Dreamland

by Nancy Bilyeau

  Henry Taul was given a lavish funeral attended by New York society. He was not written about in the newspapers as a murderer or a drug addict or an insane person. The Taul and Batternberg lawyers were busy. Hours after Henry’s body was found, the story was released that Henry’s driver, James Twilton, had been a suspect in the murders of three women, and he was shot when he refused to surrender to a lone Coney Island police lieutenant, an officer to be rewarded for bravery. Henry himself had rushed to Dreamland to help in the rescue efforts, the newspapers insisted. Henry’s other servant, Francois Sacron, gave lengthy statements to the police supporting the story of James Twilton’s depravity and violence.

  As soon as Lydia was physically able, we left Coney Island Hospital and drove to Manhattan. We never set foot in the Oriental Hotel again; our belongings were removed without any of us being there. Once we returned to Manhattan, both my mother and Lydia required rest and quiet. Even with me, Lydia said next to nothing about her ordeal with Henry. I never learned the terrible truth of what happened when she said she didn’t want to marry him. One day, staring up at the ceiling, she said, “They would have soon killed us both.” And that was all.

  “We did it for Lydia,” they all said about the cover-up of Henry Taul’s heinous crimes. But to their frustration, Lydia refused to attend Henry’s funeral, and the story had to be put out that she was too devastated to leave our house. Only my brother Lawrence represented us, along with Uncle David and his family. Another story that was whispered in society parlors at the end of the summer was that Mrs. Taul settled a large financial amount on the Batternbergs because, she said, it was what her beloved son, Henry, would have wanted. She left the city and Connecticut too, retreating all the way back to Colorado.

  Ben told me what they’d really discovered. Jim and Francois, both hired two years ago, had gradually changed from being servants to something else. Francois obtained drugs for Henry and for himself. Jim’s needs and desires were even darker, dovetailing with Henry’s sickness; his alternating need to debase and to worship women. Jim obtained women for Henry, sometimes sleeping with them first, in Europe. By the time Henry came to Coney Island, in his drug-fueled state, he had reached a line governing human behavior – and then he crossed it. Beatrice was the first woman killed. Francois said that with her long black hair, she’d reminded Henry of me. That made me ill, as I remembered the sight of her dark tresses wrapped around her head in the water. The other two deaths were also connected to Henry’s fixation with me. Yet posterity would record only Jim as the murderer. In return for his warped statements, Francois was allowed his freedom. I would never be able to think of that without anger.

  It was four days after Henry’s funeral that Ben brought Stefan to see me. He’d been quietly released from jail. With the Dreamland fire, Henry’s death, and Jim’s being blamed for multiple murders, the redemption of an obscure immigrant artist drew little interest from journalists.

  Ben rang me on the telephone to say that Stefan would be coming to the house. I did not know what else to do but see him in the parlor. I waited there, unable to even drink a glass of water.

  Finally Arthur opened the door and announced, “Stefan Chalakoski.” Not Ben. My cousin discreetly held back.

  When Stefan walked into our parlor, it felt as if my heart stirred within me for the first time since Dreamland died.

  “Hello, Peggy,” he said.

  How I’d missed his voice. His eyes met mine as steadily as that first afternoon when we spoke to each other next to his paintings of the future.

  “I’m so very glad to see you,” I said.

  He smiled, but it was a tentative one. He bore no marks of violence, but Stefan was thinner than before, his cheekbones more pronounced. I noticed his hair was newly cut and he wore a suit I’d not seen before, a formal one that didn’t fit well.

  He looked down at the carpet with the head of the bear and at the oil paintings, the tapestries, and it was obvious how uncomfortable this home made him.

  “We can take a walk in Central Park, it’s across the street,” I said idiotically.

  “No, I don’t have time for walk,” he said.

  A bad feeling growing inside, I said, “Why are you short on time?”

  “My boat sails late this afternoon. I’m returning to Europe.”

  I leaped toward him, exclaiming, “No, no, that can’t still be the case. You are not being deported. It’s a mistake.”

