Dreamland

by Nancy Bilyeau

  “Riskier than you knocking on brothel doors at midnight?” she demanded.

  She had a point. Lydia and I turned our attention to how to best go about changing our habitual place of dinner. It was difficult to think of a reason that would be persuasive. We both agreed the request should come from her, not me. She enjoyed higher standing among the family. But still, it was unlike either of us, for any of the Batternberg women, to suggest such a thing. Raising her chin, Lydia said, “Are our lives so insubstantial, so frivolous, that we cannot even take a role in changing the place the family eats dinner?” Her question pitched me into gloom, for the answer was yes.

  “I’ll ask Henry to suggest to everyone that we move dinner to the Manhattan Beach Hotel as a favor to me,” she said.

  “I don’t like you asking him for favors. Not under these circumstances.”

  “It’s the least he could do for me,” she said intently, though what her precise meaning was, I didn’t know. I very much wondered what Lydia intended to do about marrying Henry, but I knew my sister well enough that I didn’t pose the question. When she was ready, she’d tell me.

  Lydia hurried off, and word soon drifted back to my room via Lawrence that Henry Taul had moved our dinner to the Manhattan Beach Hotel. It was a bittersweet moment, to realize yet again how the only way that women in this family could get what we wanted was through whispering in the ear of men.

  I expected Lawrence to return to collect me for our walk over, but to my surprise my cousin Ben knocked on the door, asking for the privilege of escorting me.

  “You look very pretty,” he said, his guardedness a thing of the past. “Quite the New Woman this evening, eh?”

  I’d decided that, for this dinner, I would wear the only dress that had intrigued me when we were being fitted for our summer clothes that rushed week in Manhattan. It was a silk dress in the Chinese fashion, suggesting a kimono, its pattern a deep violet with light pink blossoms. The neckline was high and only a bit of ankle showed below, yet it was daring in its tight fit.

  As Ben and I stepped out of the Oriental Hotel, the late-day sun bathed the beach in a yellowish orange glow, and the salty mist of the Atlantic hung in the air. It was as if the long heat spell that blanketed the city with suffering, madness, and even death, never happened. We took the longer way to the other hotel, swinging close to the water. Nannies frantically called to their charges to forsake the beach, for they needed to bathe and dress the children to be presented to their parents before dinner. But the boys and girls leaping in the damp sand defied them. An elderly couple I vaguely recognized from the hotel passed us; they were coming up as we were going down. They looked deeply content, their soft, wrinkled hands tightly interlaced, and the woman’s eyes flicked over me and Ben before she smiled at us, as if acknowledging a fellow couple in love.

  Ben laughed dryly. I wondered if my cousin were inclined to walk this route not to soak in its golden pleasure, or even to suck on his cigarette, but to tell me something significant I should hear before dinner.

  “Look at these crowds,” he marveled. “And to think, sixty years ago, Walt Whitman could swim naked here with no one seeing him and then shout Shakespearean verse to the seagulls.”

  “I do think,” I said, “you may have some news that occurred more recently to tell me.”

  “Yes. Well. As a matter of fact, a solution of sorts might have been found for Mr. Chalakoski.” His bringing to me a solution should be welcome, but I noted the waft of disdain with which he framed Stefan’s name, and my stomach fluttered with nerves.

  “The newspapers have taken up this murder, Peggy. It’s not the crime of the year – no one ever heard of this redhaired dancer outside of one dance hall in Coney Island – but still, the sort of light shines on it that makes it difficult for our lawyers to freely maneuver. We have limited influence on the city prosecutor’s office. But we have great standing in the Department of State because of our business interests overseas. The diplomats have been making telephone calls, and one informed me two hours ago that there’s hope of getting Chalakoski deported to Serbia.”

  The misty, sunny day turned as dark as if thunderstorm clouds gathered.

  “Deported means sent out of the United States, doesn’t it?” I asked.

  “It does.”

  “But he left Serbia years and years ago – and he chose the United States very deliberately. It’s been his home for two years.”

  “I think, presented with the option of a trial followed by, most likely, the electric chair or a life sentence, Mr. Chalakoski would prefer the Old World charms of Belgrade.”

