by Liza Wieland
I think so, Elizabeth says.
And how do you suppose this will inform your future, Miss Bishop?
I think I will have to keep my eyes open. I think of the human eye. And the pupil is the past. It sees what it sees, knows what it knows.
You’ve lost me now.
Sorry, Miss Peebles. I’m just coming to these ideas myself.
But I think I understand just enough, Miss Peebles says, to know that the eye needs new things to look at. I hope you will be able to travel after college, to find these circumstances, to reorder, as you say. To be in familiar places will clog the works, as you’ve just explained it.
Yes, travel.
You realize, though, the dangers. Where will you go?
Europe, I expect.
I should be very careful there. The news out of Germany is distressing. I have a friend, a medical doctor, now in Manhattan, who left Berlin all of a sudden after reading Hitler’s autobiography. She says this is not uncommon, to be frightened this way by what’s going on there, especially for Jewish people. What else could go on, too. I want you to pay attention.
I will, Miss Peebles.
I like this one part of your essay in particular, Miss Bishop.
Miss Peebles turns over the pages of Elizabeth’s essay on Hopkins, then reads aloud.
We live in great whispering galleries, constantly vibrating and humming, or we walk through salons lined with mirrors where the reflections between the narrow walls are limitless, and each present moment reaches immediately and directly the past moments, changing them both.
That’s very complex.
Thank you, Miss Peebles.
And now tell me, what have you learned from Ibsen?
Nothing I didn’t already know.
What do you mean?
I know what I learned, Hallie says. A beautiful woman is always doomed.
Well, that’s a relief, Elizabeth says.
And you, Miss Bishop?
I’m not sure.
But she is sure. Peer Gynt: To write is to sit in judgement on oneself. And the future, that it’s like a stone in water, sinking and alone.
She gazes around Miss Peebles’s office, done up like a sitting room, with chintz sofa and curtains, silver tea service on a table between the windows, framed photographs of the Acropolis, the Eiffel Tower, the Houses of Parliament, bridges over the Danube. She’s a very tough taskmistress, Miss Peebles is, and often young women are invited into this room to hear terrible news about their futures. Even the desk is a wide inlaid dining table that appears to have been stolen out of a Saratoga mansion. It’s easy to let down one’s guard and then be savaged.
Did you ever ride the Cyclone? Miss Moore asks.
I don’t like roller coasters, Elizabeth says. But I have a friend who does.
* * *
Louise drives to Brooklyn, first to collect Miss Moore at her mother’s apartment on Cumberland Street. They are surprised to be invited upstairs by Mrs. Moore, who is seventy-three and gray eyed and very serious. The sitting room seems to be occupied more by animals—shells and feathers and painted eggs—than humans, even with the four of them crowded in. Mrs. Moore follows them into the hallway, takes Louise’s hand.
Since you are the driver, she says, and thoroughly unknown to me.
She closes her eyes and whispers a short prayer.
Thank you, Louise says.
You will want to stop your car exactly at the intersection of Surf Avenue and West Tenth Street, she says. Any farther and you will be too far for Marianne to walk comfortably.
Louise starts to say they cannot park on the boardwalk, but Elizabeth interrupts.
We will, she says. She has heard that some people who contradict Mrs. Moore are never invited back.
I understand that if a person stands or even sits up very smartly on this ride, his head will be cleanly severed from his body.
Mother, Miss Moore says. I will keep an eye on them.
I’m not worried about them, Marianne. You, however, can be a bit . . . flighty. She turns to Louise. Miss Crane, she says. I have no doubt you will take these two poets firmly in hand.
I will indeed, Louise says. You can count on me.
* * *
The Cyclone, Miss Moore tells them, is 2,640 feet long, with six fan turns and twelve drops. The first drop is at a 58.1 degree angle. Each of the three cars on the train can carry eight persons.
Why don’t you like roller coasters, Miss Bishop? Really, you must give it a go.
Trial by fire! Louise says.
Miss Moore proposes they sit in the front car. Elizabeth wants to refuse and make a gentle suggestion: the last car, perhaps? She tells herself she could just close her eyes.
