“You’re going to London?” said Magda.
“As soon as my father’s estate is settled,” said Tom. “I need to get as far away from Mother as possible, and luckily she hates ocean journeys.”
“So this is it, then,” said Magda.
“The last adventure of the Tremendous Trio,” said Tom, handing them each a glass of brandy.
“It’s funny you should use those words,” said Magda, smiling.
“Look,” said Tom, after Magda had explained Mr. Lipscomb’s commission, “if we are going to write another story, we have to do it tonight. Gene leaves tomorrow, and I’ll be with lawyers round the clock until I sail.”
“This is really the last time we’re going to see each other?” said Magda.
“Probably so,” said Tom.
“Well, I’m not going to write any more Tremendous Trio books or stories without you,” said Magda, “so if there are any adventures after this one, someone else will have to write them.”
“What’s your point?” said Gene.
“My point is,” said Magda, “if this is really the end, let’s go out with a bang. Let’s write something that’s never been written before. Let’s show the world the way it really is, or at least the way it should be. Let’s show characters who have problems and are confused and frightened just like real children. Let’s write a story that might convince a girl she doesn’t have to be defined by whether or not she gets a husband, a story that tells a boy . . . a boy like Gene that he is not alone.”
“Do you really think Lipscomb would publish something like that?” said Tom.
“Of course not,” said Magda, “but that’s the beauty of it. Lipscomb is leaving the country. He’ll be gone for a couple of months at least. I’m sure the April issue will be published before he gets back, and probably the May issue will have gone to press. He won’t be able to read what we’ve written until it’s too late.”
“Yes, but what about the rest of the chapters?” said Gene. “When he gets back, he’ll shut it down for sure.”
“Not if the magazine is selling. If he gets heaps of fan letters from readers who want more Tremendous Trio he’ll have to keep publishing. If there’s one thing Lipscomb can’t resist, it’s money.”
“But we can’t write fifteen chapters in one night,” said Tom.
“If we write two chapters together, I’ll write the rest, and we can still share the money.”
“You keep the money,” said Tom. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” said Magda.
“To my father’s study. We need a typewriter and some pens and a lot of paper. And I’ll get some hot coffee sent up. It’s going to be a long night.”
“It’s not exactly a chapter,” said Tom, when Magda had read aloud their edited version of the first installment of The Last Adventure of the Tremendous Trio. “It’s more of an introduction.”
“Yes, but what an introduction,” said Gene. “What kid is going to read that and not be desperate for more?”
“So, what is the more?” said Tom. “Where do we go from here?”
The coffee urn stood empty and discarded notes littered the floor. Magda sat at a small table by the window where Tom had placed his father’s typewriter. They had been so focused on their work that she had hardly had time to breathe in the loveliness of spending these last few hours with Tom and Gene. She looked out on a streetlight illuminating a circle of sidewalk somewhere in the mid-Fifties. She couldn’t even remember the side street. A sole pedestrian scurried through the light and disappeared around the corner onto Fifth Avenue. Magda wondered what business he had out at this time of night. What secrets was he keeping from the rest of the world?
“Secrets,” she said, turning around in her chair to face the other two.
“I beg your pardon,” said Tom.
“We begin with secrets,” said Magda.
“What do you mean?” said Gene.
“Everyone has secrets, right?” said Magda. “So, what secrets do Dan Dawson and Alice Gold and Frank Fairfax keep from the world and from one another? How can we show them as completely different people from the heroes we thought they were after the first three books, just by revealing their secrets?”
“Everyone has secrets,” said Tom. “But do you really believe the Tremendous Trio would have secrets from each other after all they’ve been through together?”
“The three of us have been through plenty together, and we have huge secrets from each other, don’t we?”
Quiet shrouded the room for the first time since they had started working. Magda could hear the clock on the mantel ticking and the sound of Tom’s breathing. Gene seemed to sink lower in his chair and would not meet Magda’s eyes. After a long minute she looked at Tom. “You have secrets, don’t you?”
“Is it enough to say yes,” said Tom, “or do I need to tell them?”
Magda swallowed hard. She was not any more excited about sharing her darkest secrets than Tom or Gene appeared to be, but if they were going to cut to the bone in this story, didn’t they need to do the same thing in real life? Besides . . .
“We’ll never see each other again,” she said. “And if we all share our secrets, then there’s no reason for any one of us to be embarrassed.”
“It seems a faulty logic,” said Tom.
“She’s right,” said Gene. “This book shouldn’t be about some made-up heroes doing things no child would ever do. It shouldn’t be about Dan and Alice and Frank, not really. It should be about Magda and Gene and Tom. We are a tremendous trio, but with all the secrets and lies and weaknesses and fears that any other three people in the world have. Put that in the story. Put us in the story. Then you’ll really have something. Who wants to go first?”
“There’s a reason I didn’t want Gene to go to San Francisco,” said Tom. “I’ve been there myself. It was the most horrible experience of my life, and the most wonderful. I met a girl named Isabella, and she died in my arms.” And he told his secrets.
