Dreamland

by Nancy Bilyeau

  “Let’s be going,” I said, easing my way out of Henry’s grasp just as he took another step toward me as if to block my movements. I had to dart around Lydia’s chair to escape him. Just before I reached Lawrence’s side, I caught sight of Lydia’s expression. She looked frankly horrified, her eyes not on me or Ben but on her fiancé, Henry.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It took a while for my heart to stop racing as we walked across the lawn to the lot for both motor cars and horse-and-buggies. I stayed close to Lawrence, with Ben and Paul leading the way to their very own roadsters. They didn’t rely on a car with a driver, like their father or Henry. Each owned a Ford Model T.

  “Lawrence can ride with me,” Ben announced when we got there, holding open a door to his vehicle.

  “No,” I said. “Lawrence will ride with Paul. We need to catch up, Ben.”

  “Oh, I’d love that,” he said, with a widening smile.

  As Ben slid onto the seat next to me, I demanded, “Why this new interest in Lawrence? You’ve never cared about him before.”

  “I could ask you the same question, Peggy. Just hold on a moment, while I find my cigarettes. I fancy a smoke while I drive. Do you want one?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Still abstaining? I thought the New Women smoked.”

  It was incredibly complicated to start a car while lighting a cigarette. I took advantage of that span of time to calm myself while he did both with his usual unhurried deliberation. We were on our way, along a road presumably connecting us to Coney Island, when Ben glanced sideways and said, “The black sheep of the black sheep. How I’ve missed you, Peggy.”

  “Hmmmm,” I said, refusing to rise to whatever he was baiting me with.

  Ben made a neat turn around a corner, his hands crossing on the steering wheel while the cigarette dangled from his mouth. He removed it and said, “Did you see Lydia’s face? I think she’s beginning to wonder which sister Henry Taul wants most to control.”

  “That’s ridiculous. He’s just bossy, that’s all.”

  Ben laughed dismissively.

  “I’ve always loved the story of you and Mr. Henry Taul,” he said. “How you reeled in the playboy, the prince of mines – second only to the Batternberg mines in all the Americas. You caught him like a prize trout and then, after getting a good sniff of him, just tossed him back in the lake. Wonderful. But we can see he’s getting his revenge now.”

  “That’s terribly insulting to Lydia,” I said angrily. “I can’t believe this, even of you.”

  “I am not the one insulting Lydia,” he said. “So hold your temper, my dear.” He took another puff on his cigarette. “I’m surprised to find you so well disposed to your sister and mother. Frankly, I was very surprised that you even agreed to this summer stay.”

  “Why? Because I’m such a lost cause?”

  He shot a look at me. “Oh, the opposite. They’re going to need that inheritance of yours from Grandfather to live on if Henry Taul bounces away. He’s proving elusive on that date, from all accounts. It may come down to you keeping your branch of the family from sliding into ruin. Everyone’s been worried that once you gained access to your trust income, you’d give it away to a bunch of bohemians and anarchists. That’s why they eased you out of the bookstore.”

  How loathsome of Ben to try to stir matters up. Making jabs about my trust fund was low, even for him.

  But then I felt my back and neck stiffen and my throat begin to close. Oh, no, I realized, with a rush. This was true. My family wanted to pull me in this summer to use me as a sort of reserve play at the card table, not because of new-found love for me.

  It all came down to control of the money. Our grandfather had set it up so that every single one of the children on our line in the family would inherit $2.5 million at the age of twenty-one, to earn only the interest on the amount until thirty, when the entirety would be available. My mother couldn’t touch any of it directly. She inherited nothing from my father because he died in debt. But between her three children, there was more than $7 million to be had as we each came of age.

  Ben said, “I really think I should represent your interests, Peg. I’m still in law school, but I can arrange the best counsel. I’ve some useful contacts. This is likely to get tricky.”

  “Oh, shut up, Ben,” I snapped. “You’re absolutely the last person I could ever trust to look after my interests.”

