The Magnetic Girl. Jessica Handler
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Название: The Magnetic Girl
Автор: Jessica Handler
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9781938235498
isbn:
Daddy’s pocket watch ticked loudly from his vest. He needed to wash. I made myself listen not to my thoughts, but welcome instead the soft cushion of quiet around my breathing. My heartbeat grew louder, and the room around me slithered away through a pinhole.
Something circulates in the background, Mrs. Wolf wrote.
I pulled, and the chair groaned, and then it rose, back and up and easy, the front legs hovering an inch or two above the floor, the back legs balanced on their edges. I held my father there, suspended, in the moment of finding the apex between far back and far front. In that single place, there was a real and true lift, at the top of the triangle of man and kitchen chair, rocked back, then forward, by me.
Daddy’s shout broke open my padded world. Blinking and dizzy, I massaged my raw hands. His grip on my shoulder was hot, and I heard his laugh, but he might as well have been on the other side of a glass. Momma ran in, confused, but Daddy spoke words that stretched and bobbed and made no sense. Momma applauded me, her smile beautiful. And gradually, with his hands on my arms and hers around me, they came through the glass, and my feet were on the ground and my parents were so very happy.
“Newton, Lulu,” he said. “Fulcrum and lever in action.”
My heartbeat roared over his voice.
He wanted to work this test until I got it smooth. I was too flustered, he said.
“Yes, sir,” I said, waiting for my pulse to return to normal.
SUCCESS AT HOME WAS the first step. When I was ready, people would come to the parlor to watch. After that, he said, I’d play the Magnetic Girl in a theater a few times. Enough to lift the loan from his shoulders, as I’d promised.
“Consider that fox you say you held in your thrall,” Daddy said. “Who needs a dumb animal when you can hold a roomful of strangers the same way?”
The lines he drew in his notebook became tight wires with every test, every time.
“Think of how proud Leo will be,” Daddy said.
The straight lines in his notebook were my gift to my father. For myself, I only wanted to captivate and practice the power Mrs. Wolf applied to her visitors: the Mesmerist’s kindness toward the unwell.
MY FATHER CHOSE A SUNDAY IN NOVEMBER FOR MY parlor tests. All the guests would be men. Women frighten easily. Just look at Dale, he said. She was a prime example. Men protected ladies, and if men believed what they’d seen was too alarming for ladies, more men would want to come see what the fuss was about. Eventually the ladies would get their way.
The fact that Mrs. Wolf, when she was alive, was a lady—as was I—didn’t escape my notice. In her writing, she hadn’t seemed frightened at all. Momma was a lady and she didn’t rattle easily. But Leo would, after all, someday be a man, so I might as well practice on men. Still, I didn’t see why I couldn’t captivate a wife or mother when I did a test.
After church, I waited in the wagon while Daddy invited Mr. Rogers, up from Atlanta visiting family, and Mr. Shepherd, the husband in a young couple Momma had deemed “charming” because they were new and he was in business with the Iron Furnace. I picked dirt from my boot heel and watched my parents stroll with Colonel Furman, who owned The Appeal. Nearly everyone who had fought in the war was called Colonel, no matter what their rank. My father was called Colonel by some. Drummer boys were old enough by now to get themselves called Colonel, and I guessed that was all right.
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