Magruder's Curiosity Cabinet Read Free

any manner of resorting in this weather?
    She smiles a bit at the thought, despite her circumstances. Kitty sits alone on a bench at the edge of the world. She’s been here for two days. She knows no one in this city. She has no luggage, passport, or money. No family or friends. No one waiting for her. No one to care if she remains on this bench for another two days, or two weeks, or two years.
    If ever there was a last resort, this is surely it.
    Against her will, Kitty’s gaze travels toward the west, in the direction of the majestic hotel she’d called home for all of ten hours and thirty-six minutes. She knows she shouldn’t keep looking, shouldn’t give that blasted hotel the satisfaction. But she can’t stop hoping Mother will suddenly appear, robust and smiling, and turn the past two days of misery into a joke. She can practically hear her mother’s voice. “Bless us,” she’d say. “You simply will not believe what nonsense our Kitty got up to in New York!”
    Imagining her mother causes Kitty’s eyes to sting, and she forces herself to stop.
    Instead, looking out at the tide, she imagines herself lying facedown, rocking lifelessly with the current, her petticoats blossoming on the surface of the sea. The gulls would squawk in confusion, but the little birds would understand. It takes a lot of energy to keep flap-flap-flap-dropping. Sometimes energy runs out.
    Kitty stands with the indignant air of someone who’s waited too long for a tardy friend and has decided to give up and go home. She takes a few steps closer to the shore. And why not? she thinks. Why shouldn’t I chuck myself into the sea? What do I have to live for? Father long dead, Nate gone, and Mother…Mother apparently lost as well. I’m only seventeen , Kitty reminds herself. I’ve no skills, no way to get by, no way to get home. Anything, even drowning, has got to be better than just sitting here, day after day, waiting and waiting for exactly no one to come and precisely nothing to happen. No one back home is fretting over me anyway. No one here knows me, and no one there wants me. Wouldn’t it be more convenient if I floated away?
    She takes another step closer to the water.
    But Kitty has never been convenient. Not from her first breath—the infamous moment when her mother took to her bed, expecting to deliver another baby Nathan. She hadn’t even bought any new baby clothes, so certain was she that she’d produce a second agreeable, easygoing son. But she’d ended up with baby Katherine instead. A colicky daughter, red-faced and squalling.
    Convenient? No , Kitty thinks, I’ve never been convenient to anyone.
    Coney Island would be a right silly place to start.
    â€¢ • •
    Morning turns to afternoon, and the sun saunters indifferently across the sky. Bathers come and go; children laugh and cry and laugh again; couples hold hands and fight and make up and hold hands some more. Kitty sees it all, but no one sees her.
    Although she sits quietly, there’s a squelching, sickening fear inside, turning her limbs to water. What will she do? Where will she go? Will she die on this bench, unseen and unmourned?
    Battling with her fear is fury. At the hotel, for tossing her out on the street. At her mother, for somehow allowing it to happen. At the children, for frolicking in the waves without a care. How dare they? She knows the thought is irrational, but it comes anyway. How dare they be so happy?
    As intense as her fear and anger is her hunger. It’s been two days since she’s eaten. There had been a splendid breakfast on the steamship delivering her family into New York Harbor. But she’d been sullen, pushing the eggs around on her plate and rejecting the fruit course. Lesson learned , she thinks to herself now. Never, ever refuse breakfast.
    There’s a screeching sound just behind her bench. She turns to see two squirrels tumbling