The Way of Beauty

by Camille Di Maio

  “I didn’t say I was. I said it was simpler to be poor. And I used to be, you know. For many years. So, yes. I do know a little something about it.”

  “The truth is,” Alice said, looking right and left to make sure that Libby was not within earshot, “I’m going to talk to William about letting her go. I’ve been invited to speak at a symposium at Cambridge University on the piece I wrote about colonial architecture, and I want to ask William to go with me. He’s been working himself to the bone ever since his grandfather retired, and we haven’t been away together since Maine.”

  Every anniversary, William and Alice took a vacation. He only called in to the office once a day, and they’d found it to be the key to keeping their marriage romantic. They outdid each other with surprises. One year William arranged for Alice to take a private tour of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. Another year Alice took him to the Daimler-Benz factory in Germany.

  “And you should,” said Vera. “But you don’t need to ship her off hundreds of miles away. She can come and stay with us. We’re her only grandparents, after all.”

  Alice smiled and handed her mother the sugar bowl.

  “That’s very generous of you, Mama. But why don’t you and Papa stay here instead?”

  “Is that the game you’re playing? You’ve been trying to get us to move in for sixteen years now. So you plan to wine and dine us under the guise of watching Libby and think that we’ll be seduced by the best cook in New York and the great views from the balcony?”

  “You suggested it, not I.”

  Vera shrugged. “Well, we’re not moving. I like our apartment. I like my stove. And I like my Laundromat. The owner is the most interesting Chinese man. But when you live like this, people do your laundry for you. You’d never meet the interesting Chinese man here.”

  “Well, there’s an interesting Turk I buy apples from when I walk by his cart.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Alice leaned in to her mother. “You know that I would be just as happy over on Thirty-Third, if not more so. But the apartment was a gift to us when William’s grandparents finally made peace with the fact that he’d married me and that it had actually lasted, against their predictions. So how can I deny him that? It’s the only kind of thing he’s ever known.”

  “Not true. He lived with me for a while as a boy. Don’t forget about that.”

  William walked in holding a newspaper. “My ears are ringing. Were you ladies talking about me?” He kissed Vera on the head and then came around to his wife, where he kissed her lips. “Good morning, dear. New scarf?”

  At Libby’s urging, Alice had tried a hot-pink wrap around her hair. The color complimented her skin tone, but it felt like a juvenile accessory. “Borrowed from our daughter.”

  “I like it on you.”

  She didn’t answer. Just basked in William’s attention to detail. He always noticed new earrings, new shoes.

  “Mama has just offered to stay with Libby next month so that you and I can make that Cambridge trip together.”

  “You know I’d love to, but that’s when the buyers from Barcelona are coming in.” He poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “Why don’t you save them the boat ride and have them meet you in London? We could stop there first, and you can have your meetings in those offices.”

  “They weren’t taking a boat trip, Alice. They’re flying. It’s not as difficult as it used to be.”

  Vera slumped in her chair and crossed her arms. “Don’t talk to me about airplanes. They’re ruining this country.”

  “They’re uniting this country,” refuted William. “One can travel farther and faster than ever before.”

  “People aren’t meant to fly. If we were, God would have given us wings. There’s something unnatural about it.”

  Alice turned to her mother. “There was a day when riding on rails would have seemed unnatural to people who thought the two feet you were born with could get you everywhere you’d need to go. And yet you love train travel.”

  “Of course I do. You stay on the ground. Let gravity do its work.”

  “You’re a bit cranky today, Mama. Is everything all right? Is it your back again?”

  “It’s not my back. It’s the blasted newspaper.”

  William asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I got my copy this morning before I walked over. I should have seen it coming. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company has sold off their air rights. See, there’s progress for you. All the planes and all the cars mean that people don’t need the trains anymore. You’ve seen the plastic sheets they’ve hung up over there. Closing off parts of the station that aren’t even used anymore. Poor Alexander Cassatt would roll over in his grave if he knew.”

  William and Alice had exchanged glances the minute she said, “Air rights,” a particular real-estate term that allowed the owners of a building to sell not only the ground it sat on but also the air above it. One might own a three-story structure but sell the air rights up to thirty-five stories, making an enormous profit. Selling air as if it were land.

  It had been talked about in some circles. The beginning of the end for Penn Station. Their worst fears. It would be torn down to build who knew what in its place. William flipped to page three of the newspaper and showed Alice the story that Vera had mentioned.

  “There it is right there,” he said.

  The fate of Penn Station had caused some disagreement in the family, William as the lone neutral party. While he’d been in and out of the station many times, he did not have any particular memories attached to it the way Vera and Alice did. And the dawn of more air travel meant new methods of transportation with which he could send cargo out from their factories.

  Libby spoke of Progress as if it were the most vital thing in the world.

  But there was one project that grandmother, mother, and daughter were all working on together: a bronze statue honoring suffragettes. Vera had hired the sculptor and was in charge of locating some possible places to put it. Though it would not carry the name of Pearl Pilkington, it would bear her face.

