Twisted River Read online

  Laughing, Hazel slid to a stop followed shortly by Rosalea, their hair billowing in wild tendrils beneath their woven caps. “Well, Tena, looks like you win again,” Hazel sighed. “You’re certain you’ve never been sleddin’ before?”

  “Certainly. My mother would faint if she caught me in such a state.”

  “Well,” Rosalea countered. “Thank the stars your Mama isn’t here then.”

  Tena linked her arm through both girls’ and pulled them to their feet, shaking the snow off her coat and skirts before she popped her sled rudders from the snow. The movement sent a spray of moisture at the nearby lantern and it went out with a sizzle.

  Hazel’s tiny lips turned into a pout. “Oh folly, fire’s gone out.”

  Tena pointed to the one farthest down the line. “That one too.”

  With an absent shrug, Rosalea tugged her own sled loose. “There’s still one left. Leave those here. Earhart can bring his lighter on the way back down.”

  Luella and Phoebe trudged over from where their sled went off course. “I will never learn to steer this darned thing!” Luella cried.

  Phoebe pinched her cheek. “I dare say it’s the extra weight.”

  “What are you implying, Phoebe?”

  “Ladies.” Rosalea halted the argument with a flick of her wrist. “It’s my birthday and there will be no squabbles. The night is young, there’s another round of cake calling me quickly, and our men are looking very ample in the firelight.” She frowned as she squinted towards the hilltop. “Oh dear, young Mr. Kisch has channeled the spirit of dear old Louie.”

  Barely more than a spot in the distance, the fire illuminated Emil galloping circles around the forty-foot bronze statue of St. Louis—also installed immediately following the World’s Fair. Raising an imaginary sword to mimic the statue’s stance, his voice carried over the others as he led his steed into battle. Stanley, Reuben, Tyler, and Earhart egged him on with a rousing rendition of the recent radio release, Ragtime Cowboy Joe.

  “Come, come,” Luella said. “The lads are having a better time than we, and that is simply not allowed.” She started up the hill, high stepping her way through the snow.

  They trudged up the rest of the rise, limbs finally rebelling against dragging sleds up the hill for the seventh climb that night. Unlike the rest, Tena couldn’t complain. She cherished the burn in her muscles and the pinch of the cold on her skin. Being out late into the evening. Laughing about nothing. Living life. She reveled in the invigoration—and the unusual accent—of her new American friends and their clandestine ways.

  Their frivolity made Tena remember Charles with every waking moment and deliberate how different life was from what he would have chosen for them. He had been surefooted and certain of what would meet them across the pond. Focused on home, marriage, family—always stretching towards the future while her new friends relished in the moment. If she returned to a life of similarity, the pain of living it without him would consume her heart.

  So, after the third invitation and a helping of Emil’s coercion, she accepted the typists’ offer for evening tea every week like clockwork. Whether they met at Phoebe’s intimate flat or Rosalea’s three-story estate, they turned the radio on, kicked off their shoes, and laughed around several pots of tea until someone rang to discover one of their whereabouts.

  On Friday nights at Cave Hall, she slid into a new deep-lilac dress with embroidered ochre flowers on the bodice and a hemline an inch above the ankle—the only gown of color in her current wardrobe. Within a month, she learned the steps to all the disreputable dances and could mock the morality squad with the best of them. She tried to partner with anyone besides Emil—pushed herself as far out of her comfort zone as propriety would allow—but no one made a suitable match. Only one man could make her feel as secure as Charles had. The problem was he avoided her eye at every glance and clung to Hazel like tree sap.

  Only at night in the bed she should have shared with Charles did she encounter the terrible pang of longing for his arms and her sister’s comfort. Even though thoughts of Maggie made hot tears sting Tena’s eyes, she still prayed that in between all the lies her sister actually found happiness. She wished it with all she had, but her heart could not carry the weight of watching it come to pass.

