Dreamland Social Club(90)

Finally, they turned off Surf Avenue and headed toward the boardwalk down another side street packed with spectators. Jane stole a peek and saw a blur of sunglasses and cameras and baseball hats and sun hats and smiling faces and it felt like maybe it was what Coney used to be like, back in the day—and maybe would be again.





After an impromptu party on the beach, Jane went home to change back into normal clothes and grab the journal before heading to the Coral Room, where she found Beth sitting at a table by the aquarium, doing some paperwork. There were two women in swimsuits in the tank. Jane stopped and watched their golden hair glimmer in the underwater lights, watched the way they formed a circle with their two bodies, hands touching feet and feet touching hands, backs arched back.

Beth turned to look at the aquarium. “It’s mermaid practice.”

Jane started to move forward.

“Big show tonight,” Beth added.

“They look great,” Jane said, then she took her mother’s journal out of her bag. “I found this,” she said. “I thought you might want to look through it.”

“Oh my gosh!” Beth took the book in her hands and then rubbed her palm over the cover. She opened to the first page. “I haven’t seen this thing in so long.” Her eyes ranged over page after page. “You sure?”

“Yeah.” Jane nodded.

“I’ve been thinking about her a lot,” Beth said. “About why she left for art school and never came back.”

Jane just waited.

“I can’t help but think it was because she wanted more. For you.” She shook her head, waved a hand dismissively. “I know it’s crazy. She hadn’t even had you yet. Hadn’t even met your father. But maybe she knew she wasn’t going to meet him here.”

“But why not?” Jane had met Leo. She’d met Leo here.

“Most of the smart ones leave.” Beth closed the journal. “You’ll do it, too.”





The blue dress was one of the first ones she’d found in that chest in the attic, but it was so dressy that she’d never found an occasion to wear it. Tonight would be the night. She slipped into its silky blue fabric and felt like she was traveling back in time; in the mirror, her features, too, seemed somehow transformed. More angular, more old-fashioned. But more herself, more now, at the same time.

When she walked into the kitchen, Marcus and her father both looked up.

“Wow,” Marcus said.

Her dad came over to kiss her forehead. “Lovely.” He pulled back, holding her by her shoulders. “And that mermaid! It was spectacular!”

Jane’s father and brother were going to the ball, too, but weren’t ready yet and Jane didn’t want to wait, so she walked back up to the boardwalk, to the roller rink building, where the party was already in full swing. A disco ball was sprinkling light on the crowd, dotting people with pink and blue and green lights like raindrops. Jane saw a tuna roll dancing with a clam on a half shell and thought that maybe next year, instead of a funeral, she’d like to make a float that celebrated something instead of mourned it.

She saw the seahorse first, then the rest of Leo came into focus. The hair on the back of his head was damp with sweat, clinging to his neck in pointy curves, and when he turned, he smiled. “I’ve been looking for you!” he shouted over the music. There was a band onstage playing some snazzy burlesque song.

“Why?” Jane shouted.

“Because I’m up next.”

He disappeared into the crowd then, and the band onstage finished their number and walked off and Leo appeared in their place. He was carrying a saw in one hand and a stool in the other, and he put the stool down and sat in front of a microphone. From his back pocket, he plucked his bow and held it in his right hand at the ready. He nodded off to the right, and a man came onstage and pulled a movie screen up out of a metal tube and latched it onto a hook. Then Leo nodded to someone at the back of the room somewhere and a funnel of projection light filled the air.

Orphans in the Surf appeared in shaky black-and-white just as Leo’s saw started to sing and sway. It sounded like a woman singing a wordless song of longing, like she’d give anything to be with those children—to be able to take them in her arms and tell them they weren’t orphans after all—but couldn’t. It was wrenching and beautiful and it was coming from him. He played with his eyes closed, not even watching the way the saw bobbed and bent, and it made Jane feel like her heart might burst out of her chest. Just when she thought it was over, because the film was that short, it started again. And then again. The effect of showing the footage on a loop was heartbreaking, and Jane only wished that the children had played a game other than Ring Around the Rosie, something that would have lifted them up and not dragged them down. Leo’s saw seemed to sing ashes, ashes, each and every time.

“Something weird just happened,” she heard Babette say when Leo had left the stage. “Bend down.”

Jane complied.

“H.T. just asked me out.”

Somehow this didn’t surprise Jane at all, didn’t seem that weird. “What did you say?”

“I said, ‘For real?’”

“And he said?”

Onstage Jane saw that Leo had returned with his band; the drummer clicked off a count with his sticks.