CHAPTER seven
THINGS WERE SUDDENLY very grim on Coney the
next morning. Word spread quickly through homeroom that a
six-year-old girl had been hit by a stray bullet from a robbery in
the building next to hers the night before and was dead. That very
same night, a famous competitive eater—he’d won the hot-dog-eating
contest at Nathan’s a number of times—had been killed in a
hit-and-run accident on Surf Avenue at the age of 103. And while it
shouldn’t have inspired nearly as much grief as the other two
tragedies, the announcement that Wonderland was going to be
dismantled and packed up on Saturday seemed to be the thing that
pushed everyone over the edge. Even Mr. Simmons seemed incapable of
talking about it without getting visibly upset. “It’s been here
forever,” he kept saying, which everyone knew wasn’t exactly true,
but apparently it felt that way.
In class he dimmed the lights and pulled a movie
screen down from above the blackboard and said, “No field trip
today, but I managed to get my hands on a few more Edison films
with a Coney connection. He filmed some reenactments of the Boer
War, which was also one of the larger spectacles ever staged at
Dreamland.” He seemed to lose his train of thought for a second and
just said, “Let’s watch.”
He stood by the projector set up in the room’s
center aisle, and its tube of light shot through the room to the
screen. The words, white on black, said “BATTLE OF MAFEKING, April
28, 1900, Thomas A. Edison.”
It was even harder to see what was going on here
than it had been with Topsy. There were two groups of people in a
field—one line in the distance and another in the foreground with
their backs to the camera—and there were frequent bursts of smoke,
presumably made by gunfire, and then one group appeared to charge
forward and the other retreated but not fast enough, and they
clashed. Some men rode by in the foreground on horses.
Immediately following that reel came Capture of
a Boer Battery, in which a bunch of people stood in a field
firing into the distance. Then a group of men on horseback charged
at them from the distance and captured some of them, and then you
could see that the men on horses were wearing kilts. They were
taking the Boer peasants prisoner.
After that came one called Boers Bringing in
British Prisoners—Edison sure was fascinated by the Boer
Wars—which was basically just a bunch of people walking through a
field together, with some horses. The man at the back took off his
cap and waved it, as if to signify victory.
“Exploitation,” Mr. Simmons said, after the last
film was over and he asked Babette to get the lights. “We talked
about exploitation, meaning to treat poorly or take advantage of,
earlier, but there is a second definition, which is merely the act
of making some area of land or water more profitable or productive
or useful. There isn’t, in those cases, any wrongdoing or ill
intent.
“People have been trying to exploit land and water
the whole world over as long as humans have been roaming the
planet.” He was pacing the aisles. “To raise more, better crops,
for example. To find oil to fuel our cities. To provide seaside
amusements and services on beaches much like our own. So Coney has
exploited and also been exploited. And, as we all know, it
is still happening now.”
He seemed distracted, unfocused, like he’d sort of
forgotten what he had been planning on teaching. “Uh, Mr. Simmons,”
Leo said. “Why bore us to death with the Boer War?”
“Africa,” Mr. Simmons said, “in the nineteenth
century was the victim of an unabashed landgrab by the more
wealthy, industrialized nations of Europe. France, Germany, Italy,
and even Belgium carved up Africa arbitrarily. And the Boers,
understandably, didn’t like it. It was their land. But then again,
they—the Boers—were Dutch settlers. They’d just gotten there
first.” He looked meaningfully at Leo, and Leo said, “Is this a
call to arms, Mr. Simmons?”
“Something like that,” Mr. Simmons said. Then he
sat and his desk and said, “You can all use the rest of the period
to read or catch up. Whatever you want.”
Jane got her book out and pretended to read but was
mostly looking over at Leo, who was doing a very good job of not
making eye contact with her and who kept touching his seahorse,
like the creature itself had an unscratchable itch.
All day she looked around for fliers announcing a
meeting of the Dreamland Social Club—surely Babette couldn’t stand
for things to stay the way they were for long—but none appeared.
Jane half feared they never would again—that she had destroyed her
mother’s legacy and that her moment as a mermaid would never come
to pass.
