Escaping Dreamland Read online

  The stories became even more exciting in the Tremendous Trio books. Now disasters, daredevil stunts, inventions, and exploration all mixed together in nonstop adventures. Alice invented a barrel in which Dan could go over Niagara Falls, but Frank discovered someone had sabotaged the craft, and danger, hijinks, cleverness, a daring rescue, and a triumph over the bad guys ensued in rapid succession—that sort of thing.

  Robbie had loved the Tremendous Trio, and loved sharing the stories with his father, until three children—Dan Dawson, Alice Gold, and Frank Fairfax—had ruined everything.

  II

  Three Children in New York City,

  In the Days of Horses and Hansom Cabs

  Even at age four, Magda thought of herself not just as an American, but as a New Yorker, and she had never been prouder of her city.

  On a cool Saturday afternoon in October of 1886, when the breeze had blown away the damp of the recent rains, her father brought his wife and daughter from their home in the “Kleindeutschland” neighborhood of the Lower East Side of Manhattan to Battery Park at the island’s southern tip to see a sculpture that had been dedicated two days earlier. President Grover Cleveland had led a parade from Madison Square down Fifth Avenue, passing only a few blocks from where the Hertzenbergers lived. Magda had begged to see the parade, but her father had insisted the crowds were too dangerous. “On Saturday, my Magdalena,” he had said. “On Saturday we shall go and see her.”

  For the rest of her life Magda would remember that Saturday as a series of images, like engravings in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, but with color—the blue sky with white clouds reflecting in the water of the harbor, the fading green of the grass in the park, the dull red brick of nearby Castle Garden. As meaningful as that building had been to Magda’s family, her father directed the attention of his wife and daughter elsewhere that day, out across the water to Bedloe’s Island.

  There stood a copper-colored woman, her arm raised to the sky and bearing a torch. Magda’s father called her Liberty Enlightening the World, though most people Magda would meet over the years—as the sculpture gradually turned from brown to green—would call her simply the Statue of Liberty.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” said Magda’s father, and she replied with a smile and a vigorous wave at the torch-bearing lady in the distance.

  A trip to the tip of Manhattan Island was something special for the Hertzenbergers, an experience Magda would not repeat for many years. But there had been another sight on the harbor that day, one her father had not expected. As they stood in the wind, Magda clutching her mother’s hand, a three-masted steamship with two closely set funnels belching smoke cruised slowly past the statue. As she made a slight turn, the ship’s name became visible on her port side: SS Hammonia.

  “Wilhelmina,” said Magda’s father with a gasp. “It is her! It is the Hammonia!”

  “Why, so it is,” said Magda’s mother, an expression of pure delight washing across her face.

  “Who is she?” said Magda. “Who is the Hammonia?”

  “My dear Magdalena,” said her father, “the Hammonia is the ship that brought us here from Hamburg. She began our New York adventure.”

  At the age of eight, Thomas just wanted to play baseball in the park like any normal kid did in 1890.

  Instead, imprisoned in a black woolen suit, a starched white collar that dug into his neck, and a black necktie that seemed certain to strangle him, he nearly disappeared in the miles of silk that billowed around his sisters, Florence, Emily, Eliza, and Alice, as the carriage bumped down Fourth Avenue past the Lyceum Theatre and turned onto Twenty-Third Street. At eight, Thomas De Peyster was well removed in nearly every aspect from his older sisters, who ranged in age from thirteen to eighteen, so, although there was novelty to this excursion, he took no great delight in it.

  The studio was at the top of a narrow building at 115 West Twenty-­Third, and the process of hoisting skirts and climbing several flights of stairs that had not been constructed to accommodate the dresses of Fifth Avenue ladies promised to take some time. Thomas managed to shoot out of the carriage as soon as it pulled up to the curb and spring up the stairs, arriving in a room smelling of turpentine. At one end of the room stood a serious man with graying hair and a clean-shaven face, his thumbs hooked in his pockets. Across from him, holding a brush and staring at a canvas propped on an easel, stood a young man with a neatly trimmed beard wearing a shirt smudged with paint—the man that Thomas, his sisters, and their mother had come to see, an artist named John Singer Sargent.

  Thomas had already met Mr. Sargent when the painter had come to the family home on Fifth Avenue to pick out the dresses his sisters and mother would wear in their portrait. He had not looked into Thomas’s wardrobe, only saying, “Put the boy in a black suit.” Thomas blamed Mr. Sargent personally for his present discomfort, but the artist seemed not to know this, and greeted the boy heartily.

  “Young Master De Peyster. A very good afternoon to you.”

  “Hello,” groused Thomas, plopping himself down on a small divan shoved against the wall under the window.

  “Do you know who this distinguished gentleman is?” said Mr. Sargent.

  “Is he Oyster Burns?” asked Thomas, sitting up hopefully. Though his father refused to allow him to attend a game, calling it lower-class, Tom followed the exploits of his favorite baseball team, the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, in the newspapers. Oyster Burns had hit over .300 last season, helping the Bridegrooms to win the American Association championship and becoming Thomas’s idol.

