The Museum of Extraordinary Things

APRIL 1911

THE QUIET of the off-season persisted, despite the emerging bloom of lilacs and the haze of green in the gardens of Brooklyn. Small leaves had begun to unfold on the plane trees, but the truest sign of spring was the mud seeping in between the slats of the wooden sidewalks. Even the wild area known as the Gut was quieter than usual, for all racetracks on the island had been closed down and gambling had been outlawed in the hope of lessening crime and vice, though certainly there were still illegal races along Ocean Parkway, often held by lantern light.

Fleets of fishing ships filled Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay, and before long wooden docks were strewn with catches of mussels from Coney Island Creek, along with bass and clams from the bays. The air was blue enough to glimpse the approach of warmer weather, yet the Museum of Extraordinary Things remained closed. A heron circled and considered nesting in the chimney, but when the wind blew cold from the sea, the ungainly creature was frightened off by the slap of a loose shutter banging against a window frame, and it heaved itself into the air. In any other year, carpenters would have been hired to unclasp the shutters, nailed closed in the winter to protect the exhibitions from light. They would have been at work repairing the broken stairs, and begun installing the wooden signs that invited customers to step inside. This spring the Professor had no time to order renovations. He locked himself in the cellar as soon as he awoke and rarely emerged. He refused proper meals and hadn’t bothered to change his clothes in days, though the fabric reeked of chemicals. When the stench was impossible to ignore, Maureen presented him with a clean, starched white shirt, which he grudgingly pulled on. He was distracted, and his gaze was fiery, as though he saw something beyond the confines of their house.

“He’s up to something,” Maureen worried. Though she knew nothing of her employer’s plans, she recognized the fever that marked an obsession. Clearly, some dark dream had taken hold of him. “The next thing you know we’ll have a bear sitting at the dining room table or a giant in one of our best chairs. I only hope there won’t be a snake in the kitchen sink.”

While Maureen went to hang laundry on the line, Coralie crept on her hands and knees, pressing her ear to the wide planks of pine flooring in an attempt to eavesdrop. Her thoughts were consumed by the drowned girl, but there were no telltale sounds rising from the cellar. Still, she knew her father’s urgency to present a monster to the world. He’d insisted this was the only way he could turn their fortunes around. “Do you think I’d have you swim for those fools if we weren’t desperate for the money?” he’d said to her, as if that explained the dreadful things he’d had her do. “We need a real success!”

Coralie would have preferred to live like a mouse, on crumbs and crusts, rather than be subjected to those evenings. “Is there nothing else we might do to change our fortune?” she pleaded.

“There’s worse,” he said darkly, and left it at that.

They had grown poorer, left with only soup and bread for their meals. Maureen complained she could hardly buy groceries with her slim allowance. Coralie wished she could tell the housekeeper about her father’s intentions, but it was as if those wicked evenings in the museum had left her bewitched and mute. She made certain to dispose of liquor bottles and cigar stubs in the mornings that followed her humiliations, tossing bits of evidence into the trash pile. Once a week, it was set on fire. Maureen always encouraged Coralie to come inside on these occasions, for bright cinders snapped up into the branches of the pear tree and smoke swooped above them. But Coralie sat on the porch steps, unmoving. She watched it all burn.

IN TIME, Coralie had come to wonder if the housekeeper had just as many secrets as she did. A house of secrets is like a house of cards, falling in on itself. The more you knew, the more you had to know, and Maureen’s private life nagged at Coralie. The housekeeper had never spoken of where she came from, nor had she mentioned a family.

One day Coralie blundered upon a hint that her suspicions had been correct. She spied Maureen on Neptune Avenue, on the other side of the trolley tracks. It was Sunday, the housekeeper’s day off. The air was bracing due to the spring fog that hadn’t yet lifted. The haze turned the world into a mist, and within that mist Maureen appeared beautiful, her long auburn hair wound up with tortoiseshell combs. Shrouded in the hazy air, her damaged face seemed perfect, as it must have been before she’d been assaulted by her jealous lover. She had no photographs of herself in her earlier years; she insisted that photographs were for the rich. But trust me, she was always quick to say with a grin, I made heads turn.

