Palisades Park

by Alan Brennert

  He sighed. “All right, all right. You’ll do it eventually no matter what I say, you might as well do it at Palisades where I can be there if anything—”

  His voice caught. He touched a hand to her face. “I love you. Promise me this is safe.”

  “I promise. I love you too—and I have no intention of leaving you.”

  * * *

  Toni was surprised to find the temperature in Jersey actually higher than it had been in Florida. According to the U.S. Weather Service, there was a “persistent continental anticyclone” producing higher temperatures across most of the Mid-Atlantic states. You could certainly feel it in Cliffside Park, where it reached ninety-one degrees on June 21, the day Toni decided to go to Palisades and tell Irving Rosenthal about her new act. The idea of bursting into flames in weather this warm wasn’t exactly appealing, but at least fire dives were usually done at night, when temperatures were cooler.

  The park was definitely benefiting from the heat—Palisade Avenue was jammed with traffic all the way back to the George Washington Bridge. It took Toni twenty minutes just to turn right off Route 5 onto Palisade. No wonder there was so much squawking from the cities of Cliffside and Fort Lee about traffic congestion. It took another ten minutes just to get into the parking lot, partly due to traffic having to detour around a police car inside the lot, where an officer was taking information from a distressed woman whose car had been broken into while she had been in the park. This, too, unfortunately, was becoming more common.

  Before seeking out Irving Rosenthal, Toni took a detour to one of the park’s most popular attractions—the sideshow building, crowned with its brightly colored sunburst marquee, which hosted the Freak Animal Show and the Palace of Illusions. Maie McAskill was managing it while her husband, Arch, handled their other attractions touring the country. “Hey, Toni,” she said from the ticket window, “welcome back. How was Florida?”

  “Went great. Okay if I pop in for a second?”

  Maie waved her inside. The Palace of Illusions featured standard illusion-show fare like the Headless Woman—the living body of a woman who appeared to be sitting there sans head, with tubes and wires arching out of the stump of her neck—and its opposite, the Decapitated Head of a woman sitting on a pedestal, chattering away as if nothing were amiss.

  But what Toni had come to see was the Blade Box Illusion, the same trick that had so thrilled her and her brother back in the ’40s. As Toni drew closer she heard the voice of a magician doing the standard patter:

  “—hate to think of what might happen if anything goes wrong. Let’s have a hand for this brave young woman.”

  Toni stood at the back of the audience and looked up at the figure standing beside the blade box.

  The Magical Adele was dressed in a white tuxedo shirt, black tie and jacket with tails, black silk stockings—her legs still shapely as a dancer’s, even in her mid-fifties—and three-inch-high heels, which helped give her a commanding presence onstage. She took the first of the razor-sharp blades and plunged it casually into the lid of the box and out through the bottom, which brought a small gasp from the audience. “Good, no blood,” she said. “Let’s see if her luck holds up.” She lifted an even bigger, heavier blade and plunged it straight into the middle of the box and out the bottom—where the tip of the blade seemed to have picked something up along the way.

  “What’s this?” Adele wondered, bending down to pick off the sharp tip of the blade what appeared to be a scrap of white clothing. “Oh, dear. Part of an undergarment. That was close,” Adele said with a grin.

  Toni had never let on to her mother that she’d seen her waitressing in Atlantic City, but when she returned to Palisades she asked the McAskills whether they needed a magician for their sideshow. As it happened one of their traveling illusion shows needed someone to do a Blade Box, so at Toni’s suggestion they called Adele’s agent directly, auditioned her, and soon had her on the road. She played state fairs in Milwaukee, Detroit, Memphis, and Dallas; then, when the ’63 summer season began, she performed with one of the McAskills’ Palace of Wonders units at Riverside Park in Agawam, Massachusetts. Postcards from the road barely contained her happiness at being back on the circuit again, and for the next two years, when she wasn’t playing Riverside Park, she was sending Jeffrey and Dawn little presents from Sulphur, Louisiana; Amarillo, Texas; and the Pike amusement pier at Long Beach, California.

