The Point of Vanishing

by Maryka Biaggio

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  BARBARA AT SIXTEEN

  From Pasadena to Parts Northeast, June–August 1930

  In June, she and her mother set off for the East Coast on the S.S. Marsodak. Knowing it was probably her last sea voyage for a long time, Barbara tried to savor the journey. The lulling clip of the ship, even this doddering steamer, certainly satisfied more than the jostling lurch of any bus or train. But she hated what it signified—losing the chance for a reunion with Ethan any time soon.

  She already missed him. Just as they’d left Pasadena, Ethan had set sail for the remotest of outposts, Point Barrow. They’d not be able to write for four months—there was no system for mail exchanges. Going from two or three letters a week to none was like stalling on a windless sea. How would she fill her sails?

  And her mother’s unending rants against her father sent her hunting for other conversation. She preferred not to even think about the miscreant. She’d will him out of her life. At least he and Margaret were staying in California, so she needn’t worry about crossing paths with him on the East Coast, wherever she and her mother might land.

  As for where they’d settle, her mother kept quibbling and equivocating, which was maddening. Barbara stayed out of her way as much as possible. That wasn’t hard during the day since her mother shut herself away in their puny interior cabin and wrote like a maniac. But come evening, Barbara couldn’t avoid her mother.

  Two nights before they were to put in at Baltimore Harbor, her mother launched another diatribe. “Whenever I think about your father and that impudent girl, I get worked up all over again.”

  “I’m tired, Mother.” Barbara flicked off the cabin’s overhead light and crawled into her cot.

  Her mother’s words pierced the darkness. “I’m so angry at him. Look at the straits he’s left us in.”

  “Can’t you just forget about him?”

  “How can I when he’s backed me into a corner? Not a cent to speak of from him. He won’t even sign the house over to me.”

  “So? We can still live in it.”

  “No, we can’t. We need the rental income. Besides, there’s no work for me in New Haven.”

  “I could work. I’m sixteen now.” If she were on her own, she could earn money for herself and Ethan. She hated to think of merely exchanging this ship, with its dingy rooms, for a cramped apartment. She’d had her fill of being confined in close quarters with her mother.

  “Not likely, not while men with families are lining up for the lowliest jobs.”

  “I could tell them I have a family to support, too.”

  Her mother’s sigh filled the cabin. “Oh, Barbara, sometimes you’re too naive for words.”

  “You can finish the book. Wasn’t that your plan all along?”

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do. With minimal help from you.” Barbara could picture her mother tugging the corner of her mouth into put-upon disgruntlement.

  “I’m doing the best I can.” She hated her mother haranguing her like this. She’d told her time and again she couldn’t do the writing; she could only review and offer suggestions.

  “One of the passengers told me today she has an inexpensive apartment for rent in Washington, D.C. Maybe I can find an attorney there to put some pressure on your father.”

  “Fine,” said Barbara, pulling the pillow over her head.

  Still, with her mother’s cot only three feet away, her words came through loud and clear. “We’ll hole up there until we finish the book. And you will help with it.”

  ✭

  Their apartment was in a broken-down neighborhood near Georgetown University. Her mother sent her to the University Library to research details for the book, which wasn’t such an awful way to pass the time. Barbara far preferred the library’s cool interior and gilded sanctum to their shabby, sweltering apartment.

  She’d return home late afternoons and find her mother sweating over the typewriter. Barbara would plunk down with a glass of water, and her mother would report on the day’s writing. Sometimes her mother sounded hopeful, even cheery: “I think the best chance for having the story published is to tell it as you would have. After all, that’s what the editor at Harper expects.” But other times, she despaired: “Here I was three-quarters through, thinking I’d figured out how to inject a nice rhythm and wonder into the telling. Then I circled back to the beginning this morning. Now I can’t stomach how wretched it is. I’ll have to revise from word one.”