  Stefan took my hand, squeezed it, and led me to the couch to sit together.

  “Is not deportation,” he said gently. “Is regular passage.”

  A flash of understanding came. “This is Ben’s doing. So this is how he helps me!” Rage smoldered; how could I have allowed myself to think Ben would work toward keeping Stefan at my side?

  Again, Stefan squeezed my hand. “Ben helped with tickets, yes. He argued first. He offered job with Batternberg family – become mapmaker, cartographer, good salary.” He paused. “Ben try hard to persuade me. He reminds me of you.”

  I could not take this in. “You don’t have to take any position with the family, Stefan, but why would you want to leave? Your life is here.”

  “I don’t belong here,” he said. “Not just in room like this with you, but in New York, in America.”

  “You do,” I cried. “You love this country.”

  “I thought I did. But I love idea of America – its future. Its present?” His face hardened. “I know truth about the man Henry Taul. He murder Louise, do it to put blame on me so police will not suspect. But to also punish you. He was – what’s the word? – obsessed with you.” Stefan shuddered, and then burst out, “How can I live with this? Poor Louise. She die because of me. No other reason.”

  “I know,” I said. “It is terrible.”

  He was silent for another minute before saying, “Rich people play games and Louise and me get caught in it, like animals in trap.” When he said, “rich people,” I realized he meant not just Henry but me, while he sided with Louise. I was deeply, deeply hurt.

  Stefan saw he wounded me and raised my hand to his lips. “Ah, Peggy, I care for you.” He kissed my hand, tenderly. “It’s truth. But I belong with my family, my brothers. I know it.”

  “Stefan, you’re an artist. You have amazing talent.”

  When he pointed out that Belgrade possessed canvas and oil paint, I sputtered, “Your country is in such distress. And if war comes…?”

  “More reason than ever to be there, to fight alongside them.” His eyes took on that faraway look. But in this room, I realized, his eyes weren’t the color of cognac. My father’s bottles sat on the table ten feet away for comparison. His eyes were something else, a color I’d never be able to describe.

  “People fight with more than sword, gun, bombs,” Stefan said. “I can help.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, struggling through this bad dream.

  “I know that I am needed there,” he said with the same strange resignation of the day we’d gone to the police. “America – New York City – it doesn’t need me.”

  But I need you! I wanted to throw myself at his feet, beg forgiveness for dragging him into the orbit of a deranged murderer, tell him I loved him. If he must go, I would go too. Make a life in Europe. I’d follow shortly.

  For the rest of my long life, I would become known not only for what I would achieve, the lives altered, the buildings raised with my name on them, but for my passionate heart. There would be husbands and lovers, night after night of intense desire, deep needs within me never wholly met but very close to it. How many stormy dissolutions and reunions there’d be, of promises made and words said that should never be said.

  Yet I would always through the years cling to this memory, of losing my first love, in some ways my purest expression of love, but not losing my dignity. Somehow, I found it, a reserve of strength within, and I did not beg Stefan to change his mind and stay with me. It would be wounding without purpose, for I knew that Stefan wa
s not only leaving America but leaving me. He had not said he loved me in this house. He loved an idea of me, perhaps, and now he was letting go of the dream.

  “Goodbye,” I whispered.

  “Goodbye, Peggy. You’re remarkable woman. You have ability – you have power – to do important things.” I felt his lips on my cheek, and then he stood, regarding me with sadness.

  “If Dreamland weren’t gone, would you be leaving?” I asked.

  He gave a little shrug, and seemed on the point of saying something more, but then Stefan turned to go. I heard the murmur of Ben’s voice outside the door of the parlor, they spoke together, and other doors closed as they both departed.

  When, days later, I felt able to speak about it, I went to Lydia who listened with sympathy and love and dried my tears as we sat in her bed. “He’s right – you are remarkable,” she said.

  “That’s absurd,” I said. “People say it, but it’s not the truth. I’m nothing, without any idea whatsoever what to do with my life.” My mother wouldn’t need my inheritance after all, but I had no notion of what to do with my money either.

