Escaping Dreamland

by Charlie Lovett

  Tom slipped into a chair next to Magda’s desk and, as out of place as he looked in his suit, he seemed completely at ease leaning his elbows on the furniture and looking her over. She could feel his eyes scanning every inch of her.

  “I have a manuscript—a story, the beginning of a series like the ones Pickering publishes. You see, I’ve been working for Mr. William Randolph Hearst at the Journal for quite a while—newspaper reporter. You’ve probably read my work. But a few months back I was in . . . well never mind where I was, the important thing is I got this idea for a story. I mean, a series of stories. You remember Horatio Alger? Ragged Dick and all that. Well it’s like that—boy hero, lots of adventures. So, I go down to Putnam’s all the time and I see these series books for kids flying off the shelf—not just Alger but Roy Rockwood and the Motor Boys, the Bobbsey Twins and the Great Marvel books. So, I figure, if all those books are selling, then why not Frank Fairfax, Cub Reporter.”

  “So you decided to pitch your idea to Mr. Pickering.”

  “No, I decided to pitch my idea to Edward Stratemeyer. He’s the top man in the business, which I found out on account of my reporting skills.”

  “They must be remarkable,” said Magda.

  “Oh, they are,” said Tom, who either failed to understand or chose to ignore her sarcasm.

  “And what did the top man in the business have to say about your cub reporter idea?”

  “Hated it,” said Tom with a smile. “Hated the premise but mostly hated the idea of anyone besides himself coming up with a character.”

  “Because he develops all the series himself,” said Magda.

  “Exactly. Writes outlines and then sends them out to—what do you call them?”

  “Ghostwriters.”

  “Right. Ghostwriters. Well, Neptune B. Smythe is no ghostwriter. So, I took my idea to someone else.”

  “And then someone else and someone else.”

  “Right.”

  “Until you finally reached the bottom of the publishing barrel that is Pickering Brothers.”

  “And here I am.”

  “You seem awfully cheerful for someone who has been rejected by every publisher in town.”

  “Did you know that The War of the Worlds was rejected before it was published?” said Tom. “I did an interview with H. G. Wells when he was in New York last spring and he said one publisher called it ‘an endless nightmare.’ But it’s done pretty well. So, no, I’m not bothered by rejection.”

  “You’ve read The War of the Worlds?” said Magda quietly, losing a bit of her confidence as she tried to suppress the memory of the day she first encountered that book. The library copy had been lost when she fell into the water, and it had been another year before Magda bought a copy of the book at Putnam’s, read it, and mailed it anonymously to the Freie Bibliothek.

  “Sure,” said Tom. “But I’m here to talk about my book. It’s about this boy who gets a job as a reporter—he’s twelve or thirteen in the first book. And he’s always saving people because he always ends up in the middle of these big disasters. You know—earthquakes, floods, fires, that sort of thing.”

  At the mention of the word fire, Magda felt the blood drain from her face. She immediately saw an image of that little boy—a child who she had told herself a thousand times was not her brother, Henry—falling into the flames as the flagpole he had climbed collapsed beneath him.

  “Are you all right?” said Tom. “You look pale.”

  Magda did not respond, but only swallowed hard as she tried to banish the picture from her memory. She had managed to think of that day less and less often over the past two years, but it had a way of creeping into her consciousness at the most inconvenient moments.

  “Lunch,” said Tom. “You need lunch. Where are my manners? Let me take you to lunch and I can tell you all about Frank Fairfax, Cub Reporter, and you can tell me if you think Mr. Pickering—I mean, Mr. Lipscomb—will like it.”

  “I couldn’t possibly accept such an invitation, Mr. De Peyster,” said Magda.

  “I’m not talking Delmonico’s,” said Tom. “I know the suit is nice, but it’s all for show. There’s a Childs right around the corner. Nothing scandalous about lunch at Childs.”