  Alice and Libby were in charge of fund-raising. Of course, William and Alice could write one check and not only have the statue built but also grease the hands of the city officials who might consider their top location contenders. But Alice felt strongly that the suffragette memorial needed to be funded by everyday women so that they would feel a piece of ownership over it.

  They were just over halfway there.

  The progress of women came with a price, in Alice’s eyes, and her daughter was a bellwether of that. Combined with an age where technology was allowing people to do things previously unthinkable—it was actually thought they’d be able to put a man in orbit within the decade—young women were keenly focused on the future with little regard for the past.

  Alice feared what this meant going forward. Not merely for the rejection of the moral structures of a functioning society—though she acknowledged to herself that she had not exactly adhered to tradition in regard to her affair with Emmett—but to the actual destruction of what was old.

  To the Pied Pipers of Libby’s world who played the flutes of Progress, there was no coexistence to be had with the ancient or the antique. Out with the old, in with the new. And the young people were marching to the tune without question.

  Funny how those who most prided themselves on being revolutionary were often the biggest conformists of all.

  “Penny for your thoughts, dear,” William said, and Alice grinned. She played out these imaginary arguments with Libby in her head, hoping to build some storehouse of wise sayings when the time came.

  But the truth was that she wouldn’t rock the boat with her daughter. She was proud of Libby for having conviction.

  “I’m sorry, William.” She set her napkin on her lap. “I was just lamenting that there are those who want to march so far forward that the things I love—the things of the past—are going to get overlooked. Or worse, destroyed. The
idea that Penn Station—you know how much that place means to me—might cease to exist is like telling me that my right arm is going to be cut off and I have to step in line and be happy about it.”

  “You have to admit that the old girl is fading, though. At the time they built it, they expected it to outlive us all by hundreds of years. They might have been fantastic engineers and visionaries, but they couldn’t construct a crystal ball that could tell them that people would fly or that cars would become sophisticated enough that families could travel on their own wheels rather than renting them from the Pennsylvania Railroad. That’s the progress that is killing the station. Why travel by rail to San Francisco and do it over days when you can fly and get there in a few hours? We have to face it. Train travel as you and I knew it is dying. And the station is dying with it.”

  Vera spoke up; Alice had nearly forgotten that she was there. “That’s the way of beauty.”

  “What do you mean, Mama?”

  “The way of beauty. We are born shiny and new, and people marvel at us. How we smell. How we look. They celebrate when we take our first step. Fanfare all around. I remember when Penn Station was just like that. Angelo and I watched the opening ceremony from his newsstand together, and it was as magnificent as anything I’ve ever seen.”

  She continued. “But then it reached a sort of a middle age. No one lauds you when you take a step, because you have done it several million times before. As much as I love it, I can’t say that I’m awestruck every time I enter the main hall. The station became functional rather than fantastic.”

  William tapped on the newspaper article. “And now this.”

  “Yes,” said Vera. “Without the maintenance it needs, it’s showing its age. As we all do. Our wrinkles tell our story, etched out like a road map. That’s the way of beauty. Birth, middle age, decline.”

  “But,” interjected Alice, “there are some things that are better as they age. Wine. Cheese. Books. Who doesn’t love the smell of an old book? This is exactly why I love old buildings. They have history. The things they’ve seen. A new building is an empty shell. Sure, its plumbing may run smoothly, but has it ever embraced a cheering crowd or housed a dramatic performance or sponsored a ghost?”

  Vera smiled. “Exactly, my dear. You understand it. At Libby’s age, because they are so new themselves, they embrace what is being birthed right alongside them. But at our age—well, mine particularly—we value that very arc and see the beauty in its entirety. Libby doesn’t have the eyes for that yet.”

  Alice stood up and removed the coffee cups. “Well, I don’t suppose there’s anything to be done about Penn Station, since the air rights are already sold. But if they can destroy that—that—masterpiece, what will be the next victim? Grand Central? The Astor Library? That beautiful post office by McKim, Mead, and White? Something has to be done to save them.”

  “What do you propose, then?” asked William.

  “There must be some kind of commission or ladies’ society or something that can get the word out. Do you want to live in a world where its history is erased so handily?”

  Vera laughed. “It sounds like we have another Pearl in the house.”

  Alice rejoined them at the table. “Well, maybe I understand her even better now. Maybe we all have to find our cause—our purpose. The thing that makes us get up in the morning with our battle armor on. It’s not going to be the same for every person. I promise that this article won’t be the hot subject at the barber’s today. But believe me, when there’s a gaping hole where Penn Station once stood, people will notice, and I, for one, am not going to let it happen to anything else.”

  She realized that this might have been the most impassioned speech she’d ever given, but maybe it was that fire sparked by her love for Emmett all those years ago, right in the belly of the train station, that made her feel as if an irrecoverable blow had just been dealt to the girl she once was. If bricks and mortar were the flesh and bone of one’s past, their destruction was your demise.

  If she saved a building, it was like saving a life.

