Time After Time

by Lisa Grunwald

  It was two in the morning, and Nora was more than a little tipsy by the time she and Margaret left. A few of their friends chipped in to treat them to a taxi, so Nora’s last image of the evening was the Champs-Élysées, where the upswept chestnut trees were decorated with a thousand Christmas lights, as if the branches had put forth shining white buds.

  * * *

  —

  Bellowing and raucous, the SS Paris pulled out of Le Havre nine hours later, and though it was the last day of November and well below freezing, Nora stayed on deck until Ollie insisted she come inside to get warm.

  Ollie—suave and avuncular as always—had claimed to have some business with one of the galleries in New York, though Nora suspected he was really coming as a self-appointed chaperone. She didn’t mind. It had been more than two weeks since she had found out that her father, Frederick, had cancer. Nora’s mother had written to say he was probably dying, and that it was time for Nora to come home. At first, Nora had suspected Elsie of, at the very least, hyperbole. But as soon as the letters were replaced by phone calls, Nora booked passage on the Paris. For a year and a half, she had reveled in the jagged energy of the nightclubs, the consolation of the cafés, the profusion of flower carts and dress shops—and always the parks and boulevards, where in summer the leaves on the trees had waved her on like soft-gloved hands. And now it was time to go.

  The crossing took five days, and Nora spent most of them on deck, sitting under two steamer blankets and reading a P. G. Wodehouse novel she’d found in the ship’s library. In Paris, she’d read H. G. Wells, E. M. Forster, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. But now she didn’t want to be inspired, only distracted.

  The Paris was indeed Paris all over. Its grand double staircase, modeled on that of the opera house, flowed and flared out under high arched ceilings. Its marvelous café served pastries and coffee on an airy veranda. Its dance floor was famously made up of lighted glass squares. But Nora had already said her goodbyes to Paris at the Caveau.

  * * *

  —

  It was common practice all over the world that when ocean liners came into port at any hour past sunset, passengers could stay on board and not disembark until morning. The laws of Prohibition dictated that liquor had to be locked up three miles from the pier, but whether people were still drunk or still secretly drinking, a lot of them seemed determined to stay until the last moment.

  Nora wasn’t tempted. She wanted to see her father as soon as she could, so the minute New York came into view, she donned her pale-blue day dress, her pearl earrings, and the gold charm bracelet Frederick had given her at her graduation. She brushed her hair, powdered her nose, and applied fresh dark lipstick in the bee-stung style of the times. She shut the last of her steamer trunks, tucked francs for tip money into her pockets, and, after one last glance at the mirror over her coat’s silver-fox collar, stepped out of the cabin.

  “It’s still going to be hours,” Ollie said when she knocked on his cabin door. “The trunks have to go down first, and then there’s customs.”

  “I don’t want to wait until morning,” she said.

  “All right, then. I’ll have to come with you.”

  Up on deck, the three red-and-black smokestacks shone, jaunty as trumpet keys. Despite the hour, some people were clustered on the pier, waving hello, and reporters stood ready to take note—and, if possible, photographs—of whatever celebrities might be trying to sneak ashore. Among the crowd was William, the Lansings’ sometime driver, who deftly hustled his way through the crowd once he spotted Nora descending the long gangplank.

  “Your mother expects you to come right home,” William said when Nora told him she planned to go straight to the hospital, leaving him to wait for the trunks. “She won’t be at all pleased with you.”

  “My mother is never pleased with me,” Nora said. “And I’ve come to see my father.”

  * * *

  —

  It was past four A.M. by the time she and Ollie flagged one of the taxis waiting at the pier. Nora told the driver, “Lenox Hill Hospital, Seventy-sixth and Lex,” sat back, and then straightened up again, stricken.

  “What?” Ollie said.

  “Money,” Nora whispered. “I forgot to get American dollars.”

  Ollie presented his wallet, which was tidily lined with fresh U.S. currency.

  “Oh, you’re brilliant,” Nora said.

