The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

But instead of the shattering of my bones, I plunge into a soft pillowing, as though my body were a leaf fallen from an oak tree in autumn. The air catches me, cupping me in its palm, and I drift through a gap in the world until my feet come softly to rest on the ground. My eyes are still closed, but everything is silent. I stand immobile, listening.

Then, as though I were an image in one of Wes’s captured moving pictures that’s been frozen and is now speeding forward, a wall of sound comes bearing down on me. I cringe in fear, but when I open my eyes I see that the terrific noise is local Ward 4 fire brigade’s brass band and bass drum, and I’m standing on a dais next to Mother and Papa, with Beatrice cradling one of my hands and Ed dragging down the other like a sea anchor. Throngs of New Yorkers are crushing forward to reach the platform, all brightly lit by lanterns and torches throwing all our faces into jack-o’-lantern shadow. The firemen parade by in formation, whiskered cheeks puffed out with effort blowing into their horns, tall hats and fringed epaulets gleaming, and the governor stands at the podium next to us, clapping his white-gloved hands and grinning.

My father looks beefy-faced and blurry from too much gin, and Mother stands next to him, propping him up with the crook of her arm, beaming in her proprietary way across the heads of the people parading below her. The dais has been set up in front of the town hall, which is almost completely obscured with billowing bunting in red, white, and blue, and on the heels of the band come uniformed private police mounted on painted horses, trotting high, their tails flicking. When the policemen pass the governor, they raise their arms in salute, and the governor acknowledges them with a happy return. My father salutes them back, sloppily, leaning with his free elbow on the banister.

I glance around, trying to get my bearings. Everywhere faces throng together, tired or leery, bright-eyed, excited, painted, hot-cheeked, drunk. Voices babble and shout in all different languages, German, Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, Arabic, Chinese. A fresh horn section bears down on the platform, flanked by children tracing bright sparklers and streamers through the air, followed by the boys from Columbia College, all decked out in woolen academic robes and tasseled hats.

“Wave,” my mother hisses to me, grinding her foot on my toe.

I look around myself in panic, and Ed drags on my arm, trying to hide behind me. My left ring finger burns with the heat from Herschel’s cameo, and my senses are alive with the need to find him. I hunt over the heads of the crowd, searching. Desperate.

And then I see him.

He’s there, a few shoulders back in the crowd at the foot of the stage, staring at me, his face pale under his dark-rimmed hat, his ear curls tucked up out of sight. When I spot him his eyes widen, and his whole face brightens in a smile, and he starts fighting his way through the throng to get nearer to me.

“Herschel!” I breathe, and Beattie hears me and stands on her tiptoes to see.

“He’s here?” she whispers in my ear as the college boys parading past in the street are supplanted by robed young men from the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Two different brass bands blare warring themes from opposite ends of the green in front of the Town Hall, bass drums throbbing in syncopated disunion.

“What? How do you know about Herschel?” I hiss at her.

“Come on, Annie”—my sister looks at me from the corners of her eyelashes—“everyone knows. You act like no one sees you when you go walking in New-York.”

“I have to talk to him,” I say, trying to drop Ed’s hand. He clings to me like molasses.

“Don’t go!” my brother pleads. “It’s so loud! Stay here!”

“What are you doing?” Beattie says with urgency. “You can’t go!”

“You don’t understand!” I cry to her. “I have to!”