Stealing Magic

by Marianne Malone

  “The secret is,” she began, “sometimes I feel rather out of place here. Parisians are so different from Berliners.”

  “You’d fit in at our school,” Jack said. “Everyone is pretty different.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Lots of our classmates’ families come from somewhere else. Even our teacher, Ms. Biddle, grew up outside of the States—her mom’s Nigerian and her dad’s from England,” Jack explained.

  “That sounds fun,” Louisa said.

  “Do you go to school here?” Ruthie asked.

  “No, since it is temporary. My brother and I have a tutor for lessons, though.” Then she turned toward the river and pointed. “The United States pavilion is down by the Seine over there.”

  “Let’s go see it,” Ruthie suggested.

  They walked to the bridge that crossed the Seine, seeing the tourist boats pass under. The sunlight hit the waves created by them, glints bouncing off the white foam. On the other side, they turned to the right, passing the pavilions of Great Britain, Sweden, and Czechoslovakia. The U.S. pavilion was a symmetrical building with a windowed tower in the middle that was much taller than the rest of the building. A single U.S. flag waved on top. It looked like a typical office building. There was a long line of people waiting to go inside, and Ruthie and Jack knew they didn’t have time for that.

  “You know what I’ve always wanted to do?” Jack suddenly said. “Stand right under the Eiffel Tower.”

  “Now’s your chance!” Ruthie responded. They backtracked to the tower.

  “This is awesome!” Jack said as he found the spot directly under the center of the tower. “If you look long enough, it seems like it’s spinning!”

  The four massive legs sloped up around them and the rays of the sun poked through the metal lattice. It seemed so much bigger than either of them had expected.

  “It is beautiful, no?” Louisa offered.

  “It really is,” Ruthie agreed. Then she heard a man’s voice that seemed to be directed at them, even though she couldn’t make out anything he was saying. Ruthie saw that a vendor a few feet away was calling to them and laughing a bit. “Is he saying something to us?” she asked Louisa.

  “Uh, well, yes,” Louisa answered tentatively.

  “What’s he saying?”

  “He is asking if you are American. He says you are dressed like them,” Louisa translated.

  Ruthie felt a little insulted, but Jack just laughed. “He’s got that right. Hey, what’s he selling?”

  The vendor smiled at them, now that he had their attention, and they decided to look at his wares. They saw postcards of Paris and the exposition, along with a wide variety of souvenirs.

  “Look at this.” Jack pointed to a small red model airplane. It had a single propeller and was the type that would have been big enough for only a few passengers. “It looks familiar.”

  “Bonjour, mes amis américains!” the man said in a big, friendly voice.

  Louisa automatically translated for him. “He said, ‘Hello, my American friends.’ ”

  “Vous aimez? You like?” He picked up the toy plane and handed it to Jack.

  “Yes,” Jack replied. “Oui.”

  “C’est l’avion d’Amelia, la belle aviatrice américaine.”

  Jack and Ruthie looked toward Louisa.

  “He said, ‘It is the plane of Amelia, the beautiful American aviator.’ ”

  “That’s where I’ve seen it before—it’s Amelia Earhart’s Vega!”

  “Pour les jeunes américains, un cadeau!”

  “He said, ‘For the young Americans, a gift.’ He wants to give you this plane!”

  Jack’s eyes lit up. Ruthie looked at him. “We can’t, Jack.”

  “Sure we can. He wants to give it to us!”

  “Je vous en prie.” The man was pushing the plane into Jack’s hand. “J’insiste.”

  “ ‘Please,’ he said. He insists,” Louisa translated.

  “What’s the big deal?” Jack said to Ruthie.

  “Never mind.” Ruthie turned to the vendor. “Merci beaucoup.”

  Even Jack knew what that meant, and he repeated the phrase.

  “Vive Amelia Earhart!” the man said, and then handed Ruthie two small flags, one French and one American. She smiled at him and waved the two flags.

  Louisa explained, “The French like Americans—except the way they dress!”

  Jack looked at the model plane in his hands. It was made of metal and hand-painted with fine details. “This is outstanding.”

