Dreamland

by Nancy Bilyeau

  “Sousa dedicated a special song to Manhattan Beach,” Uncle David pointed out.

  “Lydia loves Sousa, not me,” I said, but lightly. The irritability that had dampened my mood for the last week was lifting.

  We each had a room on the same corridor on the top floor corner tower. This would be the Batternbergs’ private domain. In the room at the end of the hall that I’d been given, I flung open my main trunk and found my split skirt for bicycling, a long-sleeved blouse, and a floppy hat to tie under my chin. For the first time I was grateful that Mother insisted that I be fitted for every sport. I wasn’t a woman who excelled at any of the popular outdoors pursuits, but given the choice of sitting inside a hotel with little to do or develop a love of sports, I chose the latter.

  Once on the bicycle, it took me some time to overcome my awkward pedaling, including two near spills, but I improved and, following my brother’s lead, we explored. Uncle David had explained that the Oriental was one of three grand hotels in this area. There was also the Manhattan Beach Hotel, and finally the Brighton Hotel, the establishment closest to Coney Island’s amusement park, or, as Henry Taul had memorably described it, “Sodom by the Sea.”

  At our hotel, the farthest away from Coney, we weren’t looking at the open ocean. The establishment faced a sort of bay opening up into the Atlantic. A large ferry boat packed with people moved through the water, heading for a pier on our side. Lawrence and I pedaled up the path that extended to the east of the hotel until we reached the farthest point on the bay. All along, we passed bathing pavilions stringing along the beach. I glimpsed people in their best resort clothes step into the houses at one end and come out in bathing costumes at the other. Treading across a strip of white sand to reach it, they waded into the water, laughing and splashing and ducking in the waves.

  Stopping for some lemonade, Lawrence and I decided to turn and explore in the other direction. Of course Coney Island lay that way. I was curious about it, but I didn’t know if my brother felt the same.

  The wind picked up between the Oriental Hotel and the Manhattan Hotel, untying my floppy hat. I watched it sail over the top of one of the bathing houses. Rather than stop bicycling to go in search of it, I kept pedaling. The hat was hideous, and I relished the feel of the sun on my cheeks and the wind in my hair. “Do you see that?” Lawrence shouted over his shoulder. He pedaled off to the side and signaled for me to do so. Our path had jutted out onto a spit of land extending into the bay.

  What I saw rising in the distance was fantastical. It was a city on the water, of tall towers and colorful spires and wheels and castle walls – and yes, it might have been a trick of the wind or the sun, but all of it seemed to be slightly moving. The sound of piano and horns and flutes floated toward us and that of a thousand delighted screams. It was as if the lid had been opened on a giant’s music box.

  “It looks like… Oz,” said Lawrence finally. The Wizard of Oz was his favorite book.

  I started laughing.

  “Should we get closer, Peggy?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer, but simply jumped onto my bicycle. The hell with Henry Taul.

  The last of the three big hotels – the Brighton Beach Hotel – loomed on our right, surrounded by brilliant geranium beds, and the bathing houses and beach on our left. I’d detected a change in the crowd wading into the water. They were louder, and their bathing costumes scantier. Whenever I looked in that direction, I glimpsed a forest of bare, wet limbs. Lawrence’s attention, I noted, was fixed on the bathers. Well, that was only natural. He'd never seen men and women standing so close to one another, their flesh so revealed. Come to think of it, neither had I.

  We passed a pier with a lemonade booth, and a few minutes later the two of us put the brakes on, for before us stood a man wearing a dark suit on the boardwalk, his arms stretched wide to block a trio of young teenage boys. Beyond the man stretched a long stone pier, a building rising at the end of it. The pavilion was crowded with booths for the rest of the way to Coney Island, which rose ahead, no farther than what would be three city blocks. I heard a ragtime tune and inhaled fried food.

  “Is it forbidden to keep going?” I asked the man in the suit.

  “Are you guests registered at one of the hotels?” he responded.

  “Yes, the Oriental.”

  “Then it’s advised that you remain on the east side of the island,” he said severely. “Beyond this point is the west side. You don’t want to go there.”

  “But what if we do?” I persisted.

