The Transformation Read online

  ALSO BY CATHERINE CHIDGEY

  Golden Deeds

  (also published as The Strength of the Sun)

  In a Fishbone Church

  To Kate Camp

  I begin by weaving a net. It must be light yet strong, and the tension exactly judged: too tight is as dangerous as too loose. This is a trick which takes many years to master—it consumed my childhood, as well as those years when a man should be selecting a bride—but once it is learned, all society is at one’s command, and any price may be asked. My tiny nets, my little foundations of holes, are as fine as gossamer; neither pins nor messy adhesives are required to keep them in place. A simple adjustment of springs is all that is necessary to maintain the tension, but this is a painless procedure, and the devices are quite invisible.

  In my trade, the net is known as a caul. Perhaps you associate this word with the piece of skin which is sometimes found clinging to the skulls of newborn children, and which is kept as a charm against drowning? I like to think my hand-woven cauls similarly lucky; I like to consider myself a maker of charms. You will see no sign above my door save my name, for many of my customers value their privacy, but my trade card is more illuminating:

  Monsieur Lucien Goulet III

  Manufacturer of Ladies’ Imperceptible Hair-Pieces

  & Gentlemen’s Invisible Coverings

  Some in my profession sneer at these terms, dismissing them as old-fashioned. People need to know what one is selling, they say. Call the thing by its true name. Wig. Toupee. It’s a matter of honesty. I, however, am an old-fashioned man, and prefer to maintain a certain mystique. Besides, my customers are more comfortable in my coy hands than in those of a common tradesman. Imperceptibility, invisibility: these are my areas of expertise. If you can afford the price, I can work miracles. I can take years off your life.

  PART I

  This Side of Heaven

  February 1898

  With its tangle of Moorish minarets, cupolas, and arches, its Byzantine domes and its thirteen crescent moons, the Tampa Bay Hotel was a fairy-tale castle anchored at the water’s edge. It was open only a few months a year, and during the immense summers it stood empty, its glittering roofs blinding even the crows. From December through April, however, it was full of the best sorts of people: bankers and industrialists, stockbrokers and shipping merchants, attorneys and architects, and a number of celebrities. They came from the big northern cities and from Europe, these guests, each man accompanied by a sleek wife. Any children they brought with them were, like the Hotel maids, silent until asked to speak. Wealthy invalids came, too: women of delicate constitution and sensitive nerves, feeble second sons, consumptives, rheumatics, all ordered south by physicians weary of the illnesses of the rich, whether phantom or genuine. Florida was a place where wonders could happen, where there was no winter worth mentioning, and where the soil was so fertile that dry sticks took root and flowered like Aaron’s staff. Heart cases did well there.

  Once inside the gates of the Tampa Bay Hotel there was no need to leave, no reason to venture into the dirty, dangerous parts of town, where the Negroes and Latins lived. It was a city unto itself, with a drugstore, a schoolhouse, a barbershop, a newsstand, a beauty salon, and a telegraph office. There were spa facilities, an exposition hall, a casino, a bowling alley, tennis and croquet courts, kennels and stables. Every room had a telephone, hot and cold running water, and electric lighting designed by Edison himself. The grounds contained one hundred and fifty varieties of tropical plants and were so vast that porters were available to squeeze the lazier guests into rickshaws, transporting them like luggage along the ornamental walkways so that they could admire the peacocks and the mirror pool. To the north and the west lay the wilderness, which an army of gardeners kept at bay, and which shook with easy quarry: trout, alligators, tarpon, egrets, plover, deer, and snakes. Upon one’s return to the Hotel these could be cooked by the chef, fashioned into a handbag, secured to a hat, or stuffed by the resident taxidermist.