  “You know, we’d better start heading back,” Ruthie said.

  “So must I,” Louisa echoed. “My mother will worry.”

  “Do you live near here?” Jack asked as they crossed the bridge.

  “Yes. Just over there.” She pointed across the park to a row of beautiful buildings. “It is very nice. But I miss my home in Berlin. And my school. And my friends.”

  “Where did you learn such good English?” Ruthie asked.

  “It is taught in my school in Berlin. But I also have American relatives. They don’t speak any German at all, so we must speak in English when they come to visit.”

  “Your English is perfect,” Jack admired.

  “Thank you very much!” She beamed at the compliment.

  “How long will your family be staying in Paris?” Ruthie wanted to know.

  “Until we can go back to Berlin.” Louisa’s voice sounded sad.

  “What do you mean?” Ruthie asked.

  “We can’t go home now. Because of them,” she said, pointing over her shoulder to the big Nazi tower across the way.

  “The Nazis?” Jack asked.

  “Yes; they are running the government. My father can’t work in Germany right now.”

  Of course Ruthie knew a little bit about what had happened in Germany under the Nazis, but now she wished she knew more. “What does your father do?” Ruthie asked.

  “He is a surgeon. They took away his license because we are Jewish. But my father says it will get sorted out and we will go back soon.” Louisa seemed uncomfortable with the subject. “I really must be going now. Will you come to the Jardins du Trocadéro again?”

  Ruthie was about to answer no, but Jack was faster.

  “Oh, sure. We’ll probably see you again,” he answered.

  “If you don’t see me with Frieda, come to my house. Number seven, rue Le Tasse. Second from the end. You will see the name Meyer on the doorbell. Just ring.” She smiled at them. “I mustn’t be late. À bientôt, Ruthie and Jack.”

  Ruthie smiled back, knowing what she had said. “À bientôt!”

  Louisa ran off with Frieda, whose long ears flopped while her short legs moved so fast it appeared she had eight instead of four.

  “She’s nice,” Ruthie said as soon as Louisa was out of earshot.

  “We’d better go back—it’s getting late.”

  As they left the Jardins du Trocadéro, they passed by a newsstand that they hadn’t noticed before. There were several magazines and newspapers. The one on the biggest pile had the words Le Temps written across the top.

  “Hey, look,” Jack said, pointing to the date on it. Ruthie read 18 juin 1937.

  “Juin is June,” Ruthie declared.

  “Wow. That’s just a little over seventy years ago,” Jack said. He turned to Ruthie. “Amelia Earhart is flying around the world right now! She took off at the beginning of June in 1937!”

  “Wow. But didn’t she … she didn’t make it, did she?”

  “Exactly,” Jack said. “It’s kinda amazing that we’re the only people on the planet right now who know that. In just a few weeks she’ll be declared missing.…” His voice trailed off and he gazed at the little red plane. “I wonder …”

  “If we could do anything to save her?” Ruthie had been thinking the same thing. “She’s one of the most famous people of the century; we’d be changing history!”

  “We could go to the embassy, or ca
ll the newspaper.”

  “What would we say to convince them? ‘You’ve got to stop Amelia Earhart—her plane is going to crash’? Do you think anyone would believe us?”

  “Not a chance,” Jack conceded. “Man, that’s sad.”

  Ruthie wrapped her brain around this dilemma. “Amelia Earhart knew the risk she was taking. She chose the danger.”

  “I guess she’s sort of like the astronauts.”

  “Right. If she accepted the odds, then probably we should too.” This made sense to Ruthie, but she hated that she couldn’t do anything about it. They arrived at the spiral staircase and began the ascent. Approaching the top, Ruthie said, “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To the airplane. The reason why I said you couldn’t take it,” she began, arriving on the balcony and remembering to stay out of sight behind the curtains.

  “Oh, right.” Jack looked at the plane longingly. “It’s such a good one too.”

  “All clear,” Ruthie said.

  They came through the balcony door into the room—the portal back to their time—and even before they made it across to the garden door, the Vega had disappeared from Jack’s hand. “Just like the arrows,” Jack said.