On this quiet Sunday, Coralie followed the housekeeper to a building where many seasonal workers boarded. She trailed her inside, up to the third floor. When Maureen turned, as if she’d heard footfalls, Coralie darted into the stairwell. At last she dared to glance out, only to find she’d lost sight of Maureen. She went along the hallway, listening in at the doors, her ear pressed close. At one set of rooms she thought she heard the rise of Maureen’s voice, but she couldn’t be sure.

Nearby, a door opened and an old woman peered into the corridor. Coralie had no choice but to pass by on her way back to the stairwell. The hallway was poorly lit, but Coralie could tell the woman gazing out had worked at a carnival or a sideshow, for she was covered with tattoos. Living wonders looked down upon those whose attributes weren’t natural, and the old woman may have felt she was an outcast. Her expression was coarse and bitter. She wore a heavy wool cloak, a hood over her head. When Coralie drew near, it was possible for her to see a mask of flowers and vines on the woman’s aging face, a scrim of blue and red inked around her narrowed eyes.

“What are you doing here?” the tattooed woman wanted to know.

Coralie said she was looking for a Mr. Morris.

“Who are you?” the older woman asked. “His whore?”

Coralie felt the sting of outrage. “Of course not!” She calmed herself and went on. “But I think there is a woman who stays with him. As for him, you’d recognize him—he’s quite covered with hair.”

“Every beast can find a woman. It’s so unfair, for what man would have a woman like me? You can barely bring yourself to look me in the eye, but if you’d like, you can come inside my room. I’ll show you everything, if you have the nerve to look. These pictures cover every bit of me, even the most private parts that were sweet once upon a time.” The old woman gestured for her to come in. “One whore knows another, darling. It’s written all over our faces.”

It was a wretched thing to say. Stunned, Coralie ran down the stairs, her heart pounding, the callous comment still cutting her as she fled. She couldn’t help but wonder if the old woman had a talent as a mind reader, if she’d somehow intuited what had happened on those wicked nights at the museum. Coralie ran home, unaware of the world around her. Once safely in her room, she bolted the door and stood before the mirror. She was a plain girl, nothing more. There were no flowers, no ink, no signs of her true nature. Then she looked down and saw that in her hurry to follow Maureen she had forgotten her gloves. Her deformity had been there for the old woman to see, her own dyed skin, the webbing between her fingers, the mark of who she truly was.

Coralie threw herself across her bed. As she dreamed on this hazy afternoon she found herself lost in the woods. She spied the young man once again and followed him to a cliff. She could view the river from where she stood and hear the birds in the sycamore trees. The young man seemed to know her, and he stepped near. Coralie hoped he would embrace her, but instead he urged her to jump into the river. It’s the only way, he said to her. The danger seemed so apparent, only a fool would make such a leap. Coralie was torn between her wish to win him over and her dread. It’s much easier than you could have ever imagined, the young man told her. She took one step and began to fall through the air, not breathing until she hit the water. There, in the river, she became her deepest self, a monster, to be sure, but one with iridescent scales, a fierce and fearless wonder of the world.

Restless, Coralie went out walking regardless of the weather, often stopping to watch the workers at Dreamland. There were hundreds of men swarming over the park, painting and reconstructing the buildings to ensure that Dreamland would be ready for the last weekend of May. She’d hoped to see Mr. Morris among the crowd of newly hired performers, for many had reported in early so they might practice their acts throughout April and May, but he was nowhere to be seen. Still, the park drew her to its gates. She was fascinated with the land of Lilliputia, where everything had been built to scale, so that a tall man might easily lean his elbow on the roofs of the houses and a full-grown woman could stare down the chimneys to watch the miniature lives that would be led inside for the entertainment of Dreamland’s patrons. Coralie wondered if these small people were grateful to be protected in their separate world, if they would light candles in the evenings and sit comfortably at their dining room tables, curtains drawn, so they might lead ordinary lives.