  Mr. Sargent shook his head and the man posing for his portrait burst out laughing. “I’m afraid I’m not quite as distinguished as Oyster Burns,” he said. “I’m just an actor.” He walked across the room in two long strides and held his hand out to Thomas. “Edwin Booth at your service.”

  Thomas reluctantly shook the man’s hand, at the same time catching Mr. Sargent’s eye. “You really should try to get Oyster Burns,” the boy said. “That could make you famous.” On this note of wisdom, Mrs. De Peyster entered the room, trailing both a train of blue silk and a quartet of daughters.

  The rest of the afternoon, and several afternoons that followed, proceeded with far less excitement than Thomas’s brief fantasy of meeting Oyster Burns. While Mr. Sargent always introduced his guests to Thomas—for the boy invariably bounded up the stairs ahead of the De Peyster women, arriving before the previous visitor or sitter had departed—none of the men Thomas met provided anything like the pleasure that meeting a professional baseball player would have. Mr. Sargent seemed to take great amusement in these introductions, presenting men to Thomas with the words, “While I have not the pleasure of introducing Mr. Oyster Burns, do say hello to Mr. Henry James.” Or Mr. Stanford White. Or some other mister who had some dull job such as architect or novelist or, worst of all, banker.

  On the family’s final trip to Mr. Sargent’s studio, Thomas arrived to find the room occupied by another family—a mother, a daughter on the brink of womanhood, and a girl about his own age. She had blond hair held back in a green silk bow and a matching sash wrapped around a dress concocted out of more layers of lace than Thomas cared to imagine. Kneeling next to her mother and pretending to examine a colored engraving, she looked as miserable as Thomas felt sitting still in his razor-like white collar for two hours every afternoon.

  As soon as Mr. Sargent saw Thomas, he set down his brush and said, “That will be all for this afternoon, Mrs. Vanderbilt. An excellent start, I think. Your daughters are patient sitters. Not like some young people I know.” Here he shot a surreptitious smile at Thomas. Mrs. Vanderbilt, whom Mr. Sargent did not introduce—perhaps because Thomas could not possibly mistake her for Oyster Burns—immediately began gathering her skirts and her daughters and was just about to leave when Mrs. De Peyster and her retinue of female offspring came through the door. For a moment the room seemed so filled with skirts that Thomas
wasn’t sure he could breathe.

  “Mrs. Vanderbilt, how lovely to see you,” said Thomas’s mother.

  “And you, Mrs. De Peyster,” said Mrs. Vanderbilt in a voice that belied her words. “Come, girls.” Without further discussion, the Vanderbilts filed from the room and Florence, Emily, Eliza, and Alice began to place themselves in their usual arrangement.

  “Did you speak to Amelia?” hissed his mother at Thomas.

  “Who’s Amelia?” said Thomas.

  “That young girl in the green and white. Amelia Vanderbilt.”

  “Why would I speak to her?” said Thomas.

  “Why indeed?” said Mr. Sargent. “Mr. De Peyster reserves his conversation for gentlemen named Oyster.”

  Mrs. De Peyster ignored Mr. Sargent. “It’s just as well,” she said. “This is hardly the place for a proper introduction, and perhaps we should wait until you are a little older.”

  “Wait for what?” said Thomas.

  “Your father and I have discussed it,” said his mother, “and we agree that Miss Amelia Vanderbilt would be a perfect match for you.”

  “Match?” said Thomas, as Mr. Sargent shooed him into his place of discomfort next to Alice.

  “She means,” said Eliza in a tone of great superiority, “that she wants you and Amelia to get married.”

  Before Thomas could react to this pronouncement with words that would certainly have appalled his mother and everyone else in the room, Mr. Sargent said in a loud voice, “Now, silent and still.”

  Thomas remained silent on the carriage ride home, but he pressed his nose against the window, eager to see parts of the city he did not often have a chance to observe. In the mouth of an alley, he spotted a clutch of boys about his own age, dressed in shabby clothing, playing some sort of game. He longed to know who they were, what game they were playing, what life was like outside the bubble of the De Peyster home. He tried to see their faces clearly to discern if they were as happy as they should be that none of them would ever have to marry Amelia Vanderbilt, but the carriage rattled quickly by, and within a few minutes he saw only the mansions of Fifth Avenue.

  Eugene Pinkney lived for those days when he could snatch an hour or two of quiet solitude at his family’s apartment on Broome Street reading a book—preferably something about science or the future.

  For his tenth birthday in 1892, he had hoped for an excursion to Brentano’s bookstore on Union Square and a generous allowance for making purchases. Instead, Eugene’s father took him to the bakery on Houston Street where he worked six days a week in order to celebrate with the other bakers. Mrs. Pinkney joined the excursion, and while Eugene enjoyed the fuss his father’s coworkers made over him, and enjoyed—even more—the freshly baked treats with which they showered him, it hardly seemed a special occasion. Eugene had stopped by the bakery at least a hundred times, and the men always made a fuss and filled him with warm rolls.

