Escaping Dreamland

by Charlie Lovett

  They walked through the soaring atrium, with its cast-iron railings on level after level of balconies finally giving way to statues of classical figures just below the skylight. Gene led Magda to the foot of a staircase that was like only one other she had ever seen in her life.

  “Moving stairs in a department store,” she marveled, as he took her hand and helped her step on.

  “Just like Shoot the Chutes at Dreamland,” said Gene. “The mechanics are actually fairly simple.” As they rode up and then down, Gene explained how the moving stairs worked. Magda nodded, and smiled, and stared wide-eyed at the vast array of expensive goods and the carriage trade who came to buy them.

  Despite the crowds and the rattle of the El trains overhead, Magda and Gene managed to chat as they strolled downtown. He told her about how United Electric used alternating current, and how Mr. Tesla had written a letter attesting to his abilities. She spoke of Mr. Lipscomb’s hope for the Christmas season, that the new books would finally put Pickering Brothers on the map. “Surprisingly, he actually understands that our books are better than what Stratemeyer produces,” she said. “He just doesn’t know if that will translate into sales.”

  “And when will he decide if he wants more?” said Gene.

  “More of Dan and Alice and Frank? Probably after he sees the sales figures for the holiday season. Will you have time to write another book if you’re working now?”

  “I think so,” said Gene. “I can always work in the evenings. I’ve . . . curtailed my social life.”

  “Because Tom is gone?”

  “And other reasons,” said Gene. He did not know if Magda noticed the thin layer of powder he wore on his face—not because he wished to draw the attention of men interested in such things, but because he wanted to cover up the bruises. A month ago, he had suffered another beating, this one severe enough to break two ribs and leave his face swollen and blackened. At work he had told a story about being struck by an automobile on Broadway—hurled against the paving stones and fearing for his life. He had feared for his life, but not because of an automobile. After that night, he had sworn to himself—no more. No more men in his rooms, no more taking the streetcar to Coney Island to seek out the seediest of the seedy night clubs, no more trying to forget Tom in the grip of men who used him and cast him violently aside. He would concentrate on his work, on science, and, if Mr. Lipscomb wanted, he would write another book. But as far as his other desires, he would pretend they did not exist. He would force that part of his life into the darkest recesses of his being and leave it there.

  They reached Siegel’s at the corner of Fourteenth Street, and Magda gasped when she saw the window display.

  “You knew about this, didn’t you?” she said with delight. “That’s why you walked me here.”

  “I read about it in their newspaper advertisement,” said Gene, “but I hadn’t seen it until now. It’s most impressive.”

  Laid out in front of them, across four huge windows, was a vast model of Coney Island, shown as it appeared, according to the sign hanging above it, “in the good old summertime.” Here were bathers crowding the beach, the roller coasters and thrill rides and sideshows of Steeplechase Park and Luna Park, and, glistening white in a window all of its own, Dreamland.

  “I wasn’t sure I should show you,” said Gene. “If the memories are happy or painful.”

  “Both,” said Magda quietly, as she gazed at the miniature buildings, the perfect re-creation of her own memory of that day. The elaborate architecture of Dreamland had been copied to perfection—at a cost of five thousand dollars, bragged a sign in the display. Beacon Tower reigned high above the boardwalk, the water of the lagoon glistening below it. The model rendered every attraction in exquisite detail, all crowded with the tiniest revelers one could hope to see. Magda stood for a long time, reliving the events of that day, doing her best to forget how it had ended. She felt certain that she would forever remember the summer that had led to Dreamland as the happiest time of her life.

  Gene laid a hand gently on her shoulder—a gesture that once would have given her a thrill but which she now understood was only a sign of friendship and support. “I just thought you might want to see it,” he said.

  “Thank you,” said Magda, reaching up and taking his hand in hers just long enough to give it a squeeze. “Thank you so much.”