When she grew tired of watching the little village, Coralie peered through the wire fencing to gaze at the shell of the enormous ride Hell Gate. It was impossible to see inside, but she found herself frightened by the artwork that surrounded it, devils with their beards and magic wands. What she loved most was to view the animals in their pens. The great animal trainer Bonavita spied her watching and invited her in through the employees’ gate. She immediately recognized him from posters that were hung all over Coney Island. Bonavita had been well known in Europe, and now, in Brooklyn, he was a star. He was a handsome, graceful man, despite having lost one arm to a maddened lion called Baltimore. The animals were kept year round in a lot beside the park, surrounded by tall fences spiked with nails and glass to ensure that neighborhood boys searching for thrills wouldn’t climb over and find themselves in a cage of tigers or discover they had come face-to-face with Bonavita’s beloved black-maned lion, Black Prince.

The animal workers lived in nicely furnished apartments above the animal arena. Bonavita invited Coralie to his apartment for tea; his wife and daughter were visiting friends in Manhattan. Coralie hesitated, wondering if he read the same thing in her face that the tattooed lady had divined. Did he see her as a whore, expecting more than the kiss the night watchman had begged for? And yet Bonavita seemed a perfect gentleman, even though he was so attractive movie stars wrote him love notes. When Coralie sat at the table, he served orange pekoe tea, asking if she would like lemon or cream. His disability did not seem to affect him or his thoughts about himself, and this alone amazed Coralie. Soon enough, she learned that he possessed the kindness of a truly great animal trainer. He confided that animals never responded to cruelty; trainers who used that method would one day find that their charges turned upon them and be maimed by the beasts they had beaten into a false docility. Bonavita proclaimed that human beings were not the only species that cried or formed deep attachments. He made reference to a Captain Andre, the trainer of Little Hip, the elephant who was the mascot of the park, leading the opening day parade every year. In Bonavita’s estimation, Andre was a genius of a trainer, and in return his elephant was so resolute in his loyalty he would bellow all night if not allowed to sleep in Andre’s room.

Coralie felt comforted by these stories of men’s devotion to their charges. If a beast could be treated with kindness and respect, perhaps there was hope for her as well. Bonavita’s animals were treasured companions, rather than possessions to be shown off and displayed. Bonavita took her to see Black Prince, his pride and joy, the lion he had raised as a cub. Prince was sleeping on a cushion. When his trainer called his name, he looked up lazily and yawned. Before Coralie knew what was happening, Bonavita had opened the cage and slipped inside. The lion rose to his feet when he spied his trainer. When they met in the center of the cage, the creature let out a sound that sent chills down Coralie’s spine. He then leapt up to an enormous height, a black mane framing his ferocious face, his huge paws balanced on his trainer’s shoulders. Certainly the trainer’s deformity did not make him any less than any other man. He was, by far, the most courageous individual Coralie had ever seen.

Still, she imagined she would see his death before her very eyes. The cage was open, and Coralie wondered if she would rush to the trainer’s defense if tragedy struck, or if she would watch, paralyzed, as he was eaten alive. But the lion only rubbed his head against his trainer and seemed to embrace him. “That’s a good fellow,” Bonavita said. He pushed the lion off and afterward scratched at his mane with the palm of his hand, which the beast greatly appreciated. A deep rumbling came from Prince’s throat and chest.

“Come inside,” Bonavita urged his audience of one.

Coralie’s heart dropped. But she thought of her dream, how she had feared to make the leap from the ledge in the woods, and then, when she had expected to crash to the ground below, she fell into the blue water and knew she had been made for another element entirely.

She stepped inside the cage.

“Don’t scream or shout,” Bonavita said softly. “Ignore him.”

Coralie was still as the lion studied her. She dared not take a breath as the beast approached.

“I knew it.” Bonavita was pleased with himself and how good a judge of character he was. “You have a form of bravery inside you.”

The lion’s scent was of straw and an earthy wildness. He rubbed his head against Coralie, and as he did, Coralie felt her own wildness. She sensed that all her waking life had been a dream, and that it was only in this moment that she had at last opened her eyes.

When Bonavita called to Prince and clapped his hands, the lion went trotting back to his cushion. Coralie left the cage so that Bonavita might bring the lion his breakfast, the half-frozen carcass of a cow, which the lion attacked with studied intensity. Coralie noticed there were several coarse hairs on her skirt, some golden and some black. Her heart was still pounding, yet she felt overjoyed at having been so close to such a fierce creature, and one as great as Prince.

She asked Bonavita what allowed him to be so fearless in the presence of his lion, especially having been attacked earlier in his life.

