When the living wonders arrived in the yard on what they had thought was opening day, they were greeted by the stench of the rotten fish, for the giant striped bass had been lugged onto the trash pile and set on fire. Bits of scales rose into the air, and it seemed that silver wasps were soaring into the clear May sky. Maureen spoke to the employees through the screen door, too embarrassed to tell them face-to-face that they were no longer needed. She made her voice as stern as she could, for, given the circumstances, no one would benefit from sentiment. Malia, who had been a feature since the age of seven, wept in her mother’s arms, and the others clustered together in disbelief, for they were suddenly without the means to support themselves. The season was about to begin, staff had been hired everywhere else, and it would be difficult to find work in even the lowliest museums and entertainment halls.
“Is this any way to treat us?” one of the Durante brothers called. “After so many years?”
“No,” Maureen said. “But it’s his way.”
“Let him rot in hell,” Malia’s mother cried, surprising those who hadn’t expected she knew any language other than her native Portuguese. “For hell is where he belongs.”
Coralie wanted to apologize, but Maureen stopped her.
“This is your father’s decision. Next season he may hire them back. The world is unpredictable.”
“And when he no longer has any need of you, will he do the same?”
“He has already.” Maureen dropped her voice to a hush. “I’ve been dismissed.”
Coralie was confused. “And yet you’re here.”
The housekeeper admitted she was there only as long as it took for Coralie to pack her belongings. She insisted there was no way that Coralie could stay in this house, and suggested she take as little as possible, for haste was the most important aspect of their departure.
Coralie understood the danger and therefore rushed upstairs to fill her cowhide satchel with her most precious possessions, clothes and books, along with the strand of pearls left to her by her mother. She hurried downstairs, but once in the parlor she suffered pangs of regret for all she was leaving behind. She had the urge to take the cereus plant, whose woody stalks had suddenly turned a ripening green, to liberate the tortoise, whose shell she rubbed with oil in the winter months, to free the hummingbirds from their cages. Perhaps it was this moment when she tarried that allowed her father to discover Maureen lingering in the kitchen. She’d been told to vacate the premises, yet she had disobeyed him. His dreadful mood was intensified by a good portion of rum. Coralie heard her father’s raised voice and then the murmur of Maureen’s rational tone as the housekeeper did her best to assuage his anger. The Professor refused to listen to her excuses; he began thrashing her mercilessly. Coralie could hear the rising tide of their emotions as they struggled.
“I should have known I had a thief in my own kitchen,” Sardie shouted. “How many times do I have to teach you the same lesson? How stupid can you actually be? I thought I taught you your rightful place long ago.”
“You have no right to speak to me so anymore. I’m no longer your employee.”
Coralie came to stand outside the kitchen door. When she peered inside she saw that Maureen held a frying pan up for protection as the Professor beat her. He’d cornered her beside the stove and now grabbed the frying pan to use it against her. Maureen could do nothing more than bury her face in her hands. Coralie ran and threw herself against the Professor. He nearly turned on her, the cast-iron pan raised high, before realizing it was his daughter who grasped his arm. “Please,” she begged. “It was my idea to leave. Maureen has nothing to do with it.”
“Are you conspiring to leave?” His anger had been entirely directed at the housekeeper; now he realized Coralie’s intentions. “What other conspiracies have you been a party to? Why would I believe anything about you? Was the report about your physical condition a lie as well?”
“You need to go,” Coralie urged the housekeeper, doing her best to hold Maureen’s gaze with her own, all but pleading with her to run off before the Professor did any more damage.
The housekeeper’s complexion was so chalk white that the random burns stood out in bunches, as if rose petals had been scattered across her skin. There was a fresh gash in her scalp, and dark butterfly-shaped bruises were forming on her chin and cheek. Still, she stood her ground until the Professor grabbed her, pulling her to the door. He locked it after he’d cast her out, pleased with himself. The housekeeper didn’t give up but came to bang upon the window glass, calling for Coralie to be set free. Their eyes locked, and in their glance was an attachment that could not be broken, even though the Professor was already guiding his daughter down the cellar stairs.