  “Why is that?” he asked, as if he honestly didn’t know. He always acted so dismissive of what happened between us. How older cousin Ben, bound for law school, had taken charge of poor distraught Peggy, and where his “cheering up” had led. “You make too much of it,” he said a year ago.

  “Well?” he persisted.

  “You’re too… mean,” I said.

  This seemed to catch him so by surprise he burst into laughter, choking on the smoke he’d just inhaled. “Mean – mean? I would hope so! How else does anyone make any money? You know, Peggy, I take that as a compliment. Nicest thing you’ve said to me in ages.”

  The automobile slowed, and Ben turned into a dirt lot. “I don’t know why Henry is making such a fuss over Coney Island,” he said. “It’s not like he hasn’t been there himself. I spotted him here a week ago.”

  Paul pulled in alongside us. Ben handed over a dollar to the teenager guarding his ground like the choicest real estate in all of New York. They’d clearly been here before.

  Acting as guide, Ben led us to a street called Surf Avenue and announced, “Welcome to Coney Island, home of not one or two but three separate parks: Steeplechase, Luna Park, and Dreamland. They all compete with one another for customers – no cooperation, from what I’ve heard.”

  I was in the foulest mood possible that Sunday afternoon, when I first entered the sprawling, joyous, noisy tumult. It was like being dropped into a hot cauldron of sickly-sweet smells – saltwater taffy, sugared lemonade, and cotton candy – while surrounded by shrieking laughter. A roller-coaster creaked to the sky as we walked in its shadow. Just ahead a young woman, seized up with giggles, rode a camel being led down the walkway. And beyond her, a man in a bright pinstripe suit stood on a platform. I couldn’t focus on the rides or other attractions this afternoon. I was still struggling to take in what my mother and the rest of the family had done in severing me from my job and dragging me out here.

  I paid little attention to Ben as he continued to function as tour master, explaining the story behind this attraction and that. It was correct that he, Benjamin Batternberg, heir to a vast fortune, seemed perfectly safe. No one gave him, or Paul or Lawrence or myself, a second look. The thick crowd was too highly entertained by all the sights today.

  But even more than that, it was Ben’s personal style. His clothes were never obviously costly; he favored dark, plain trousers, jackets, and vests, and liked to roll his shirt sleeves and push them up to his elbows. They were rolled up now, exposing his forearms covered with thick black hair. That and rarely wearing a hat gave him a deceptively proletarian air. The only sure giveaway for Ben were his shoes. He loved Oxfords and only wore the best.

  The eager crowd couldn’t have been less interested in Ben’s shoes, or in any of us. Yes, these people in their weekend clothes could be sales clerks and secretaries. To me, they also looked like the true workers of the city, slaving away in the factories and on the wharfs. Yet instead of being stooped with misery, these men and women enjoyed everything tremendously. As we wove our way through the crowds, encircled by joyful cries and surprised shouts, I felt even worse. It wasn’t that I begrudged anyone an entertaining Sunday. It was the realization, yet again, that the family money, which everyone at Coney Island might assume would deliver ecstatic happiness, brought me pain. Hot tears pricked the corners of my eyes as I pretended to look at a man on a platform, wearing a striped suit, shouting his invitation to step this way and see for ourselves a family from the Philippines. After a moment we moved on.

  “Look at what we have here,” announc
ed Ben, staring upward with a smile. The four of us had left the huge park called Steeplechase, returning to Coney Island’s Surf Avenue for more sight-seeing. We came to a stop in front of an enormous semi-circle brick archway leading to a separate park, one with a sign atop it spelling out “Dreamland.” Underneath that word stood a statue of a giant woman at least one hundred feet tall, perhaps an angel, for wings sprouted from her back. She looked to the side as if she were beckoning, bare breasted, a sheet clung to her waist, wrapped around part of her legs.

  “What do you think, Lawrence?” Ben asked. “Do you like your women with this sort of figure? Will she show up in any of your dreams?”

  Paul pealed with laughter as my brother looked down and then up at the statue, turning as red as he did in the train carriage.

  “That’s enough of that,” I said.