  He was right—the whole point of places like Childs was that a single man and a single woman could eat there without raising eyebrows. Magda often ate alone at the counter at Childs on Twenty-Third Street, and as it was a Friday, she could order the fishcakes. She did need to eat, and as long as Thomas De Peyster didn’t pay for her meal there could be no harm in listening to his tales while she had her lunch.

  “Let me get my coat,” she said.

  “Excellent,” said Tom. “By the way, I didn’t get your name.”

  “I didn’t give it,” said Magda. “It’s Mary. Mary Stone.”

  “That sounds as made-up as Neptune B. Smythe.”

  “It most certainly does not,” said Magda with false indignity. In a way she had not felt since she lost her family, Magda believed she could trust this man—even though she had only known him for a few minutes. She leaned toward him and whispered, “In confidence, though, Mary Stone is made up. You can call me Magda.”

  As they walked down Twenty-Third Street, Magda felt comfortable chatting with Tom about books and reading. They had both read and been shocked by The Jungle—Tom carefully dropped into the conversation the fact that he had met Upton Sinclair at a cocktail party. Sensing that Tom’s own relationship with both the upper and lower classes was more complicated than he admitted, she recommended The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, about a society woman’s slow loss of standing.

  Magda liked the intrigue of Tom’s contradictions. If he went to cocktail parties with a socialist like Upton Sinclair and also carried a silver walking stick, did he really live on a reporter’s income and dream of nothing more than writing adventure stories for boys? He seemed like one of those Russian nesting dolls. Magda had been clever enough to realize that fact, and perhaps to remove the first doll—but there were many layers still between her and the truth about Thomas De Peyster.

  Childs was only a block and a half from the Flatiron Building and Magda felt suddenly ravenous as soon as they stepped through the door. The walls and floors were covered in white tile, and white-clad waitresses busied themselves with the lunchtime rush. From the wall on the right extended a series of marble-topped tables, each with twelve café chairs. Most were already filled with diners, both ladies and gentlemen, the latter group having placed their hats on a convenient ledge about six feet up the wall. Magda and Tom found a table in the back where only one other diner sat and ensconced themselves at the other end from the young man who hunched over a bowl of chicken soup.

  After they placed their orders they sat in self-conscious silence until the waitress arrived with their food. Tom then resumed the conversation as if it had never stopped.

  “My problem with The War of the Worlds,” he said between bites of his oyster sandwich, “is that I wanted to know more about the Martians. What are their lives like? What sort of culture do they have? Were the invaders just members of the army? And if so, what does everyone else do? I wanted to understand them and their motivations.”

  “You’re missing the entire point of the book,” said Magda, surprised to find herself animatedly arguing with a man she had met less than an hour ago. “It’s not about the Martians, it’s about us, the humans. It’s about how we deal with disaster, how we react when death is all but inevitable.” Her entire experience of the book had been inextricably linked to her own encounter with disaster and death on the General Slocum. Wells, she thought, did a wonderful job of portraying how despair, hope, and abject terror can intermingle.

  “You say that as if you have some experience with the subject.”

  Magda blanched as she tried to think how to reply, but as she struggled for the words to hide h
er past, the young man at the far end of the table came to her rescue.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said in a soft voice, “but I couldn’t help hearing you talking about The War of the Worlds.”

  “That’s right,” said Tom jovially. “Would you like to join us?”

  The man picked up his bowl and moved to the seat next to Tom and across from Magda. Everything about him seemed as soft as his voice, thought Magda. His brown hair was too long to be fashionable and reminded her of pictures of Oscar Wilde. He had delicate features, eyebrows that looked almost as if they had been carefully plucked, and pale cheeks. Although he looked like a boy, his eyes gleamed with the maturity of a man and the rest of the room seemed to fade away into a silent mist as he spoke. Magda could not take her eyes off him.

  “The trouble with The War of the Worlds,” the young man said, “along with most of what you might call science fiction published these days, is that there is too much fiction and not enough science. Real science, I mean. Wells writes that the Martians arrive and that they use their death rays, but he never explains how. He doesn’t base any of what happens on actual scientific principles—things an advanced civilization could eventually achieve.”

