Escape Artist

sheeny. Run! Go on, run!” I couldn’t find a hiding place. “Christ killer.” Everywhere I ran in the hundreds of rooms- each one empty of furniture, each one a coffin-like box-there was no refuge. Finally I located my family, a frozen Sunday-best photograph of Jacob, Julia, and Fannie lined up and staring bleakly into the photographer’s lens. Where am I? I begged. I’m not in the picture. And no one answered. Why am I not in the picture? I woke again, gasping for air, and sat up. One thought knocked me back into my wet pillow. My home was behind enemy lines.

But what did that mean?

Chapter Eighteen

The next day I was restless. At the city room I snapped at Miss Ivy, apologized, and the woman nodded, though occasionally she glanced my way, a puzzled look on her face. Matthias Boon, in and out of the office-“Chief of Police Stone has been talking to a drummer who’s back in town and yammered about the murder in a drunken stupor”-had edited my article on baseball down to an innocuous paragraph, which, I thought, made me sound like an idiot. A good part of the time I stared straight ahead, vacantly; and one time I spotted Sam Ryan peering at me, eyes narrowed. I tried to busy myself with a rewrite of a Milwaukee story: Lafollette and the wars at the state capital. Nothing like my own wars, I told myself.

Byron Beverage walked in, a grin on his face. “Well, I saw your Harry Houdini getting on the train an hour ago. The most famous man to ever come out of Appleton had uncombed hair, a poorly-tied cravat, and, I swear, dried shaving cream on his left cheek.”

I stayed quiet, typing with my two fingers.

I waited for someone to comment on Houdini, but Miss Ivy started to ask her brother about an overdue account, some advertising from the Fox River Electric Car Company. “Again, they’re two weeks late,” she complained. “It throws everything off.”

Sam rustled some papers. Every month they conducted the same conversation. Like clockwork. Within a day or two, Maxwell Pellum from the streetcar line would rush in, dropping shiny quarters on Miss Ivy’s desk, get a receipt, and leave. He never apologized. A routine. Like me and Fannie, warriors in muslin and gingham.

I treated Esther to an afternoon coffee and a powdered doughnut at the Elm Tree Bakery, and she nonchalantly informed me her father had decided she was to marry. She shared the news so calmly it took me a second to understand how important this was. “Who?” I was flabbergasted. “Esther, this is a bolt out of the blue.”

She sighed. “He’s chosen Leo Reiner. You don’t know him. He’s from Kenosha.”

“Do you know him?”

“I’ve met him.”

“And?”

“He’s built like an ice house and will be bald at thirty.”

“And you’re actually going to marry him?” Grim, flat out.

“Well, in two years, yes.” She waited. “Well, I have to.” She had to? Of course, she did. Esther’s father, Rabbi Mendel Leitner, a redoubtable Old World cleric, believed in the East European tradition of a father choosing his children’s mates. Esther’s older sister, now saddled with a gaggle of colicky babies, had quietly acquiesced to her father’s dictates. Esther, vivacious American girl with her own Garibaldi-styled dresses, tennis rackets, and Gibson girl face, had no choice but to comply.

“Slavery.” My severe declaration.

“Please, Edna.” Esther, I sensed, had her own reservations but would never voice them. After all, she was not me. She was a small-town girl who wanted a grand home on Prospect Street-with electricity and an Alaska Opelite refrigerator. She wanted a dozen children in a crowded kitchen. She wanted to watch yeasty dough rising in a crock settled into a warm corner of the pantry. She was a girl who would define her life by the High Holy Days and the keeping of two sets of dishes.

“Esther…”

She twisted in her chair. “Be happy for me, Edna.”

A long pause. “I am.”

But I saw Esther’s lips tremble. I hurried to change the subject, mentioning Kathe’s abrupt leave-taking from the Ferber household.

“Yes,” Esther acknowledged, “I heard all about it from Kathe. We’re still friendly.”

“Why is she so hostile to me?”

Esther broke into a big grin. “Edna, sometimes you don’t see yourself as others do.”

“And what does that mean? I seem to have heard that before-and recently.”

Esther waved her hand in the air. “You know you can be a little harsh with people…”

I broke in. “The girl accused me of interfering with her already failed romance with Jake Smuddie.”

“Well, you know Kathe is not so clever.”

“Putting it mildly.”

“But she can pick up how much contempt you have for her. And-now don’t get angry here, Edna-she thinks you have an infatuation with Jake Smuddie.”

I fumed. “He left her and she practically named him the murderer.”

“She’s feeling hurt…and deserted.”

“Conditions she’s brought upon herself.” I tapped a finger on the table. “More than once she’s suggested she’s glad Frana is dead, as though death opened the doors for Jake to rediscover her massively-concealed charms.”

Esther shrugged her shoulders and took a big bite of the warm cinnamon-dusted doughnut. “You have to accept that Kathe is now your sworn enemy.”

“She’s chosen me because she needs an enemy now.”

“And you’re the girl reporter.”

I whispered, “I’m starting to hate that expression.”

Esther’s eyes twinkled. “Why? You use it all the time.”

“So Kathe has been chatting with you?” A hint of betrayal. The two pretty girls in cahoots.

“We met at Kamp’s. I was buying bon bons. You know, we talked about Frana, and I think she’s sorry more than you give her credit for. Edna, nobody wants their friends killed.”

“Are you sure?” Bitingly.

Esther bravely made eye contact. “Which is why people have trouble liking you, Edna.”

“Houdini likes me.”

“That’s because he knows how to escape.” She said the words so innocently. We looked at each other, eyes bright, and we both started to laugh out loud. We laughed for a long time.

For a moment I wondered whether Esther had heard the story of Frana’s pregnancy. I wanted to tell her but I thought of Jake’s sobbing, the mournful way he said Frana’s name. I kept still.

“Seriously,” Esther was saying, “Kathe told me something I didn’t know. Frana was having some real trouble at the high school. Kathe didn’t know what. She’d been called into Mr. Timm’s office lots of times and reprimanded. Once, passing by, she thought she heard Frana crying out of control. When she asked Frana about it, Frana only said that she was scared of Mr. Timm. Like we all were, you know. But he was always calling her into his office on some stupid little pretense. And she didn’t like the way he treated her. He singled her out.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” She deliberated. “I guess Frana’s uncle blamed the school for Frana’s behavior. You know, all those fantasies she had. I heard that when Mr. Powell sent her father a letter telling Frana to stop pestering the actors at the Lyceum, the uncle waved the letter in front of Mr. Timm and blamed the teachers for putting ideas in her head.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“So Mr. Timm felt he had to yell at her.”

“What did Mr. Timm say to her?”