“Oh, I fear him,” Bonavita assured her. “He could kill me if he wished. He and I both know that. But the lion that attacked me was misused and ill treated before I had him. I raised Prince from the time he was first born. There is a connection in that sort of companionship, a trust that goes beyond his nature, and mine as well I suppose.”

Coralie asked if Bonavita’s wife wasn’t afraid at each one of his performances, some of which included a dozen tigers and leopards surrounding him in a ring.

“I am good to my wife and to my daughter, but they understand me. In my experience you can only have one great love, and I have chosen mine.”

Coralie was certain that real love was nothing like the life she’d known, the lust of the exhibition room, the shadows lingering on the wall, the rasping sound of the tortoise in its pen, so calm and patient in its confinement, the men who had stalked her on the other side of the tank, then been ushered away as if they were mere figments, rather than flesh and blood.

The animal trainer had thought she was brave, but in her daily life Coralie remained a mouse. Her anger became self-directed, her wounds self-directed as well. When she was angry she stuck pins into her own flesh, but unlike the Human Pincushion, who had been with them for several years and who drank an elixir of nettle, blackberry, and lotus to stanch his wounds, Coralie bled. She felt the pain. In the evenings, she served her father large mugs of rum, so that he would close his eyes and dream and there would be peace inside their house. She shocked herself by considering how easy it would be to lace his drink with arsenic, which was stored in the garden shed and used to keep the rats away. She fled the house, frightened by the sheer wickedness of her thoughts.

The evenings were still damp and chilly even though spring had arrived, and the dusk fell in sheets that were mottled and fish colored. Coralie went to the shoreline where she had first learned to swim. The water’s pull was difficult to resist; she could feel it in her blood, stinging like salt. It was here the whole world opened to her, as it always had, in a grid of sand and sea. She had come to believe that if her father had wanted a docile daughter, he should never have allowed her access to the ocean. It was here she found a strength that often surprised her. Perhaps she was not a spineless creature, but a wonder after all. Recently when she gazed into the mirror she believed she spied a series of lines at the base of her throat. Surely they were not the gills she had dreamed of but merely a pattern of throbbing blue veins. Still, she wondered.

The deepening night was soon strewn with stars. The beach, so crowded in summer months it was impossible to walk along without bumping into another beachgoer, was empty, save for the clam diggers, who called to each other from the beds of shellfish as they worked by lantern light. It was low tide, and the air was perfumed with seaweed. As the dark sifted down, Coralie undressed to her undergarments, unlacing her boots so she might leave them behind. She loved the feel of damp sand in the tide, how it tugged at her, pulling her into a world she could sink into. The waves rolled in, and soon enough she was waist deep in water. There was a film of phosphorescence in the water, an illumination caused by tiny fish that were invisible to the human eye, unnoticed in the daylight hours. This was the virtue of the dark: you were who you had always been, only no one could see you.

She was sopping wet, deep in thought. She had stood beside a lion. Perhaps she had more courage than she’d imagined. She dressed and made the walk back home. When she reached the house, she sneaked inside, then left her sandy boots in the hallway and hung her cloak on a brass hook. Water had taught her how to move lightly, and she floated down the hall. The Professor had come up from his workshop and was asleep in the library, exhausted from the trials of his work, sprawled out in a chair. Coralie studied him from the doorway. How deeply he slept, how completely at ease he seemed, as if the world belonged to him and him alone. She drew closer to his sleeping form and leaned down, making no noise as she took the keys from his pocket. She had often sat beside the tortoise and had matched her breathing to echo that of the sea creature’s. She practiced this technique now, slowing her breath and heart and blood.

In the kitchen, the white enameled stove gleamed. A supper Maureen had left for them earlier remained untouched in the cooking pot. Coralie took the cellar stairs in her bare feet. The floor was nothing more than raked dirt, and there were often mice in the corners. An earthy odor of roots mixed with the tang of chemicals. Coralie fitted the two keys into their locks simultaneously and turned them. There were two soft clicks. She let her eyes adjust to the dark before crossing the threshold. Once she was inside the workshop, the scent of formaldehyde was stronger, nearly overpowering. There were rows of teeth in jars set on a shelf alongside dozens of yellowing books. Nearby was the rack of tools, hammers and awls and saws in varying sizes, from one so tiny it could fit in the palm of a child’s hand to an enormous wood saw. Because it was a humid night the cellar was especially damp, the air sweetened with turpentine and wild gum. There was a dark concoction on the desk as well, a sticky tar-like stuff kept in bottles that Professor Sardie rolled into beads to smoke in a pipe that let off a pungent stink.