  “And are you a scientist?” said Tom, with a slight tone of condescension.

  “I’m unemployed at the moment,” said the man. “But I suppose you could say I’m a scientist. I spent the last eight years working for Tesla.”

  “Nikola Tesla?” said Tom, clearly impressed.

  “That’s right. I was on the staff at Wardenclyffe out on Long Island, but . . . well the money ran out and most of us are looking for work elsewhere.”

  “How could you have spent eight years working for one of the most famous inventors in the world?” said Magda. “You can’t be more than seventeen.”

  “I’m twenty-four,” said the man.

  “So am I,” said Tom.

  “Me too,” said Magda, without thinking.

  “I’m Gene, by the way,” said the man. “Eugene Pinkney.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Gene,” said Tom, holding out a hand. “Tom De Peyster.”

  Gene shook Tom’s hand lightly, looking intently into the other man’s eyes. This gave Magda the chance to stare at Gene again—for some reason she desperately wanted to do this. Looking at the soft curves of his cheeks and the shadows of his hair on his forehead made her feel off balance. She liked that.

  “I’m Magda,” she said, dropping her eyes to the table when Gene finally turned his attention to her. “Magda Hertzenberger.”

  “You never told me your whole name,” said Tom.

  “I’ve never told anyone,” said Magda, looking back up at Gene. “No one except Thomas De Peyster and Eugene Pinkney.”

  XIII

  New York City, Upper West Side, 2010

  Sherwood Whitmore’s voicemail explained he was out of town and would return Sunday evening. Robert did not leave a message, preferring to speak to the collector directly. Back home, he laid out his clues: twelve hardcover books, three from each of the presumably nonexistent authors and three from the Tremendous Trio crossover series; the letter to his grandfather from Dexter Cornwall; the opening of The Last Adventure of the Tremendous Trio; Sherwood Whitmore’s phone number; and the piece of paper on which Elaine Corrigan had written Julia Sanberg’s name and place of employment.

  Looking over the evidence, he thought about a creative writing teacher in college who said, “Every good story begins with a question.” There were plenty of questions here—even ignoring the question of “How can a bunch of old books create a relationship between a boy and his father that didn’t exist before?” That question’s answer had led down a dark path indeed. But before him were questions that might bring light to that darkness: Who were the people who stood behind the names Buck Larson and Dexter Cornwall and Neptune B. Smythe? Who had written the letter to his grandfather? And what was the final adventure of the Tremendous Trio?

  Robert absentmindedly turned over the piece of paper Elaine had given him and read the notice on the other side:

  volunteers wanted

  adults needed to read for children’s story hour

  wednesdays and saturdays at 10:00 a.m.

  choose a favorite story to share with children

  contact elaine corrigan

  st. agnes branch library

  Robert slid into his desk chair and stared at the notice. Again and again he had put Rebecca off whenever she had raised the topic of children. The thought of being responsible for a child was so enmeshed in his own relationship with his father that he couldn’t begin to untangle it. Avoiding the subject was an easier way out. But he had never considered sitting in front of a group of children that were not his own and reading a story. The idea intrigued him. More than that, it resurrected Rebecca’s words on the morning of their last fight: “. . . I thought you would make a great father because you were such a good storyteller.” Yes, Robert could tell a story to Rebecca or to an adult lover of literature, but could he tell stories to children? He felt his heart quicken with the excitement of that possibility. “Choose a favorite story,” the flyer said. Had any child today even heard of the Tremendous Trio? He could see if children of 2010 would react with the same excitement and pleasure to their adventures as he had. If they did, his love of these books might not seem so irrelevant. And that love might become separated from the story of his past.

  “I don’t think we’ve ever had a bestselling author read at children’s story time,” said Elaine Corrigan over the phone.

  “I could be the first,” said Robert.