  “What about the bookstore?”

  I thought of my co-workers at the store, my friends, and of the thrill I’d felt just being near important writers and thinkers. How excited I was to attract the mild interest of the pallidly wicked G.T. Samuels. But I was a different person now. To be near creative, important people for my own diversion and edification – my own entertainment – wasn’t enough. There had to be a next step.

  “But you will figure this out,” said my sister. “You’ll have lots of ideas when you’re ready. Creative ideas. Audacious ideas. Don’t let what happened this summer stop you, Peggy. You have to be strong. Take the good things from this and not the horror.”

  I looked at Lydia’s pale, drawn face, and I asked her if she could do the same.

  “Yes, I can,” she said. “I want to go to a university and take a degree.” She smiled at the shock in my face, then grew somber again. “It’s the only way I can live with having Henry’s money, if I put it toward learning and toward supporting rights for women. We must secure the right to vote. I don’t have anything more specific planned than that, not yet.”

  “I’m so proud of you,” I cried, throwing my arms around her.

  “The world better watch out for the Batternberg women,” Lydia said, with her old spirit.

  “It should indeed,” I said.

  And I sat with my sister as, for the first time, I dared to look forward.

  If you enjoyed Dreamland, please share your thoughts by leaving a review on Amazon and Goodreads.

  You may enjoy reading The Blue, also by Nancy Bilyeau

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The idea for this novel came to me while I was writing a nonfiction story on the 4 July hotdog-eating contest at Coney Island. While researching, I tumbled down the rabbit hole of turn-of-the-century Brooklyn and discovered the existence of the grand hotels – the Oriental Hotel, Manhattan Beach Hotel, and Brighton Beach Hotel – that co-existed, not always happily, with the raucous amusement park on the same four-mile-long island. I was mesmerized by photographs of the hotels and reminded of a place that I loved as a child, the Hotel Del Coronado. My grandparents owned a condominium on Coronado Island in San Diego, California, and the sight of the nearby enormous wooden beach resort, built in 1888, left me awe-struck. Though it faced the Pacific, the Hotel Del Coronado had the same “Victorian splendor on the ocean” look as in the Coney Island photos I discovered, and I knew then I wanted to set a novel in the luxury hotels built in the nineteenth century, of which not a trace remains in Coney Island or Manhattan Beach.

  The character of Peggy Batternberg is loosely inspired by the early life of the amazing Peggy Guggenhein. What many people may not realize is that Peggy Guggenheim, lacking direction in her life, worked without salary at the Sunrise Turn bookstore in Manhattan, an avant-garde gathering place, when she was twenty-one, before moving to Europe and carving out her trailblazing career of discovering and promoting modern artists such as Jackson Pollock. To my knowledge, Peggy Guggenheim never ventured to the hotels or attractions of Coney Island, and while her dissolute father, who died wearing full evening dress as the Titanic sank in 1912, also inspired Jonathan Batternberg, the characters of Lydia, Sarah, Lawrence, Benjamin, Paul, David, and Helen Batternberg are completely fictional.

  The character of Henry Taul is inspired by Harry K. Thaw, the playboy heir to a fortune who married Evelyn Nesbit and in 1906 shot and killed architect Stanford White for “spoiling” his bride years earlier. He lodged an insanity defense in the “trial of the century,” and was found not guilty by reason of insanity. A decade later, after he was arrested for an assault on a young man, he attempted suicide and was then confined in a mental institution. He was released, lived quietly in Virginia and then Florida, and died at the age of seventy-six. Other real-life people who inspired characters in Dreamland are D.H. Lawrence, Nathan Handwerker, and Rudolph Valentino. As for Stefan Chalakoski, he is completely fictional. However, during this time period, Coney Island did excite Italian artist Joseph Stella when he was influenced by the Futurism movement, as shown in his work Battle of Lights, Coney Island. Joseph Stella’s paintings at the 1913 Armory Show, which tore New York City loose from its art conservatism roots, caused the best kind of uproar. In Stefan and some of the other characters in the book, I wish to honor the rich immigrant experience of New York City.

