The World of Tomorrow

by Brendan Mathews

  Alice knew Jimmy was gone for good and only halfheartedly went through the motions of wondering when she would hear from him again. It gave her something to think about, something to distract her from the fears that came with carrying his baby. Their baby, not just his, but Jimmy was gone, so maybe just her baby. She had prayed for this since her wedding night—a baby, and then many more to follow—but she had never imagined herself deserted, doing it alone. Hoping for letters, for money, for Jimmy’s return—it wasn’t for her benefit but for the baby’s. The baby deserved better than to be born into a broken family.

  Things got worse before they got better. One morning her father didn’t come in for breakfast and when she trudged out to the milking parlor—seven months pregnant, her feet swollen and the rest of her dripping sweat in the Indian summer heat—she found him on the concrete floor, looking like someone had flattened half his face with a shovel. A stroke, the doctor said, not big enough to kill him but bad enough to confine him to his bed, his speech garbled and his body half frozen. She put up a notice in the post office offering board and lodging and a small wage for farm help, and after two weeks she got her first and only reply: on her doorstep stood Tom Cronin.

  And then things got better. Not quickly, and not all at once, but Tom’s arrival brought a steadiness to the farm that hadn’t existed, she had to admit, since before she had married Jimmy.

  Tom could be gruff, and quiet, but over the table they started to talk. He spent time with her father, sitting with him in front of the woodstove and telling him of the day’s work and making a plan for the day ahead. In time he told Alice about the life he’d left behind, and she told him about Jimmy and how she’d been too blind to see what was plain to everyone else. One morning when Tom had started the milking and Alice was tending to the baby, her father put his one good hand on her arm and said, “Marry that one.” When she reminded him that she was already married, he shook his head with great effort and said, “Good as dead.”

  Soon her father passed and it was just the three of them. She had named the boy Henry, after her father, and though Tom was shy with the baby at first, he came to treat him like he was his own son. The women in town started to talk—Look at her with no husband and that man always around—but Alice had long since learned not to listen to town girls. When the second baby, a girl, came along, she was a new beginning. Grace, they named her. The world could think what it wanted.

  “YOU’RE GOING TO need a bath tonight,” she said to Henry. Her fingers were gritty from where she had touched his hair.

  “I don’t want to take a bath,” he said. “I want Tom to come home.” He had been talking about Tom’s return—wondering, asking, pleading—from the moment they had left Tom at the depot.

  “And what if he came home and found you smelling like a chicken coop? What kind of welcome would that be?”

  Henry eyed her quizzically, puzzling over hidden chains of cause and effect. Was it possible that taking a bath could trigger Tom’s return? Or was this a parent’s trick to get him into the tub, with nothing to be gained for himself? Taking a bath. Not taking a bath. It was a big risk either way.

  Alice wiped her hands on her apron and told him to run along. Grace would be up from her nap soon, and she hadn’t yet finished hanging the sheets. As Henry sped away, she said to no one but the laundry, “I want Tom to come home, too.” It had been almost a week and she hadn’t heard a word from him. She knew that he had not left her, and she believed that if anything terrible had happened to him, somehow she would know. She had no choice but to wait for him to appear at the door as he had done before, all those years ago. And when he did, she would take him in her arms and know that it was him, her Tom, and then she would slap him once more in that big ugly mug and tell him never, ever, to make her worry like that again. She hoped it would be soon. Henry missed his Tom.

  BATTERY PARK

  LILLY DID NOT LIKE boats and the way they troubled her stomach and pummeled her sense of balance. During the crossing from Europe, she swore she could feel the chug of the engines and the slap and surge of every wave as the ship bobbed on the uncertain waters of the Atlantic. So why, then, was she queuing with crowds of tourists—mothers and fathers sweating in the noontime heat, children crying as ice cream cones melted down their fat pink fists—to board a ferry for the Statue of Liberty? The ferry looked like a child’s toy among the ocean liners. Even at the dock, it sputtered and belched black smoke into water choked with the refuse of the earlier tourist hordes. As her foot touched the deck, the ferry lurched and she placed a protective hand over the body of her camera. Before she could get her bearings, the others jostled past her for space along the rail and she again asked herself what could have compelled her to make this journey. But she knew: it was Josef’s fault.

  Lilly and Josef had made a twenty-item list before she left Prague: Things for Lilly to Do in New York. Josef knew that she would devote all of her time to her work. Yes, she would explore the city block by block, but she would seek out its forgotten corners, and she would do it with a camera around her neck, on the hunt for the next shot. Her late nights would not be spent at the city’s hottest nightclubs; she would not drink gin and dance to jazz among tuxedoed gangsters. No, she would spend her nights in her darkroom, getting drunk on the fumes rising from the developing tray. Josef had spelled out this vision of her time in New York and Lilly couldn’t disagree. To save her from herself, he had started the New York List with items culled from Busby Berkeley movies and a brochure printed by the Foundation. WELCOME TO NEW YORK! was emblazoned in bright red letters across the first page. The inside was a slick, linear map of the city, all bright colors and sharp angles—a city of candy and chrome. Numbered dots signaled the can’t-miss attractions, each briefly and ecstatically described.

