Escape Artist

“Hot, Pete.”

“Like August, Bill.”

“We should walk by the river.”

“Too hot.”

I looked at him and my heart raced. He looked so withered now, so pale. The shadow of death hung around him. I had to look away.

I had news to tell him and I didn’t know whether it was good news or bad. When I’d delivered the news of my resignation three week back, news that startled my family, my mother seemed happy, though my father just shook his head. I welcomed the time away from the city room. Then, just last week, I found a note from Matthias Boon inserted into the front door, informing me that I’d been fired. That baffled. Had he forgotten that I’d quit? Had anyone listened to me? But I realized Boon probably needed to assert his feeble authority one last time. When I read the note to my father, he smiled. “Some men like to have the last word.”

That afternoon I’d met Miss Ivy on College Avenue and she’d whispered that the bickering between Mr. Boon and her brother had escalated since my departure. “Sam seems a different man these days. Unhappy with the paper.” Then she leaned in. “Boon’s days with the paper are numbered.”

She told me that Mac and Boon battled over a misplaced piece of writing; and the pugnacious Boon had pushed Mac. The tramp printer, already moody since my departure, had exploded, hurling Boon into the chicken- wire enclosure surrounding Sam’s desk. Since then Boon avoided Mac and refused to return to Mrs. Zeller’s rooming house, renting rooms at the Sherman House. Miss Ivy ended, “He’s a bunch of nerves, my dear.”

That afternoon I’d walked home with a smile on my face, and was immediately greeted by an excited family. “Ed, Ed, a letter from Mr. Houdini,” my mother called as I walked into the front yard. I took the letter from her. The outside of the thick creamy envelope was splashy with his name and picture: “HARRY HOUDINI! The ONLY Undisputed King of Handcuffs and Monarch of Leg Shackles.” Sitting in the parlor, my family around me, I opened the envelope. The letterhead covered the top of the first page and announced that he was world famous. To the left were five snapshots of his legendary escapes. A dazzling display of boasting.

I read the letter aloud, modulating my voice and leaning toward my father. David Baum had sent clippings from the Post and Crescent, the story of Gustave Timm’s arrest. Houdini’s note, written in a tight, cramped script, sent greetings from New York, hours before he left for Europe. I read out loud: “‘Strange, though your name is nowhere mentioned in the articles, I sense your presence, dare I say your resolution, in the matter.’”

I looked up, pleased, and continued. “‘I have to make a confession, and it embarrasses me. I must tell you that I began to distrust that theater manager. You remember how I told you I always sense danger? Gustave was too friendly with the young girls; and the night I walked you home, I had become nervous. That scene on the stage with your friend Esther bothered me. I had no idea what was going on, but the man talked too often of the beautiful girls who passed by when we strolled College Avenue; and that night, with his fawning attention to your pretty young friend Esther, I sensed something wrong. Even Cyrus P. Powell had hinted that brother Homer whispered about dark family secrets. I felt uncomfortable with Gustave. He could be dangerous. I might have acted a little odd that night, rushing alongside you, but I didn’t want him walking you home alone. I wanted to see you to your door, safe and sound. You know, I can escape handcuffs but sometimes I can’t escape the worry and confusion that floods me. You are safe now, and that is all.’”

My mother interrupted, “My, my, he senses a man is a murderer, and he says nothing.”

“He’s not exactly saying that, Mother.”

“What is he saying?”

Something slipped out of the envelope onto the floor. I picked up a worn handcuff key wrapped in a piece of paper. Houdini had written: “A key for you, Miss Ferber, though you don’t really need it.” I tightened my fingers around it, this talisman of good fortune. My eyes moist, I hid it in the pocket of my dress.

Stubbornly, I read the rest of the letter in silence, while my mother and sister debated Houdini’s moral character, his lapse of judgment. When I was through, I folded the letter, placed it in the envelope, and laid it on the table. My father was nodding his head.

“Bill, what do you think?”

“Pete, I think his letter is an apology to you.”

I sat with my father, and I was nervous. I cleared my throat.

“It feels like it’ll shower,” my father said.

I looked out across the yard. Yes, the air felt heavy, and at the horizon the slate-gray sky had turned a pale white. I heard cracking, and suddenly there was a flash of lightning in the sky. We waited for the downpour that would drench the heat of that long day.

“What is it, Pete?”

“What?”

“You’ve been trying to tell me something all night.”

I saw the first fat drops of rain splatter on the railing, and the wind blew a mist onto the porch. “We’re gonna get wet.”

“I’ve been wet before.”

“Your clothes will be ruined.”

“Edna.” He raised his voice.

Inside the house Fannie and my mother were moving a large oak sideboard. A grand piece, heavy rococo with frilly latticework, it was always too large for the long narrow room. For a month it had been wedged by the piano, and now, again, my mother had decided she wanted it near the hallway arch. So the two women, chattering and bickering, were sliding it across the polished walnut floor. Fannie wanted to sell it. My mother said no. “When I die, you can do what you will with my possessions.”

Fannie whined, “I only said…”

“I know what you said.”

“It clashes with the wing chair.”

My mother, furious. “So does the shawl on your back.”

On and on, some verbal game they played, a cat-and-mouse skirmish that excluded my father and me. Glancing through the window at them, I felt the isolation.

“Bill…It’s nothing.”

My father was not to be assuaged. “It isn’t your resignation from the Crescent, I know, though that’s left you stranded. It isn’t the murder of Frana, because that’s finally justice. And it isn’t even the letter from Houdini, which bothered you…”

I was surprised. “How did you know that?”

“I’m your father. I know everything.” He chuckled. “Houdini is a good man, but I think his arrogance bothered you. And you were annoyed that he sensed Gustave was untrustworthy and didn’t act on it. True?”

I nodded. “True. Somehow the letter suggested that he sensed all along who killed Frana.”

“No, not true. What he sensed was a weakness in a man,” my father said, completely without irony.

“Which led to murder.”

“He didn’t see the whole story. But you’re bothered because you sense a weakness, too, in Houdini.”

That surprised me. “What?”

“He didn’t come through for you. Though he did…in a way. The mystery of the latched doorway. Even walking you home that night. I think Houdini gave you much more than a glimpse into his frailty. He let you understand things about yourself…your dreams of a world out there. You’ll carry him around for some time, Edna. The thing with Gustave, well, he did what he knew how to do.”

“Is that a weakness?”

“Edna, all around you are weak men.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you get impatient with weak men.”

“No.”

“And that includes me.” He paused. “It’s your mother’s legacy to you.”