“After the Slocum burned,” said Magda, “I did something terrible.” Her hand rose to her chest and felt the absence of the necklace her mother had given her, the necklace she had placed on a horribly burned body in that makeshift morgue on the pier. “I killed myself, and no one ever knew.” And she told her secrets.
“There was a fairy resort on the Bowery we used to call Paresis Hall,” said Gene. “And there was a girl named Dame Pinky who made a lot of money there. And it was the happiest time of her life.” And he told his secrets.
Just before dawn the trio made their way down the servants’ stairs and through the kitchen to the back door through which Tom had sneaked so many times in his youth. They stopped just inside the door in a bleak, narrow passageway.
“Do you have everything?” said Tom to Magda, who carried a large envelope bulging with the drafts of the first two chapters as well as many pages of notes about what might happen next.
“Everything I’m allowed to take with me,” she said, smiling wryly at the two men.
“What would your mother say if she knew you’d had a woman here all night?” said Gene.
“If she thought it meant imminent marriage,” said Tom, “she’d probably be thrilled.”
Away from prying eyes, it seemed preposterous to Magda to abide by the rules of society. She threw her arms around Tom and held him close, whispering in his ear, “Forget me.”
“Never,” he said.
A tiny flame in her heart wondered if, with a mother so eager for him to marry, he might once again propose, but she knew he wouldn’t. And if he did, she knew she would say no. It had been a wonderful night, yes, but last summer had taught her what life would be like with a man she did not love. Besides, she had come to value her own independence over the last few years. She had built a successful life for herself and she was proud of that
. Like Alice Gold, she had no intention of judging her life by her ability to land a husband.
Magda kissed Tom on the cheek and released her hold on him.
“Take care of yourself,” she said to Gene, now wrapping him in an embrace. “And don’t walk in front of any taxis.”
“Tell the story,” said Gene, looking into Magda’s eyes. “And make the gods proud.”
XXXIV
New York City, Upper East Side, 2010
Sarah Thomas lived in a plain-looking seven-story brick apartment building on East Eighty-First Street almost to East End Avenue. It was a bit of a hike crosstown for Robert, and he thought about taking a taxi, but he was eager to go nearly an hour before their appointment and the best way to pass the time was to walk. So he headed out across the park toward the long blocks of Eighty-First Street.
Crossing the park, just north of the Ramble, he thought about meeting Rebecca there in just two days. Somewhere in those trees, assuming she showed up, he would begin to tell her his story. She had quoted his own adage about storytelling back at him during their fight. He did believe that storytelling was what set mankind apart from other creatures. Now, by telling Rebecca his whole story, he felt he had a chance to become fully human himself.
But the stories suggested by Thomas De Peyster’s scrapbook were welling up inside him, too. He knew which story he needed to tell Rebecca, but what story did he want to tell the world? Did he want to tell a story of Thomas and Eugene and Magda? Or did he want to finish the story of the Tremendous Trio? Or, could those two stories be one? Maybe, he thought as he crossed Fifth Avenue a few blocks north of Alice Gold’s fictional home, Thomas and Eugene and Magda were the Tremendous Trio.
The woman who greeted Robert at the door walked with a cane and a slight stoop, but also with a bounce in her step that belied her eighty-six years.
“Mr. Parrish, I presume,” she said, a wide smile playing across her face. “It’s not often I get such a distinguished visitor. In fact, short of my daughter and my friends from Zion-St. Mark’s, it’s not often I have visitors at all. I barely had time to go around to the library and check out a copy of your book before you arrived. Will you come in?”
“Thank you,” said Robert, stepping into the small living room. The walls were lined with shelves crammed with books and photographs, and the room was furnished with mid-century modern pieces that looked worn enough to have been bought at the actual mid-century. Light poured in from the street window, however, and the room felt alive and cheerful, loved and lived in. Robert had feared that the apartment of an old woman might smell or feel like impending death, but this room, like Sarah herself, was still very much a going concern.
“I’ll get us some coffee,” said Sarah.
“Can I help you?” said Robert.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Cream and sugar?”
“Please.”
With Sarah out of the room, Robert began to examine the books and photos that cluttered the shelves. He scanned the cases quickly, then stopped short when he spotted, on a bottom shelf almost hidden behind the sofa, a row of six familiar-looking spines—Daring Dan Dawson and the Tremendous Trio.
Seeing them among the rest of Sarah’s books reminded him of the den in his childhood home, where, after the Niagara Falls trip, the Tremendous Trio books had taken up residence. The day after he and his father had returned, Robbie had walked down to the liquor store around the corner from his house and asked for some boxes. Back home, he had packed up all of Pop Pop’s books and, without comment to his father, carried the boxes up to the attic and shoved them in among the Christmas ornaments. An hour later, he heard the creak of his father pulling down the attic steps and, while most of the books remained out of sight where Robbie had put them, the Tremendous Trio trilogy reappeared on the shelves of the den, between an old set of World Book Encyclopedias and last year’s phone book.