A wooden crate more than five feet long took up most of the tabletop. As Coralie approached she found herself counting, as if that task would keep her fear at bay. She pushed on the cover so that it slipped forward. Inside, the crate was packed with solid carbon dioxide that appeared as snow. Curls of moisture rose up, which she waved away so she might peer inside. Coralie spied a shimmer of pale hair, the glimmer of flesh. The girl from the river, her blood replaced by formaldehyde, her world reduced to ice. This was her resting place, a box that would have been better used on the docks to pack bluefish or mackerel for delivery to the markets.

Coralie shoved the cover back in place and stood facing away from the coffin, shivering, as if she were the one dressed in chemicals, bloodless and pale. Without another thought, she went to search for the handbook, driven to discover what her father’s plan might be. The room was dark and the items in the drawer were mere shadows to her eyes, but she grasped around until she found what she wanted, her hands fitting over the cover of smooth Moroccan leather. She had wanted to read her father’s diary in its entirety, but there was no time for that. She swiftly thumbed through, finding the last page he’d written upon. The date was this very day, the ink fresh, an indigo blue he favored, the color of water.

Many of the Professor’s notes were in French, and Coralie understood several phrases. Je vais créer ce que je n’ai pas. De chair et le sang. De coeur de l’imagination. But even without written explanations, the ink-stained sketches made his intentions quite clear. He planned to give the city of New York a variation of the trick for which he had been famous, half a woman. This creature, however, would be as monstrous as she was beautiful, a woman joined with a fish, stitched scale to flesh to become a real mermaid, the Hudson Mystery, a far better invention than Barnum’s Feejee Mermaid.

Coralie thought of Maureen’s warning: if you saw the dead twice you were doomed to be haunted. Indeed, the two young women seemed joined by strands of invisible thread, a single being, though one breathed and one was forever still. As Coralie turned to leave, she observed a jumble of belongings on the countertop. A comb, hairpins, a gold locket. She couldn’t bear to see how carelessly these mementos had been tossed into a pile beside surgical tools and bits of bone. She scooped them up, hoping the tokens were so small and unimportant in her father’s eyes he wouldn’t notice their absence.

She left, tugging the door closed behind her, then quickly turning the locks. The cold had seeped into her blood and her eyes stung with tears. She knew that a monster should not feel anything, not sorrow or regret. She should not weep, or shiver, or sob. To do so would only cause her to give herself away and make herself a target. Better to slink through the dark as she did now. Through the kitchen, down the porch steps, into the yard. In the dark the newly greening leaves appeared black. Out at sea there was a foghorn, for the fog that often arose on spring nights had begun to roll in from the shore, blanketing the neighborhood. It was nearly impossible to see two feet in any direction. Still, Coralie could smell an acrid scent and she spied a flash of red sparks. In the corner of the yard wisps of smoke rose from the trash pile, though it was not trash-burning day. Earlier in the evening, while Coralie was at the shore, the Professor had hurriedly disposed of evidence. But he hadn’t done a thorough enough job. Coralie recognized the blue coat. She grabbed for it, though bright embers burned her fingers. She carried the singed coat to the well in the yard and hurried to work the pump, forcing a stream of water out. The fabric sizzled as the flame was extinguished, with a gasp resembling a human sigh.

Coralie brought her find up to her bedroom. She folded it beneath her featherbed mattress, then lay there with her eyes open, her pulse pounding. She was exactly what she had pretended to be on those nights when she waded into the Hudson, a monster and a monster’s daughter. If the man in the woods could see her now, distraught and lonely, weeping in her bed, he would think she had a heart. But a heart was not enough. She understood that now. What a monster needed most was a plan.

Coralie hurried to the locksmith in the morning, so nervous as she waited she thought she might faint. But in the end luck was with her. Upon returning home, she found her father’s jacket on the hook. She could replace the keys she’d taken before he was aware they’d been gone. She had her own keys now, and a way to unlock her fate.