  He said, “You’ll find it hard to hold onto those bicycles, for one thing.”

  I looked over at Lawrence. He had retreated a few feet with his bicycle and looked down. The man intimidated him, I was sorry to see.

  “Are you a Pinkerton guard?” I asked.

  “I work for the consortium of the hotels, Miss. And your name is…?”

  I proceeded to turn my bicycle around and walk briskly, with Lawrence right behind me. “Why didn’t you give that man our names?” I shrugged; I didn’t feel like giving the Pinkerton guard my name. Why should I?

  Lawrence wanted another lemonade, and we walked our bicycles back to the pier.

  By the time we reached the lemonade table, I was sure that we made the correct decision to turn back. My arms and legs throbbed from the ride, and the small of my back was beginning to ache.

  When I heard the first woman’s cry, I thought it was nothing but bathers’ frolic. But then a second person shouted. I heard, “No!” and “What happened?”

  Lemonade cup still in hand, I made my way to the top of the pier. A group of people stood waist deep in the water in a semi-circle, gathering around what looked like the shape of a woman wearing a long blue or black dress. She was face down, one of her feet caught in the pier piling. An arm floated alongside her; I couldn’t see the other. Most of her long dark hair was wrapped tightly around her head.

  None of the bathers seemed to know what to do. All of us, in the water or on land, felt the same way: frightened, horrified, but unable to look away.

  By that point at least twenty people had gathered. The water swelled with a wave higher than the ones before, and it loosened the woman’s foot. The man nearest to her in the water reached out and seized her arm, turning her over. I’ve no idea why he did that – it was obvious this person was dead – except for an appalling curiosity.

  Because of the long black hair wrapped around her head, no one could see her eyes, which I am positive was a blessing. But her mouth hung open, her tongue extended, in a waxy gray face. One of her arms was missing beneath the shoulder.

  “Step back, step back!” sounded a new voice on the pier. It was a tall, black-haired man in a policeman’s uniform, a second, smaller policeman right behind him.

  We jumped apart to make room for them. “A week in the water,” he declared and turned to the other man. “Organize the removal.”

  A woman standing to my left said, “The poor thing must have gone out too far and drowned.”

  I said, “No, I think that’s a dress she’s wearing. Not a bathing costume. She wasn’t out swimming in the water.”

  “Oh, then the poor thing killed herself?” said the woman, her eyes bright. She was eager to discuss the tragedy.

  “Yes, but there must be a hundred better ways to kill yourself than to jump off a ten-foot-high pier,” I said. “Unless she entered the water elsewhere.”

  “Are you a writer for the newspapers?” said the policeman standing on my right. I looked over, curious myself, to spot the writer in question. I’d never met a newspaper reporter. After a few seconds, I realized he was looking at me. Despite the heat, the policeman wore a long dark blue coat fastened to his throat, with two rows of gold buttons running up and down and a shiny golden badge with the words “Brooklyn Police” engraved, and a number inserted between those two words: “152.” His skin was olive, his eyes dark with thick eyebrows.

  “Of course not,” I answered, feeling quite self-cons
cious.

  “But you sound like you got all the answers,” he said.

  His rudeness made me step back, still clutching my lemonade. I wasn’t used to anyone talking to me like that. My mouth opened, to issue a retort, when two things happened: The policeman turned away, to confer with a third officer of the law who had appeared, and Lawrence tugged on my sleeve.

  “Let’s go, Peggy, please,” my brother said. For the first time since I’d glimpsed the woman’s body in the water, I remembered Lawrence’s existence.

  And just in time – my brother’s reaction startled me. He’d lost his color. He was clearly distraught.

  “Yes, of course,” I said, placing my hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  Lawrence turned away, bent over, coughing. It looked as if he would vomit. He waved me off, and after a moment he straightened without being sick.

  “I can ride,” he gasped. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We pedaled quickly, without speaking. I don’t think either of us had ever seen a dead body before. When Father died, he was rapidly recovered; the burial was quick and dignified, as befitting a Jewish funeral. This was so different: How this woman’s life ended, I had no way of knowing, but clearly her body had endured horrible degradations in the water.