  When Magda returned home that night, she decided she could not wait until Christmas, so she ripped the brown paper off of the copy of Alice Gold, Girl Inventor that Gene had given her, and opened the front cover to read his inscription.

  To Dexter Cornwall from Buck Larson,

  in memory of a summer day. Christmas 1906.

  Magda clasped the book to her chest and wept at last.

  XXVII

  New-York Historical Society, 2010

  Access to the De Peyster album in the New-York Historical Society library was by appointment only and Robert didn’t have an appointment. A polite man sitting behind a broad desk explained that the reading room had limited space and that the next available appointment was next Thursday. Frustrated, Robert left the library with the assurance that the man behind the desk would call him if a researcher happened to cancel an appointment.

  He felt too nervous to go home. He didn’t want to read more newspaper articles or vainly search for clues about the authors of the Tremendous Trio in the text of the books. He wanted answers. He wanted to discover, if not the complete biographies of Dexter Cornwall and Buck Larson and Neptune B. Smythe, at least something about them. He didn’t expect to stumble upon an unpublished manuscript of The Last Adventure of the Tremendous Trio, but he wanted a few more clues—hints, at least, about how the story might play out. He didn’t need to answer every question, but he wanted to answer some. And he was starting to formulate a plan about how he might use those answers and where the unanswered questions could lead him. After months of inaction, this crisis—Rebecca threatening to leave for good—had finally goaded him into action; and this chase after the silly mysteries of his childhood had taken on importance not only because it had given him some purpose, but also because it offered a doorway into what he needed to confront if he was going to win Rebecca back.

  With nothing else to do, he walked laps around the neo-Romanesque brownstone monster that was the American Museum of Natural History. This museum had been here in 1906, he thought, as he marched up to Eighty-First Street, across to Columbus, and then back down to Seventy-­Seventh. The original Victorian building was all but invisible now behind the additions of the past century, but this institution had inspired, and even sponsored, the explorers of that age. From here expeditions went forth to the four corners of the earth—and to the poles at its top and bottom.

  Robert and Rebecca had never visited the Museum of Natural History. Rebecca had little interest in dead animals and Robert had scrupulously avoided the museum since his visit there with his father a few weeks after their spat on Robbie’s fourteenth birthday. He had reluctantly agreed to the excursion only because his friend Kevin, who organized the Dungeons and Dragons group, was laid up with the flu.

  “It’s raining out,” Robbie heard his mother say from the next room when his father told her the plan. “Why don’t you just stay here and read?”

  “He doesn’t want to read anymore,” said his father. “He’s a teenager.”

  Robbie had heard this before. It was so annoying. Of course he was a teenager. He still read the Tremendous Trio books; he just didn’t want to do it with his father anymore. Now he read them secretly, when his parents had gone to sleep. Reading stories out loud was for little kids.

  “I thought we could find all the animals that the Tremendous Trio see in the Amazon,” said Robbie’s father fifteen minutes into the awkward silence of the train ride.

  Robbie thought the descriptions of various frightening beasts were the most boring parts of the book, like the e
ndless catalogue of fauna in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, but he answered his father only with a wordless grunt.

  Robbie sulked his way through the day. “There’s nobody here but little kids,” he complained every time he saw someone that looked even a few months younger than himself. When others got between him and the display cases he would carp, “It’s so crowded I can’t see anything.” When they found themselves alone in a room, his mantra became, “This stuff is so boring.”

  Most fathers would have given up, thought Robert, but not his. He had the stubborn streak inherited from Pop Pop and didn’t rise to the bait of Robbie trying to pick a fight. He ignored the complaining and instead of arguing decided to up the ante, planning more and more exciting excursions in an attempt to hold on to his son’s affection. If he had just shown some interest in that damn museum, thought Robert as he trudged past the grand facade on Central Park West, maybe everything would have turned out fine.

  On Robert’s fifth lap around the museum, as he was weighing whether to stop and join the line at the Shake Shack, his phone rang. There had been a cancellation. Five minutes later Robert was back in the Historical Society library. He filled out the request form for the album, and Ralph, the man at the desk, showed him to the one empty seat in the library’s reading room.