  “We have an opening tomorrow morning. Our scheduled reader is stuck in Connecticut. If you’re available on such short notice . . .”

  “I’ll do it,” said Robert. “How long do I get?”

  “There’s no set time,” said Elaine. “Most people usually read for about forty-five minutes, but you don’t have to go that long. Or you can take as much as an hour.”

  “And the kids,” said Robert, feeling more keyed up by the minute, “how old are the kids?”

  “On Saturdays they usually range from about five to twelve.”

  “Perfect,” he said.

  Robert quickly calculated the length of the Tremendous Trio book at about forty-five thousand words. As he obviously could not read a thousand words per minute, he couldn’t read an entire volume. Would they let him come more than once so he could read the book in installments? Even if they did, he didn’t imagine he could hold the children’s attention over more than three sessions. He timed himself reading about a hundred and fifty words a minute at a brisk pace. That meant nine thousand words an hour. He would try editing one of the Tremendous Trio books down from forty-five thousand to twenty-seven thousand words. If the children liked it, he could read the whole book over three visits. He’d be sure to end each of the first two installments of the story with a juicy cliff-hanger.

  This meant some pretty serious editing. Robert dropped his copy of The Tremendous Trio around the World off at the copy shop on Amsterdam with instructions to photocopy every page, then killed an hour in the café across the street, eating a croissant and trying not to think about how Rebecca might not come back, that all this digging up of his past might be pointless. By midday he sat at his desk with a stack of photocopies and a red pen.

  As he read through the book, he realized his task was more complicated than he had expected. He suspected that kids from the smartphone generation might have little patience with sentences like: The flying machine pitched and yawed, but Dan clung to the underside of the armature, taking umbrage with Alice’s assessment that it was only the drag co-efficient of the young daredevil that interfered with the equilibrium of her craft. After a few chapters, it became clear to Robert that making this thrilling adventure of three teenagers who invented, tested, and built an airplane, then flew it around the world,
exciting to twenty-first century children for whom the idea of air travel was as ordinary as walking down the street, would take more than just judicious cutting. With the marked-up photocopy spread out on his desk, Robert opened a new Word file and began to type.

  Many paragraphs he lifted verbatim from the original, but others required at least some adjustment in language and tone. He also needed to create a historical context, to help his listeners understand that the story took place just a few years after the first airplane flight, a time when the Wright brothers were still kings of the sky. He needed to streamline the language, not writing down to children but rewording some of the archaic vocabulary and usage. And, he needed to cut eighteen thousand words. That meant eliminating several ports of call on the round-the-world journey.

  At one o’clock in the afternoon, this all seemed an exhilarating literary challenge. By eight thirty that night, when Robert stopped to eat some Chinese delivery, it seemed a foolish undertaking. At midnight, it seemed impossible, and Robert wondered why he didn’t just read some Dr. Seuss books and be done with it. At seven a.m., bleary-eyed and exhausted, feeling like he had competed in some sort of writing marathon, Robert hit print. Despite his doubts of a few hours before, he felt a satisfaction unlike any he had known since the publication of Looking Forward. True, the revised and abridged version of The Tremendous Trio around the World was not likely to win any literary prizes, but it might engage the attention of a few children for three hours. Even if the kids hated it and wandered away before he had finished reading the first chapter, Robert had, for the first time since the publication of his novel, completed a piece of writing. It might not be wholly his own, but he liked to think that Buck Larson and Neptune B. Smythe and Dexter Cornwall—even if they did not exist—would approve. As the printer hummed away, he dragged upstairs to bed, hoping that a couple hours’ sleep would be enough to energize him for the morning ahead.

  Robert need not have worried. Where a morning nap and three cups of coffee failed, the sight of three-dozen expectant faces looking up at him from their seats on the floor of the St. Agnes Library succeeded. Parents hovered around the edge of the group of children, but he barely noticed them. To Robert, only those children waiting for him, ready to fall backward into his arms, mattered. He opened the folder on his lap and began.