  That afternoon, however, with the summer sun still beating down despite the fact that dinnertime was fast approaching, Mrs. Pinkney had led the walk back home, holding Eugene’s hand and proceeding at a pace Eugene knew to be more leisurely than Mr. Pinkney would have preferred. Eugene did not often have a chance to walk along the street with both of his parents. The heat of the afternoon had broken and a soft breeze blew along Houston Street from river to river. Mr. Pinkney generally walked home via Broadway, but Eugene’s mother turned down the quieter Mott Street instead.

  Eugene thought nothing of the change until, near the end of the block, they came into sight of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral. The Pinkneys came from Jewish ancestors, but Eugene’s parents had never taken him to a synagogue or mentioned anything about religion to him; as a result he had a certain curiosity about places of worship. Early on a Friday evening, neatly dressed men, women, and children crowded the street in front of St. Patrick’s, making their way into the church for Mass. Eugene glanced across the street at the crowd and was just about to ask his parents what went on inside a Catholic church when he saw her.

  The girl herself did not attract his attention. He’d never had much interest in girls. But her dress—Eugene’s eyes widened at the sight of her dress. He did not know why. He had, after all, seen girls wearing white dresses in the streets nearly every day of his life. But something about the way the lowering sun caught the ripples of the fabric and cast shadows through the layer of lace made him shiver. Ribbons of silk glistened along the hem and in the bodice. She was just about his age, perhaps a little older. As they passed, Eugene turned his head to keep looking at her. The age didn’t matter, he thought. The important thing was that she was just about his size.

  “Glad to see you looking at a pretty girl,” said his father as they reached the end of the block, but Eugene barely heard him. He was imagining, with such a fervor that he broke into a cold sweat, what it would be like to wear that dress.

  III

  New York City, Upper West Side, 2010

  Robert hung up the phone with a sigh. Why did they always have to ask that same question? And why couldn’t he at least tell the same lie every time they did? Almost as soon as he replaced the receiver, the phone started ringing again. “It never ends,” he mumbled to himself.

  Robert sat at his desk in the apartment he shared with Rebecca, looking out the window onto the bare trees that lined their block of the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Rebecca would answer the phone eventually, he thought. She had answered the phone a lot over the past five months—months that followed the achievement they had both celebrated with such enthusiasm at the time: the publication in the fall of 2009 of his first novel, Looking Forward.

  The title, chosen with help from Rebecca, alluded to Edward Bellamy’s largely forgotten 1888 novel Looking Backward—a portrait of a socialist America in the year 2000 that had been one of the best-selling books of the nineteenth century. Looking Forward presented a landscape of America in 2100 that, Publishers Weekly wrote, “occupies a deliciously ambiguous region between dystopia and utopia and establishes Parrish as a leading visionary of our age.”

  But Robert didn’t feel like a visionary. He felt like a man who’d had one great idea and then labored and toiled for years to turn that idea into a book. He had reached the pinnacle of his dreams, only to realize that all roads led down. The critics had hailed him as a “bold new voice,” with “something important to say,” and for the past five months, journalists and critics and readers had wanted him to say something else important. He understood, he thought, how to write a novel, but he felt eminently unqualified to be a novelist—to talk to audiences at bookstores and sit on panels at festivals and answer questions about the state of the literary world.

  A new idea would solve the problem, he thought. A new idea would allow him to deflect those conversations with journalists to the topic of his next novel. It would answer the questions from his agent and his editor about what he was working on. It would even give him a way to reconnect with Rebecca. It seemed like a lifetime since he had read Chapter Eight to her on that perfect spring day when they had both been so excited to discuss his work in progress. A new idea could bring that excitement back. But Robert didn’t have a new idea.

  The phone rang on. Those interviewers had started it, he thought. He’d been fine before they started prying and asking that question, never worded exactly the same, but always cutting to the same bone. The same question, essentially, that Rebecca had asked him at the carousel two years ago: What books inspired you to write?

  “Robert, will you for the love of God answer the phone,” Rebecca shouted from the living room. He pushed it across his desk and let it ring.

  He hated that question, not just because he couldn’t tell the truth—he couldn’t tell the New Yorker or The Atlantic that his inspiration came not from Tolstoy or Fitzgerald but from the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift and the Tremendous Trio. He hated that question because of what lurked under the answer.
The beast he had left undisturbed for twenty years. That damn question had woken it up.

  “Does it require such a Herculean effort to pick up a telephone?” Robert turned to see Rebecca leaning in the doorway. She didn’t sound angry or annoyed, just tired. Her hair hung in her face and she had a pencil tucked behind her ear.

  “I thought it might be for you,” said Robert.

  “It’s never for me.”

  “Just let it ring, then.”

  “I don’t want to let it ring. What if I’d had a client out there?”

  Rebecca ran her interior design business out of an office in Chelsea, but she sometimes worked at home, and the dining table was often covered with fabric samples and paint chips.

  “Do you have a client?”

  “Not the point,” said Rebecca. “It was New York magazine this time.”

  “You didn’t have to answer it.”

  “I did if I wanted any peace.”

  “I don’t want to talk to New York magazine.”

  “It doesn’t bother me that you won’t talk to New York magazine. I mean if you want to go all J. D. Salinger on the literary world, that’s fine by me.” She stood silently for a moment, twisting a strand of hair around a finger. “But I don’t understand why you won’t talk to me.”