  No one paid any attention to me. The three of them continued to ogle the statue, Paul elbowing my brother. Fifteen was the age when, a generation ago, the Batternberg men were initiated into sex, in a way that only yesterday my brother called “disgusting.” I had no doubt that Ben and Paul began their debauchery at a similar age. Back in the days when we told each other everything, Ben waved a little leather-bound book at me titled The Gentleman’s Directory, containing the names and addresses of the best brothels in the city, which he claimed to visit as “Mr. Franklin.”

  Ben said, “She’s not quite my type. I prefer a long pair of legs.”

  “Shut up!” I said. I grabbed my brother’s arm. “We’re going back to the hotel now, Lawrence.”

  My brother pulled his arm back. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Yes, what’s wrong with you, Peggy?” repeated Ben.

  I abandoned all caution, all strategy, and said, “I insist that you stay away from Lawrence, Ben.”

  “You’re being such a prude,” scorned my cousin Paul.

  “Geez, Peggy, you’re embarrassing me,” said my brother.

  Ben took a step toward me. There was chaos all around us – thousands of people talking, laughing, singing, or screaming – but in that moment, he saw me alone.

  “And why should I be kept away from Lawrence, Peggy? Too… mean?”

  He dared me to say it while knowing I never would, that our secret was safe. I turned to my brother, who looked disgusted, not with Ben, but with me.

  “Why are you spoiling things?” he asked, angrily.

  And with that, I was through with it.

  “Fine – then I am going back,” I announced. “I’ll walk to the hotel.”

  All I heard was Ben calling my name twice, exasperated, but I turned away, and, my eyes swimming with tears, I plunged into the thick of the crowd, now so dense I was barely able to move. I pushed my way through. The thickness of the crowd didn’t bother me. The more people, the better. It would make it harder for my family to find me. I paid a dime of admission and I was inside Dreamland.

  On my right side, a brace of clarinets and trombones pounded music; in front of me, a square tower with a triangle top soared incredibly high, as high as one of the skyscrapers in Manhattan. More immediately I faced a mountain of water, with people riding down in little wooden cars that reached the bottom with an enormous splash. No matter which way I twisted and turned, I couldn’t see the natural water, the beach, or Surf Avenue. I was deep into Dreamland, away from the ocean and the town. But I didn’t want to retrace my steps. I couldn’t bear to set eyes on anyone named Batternberg. I kept walking forward – I was just one of the crowd.

  “See the midgets of Lilliput! The world’s most famous little people! You’ll never forget Midget City!” screamed a man in a striped suit, standing on a platform.

  I was anonymous here, without a doubt, I thought as I passed the Canals of Venice. Henry’s or anyone else’s fears about my personal safety were ridiculous. Not that kidnapping members of wealthy families didn’t take place. I’d read the stories in the newspapers, or heard the hushed tales at Batternberg gatherings, of heirs and heiresses abducted, stolen in the night, held for ransom. Of course no one could abduct me here. But I did wonder how the pleasure seekers of Coney Island would react to my name. Ben had mentioned the Rockefellers on the veranda. The patriarch of that family was most likely the richest man in America – and the most reviled. When John D. Rockefeller Jr got married in Rhode Island, the family had to hire an army of Pinkerton guards for, as feared, the mob gathered to surround the place of the wedding, longing to tear the owner of Standard Oil to pieces for his crimes against the working man.

  No, I reassured myself, looking at their happy, heedless faces, listening to them shriek, they wouldn’t care about Peggy Batternberg. And I had never hurt anyone, nor ever could.

  “Make way for Little Hip, the prize of Captain Ferrari’s animal kingdom!” shouted a man holding a rope. Its other end was tied to the neck of an elephant. When I was a child, I loved stories about elephants, and despite nursing all my earned grievances, I smiled at the sight of this lumbering, wrinkled gray beast with such kind eyes.

  Heartened, I turned toward some sedate-looking booths. The first one seemed to be created for people who wanted to be photographed, the images turned into postcards. A long line stretched out in front of it, of couples with their arms around each other. The second booth had a sign atop saying: “Art for Sale!” There was no line there. Coney Island art? With a grim chuckle, I headed for it.