  Marion Unger stood at her window on Fortune Street brushing her hair. Across the river she could see the Tampa Bay Hotel gleaming like quicksilver under the February sun, and if she lowered her gaze to the water’s surface she could watch the entire structure rippling and dissolving, then reassembling itself. She had come to Tampa because of the Hotel, not as a guest but as a bricklayer’s bride, and she had watched the resort grow to one-quarter of a mile from its foundation stone. She had married Jack at the age of nineteen, almost ten years before, and at their wedding in Detroit she had worn a crown of orange blossoms, as if Florida had claimed her already. She had wanted to put the flowers in water before she went to bed, but she could not untangle them from her hair without tearing the petals, catching them in the white-blond strands.

  “Don’t worry,” said Jack. “You can have as many orange blossoms as you like once we’re in Tampa. Come here.” And he opened the starchy sheets to her, and she climbed into the cool, high bed.

  The next weeks were spent preparing for their departure. As Marion filled her trunk with her new clothes, the clothes of a wife, she tried to imagine what her life would be like so far south, on the edge of that low-lying peninsula. At breakfast each morning, she thought, when she would wear her new silk kimono, she and Jack would drink juice the color of the sun, and she would make him orange marmalade and her mother’s orange cake—the secret was the zest, rubbed as fine as sand—and if it were ever cold enough to light a fire she would sprinkle the kindling with curls of peel and their house would be warm and spicy. She folded the burial robe she had sewn as part of her trousseau, admiring the tiny tucks in the bodice, the handmade lace at the wrists and throat. It seemed a shame she could not wear it as a nightgown; the satin felt so luxurious to the touch. On top of the neat pile of clothes she placed the woollen stockings her mother had knitted, although Jack said she would never need them, and that she was foolish to take such things along.

  They arrived in the summer of 1888, when there was no grand resort and no bridge, just acres of swamp and underbrush to be cleared, and alligators prowling the sandy streets, and serpents stirring in the palmetto scrub. Marion had never known such heat. The wild orange trees were bright with ripening fruit, and the air clung to her skin.

  “We’ll get used to it—everyone does,” said Jack, his brow glossy, his cheeks too flushed. “And come hurricane season, you’ll long for this calm.”

  He meant it as a joke, but Marion was too hot to laugh. As he led her into their house she thought of her hometown, where the hottest weather was smoothed by its passage across the Great Lakes.

  Jack stroked the humid strands of hair at her temples. She could feel the grain of his skin, the whorls and ridges rough to the touch, like the rind of citrus fruits. He had confident hands; she had watched him build a wall not a fraction out of true, the liver-colored bricks rising from the ground and obscuring his legs, his chest, his face, until he disappeared. He was confident in society, too, able to transform himself into a gentleman whenever he wished, always wearing the right trousers with the right coat, the correct shade of gloves, the appropriate hat. He felt as comfortable at a grand ball or a ceremonious dinner as he did at home, and indeed, he sought out such events, always delighted to make the acquaintance of members of the fashionable set. He became known by a number of society hostesses as a desirable guest; he could be relied upon to invite the plainest wallflower to dance, and was never at a loss for conversation, entertaining many a table with snippets gleaned from the latest periodicals and presented in such a way that one might think them his personal observations. To mark their engagement Marion had given him a spirit level made of brass and engraved with his initials, but she suspected he seldom needed such devices; he trust
ed his eye. On their wedding night his broad hands had moved over her, expertly arranging and nudging and tap-tap-tapping, placing her in line. And afterward he had looked at her so—there was no other word for it—so proudly, drawing back to see her in perspective, then smiling and saying, “Perfect,” as if she were his own creation.

  They would be in Florida two years, he told her. Quite apart from the generous wage, it was an honor for him to be chosen for the job; the railroad magnate Henry B. Plant had handpicked twenty-five bricklayers, and they would build the most luxurious hotel in the world.

  “I’m so proud of you,” she said when he returned from his first day on the site. And then, fanning herself with his straw hat, “How long will the summer last?”

  Day by day she willed the building to take shape as she watched the barges moving up the Hillsborough and depositing their cargo. Bricks and cedar came, and a great coil of steel cable, and fifteen hundred barrels of oyster shells from an old Indian mound. They would be added to the concrete, Jack said, and would bind together the walls of Mr. Plant’s palace. He liked that about the project: it was innovative. Mr. Plant saw any problem as a riddle to which he could find a shrewd solution, and that was why he was so wealthy. Take the coil of steel, for example. Tampa had a reputation for catching alight, but the lengths of cable winding through the Hotel’s concrete floors would protect the building, he assured her.