  But this was her first season at the Palisades unit—perhaps she had asked the McAskills whether she could spend a season closer to home—and Toni found it strange and uncomfortable having her here, and performing this particular illusion, no less. No matter how much she admired her mother’s skill and dexterity in doing the Blade Box, it couldn’t help but dredge up unhappy memories. Already she saw Lorenzo’s smirking face again, saw the two of them in bed, felt the old anger bubble to the surface.

  Quickly she slipped out of the sideshow before Adele spotted her.

  * * *

  Crossing the main midway on her way to the administration building, Toni noted another familiar figure: a seven-year-old boy with a tight blond crewcut who was scrambling up one of the hills on the miniature golf course and, while no one was looking, snapping up golf balls that had gone astray in the water hazard. Eagerly he dipped his arms in up to the elbows, scooping out a clutch of slime-covered golf balls. Now, as he sneaked back down the hill, Toni walked up to him, blocking his path, and smiled. “Morning, John-John,” she said. “Whatcha got there?”

  John Rinaldi, Jr., arms dripping wet, caught red-handed, smiled a hundred-watt smile. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Russo,” he said cheerily. “You mean these? Nobody’ll miss ’em, and I need ’em for my ball collection at home.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen you sneaking around the batting cages too. What does your dad think about you doing this?” Upon the unexpected death of Joe Rinaldi after only one year as superintendent of Palisades, Irving Rosenthal had promoted Joe’s son, John Sr., to the position—making him, at twenty-nine, the youngest amusement park superintendent in the country.

  “Oh, he doesn’t mind,” John Jr. maintained.

  “You mean he doesn’t know.”

  “That too.”

  “Didn’t I see you a while back sneaking a teddy bear out of Sadie Harris’s stockroom?”

  “Oh, but that wasn’t for me,” John protested. “A little kid was crying and crying ’cause he couldn’t win a prize, so I went and got one for him, and boy was he happy!”

  Toni had to smile. This kid regularly got away with murder because his dad ran the park and no one wanted to get on his bad side—but you couldn’t say his heart wasn’t in the right place. Like the time he had released all of Curly Clifford’s parakeets from their cages so they could have a better quality of life, but which only resulted in them dive-bombing hapless customers in the Penny Arcade. It took hours for Curly to round them up, and almost as long for the Mazzocchis to clean up all the bird shit.

  “Okay, I never saw any of this,” Toni told him. “Just stay away from my water tank once it’s up, okay?”

  “What’s in your water tank?”

  “Seventy thousand gallons of water. And I’d like to keep it there.”

  “Deal. Thanks, Mrs. Russo. Hey, you wanna come down to the free-act stage with me? I’m gonna hang out with Cousin Brucie, he told me Bozo the Clown and Soupy Sales were coming today.”

  “Can’t, I’m looking for Uncle Irving.”

  “He’s on patrol. I just saw him down at the Antique Car ride.”

  “Thanks.” As John Jr. started off down the midway she added, “Enjoy the show and stay out of trouble!”

  “Sure thing,” he assured her, but somehow Toni was not convinced.

  The Antique Cars were a short walk up the midway, and Toni indeed found Irving there, looking it over. When she called out a hello, he turned, face brightening. “Ah, the Amazing Antoinette. Back to amaze us again?”

  “Maybe more so than usual,” Toni said. “I have a new
routine.”

  Now she noticed that the Antique Car ride was shut down, with workmen repairing several of the old-timey, Model T–like roadsters, which had had their tires slashed and seats defaced. “What happened here?”

  “Petty vandalism. Some riffraff’s idea of a good time. A while back we even caught two young punks stealing a pair of human skulls from the sideshow—go figure. The price of success, I suppose.” He greeted her with a warm hug. “Walk with me, would you like something cold to drink?”

  “I’d love it. It’s hotter here than it was down in Tampa.”

  Irving bought her a birch beer—he never failed to pay, never cadged free food from anyone—and they moved on down the midway. “I’ve added a new stunt to my act. Ella Carver showed me how to do it. A fire dive.”

