Dreamland Social Club

by Tara Altebrando

  They’d already discussed and done the homework assignment Jane had missed. Her postcard for Mr. Simmons would have to wait a little longer.

  Babette put the mermaid down on the bed. “The guy you’re going on a date with.”

  Jane really did think Legs was cute—for a giant—which she knew was wrong. So she said, “It’s not a date.”

  Was he cute or wasn’t he?

  Babette started to whistle “By the Beautiful Sea,” then stopped when Marcus peeked his head into the room. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry. Didn’t know you had company.” He closed the door.

  Through a tiny pout, Babette said, “Okay, is your brother gay or something? Because I’m throwing all sorts of mad vibes at him and they’re all just getting deflected big-time.”

  “No,” Jane said. “Not gay.”

  Babette leaned in. “He doesn’t have some crazy long-distance relationship with some hot Brit chick, does he?”

  Jane shook her head. “Nothing like that.”

  There was no nice way of saying that her brother was into Rubber Rita. Didn’t Babette see it? Wasn’t it obvious by now?

  “Well then, you’ve got to help me out.” Babette started scribbling in her notebook. “Tell him how cool I am. And, I don’t know. I mean, can you give me any insider tips? Stuff he likes? Anything.”

  “I don’t know, Babette. He’s my brother.”

  “Fine, don’t help.” Babette crossed her tiny arms.

  “Don’t get mad.” Jane just wanted to smooth things over. “People have to grow on him.”

  They were quiet for a minute, then Babette climbed up onto the bed, sighed, and said, “You know, Legs is really, really sweet. Way sweeter than Leo. And available, too. You should give him a chance.”

  “Thanks,” Jane said, once more fighting the urge to tell her about the keys to Coney Island and the fact that she and Leo were meeting up for secret outings. But Babette wouldn’t understand—or wouldn’t even believe her. And besides, if Babette could keep the goings-on of the Dreamland Social Club a secret, Jane could have her secrets, too. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Babette looked at her watch. “I should probably go home and watch my parents pretend they like each other.”

  Jane said, “You can tell me about it if you want.”

  “Snore,” Babette said. “It’s so boring. I keep waiting for them to tell me they’re getting divorced.”

  “They might not,” Jane said.

  “I actually want them to,” Babette said. “I just don’t know which one I’d hate living with more.”

  Babette gathered up all of her notebooks and textbooks and papers and shoved them back into her exploding book bag.

  It was only after Jane had escorted her to the front door and gone back upstairs that she realized Babette had left a piece of paper behind.

  Across the top, it said Dreamland Social Club Membership Questionnaire, in curvy handwriting that looked a lot like Jane’s mom’s. The print was fuzzy and blurred, like it was possible the original document had just been photocopied and photocopied for some twenty years.

  Below that were a series of questions:What’s your earliest memory?

  What sound makes you happy?

  What was the last dream you had that you remember?

  Name one thing you want to do before you die.

  Why is a raven like a writing desk?

  What’s the best thing about being you?

  So the raven question meant her mother had also read of Alice’s adventures. No surprise. But had that last question been one that Jane’s mother had actually asked her at some point, maybe more than once? Is that why she’d so often wondered it of others? Jane had no idea, nor did she have any clue as to how she would answer any of the questions if anyone asked her. But it didn’t matter.

  No one would.

  She was the lone member of the Jane Dryden Social Club and its motto was “You don’t know who you are.”

  And no one else really does either.

  Except for Leo. Wasn’t Leo maybe starting to come close?

  The Claveracks lived one block away in one of those row houses with bars on the windows on the second floor. In this case she wondered whether the bars were there to protect the outside world from the house’s inhabitants instead of vice versa. She took a deep breath, found the bell, and pushed the button. The ho-hum ding-dong struck her as almost too ordinary for a house inhabited by Claveracks, but maybe she had built them up too much in her mind. Geeks were people, too.

  A shockingly old man opened the door, took one look at Jane with an eye that had to be lifted out of a wrinkle pool resting on his cheekbone, and said, “You again?”

