Alice Hoffman - The Museum of Extraordinary Things

“It’s dangerous to look into things you don’t understand,” Coralie advised. “You haven’t seen the half of what there is in this world.”

“Perhaps you’re one of the extraordinary things I don’t understand. I’ve heard you’re something of a mermaid.”

“Have you?” The very word sent a shiver down Coralie’s spine. It called up images of nighttime performances, mortifying scenes of flesh and wanton desire. “Whoever told you that knows nothing.”

Eddie felt a chill directed toward him. “I don’t mean to offend you. There’s a hermit camped out in the woods who’s spied upon us both. He said you’re a grand swimmer, and that you did your best to rescue Hannah. That’s her name. Hannah Weiss.”

Coralie now understood why the body she’d left sprawled in the weeds had been discovered with her hands folded on her chest, her head placed carefully upon a grassy pillow.

“Can you take me to her?” Eddie asked.

“She’s locked away, and my father is present so I cannot. But even if I could, she’s no longer among the living. Should we not simply forget her?”

“Can you forget what’s lost?” Eddie furrowed his brow, a sort of outrage passing across his features. “If it’s such a simple thing to do, you must teach me, for my mother died when I was a child, yet I mourn her still.” His words clearly touched Coralie, so he went on. “Should I go back to Manhattan and tell an old man to forget his daughter? Not to dig a grave or have blessings recited for her soul?” Eddie’s glance held hers, and he dared to speak his innermost thoughts. “And should I forget you when I leave here on this day?”

“You should,” Coralie insisted, for they had gone too far in words, and words, Maureen had always warned her, were soon enough followed by deeds. “Absolutely.”

“ Should is what you don’t want to do, but do anyway. That isn’t me.”

A smile played at Coralie’s lips. “No. I’m sure it isn’t.”

“Nor is it you, I’d wager.”

Coralie shaded her eyes and gazed up into his. They were a deep brown, flecked with gold and black.

“I can get you her belongings.” She did her best to keep her voice even. “Would that help?”

Maureen had come outside to wave at them, gesturing in no uncertain terms for Coralie to send the tall young man away. Coralie had been so caught up in their conversation she’d failed to notice the living wonders had already gone inside one by one to greet her father and sign their binding contracts for the season to come. The porch had emptied, with only Reeves and the alligator remaining.

“It would help greatly.” Eddie’s back was to Maureen. Most likely he would not or could not gaze away from Coralie.

“Wait for me. I’ll be as fast as I can.”

Coralie hurried to the porch, where Maureen was waiting to usher her inside, nearly faint with relief. “Thank goodness you’ve come to your senses,” the housekeeper remarked. “Have you not seen me signaling for you to be rid of him?”

“Don’t let my father find him,” Coralie instructed her.

“You don’t know where this will lead,” the housekeeper warned.

All the same, Coralie could not be dissuaded. She could see Eddie through the screen door, out in the yard, whistling to himself, as he had in the woods. She didn’t intend to deny or disappoint him. Whitman’s poetry had been her schoolroom, and most of what she knew of life she’d taken from its pages. Why should you not speak to me / And why should I not speak to you?

She shrugged off Maureen’s pleas and went swiftly through the hall, taking the stairs two at a time. As she slipped into her room, Coralie heard her father call out William Reeves’s name so that he might be interviewed for his season’s contract. She shifted the heavy horsehair mattress so that she could remove the blue coat she’d hidden. Clutching it, she went to her dresser. There, stored beneath her undergarments, were the tokens stolen from her father’s workroom table. Some hairpins, a small tortoiseshell comb, the gold locket on a chain, the black buttons that had fallen from Hannah’s closed hand. She swept these items into a handkerchief that she tied with a knot.

She prayed her case of nerves would not grow worse until her task was completed. It was then she heard her father’s raised voice. He was shouting at William Reeves, and Coralie feared if she had to pass him, his rage would be directed at whoever blundered by. She went to the window and signaled to Eddie, who looked up confused. Leave, she urged him. Run away . He grinned at her and shook his head, and made it clear he intended to stand his ground. Coralie knew he was not the sort to run, and that he would not forget her, though it would be best if he did. Mr. William Reeves was shouting at the Professor, balking at the deal he’d been offered and suggesting the Professor rot in hell for paying his workers such a pittance, before he slammed out the back door, his alligator under one arm as if it were a suitcase. Apparently, Reeves’s impudence and his demand for a more fitting wage had so infuriated the Professor, he followed the rascal out of the house and, in doing so, came face-to-face with the photographer in his yard.

IF THE WOLFMAN had not disappeared from my life I would have made certain to question him further about Jane Eyre, the book he held so dear to his heart. I suppose I was studying love, and in my studies of this subject I could never understand the brutal love of Rochester. I did grasp why Rochester revealed his humanity only after he had been blinded and disfigured; like the beasts around us who reveal their natures because they have no access to artifice, he at last had no choice but to be truly himself. I wondered why he didn’t then realize how cruelly he’d treated the first Mrs. Rochester. Surely if he comprehended all he’d done to her, he would have locked himself in a tower to repent for the rest of his days rather than taking the sweet Jane as his wife.

As for Jane, I considered her to be a fool, but what young woman has not been a fool under certain circumstances? The blind aspect of love was of great fascination to me. Could a person not see what was readily before her? Did the heat of passion have the power to change one’s vision, so that what was false became true, and truth itself was nowhere to be seen?

I wondered how many women had come under my father’s spell, and if he had ongoing affairs of the heart that he kept secret from me. He came in late in the evenings. I often heard him groan as he climbed the stairs, and sometimes he carried the scent of a woman’s perfume on his clothes, along with the odor of the peculiar mix of tobacco he smoked, a black tarry substance. Perhaps if he’d been blinded as Rochester was, the best of my father might have surfaced and the future would have been written differently. Or perhaps there is evil in certain people, a streak of meanness that cannot be erased by circumstance or fashioned into something brand new by love.

Now that I was eighteen and thought so frequently of what drew one person to another, I pondered more often over my mother’s character. I imagined her to be a naïve girl who could not resist my father. Or it was quite possible that she was the opposite, a wild creature that needed taming. I wondered, too, if she knew about my father’s past, and if she’d learned, as I had from reading his handbook, about the half woman in his show who had accused him of mistreatment. Was it possible that, like Jane, she’d forgiven him his transgressions? Perhaps, like so many women, she thought she would be the one to change him.