  “The only fireproof resort in the country,” said Jack.

  “But what do you mean, a reputation?” said Marion. She did not think she had room for another danger; there were too many in this primitive place. She was to stay inside when the sun was fierce; she was to be on her guard against alligators and snakes, especially at night, when anyone venturing out of doors should carry a gun; if she heard an alligator hissing she should move away as quickly as possible. Then there were the regular outbreaks of disease: only six months before she and Jack had arrived, yellow fever had been epidemic. Many families had fled to the woods for fear of infection, and there were tar barrels burning on every corner in the hope that the smoke would kill the germs. Even now, any railcars bringing building materials from Jacksonville, where the disease was still spreading, had to be fumigated before they were unloaded. One of the first things Marion had done was to buy lengths of mosquito netting and hang it about their bed, and in the early morning, when she first awoke and tried to make sense of her veiled surroundings, it was as if clouds of smoke had risen up and hidden the whole world, and Jack was the only thing real to her. And she did not want to leave their misty sanctuary for a place so full of danger, but as soon as she moved her feet or rubbed her eyes, Jack awoke and dressed and was gone. Now, it seemed, there were fires to be taken into account. She would not like to raise a child here, and hoped she would not fall pregnant until they were safely back in Detroit.

  “It was an old submarine telegraph line that took messages to the Florida Keys and the West Indies,” Jack was saying. “The copper wire salvaged from the core covered the cost of bringing it to the site. Innovative, do you see?” He tapped his knife against his plate for emphasis. The bridge across the Hillsborough was another example—rather than build a new one at great cost, Mr. Plant had simply cannibalized an old one. And the Hotel walls and ceilings—they were reinforced with outmoded tracks from his South Florida Railroad.

  “No wonder he’s a wealthy man,” said Marion.

  “Mrs. Plant is playing her part too,” said Jack. “She’s making a Grand Tour of Europe and the Orient, buying furnishings for the place. Onyx chairs from the Far East, antique tapestries from France—Mr. Plant is joining her for some of it.” He laughed. “I like the way people operate down here. There are lots of possibilities.”

  There it was again: an emphatic tap of the knife against their wedding china. Marion thought of the Indians who had dropped their oyster shells as they ate, every generation doing the same so that the mound grew and grew until it changed the landscape, making a hill where before there was none.

  She could feel the bristles of the brush pushing through each strand of hair, scratching her other palm like stubble, and if she closed her eyes she could imagine that Jack was home again, rubbing his face against her hand. And she could imagine, too, that from her window she saw not the shining Hotel but the wild orange trees, pretty and sour, that had surrounded their house in the beginning.

  It faced south, turning its back on the wilderness where the wild animals prowled and where men could go, so Marion had understood, to buy the company of a woman. She had never seen any of these creatures, these scrubland females who displayed their colors and whistled and cawed and brushed their pulse points with scent, but Jack assured her they were there, and that it was a place best ignored. The house looked toward the center of town, where the roads were being paved: toward the future, Marion had told herself, and she thought of Jack piecing Mr. Plant’s palace together, sending its shadow across the water to her, brick by brick.

  During those first few weeks in Tampa, when she had felt she might evaporate in the heat, she made her way through the orange trees to the river and bathed, her body as light as a leaf, her toes now and then tracing the stony bed. Once, when she found Jack already home upon her return, he said, “We seem to have a mermaid living in the river. She must have lost her way.”

  “What does she look like?” said Marion, smiling, her hair trickling down her back.

  Jack took her by the shoulders and turned her to the left and to the right, lifting her wet hair over her breasts, examining her face for features he might recognize. “A little like you. But I couldn’t be sure,” he said. Then he told her that in Tampa men outnumbered women by seven to one, and that she should be careful about displaying herself. If the heat was unbearable he would do something about it, and for a moment Marion believed he could change the weather to please her. “I’ll look after you,” he said. “You’re a rarity here. An endangered species.”