  Jovial male voices amplified as the girls dropped their sleds on the hilltop, the glowing bonfire and triple pillars of the Palace of Art a perfect backdrop for a birthday celebration. Laughing with Stanley, Reuben slapped Emil’s back and ordered him to “Move that pony faster!” When he noticed her watching, he raised his hand in acknowledgment and caught her eye with an unexpected smile before turning away. Hazel giggled beside her. Of course, she thought, his glance was meant for her.

  Earhart strode towards them with arms outstretched. “Ah, they return to us safe and sound!”

  Spinning Rosalea into his chest, he planted a firm kiss on her cheek and whipped the cloche from her head so her hair flew wildly about her face. He pressed a palm to her flushed cheek. “My beautiful girl,” he breathed then called to the group. “A toast to my Rosie! To her 21st year and the last before I call her my wife.”

  “Prost!” Emil shouted.

  “Hear! Hear!” Tena laughed along with the rest as Rosalea pressed her lips to her beau’s.

  It was Earhart’s third similar toast in the hour since they arrived. He had arranged the entire affair with glass lanterns arranged around the peak of the hill, simple hors d’oeuvres, cake, bottles of soda and beer for those who fancied it. There was some disagreement over whether they were allowed in the park at such a late hour, but Earhart insisted that his father had a friend who knew someone’s brother who knew the chief of the Forest Park mounted patrol. There wouldn’t be an issue.

  Hazel slipped her arm through Tena’s, pulling her towards the supply wagon parked behind the two motorcars that carried them there under Earhart’s instructions. She pulled two Coca-Colas from a crate and popped the caps, handing one to Tena. “How are you enjoying Rosie’s little party?”

  Tena sipped the sugary beverage. “It’s nothing like any birthday celebration we would have back home.”

  “Rosalea don’t like to do anything the usual way. She’s the worst of all of us. If it isn’t fancy, it isn’t Rosie.”

  “This isn’t fancy. Fancy is what my life was. Gemstones and ballrooms, conversing in straight-backed chairs. Very straight-backed chairs. If my mother saw us at tea sitting on the floor like a gang of hobos, she would lose her mind.”

  Hazel giggled. “We must have come as a shock.”

  “A shock yes, a bit, but a good one. It’s easier to overcome past times in the unfamiliar. I fear that having to deal with Charles’s loss in a town where he had walked every step would have been far more difficult to accept. Anywhere I go here, I go alone.”

  “Oh.” Hazel turned her attention to the dish of cookies, sticking one in her mouth before handing the other to Tena. For a minute they chewed in silence while they watched the others across the way. Emil, Tyler, Reuben, and Stanley had instigated a snowball fight against Luella and Phoebe, who were squealing as they attempted to hide behind the statue’s concrete base. Stanley grabbed Luella around the waist and smashed snow against her back while off to the side Earhart had Rosalea in the makings of a rather intimate kiss.

  “I must ask,” Hazel whispered suddenly. “Was it so very wonderful? Being in love?”

  Tena nibbled on her cookie then swallowed another long drink of her soda while she continued to watch the chaotic snowball fight unfold. She would have loved to participate, but not Charles. He may have taught his youngest brother how to drink and smoke in private, but in a public place, he had been all reservation and conformity.

  “Wonderful,” she said. “As wonderful as the smell of winter before it snows. Even when he leaves you, it doesn’t change. It’s impossible to forget.” Beneath her glove, Charles’s gold engagement band froze around her finger.

  She flinched when Hazel touche
d her forearm. The girl offered her a timid smile. “What will you do at year’s end?” Of course, thought Tena. Her year of mourning was already half past; in another few months, she would have needs to consider. What would she say when gentlemen came to call? Could she unwrap Elsa’s white wedding satin and wear it for another man?

  Her eyes flicked back to the fire. Earhart was now serenading Rosalea with a poor rendition of Come Josephine in my Flying Machine, having changed the title lady’s name to Rosalea, and the snowball fight appeared to have concluded. Reuben and Emil stood shoulder to shoulder by the bonfire, their hands warming over the flames. “You’re quite fond of him, aren’t you?” she asked Hazel.