  Barbara did what she could to help, and she stole a few hours each day to launch her novel. But without Ethan’s bolstering letters, she felt lonely and unmoored. She tracked down three books at the library about the Alaska territory and read the sections on its northern reaches. Learning about the harshness of the Chukchi Sea and the harrowing adversities faced by its early explorers only added to her worries.

  She yearned to reach out to Ethan. But imagining her letters piling up like orphans while he navigated hostile waters sent shivers through her. He’d not receive them until his return, and some superstition warned her off sending them. In her darkest moments, she feared he’d forget about her, with the time and distance between them widening. She’d wait until she heard from him—and hope for his safe passage and steady love.

  Meantime, she contented herself with letters to Alice, who’d become a great friend. Alice, too, needed a friend just now. A month before Barbara and her mother left Pasadena, life at the Russells’ home took a sad turn. Alice’s husband, Bert, found a job, but across the country in Maryland. He’d left straight away and didn’t know if or how he could afford to move the family. Alice was terribly sad, and the girls begged to go along. Barbara cringed at the unfolding events, for she knew what could come of a father leaving his family for work. But she avoided sowing any of her gloomy seeds of apprehension. Everybody was glum enough without that.

  Finally, after months of laboring over the manuscript all day, every day, her mother declared it finished. “We’re going to New York,” she said. “The lawyers here are useless. And it’s depressing watching Hoover beg industry people to help the unemployed.”

  Her mother arranged, by telephone, to rent an apartment in Manhattan on West 122nd, and they packed their belongings.

  Barbara watched the columns of tracks recede as their train trundled off.

  Her mother said, “The first thing I’ll do is make an appointment with Herbert Ashworth. God, I hope Harper accepts the book.”

  “I’d like to look for work, Mother. That’s how I can help.”

  “Well, I suppose we should both look. Who knows what our chances are? And I can’t bring Sabra to live with us until we have some income.”

  “I wonder what she looks like now. I can hardly imagine.”

  “That’s the least of my concerns about Sabra,” her mother said, staring out the window.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  BARBARA AT SIXTEEN

  New York City, September 1930

  September 24, 1930

  Dear Alice,

  Helen is in New Haven at the moment, packing up Sabra and checking on the house renters. The reason I didn’t go with her is I have a job. I read novels for Fox Company and write up synopses. I don’t know what they do with them. I’m a cog of no account in their churning wheel. Helen says they’re taking advantage of me, paying me half time when I’m working full time, but that I shouldn’t complain because we need every cent.

  The doom and gloom are still upon me. The typewriter once brought me pleasure and relief, but now I’m chained to it for tawdry reasons. Nights I toss and turn from the drudgery of working for rent and bread. Eventually, I manage a few hours of sleep. When morning comes, I talk myself into being strong, like those salty sailors who take each day as one more stretch of sea.

  Helen is in a tizzy of late. Harper rejected Magic Portholes, apparently because they wanted something from me, not her. Helen doesn’t come right out and say it, but I know she blames me for not fulf
illing the contract. My penance is this tedious job. She’s determined to get the book published and toils over the revision all day long. After work, she wants me to edit her writing when I’m exhausted and hardly able to think. It’s a constant tug of war with us.

  We’ll be poverty-stricken if Helen doesn’t sell the manuscript soon. And it’s all because of HIM. That unspeakable person isn’t what you’d call a man. I’d like to bang him over the head and knock him out of his selfish, shameful ways. He’s never lived any sort of hard life. How would he fare if he had to swing an ax all day long? After an hour, he’d break down and try to wrangle his way out of work with overblown words. It gives me a pitiful kind of pleasure to think that his foreman would smirk at him and order him back to work. Sometimes I imagine him shanghaied and slaving away on a cargo ship, where he’d wilt under the sun and scorn of no-nonsense sailors. But, honestly, I try not to waste too much time thinking about him.

