Dreamland Social Club

by Tara Altebrando

  Babette looked up. “The Mermaid Parade last year. Hands down.”

  “What, exactly, is the Mermaid Parade?”

  Babette’s eyes widened into large blue pools.

  “Sorry. But I don’t know,” Jane said.

  Babette shook her little head. “You, my dear, are in for a treat.”

  “How many Preemies does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” a geek said as he passed them in the hall. Jane and Babette both braced for the punch line.

  “I don’t know, but it only takes one of me to screw a Preemie.”

  “I swear,” Jane said to Babette when the geek had passed, “I’m just going to give them the stupid horse.”

  “And let them win?”

  “They’re already winning!”

  “What did I tell you about reading the newspaper?”

  “I read it!”

  Babette stopped and huffed so that her black hair lifted off her forehead for a second. “Here’s the thing about newspapers, Jane. They have news in them. Like every day. Different news.”

  “Just tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “The city just announced that it’s going to restore the Claverack carousel as part of this whole redevelopment that’s happening. It’s like a landmark, and they’re moving it to like Ohio this winter to have it fixed up. Maybe they’d want the horse, since it was part of the original.”

  So the carousel was still here? Which meant the Claveracks were probably looking to sell the horse to the city, which wasn’t the worst idea in the world, not if the horse could take its rightful place back on the original Claverack carousel. Maybe Preemie had guarded it for all those years awaiting just this sort of project. He must have had a reason for keeping it, right?

  “I just want them off my case,” Jane said finally, having no idea how to go about seeing if the city even wanted the damn horse.

  “You think that’ll happen if you hand it over?”

  “It’s worth a shot!”

  “I see you didn’t inherit Preemie’s spine.” Babette shook her head and walked away.

  Rita, whom Jane found in the hall heading for the cafeteria at lunch that day, looked at her apologetically, then said, “So my aunt remembers your mother.”

  Jane’s body jolted. “She does?”

  “Yeah.” Rita made a wincing face. “But that’s all. She knew of her. She wasn’t friends with her. She’s not sure they ever actually talked. It’s a big school, you know. Was then, too.”

  “Oh.” Jane’s mood deflated. “Well, thanks for asking.”

  Rita chewed her lip for second, then said, “Legs said you were going to try to find her in the school paper, but then you never followed up.”

  “He told you that?” It seemed a weird thing to share.

  “You should do it.” Rita shrugged, then said sadly, “I guess you don’t remember a lot about her.”

  Jane could only shake her head, holding back tears. “I need to go in here,” she said, indicating the girls’ bathroom, then she ducked in with a small wave. She sighed with relief when the other girl in there went on her way, leaving the room in silence. She went into a stall and just stood there and wondered how long she could stay without being missed.

  One hour? Two?

  One day? Two?

  The stall’s thick pig-pink paint was carved up with graffiti, and Jane started reading it, wondering how old it was and whether any of it might date back to her mother’s high school years. She hadn’t seen any trophies. There were no old photos in glass cases. Nothing.

  SAVE CONEY, she read.

  Followed by: SCREW CONEY.

  And then Coney crossed out and replaced by YOU.

  Next to that someone had carved out CARNY ISLAND HIGH.

  To which had been added SUCKS.

  Looking farther up, some newish-looking writing made her want to hide out forever: PREEMIES MUST DIE.

  She might have just turned up for the meeting of the Dreamland Social Club that week if it hadn’t been for Venus, who found her in the hallway after school and said, “What are you still doing here?”

  “Oh,” Jane said. “Nothing.”

  Venus had her hand on the doorknob of Room 222 and twisted it before saying, “I think it’s lame of you to not give them the horse, by the way.” She opened the door, and Jane heard voices and laughter all mixed up together. “I know that’s not the popular opinion, but there you have it.”

  “Thanks for sharing,” Jane said, surprising herself, and Venus said, “Are you giving me attitude?”

  “Of course not,” Jane said, and she headed down the hall.