You won’t be sick, will you? Miss Moore says.
Elizabeth shakes her head, very glad they have not yet eaten lunch.
As he slams and locks the gate of their car, the attendant looks concerned, leans in close to Elizabeth.
Be careful with your mother, there, he says. Some people have a weak ticker and don’t know it.
Yes, of course, Elizabeth says. Always. Thank you.
We have a medic and an ambulance right here, though. Just in case.
I don’t think that will be necessary, Elizabeth says.
We may need the medic for you, Miss Moore whispers.
Louise steps into the last car. She is alone for a moment but soon joined by three other riders, all men.
They look to be reasonable, calm fellows, Miss Moore says. See, that one has brought along his lunch! He won’t let Louise lose her head.
I hope not, Elizabeth says.
The ascent is agonizingly slow, the cars ratcheting higher with a sound like wood snapping: branches in an ice storm, kindling in a fire.
Look down! Miss Moore says. It’s like we’re climbing matchsticks!
The worst thing is that Elizabeth can’t see Louise and can’t know what reckless thing she might do. She can’t see what she imagines to be happening: the man offers Louise half his sandwich, Louise refuses at first, then changes her mind. The park, Surf Avenue, all of Brooklyn falls slowly away behind them.
Oh dear, she says, I’ve just remembered that I don’t care for heights.
Miss Moore smiles appreciatively, as if she thinks Elizabeth has just made a very good joke.
Then this will be your cure, Miss Bishop, she says.
They have almost reached the summit. Elizabeth tries to turn in her seat to catch a glimpse of Louise.
No, no, Miss Moore says. You must look straight at it or you’ll miss the experience. When we round the first bend, you’ll be able to see Miss Crane. We’ll be almost right beside her.
Bent in half, Elizabeth thinks. All kinds of rules get broken on this machine. The notion of time travel flashes into her mind, then out again.
They sit balanced at the top of the Cyclone for so long that Elizabeth believes the entire ride must have broken down. She wonders how they will be rescued. Helicopter? That would be worse than the usual descent.
The car begins to tip, as if in slow motion, as if taunting, and then suddenly it’s hurtling toward the ground. Elizabeth wants to close her eyes, but she can’t—the wind holds her eyelids open, or is it some kind of paralysis? The earth rushes at them, people below grow larger, sound changes from a low whistle to a fierce whine. Someone two cars back is screaming. It’s a girl, a child. Not Louise.
At the last second, they do not, in fact, crash through the timbered gully of the Cyclone but dive upward again and round the curve and yes, there is Louise, waving half a sandwich.
On the next descent, something whips across Elizabeth’s eyes (a snake? How could that be, this high up?). She turns to look at Miss Moore and sees the reddish-gray braid has unwound and the pins that held it are blowing into the car behind them, where two men in military dress catch them as if they’ve practiced this maneuver every day for years. Miss Moore looks strange and beautiful—unlikely is the word. A word in spite of itself.
&n
bsp; Three more whipsaw turns, and it’s over.
The first and last roller coaster ride of my life, Elizabeth says.
At least in the conventional sense, Miss Moore tells her. Really, it’s not very dangerous.
I’ve come to realize I don’t love danger, Elizabeth tells her. Of any sort.
It’s a good thing to know about oneself, I should think, Miss Moore says. And it will keep you safe or bored or both for your entire life.
But alive, Elizabeth says. There is that.
Louise strides toward them, grinning broadly, her mop of hair blown sideways, gleaming copper in the sun.
Oh, she says. Miss Moore! Now that was poetry!
Of a sort, Miss Moore says. Though not completely elegiac, as Miss Bishop would have it.
Elizabeth notices the soft magnetism that seems to swirl between Miss Moore and Louise. In the right light, they might be mistaken for mother and daughter, not so much their looks, but the way they relax into proximity but don’t quite touch. It’s as if they have known and will know each other all their lives.
All I want to do is kill you. After she whispers these words, late one night, Elizabeth’s mother disappears for eighteen years, and when she returns, she’s dead. That’s how she comes back, as a message from Uncle Jack three days before graduation: Your mother has died in the state hospital.