“I had no plan to leave,” Coralie protested. “I misspoke.”
“That’s what every liar says,” the Professor told her. “I no longer have faith in you.”
Coralie looked at him coldly. “Nor I in you.”
“Silence will be the best teacher.” Sardie opened his workshop door. Once Coralie was inside, he closed the door in one swift move. The room was dark, but Coralie found candles and a lantern, along with a box of wooden matches. She searched and found water in a jug; though it smelled rusty, she washed her face and cupped her hands so she might drink. She felt a shiver of pleasure knowing Maureen had gotten away, and that she had helped in her escape.
That night Coralie slept on the floor. The boards set over the windows made the room exceptionally dark, but she could hear the crowds on the pier. A shimmer of excitement was rising, for the new and improved Dreamland was set to open on Saturday. In the morning Coralie’s eyes adjusted to the pale light that filtered around the planks of wood nailed across the windows. She found some dried fruit and seeds to eat, and relieved herself in an enamel pot. Then she gathered tools that might prove useful—a small shovel, an awl, and a hammer. At last, she opened the drawer where her father kept his journal. She grasped the book with a sense of rebellion, then sat upon the earthen floor with the book in hand.
She read for some time, coming to a section in which he listed all of his purchases, where he had discovered them, what their cost had been. The Professor mixed English and French in his writings and created a sort of code, reversing letters of the alphabet and often utilizing numbers in their place to ensure that his secrets would not be divined. Magicians did not share, and Sardie was particularly mistrustful, perhaps because he judged all other men by the measure of his own character.
He kept a list of obituary notices. If the deceased individual was a scientist or an explorer, he went to that person’s home address at the time of the funeral, letting himself in by breaking open any locked doors, sifting through belongings, taking any interesting finds. In surgeries at hospitals throughout the city he was well known as a collector, and, in his younger days, he had traveled to Mexico and Brazil. It was there he had found Malia’s mother begging on the street in a town where her daughter was thought to be cursed. The Durante brothers had been discovered in an orphanage in New Jersey, where they entertained the matrons with their acrobatics in the hope of a decent dinner. He’d paid twenty dollars for the two of them, and they’d begun their performances at the age of twelve, for there were no laws to protect children from theatrical exhibitions in the city of New York, and anyone could place them on display.
The tortoise was brought to him in the year Coralie was born. A very old sailor from the Canary Islands had owned the creature for eighty years, which meant the tortoise was now nearly a hundred. Its enclosure was above the workshop, and, as she read, Coralie could hear it moving slowly from one section of its confinement to the other. Grains of sand fell down between the floorboards. That was when Coralie wept, when she thought of a century of capture. She read on.
Sword, Hat, Mouse, Snake, Two of a Kind, Three Faces, Half a Woman, Fire in the Palm of My Hand, Cards, Aces, Deuces, Scarves, Doves.
The elements of each illusion were written in code, which Coralie had not yet completely deciphered. But there were other secrets as well. She came to one notation that was puzzling. Baby in a Cradle. The notation was set off by itself, and there was a blue image of a fish sketched below the letters. Coralie hurriedly turned the pages until she found another small fish inked in the margin. Before she could begin to read, however, she heard a disturbance above her, a pounding at the door and a man calling out. Coralie recognized the voice as Eddie’s. She could hear her father’s response soon enough, and the tone of the men rising into shouts. There was a clattering, as if pots and pans were falling. She could hear her father yelling that Eddie would never find Coralie. She had run off, the Professor said, leaving behind a note for the photographer, so he might know the truth. She wanted nothing to do with him.
Coralie pushed hard against the locked door. She called out until she was hoarse, but it did no good. Eddie had already slammed out of the house, and she could feel her future with him disappearing. By now Eddie would have crossed the yard and slipped into the crowded street, too hurt and disappointed to stay a moment longer. He could not know that, although Coralie was an avid reader, she had never learned to write. Her father had said her hands were too clumsy. She was better at household chores.