  Any club that Venus was a member of was not a club for Jane, even if her mother had founded it.

  There were keys in the drawer next to the sink, keys in the small drawer in the table in the front hall, keys in a dusty red glass jug on a shelf in the living room, keys on hooks inside a kitchen cabinet. None of them worked on the lock on the carousel horse.

  “Whatcha doing over there?” Jane’s father said from the hall when he came in and found her on the floor by the radiator, surrounded by keys. “Planning on riding off into the sunset?”

  “Something like that.”

  Her father started down the hall toward the kitchen but Jane said, “Dad?” and he came back.

  “There are kids at school whose grandfather made this horse. Carved it and painted it, the works.”

  “Well then, they had quite the artistic grandfather.”

  “Yeah.” Jane hadn’t really thought of it like that. “But they’re sort of, well, mean. And scary. And Preemie refused to give it back but now they want us to.”

  “Fascinating.”

  Not the word Jane would have chosen, but that sure was another way of looking at it.

  “So why not give it to them?” he said. “We’ve got to clean this place out anyway.”

  “That’s what I thought, too. At first. But it’s just, well, they’re so mean about it. Threatening to break into the house and stuff.”

  “Well, I think they would’ve done that by now if that was their big idea.” He sat on one of the couches. “I mean, the place was empty before we got here.”

  “True.” The idea that the Claveracks were all talk was sort of appealing.

  “Well, anyway.” Her dad got up. “I trust you to decide what’s best.”

  “Why would you do that?” Jane snorted.

  “Because you inherited your mother’s good sense.”

  She was down to the last key. It didn’t work. “She doesn’t sound to me like someone who had a lot of sense.”

  “Well, at the very least, she had the good sense to leave Coney.”

  Jane studied one of the horse’s hooves. The detail really was amazing. “Why do you think Preemie even has it? I mean, why did he bother?”

  Her father shrugged and said, “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.”

  CHAPTER ten

  THE TABLES OUT IN FRONT of the Anchor that Thursday afternoon were crowded with people, but Jane was trying to avoid eye contact with any of them lest they see how wildly underage she was. So as Leo snaked through the tables, she saw only flashes of tongues licking beer-frothy lips, and fingers sandwiching white cigarettes, and teeth chewing on puffy hot dog buns. She soon found herself standing inside next to Leo, who was beside two empty bar stools. He nodded at the shirtless man behind the bar, who nodded back. The man was opening bottles of beer for two men a few feet away, then he turned to the ancient register with some bills and Jane saw the huge serpent tattoo on his back. She softly asked, “Is that your dad?”

  “I’m afraid it is,” Leo said, and then his father came over. “Dad, Jane. Jane, my dad.”

  Jane reached out her hand when Leo’s father extended his to shake. He said, “Name’s Jimmy.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Jane said, and then Leo said, “What happened to your shirt?”

  His father reached across the bar and pinched Leo’s face. He walked away and said, �
��What can I get you?” to two more people who’d just come to the bar, then slapped coasters onto the bar in front of them.

  “I’m not really sure I could tell you the last time I can be certain that my father wore a shirt.” Leo seemed genuinely embarrassed.

  “Shirts are overrated,” Jane said, and Leo said, “That’s what he says!”

  She took a seat on a high stool beside Leo and looked up at a collection of nautical-themed signs and figures hanging on the wall above the bar. There was a small cluster of “Gone Fishin’” signs next to a cluster of beach-themed ones: “Life’s a Beach,” “Life Is a Beach: Watch Out for the Crabs”—and then a bunch of signs like “Thataway to the Beach,” pointing in the wrong direction. There were handwritten signs—things like “No Credit. No Exceptions” and “Not Responsible for Lost or Stolen Items”—and official ones, like one about how pregnant women shouldn’t drink. The rest of the wall was covered in postcards—some with the picture facing out, some with the message out—from all over the country and the world.

