The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

I release the edge of the card table and smooth my hands down the front of my day dress.

“Of course, Mother,” I say with some difficulty.

“I thought I heard you shout, just now.”

I level my eyes at my mother’s face and smile prettily at her.

“Shout?” I echo, as mildly as I can.

“Yes. I thought I heard you raise your voice, a moment ago.”

It’s not like Mother to press the issue. Usually we maintain a tacit agreement that we will each pretend I do what I’m supposed to do, virtually all of the time. It’s easier on both of us.

“I’m so sorry, Mother,” I say. “Perhaps you heard someone out in the street? A peddler? They’re getting louder and louder, aren’t they?”

She watches me for a long moment.

“Indeed they are,” she says after a time.

We stare at each other across the length of the drawing room, each wondering who is going to call me on my bluff.

At length she says, “Well. Beatrice is down. We’re about to eat.”

“All right,” I say.

She’s on the point of leaving, when she gives me a last long look and says, “Are you quite sure you’re all right, Annie?”

Her unaccustomed use of my preferred name takes me aback, and I have to lean on the card table.

“I . . . I think so,” I say.

What I want to do is run to her, and have her hold me and tell me that I’m just having a bad dream within a bad dream. I want her to tell me that it’s probably on account of my having too much Madeira, which I shouldn’t have accepted from Mrs. Dudley at the corporation dinner, and it serves me right for indulging too much, and it’s just this sort of thing that’s made her consider joining the Temperance Society. I want to tell her that my cameo’s missing, and beg her to help me find it, and I want to tell her that it was Herschel who gave it to me, and why.

“I think . . . perhaps, there’s something the matter with my head,” I finish.

I bring my hand to my temple.

“Hmmph,” my mother sniffs, and her dismissal fills me with relief, as it is exactly what she would do, if we were really having this conversation. “In any case, there’s coffee on the breakfast table.”

She whisks away down the hall, and I can hear the rustling of her skirts as she goes.

I lean myself ever so slightly to the left, so that I can see farther down the hall and confirm that she’s really gone.

And then I grab up my skirts and run for the front door.





CHAPTER 4


Herschel,” I breathe as I blunder down the front steps of our town house and flop into the street. A carriage rattles by, and I throw myself out of its way. The horse, a bay mare with a grizzled muzzle, rolls its eye at me as it trots past.

I round the corner from First to the Bowery, into the morning crowds of the avenue. The traces of last night’s revels have vanished, which is odd—I’d expected wet bunting and a stench of spoiled beer. Well, the stench of beer is there, but it usually is. Beer and urine and the salty smell of seawater, even though we’re well inland from the waterfront. At least we’re far enough in that it doesn’t stink of fish.

Men stroll by in twos and threes, some women, too, and in front of the butcher shop a puppy steals a ham trotter and endures the abuse of a pigeon for his trouble. The day is cool and windless, and the sky is an unbroken palette of white.

“Hot corn!” a yellowish mulatta waif hollers to the men bustling by. “Hot corn, piping hot! Fresh out of the boiling pot!”

She’s carrying a huge covered basket that smells enticingly of boiled maize ears. A few sporting bloods pause to notice her as she strolls by. One gentleman in tight lacing and a tall hat lets his eye roam down her body in a frank, appreciative leer.

She stops, returning his look with just as much frankness.

“Hot corn, sir?” she asks him. She reaches into the basket, finds an ear browned in its husk, and holds it out to him.