  Put like that, it seemed the lesser of two evils. I pressed Ben, saying, “But he wouldn’t be put in prison in Serbia – you’re sure of that?”

  “Our sources tell us that he has two brothers in the officer class of the Serbian army, the elder having some significant connections. They might be able to exert influence.”

  We’d reached the border of the gardens of the Manhattan Beach Hotel. I cried, “Might? Might? But if they can’t? You forget that Stefan has done nothing wrong, committed no crime at all. If the lawyers would back him, defend him properly here in the city—”

  “Ah, but if this case were to enter the criminal courts in New York, and he pleaded ‘not guilty,’ there is no way that your name wouldn’t come out,” said Ben. “Say he was cleared of the murder, but only after a long public trial. Even if he won, our family would have lost. And that’s the question that matters.”

  How very cold he was, my beloved cousin. Peering at him, I wondered, not for the first time, if he were jealous of Stefan. All at once, a new reason for his hostility occurred to me.

  “You hate him because of that hotdog cart, don’t you?” I asked. “You can’t bear the thought of the mighty Batternbergs being associated with an immigrant like Stefan. But our grandfather pushed a cart when he came here, don’t forget that, Ben. We’re not so different.”

  He shook his head. “Oh, if you’re going to put us back behind the pushcart, why stop there? How about we all share the same room growing up on the Lower East Side, our parents stitching garments a few feet away?” Ben ground his cigarette into the freshly trimmed emerald grass bordering the Manhattan Beach Hotel with disdain. “God, you can be such an idiot, Peggy.”

  Stefan silenced and exiled, the actual murderer still at liberty. How could this be a sane solution? But perhaps that was what Ben really wanted. Walking past the fragrant rose bushes, I took stock of my cousin, trying to quiet all my warring feelings where he was concerned and determine his true objective. In significant ways, he fit the profile of the killer, especially if the man were to turn out to be a connoisseur of brothels. He had not shown me a physically violent side. Yet I knew there were depths to him I’d never fully grasped. Tonight, if Lydia succeeded in getting me those photos, I’d come closer to the truth.

  But first I had to endure this family dinner. Once we took our seats, unpleasantness ensued. No one seemed to enjoy the meal but Paul and Lawrence. My mother, ill at ease, found fault with everything, from the temperature of the baked clams to the freshness of the peonies in the table vases. My Uncle David toyed with his food, speaking little, his eyes reflexively roaming the room. I wondered if he feared his secret mistress would materialize between courses. But my occasional surveying of the vast room yielded no sight of the delectable Thelma. Taking in Aunt Helen’s stony serenity, I wondered if Thelma were really a secret to anyone.

  Sitting on the opposite end of the table, I didn’t hear the argument between Henry and Lydia until it reached full boil. “So I am informed enough to run several households and raise sons but not enough to cast a vote in an election?” asked Lydia, anger enunciating every syllable.

  “That is the woman’s sphere – the home,” Henry retorted. “My mother is right. The man’s sphere is the world, and to use his calm and his reason to vote for the best candidates. Women are too ruled by whim and sentiment.”

  My sister said
, “And you honestly believe that I am more ruled by whim and sentiment than you are?”

  I don’t think she had ever criticized Henry before, in private or in public. And she did so with the jeweled pendant hanging from her throat, his gift presented in the parlor of our Manhattan home. He sat there, a fork hanging loosely from stunned fingers, as he absorbed what had just happened.

  “I think it time for the powder room,” said Lydia, rising from the table. When Mother said she would accompany her, my sister insisted she enjoy her meal, her gaze settling on me. I immediately said I would accompany her.

  I realized that Lydia had allowed the quarrel to happen, perhaps even instigated it, to give her an excuse for a prolonged absence from the table. If she had told me beforehand, I’d have advised her not to use this dangerous ploy.

  My more immediate worry was how we’d talk our way into Ben’s locked room. Again, I had underestimated my younger sister. Batting her eyelashes and affecting helplessness, she was easily able to coax a maid into letting us into Room 505.