  Rosenthal smiled. “Audiences always love a good fire dive. I think the last one we had here was Billy Outten. Do you dive into a flaming tank, too?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “We could bill you as ‘Antoinette, the Blazing Beauty—Watch Her Dive Into the Flames of Hell!’”

  “That’s about what it’s going to feel like in this heat.”

  His imagination fired, Irving snapped his fingers. “Here’s a sweet wrinkle: What if I arrange for one of the fire engines from the Fort Lee Fire Department to park itself not far away from where you’re diving? Have them station a fire captain right next to it, and we announce, ‘This act is so dangerous, the fire department insists we have equipment on the premises to put out Antoinette’s flames should anything go wrong!’”

  Toni laughed. “That is some high grade of bullshit you’re selling, Irving. I like it.”

  “I’ll run it past Sol Abrams, he’ll love it. Jack would’ve loved it too.”

  A shadow eclipsed Rosenthal’s bright mood at the mention of his brother, who had died from Parkinson’s disease last year.

  “I was sorry to hear about your brother,” Toni said gently. “I was out of town, I didn’t hear of it until I got back.”

  “You know, I didn’t think it would be this hard, running the park without him,” Rosenthal admitted. “He was in pretty bad shape the past few years, he wasn’t that actively involved. But I’d been working alongside him for almost sixty years—he was always there if I needed advice, or to just listen to me blow my top over something. I feel like my right arm’s been cut off.” He sighed. “And I’d hoped one of his kids might want to take over Palisades after we retired. But none have any ambitions to run an amusement park.”

  “What about your niece Anna?”

  “Her least of all. She’s been doing it as long as I have. And I can’t sell Palisades to just anybody. A place like this—it’s like a living thing, the way people interact with it, how they think of it. For kids like you who grew up around here, it’s always been a part of your lives—it’s personal. Sell it to someone like Walt Disney, and it’s no longer the same park. I want it to be the same, to go on living, after I’m gone. We’re at the top of our game now, Toni—Palisades has never been more popular, more famous. What’s wrong with wanting that to go on? Nobody wants summer to end.”

  Touched by the longing in his voice, Toni said, “You’re going to be here to keep summer going for lots more years, Uncle Irving.”

  He smiled, took out his wallet, and handed her a dollar bill. “I never get tired of being called that. Here you go. Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  Toni laughed and took the dollar with good grace, a pleasant reminder of her childhood when these dollars seemed like ingots of gold.

  Irving waved and moved off down the midway, continuing his daily health inspection, like a parent checking the temperature of a child.

  * * *

  Posters soon went up all over Palisades, as well as Cliffside Park and Fort Lee, proclaiming the imminent appearance of

  AMAZING ANTOINETTE, THE BLAZING BEAUTY—SHE DIVES FROM A HEIGHT OF NINETY FEET INTO THE FLAMES OF HELL!

  It was accompanied by an illustration of a woman wrapped in fire, diving headlong into an inferno of flames at least ten feet high.

  Toni’s children now displayed an interest and excitement in her career for the first time in years. Jeff bragged to all his friends that his mother was going to turn herself into a Human Torch. “Yeah, sure—and your sister’s the Invisible Girl,” one of them scoffed. But when Jeff showed them the poster, their skepticism evaporated.

  The Atlantic heat wave continued, making Toni’s and Arlan’s job of erecting her tower and tank all the more arduous. The rising temperature sapped their strength and caused a constant drip of perspiration into their eyes as they worked under a brutal sun. They took frequent breaks and drank as much water as they could to avoid getting dehydrated, and it took longer than usual to raise the tower—close to two days of exhausting work.

  The temperature soared to a hundred degrees by July 2, the first day of the Fourth of July weekend and the day Irving wanted Toni to debut her fire dive. And he insisted on her doing it not at night, but at one in the afternoon—peak attendance, but also peak temperature as well. “It’ll get more press coverage, too,” he explained, “because the photographers will be able to get a better shot. After that you can go to night dives, all right?”

  She agreed as long as the winds remained light: “Anything higher than eight knots and I’ll scrub the dive, I’m not taking that chance.”

