhaps there was more. Perhaps I knew if I opened the door and discovered the truth, I would have to flee. I had no idea where I could go if I left my father. Another museum or theater, if they would have me. I understood why Maureen reported in for work each day. We did not have many choices.