  Even in the dim light, a pink blush prettied the other girl’s cheeks and she gulped her soda pop, sputtering. She was an adorable girl, sweet as a button and a true delight. Naïve in some ways, but her innocence made her loyal to a fault. Able to be impetuous around her friends, but safe and secure. She would never betray Reuben; she would never hurt him as Maggie had. Tena understood why he was drawn to her over the other girls in their group.

  “Well?” she smiled sweetly. “I need to know if my friend’s heart is in good hands.”

  Hazel blinked then her face lit up. She set her soda pop on the wagon bed and clasped Tena’s hands around her own bottle. “Oh, yes,” she whispered. “His heart is very safe. As safe as mine must be with him.”

  The crunch of boots against snow brought them around to Earhart, Rosalea, and Reuben approaching. With a pinch to Tena’s elbow, Hazel flung her arms around Reuben’s neck. “Come to keep me warm?” she asked.

  He tugged Hazel’s hat nearer her ears and tucked copper strands back into the sides. “Precisely. Come stand by the fire with me.”

  Snatching Hazel’s waist, Earhart pulled her out of Reuben’s arms and close to his side. “Listen not to this man’s outrageous request, Miss Vine. I have declared a race to end all races. A contest to circumvent all competitions. A triumph to outlast the glory of all other victories.” He leaned in beside Tena, Rosalea shaking her head with a simple smile behind him. “Ladies,” he hushed. “This will be the sled ride of a lifetime.”

  Rosalea swatted his hands away from her friends. “You are too dramatic, Jonathan.”

  Earhart captured her fingers before she could cast another blow and pressed them to his lips. “And you, future Mrs. Earhart, adore me because of it.”

  She giggled and tossed her head with emphasis. “He’s right, ladies. I do.”

  “Oi!” Emil called. A snowball careened in their direction and landed short. “You ninnies afraid to lose another race? I’m four for four and planning to make it five.”

  “Fancy chance of that,” Reuben shouted back. “We’ve gone easy on you, being the baby and all.” He offered Hazel his right arm, then, to Tena’s vast surprise, extended his left to her. “M’lady?”

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  The edge of his lip quirked up. “Of course. Unless you’d rather not.”

  When he offered again, she threaded her arm gingerly through his, and the three of them followed Earhart and Rosalea back towards the fire.

  “Did you really let him win, Reuben?” Hazel asked.

  “No, and don’t you ever tell him he’s just that fine a sportsman. He’ll become too egotistical to live with. Probably go to the Berlin Olympics and kill himself doing mother knows what.”

  “Sounds to me like we need to join forces and take down the buffoon,” Tena said. Reuben’s arm tensed against hers, and she worried that her jest had furthered the strange rift between them. Except when she lifted her eyes to check, the firelight caught his simple smile. Her toes felt warm again. It had been months since he paid her so much mind.

  “What is this, Reuben?” Stanley gawked as the three of them approached. He slid an arm around Tena’s shoulders with a sly smile. “You’ve already found yourself a lady friend. You can afford to give this one up.”

  “Cool it, Lee ole boy. Answer’s the same as last time you asked.”

  “Mourning sure lasts a long time,” Stanley muttered, but he removed his arm all the same. “Guess the best I can hope for is we take Kisch down.”

  “All of you against me?” Emil argued. He frowned with mittened hands tucked inside his armpits. “Hardly seems fair.”

  Earhart settled his sled on the hill’s edge and ran the blades back and forth twice while Rosalea did the same beside him. “Time to receive your sweet comeuppance.”

  “Hey!” Emil glared. “You are all so secretly jealous of me that you must take such extremes?”

  Tyler set his sled beside Rosalea and tugged Phoebe down in front of him. “’Course,” she laughed. “It’s so secret we didn’t even tell ourselves.”

  Stanley slapped Emil’s back on his way past, knocking off the boy’s cap and nearly slicing his toes with the sled blades. “Eat crow, Kisch.”

  “Hear hear!” Hazel cried and claimed her spot beside Tyler followed by Luella and Tena.