  The Museum of Modern Art: The world’s newest great museum!

  Chinatown: The mystery of Old China in the middle of Manhattan!

  The World’s Fair: The World of Tomorrow is waiting for you! (coming April 1939)

  “It’s going to be waiting a long time for me,” Lilly said. “Can you imagine the crowds?”

  “That’s why you go,” Josef said. “The crowds. The energy. And when you come home, you can tell me what the future looks like.”

  They were sitting on the sofa in Josef’s apartment—the one that he would be evicted from in May—and as he wrapped one arm around her and drew her close, she pressed her head to his chest. They stayed that way for a moment, and then a moment longer. She could feel his heartbeat. “I don’t care about the future,” she said. “I just want today.”

  All through dinner that night, Josef continued to add items to the list. Tea in Chinatown, he wrote. The Statue of Liberty. Top of the Empire State Building. Walk across Brooklyn Bridge.

  “What’s so special about a bridge?” she said. “And what is Brooklyn, anyway?”

  “It’s the place on the other side of the bridge,” Josef said. “You don’t have to go there, but the bridge is very famous. Sometimes lunatics and the brokenhearted jump off it.”

  “To their death?”

  “I assume so.”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  Josef left it on the list, with one notation: Walk across Brooklyn Bridge (do not jump!).

  Lilly stubbed out a cigarette and surveyed the ever-growing list. She wasn’t a tourist. She was going to America to work.

  Josef laughed at her haughty expression, her defense of her art. “Upon your return, I am going to require thrilling stories about your adventures in America,” he said. “If I ask, ‘What did you do in America, my darling?’ and your only answer is ‘I took photographs, my pet,’ then I am going to be very, very disappointed. And very bored.”

  Lilly still had the list. She carried it with her on the ferry, just as she had carried it all over the city, in the hope that she might stumble across one of Josef’s planned destinations. The list was in his handwriting, and along with the few letters she h
ad received and one photograph—Josef smiling behind a cloud of cigarette smoke, looking quite dashing—it was all that she had of him. How could she have taken only a single photograph of Josef? She had come upon him talking and drinking with friends at a café near the Liberated Theater and before he saw her, she had framed the shot and clicked the shutter. But only that once.

  There were twenty items on the list and she had crossed off only two.

  On Monday, just before her appointment with Mr. Crabtree, she had found herself on the sidewalk trying to believe it was still possible to save Josef despite Mr. Musgrove’s flight to Mexico or wherever fate had whisked him. She took the list out of her purse as a way to fortify herself, and the first words she saw, in Josef’s abysmal handwriting, were Shopping on Fifth Avenue. She had scoffed at that one. “Home to the world’s most exclusive retailers,” the brochure had called Fifth Avenue, and even Josef had laughed. “Someone had better tell Paris they’ve been supplanted,” he said. But there it was on the list, and here she was on Fifth Avenue. She wandered into a shop a block north of the Foundation’s offices and purchased a silk scarf: bold and flame-like, an almost lurid red. It was an extravagance, but she’d been careful with the money the Foundation had given her and if Josef teased her—You are Madame Bloch’s daughter after all!—then she would blame it on him and his list. And anyway, the scarf reminded her of him, and of the night they had met at her friend’s party. They left the party together and walked, late into the night, by the banks of the Vltava. They crossed the Charles Bridge and wound through the lanes that approached Prague Castle. On a silent empty street chalked in gray stone and moonlight, they saw a brilliant red dress draped over the wrought-iron rail of a balcony. Was it drying in the night air? Had it been tossed there in a fit of passion? Was it a signal to a lover to come calling? They had speculated, joked, invented preposterous explanations. The only thing they were sure of was its beauty.

  As she walked across the plaza to her meeting with Mr. Crabtree, Lilly had knotted the scarf around her neck—a sort of talisman, a way to keep Josef with her. Why had she become so superstitious these past few days? And what good had it done for her, anyway? After she was ushered out by Mr. Crabtree, Lilly rode the elevator to the lobby stunned by Mr. Crabtree’s obstinate conviction that all would be well. Such an easy thing to believe when you could retreat to your office occupied by Indian plunder and emptied of hysterical Czechs who pestered you for favors you were unable or unwilling to grant.

  By the time she had reached the lobby, she was shattered and disoriented. She unsnapped the clasp on her purse but instead of retrieving a handkerchief, she came away with the list. At the same moment, her gaze alighted on a sign before another bank of elevators: OBSERVATION DECK. She looked quickly at the list and joined the queue. It wasn’t the Empire State Building, but it would have to do. She was running out of time; she needed stories to bring home with her.

  The crowded elevator rose and rose beyond any imaginable height. When the doors finally parted, Lilly let herself be swept along through a small room, up a flight of stairs, out a narrow door—and found herself in the very rafters of the city. Below her was the grid of regimented streets, a landscape of buildings topped with water tanks. There, so close she could almost touch it, was the Empire State Building soaring higher still, and there too was the Chrysler Building, which made up in style whatever it lacked in raw height. To one side lay the narrow ribbon of the East River, stapled over with bridges that linked the island to the low, mottled city that spread to the east. To the other side, she saw the Hudson River. It seemed that a running start would allow her to vault across to the limitless expanse of America. In that direction, a person could lose herself; go west and keep going, with nothing to stop you but the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles distant. If she set out that way, who would ever find her? There were so many places to hide.