When she found Cliff Claverack waiting by her
locker near day’s end, she thought she might have to disappear into
the girls’ room for a good cry. But when he saw her, he waved sort
of timidly, so she decided to approach.
“I heard about what you did yesterday,” he said,
and his voice actually sounded nice, normal. “Showing my gramps the
horse.”
“Yeah, and?”
He stared at the floor, fidgeted. “And, I don’t
know, it made my gramps happy.”
“Is this your way of saying thank you?” Jane
asked.
“Don’t push your luck, Preemie.” He actually
tousled her hair, like she was a child, and then he walked off,
leaving her awash in relief. When Cliff Claverack made your day, it
was obviously a pretty bad day.
Fueled by that interaction, she went down to the
museum after school with her list and handed it over to the man at
the desk. He’d looked bored by her mere presence, then taken aback
when he said, “You have a Claverack horse?”
“I do.”
“Give me a minute, will you? Have a look
around.”
In other words, buzz off for a second.
He picked up the phone, dialed a number.
Jane could hear his side of the conversation only
in muffled tones as she strolled around the museum. She hadn’t been
there since her first day of school, and that seemed somehow wrong;
then again, she had practically been living in a Coney Island
Museum the whole time. Still, when she came upon a large bell and
saw that it was a bell that had been on a pier at Dreamland, she
could not resist the urge to ring it, not with anything loud but
with a few taps of her fingernails. Just enough to hear a tiny
ding. She also couldn’t resist the urge to take out her keychain
and see if the Bath key opened any of the museum’s bathhouse
lockers. But it was entirely the wrong kind of key.
The guy came into the room just as she moved away
from the lockers. “And you said you want to donate it, right? You
don’t expect any payment?”
Jane nodded, then he said, “Back in a
second.”
Jane walked over to look at the contents of a big
glass case by the far window and found the same photo of the
Dreamland Social Club that she’d seen in Preemie’s old book. It
appeared to be an original print—with scalloped edges and a wrinkle
in it—and Jane’s eyes fell again upon the girl in the white dress.
She noticed a sort of gash in the print right near her nose and it
brought back a memory she really would have preferred to
forget.
We’re walking down a cobblestone street and my
mother has a bag full of food like carrots and baguettes and there
is a lady walking toward us and I can tell that something funny is
going on. On her face. As she gets closer, I see that she kind of
sort of doesn’t have a nose, and that there are two metal spikes
coming out of what should be her nostrils, and I have no idea what
any of it can mean. “Mom?” I say, and I feel her squeeze my hand so
tight that I think she may break my fingers.
“Lovely day after all!” she says to the woman as
she passes, and it’s all I can do to not scream, SHE DOESN’T HAVE A
NOSE! YOU’RE TALKING TO A WOMAN WITH NO NOSE!
The woman’s voice is totally normal when she
says, “Yes, a nice surprise!”
And then she’s gone and my mother drops my hand
and I say, “She didn’t have a nose, Mom.”
She stops at the corner and looks at me, sort of
disappointed, and says, “Did you happen to notice that her eyes
were the most remarkable green?”
Looking out the window of the museum toward the
water, Jane squinted and imagined she was looking out of the eyes
of the Elephant Hotel, and she thought there were worse things in
life than being funny-looking and maybe worse things in life than
not having a nose or not having any limbs at all. Like not being
loved. Not being able to feel. Not having anything to lose or give
away.
The museum guy came back into the room and stopped
at Jane’s side. “We’ll take it all,” he said, just like she knew he
would. “We’ll send a truck.”
At home all the furniture in the living room—even
the horse—was covered with sheets and tarps, and Jane had this
sinking feeling that something had gone wrong, that the whole
thing—inheriting the house—had been a mistake and they had to move
out. But then she smelled paint and saw her father up on a ladder
with a roller at the far end of the room.
“Whatcha doing, Dad?”
He turned and pulled a face.
“Okay,” she said. “You’re painting.”
“Thought the place could use a little touch-up,” he
said. He’d chosen a pale orange color, which Jane thought
strange.
“Orange?” she said.