  They stood quietly for a moment on the ledge. Then Ruthie said, “Louisa could still be alive. I mean, in our time. She could be like Mrs. McVittie’s age.”

  “If she survived the war,” Jack said with a worried edge in his voice.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Nazis took over Paris during World War Two. It was definitely not a safe place for anyone Jewish.”

  “That’s terrible.” Ruthie pondered what Jack had just said. If this trip back in time was like their other visits to the Thorne Rooms, she knew she had just met a person who had really lived, like Sophie Lacombe and Thomas Wilcox. She understood that she and Jack could do nothing about Amelia Earhart; her fate was sealed. But maybe they could something to help Louisa. “You know what we have to do, don’t you?”

  RUTHIE WAS FILLED WITH QUESTIONS at dinner that evening. She wanted her dad to tell her all about Paris in 1937 and what had happened to the Jewish people who lived there during World War II. It was difficult to get her questions answered since her parents were busy planning her sister’s upcoming trip to visit colleges.

  Many of Ruthie’s classmates went to cool places over spring break: exotic islands with pink sand beaches, resorts in someplace called the Mayan Riviera, or at least Florida. Ruthie, however, would be spending spring break right around the corner at Jack’s while her parents and Claire traveled to college campuses. If she hadn’t had other things on her mind—a real travel adventure—she would have felt completely cheated.

  It was Ruthie’s night to do the dishes with her dad. As he washed and she dried she could finally have his attention. He taught high school history and loved answering her questions.

  “Of course you’ve learned about the Holocaust and the Jews who lived in Germany. But a large number left Germany in the 1930s, especially after 1935, when a set of laws limited their freedoms and citizenship. The Nazis believed that Germans were a superior race and that Jews were inferior.”

  “That’s so crazy.” Ruthie had learned all of that in school, but she still couldn’t believe it. “What happened in Paris?”

  “France was invaded by the Germans, and in 1940 the French surrendered. Paris was occupied by the Nazis for the duration of the war, until the American army came and liberated the city four years later.”

  “What happened to the Jews there?” Ruthie pressed.

  “They were no safer in Paris than in Germany. Some found ways to hide, but many, many were taken off to concentration camps. And most of those people were killed.”

  Ruthie was beginning to feel sick. It was as though the war were happening now and she had to do something to stop it.

  “You okay, sweetie?” her dad asked.

  Ruthie took a deep breath. “I guess. It’s just so … horrible.”

  “Yes. That’s why it’s important to know history—so we don’t repeat it. After all, World War Two wasn’t really that long ago.”

  Ruthie had heard her dad say stuff like that before, but it had always gone in one ear and out the other. Now she listened and believed him. She wiped the drips off one of the china plates that her mother had inherited from her grandmother. What would it feel like if she had to leave this apartment, leave Chicago and Oakton, and be sent to a concentration camp?

  Ruthie thought about Louisa and her little dog as she watched the soapsuds disappear down the drain. A realization grew in her, like a wave rising. Visiting the rooms and the past was not simply an exciting adventure; it involved matters of life and death, and she had a responsibility to do whatever she could to help Louisa.

  Ruthie went to her bedroom and closed the door. She called Jack from her cell phone.

  “We’ve got to warn her soon,” Ruthie blurted out when he picked up, without even saying hello.

  “Yeah. I know. Let’s go back on Saturday.” Jack sneezed three times on the other end of the line.

  “I have my first drawing lesson on Saturday, and I don’t know how long that will take. But my parents and Claire are leaving on Friday, remember? And there’s no school that day anyway—it’s Good Friday.”

  “Okay. Friday.” Jack sneezed again. “I’m going to sleep now.”

  “Bye.” Ruthie pushed the end call button but couldn’t end the conversation she was having in her own head. What could they say to Louisa? How could they warn her and make her understand the danger she was in?

  “Bonjour. Comment allez-vous?… Je m’appelle Ruthie. Comment vous appelez-vous?” Ruthie repeated after hearing the woman’s voice through the earphones. She sat on her bed practicing French from a CD her mother had given her and looking at a picture book of Paris. For three nights she had practiced the language and absorbed the images, thinking it might be useful.