  “Oh, I know,” he said.

  “I can’t believe you remembered.”

  “I’ve got less on my mind than you.”

  At the hospital Ollie took a seat in the waiting room and refused Nora’s entreaties for him to go to his hotel. “It’s my job to see you get home safely,” he said, and Nora was in no mood to argue.

  One of the nurses walked her down the hall. There were scuff marks on the heavy wood doors of Frederick Lansing’s hospital room, scars of who knew how many medical emergencies. Nervously—the only time Nora had been in a hospital was when, at ten, she’d had her tonsils out—she pulled back a dingy plaid curtain. She had figured she might find her father asleep. But for whatever reason—illness or insomnia—there he was in striped silk pajamas, reading, excessively thin, but well-shaven and alert, just as if he were sitting in the parlor at home, his feet on the ottoman by the fire. Meanwhile, a nurse—presumably a private nurse hired by Elsie—dozed, improbably, in a small wooden chair, her head against the white wall, her mouth open.

  “What in heaven’s name are you doing here?” Frederick asked, as if he had just caught his daughter sneaking in late from a date.

  “What do you think I’m doing here?” Nora said. “Mother told me you weren’t well, and I figured she must be driving you crazy.”

  Nora’s father beamed. “Absolutely crackers,” he said. “And so you’ve come to rescue me?”

  Glass bottles of fluids hung from metal poles, dripping medicine into her father’s arm. Heedless of them, he gestured for Nora to lean down, and he hugged her.

  “What are you doing awake, Dad?”

  “Waiting up for you, apparently.” He smiled at her. “You beauty.”

  “Dad.”

  “I want to hear,” he said, sitting up straighter. “Tell me all about Paris.”

  Nora took off her coat and sat at the foot of his bed. “Well, what do you want to know?” she asked.

  “Everything you didn’t want to put in your letters home,” he said conspiratorially. “Everything you didn’t tell your mother.” He took her hand. “Start with how long it took you to get that dandy haircut.”

  Nora laughed and ran her hands through her hair, which fell between her ears and her shoulders.

  “It was a lot shorter when I first got it cut,” she said, and she told Frederick about the day she and Margaret had gone to a salon on the rue de Bac.

  “Margaret was furious,” she said. “She got a coif with the ends flipped up, and she said she looked like a playing-card king.”

  Frederick laughed. “Did she?”

  Nora nodded. “It took weeks for it to grow out.”

  “What else?” Frederick asked.

  “Oh, Dad. The art. It’s everywhere. It’s every single place you go—not just the galleries and the museums, but even the smallest café on the narrowest street. There’ll be a basket of bread that should be a painting, and it’s inside a restaurant that should be a painting, on a street corner that should be a painting.”

  “And you?” Frederick asked. “Did you get to paint the way you wanted to? And draw?”

  “Both,” Nora said. “And I brought a bunch of my sketches home. I’ll bring some tomorrow to brighten up this room.”

  Frederick smiled again and closed his eyes. His eyelids were honeycombed with tiny purple blood vessels, and for some reason he had no eyelashes.

  “Dad?” Nora whispered.

  “I’m rig
ht here,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Keep talking. I’m just resting my eyes. Tell me about my daughter the artist.”

  He was asleep moments later, just in time for the nurse to rouse herself.

  “Who are you?” she asked Nora sharply. “It’s way past visiting hours.”

  “I’m his daughter,” Nora said in as soft a voice as she could. “I’ve been away.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, dear,” the nurse said. The nurse’s sympathy—coming so quickly after her brusqueness—was all Nora needed to realize that Elsie had not been exaggerating about Frederick’s condition.

  “Can I have a few moments alone with him?” Nora asked.

  “Of course,” the nurse said.

  “And could you tell Mr. Halliday, the gentleman in the waiting room, that I’ll be just a little while longer?”

  Alone, Nora took the nurse’s chair, studying Frederick through the white enamel bars of his footboard. Motionless in sleep, his face seemed to have deflated; his skin looked less like flesh than like pale-gray fabric.