  The jukebox must have been between songs when they’d walked in, because right then a Beach Boys song filled the air. Jane turned to see if she could see the person who’d put on “Surfin’ U.S.A.” and took a guess that it was the guy wearing a green-and-yellow-checkered swimsuit who was pretending to surf on one of the bar tables—also shirtless. It was hot out. And in—since in wasn’t really in with the bar open onto the boardwalk like that. Jane sort of wished she could be shirtless, too.

  Spotting the sign for the restrooms, she excused herself, then walked toward the back of the bar, where a cracked wooden door decorated with a wooden mermaid—a fisherman for the men’s room—hung on a dusty hinge. Inside, Jane examined three locks on the door, none of which inspired confidence. She opted to lock them all because the toilet was far away, on the opposite side of the long narrow room. The mirror was fogged with age, the toilet seat cracked, and water trickled in a trail of drops—like ants marching—down the pipe below the sink. Tiptoeing across the room, she made a mental note to hose her shoes down later. So far the Anchor was living up to expectations.

  When she was done she looked for soap but found none, so she rinsed her hands and patted them dry with a coarse paper towel. She went back out to join Leo and saw he’d gotten them Cokes.

  As soon as she sat down Leo spun away from her on his stool. There was an old man whose face looked like a baked potato sitting on the next stool down. “Hey,” Leo said to him, “tell my friend here why you come to the Anchor.”

  “What’s so great about the Anchor?” Mr. Potato-head barked back.

  “Yeah,” Leo said, laughing. “What’s so great about the Anchor?”

  “The beer’s cold, the women are loose, and no one ever gets kicked out.” He raised his beer and then drank heartily.

  Leo’s father walked by then with a big bin of ice and said, “How’s my boy?” but he wasn’t looking for an answer.

  “I know it doesn’t look like much,” Leo said. “But it’s just a great, low-key place. If they keep jacking up the rent, though, my father’s done for.”

  Leo’s father bounced a quarter on the bar and it landed in one of his patrons’ beer mugs; people cheered. Jane had no idea how much rent on a place like this would be but had to hope for Leo’s sake that his father could keep paying it.

  “Your father, I trust, has a respectable job?” Leo turned to Jane, toying with a quarter in his own hand on the bar.

  She knew she should come clean and tell him that her father was a roller coaster designer, but then he’d want to know more—people always did—and she didn’t trust herself to not tell him that it was her secret wish that her father design a new ride for Coney.

  “He’s a structural engineer,” she said. “But he’s unemployed.”

  It wasn’t a lie.

  After a moment’s silence, Leo said, “I heard about your mom.”

  Jane just nodded and studied the wall behind the bar until her eyes landed in a most unexpected place. It took her a minute to process what she was looking at, to jolt her body awake into the tingling state of discovery. “I found the seahorse,” she said, and pointed.

  He followed the line of her finger and said, “Holy shit.” He got up and went around behind the bar and pulled the postcard off the wall, then handed it to Jane. On the front, a woman was kissing a toy seahorse underwater, the same seahorse that was inked into Leo’s skin, the same seahorse Jane had seen in her dream. The type said “Wish you were here . . . in Weeki Wachee!”

  Weeki Wachee.

  It actually did sound vaguely familiar.

  Leo lifted her hand so that he could see the flip side of the photo and said, “It’s to my mom from somebody named Tiny.”

  “Tiny’s my mom!” Jane nearly shouted. “Clementine.” Then she turned it over and saw that it had been addressed to Beth Mancuso.

  “Like the restaurant?” she said, turning to Leo, who nodded and said, “Family business.” He looked around. “The other family business.”

  Returning to the card, Jane read: Dear Beth: It’s not the same here without you. Do you think my mother ever regretted keeping me from my true calling here in the tanks? LYLAS, Tiny.

  There were tiny drawings surrounding the writing. A mermaid smoking a cigarette while sitting on top of some kind of little round submarine. A curled ocean wave. A lobster drinking a cup of tea. She felt like she might cry.

  Leo said, “I got a tattoo based on a postcard that your mother sent to my mother.”

  She could barely process it. “What does LYLAS mean?”