  The honk and grind and soup lines of New York depress me. It’s all so seamy. I feel my dreams unraveling, the whole lot of them—my once shimmering, iridescent hopes. Will I ever publish again? “Poppy Island,” my old pirate ballad, is, I think, quite good. But it languishes in a trunk. Vanity Fair once accepted it on the condition I cut it down, but my supposedly infallible editor told me not to. Well, we know how that turned out. I still work on Lost Island, but whenever I take it up, I worry it’s mere drivel.

  I can’t let you think I’m completely miserable, for I do find glimmers of happiness. Sabra will soon be with us. She’ll have her big sister again, and I’ll help Helen take care of her and teach her all sorts of things.

  But, honestly, the thing that keeps me going is Ethan. I worry about him up there in the Arctic. I drift aimlessly without his letters and the joy of writing him. Do you know he didn’t say a word to me about the dangers of Point Barrow? He cares about me, you see. But I know it’s perilous.

  I anxiously count the days until I hear from him again. And when he’s back, I’ll invite him to visit, for I yearn to have him beside me so we can speak of the things we dream about. Do you know it’s been nearly 15 months since we met? I can’t imagine how I’d get on without him. He’s as essential to my world as the sea and bees, as meadows and trees.

  I’m so sorry Bert sees no way to bring the family together. You ought to let him know you and the girls can’t go on like this forever. Why don’t you come East this winter? You could spend some time with Bert and then settle in for a visit with us. We could drink cocoa and write to our heart’s content. I’m sure we’d inspire marvelous scrivenings in each other.

  So, dear Alice, I’m getting along well enough, considering everything. You mustn’t worry about me. Only do write and tell me how you’re doing so I can write back soon, for you’re my dearest friend, and I’m grateful I can unburden myself to you.

  With much love,

  Barbara

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  BARBARA AT SIXTEEN

  New York City, October–November 1930

  In October, a quickly scribbled note from Ethan arrived. He was back in Seattle and would write more as soon as he could; he only wanted to reassure her he was safe and missed her dreadfully.

  Barbara catapulted from foreboding—that tragedy might strike him in the Arctic or that time would dull his love—to bliss. She fired off an affectionate letter. He responded with a ten-page epistle. Oh, howling-fierce joy, he was still hers!

  November 23, 1930

  Dear Ethan,

  It’s terrific the captain has trusted you and your mate to keep the ship in order at the dock. Why shouldn’t he depend on as steady a sailor as you? Only I’m disappointed you can’t visit New York, even if it’s miserably cold here and dirt-crusted snow sullies the sidewalks and street edges. It’s not what you’d call pleasant or picturesque.

  Now that you’ve signed on for three more seasons of summer trading, I wonder when I’ll see you again. I’m pleased you’re saving for our life in Alaska, but I long to have you near, to gaze into your eyes, and shelter in your embrace. I hunger to talk of the things letters, dawdling one-sided exchanges that they are, can only hint at. Please tell me I won’t have to wait three whole years.

  Life in this big city is peculiar. After residing in villages and hopping about islands in the West Indies and South Pacific, it’s strange to cram into a subway like sardines and work in an office with people grinding away like automatons. It’s so IMPERSONAL. Were people meant to live in these gigantic buildings in cities covered by concrete? With only pigeons, crows, and sparrows for wild creatures? There are so many here who roam aimlessly, with little prospect for employment, that I wonder if they’d be better off in the countryside working the land. But farmers aren’t faring well either, so perhaps that makes no sense. What’s to become of this country and the beauties of our world?

  All this strife and suffering make me ponder evolution. The scientists speak of it abstractly, but I prefer to see into it, into the depths of life and its meanings. We are all of one stream—I know you agree—with seemingly simple plants and wild animals abounding, sea life plying the oceans, farmers planting the fertile land, even workers of the concrete cities producing goods. I wonder, though, if city-dwelling financiers and scientists have stepped out of the stream. They likely believe they’re above it, profiteering and pontificating like aristocracy or high priests. But with their worship of money and efficiency, they profane nature. For what is God if not beauty: the moon in full-faced glory; nature’s color and symmetry all unfolded, and wind and waves coursing the globe? What a travesty, so many fail to use their eyes to see, their ears to hear, their hearts to feel.

