Harry seemed to relax at the suggestion. “Hey, look at this!” He reached behind one of the girl’s ears and brought a tiny paper flower into view. “Presto,” he said, waving the flower with a flourish. The children released Bess immediately and crowded around him instead.
From the back of the apartment, they heard a loud wail. Mrs. Rahner came out of the bedroom in her nightgown, brandishing a chain of rosary beads, Stella trailing after her. “You get out of my house!” she cried, in her heavy German accent, rushing toward the door. “Beatrice, you have condemned yourself! How could you? You’ve gotten yourself in league with the devil!”
The children scampered into the kitchen, laughing, but Harry stepped backward into the hallway, clearly startled. Bess just stared. Her mother’s green eyes were full of fear and rage, the skin beneath them paper-thin. Her face and body were thin, too, so that even in her assault she seemed frail as a bird.
Stella stepped in front of her mother and tried to calm her. But Mrs. Rahner grabbed a vial of holy water and began splashing it all over the foyer and in the doorway where Bess and Harry stood.
“What in the world is going on?” Harry said, as the water splashed over his feet. She could see his cheeks reddening angrily.
Bess grabbed his arm. “Oh, be rational, Mama. He’s not the devil. We just came to say good-bye before we leave.”
“If you’ve married this man, I don’t want to see you again. Do you hear me? You’ve gotten yourself into an unholy marriage, and you’ve put a curse upon yourself. Your father would be ashamed of you.” She broke into a series of vehement Hail Marys and Our Fathers.
“I don’t care!” Bess cried, losing her composure. “I love him!” Her heart was breaking. She had spent years both hating her mother for remarrying and vying for her love. After her father died, Bess had done everything she could to make her mother happy again, but nothing ever seemed enough. Now, she was being pushed out of the apartment for a second time. “Please, won’t you try to understand?”
“You’d better go.” Stella attempted to wrestle the water from her mother’s grasp. “Leave me your address and I’ll write you. Just give it time.”
Bess turned and ran down the stairs and into the white city sunlight, her chest heaving. Harry followed her and pulled her back before she could run into the road.
Bess was shaking. “She’s—a nasty woman,” she said between choked breaths. She vowed she would not give her mother the satisfaction of making her cry. “She treated you—so rudely.”
A shadow crossed over Harry’s face. “Don’t leave me because of this,” he begged, grasping her hand. “Come home with me. None of this will matter tomorrow.”
Bess was so surprised to see him overcome with worry that she regained her calm. “That’s ridiculous. We’ve only just gotten married. How could I leave?” The idea hadn’t occurred to her, but now she saw that, if she wanted, she could still be free of him; after all, they had not had a proper wedding. She could still return home, to Stella’s house and her mother’s cooking on Sundays and the rooms smelling of salt and perfume and the red-brick views outside her old bedroom window.
Harry took her by the elbow. Above them, the city sky was colorless, bisected by buildings whose shadows did nothing to cool the sidewalks. “It’s too hot out. Let’s have some dinner and go meet the train.”
Bess shook her head and pulled her arm away. “I’m serious, Harry. I won’t ever speak to her again. Your mother can be mother enough for the two of us. She was very kind to me, and she didn’t have to be. For all she knew I was nothing but a little hussy.”
Harry smiled. “Nonsense. You look far too young to be a hussy.”
He took her hand and walked her down Fulton Street, stopping at the shop windows and making promises of what he would buy her one day. Bess kissed him in front of a diamond cross but could not help hearing the voice of her soft-spoken Brooklyn priest, warning that a rich man can never be admitted into heaven. Harry’s fixation on money worried her. She wondered if there was some truth to her mother’s fears, and whether there were some of his tricks that were in fact not tricks after all.
“The brothers Houdini, who for years have mystified the world with their mysterious box mystery, known as ‘Metamorphosis,’ are no more, and the team will hereafter be known as the Houdinis. The new partner is Miss Bessie Raymond, the petite soubrette, who was married to Mr. Harry Houdini this month. First and final show in Coney Island tomorrow evening.”
Bess held up the page she had torn from The New York Clipper and frowned. “They got my name wrong.”
Harry took it from her and read it again. “That’s all right,” he said. “It’s a splendid article. Raymond, Rahner, it doesn’t matter what you were before. You’re a Houdini now. This should draw us a big crowd. It’s not often people see a husband and wife performing together.”