  Inside the room, I pointed out the line of photos on Ben’s mantle. However, their scarcity presented a problem. I feared that to snatch up these few would draw Ben’s attention when he returned.

  “Isn’t Paul’s room next to this one, adjoining it?” Lydia asked, pointing out a side door. She was right again. But inside Paul’s room we found something as upsetting as anything that had happened during my time in Coney Island. There were reams of family photos. Paul wouldn’t miss us taking a few from this pile. I selected one of Ben and Paul posing with their proudly smiling father, and one of Henry and Lydia, taken that first day at the hotel, Henry’s driver carrying bags behind them. I hated to expose Lydia’s face to brothel madams, but there were no photos of Henry alone. He was always with my sister.

  What disturbed us both was a folder to the side, containing more photographs. Still looking for one of Henry without Lydia, I leafed through it, and saw three photos of an unknown woman. She wore nothing but a black corset, the kind I’d never seen before, and had her wrists tied together with rope. She held up those bound wrists toward the camera – which I must assume Paul wielded at that moment – a sneer on her young face.

  My hand recoiled from the folder as if I’d touched a poisonous snake. “I have what I need – I have what I need,” I said hurriedly, tucking the two of Henry and the Batternberg men into my handbag.

  “How dreadful,” Lydia whispered about the other photographs. As much as we adopted sophisticated airs, we were both of us virgins, sheltered from the realities of vice.

  We hurried down the hall and rang the button for the elevator.

  “Lydia,” I said. “What do you feel for Jason Campion?”

  “He’s my friend, and just my friend,” she said. “I’m not in love with him, if that’s what you think. But it’s fun and it’s – comfortable. I don’t think I’ve ever felt comfortable with Henry. Not really.”

  It had been in the back of my mind that Lydia would shift from Henry to Jason, that she would become engaged to him even in the face of our mother’s undoubted fury over losing one of America’s richest men for a doctor son-in-law. But I’d been selling Lydia short. It was hard to believe this was the tense sister who pleaded with me to come to the Oriental Hotel to help her impress Henry and his mother. What happened to that girl?

  We went back to the dining room, taking our places. It was difficult to even look in Paul’s direction while I forced down dessert. I most worried we’d return to an explosive Henry, but he seemed to have moved on from it. He was solely focused on insisting that after dinner we join him for the famed firework show on the lawn of the Manhattan Beach Hotel. I needed to find something to do for the next couple of hours, so I agreed.

  The crowd on the darkening lawn was massive. I lost track of Henry and Lydia shortly after he recognized some friends of his from town, and they mingled with the new group while I stayed with my mother and Aunt Helen. I saw my sister just once more, and it was when a red shooting star exploded in the sky, shining light on us all for a few seconds. They were a distance away, Henry’s arm lightly around her waist, Lydia pointing to the sky.

  The fireworks turned out to be a consuming event for the east end of the island, ending later than I expected. I hoped the crowds milling everywhere would give me welcome cover for my own discreet departure. After saying goodnight to my family and letting Alice know I’d get ready for bed myself, I didn’t have time to change my dress myself and safely make the rendezvous time for the horse and buggy and Dimitri. This dress was fashionable, if conspicuous. To conceal it, I threw a wrap around my shoulders and slid out of my room, making my way to the stairs.

  If there were any hope of vindicating Stefan, I’d have to come back with something real.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  My mercenary buggy driver awaited me, helping me into his buggy with a gap-toothed smile, happy to receive a second pair of expensive earrings. Part of me hoped that Dimitri wouldn’t be waiting for me on that corner of Surf Avenue, although he undeniably offered some protection with his presence. I had the addresses and was capable of locating the two brothels on my own.

  Sadly, the man was present and accounted for. Who could miss him? His face was scrubbed of pancake makeup; still, he was dark with olive complexion, black eyes, and blackest hair. He wore a jacket for the occasion, but under it radiated a shirt of a shade of blue I’d never seen on a man before – or a woman, either.

  “Good evening, Miss Batternberg,” he said with a mocking twirl of his hat, his gaze traveling from the top of my head to the tips of my shoes. “May I say you’re looking fetching tonight?”