  The radiator in the room clanked noisily but didn’t seem to disturb him. There was a small throw rug on the floor and drapes on the double windows. Nora wondered if this was commonplace in a private hospital room, or whether Elsie had brought these things uptown. She could imagine her mother’s tone of voice as she told the nurse exactly what was needed, what was lacking. The nurse must have loved that, Nora thought. Elsie, as usual, getting her way. Nora suddenly realized that she herself was half asleep. She stood up, put on her coat, bent over carefully to kiss her father’s forehead, then rushed to relieve Ollie of his post in the waiting room.

  * * *

  —

  It was after six in the morning, and it was cold. Ollie and Nora stood on Lexington Avenue at the hospital’s main entrance. A few automobiles slipped by, followed by half a dozen horse carts, but otherwise there was stillness. Across the street, a line of trees looked bare and tangled.

  “Where are all the cabs?” Nora said.

  “Isn’t there a queue somewhere?” Ollie asked.

  “No, it’s not like that here, Ollie. They cruise, and you just flag one down.”

  They were quiet.

  “He looked so thin,” Nora said.

  Ollie said, “I’m very sorry.”

  “I’m going to miss him so much,” Nora said. “I could have been here this whole last year—” Tears came to her eyes.

  “Don’t do that,” Ollie said.

  “What?”

  “Don’t think that way.”

  Nora used her right hand to fiddle with her charm bracelet, remembering how it had looked in the narrow velvet box Frederick had handed her after graduation; remembering how he’d waited until they could be alone, without Elsie. The gold heart with her name engraved on it was the largest of the charms, but there had been others, representing things she loved: a ballerina, a pair of ice skates, an ice cream cone, a Coca-Cola bottle, a birthday cake, and a phonograph player with a top that actually opened. Best of all was the gold artist’s palette with spots of bright paint made by colored enamel. She held that one now. My daughter the artist. No one had ever believed in her the way her father did.

  “Why don’t you wait back inside?” Ollie asked.

  “I’m all right,” Nora told him.

  A few more minutes passed. “We’ll have to take the subway,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  She was surprised to see how full the train was at this hour, especially given how empty the streets had been. But these were working-class men and women, riding to or from whatever jobs they had. In the double seats that faced forward, half a dozen washed-out riders were asleep with their heads against the windows. Unlike the Métro Nora had ridden so often in Paris, this car was nearly silent.

  Ollie led them to a seat along the windows.

  “It’s always been your dad, then?” Ollie asked. “You and your mum—”

  “Chalk and cheese,” Nora said. “Isn’t that what you Brits say? I know it’s strange. She loves me, but I think I’ve scandalized her. She’s not bad to me, but for some reason she just doesn’t like me. Or understand me. Never has.”

  Ollie said nothing. Nora allowed herself to be lulled by the rhythm of the train, imagining she was still on the ship. But the image of her father’s face, tightened and narrowed by age and illness, was inescapable. She had called him Dad, but she’d kept thinking, Oh, Daddy.

  Just as the train was slowing on its approach to the station at Grand Central, it came to a harsh stop, and every passenger who had been asleep woke up, many looking startled, some apparently annoyed by the delay. Several moments of stillness followed, and people checked their watches. Then the train lurched wildly, and the lights exploded in succession: flared, popped, and smoked, like a long line of firecrackers rimming the top of the subway car. Now the passengers, eyes up, were as spellbound as a circus crowd. Soon, however, enveloped in the growing darkness, they started to clamber and shout. Black smoke began to make some of them cough, and everything that had been too bright and silent was now too noisy and dark.

  Ollie had been hurled out of his seat and violently slammed into a metal pole. Nora’s body, thrown partly on top of him, had been cushioned by his, but something inside her felt twisted. Her whole chest and stomach hurt when she tried to catch her breath. As she struggled to her knees, men and women were yelling and hustling past her to find a way out.