He kept on rolling, and it was actually sort of
peachy and lovely. “It’s called Clementine Dreams,” he said. “I
took it as a sign.”
Jane went upstairs to change into old clothes and
then went back down and picked up a second roller. “You were
right,” she said. “About the Anchor.”
“I’m sorry, honey.” He was pouring more paint into
the tray.
“No.” She shook her head and got her roller wet.
“It’s okay.”
She turned and rolled a tall stripe onto the wall.
“So the guy at the museum said they’ll take the horse, and a bunch
of Preemie’s stuff, too.”
“Well done,” her father said. “Really. I mean
it.”
Marcus came through the front door then with an
open letter in his hand. “Columbia,” he said. “In.” He looked
around the room and said, “Is that peach?”
“It’s Clementine Dreams,” Jane said, and he took up
the third roller.
This time when the house phone rang, Jane’s dad
didn’t move an inch. He said, “I think that’s probably for
you.”
Jane perched her roller on the tray and approached
the phone warily, wondering what Leo could possibly have to say to
her now, why he could possibly think that calling their house was a
good idea.
She picked up and said, “Hello?”
“Can you meet me?” he said. “Like now?”
“I don’t know.” She twirled the phone’s cord in her
fingers. “It’s been sort of a crazy afternoon here.”
“Here too,” he said. “Please. It’s
important.”
“Okay,” she said. “Where?”
“I’m at the bar,” he said. “I’m alone.”
“I don’t understand.” It was the thick of happy
hour.
“Just knock on the gate when you get here,” he
said. “I’ll explain.”
Health department notices glued onto the gate to
the Anchor announced it had been shut down. There were some numbers
and letters and codes listing violations, but Jane already knew
what they’d be. She rapped on the gate and it shook and rattled,
and then she heard a sort of cranking sound as it started to lift,
rolling into itself.
“Can you fit?” Leo said when it was about two feet
off the boardwalk. Jane lay down and rolled into the Anchor under
the gate. Leo helped her up, then cranked the gate back down and
shut.
He said, “Can I get you a drink?”
He had a beer bottle in his hand and Jane said,
“I’ll have one of those.” She felt very grown-up here with him, in
a bar. Alone. She’d put on jeans and a sort of tank top that had
been Birdie’s but looked new, never worn. It was sort of low-cut
and, for once, Jane liked that.
Leo went behind the bar and slid open a bin
refrigerator, then took the bottle cap off and slid the bottle on a
coaster onto the bar in front of Jane. She took a sip and waited
for him to say something, but he didn’t. “What are we doing here?”
she asked finally.
“He fessed up about not paying the rent, and about
the rats, too.”
Jane just waited.
“And did you know you can get shut down for
‘excessive fruit flies’?”
Jane shook her head. He wasn’t drunk, she didn’t
think. But there was something sort of off-seeming about Leo. He
shook his head and looked around the bar. “I think this might be
the Anchor’s last hurrah. You and me right now.”
“I’m really sorry.” She wiped condensation off her
beer, then wiped her wet finger on her jeans.
Leo said, “It’s okay. I’m the one who owes you an
apology. You can’t help those who don’t help themselves. Isn’t that
what they say? I mean, he could’ve done something, you know?
Cleaned up?”
Jane just nodded in agreement, and Leo came around
and sat on the stool next to her. “I’ve been thinking a lot about
this place lately, and I figured out why I’m so messed up about it
all.” He sighed. “This was my Trip to the Moon, this place. My
Elephant Hotel.”
He shook his head. “I used to build forts behind
the bar and pretend we were under attack by some evil foreign navy.
I used to pretend I had records of my own, songs I’d written, in
the jukebox. I used to build igloos out of the toilet paper
supplies in the storeroom.” He paused and seemed sadder for a
flash. “I was here on nine-eleven, even though I didn’t really
understand what was going on.”
He hung his head now and said, “I’m sure it sounds
awful, but I grew up here. At the bar. It’s the one place I
remember my parents together and happy.”
“It doesn’t sound awful,” she said. “It sounds
fun.”