  He turned and shuffled down the carpeted hall and yelled out, “Freddy! It’s that gal of yours!”

  The door was about to close on Jane, so she put a foot on the threshold and then waited. A man around her dad’s age—and this one looked like the guy in the picture—came to the door. He had a large oblong head and a salt-and-pepper ponytail and wore work boots, jeans, and T-shirt that said BADA BING! next to a silhouette of a naked woman. He reopened the door fully and said, “Can I help you?”

  “I think you knew my mother,” she said—though it seemed suddenly very hard to believe they’d ever dated—and he took a look at her, rubbed his eyes like he’d just woken up, and said, “Tiny?”

  The old man’s voice from another room said, “And what kind of name is that anyway? She’s not that small!”

  “I heard you were here,” Freddy said. “In the old house.”

  Jane just nodded, not sure anymore why, exactly, she had thought this would be a good idea. Until she remembered the photo. “I just wanted to ask you a few questions,” she said.

  “About what?” he said. “Your asshole grandfather?”

  “No.” She bristled. “About a photograph.”

  “And I’m right here!” the old man said. “So no funny business.” He was sitting at the table in the adjoining dining room playing solitaire. “My own son,” he grumbled. “With that prick’s daughter.”

  “Shut it, Dad,” Freddy said, then he turned to Jane. “He thinks you’re her.”

  Jane nodded and pulled out the photo. “I was hoping you could tell me what this photograph is. You’re in it and it says D.S.C. on the back. What does that mean?”

  He took the photo and breathed out hard, and it smelled suddenly like stale cigarettes in the room. “Even if I remembered, why would I tell you?”

  “Because I’m Tiny’s daughter.” She pointed at the photo. “You have your arm around her.”

  “Here’s the thing, kid.” He reached for a pack of cigarettes and slipped one out. “If I want to, you know, honor your mother’s memory or whatever, I shouldn’t tell you.”

  It wasn’t the sort of opening she’d been looking for, but it was an opening. Wasn’t it? “It’s the Dreamland Social Club,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

  He just lit his cigarette, then exhaled and looked at her. He wasn’t going to say anymore.

  “What about her journal?” Jane tried. “Do you remember anything about that?”

  He waved his cigarette dismissively. “Just that she carried it everywhere and was always scribbling.”

  “Do you know where she may have hidden it?”

  He shook his head, then reached back and ran a hand down the length of his ponytail. “Didn’t know she hid it nowhere.”

  Jane’s gaze fell to the photo again, to his arm around her mother. “So you were, like, girlfriend and boyfriend?”

  “For a millisecond,” he said. “As long as it took to get a rise out of our fathers. But your mother always knew she was leaving and I always knew I was staying. She thought she was too good for me anyway.” Something occurred to him then, and he seemed suddenly agitated. “The boys said you wanted to talk about the horse.” He stubbed out his cigarette, only half smoked.

  “That, too,” Jane said. “I heard you’re going to sell it to the city if I
give it to you?”

  “The city can bite me,” Grandpa Claverack muttered.

  “He’s got some private buyer in Europe,” Freddy said.

  “You tell your father,” Grandpa Claverack said slowly, “that when I can get to that key I’m going to waltz right into his living room and take what’s mine.”

  Jane turned to him. “You know where the key is?”

  “Of course I know where it is.” He was counting cards in groups of three at the table. “I just can’t get to it is all.”

  “Where is it?” Jane asked.

  “At the bottom of the damn ocean!” Grandpa Claverack shouted.

  “It’s not at the bottom of the ocean, Dad.” Freddy shook his head and turned to Jane. “He’s been saying this for years. He says Preemie said to ‘go fish’ whenever he asked for it.”

  Grandpa looked at Jane and squinted. “You said yourself it’s the only place worth hiding anything.”

  There must be a shipwreck or a submarine around here somewhere. . . .

  “Why did Preemie keep the horse?” she said, hoping to capture some more from this moment of clarity. “Did he ever say why he even wanted it?”

