There was another splash, and Levi looked up to see Amelia reaching into the jar of sand on the platform.
“Ooooooh,” Caroline said as she watched the scales on Amelia’s body disappear.
Levi looked at Charity, who was wiping the tears from her eyes with a handkerchief, and then at Amelia, who was climbing naked down the ladder as if no one could see her. He wished suddenly to sweep them up and take them away—Barnum’s wife, his children, his mermaid—take them away to a place where they could be free of him. He’d been friends with Barnum for a long, long time, but he’d never realized just how careless and mercenary Barnum was until Amelia arrived.
Amelia pulled on her underclothing but not her dress and waited for Barnum to speak.
Barnum turned his face halfway to the ground and said, “Once you’re dressed, Mrs. Douglas.”
He didn’t appear embarrassed or as if he cared about her modesty. Rather, it seemed to be a sop to Charity’s sense of decency.
Charity said, “Taylor, you ought to get the girl a dressing gown for this. She can’t possibly change into and out of her ordinary clothes several times a day.”
“I bought her a dressing gown,” Barnum said. “That damned reporter told half the city about it.”
“She can’t be expected to carry her dressing gown from the hotel to the exhibit and back again every day,” Charity said.
“Charity, I did not come here to talk about dressing gowns,” Barnum said. “Take Caroline back to the apartment, please.”
“What did you come to talk about?” Amelia asked.
Barnum glanced around at Levi, Charity, and Caroline watching him. “I’d prefer to speak to you in private.”
“I wouldn’t,” Amelia said. “Especially as I noticed this morning that there was no sign near the ticket-taking booth indicating the hours I would not be exhibited. I can’t read very much, but even I can tell if a sign isn’t present when it’s supposed to be.”
Levi started. He hadn’t noticed that the sign wasn’t up. He’d been too busy thinking about Amelia—about her ordeal in the crowds that morning, about what she might expect inside the museum. He’d assumed—rather foolishly, as he knew Barnum almost as well as Charity did—that the matter was settled.
Barnum scratched the back of his neck. “As it’s the first day, and the crowd outside is so large, I thought—”
“No,” Amelia said. “That is not what we agreed.”
“We didn’t agree to your spending half the day lounging behind a curtain,” Barnum said.
“Taylor,” Charity said, sounding scandalized. “You can’t possibly think of leaving this woman in the tank all day without a rest or food. It’s not human.”
“She’s not human,” Barnum said. “You just saw that for yourself. What’s the difference between her and a tiger in a cage?”
“I am not an animal,” Amelia said. “And I won’t stay in the tank all day, even if it means climbing out naked in front of all your precious ticket holders.”
“You can’t climb out if someone takes your jar of sand away,” Barnum said.
Levi started toward Barnum. He didn’t know what he was going to do—hit him? Levi wasn’t practiced in violence, but he’d never felt the impulse to it so strongly. Caroline’s voice drew him up before he could do something he might regret.
“That’s a terrible thing to say, Papa.”
The little girl’s eyes were enormous and so full of disappointment that Levi thought they must pierce the cash register Barnum had in place of a heart.
“Caroline, this is not business for you to hear,” Barnum said. “Charity, I told you to take her away.”
“No, Papa,” Caroline said, and ran to Amelia’s side. “Amelia is a mermaid. She’s not an animal, and you can’t treat her like one. If you do, she’ll run away, and I will, too.”
“Caroline, enough of this nonsense—”
“And so will I,” Charity said. “I will take the children and I will leave you.”
Barnum stared at Charity. “You can’t divorce me. You have no grounds.”
“I didn’t say I would divorce you. I said I would leave you.” Charity’s voice trembled and so did her hands, but she would not drop her eyes.
“Over this?” Barnum said, pointing to Amelia. He seemed barely able to speak, choking on his astonishment. “Over a mermaid?”
“Can’t you see she’s something wonderful, Taylor?” Charity said. “Can’t you see that she’s not a thing to be bought and sold? I know you want this museum to be a success. I know how hard you have worked your whole life to this end. But Amelia is not yours. She came here for her own reasons, and she will leave for her own reasons. Until then, you need to respect her as a partner, as a being who has her own will. You can’t put her in the tank and leave her there just because you want to sell more tickets.”
“And you agreed to her terms, Barnum,” Levi said. “I witnessed it.”
Barnum looked from Charity to Amelia to Levi to Caroline. He threw his hands into the air. “Let the lady have what she wants then. She wants a sign, I’ll make a sign.”
He left the exhibit without another word.
Levi wondered when his friend had become a newspaper cartoon, when Barnum’s love of money had overcome his humanity and his common sense. He’d always thought of Barnum’s avarice as a small part of his personality, something to laugh about but not truly characteristic. But it had become apparent that the mermaid had made him mad.
Charity crossed to Amelia and put her arms around her. Levi saw surprise, then joy, then a strange kind of sorrow on the mermaid’s face. She returned Charity’s embrace, her eyes closed, as Charity wept into her shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over and Amelia murmured, “It’s all right, don’t cry now.”
Caroline wrapped her little arms around Charity’s and Amelia’s legs and pressed her face into her mother’s skirt and the three of them seemed so far away, so enmeshed in one another, that Levi had to leave the room. They didn’t notice him go.
They were all against him, Barnum thought. All of them! They all sided with the mermaid no matter what he did. He wished Moses were there. He could talk to Moses about his troubles, but Moses was back in Boston running his own museum.
He used to be able to talk to Levi, once upon a time. The boy had been his glad co-conspirator, full of mischief. He’d enjoyed pulling one over on the public with Joice Heth, at least at first.
Then the woman started saying she wanted peace, that she wanted to die. Levi hadn’t ever really forgiven him for not letting the woman go, or for charging an entrance fee to see Joice’s autopsy. He had extracted a promise from Barnum that it would never happen again.
And yet here they were, Barnum mused. He’d gone too far, just as he had with Joice Heth, and Levi was angry with him again.
He’d never seen Charity like that, either.
She would leave me—threaten to leave me—over a mermaid! When she never says boo to a goose most of the time. It had shocked him to see her like that, it truly had.
Couldn’t she see that he was only trying to make a good life for her and the children?
Still, perhaps it was unreasonable to expect the mermaid to perform all day. As she herself had pointed out, he didn’t expect it of his other performers.
But it was difficult, so difficult, to reconcile that thought with the money he imagined he would lose.
Do you want to lose your wife and children instead? The thought, unbidden, emerged from somewhere in the depths of his mind.