In Sarah Thomas’s sitting room, the books had less ignominious company. They stood surrounded by classics of children’s literature from Anne of Green Gables to Alice in Wonderland.
Most of Sarah’s photographs were in color and showed weddings and family gatherings, but next to the Pickering books stood a black-and-white photograph in a silver frame of a woman standing at the edge of the East River, the lighthouse of what was then called Blackwell’s Island in the background. Robert recognized the face. She was older and more careworn than she had been in Central Park in 1906, but the picture clearly showed Magda Hertzenberger. Sarah Thomas was somehow connected to both Magda and Thomas. Robert had come to the right place.
Robert continued his examination of the room until he heard the tinkling of china behind him and he turned to see Sarah, sans cane, carrying a tray with two coffee cups.
“Please, let me get that,” said Robert, taking the tray from Sarah and setting it on the coffee table.
“So,” she said when they were settled with their coffee, “what is a famous novelist doing poking around in Thomas De Peyster’s scrapbook?”
“Did you know him? Thomas De Peyster?”
“I never met him,” said Sarah. “That album was from long before my time.”
“It’s from 1906,” said Robert.
“And I was born in 1924,” said Sarah.
“So how did you come to have . . .”
“It belonged to my aunt. It was one of the few things she had with her when she . . . reappeared. That was just before I was born.”
“What do you mean ‘reappeared’?” said Robert.
“Have you heard of the General Slocum disaster?” said Sarah.
“Vaguely,” said Robert. “Was it some sort of boat fire?”
“A steamboat that caught fire in the East River at Hell Gate not far from here. Killed over a thousand people, including my uncle and my grandmother. Everyone thought my aunt died, too. That was in 1904. In 1922, she showed up at my parents’ apartment just a few blocks from here. She had no idea that her little sister, my mother, had survived the Slocum as well.”
“Where had she been?” said Robert.
“I never knew the details,” said Sarah. “I would catch bits and pieces every now and then from something she said to my mother, nothing more. But she came to live with us and for me it was like having a third parent. She took me on long walks around the city, and played games with me, and oh, the books. She was always bringing me books. When I was in grade school we went to the library every Saturday and on the way home we would go down to the river and sit on a bench and talk about what we read, and if the weather was nice, she would tell me a story. She told the most marvelous stories. They all had the same three heroes. Oh, I wish I could remember them. They would have these wonderful, interminable adventures. I remember flashes—a desert island, a wild lion, a terrible fire—but no more. It’s been so long now that her stories are just a few grainy photographs fading and curling in the back of my memory.”
“But what does all this have to do with the scrapbook?” said Robert. He was sitting forward in his chair and had nearly slipped off the edge when she spoke of her aunt telling stories about a trio of heroes having adventures.
“I’m getting to that,” said Sarah. “I’ve waited thirty-four years for you; you can wait a few minutes for me.”
“Thirty-four years?”
“Shh,” said Sarah. “I married an ex-GI in 1946. Gregory Thomas. A medic. Such a handsome man. We lived out on Long Island for a few years, but when my father died in the early 1950s and then my mother a few years later, we moved back to the city to live with Aunt Magda. By then we had our own children, and she told them stories, but these were different. She had moved on from adventure stories to fairy tales. When my children grew up and left home, we decided to move to a smaller apartment. We were sorting through things trying to decide what to take and what to get rid of, when I saw the scrapbook for the first time. At first, Aunt Magda didn�
��t even want to look at it. She told me to give it away or throw it out. But I left it on her dresser, and a few days later I found her sitting on her bed, with the scrapbook on her lap and tears on her cheeks. She told me to come and sit next to her and we went through every page of that book together. And that’s when I found out who she was.”
“Who was she?”
“You already know,” said Sarah, “or you wouldn’t be here. I saw you looking at her picture.”
“She was Magda Hertzenberger,” said Robert.
“Magdalena,” said Sarah. “But that wasn’t her only name.”
“Dexter Cornwall,” said Robert.
“Author of Daring Dan Dawson and the Tremendous Trio. It took me years to track down all six volumes, mostly in bookstores on Fourth Avenue, but when I did, I recognized snippets of the adventures she had told me when I was a child. Aunt Magda would never read them, but I loved them.”
“My grandfather introduced me to them,” said Robert. “He sent a fan letter to Dexter Cornwall and somebody wrote him back.”
“Probably Aunt Magda,” said Sarah. “She worked for the publisher, Pickering Brothers, and the only thing she told me about her job was that she answered the fan mail. After we moved, I would take the scrapbook out every now and then and look at those pictures and read all those newspaper articles in the envelope in the back.”
“I’ve read them all, too,” said Robert.
“The whole thing seemed so mysterious to me. By then my aunt was in her late seventies, and it was hard to imagine her a girl in her twenties in 1906, going out with these two men in the pictures and writing children’s books. I always thought there must be a great story behind it all, but she never would tell me more than the basics. She had worked for the publisher, had briefly known Gene and Tom, that’s what she called them, and the three of them had written a few books together. Tom gave her the scrapbook.”
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