The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

What could Lottie have done to the beans? I wonder. It smells so good that I’m regretting my plan to sneak away to see Herschel and miss my chance at breakfast. I am planning to buy something in the street on the way, hot corn or something like that.

Downstairs I hear voices in conversation from what sounds like the drawing room, animated voices so loud that I wonder if Papa’s in there having another argument with some of the Canal Corporation men, like I caught him having last week.

They mean to do it, I’d heard my father shout. Don’t you see? They can still ruin everything.

The other man had said something I didn’t understand. They were both on the committee for the Grand Aquatic Display to be held when the canal finally opened, the party that we went to last night. A whole flotilla wending all the way from Buffalo to the Hudson, and down to New-York, over a period of weeks, and when we heard word that they were only a few days away, the city leapt to preparations. Papa and all his business associates readied to receive them amidst fireworks and music and martial displays, all the newspapers there and Governor Clinton pouring water from Lake Erie into New-York Harbor, along with water from the Ganges, and the Nile, and the Amazon, and the Mississippi, and all the greatest waterways in the world, though Ed had wondered aloud how they really knew that’s where all the water was coming from, after all, doesn’t all water look the same?

I hesitate on the stair, straining my ears. The voices grow louder, but somehow not more distinct. I can’t tell what they’re saying. Usually Papa is downtown by now. He hasn’t breakfasted with us in weeks. Always rushing off to planning meetings, being picked up outside the town house by different carriages. Strangers rapping at the door and asking for him.

The morning light is streaming into the first floor hallway, pouring like rays of heaven through the transom window over the front door, glinting off the hall-stand mirror. I squint against it, and descend another step. Usually the morning light is soft, orange and muted, since more buildings have gone up on this block. But today the light is harsh and white.

I bring my hand up to shade my eyes, peering into the glare.

The whiteness is so bright it’s almost a haze. It fills the hall, lightening the dove-gray walls and swallowing the floorboards.

I descend another couple of steps, and the light glows so bright that I can’t see where I’m stepping. My feet hunt about for each stair tread, and I grope for the banister, but I can’t find it. My hand plunges into space, grasping nothing.

Finally my foot lands hard on the floor, and the carpet runner is missing, and my foot makes an unfamiliar sound in the front hallway. Voices are all around me. Their murmurs rise and fall, like music, or like the crowds of people outside the African Grove Theater on Bleecker, a clamor of voices and sounds and smells and everyone talking at once, but somehow never to one another. I can’t make any of them out, and none of them seem to be talking to me, but they buzz around to my ears like bees, close enough that I struggle to bat them away.

“Papa?” I call out.

The brightness of the morning sun is making my eyes ache.

“Order up!” someone shouts close to my ear, making me jump.

“What?” I say, looking left and right.

I can’t see anyone. I’m alone, but somehow I’m surrounded by people and smells and I can hear a bell jangling, but I can’t tell if it’s the bell Mother uses to summon us for meals or if it’s something different.

“Mother?” I try this time, wondering if she’s serving breakfast in the drawing room for some reason. Perhaps she has guests? But she wouldn’t entertain at breakfast. And she would have made sure Beattie and I dressed up.

A whiff of air brushes past my cheeks, and I spin where I’m standing, but all I see is the outline of the front hallway filled with pure white light.

I move nearer to the drawing room, reaching a hand forward to where the sliding door should be, but my hand keeps going forward in space, deeper into a void, not meeting anything.