  Hadn’t Josef himself told her to stay? His last letter had put it quite bluntly: I love you but do not return. The city is in the grip of a madness. Even sensible people believe that this is as bad as it will get; that our guests can be resisted, or even overcome. Josef thought otherwise. He had lawyer friends who worked in the Castle, friends who already knew enough not to be seen in public with Josef—a Jew, a lawyer, a leftist, and a columnist for a recently shuttered newspaper. They had told him that legislation was already being drafted that defined who was Jewish and how exemptions could be granted to those deemed essential. You will perhaps be surprised to hear, he wrote, that I will not be deemed essential. Farther down the page he wrote, You are essential to me but not to these idiots. Therefore you MUST stay. A postscript dashed along the bottom of the page told her that this could be his last letter. Censorship had become routine, but he managed to get a friend bound for Zurich to post the letter on his behalf. He signed off, as always, Your favorite, Josef.

  The ferry lurched as its engines slowed. The boat was scudding toward the pier, and the other passengers pushed past Lilly for a better view of the statue. Lilly was left alone near the stern, facing east, and she could see on the horizon the hot glow of the Atlantic under the midmorning sun. She knew what lay that way. Miles and miles of ocean leading inexorably to a port, a train, a city where everything had changed. She was going back to a place where she could not hide, only disappear; where her papers would allow for only one journey, and one destination. She burned like the morning sun to see Josef again, but for the first time she asked herself, What if I cannot find him? What if he was already gone?

  Even after receiving Josef’s letter, she had never seriously considered the idea that she would stay in America while he remained in Prague. If Mr. Musgrove could not bring Josef to New York, then of course she would return to him. But yesterday at the top of the RCA Building, she had let herself get swept away by the possibility of staying in America—of abandoning Prague, and Josef, too. And now here she was, imagining him gone, or lost forever, as if that would excuse the betrayal taking root within her. She should have spent the day packing for the voyage, preparing to return home. Her luggage was due to the agent no later than noon on Saturday. Instead she had unfolded the list and, eyes closed, chosen the next item. Her finger had landed on The Statue of Liberty and now here she was, riding this ridiculous ferry, sick to her stomach and even more sick at heart. Soon she would climb to the crown, and she would look to the east, and when she saw the midday glow on the horizon, she would try not to think of burning cities but of the promise of the next sunrise.

  FORDHAM HEIGHTS

  FROM THE KITCHEN, MARTIN could hear Rosemary’s muffled voice singing the girls a lullaby, “Toora Loora” or “Give Her a Kiss” or one of her own invention that worked each girl’s name into the tune (Katie and Evie are my sweethearts…). Next came the click of the door and Rosemary’s feet on the floorboards, laced through with a melody of ssssshhhhs directed at the girls’ room. Through the open windows came the murmur, laughter, and shouts of neighbors on their front steps, but in the apartment a sense of calm was descending as the girls eased to sleep.

  Rosemary returned to the kitchen to find Martin in the middle of the room, knotting his tie. “You’re going out?” she said.

  “To the Savoy,” he said. “With Francis.” Since yesterday’s practice at the Dime, he had been eager to hear for himself Benny Carter’s reworking of his song. His canvass of the music stores hadn’t turned up a mad rush for the sheet music, but it was still early days. A lot depended on Carter and whether he recorded the song, and then on the radio stations and jukeboxes—those that played records by Negro bands. Your first race record, Rosemary had said last night. My parents will be so thrilled.

  Now, as Martin checked the length of his tie and adjusted his pocket square, Rosemary busied herself with drying the dishes. They still hadn’t talked about his decision to quit the band, or about his prospects for another job. All Martin would say was that he had a plan.

  “Don’t you think—” Rosemary stopped herself but then figu
red, Just say it. “Don’t you think you should’ve waited until you were back on the Hit Parade? Then you’d have more options, or you could’ve asked Chester for a raise.” She smiled weakly.

  Martin laughed, a harsh bark, full of edges. “You couldn’t pay me enough to keep playing that music.”

  “But wouldn’t it have made sense to see where the song goes before—”

  “I’d already made up my mind,” he said. “The song at the Savoy—that feels like a reward for finally doing the right thing.”

  “I know you’ve had a shock these past few days, but we need to think about—”

  “Yes, I know. Rent. Food. Shoes.”

  He made them sound like small things, but a roof over their heads and food on the table—what mattered more than that? “It’s not just the two of us,” she said.

  “Do you think I’d’ve given Chester the high hat if I didn’t have a good reason?” He was losing patience, but trying not to show it. He had almost mentioned Hammond last night, just to prove to her that he was on the verge of something special, but he was so anxious that he feared saying Hammond’s name aloud could jinx the whole operation. He’d told Rosemary that he had a plan, and that would have to be enough for now.

  “We need—”

  “What we need is to move out of this dump,” he said. “The four of us squeezed in here, and Mrs. Fichetti always minding our business.”