Escape Artist

Bleak House or The House of the Seven Gables for the eighth time.

The window opened again. “For Heaven’s sake, Ed. Do something. Fan can’t deal with Kathe.” My mother’s voice was higher now, more frantic.

My father was shaking his head. “Kathe, I gather, burned the roast.” Kathe was a high-school girl who helped with cleaning and cooking and was Fannie’s helper in fashioning the clothing she craved. She was always at war with Fan, who supervised with an iron hand.

“In a minute,” I yelled. The window smashed down.

A downstairs window opened. “Edna.” This time it was Fannie, frustrated.

My father struggled to his feet, fell back into the chair. Though he turned to face me, he was staring over my shoulder, his clouded eyes scrunched in some feeble attempt at sight. “You’re in trouble, Pete.”

I jumped. “What?”

His face assumed its handsome proportions: the high cheekbones, the sliver of a moustache, the gentle jaw line. A beautiful man, my father. The flicker of a smile, seen so seldom now, with its curious power-it shifted the contours of his face until, well, I was reminded of a romantic stage hero, Edwin Booth maybe. Or James O’Neill.

“I can read your silence.” He spoke quietly, the smile gone. “You talk of Houdini, but even in your excitement I can hear sadness.”

I lied. I had to. I thought of Matthias Boon. “Just tired, Father.”

Inside my mother banged something in the dining room, slammed a cabinet door. Kathe’s whiny voice apologized to Fannie.

“And now your mother is angry with you.”

These days my mother had little patience, especially with me. “Ed, do this. Ed, do that. Ed. Ed. Ed.” The truncated name made me tremble, cringe. I wanted to scream at my mother: My name is Edna, horrible though it is. The name of the ugly stepsister in, say, a Marie Corelli romance. After all, my mother had told me more than once that they had been expecting-they wanted-a boy. They planned to name him Edward Charles.

Let Ed do it. Why is Ed late again? Ed, you…

My father stood and carefully opened the door, but I didn’t move. I lingered out in the brisk night air. Inside was shrill gaslight; the clatter of ladle against soup tureen, the tinkling of silverware brushed and placed on the large mahogany table, the platter of roasted potatoes slathered with sour cream plunked down in the center of the table. And the ruined roast…My father had stepped through the door but now stepped back, closed it.

“Edna,” he whispered, using my name and leaning down. “Sometimes your mother has no time for kindness.” He bit his lip. “And sometimes a blind man has only kindness to offer.”

“What?”

Again, the enigmatic smile, shadowy, oddly elegant. The impeccably dressed man who could not see his fingertips. “Well, the first can make a person hard and bitter. Be understanding, please.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you do.” He squinted. “And the second-kindness all the time-blurs the edges, blunts life. Neither person can see what he’s doing to other people.”

He disappeared into the house.

I sat there too long and stared across the dark yard, trembling.

Fannie, confusion in her eyes, rapped on the window, her face tight. “Do you think you could join us, Edna?”

At supper my mother looked harried because she had to return to My Store. The stock clerk Arthur Howe, a wisecracking Irish lad, had agreed to unpack a new hogshead of figurines just arrived from a Chicago warehouse, and she had to supervise. “Never a moment’s rest.”

“Julia.” My father was ready to protest but changed his mind. Tonight, like most nights at our six o’clock supper, he mechanically spooned his beef marrow soup, nibbled at his vegetables, bit into a slice of buttered homemade bread, each movement deliberate, tentative; a man afraid to slip, afraid of catastrophe.

At meal’s end my mother folded the clean black sateen apron she’d carry to the store, nodded to us, and headed off. Kathe, who’d been cutting dress patterns in the back room, hurried to clear the dishes and mumbled that the burning of the pot roast was the stove’s fault, not hers. As I carried the soup tureen from the dining room, trailing after her, I got annoyed. She stood in the kitchen, hands on hips, lips tight, and pouted.

I didn’t care for the pretty Kathe Schmidt, a girl in her last year at Ryan High School. A red-faced girl with blond, straw-like hair worn in little-girl ringlets, periwinkle blue eyes, a cupid’s bow mouth, and a curvaceous girl’s body, a little thick in the waist; a pretty girl, the daughter of August Schmidt, the shy janitor at the high school. I considered Kathe both vain and simple-two deadly sins, though being boring was the worst-even though she was a friend of my closest friend Esther Leitner, a relationship I could never fathom. Esther was bright, dimensional, witty, a stunning beauty herself; Kathe was plodding as a workhorse, as empty as an upturned butter churn. A girl with coarse good looks. Hired by my mother at Fan’s recommendation, Kathe had little use for me.

The two of us alone in the kitchen, Kathe narrowed her eyes. “I ain’t to blame, Edna.”

“You didn’t hear me open my mouth to accuse.”

Kathe grunted and hurried with the dishes. “I need to be somewhere.”

Fannie walked in, for some reason having changed her dress-the workaday Empire house shift with the gray shirtwaist and flounced skirt replaced with a black satin tea dance dress with narrow black velvet ribbons and a red-taffeta Dutch square neck. A dress for a cotillion. Her newest creation, on display. She was showing off. “Did you forget something, Edna?”

Kathe was mumbling something about leaving as she dipped dishes in soapy water. I needed to go to my room to change for the theater, but paused. “On the table?” All the dishes were carried in. I was sure of it.

“No,” Fannie yelled. “You were supposed to bring home the dress patterns I ordered from The Delineator.” She adjusted the ribbons on her left sleeve.

“Oh Lord, I did pick them up, Fan. I purposely stopped at Taylor’s Millinery, but forgot them at the city room.”

“How like you,” Fannie hissed. “I asked a favor of you and…”

Kathe dried her hands on her apron and watched, a hint of a smile on her rosy face. She’d seen these moments before, of course, but never seemed to tire of the fitful bickering of the Ferber sisters. Fire in her eyes, Fannie moved back and forth in the kitchen, banging the chairs, knocking a cupboard door, while I stood still, gripping a chair rail, implacable. We screamed at each other until from somewhere in the house the raspy sound of my father’s voice stopped us. “Girls! Peace.” A momentary pause; then Fannie and I, both breathing in, exploded. At that moment our mother walked in from the back porch.

“I forgot my…” She stopped, her eyes darting from one daughter to the other. “Not a moment’s peace you two give me.”

Fannie whined. “She forgot…”

“I don’t care.” My mother’s voice broke.

“Edna, perhaps if you weren’t traipsing up and down College Avenue,” Fannie snarled.

I’d heard it before. “I don’t traipse, Fannie. I’m not a traipser. I walk. Do you hear me? I’m a reporter.”

My mother closed her eyes. “A reporter,” she echoed.

“That’s what I do.”

“A young girl out there…in the world of men…”

“Like you, Mother.” I breathed in. “Why do you always take her side? You’re a woman out there running a store by yourself.”

My mother lifted the account book off a shelf, held it to her chest, and glanced at the back door. “It’s your father’s store, Edna. I have no choice. You know that. We have to eat, you know. Your father can’t do it. He just sits.”

I looked to the parlor where my father sat. “Mother, please…”

Fannie stormed out of the kitchen, slamming a hand against a wall. I closed my eyes and held onto the chair