  I was told by a woman who gives excellent walking tours of Coney Island that the place “gets under your skin,” and truer words were never spoken. The hotels have left not a trace, but there are still rollercoasters and Ferris wheels, hotdog stands, carousels, funhouse mirrors, and even a “freak show,” at Coney. My many visits, walking the same ground as Peggy and Stefan and breathing the Atlantic Ocean salt-tinged breeze, were essential. Coney Island is, however, much diminished from its heyday. In 1911, it was enjoying its Golden Age. Each of the self-enclosed parks was fantastical, but for me the most beautiful was Dreamland. I took some creative license in moving its destruction by fire from May 1911 to July 1911. Other than that, I tried in my months of research to re-create its manic magic with as much accuracy as possible.

  I received valued help from the New York Public Library. Special thanks in tracking down photographs and archive material must go to Paul Friedman of the General Research Division. Visits to the New York Historical Society, the Museum of the City of New York, the Tenement Museum, the Brooklyn Historical Society, and of course the Coney Island Museum (special thanks to curator Lisa Mangels-Schaefer), as well as trips to the Modern Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Interestingly, several years ago, the Guggenheim put on the best exhibit ever assembled on Futurism in New York City: “Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe.”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This novel would not have been possible without the support of certain wonderful people. I’m grateful to publisher Alice Rees for her enthusiasm for Dreamland and her careful editing of the novel. Her comments and questions brought it to a higher level. I have enjoyed working with Hannah Groves, Imogen Streater, James Faktor, Cate Bickmore, Rufus Cuthbert and the rest of the team at Endeavour Quill.

  Whenever my spirits flagged as I worked on the book, I was heartened by encouragement and insightful feedback from my friend and fellow novelist Emilya Naymark. The book also benefited enormously from the notes given by Michele Koop, Elizabeth K. Mahon, Harriet Sharrard, and Sanya Popovic. Whether it was comments on a character’s motivation, a college, a sunburn, a fashion choice, or convincing dialogue, they were extraordinarily helpful.

  When it comes to friends and colleagues, I am particularly fortunate in my Queens writers’ group: Laura Joh Rowland, Mariah Fredericks, Triss Stein, Jen Kitses, and Shizuka Otake. I’d be lost without our monthly dinners. I’ve benefited greatly from my participation in two writers’ organizations: Mystery Writers o
f America and Historical Novel Society. Within those two fantastic entities, my special thanks to Laura K. Curtis, Jeffrey Markowitz, V.S. Kemanis, Erica Obey, Charles Salzberg, Annamaria Alfieri, Dru Ann Love, Margery Flax, Richard Lee, Sarah Johnson, E.M. Powell, Rosanne Lortz Spears, and Faith Justice. My salutations to colleagues at the Center on Media, Crime and Justice and John Jay College: Stephen Handelman, Ricardo Martinez, and Richard Relkin.

  A huge thank you to my friends: Kris Waldherr, Sophie Perinot, Dawn Ius, Judith Starkston, Radha Vatsal, Pam and Mary Kramer, Mark Alpert, Christie LeBlanc, Dick Belsky, Donna Bulseco, Ellen Levine, Max Adams, Timothy Miller, C.W. Gortner, Barbara Claypole White, Beth von Staats, Joshua Todd James, Bruce Fretts, Bret Watson, Aleksandra Andonovska, Elizabeth Angell, Sue Trowbridge, Russell Rowland, Natasha Wolff, Adam Rathe, Theresa Defino, Victoria McKenzie, Sandra and Brec Morgan, Rhonda Riche, Delia Blackler Perretta, Evelyn Nunlee, Elaine Devlin Beigelman, and all the friends I cherish from our crazy youth in Livonia, Michigan.

  I thank Max Epstein for his legal work on the contract for the book and for agenting it so well.

  Without my family, I couldn’t function, much less write books. My love to my husband and children, my sister Amy, my mother, and all my cousins.