  “To spite me!” Grandpa Claverack hissed, but Jane just felt certain there had to be more.

  CHAPTER eight

  IN HOMEROOM, BABETTE MARCHED OVER and produced a newspaper from her bag. “Loki’s trying to buy a weenie.”

  “What?” Jane couldn’t parse the words.

  “A weenie. It’s carny talk for a big flashy ride.” Babette pushed the newspaper toward Jane, who picked it up. “They’re going to present an official plan to the city next month, and it’s supposedly going to include a weenie.”

  Jane studied the article and confirmed that her father had not been named as the potential designer. “That could be a good thing, right?”

  The article said the whole purpose of a weenie was to draw big crowds.

  “A weenie, sure.” Babette said. “A Loki weenie, not so much. Because a Loki weenie is going to shut down the Anchor and Wonderland, since that’s the land they own.”

  “This spring,” Jane said aloud, because suddenly it all started to feel real and spring didn’t seem so far away. It’d be a miracle if she could keep the Tsunami a secret that long. “But the city has to approve the Loki plan first, right? This winter? And they might not?”

  “Finally!” Babette patted her on the back. “She gets it!”

  “This is bad,” Jane said. But if the city just didn’t give Loki the go-ahead, she’d be saved. Then the city could buy the Tsunami and everyone would be happy.

  Rita said, “You’re going to have to tell him sooner or later.”

  “You’re one to talk,” Jane snapped.

  Babette looked back and forth between them. “Him who? Tell him what?”

  “Exploitation,” Mr. Simmons said. “I want to talk a little bit about exploitation in Coney history. So, for starters, what does it mean?”

  “To take advantage of someone,” someone called out.

  “Yes,” Mr. Simmons said, then he wrote on the board, an act that exploits or victimizes someone; treats them unfairly. “Can anyone name some examples of groups of people who have been exploited, historically, right here on Coney Island?”

  Leo raised a hand and was called on. “At Dreamland, they shipped people in from Africa and brought Pygmies here against their will.”

  Mr. Simmons turned and scrawled SAVAGES in big letters across the board. “What else?”

  Babette raised her hand and, when called upon, said, “Little people.”

  MIDGETS! Mr. Simmons wrote. Then: DWARFS!

  “Who else?” Mr. Simmons said.

  Jane raised her hand and contributed, “Premature babies.”

  PREEMIES! Mr. Simmons wrote, then he put down his chalk. “Savages! Midgets! Dwarfs! Preemies! Freaks! No one was safe. If people were willing to pay a couple of cents to look at you, the businessmen on Coney historically provided these human amusements without punishment or judgment.”

  “But Mr. Simmons,” Legs said, “wasn’t it true that normal people were exploited here on Coney, too? Just like freaks.”

  “And the student becomes the teacher.” Mr. Simmons smiled. “What do you mean, Mr. Malstead? Enlighten us.”

  “Well, at the Blowhole Theater at Steeplechase, it didn’t matter who you were.”

  “Excellent point,” Mr. Simmons said. “And that, dear students, brings me to your next assignment.”

  Groans filled the room. Here we go, Jane thought.

  “I want you to imagine that some evil circus sideshow person has come to your home and captured you with the intent of putting you on display for profit, for all the world to see and gawk at. I want you to come up with your stage name and draw up a sort of banner advertising your talents. Or, if you’re not feeling artistic, I want you to write the script that the barker would use to introduce you and to try to lure people into your tent. ‘Step right up and behold the ninth wonder of the world,’ that kind of thing.”

  “But Mr. Simmons?” It was one of the Kiras or Stephanies whom Jane could never keep straight. “What if there’s nothing weird about us to even exploit?”

  Mr. Simmons smiled and said, “I am confident that if you all think hard enough, take a look in the mirror and inside your soul, you’ll come up with something.”

  “Pretty deep, Mr. Simmons,” Leo said, and everyone laughed.

  At day’s end, Jane stopped in the hall and watched Leo for a moment before he saw her coming. There seemed to be a new urgency about him. He was at her locker—waiting, eager, tapping his foot and fidgeting. Something had shifted. She had no idea what it might be but feared, in that second, that he knew.