  “Good evening,” I said coldly. “That’s quite a color you have on.”

  “Isn’t it smart, though?” he said, missing the sarcasm. “My favorite turquoise.”

  As Dimitri confidently led me through the still-crowded streets of Coney Island toward the Bowery, he kept up a steady patter of conversation as if he’d found a new friend. He told me of coming to the United States as a boy, of his passion for dance that led to traveling the country with troupes, giving lessons, and, unfortunately, having to earn his bread as a “taxi dancer,” paid to tango with wealthy women. It seemed his ambitions lay not on the dance floor or in theaters but in the burgeoning motion-picture industry. He was certain that his brand of handsomeness was what women longed to see rendered huge on a flickering screen, and it was only a matter of time before D.W. Griffith or some other director recognized his potential for fame.

  Once we reached the Bowery itself, the noise on the streets ratcheted up to a fierce din. Warring orchestra pits mingled with the sounds of hundreds of men out for the night, most of them laughing and nearly all of them drunk.

  “Hello, my beauty,” slurred one man, his face shining with cheap whiskey as he stumbled across our path. I took a step closer to Dimitri, who laughingly linked his arm with mine.

  “Now you’re mighty glad I offered to come,” he said, only too willing to rub this fact in my face. I ached to step on his foot with the heel of my shoe, but instead I nodded tightly. He was a necessary evil.

  Mabel Morgan’s house, unsurprisingly, was not on the main Bowery street. It stood on the next street, one which echoed with raucous noise but was not nearly as populated. I don’t know what I was expecting of the brothel, but it wasn’t this: a three-story wooden clapboard house with six windows fronting the street, the shades all drawn but candlelight glowing behind each. In the puddle of yellow thrown down by the streetlamp, I spotted two rows of pink and white petunias flourishing in a tiny plot of soil in front of the house. The flowers showed evidence of careful watering and pruning. Piano music tinkled within, along with the deep boom of a man laughing.

  “Scared?” Dimitri asked.

  “No,” I lied, and he banged on the front door. A tall, hard-faced man wearing a bowtie opened the door. I extended the envelope to him, which didn’t provoke a welcome. He took it as if it bore a new
strain of cholera and shut the door in our faces.

  The minutes crawled by. The only thing that would be worse than listening to Dimitri go on about the motion-picture industry was to have to listen to my own thoughts without the distraction of his rambling. I was plagued by doubts as I stood on this front step, staring down at the vigorous petunias. A series of assumptions led me here, beginning with Marta’s assurance that Countess Isabelle held sway everywhere on the island and concluding with my own belief that what was written on the paper now in the hands of a brothel madame would make me welcome inside. How could I be so sure of this?

  When the door opened the next time, we were both beckoned inside. Dimitri had said he would wait outside, but now he appeared more than willing to cross the threshold of Mabel Morgan’s. We stood in a tiny foyer, a large empty umbrella stand at our feet and a chandelier glittering above our heads. The bow-tied man indicated we should wait here a while longer. He slipped through a door to the right, closing it quickly behind him. On the left an archway opened to a larger room where the hum of male and female conversation filled the air, but all I could see was the back of a man sitting at a piano bench. A few bars of music began to sound pretty familiar.

  With a horrified jolt, I recognized it as the Scott Joplin song “Wall Street Rag,” Ben’s favorite tune. Was my cousin sitting just inside this room, making requests of the piano player?

  The door to the right opened, and the bow-tied man beckoned for me alone. Trying my best to look unafraid, I walked toward him, preparing for the umpteenth time the words I would use with Mabel Morgan. Glancing behind me the second before I stepped inside, I noted Dimitri edging toward the sound of the piano.

  The woman who awaited me within this comfortably furnished parlor was not the burlesque creature of any schoolgirl’s imaginings but a respectable-looking woman well into her forties. She might have sprung from the same mold as one of my mother’s most relied-upon dressmakers: smartly dressed herself and exuding the calm, shrewd air of someone accustomed to dealing with difficult requests and unreasonable demands. Fair-haired, she had large hazel eyes and thin lips, her throat softening with age under her chin.