  The same Ionic columns he had seen outside surrounded the space, but while the gray granite columns on the front of the building felt cold and out of place, these cream-colored columns fit right into the grand neoclassical hall. A skylight fifty feet overhead let the cold winter light mix with the warm glow from brass lamps and hanging fixtures, all of it gleaming off polished oak tables. Two huge stained-glass windows were set into the east wall. It felt like the library of some grand college in Oxford or Cambridge.

  After a few minutes, a librarian brought Robert an oblong black volume bound in cloth and stamped in gold on the front cover with the word Photographs.

  “Please handle the pages by the corners, and don’t touch the photographs,” said the librarian. “And take notes only in pencil.” Robert had come prepared for this last rule and had already set a notebook and pencil on the table. A buff-colored card with a description of the item lay on top of the volume. Robert copied out the words: Album of photographs and memorabilia, most associated with New York City, collected and signed by Thomas De Peyster, ca. 1906. Gift of Sarah Thomas, 1977.

  Robert could hardly believe he was looking at something that had belonged to Dexter Cornwall or Neptune B. Smythe, or possibly both. His fingers trembled as he set the card aside and gently opened the volume. On the inside of the front cover was the name “Thomas De Peyster” in an elegant hand. Robert didn’t know exactly what he had expected inside the album—perhaps a portrait labeled Neptune B. Smythe or a plot summary of The Last Adventure of the Tremendous Trio. What he hadn’t expected was a menu from Childs restaurant, with the date July 13, 1906, written at the bottom. Determined to give his full attention to every item in the album, Robert dutifully read the menu. There seemed nothing significant about corned beef hash or graham crackers and milk. The menu had been pasted onto the paper album page but had come loose at the bottom and on most of two sides. As carefully as he could, so as not to hasten its complete detachment, Robert turned the page.

  The next page held two black-and-white photographs, each just over two inches square. They showed two different men, dressed in formal attire, posed in front of the same fireplace. Beneath the photos a caption read: “Gene and ‘Mr. Marcus Stone of Philadelphia.’ ” Both the men in the picture had rather soft features, but neither held a copy of a Dan Dawson or Frank Fairfax book. Robert moved on.

  The next several pages held a variety of uninteresting memorabilia: a ticket stub from a baseball game between the New York Giants and the Pittsburgh Pirates together with a baseball card for a player named Cy Seymour; programs from the plays The Social Whirl and The Girl of the Golden West ; a postcard of the actress Evelyn Nesbit; and postcards and photographs of several New York landmarks, including the Flatiron Building, the old Madison Square Garden on Twenty-Sixth Street, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Most of these items were captioned with dates in the summer of 1906. Robert dutifully took notes on everything, becoming more and more convinced that he had arrived at another dead end.

  With waning enthusiasm, he turned a page about halfway through the album. He almost couldn’t process the perfection of what he saw. Hands trembling with excitement, Robert laid down his pencil, leaned back slightly in his chair, and gazed in amazement at the page. Before him lay the Rosetta stone of the Tremendous Trio mystery.

  He had a sudden and almost painful desire to share this moment with Rebecca, but of course he had kept secret all that had led him to this point, so even if she was at home waiting for him, this spectacular discovery would mean nothing to her. He wished he had shared all this with her years ago: his fascination with series books, the mystery of the Tremendous Trio, even the disastrous roller-coaster ride of his relationship with his father. As Robert stared at the page in front of him, memories of his happiest moments flooded back—all experiences made happier because of Rebecca. The acceptance of his novel, the glowing reviews—these events hadn’t seemed real until he shared them with her. He ached that, because of his own guardedness, he had no way of letting her share the thrill of what lay before him.