  About her dad.

  Loki.

  Everything.

  He spotted her in the middle of another of his yawns and turned the yawn into a smile, relaxing his whole body along with his mouth. “I’m dragging this week,” he said, when she reached him.

  She smiled, relieved. “Me too.”

  They walked down to the Wonder Wheel and got on a swinging car after a few cars got loaded up with members of a tour group wearing badges Jane couldn’t quite read.

  The wheel spun them up high and around, and Leo opened up his backpack and took out two cans of Budweiser, dangling from the plastic loops of what was once a six-pack. Jane couldn’t help but wonder what had become of the other four beers, but she took the one offered her.

  Retracing her steps. Wasn’t that the idea?

  Leo took the can back briefly and snapped it open for her, then handed it back, opened his own beer. He looked at her across the car—they were on opposite benches—and then slid over to sit beside her and said, “Cheers.”

  They banged cans with a dull clank, like a dampened bell, and then sipped. It was cold—was his backpack a cooler bag? had he swiped them frozen from the Anchor?—and tasted bitter, but good. And it turned out Jane was thirsty. She drank more. She felt sort of loose and good as she studied his knees in his jeans. They were skinny but squarer than her own.

  “I think it’s safe to say”—Leo stretched his legs out, his knees disappearing into his jeans like quicksand—“that this is the best part of my day so far.”

  “Mine too,” Jane said, looking out at the sea and thinking about the first time she rode the Wonder Wheel with Marcus, how much had already changed, and wondering whether Leo was going to explain about his day or not, but not entirely caring.

  “What do you think that says about us?” Leo said with a smile, looking over at her.

  She laughed. “No idea.”

  “So what’s up with you, anyway?” He sat up straight. “Like, what do you do? Like, are you going to join the school paper or the basketball team or anything?”

  “Do I look like I play basketball?” She looked down at her clothes, her general way of being.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what you look like, exactly.”
/>   “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks a lot.”

  “I don’t mean anything.” He nudged her with an elbow. “I just mean I’ve never met anyone quite like you before.”

  “Quite so boring, you mean?”

  “Who said anything about boring?”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s a reach to say that I’m the least interesting member of my family.”

  “Meh,” he said. “Being born a few weeks early doesn’t make you that interesting. Neither does pretending to be part bird.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  Leo laughed. “Okay, you got me on the bird bit. But I don’t know. You seem like you have, I don’t know, an interesting point of view. I mean, just having lived so many different places.”

  “If you say so,” Jane said.

  “I heard you gave H.T. some old photo of his idol.”

  “I hadn’t known it was his idol.”

  “He won’t shut up about it.”

  The car swung then, and they both almost dropped their beers. Then they sat there swinging and swinging and swinging. Finally Jane said, “I don’t think this was the Wonder key.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. Just too hard to sneak onto at night, don’t you think? And then to operate? It feels different than the others. And your mom said they used to sneak beers onto the Wonder Wheel, not that they snuck on.”

  The ride was over; the beers were empty and the cans put back in the backpack. Leo said, “Next stop, Wonderland.”

  A water-gun game was open for business when they walked by the games section and they looked at each other, shrugged, and stepped up. Leo paid for the both of them, and the guy barking the booth shouted out to try to scare up some other customers, but none came. “Can’t run the game without three,” he said. “That’s the rule.”

  Jane looked around for any takers, but the place was pretty empty. Leo slapped down a few more bills by a different gun and said, “How about we pretend.”

  “Fine,” the guy said. He flicked a switch and announced the beginning of the race and then suddenly, Jane’s water gun was alive in her hands. She focused the spray of water on the clown in front of her and then studied its features: the exaggerated arch of the eyebrows, the candy-color red of the stretchy lips, the big ears and red dot on the nose. She realized that in her mind, images of this kind of water-gun clown and of her grandfather had sort of morphed into one another so that her vision of her grandfather was one of a clown.