1973
It was the most boring moment of Alice’s life. She couldn’t remember ever being so bored. Sitting with her parents and the older couple who had joined them for dinner, the boredom was so intense that it manifested as physical discomfort, a feeling of such overwhelming restlessness that she rubbed her hands on the itchy cloth arms of the chair and repeatedly kicked the table leg. Her mother put her arm on Alice’s to tell her to stop, and she knew she was annoying the adults, but this knowledge did not help; in fact, it made her angry—they should try being her and listening to them, to whatever it was they were talking about, dreadful nonsubjects from the distant, gray, obscure world of adulthood: annuities, commutes, the pros and cons of tile roofing versus shingles.
She knew she was being childish, and she hated being childish, though she was a child and, at nine years old, would continue being one for at least another two or three years. Even before your bat mitzvah, by eleven or twelve, you were nearly a teenager, which was something different. She’d recently watched her older sister, Elise—installed for the week at a cousin’s house in White Plains after a pitched family battle, during which she’d expressed the sentiment that the Catskills were stupid and tried out a new word that Alice knew, given her father’s guffaw, Elise must have read and never spoken out loud: borjeeoyce—pass into this realm.
Alice wished she could have stayed home too. They came twice a year, July and December, and would keep coming for the rest of time. The Neversink was, after all, in the family, as her father liked to say, though it wasn’t his family. His name was Fred Emmenthaler. Her mother, Rose, was Joey Sikorsky’s daughter—the infamous Joey Shvetz, who, as Catskills lore went, had suffered a breakdown on the Neversink main stage. Joey was the family’s black sheep, and, Alice dimly understood, her parents’ tireless allegiance to the Neversink was partly an attempt to ingratiate their line back into the fold. Even at nine, she sensed it would never work—Great-Aunt Jeanie reserved them the same nice room and greeted them warmly upon arrival, but she never lingered long, and soon they were alone again, sitting with other boring people from New Jersey.
She kicked the table again, harder. Her mother leaned over and whispered, “Stop being a child.” Her mother’s favorite tactic for controlling her daughter’s childishness was to point it out, which usually resulted in Alice at least being quiet—a behavior that was nonchildish, if not especially grown-up. But now, sitting at this table, she did not care, she needed to break free and run, shake off the dullness that had settled on her like the dust in their unfinished basement back home. She felt like she might actually die if she had to sit here another minute.
Mr. Schenkman tilted a bald head that reflected light from the dining room’s large chandelier toward her and said, “Is it past your bedtime?”
“No,” said Alice. “Is it past yours?”
Her father said, “Alice! What has gotten into you?”
“Can I go?”
Mrs. Schenkman said, “There’s still dessert and coffee.”
Alice’s mother said, “I don’t think she needs any coffee.”
“Can I go, please?”
“No,” her mother said.
Her father said, “Where do you want to go?”
“Just back to the room. To read.”
“Fred, it’s not a good idea.”
“Why?” Her father turned to her mother, and Alice saw that the discussion was now past her, again in the adult realm.
“You know why.” Her mother looked at her father, then said, “The ildren-chay.”
“I understand pig Latin,” said Alice, although she wasn’t sure what her mother meant.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Schenkman, “it’s so horrible. Two decades and no one caught. How can it just go on and on?”
“I have my theories,” said Mr. Schenkman. “I think it must be a hotel guest, someone who takes little hunting trips to the country, if you catch my meaning. In the city, you have cops everywhere. Here, there’s probably five police in the entire county.”
“Can we not discuss this right now?” said Alice’s mother.
“Discuss what?” said Alice.
Her mother sighed. “Do you know the way to the room?”
“Yes, definitely. Yes yes yes.”
“Straight back, then, and we’ll check on you in an hour. You’d better be ready for bed.”
Or what, Alice thought, but knew better than to say it. She walked slowly out of the dining room, her legs stiff from tensing them in sullen protest under the table, but as soon as the dining room disappeared behind her, she was running down the carpeted hallway with a feeling of joy in her heart so immense she felt like she might explode. Had she ever been this happy? An elderly couple gave her a reproving look as she flew by them down the hall, aimless in her revel. She jogged first past the pool, brightly lit in the early evening, overseen by a young lifeguard who stared dully over the rippling green water, then through the lobby and back, past the dining room, to the closed door of the auditorium. A sign warned, “Show in Progress, Do Not Enter,” so she did not, instead turning heel again and racing up the main staircase, past a family of five and a put-upon porter pushing the luggage cart behind them; past a sitting area with empty gilt-backed chairs, herself streaking by in the mirror; past doors and doors and doors and doors and doors and doors and doors.