  “That girl in the water was a year younger than you are now,” Lawrence had said about Father’s mistress on our train ride here. Of course, that girl survived, the only one on the boat who did. Everyone else died, though not immediately. I used to wonder what Father thought in those last seconds – or, God help him, minutes – after the ships smashed into each other and everything was chaos and fire, and the water was pulling him down. Mercifully, those thoughts had stilled in my mind, but now the old horrors stirred.

  It was no wonder the sight of the dead girl today had devastated Lawrence. The question was: Why hadn’t it done the same to me?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Just before we reached the Oriental Hotel, I suggested we say nothing of the poor dead girl in the water, and Lawrence agreed. I feared this was the sort of news that would confirm Mother’s first instinct, which was to protect her children from the world. I couldn’t bear for either Lawrence or myself to be trapped behind barricades.

  As it was, our afternoon of bicycling met with disapproval, even without the rest of the family knowing what we’d witnessed. I’d loved the feel of the sun, but the result was a reddened nose and forehead and cheeks showing a tan. No respectable lady wanted to display a face that was anything but milky white. “Now you look like a shop girl,” Lydia teased.

  Mother was too aggrieved to joke; she just sighed and said, “I can send to the druggist for a bleaching cream.”

  It was an odd dinner, and not just because of my physical state: lightheaded from the sunshine, muscles throbbing from the hours of pedaling. We’d dressed carefully for going down. Because my arms were smarting from sunburn, I picked my filmiest chiffon. We were not wearing our absolute best gowns or jewels – this was a hotel dining room, after all – but wanted to make a smashing good impression. Tonight the Batternbergs would be dining with Henry Taul and his mother.

  Except that, as it happened, we weren’t.

  The maître d’ led us to a table near the windows. The sun wobbled low on the horizon, casting a beautiful rosy golden light onto the bay. But it was difficult to bask in the calming light outside, for inside the dining room we made up a group dining among a thousand people. There was an inevitable din. The tablecloth, china, and crystal, while very nice, were not of the highest quality. We took our seats without a word, looking at one another uneasily. After a few minutes Henry appeared, bouncing across the dining room. He was alone; perhaps the redoubtable Mrs. Taul had been delayed.

  “We’re all together at last – fantastic!” Henry crowed, taking in the sight of all of us at the table one by one, ending with me. “Isn’t the Oriental dining room posh?”

  Mother nodded weakly. It was up to Lydia to say, “It looks quite… stylish, Henry.” He snatched her hand, kissing it, having no idea that stylish was a word the Batternbergs used to describe something just a little déclassé.

  Her fiancé sent waiters scampering for bottles of champagne and then launched into his recommendations for dinner: lobster, of course, but we should be sure to sample the littleneck clams. He beckoned to the waiter, who was hurrying over with champagne, and announced that we were ready to order food.

  “But your mother, Henry, we must wait for her to join us before we order,” protested Lydia.

  “Oh, Mother never dines in the main room, she takes all her meals in her private suite,” he said. “This isn’t the sort of setting she cares for.”

  It took all our collective self-control to not take offense. What he’d said was astonishingly rude, but the grinning Henry was oblivious. When the champagne came, I drank it quickly. I could not decide whether I should be angry that the woman who’d commanded my presence at this hotel for the summer hadn’t bothered to come down to dinner, or relieved.

  While we ate, Henry continued to do most of the talking. He’d stashed three of his favorite racehorses at Sheepshead Bay Racetrack. The track was closed last year, pitched into limbo because of the law New York State passed against gambling, bowing to the rise of the morality lobby. But Henry said he was sure that the law would be lifted soon, and he wanted his horses in good condition. “Brooklyn is the horse-racing capital of the nation – those stables can’t stay closed long, it would be a real catastrophe,” he said, loud enough for people at neighboring tables to turn around. “I spent a bundle to buy the fastest horses in the world. I mean to race them.”

  At a certain point, two young men approached the table and Henry leaped to his feet to shake his friends’ hands and introduce them to Lydia. “I’m marrying the most beautiful girl in the world, fellas,” he boomed. Lydia smiled while trying to assume a dignified pose; my mother and aunt and uncle looked as if they would faint. As for me, I was struck by the similarity between the way Henry Taul talked about Lydia and his racehorses.