  If only Atlantis would rise again. We could sail to its shores in a trusty schooner and live and love with the simplicity and curiosity of nature wanderers. Let’s imagine doing just that, as I am in my novel. It shall be a tribute to a different kind of life. I yearn to turn my back on the maniacal side of civilization and float like a butterfly in the airstream of life.

  But I’ve turned philosophical and given you not a jot of news. Helen perseveres with Magic Portholes. She’s discovered a new way of telling the story. Wilson recommended she get it into the hands of an agent who knows all the big editors, so we’re hoping that strategy will succeed. I like my new job at the Personnel Research Federation well enough. At least I’m not reading abominable fiction for Fox. It’s full-time, and I earn $25 a week. I turn it all over to Helen. She’s the one who pays the bills.

  Helen and I are looking forward to a Woolworth’s foray to buy some trinkets for Sabra for Christmas. It’s lovely having my little sister again, though she’s such a CHILD. And it’s hardly right to celebrate Christmas with several million people out of work and struggling to feed themselves, not that Sabra is capable of grasping suffering on that scale.

  That’s quite enough for now, especially if I’m to fit these pages in an envelope and deposit them in tomorrow’s mail. I remain,

  Your devoted shipmate,

  Barbara

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  HELEN

  New York City, November–December 1931

  She should have known. Her lawyer had predicted it. As soon as Wilson marked a year of residency in California, he filed for divorce. There’d be no reconciliation. Her marriage was over. It had died three years earlier—when Wilson walked out on her and the girls.

  Heaping depravity on top of neglect, he claimed cruelty as the grounds. That doused the last embers of any desire to patch things up with him. She couldn’t possibly abide a man who ruthlessly twisted the truth for his selfish gain.

  She hired an attorney in New York to collaborate with her California lawyer. They requested a declaration of Wilson’s assets, which amounted to little: one beat-up Lincoln L parked in Maine; a nearly depleted stream of income from The Atlantic Monthly; and a modest advance on his soon-to-be-published novel. Wilson offered her half his advance, three hundred dollars, “out of kindness and consideration for
my daughters,” and reminded her he was also signing the house over to her.

  She asked her attorney: Could she press Wilson for more than the house and three hundred dollars, for instance, for ongoing alimony? Her Los Angeles attorney explained that California required some reason for divorce; if she wished to contest the terms or grounds, she’d have to countersue. In essence, she’d need to pay dearly for the sake of a dubious exercise. Even if she won a countersuit, there was little the court could order him to hand over, destitute as he was. In December, she told Barbara and Sabra she was granting their father a divorce. Barbara, who’d regularly urged her to resist divorce, just shrugged and said, “I don’t care about that low-down weasel anymore. The Follett family is a meteor that has blazed and crashed.”

  The three of them would make the best of a bad situation. The divorce left them on their own financially—which, for all practical purposes, they’d been for the past three years anyway. She’d urge her agent to keep sending the book around to publishers and, when the renters’ lease ran out in the spring, sell the house. What choice did she have but to look for work and start writing a new book? The next book would pick up where Magic Portholes left off and recount their South Seas’ adventure.

  Finding work, with unemployment rates as high as they were, would require hours and hours of beating the streets, and she couldn’t encumber herself with an eight-year-old. For the second time in three years, she’d need to turn the care of Sabra over to others. Anne and Oxford agreed to take Sabra in and send her to school in Hanover. Helen took some comfort in knowing Sabra would have old family friends for guardians and their two well-bred sons for playmates.

  Her heart broke as she hugged Sabra goodbye. Damn Wilson and his profligate ways, splintering the family to satisfy his lascivious cravings.

  In December, she received a letter from Alice Russell reporting that Wilson and Margaret had married in Arizona, apparently in a civil ceremony. She told Barbara: “They must have packed for Arizona before the ink dried on the divorce papers.” All Barbara said was, “He doesn’t deserve to be considered a father. He’s the prince of fools.”