  Two similar photographs showed a woman and two men posed in front of the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. In the top photograph they posed seriously, with stern looks on their faces. The woman held a parasol and one of the men had his hand in his coat, Napoleon-style. In the second picture, they stood in strange poses, the woman with one arm over her head. They all smiled broadly. Clearly, they were friends, with senses of humor. Below the first image, a caption read: “Eugene Pinkney, Magda Hertzenberger, Thomas De Peyster.” The second photo was captioned “Buck Larson, Dexter Cornwall, Neptune B. Smythe.” At the bottom of the page, in much larger script, were the words, “The Gods and Goddess of Children’s Books.”

  XXVIII

  New York City,

  Not Long After Man Learned How to Fly

  The first indication of his approach was the whistling of tugboats, soon joined by other craft tooting and snorting. The sound moved toward Magda like a wave, and soon another noise melded with it—a sound like a gasoline-­powered automobile, but deeper, a staccato so rapid that its individual percussions were nearly undetectable. And then she saw him. He wore a gray business suit with a vest and a simple cap on his head, looking for all the world like a man who might be striding down Broadway on the way to an office on a crisp autumn morning. Except he wasn’t striding down Broadway; he was hanging in the air more than two hundred feet above the Hudson River. Magda waved madly and cried out with excitement as Wilbur Wright flew his aeroplane straight up the river, gaining altitude as he passed by the end of Twenty-Third Street where she stood in a crowd near the river’s edge. She could feel the wind blowing stiffly downstream, yet Wright seemed to travel faster than any automobile or train. The crowd, which had been struck breathless at the first sight of the flying machine, cheered wildly as Wright rounded the bulge of Manhattan and disappeared up the river.

  The papers for the morning of October 4, 1909, had said the aviator would attempt a flight from Governor’s Island up the Hudson to Grant’s Tomb and back, a distance of some twenty miles. Now the crowd waited to see if he would return safely, each wondering how quickly an aeroplane could make a trip that would take more than an hour by elevated train.

  Wright’s appearance in the New York skies was part of the Hudson-­Fulton Celebration, a two-week commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival in New York Harbor and the centenary of Robert Fulton’s steamboat. Surprisingly, Mr. Lipscomb had allowed Magda to take the morning off to watch the flight. More than a million other New Yorkers had made similar plans. A week earlier she had watched a massive fireworks displa
y from Riverside Park, and two nights ago she had seen the Carnival Parade, marveling at the display of floats on the theme of “Music, Literature, and Art.”

  As she watched the floats in that parade depicting folklore and fairy tales, Magda could not help imagining what a float in honor of Dan Dawson, Alice Gold, and Frank Fairfax might look like. Three years had passed since those heroes had made their debut, and while no one could argue that they had made any great mark on American culture, Magda knew from the fan mail she answered that the exploits of Dan, Alice, and Frank had entertained and even inspired at least a few children. Mr. Lipscomb had, with only slight reluctance and under constant prodding from Magda, commissioned a new book in each series in 1907 and 1908, but had taken a hiatus from those series in 1909.

  Magda had finally written to Tom in Chicago the summer after Dreamland. She had still felt bitter toward him, betrayed by the way he had cast a shadow over their summer together, but she needed his help. She was surprised to find that her need for his advice tempered her anger, and though she did not exactly write him in a spirit of friendship, she did feel herself softening as she read his reply. Tom had said he might help her with the rescue scenes in Dan Dawson and the Great Earthquake, her second book, and she had written asking for that assistance. Tom had answered Magda’s request with the suggestion that she mail him any sections of the book dealing with the earthquake itself for him to look over. He returned each section with additions and emendations, and Magda had been impressed with his ideas about how to depict the earthquake and its aftermath. With each returned chapter, he included a short note—Hope you are doing well, I think of you often. Say hello to “Mr. Pickering” for me—and with each note, Magda felt her bitterness eroding. The note included in the final packet read, I know your book will do well. You were always the best writer of the three of us. I hope someday you can forgive me for Dreamland. I doubt I’ll ever forgive myself.