  “Où est le parc?… Il fait beau aujourd’hui.”

  “Are you going to be doing that much longer?” Claire asked.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll just listen,” Ruthie said as her sister climbed into bed and turned the lights out. Ruthie silently mouthed the words she heard through the earphones. They sounded beautiful. That surprised her; she was so used to French simply being what her mother taught, but she had never really listened to it. Ruthie fell asleep with the waterfall of words tumbling down into her ears.

  She awoke to the sounds of general chaos in the Stewart household on Friday morning along with her cell phone ringing on her bedside table.

  “Hey, Ruthie,” Jack’s voiced croaked at her.

  “You sound awful!” Ruthie responded.

  “Yeah, and I feel worse. I can’t go to the museum today.” He paused for a sneeze. “I have a fever, and my mom says no way. I think she wants to talk to your mom.”

  “Bummer.” Ruthie’s spirits dropped. What about Louisa? Warning her couldn’t wait.

  Her mom hustled into the room. “Come on, Ruthie. Time to get moving.”

  “Mom, Jack’s sick. He has a fever and everything.”

  “Oh, dear!” her mother said. She conferred with Lydia on the phone. Then she made a quick call to Mrs. McVittie, who was always offering to put either of the girls up in a pinch. So it was decided that Ruthie would spend the week with Mrs. McVittie instead of with a contagious Jack.

  Ruthie threw her clothes on and brushed her teeth. She had already packed her duffel with everything she needed for the week. She loved Mrs. McVittie, but as long as Jack was sick, spring break was going to be slow.

  An hour later Mrs. McVittie opened the door to her apartment. “Hello, dear.” A warm cinnamon aroma wafted into the hall. “Come in.”

  Ruthie’s mom handed Mrs. McVittie their itinerary and a list of contact numbers. “Don’t worry about a thing, Helen,” Mrs. McVittie said. “Have a good trip.”

  Her mom pulled Ruthie
into a huge hug. “Be good. I love you, and we’ll call every night.”

  “Now off you go,” Mrs. McVittie said, shooing her out the door.

  Once Ruthie was in Mrs. McVittie’s apartment she felt better. The panicky sense that she would be going stir-crazy all day began to recede. The apartment was fairly large—especially for one person—and filled with interesting objects. Mrs. McVittie had grown up in Boston but moved to Chicago as an adult. She’d lived in this apartment for over fifty years.

  “Let’s get you settled.” Ruthie followed her down the hallway filled with old drawings in ornate frames. The guest bedroom was second on the right and had its own bathroom connected to it. Heaven, Ruthie thought.

  “You can hang your clothes in the closet and use this chest of drawers,” Mrs. McVittie said. “Then come sit with me in the kitchen.”

  Ruthie hadn’t planned on actually hanging up her clothes, but she didn’t want to insult Mrs. McVittie by leaving them in a heap in the duffel bag. She put them away in the drawers and closet. She had even packed the beaded handbag; she’d gotten into the habit of checking on it before bed, just to see if it was exhibiting a special glow. She placed it gently in the top drawer. Then Ruthie let herself fall onto the bed; of course Mrs. McVittie would have nothing but a real down comforter and pillows. She lay there and threw her arms out at her sides, feeling the feathery softness conform to her shape. She could get used to this!

  Ruthie got up and walked through the apartment on her way to the kitchen. There were so many oriental rugs on the floor that they overlapped in places. A large carved stone fireplace on one wall of the living room faced another wall of tall windows with a grand piano sitting next to them—you could look out the window as you played. There were two sofas and multiple stuffed chairs, all with reading lamps next to them. The living room flowed into the dining room, where a long table was covered with piles of books.

  “Sit down, Ruthie,” Mrs. McVittie said when Ruthie came into the kitchen, a cozy space filled with old copper pots and well-used cookbooks. “Would you like some milk?” A plate in the middle of the table was piled high with sticky cinnamon buns.