All I want to do is kill you. It is impossible to talk about such a sentiment expressed by one’s mother, and so Elizabeth doesn’t. She breathes it, though, in and out, every minute. There’s always been the fear, too, that what her mother said is a deed undone and looming ahead in some possible future. Or done continuously, as if neglect were a weapon, a blade driven in slowly, through the breastbone—or no, slanted a little left of center, ever closer to the heart.
And now she is dead. The threat shrivels to a little ache. Although sometimes her heart feels like a sponge held too long underwater. A sponge in the Hudson, a sponge in the ocean.
* * *
For some reason, Elizabeth tells Margaret, I really thought, I thought she might, you know, just turn up. Maybe for commencement. She would come to her senses and do the necessary calculations, and she would know what year it is, and where I was. She would have to ask my uncle—and then . . .
I feel so sorry for you, Margaret says. It’s such terrible timing.
They are lying on Margaret’s bed, Elizabeth on her side and Margaret behind her, half sitting, so that she can stroke Elizabeth’s hair. The room has a curved wall of windows—they are in the tower suite, seven floors up, so that the evening sun illuminates them like a stage light, but in a theater without an audience. Everyone else is so far away, groundlings who never even think to look up. Elizabeth has loved these rooms all year: so much exquisite privacy. Margaret’s undivided, careful, cool attention. Their conversation about art and poetry and beauty. The first thing in the morning and the last thing at night, followed by the click of Margaret’s bedroom door closing, tiny rebuke, with Elizabeth on the outside.
I’m crying all over your duvet, Elizabeth says.
I can wash it. Anyway, it’s only tears.
I guess I pretended in my head that I had some family, and I believed it.
And now it’s real that you don’t.
It’s real. I’m sorry to be so pathetic.
Elizabeth lifts Margaret’s hand from her hair and tries to pull her into a hug. Margaret resists, moves off the bed and toward the windows.
Do you want something to drink, Elizabeth? she says.
I want everything to drink.
Sorry, but I only have something. It’s just sherry.
Margaret opens her armoire, reaches down behind the shoes. Elizabeth hears a clanking of glass that suggests more than one bottle. The sound makes her cry again, the camaraderie of it, the promise of an evening talking to Margaret.
I’ll take sherry, Elizabeth says.
We’ll be your family tomorrow, Margaret says. Remember all the trouble we got into our first year? And my mother still likes you. She’d be glad to have you at our table for the president’s luncheon.
Elizabeth rolls over onto her back. The light on Margaret’s hair turns some strands a glittery red, as if they were heated filaments.
It feels like I’m losing everything. All at once.
No, you’re not. You’ll come to New York and we’ll all be together, and then Europe.
But not you. Like this.
Elizabeth holds out her arms to Margaret.
Not me, Elizabeth. I’m sorry.
* * *
My mother has a friend in Paris, Louise says.
A mother with friends, Elizabeth says. Isn’t that something? My mother’s friends were probably all lunatics. If she had any.
I’m telling you this for a reason, Louise says. And by the way, you don’t need any more of that.
She screws the cap back on the gin bottle, stashes it on top of the bookcase.
Sorry.
It’s all right.
I can still reach it there.
I’ll see that you don’t. You’re going to stay here tonight.
I’d love to.
Anyway, my mother’s friend, Clara Longworth de Chambrun. The comtesse de Chambrun. And the sister-in-law of Alice Roosevelt. And rich. And eccentric. She has odd theories about Shakespeare, mainly that he was a Catholic.
And so we should meet her?
Eventually. She has an apartment beside the Luxembourg Gardens. My mother will rent it for us.
Your mother is too good.
We both think you should go to Paris.
And get in some trouble.
No, that’s my department. You’re to be my chaperone. Hallie’s going over first. You should go with her. Margaret and I have to placate our mothers for a little while, so they’ll let us go off on our own. But they will. They think you’re a good influence.
I’m glad Margaret’s going, too.
Elizabeth, Louise says. That’s never going to change. You need to . . . think about it differently.
I don’t know if I can, Elizabeth says.