  The night before the dive, Toni slept fitfully, and not from the heat. She seemed to float through a series of disturbing dreams, none of which she could remember afterward; and when morning finally came she woke with a feeling of dread and anxiety. She never had feelings like this before a dive, and to allay them she checked again with the Weather Service and was told the local temperature would top out at a hundred degrees, with the wind speed between five or six knots. She felt a little better after that—wind was what worried her most, and six knots was nothing to worry about.

  Even so, the atmosphere at the park was hot and muggy and she wasn’t thrilled to be pulling on a woolen leotard and shirt for her first show. She checked and rechecked the equipment; everything was in working order. She licked her finger and tested the wind, which remained light.

  About forty-five minutes before showtime, an engine company from the Fort Lee Fire Department parked one of its trucks outside the northern border of the park, off Route 5—exactly where many of the fire engines had parked back in ’44—and unrolled several hundred feet of fire hose, which two firemen carried into the park, snaking it behind the bathhouses and all the way to the free-act stage. They struck a suitably dramatic pose as Bob Paulson’s voice issued from the loudspeakers:

  “In just fifteen minutes on the free-act stage, for the first time at Palisades, the Amazing Antoinette will dive from the top of a ninety-foot tower, her body set on fire, into a tank filled with flames! And because this is the Blazing Beauty’s most daring and dangerous dive ever, a fire engine has been posted outside the park, and firemen from the Fort Lee Fire Department stand ready to assist should anything go terribly wrong!”

  Arlan, helping Toni into her jacket with its backpack of gasoline, pointed out, “Lotta help they’ll be—fire hose isn’t even hooked up.”

  Toni should have found that funny, but didn’t.

  Arlan picked up a gasoline can, went to the tank, and carefully sprinkled the circumference with gasoline.

  As the audience gathered, Toni adjusted her canvas jacket and the gasoline packs. From behind the stage she saw her cheering gallery being seated: Jimmy and the kids, Eddie, Lehua, Jack, Bunty, Minette, Irving … and, still wearing her black-and-white magician’s costume, Adele, taking a seat next to Jack. This shouldn’t have surprised Toni, but it only added to the anxiety she had been unable to shake all morning.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, performing the most daring of all high dives, Palisades Park is proud to present … Antoinette, the Blazing Beauty!”

  Toni’s music started and she began to ascend the ladder. In her wool
en costume she was sweating like a pig before she had even cleared the halfway point. By the time she reached the top she licked her lips, sorry she hadn’t taken another swig of water from her thermos bottle.

  Down below, Arlan struck a match and tossed it into the tank.

  A spear of flame erupted from the tank, the crowd gasping as the flames circled all the way around in less than ten seconds.

  Toni walked out to the edge of the platform. She gauged the wind speed—five knots, tops—and looked down.

  The flames danced around the edges of the tank and Toni felt a surge of sudden fear, despite the calm wind and absence of anything threatening on the ground. She looked farther afield, just to be sure—taking in the audience, the saltwater pool and bathhouses in the distance, and behind them, a single fire engine parked on the curb outside the park.

  She felt another jab of fear, for no apparent reason. Stop it, she told herself. Everything was fine, and the audience was waiting.

  She reached behind her, lit the fuse on the gasoline packs, which burst into flame with a WHOOSH—the fireball generating a blast of heat so intense it staggered her, took her breath away.

  As she gasped for air she looked down and saw—

  Flames across the midway, consuming her parents’ French fry concession as if it were no more than an appetizer before a really good meal. WHOOSH, and then it was gone! Sparks flew like spittle across the midway and ignited the Funhouse, the exterior walls gobbled up like a snack, exposing bones of dry tinder, which were then devoured in turn …

  A frightened voice inside Toni said, No, no, not again—

  The heat was overpowering and the skies above her glowed red, the air around her choked with acrid smoke. The bathhouse was next for the fire to feast upon, and Toni on her high perch found herself nearly surrounded by the hungry flames. She told herself to jump, but fear paralyzed her—fear of falling, of hitting the water the wrong way, her body snapping like a twig …

  Terrified, unable to move, Toni felt the ferocious heat on her back growing even hotter, saw livid flares at the periphery of her vision and knew they would soon consume her if she didn’t jump.