  Maybe she was the next Pearl, instead of Libby.

  And perhaps the way of beauty was not a one, two, three process. Birth, life, death. Maybe there was a fourth stage—renewal. She’d already been through it once. There was a time when she’d thought she would never recover from the loss of Emmett, but she’d gone on to marry William, graduated from college, written about buildings she loved.

  But she’d also immersed herself in motherhood. And now that Libby would graduate from high school soon, she was ready to take on a new project that would invigorate her.

  The death of Penn Station would be the rebirth of Alice Pilkington.

  Epilogue

  1963

  My dreamer, the note said. It’s been too many years. But I must see you. E.

  “Who gave this to you?” Alice asked the boy at the door. “And where is he now?”

  “Downstairs, ma’am. At an outside table in the café. Said he’d give me an extra dollar if I brought you there.”

  “Why didn’t he come up himself?”

  “I couldn’t say, ma’am. I didn’t ask him any questions.”

  Emmett was here. He was alive. He was here. Like someone facing death, scenes raced through her mind. His kisses on her skin, their embraces in the darkroom.

  “I’ll be right back,” she shouted to her mother. It had been an emotional morning. Watching that first eagle come down off the building—the one her father had named Saint Michael—was more than her mother could take. Angelo’s death still felt recent, although it had happened nearly two years ago. The dismantling of the station felt like the undoing of both of them, each woman woven so intricately into its fabric. She knew that it brought back the loss of Vera’s father as well. She’d always taken such pride in what he’d done as a sandhog.

  She’d slipped a sleeping pill in her mother’s water. It would be good for her to rest for a while.

  She checked her watch. She’d told William she’d meet him for lunch at twelve thirty. An hour to go.

  Alice followed the boy downstairs, each step feeling like a brick was tied on her feet. They wanted to fly. When they reached the ground floor, he pointed to the café and ran ahead to collect his extra dollar.

  The man sitting with his back to them turned to the boy and gave him the money. Then he stood, and as Alice looked at him, it seemed as if she had seen him only yesterday.

  He still took her breath away.

  “Hi, there,” Emmett said, pulling out a chair for her.

  She didn’t take her eyes off him as she sat across from him. A waiter set down water glasses.

  “You’re here,” she answered.

  “I’m here.”

  “How?”

  “Pan Am.”

  She laughed, surprising herself. In fact, her chest felt like a knot had grown in it. “I didn’t mean how did you get here. I meant how is this possible?”

  He leaned in. “There is so much to catch up on, Alice in Wonderland.”

  Those magical words. She’d never forgotten that name.

  “No one has ever called me anything like that except you.” How slowly they were both speaking. Dancing around the things they both wanted to say.

  “It’s how I’ve always thought of you.”

  “Have you thought of me?” she whispered.

  “Every day.”

  Her heart clenched.

  She would not cry. She would not cry.

  “I thought of you, too.” She crumpled a napkin in her hand just in case. “What happened, Emmett? The last time I saw you, those men were dragging you from your apartment. I didn’t know where you were. I didn’t know who you were. Emmett Fischer.”

  His eyebrows raised, and he sat back. “Emmett Fischer. I haven’t heard that name in a while.”

  “What do you mean? I hired a private investigator to find you, and he confirmed that Adler wasn’t even your real name.”

  She s
aw him ball his hands into a fist. “Is that what you did with your rich husband’s money? You tried to find your old lover?”

  His bitterness was palpable, and it felt like she’d been slapped.

  “That is not a fair thing to say.”

  “That’s how it looked to me at the time.”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Look”—he leaned in—“let me just knock this all out for you so that we don’t spend all day rehashing what happened. The tale of Emmett Adler. Or Fischer. It’s Schwartz now, by the way, but that will come later.”

  The waiter interrupted. “May I take your orders?”

  Alice didn’t think she could eat anything. But it wasn’t the waiter’s fault that a memory had turned into flesh and blood and walked back into her life.

  They each ordered black coffee.

  Maybe it would calm the nerves she was feeling.

  “So,” he said. “Here it is. I was born Emmett Fischer. My German father was a tailor; my Jewish mother was a seamstress. They worked together. You’ve never seen anyone so in love. When the Nazis came and took her away, my father sewed a yellow star on his sleeve and claimed his name was Schwartz so that he could follow her to the trains that we later learned went to the concentration camps. I’ll never know if he found her or if they died there or later. But at the time I knew that I needed to leave or I would be sent there, too. I always resembled my father, so I made myself look older and was able to escape with his passport. I didn’t think I could get a job, though, so I bought a camera with everything I had and began selling pictures. You know that part.”

  She couldn’t imagine. To have lost his parents in such a way. Alice wanted to reach out to him, but too many years had passed. Too many things had happened.

  “You found a real passion for it.”

  “I did. I could look through a lens and see the world I wanted to see rather than the world I was in.” He leaned in and took her hand. A jolt shot through her.

  But it was the reaction of a girl from long ago. The woman was married—happily—to the man who’d stayed.