“I used to think a lot about growing up and being
old enough to tend bar and take over from my dad, you know. I guess
that ship has sailed. I’ve never even gotten drunk here. It just
seems”—he laughed—“wrong that I never will.”
She was so happy that they were talking again—and
like this—that she had to fight the urge to smile, to dance.
“We could get drunk now,” she said. “We can build a
fort out of toilet paper. Whatever you want.”
They stocked the jukebox with songs, and almost
every time one started Leo would say, “Oh my God, I almost forgot
about this song” or “I love this song” or “I hate this song,” but
Jane didn’t really recognize any of them, didn’t care. She
remembered dancing—that had been her earliest memory—so there must
have been music, but she couldn’t remember any songs beyond “Meet
Me Tonight in Dreamland,” just a feeling. Some of these songs
sparked that feeling again. Others, not so much. And then the song
that started with “Hey! Ho! Let’s go!” came on and Jane felt a sort
of explosion in her brain. This was a song she knew. Even
though she didn’t know it by name.
They danced in the bar and on the bar and
had a few more beers and went to the storeroom, but there wasn’t
much in the way of toilet paper, and then they sat up on the bar,
facing the wall behind it—feet perched on fridges of beer—and
looked at all the old postcards and signs on the wall.
“I just can’t believe this wall is going to be
gone,” Leo said as they read from old postcards and bar tabs and
IOUs, studying pictures of people who’d been to the
Anchor—celebrities, the mayor, but also just a woman who’d gone
into labor while walking past and tourists who’d gone home to
faraway lands with tall enough tales that they’d sent postcards
from Peru, Amsterdam, Berlin.
“This is one of my favorites.” Leo pulled a
postcard off the wall and read from it. “Everyone has a holy place,
a refuge, where their heart is purer, their mind clearer, where
they feel close to God or love or truth or whatever it is they
happen to worship.”
“I like it,” Jane said. She’d just spotted a stack
of postcards advertising the Anchor itself, next to the cash
register. “What is it?”
“It’s from some book about a bar, I think.”
Jane studied the attribution on the card—J. R.
Moehringer—and read the quote again.
“That’s what this place is for me,” Leo said. “Not
just the bar. But Coney. And this wall is a sort of
monument.”
“You should talk to the museum,” Jane said, still
high on the fact that the museum was going to have its very own
Preemie collection. “Maybe they’ll move it.”
“Move the wall?”
She shrugged. “They’re coming to get the Claverack
horse on Thursday.”
“They are?”
She nodded. “Or they could re-create the wall. Just
move the stuff.”
“I don’t know,” Leo said. “I don’t really see the
point if the rest of the place is gone.”
Jane didn’t want the place gone either. Because she
never wanted to forget this night.
“I heard you have an extra ticket,” he said. “To
the presentation?”
She surveyed him, with his tired lollipop eyes and
anemone hair, and said reluctantly, “I promised it to Legs.”
“Ah,” Leo said. “Another hot nondate.”
“You know it’s not like that”—she looked at him
meaningfully, tried to communicate it all through her eyes—“at
all. He’s writing a story for The Siren.”
“Right.”
“Wait,” she said. “You want to go to the
presentation?”
He nodded.
“To protest?”
“Not my style.” He’d just taken darts from the
board on the wall and handed three of them to her. “Information is
power, right? I’m just following your lead.” He indicated a line on
the floor and nodded at the board.
“No funny business?” She threw a dart and missed
the red-and-green board entirely. Her dart hit the wall and fell
with a thump to the floor.
Leo held up two fingers with a dart in his hand.
“Scout’s honor.” He threw and hit the bull’s-eye, then flashed a
smile at Jane.
And flirt. Oh, the woman flirted like a
pro.
She said, “You don’t strike me as the Boy Scout
type.”
He froze and looked at her then, and smiled this
sort of debonair smile, and she thought maybe this was
it—finally!—the moment in which he’d kiss her, but then a scurrying
sound—undeniable scurrying—behind the bar made them both
freeze, and then Leo grabbed her hand, headed for the back door,
and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Wait.” She ran to the bar and grabbed an Anchor
postcard before running with him, out into the night.