“You’re too much, Miss Ferber,” he stammered. Then, to Theo, “Get me out of this.” Quickly, his brother released him and Houdini shook out his arms, exercised his stiff fingers, and rotated his beet-red neck. He pushed the contraption aside, and he smiled sheepishly. “I won’t get into a bind unless I know my way out. This one’s a puzzle. A few wrinkles.” He sized up the contraption. “This will be a sensation on stage. The straitjacket is no problem. I already do that.” He winked at me. “Assuming I use my imagination.”
“I’m sorry.” Though I wasn’t.
“You said what you were supposed to say.” He saluted me. “Like my wife Bess, you hurl the most cutting barbs when I’m trussed and chained.”
I started to say something, but Esther, who’d been quiet all along, suddenly spoke. “You know, sir, Edna’s dream is to become a famous actress. Like Bernhardt. She wants to perform on a stage like this.”
Said, the line seemed inappropriate, especially in the old, creaky theater and on that storied stage. Outside of my family, she alone knew my precious desire. Why would she say that now? Houdini raised his eyebrows as though Esther were joking; and Gustave Timm looked perplexed. Embarrassed, I didn’t know where to turn.
“Really?” Gustave Timm said. “I’m surprised. I picture you as a writer.”
Feebly, I sputtered, “It’s been my dream.” I breathed in. “Well, I love the theater. The Ferber family has survived dismal towns because there was always a theater nearby.”
“I know what you mean.” Gustave understood that. “Your father and I have had wonderful talks about it. He remembers seeing Edwin Booth in Hamlet, in fact. Even Nat Goodwin in A Gilded Fool. I find that thrilling.”
“So why is it surprising that I want to be an actress?” I avoided eye contact with Houdini.
Gustave Timm acted flustered. “I meant no harm, Miss Ferber. Of course, it’s just that given my profession”-he waved his hands around the room-“I hear a lot of such sentiment from many young men and women. People think of the glamour and the…the…” He looked away.
I kept still.
“Miss Ferber has dramatic flair,” Houdini jumped in.
“I find it strange myself,” Esther added out of the blue, and everyone looked at her.
“How so?” Houdini asked.
Esther’s face got red. “To be anything. Edna is a reporter. I just want to be a good wife. A mother to lots of children. I…I don’t know…” Her voice trailed off. It seemed a bizarre statement, and everyone waited for her to continue. She looked to me for help, but I was silent.
The men were staring at Esther, and I knew what they saw: the absolutely beautiful young girl with those dark ebony eyes and that alabaster skin set against that dark upswept black curls. Here was the stunning Rebecca of Sir Walter Scott’s imagination. And me: here, too.
Not happy, I was.
Theo flattered Esther. “You, my dear, should be an actress. Your beauty…Why your face is positively luminous.”
“You certainly are…” Gustave agreed, but he stopped, flushed, staring into my stony face. “Oh, I don’t mean, Miss Ferber, that you shouldn’t be…”
I drew in my cheeks. “I gather only beauty can tread the boards?”
I glanced at Theo, then at Gustave.
“I didn’t mean that.” Gustave nervously looked over my shoulder.
“And yet that’s what you just said.”
“I’m sorry,” Theo added. “I was just trying to be complimentary to your friend. I…”
“But not to everyone.” I was furious.
Houdini interrupted, laughing. “Now, now, Miss Ferber. Frankly I can see you as a hellfire Kate in The Taming of the Shrew. And I mean that as a good thing.”
Well, I’d made everyone uncomfortable. So be it. It wouldn’t be the last time I’d disturb the peace.
Theo hurriedly glanced at his watch, mumbled something to his brother, and told us all goodbye. “I’m off to meet a friend.” He walked off the stage.
Gustave Timm was sputtering some gibberish about my talent as a writer.
Hmm. The homely girl as wordsmith; the drudge as hawker for his melodramas. Cinderella’s stepsister turning pieces of coal into words of diamonds.
Houdini obviously enjoyed the flash fire exchange, which bothered me. Was I overreacting? I was hurt, not only by Theo’s insensitive dismissal of me as a future actress but by Gustave Timm’s ready agreement with him, though perhaps he was just making idle chatter. A word came to mind, one to be added to my list of deadly sins: shallow. A cousin to boring and annoying. Pride and greed and lust and the other deadly sins were the stuff of literature-and classical theater. The niggling little petty vices were the ones that rankled and were thus especially unpardonable.
Gustave hurriedly changed the subject. “Miss Ferber, I saw you talking to that strange man who lives in my brother’s rooming house.”
“Mac?”
“I hadn’t realized you knew him-worked with him. He’s quite the oddity. He talks to no one in the house, even stares down the formidable Mrs. Zeller.” He mock shivered. “Everyone is quite scared of him.”
Well, so was I, but I declared, “He’s a highly accomplished printer.”
Gustave squinted. “Really?”
“We all have our idiosyncrasies, sir.” I waited a second. “Unfortunately, Mr. Timm, I overheard you squabbling with your brother while I was in Mrs. Zeller’s parlor. The walls are thin…”
He turned red in the face. “What?”
“I was surprised to learn that he’s planning on leaving the high school.” I spoke rapidly, purposely defiant, violating whatever tacit laws of privacy I believed in. I wanted to annoy now, to goad. Prick my vanity and I’m hell bent on revenge.
Good for me.
Gustave Timm looked lost for a minute. “That’s not definite, Miss Ferber…and not for publication. I’m hoping you’ll honor that.” He sighed. “What you heard was brotherly rivalry. My brother has been shattered by his wife’s illness and…and estrangement…and has been paralyzed. I actually took this job at the Lyceum to be near him.” His voice rose. “I’ve come to love Appleton. I have a life with Mildred now. And to spite me-it has nothing to do with his failed marriage-he says he wants to leave. He’s playing a game and…” He held up both hands. “Enough. What you heard was private. I don’t know why you have to bring it up now.”
Because I want to irritate you. “Well, you seem to want to provide a detailed explanation.”
He shook his head. “Touche, Miss Ferber. It’s a failure I have. My brother Homer is the taciturn one, the tombstone in the graveyard. I’m the chattering magpie, running on and on…”
“I was just curious.” I shrugged. “I’m a reporter.”
“Surely…”
“This is not news…Yet.”
“Homer is not leaving Appleton.”
“All right, then. But this is what the citizens of Appleton will want to know.”
“Please.”
For some reason Gustave glanced at Houdini. “I’ve said too much. I’m protective of my brother, even as we do battle.”
Houdini looked into the wings. “My brother Theo and I have our problems, I’ll be the first to tell you. He’s my shadow, you know. He even does his own show under the stage name Hardeen, but it’s a pale reflection of mine, and so…well…he runs off to talk about me with his friends…” He frowned. “While I yammer about him to you.”
I thought of Fannie. She was my sister and I would defend her, even though we argued. I did love her. She was my blood. I supposed someday, should we cross paths one time too many, especially with her frilly Cinderella posturings, I’d have to kill her. Deputy Moss would fumble with the leg irons…and wither under my tongue-lashing.