  “Don’t know. So wait.” He got back on his stool. “Was your mother a mermaid, too?”

  “What do you mean was she a mermaid?” For a second she felt like this was going to be some cruel joke.

  He pointed to the swimmer on the card. “They call them mermaids. The swimmers. My mom went to some camp there when she was like fourteen. Mermaid camp.”

  Jane wanted to strangle him. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  He matched her in intensity when he said, “I didn’t know it mattered!”

  “Can we go talk to her?” Jane asked, and Leo said, “Yes,” and got up. Jane thought the excitement might kill her, but then he said, “No, wait. Shit. She’s in the city this afternoon. Until late. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “But tomorrow. After school? She’s usually at the club by four.”

  “The club?” As in Dreamland Social? No, it wouldn’t make sense.

  “My mother runs the lounge upstairs at Mancuso’s. The Coral Room. With mermaids like these.” He indicated the card again. “Swimmers.”

  Jane couldn’t find words to speak, just studied that mermaid and her cigarette and nodded.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you home.”

  “Anybody here?” Jane called out in the dusty foyer. When there was no answer, she invited Leo in.

  “So there it is,” he said immediately upon entering the hall, then he approached the Claverack horse and stroked it, as if it were real.

  “Climb on if you want.” Jane turned a lamp on; it glowed gold.

  “Nah,” Leo said. “I shouldn’t.” He stepped back from the horse. “What do you think you’ll do with it?”

  “I honestly have no idea.” She nodded her head toward the stairs. “The rest is upstairs.”

  She led the way to the attic, pulled the bulb light on, and stepped aside to let Leo up the final step. He crossed the room to touch the Hell Gate demon and said, “Incredible.” He shook his head a few times in disbelief. “How the hell did he get his hands on this?”

  “I don’t know. But I found this in a box of stuff.” She handed a small piece of cardstock to Leo; it was an invitation to Trump’s Demolition Party at Steeplechase. “He must’ve been on a sort of mission to save stuff. It’s possible he made off with the horse the night of the party.”

  Leo turned to take in the rest of the room. She just watche
d his eyes, the way the blue in there seemed to swirl with excitement over what he was seeing. She had uncovered a few other notable pieces in Preemie’s collection: an old sign from Nathan’s; a sign that said “Wonder Wheel 5¢”; and a pair of old signs, one “swinging,” one “stationary.”

  Leo shook his head. “Crazy old dude was single-handedly trying to preserve Coney. Gotta love that.”

  Orphans in the Surf was on the reel, and Jane moved to the projector and turned it on. Leo swatted at the title card projected on his shirt, then laughed and moved out of the way. He turned and watched, and the only sounds in the room were the whir of the motor, the click of the film, and their breathing.

  “It’s so sad,” Leo said as the film played, and Jane just nodded, watching the kids run through the surf.

  Ashes, ashes. We all fall down.

  The film ended and she turned the projector off. Leo said, “Do you think they were really orphans?”

  She shrugged. “It’s almost sadder if they’re not. Because that would be cruel, you know?”

  Leo stuck his hand into the box of reels and pulled one out. “What’s on this one?”

  It was a reel Jane hadn’t watched yet. She’d been taking it slowly, savoring them, spreading them out over time. But Leo was there and he was asking, so she changed the reels, threaded the film. When the image of the entryway of Luna Park appeared on-screen—with its moon slices and towers and lights—she and Leo both sat cross-legged on the floor and watched.

  It must have been a reel that they showed in movie houses, advertising Coney Island to tourists, because it was just a series of clips of amusement park attractions with people enjoying them. Jane recognized some of the amusements from pictures she’d seen, but to see them in action was another thing entirely. There was the human roulette wheel, with a bunch of people spinning round and round on a big circular disc, then being shot out off it when they couldn’t hold on any longer. There was the crazy spiral roller-coaster ride. Who would have guessed that the whole thing spun like a top on one big axis while cars rolled down the track. She wished she knew what it had been called, longed for it to have a name.