  I never turned down a chance to see an art exhibition, in New York or in Europe. When I spent a few months in Paris after leaving school, I went with my Aunt Rachel on her tireless treks to find a new Degas dancer statue to buy. What would she say about Coney Island talent?

  Stepping inside to a space much larger than I expected, I was rewarded with a garish portrait of a clown riding a bicycle on the boardwalk. Then came a young couple embracing while a dwarf looked up her dress. This was even worse than I feared. However, there was no one else looking at art inside the booth that I could see, and I was enjoying the reprieve from being pushed and pulled, so I kept walking.

  Two stalls down, at the end of this dim little corridor, I saw something different. A rod had been nailed into the wall, jutting out awkwardly, with a blue curtain hiding what was behind. As I drew nearer, I saw a small cream-colored sign fastened to the rod where the curtains met. It was not bright and garish, like everything else I’d seen. In a plain, thick, angular typeface, it said, “The Futurist.”

  I pushed the blue curtain aside and slipped into the booth. I had to blink a few times, because, in absence of natural light, someone had mounted electrical lights to shine brightly. As my eyesight adjusted, I gasped. As I stood there, and the full impact of this art washed over me, I seized the rickety wooden railing in front of me for balance. I felt so overcome it was as if I were in danger of collapsing.

  I was looking at a Coney Island that was not a corny fair but part of a dazzling metropolis, a boldly imagined world, rendered with vivid skill. There were three paintings, carefully mounted on a thin wall, using abstract technique but depicting objects recognizable as giant roller coasters and beautiful Ferris wheels and sleek motor cars. Their speed was celebrated; the machines were vibrantly beautiful. The point of view was revolutionary. It was as if I were being pulled into the painting, to exult personally in the speed and movement.

  “Who is the artist?” I said aloud. “Who is he?”

  From behind me, a man said, “Why? You want to buy?” in a strong accent. Someone had slipped in behind me without making a sound. I turned around and faced a man of my height, standing back a respectful distance. Like the “Futurist” sign, the workman wore not the striped, garish uniform of a Coney Island employee, but plain clothes, a strangely cut tunic without buttons and simple trousers. In perhaps his late twenties, the man had sandy hair, high cheekbones, and a steady gaze.

  “Yes, I want to buy. How much?”

  He cocked his head, thinking for a moment. “Three dollars for painting,” he said.

  “I’ll have
two,” I said.

  He smiled and then, most surprisingly, bowed. It was a traditional sweeping bow, not at all what I expected.

  “Who is the artist?” I said. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “He signs work with name ‘Stefan,’” the worker said in that same harsh but lilting accent. I could not place the country of origin.

  “Where else does this Stefan show his art?” I took the dollars out of my purse that I’d meant for hotel sweets, trinkets, or gifts, and handed them to him.

  “Here. Only here.”

  That was strange. “How do I find out more about him, about Stefan?” I asked.

  He slipped the dollars into a small leather bag and tightened the strings.

  “What is your name?” the workman asked. I realized suddenly that his eyes were an odd color, a dark gold, like cognac in a glass. “I shall tell him of you.”

  “My name is Peggy.”

  “He can find you where?”

  I hesitated. It didn’t seem like a good idea to tell a stranger, a worker in Coney Island, my address or anything about me. He smiled again. “You have husband?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, surprised at his impudence. What did my being married have to do with anything? But I did badly want to find out more about this artist. A solution occurred to me. “I work at Moonrise Bookstore, on Thirty-Ninth Street in Manhattan.”

  He looked surprised. “A shop girl? This large amount of money for you.”

  Now that was impudent too, although there was nothing rude or improper about his manner. He seemed quite concerned. I considered not responding to his point, but said, firmly, “It’s worth it. This art is very, very good.”

  He scratched his arm, looking at me. “Stefan delighted to hear.”

  Thinking the man got his tenses wrong, I said, “He will be delighted, you mean to say? You’ll see him soon?” I looked around the booth, wondering if this wondrous talent were about to materialize.

  “He knows now.”