  The next day he bought her an ostrich-feather fan. He placed it on the sideboard in the parlor as if it were a bouquet of flowers, and when she opened it and used it during the hot afternoons it made a murmuring sound: the sound of a marriage beginning to breathe. And she knew that she must be at home in this close place, with this man who had brought the wind inside, and it was only for two years, and the heat could not last.

  Then, in November of 1888, Jack told her that Mr. Plant had decided to make the Hotel even bigger, adding fifty more rooms, sixteen private parlor suites, and a domed dining hall that would seat six hundred and fifty. It would take an extra year to complete.

  “But he can’t just add rooms. He can’t just change the plans halfway through,” said Marion, her voice shrinking.

  As she watched from her side of the river, however, the Moorish palace grew and grew, rising from the wilderness and expanding all through the mild winter months and again in the heat of summer, the sky shining through its bones, the scaffolding spreading like vines. It was too big to hate, this castle conjured from the swamp, from oyster shells and railroad tracks and telegraph cables. Marion imagined the long-gone feasts set into its cement, and the journeys by train, and the ghosts of messages that had once shivered along the undersea cables. There were wishes in its walls, she thought, and in spite of herself she admired it, just as she admired Jack for his part in its creation.

  As the Hotel neared completion, bonfires were lit so that Mr. Plant’s rail passengers could admire it at night. Jack’s days became longer and longer, until just before the grand opening he and several hundred others were working until well after dark. Even with her curtains and shades drawn, even with her eyes shut, Marion could see the glow from the site, and she never slept until Jack was in bed beside her, his arm resting about her waist, the smell of brick dust in his hair. He told her of the treasures from Mrs. Plant’s Grand Tour that were filling the Hotel. Every day they were arriving on the trains, forty-one carloads in all. There were one hundred and ten carved mirrors from Venice and Florence
; there was a life-size bronze of Victor Hugo’s Esmeralda and her goat; there were pieces once belonging to Napoleon, Queen Victoria, Marie Antoinette, Louis XIV, and Mary, Queen of Scots. Placed throughout the grounds would be a range of jardinières—pretty porcelain stands shaped like mushrooms and elephants, monkeys and frogs, to be used as seats by weary strollers. Inside the building stretched thirty thousand yards of red carpeting woven with lions—it was made for the English Royal Family, but they refused to walk on their emblem—and in the basement a Parisian music box operated by steam sent melodies drifting through the rooms.

  “When I have made my fortune, we’ll stay in one of Mr. Plant’s parlor suites,” he told her. “We’ll dine on the finest food prepared by the finest chefs—the pastry cook comes from Delmonico’s in New York, the baker from the Manhattan Club—and if you don’t care to attend the concerts in the Ballroom or on the verandas, you can simply telephone the front desk and arrange for a piano to be sent up, complete with pianist.” If she took a short stroll down to Franklin Street, he said, she could shop for trinkets to remind her of their stay, such as whimsically carved alligators’ teeth, or coquina vases embedded with ancient shells and corals, or the vivid wings of curlews and flamingos, with which she could decorate a new hat. For a prank, she could even purchase a foot-long hatchling alligator, have him packed in Spanish moss and delivered by one of Mr. Plant’s express trains to her mother in Detroit.

  The Tampa Bay Hotel is the palace of a prince, read the brochure, a museum of costly and pleasing paintings, statuary, cabinets, and bric-à-brac from many lands. It typifies all that the refined, cultured, and luxurious tastes of our modern civilization term elegance, and to be once a guest within its portals is to remain always under the subtle fascination of its alluring charms. The Grand Salon is a dream of magnificence indescribable; a Jewel Casket into which have been gathered Rare and Exquisite Gems; the great Hotel and its surroundings are a world within themselves, where the days pass as hours, and the hours as minutes.