  Ollie was lying facedown. Nora felt for his shoulders and shook him. His body was leaden. She shouted, “Ollie! Ollie! Come on, Ollie,” but he didn’t move. Nora looked up, desperate for someone who could help, but no one seemed to be helping anyone. Passengers were climbing up onto the seats, smashing windows, then crawling through the openings, so bent on saving themselves that the shards of broken glass didn’t stop them.

  Could one blow to the head kill a man in an instant? With all her strength, Nora managed to turn Ollie over, and when she bent down to his face, she could see in even this dimmest light that it was covered in blood. Another passenger tripped over her, trying to get out.

  “Better move, miss,” he said.

  “Can you help me with my friend? Please?”

  But already the man was gone. Nora put her fingers on Ollie’s wrist but couldn’t find his pulse; she leaned in close but couldn’t feel his breath. Now there were waves of people rushing past her and over each other. She could smell burning rubber. She heard cries of “Fire!” Someone stepped on Ollie’s arm. It was a stampede, and Nora understood that there would be no way to save Ollie, even if he was still alive. She shook him once more, but he was lifeless.

  One of the subway doors had been pried open by now, and Nora, standing up, was swept through it amid the crush of people. To her horror, she realized that some passengers were trapped underneath the throng, and at one point she stepped on someone’s hand. Bent over in pain, she moved as quickly as she could. A few times she felt sure she was going to fall, but somehow she braced herself, and for a few minutes at least, she was able to keep going. Through the smoke, which was now so thick that it sickened her, she saw not too far ahead the lights and signs of the subway platform. Then someone rammed into her, hard, from the side, and she fell onto the tracks, her chest and stomach hitting one of the rails. She barely managed to stand up. She was trying to climb onto the platform, but she thought she must have broken her ribs, because it hurt just to lift her arms, and it hurt to breathe. She shook off her coat and dropped her purse.

  By now people were scrambling up on either side of her, not stopping to look back or down, only desperate to leave the darkness behind them.

  “Please!” Nora shouted, and, amazingly, a woman who’d just made it onto the platform turned back and knelt to reach for Nora’s hands.

  “Come, child,” she said. “Grab hold. You must, or they�
��ll trample you like the others.”

  Nora braced herself and took hold. She felt her charm bracelet digging into her wrist and snapping off. She put one foot on the wall and tried to help herself up, but the pain was stronger than the darkness or the fear. Half conscious now, she realized that the woman was pulling her up like a body over the side of a boat, but the boat was the edge of the platform, and that didn’t make any sense, and the edge of the platform smacked her ribs, and she felt something break even deeper inside her, and when she tried to breathe she couldn’t.

  * * *

  —

  Someone must have carried her upstairs. The next thing she was aware of, she was lying on a cold floor, hearing cries, shouts, and orders. “Broken leg!” “Burns!” “Blunt trauma!” “Internal bleeding!” Now a man with a reassuring hand—maybe he was a doctor—knelt beside her and said, “Just lie still. We’re going to take you to the hospital.”

  With victims on either side of her, and more being brought up from the tracks, Nora continued to hear curt instructions, shouts of alarm, moans and bleats of pain. For a few minutes, she was able to keep her eyes open, staring up at the twinkling ceiling, stars against a blue-green sky the color of ocean, not night. Where were the real stars, she wondered, the stars that her wonderful Paris skylight had framed? She searched for the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, Leo.

  “Ollie,” she said. “Ollie.”

  Then, in a blaze, the pain in her chest and stomach overwhelmed her, and even as the pain dulled, Nora realized with a panicked precision that she was going to die. It was a specific understanding of death, gripping and clear in a way that, even minutes before, leaning over Ollie, and even an hour before, standing by her father’s bed and looking at his wasted face, she hadn’t been able to have. One of her last thoughts was whether her father felt the same way. She had been forced onto the threshold of a door that was seconds from closing behind her. The past and present ceased to exist, or rather, each of them pulled at her. But she wasn’t able to turn back, and she wasn’t able to go forward.