  At the end of the line, Reuben adjusted his sled. Situating his too large feet against the rudders, his knees pinned into his chest. Finally, begrudgingly Emil took the place beside him.

  “At the ready, my good lads and ladies!” Earhart called. He raised his arm with a flourish. “On my mark of three, a race to—”

  “Three!”

  Emil’s whoop sounded as he kicked off and sailed away down the hill, his hands waving above him. Shouting protests—and Earhart vowing revenge to all dirty cheats—the others followed close behind. Reuben’s deep laughter escalated as he bent over his sled in pursuit, and the same delicious elation caught Tena even as her eyes watered and the wind blew the cap from her head. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders and whipped behind her. Her fingers twitched at the freedom of it. Itched to let go. But at their speed, and with the ice below, it would be far too dangerous. Charles would never have done it.

  Charles would never have raced down the hill at all.

  Reuben looked over when she called his name. Tena stretched her arms out like an eagle’s wings if eagles could also throw mischievous smiles. “Let go!” she yelled.

  “Seems reckless!” he countered but did so anyway, only to pull his arms back in the next second.

  “Oi!” Emil shouted. “Roll off side!”

  Reuben squinted forwards then thumbed sideways. “Into the snow!”

  He flung himself off the opposite edge of his sled, and she whistled past him. She couldn’t see what he had gone off about, until she realized that was the trouble. She couldn’t see anything. The last of their safety lanterns had flickered out with barely a moon in the sky, leaving no indication where the snow ended as she rushed towards the water. Dark and still and for a split second—the time it took to soar through the air and crash onto the basin—there was naught but silence. The hush of an ocean after the loudest roar of voices. The emptiness of a thousand lives upturned.

  The sled blades sliced through the ice and with a crack, it broke away in jagged edges. At first only her face stung with the bite of the cold then the water worked its way through the layers of her coat, her dress, her undergarments, and she finally understood how Charles died.

  Like shackles chained to a cannonball, her sodden clothes dragged her into the inky blackness, and her shoes felt full of lead. Unaware which way led up and which would end her quicker, she drifted. Lost without a lifebelt to save her.

  Except a lifebelt hadn’t saved him.

  Water roared in her ears, two thousand imaginary voices blending to form the shouted memories that haunted her nightmares. Those voices of Titanic looped together into a conversation that never made sense.

  Running.

  Frantic.

  Hopeless.

  She returned to that lifeboat with forty other women on a moonless night. All of them silent as the air around them shrieked for a savior. Mothers clasped their children. Fully matured women covered their ears. It made not a smidge of difference. Nothing was pow
erful enough to block out that sound. The women stared at each other or at the floor of the lifeboat, but hardly one looked towards the ocean. The sound was terrible enough.

  The calm came on suddenly as though a dark beast moved through the water and swallowed those voices up. A few remained for another moment more—a frantic plea here, a whimpered cry there—and then they too went quiet. The officer in the lifeboat took up the oars and began rowing, to where Tena didn’t know and she wagered neither did he. Simply away. Away from the other boats, away from the death, away from the guilt of survival at the cost of fellow human lives.

  Man this boat, officer. She had heard the command given when the lifeboat first swung away from the davits, minutes before Charles’s final farewell. The officer had only been following orders. So had she.

  “Look!” one of the survivors cried as the sun rose hours later. She pointed into the open water, and the other women craned their necks. Far off bobbed hundreds of white objects, bursting above the water and down again with the waves, too distant to make out their exact shape. “Must be seagulls,” Tena noted. “Curious to see so many this far out.”

  That was the beginning of the denial, the start of self-preservation.

  Tena now hovered in the water of the Grand Basin, balanced between the world of the dead and the land of the living. Her lungs burned with the need for air and her limbs from the pain of frozen water. Charles felt it all. In terror, the last breath of air passed from his lungs. He knew no help was coming.

  Once many years ago, she read a book in her father’s collection that told of a man who bartered with the ancient gods. He asked for the life of his love and the gods granted it. It was not without great cost, but he would have paid any price.