  One of the men said to the rest of us, “I think it’s commendable that you would take rooms here. It’s big of you. Forgive and forget.”

  Who knew what that was supposed to mean?

  I heard the same song in a different tune from the owner of the Oriental Hotel, a Mr. Frank Lancet, tall and barrel chested with snow-white hair flowing on his wide shoulders, like the senior lion at the Bronx Zoo. “Your decision to reserve rooms at the Oriental is deeply appreciated,” he boomed.

  After dinner, Uncle David accompanied Henry to the billiards room for cigars. He was obviously miserable without Dr. Mackenzie, but it was his own fault – he’d been praising the doctor’s skills to all of his brothers in a manner dangerously close to bragging, and in the afternoon a telegram arrived from my Uncle Bernard, saying he was in need of a consultation on his gout. With that, Dr. Mackenzie packed his bags for Oyster Bay, and a silver car purred up the drive to whisk him away.

  We females played euchre in Mother’s large room. Lawrence, who I took note had been subdued throughout dinner, vanished into his own quarters.

  Mother’s card game steadily deteriorated as she alternated between sipping cognac and chiding Lydia to stop biting her nails. At one point she lit into the furniture in her suite. “The dressers are old, a style not even of the twentieth century,” she fretted. “The handles on all the drawers have been replaced, they’re smooth and shiny, but the drawers themselves? The wood is close to sagging.” Again, she was acting as if something had been imposed on her. But Mother hadn’t been reluctantly forced here; this was her project, hers and Lydia’s. This stay at the Oriental, which was supposed to bring the two families together ahead of the wedding, was getting off to a shaky start. We simply couldn’t be the ones to come out and ask to see Mrs. Taul. Etiquette forbade it. Why wasn’t she inviting us to call on her in her suite at least? This wouldn’t help in the cause of setting said wedding date, I feared.


  David’s wife, Helen, prattled on genially about nothing, which I know was her way of trying to ease the situation, but my mother and sister looked miserable. As for me, I kept the card game going. If I concentrated on it, which I didn’t often bother to do, I could be a devilishly good card player. My cousin Ben had taught me all he knew, and he was celebrated at private schools from Boston to Baltimore as a top card player.

  At one point in the game, my mother did something startling. She reached out and held my right hand in hers, squeezing it so tight that her rings dug into my flesh. “I’m terribly glad you are here, Margaret,” she said.

  “Yes, of course,” I murmured. Mother was not physically demonstrative with her children. I felt embarrassed but also, I have to say, rather touched. I’d never fit into my family, not even before Father died. This could be shifting.

  As tense as our after-dinner hour was, Uncle David had it worse. I could tell the minute he came to collect his wife that he’d found Henry Taul a hard sail. I overheard what my uncle said as he helped Helen find her wrap. “The man never stopped talking. And most of it was about his tour of Europe. He said he went to specific places that celebrated female purity and virgin martyrdom. What on earth am I to say to that?”

  We all retreated to our rooms. It took me a bit of a search to find my nightgown. I smiled to myself when I fingered the handles of my drawers – they were worn and chipped. The hotel hadn’t replaced mine. Not that I cared. But I wondered, how did they make these decisions, who was to have furniture refreshed and who wasn’t? Did even the staff of the Oriental Hotel discern my lesser status among the Batternbergs?

  I usually relished the first night of a holiday, sorting my clothes in different drawers and shelves, anticipating the adventures to come. But tonight I felt no such satisfaction. And strangely, I wasn’t ready for sleep. My limbs felt heavy with exhaustion, but my brain whirred.

  I took out my book. I’d started Wings of the Dove, selected from my mother’s set of untouched Henry James tomes. I liked it more than I expected to, perhaps because I felt a strong kinship with Kate Croy, and not simply because she was brunette and young and determined but because she was the daughter of an unhappy marriage, with a selfish, wastrel father who put on a good show for the world. “His plausibility had been the heaviest of her mother’s crosses.” That sentence lingered.