You will. One day you’ll wake up and everything will be . . . The whole idea will just be gone. And you’ll be good friends and you’ll barely remember this.
I don’t think I’m capable of that, Louise.
We don’t know what we’re capable of, Elizabeth.
Until someone tells us.
GEOGRAPHY II
1936
In their cabin aboard the S.S. Königstein, lying still in her narrow bunk, eyes open, Elizabeth imagines burial. For a while, Hallie, in the top bunk, snores gently. Then she hops down, brushes her teeth, and slurps from the tap in the tiny WC.
What are you doing? Hallie wants to know. You’re not sleeping. Let’s go meet some of the other passengers. I hear they’re mostly Germans.
Elizabeth closes her eyes. It’s late, she says.
I’ve met one called Albert Nock. He writes for The Atlantic. He’s actually American. Elizabeth, you’d like him.
I don’t know about that.
He says our itinerary is all wrong. Instead of Paris, we should go to the Breton coast.
We’d be traveling backward.
We’ve got time. You can’t have the Chambrun apartment for another month. Louise won’t even be there until then. And it’s a good thing. She’d hate this. How did you get us on a Nazi boat anyway?
I looked for the cheapest, Elizabeth says. What does it mean, a Nazi boat?
German. Dangerous. I don’t really know actually.
Dangerous. That’s funny. I keep dreaming I’m being chased. But by a feeling. Not a creature.
What feeling?
I don’t know, Elizabeth says.
But she does know. It’s homesickness, but a strange sort. The stranger’s version: she hasn’t had a home for ages, not since her mother went into the hospital and never came out.
Maybe it’s the Nazis chasing you.
Do you think this trip w
as a mistake?
I think it would have been a mistake to stay home, Hallie says. I’m glad you could come with us.
I have a little money now.
Inheritance. Call a thing by its name.
I don’t deserve it.
No one ever does, Hallie says. She touches Elizabeth’s cheek. No one but you. I for one will be glad to get to Paris and have a social life!
* * *
Some passengers, mostly German soldiers, are drinking in the ship’s canteen. Hallie and Elizabeth watch a slight young man move from table to table, pressing up against the backs of the soldiers.
What is he doing? Hallie says.
You won’t believe it, Elizabeth says. Listen when he comes closer.
The young man bends, whispers to each soldier, Oh, you are a prince!
Oh no! Hallie says. I hope he stays away.
He’s not interested in us.
The soldiers behave as if they’ve experienced these attentions before. A few roll their eyes. Elizabeth imagines they’ve endured much worse.
Or will.
* * *
The civilians on the ship are a force of nature, like some previously uncharted and violent weather. They fill up the narrow passageways, pushing past Elizabeth and Hallie without greeting or apology, dark coats whipping open against Elizabeth’s legs. The women’s heels pound like gunfire, the men’s boots like explosions. At six o’clock on the first night, pairs of Germans rush arm in arm from the cabins, steely eyed, forcing Elizabeth to flatten herself against the walls.
I feel like a small bug, Elizabeth says.
It will be better at the table, Hallie says. They’ll have a drink and relax. They’re just, you know, reserved.
The purser leads them to a table in the center of the dining room, already occupied by a man and a woman and two girls, maybe eight and ten, who must be their daughters. Hallie begins a conversation in her phrasebook German—where are you from, where are you going, do you speak English. The man answers stiffly—München, Antwerpen, nein. The dining room is crowded and too hot. Conversation roars around them. Elizabeth feels exposed, as if a spotlight is being trained upon their table. She thought there might be windows, even a line of portholes along one wall, but the room is sealed, as if they were traveling in a submarine. The din of talk fades as plates are delivered to the tables. Elizabeth remembers grammar school and the times girls misbehaved and were punished with silent lunch—the cruelty of that. She notices that sounds are being replaced by smells, of cabbage and another sour, yeasty aroma, like spilled beer. When their plates finally arrive, loaded with watery vegetables, a slice of roast, and a hunk of dark bread, the man and woman look accusingly at Hallie and Elizabeth, as if they have prepared this grim dinner.