The closed doors fired her imagination. She had decided she wanted to be an author, though she hadn’t written anything yet, besides some “creative free-writes,” as her teacher called them, in her fourth-grade class. But she loved books, and she loved picturing what might be happening just behind all those doors. Other people’s lives seemed so incredibly interesting, in contrast with her own life and the lives of her parents, which were dull, though very nice. That would be the great thing about being an author, she thought—you could have your dull, nice life while simultaneously occupying the lives of anyone you wanted. Cleopatra, for example. They had learned a little about Cleopatra in her class, and she had looked up more about her in the Encyclopedia Britannica during recess. Why had no one written about Cleopatra, she wondered? She would, when she got older.
She kept moving, charged with a sense of adventure, certain she was on the verge of discovering something she hadn’t seen yet. The hotel was massive, an unknowably huge labyrinth of rooms, corridors, passages, floors, and compartments—a world unto itself. She’d always loved secret places, perhaps because of the lack of secrets or privacy in her own life, a lack of which she had lately become aware. Her life contained no private spaces and no secrets she could immediately think of, besides getting in trouble earlier in the year for throwing a rock at a mean boy during recess, but that wasn’t the same kind of secret. Elise, for example, had real secrets—her body, on its own, constituted a mystery. Her sister’s entire life, for the last year or two, had become entirely, annoyingly private, a succession of whispered phone calls, shut doors, long bathroom ministrations, rendezvous. Alice’s existence, suddenly, felt immature and slightly ridiculous in its unadorned simplicity. She got up and ate her breakfast, went to school, came home, had a snack, maybe rode bikes with her friend across the street, watched TV and petted Banjo, ate dinner, described her tedious day in even more tedious detail, did her homework, watched more TV, went to bed. Lying there, the Plainview crickets sawing their nighttime plainsong, she felt the unspecial suburban landscape outside like a personal indictment.
Having climbed to the fourth floor, she was disappointed. On her way up, she’d imagined a secret tunnel leading out to a rooftop esplanade, a hidden garden on the roof, with a bright fireman’s pole plunged back down through the heart of the hotel. Instead, it was all just more guest rooms. There was an interesting closet near the stairwell, but it proved to be full of towels and cleaning supplies. Poisoned cleaning supplies, perhaps? No, she thought, don’t be stupid, just the dumb stuff your mother keeps under the kitchen sink. Poisonous, yes, but boringly poisonous, not skull-and-crossbones poisonous. She walked back downstairs in a growing mood of discontent. What if there really wasn’t anything to see; what if there were no secrets? This was a terrible thought. If the adult world was just what it seemed, that is, a series of boring transactions and conversations, then there wasn’t any point in getting older. The only thing that made it seem palatable was the intimation she got now and then that there was a vast, interlocking web of things beneath the surface, as if a blanket had been thrown over an unspeakable, writhing tumult. But maybe the hotel was just a hotel, New Jersey was just New Jersey, her sister was just an unhappy teenager.
On the second floor, she decided to play a game, make a bet of sorts: she would knock on one of the doors at random, and if an old woman came to the door, it would be a good witch in disguise. She would tell Alice where she should go next, in code, and this would lead her to something interesting. At the first door, she knocked and stood with her heart pounding, but no one answered. At the second, no one did, either. But at the third, she thrilled as the door opened to reveal an older woman. Maybe not old-old, exactly—not her grandmother’s age—but old enough. Wrinkly.
“Yes,” the woman said.
“My name’s Alice.”
The woman smiled the smile of a good witch. “Hello, Alice.”
“Hi.” She stood there, waiting for the information.
“Can I help you with something? Are you lost?”
“Do you have something to tell me?”
The woman leaned out of the door and looked up and down the hall. “Where are your parents, little girl?”
“Do they know where you are?”
“I’m supposed to be back in our room at eight thirty.”
“I see. Why don’t you go there now?”
“I’m bored,” she admitted.
The woman paused, thinking. “I have an idea. Why don’t you go down to the coffee shop and put a lemonade on our tab? Mrs. Moskowitz, room 208.”
“Will I find the next clue there?”
The woman looked at her with irritation and mild concern. “Clue? No, just lemonade, I believe. Go on down there now.”
Walking away, Alice tried to convince herself that the good witch was being sneaky, had secretly given her a clue, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt like an annoyed woman had told her to go away. As she padded back down the carpet, she ran her fingers on the walls and felt her mood deflate further. The walls were the same cream color as their house—as her school, now that she thought about it. Everywhere was that color; the only exception, the only place where fun things really happened, was in books. At the end of the hall she went into their room, but felt too antsy for bed, so she grabbed her novel—A Wrinkle in Time—and went obediently down to the coffee shop.
There was only one other person there, an older man with a newspaper. No one behind the counter. She climbed onto one of the high vinyl stools, pinioned the book on the hard linoleum, and had just found her page when a man’s voice said, “Alice?”
She looked up, surprised to see Len, the hotel manager, on whom she’d had a crush since she could remember. He had curly hair, and big arms, and a gentle way about him that put her at ease, like a big, friendly dog. “Hi.”
Why did everyone always ask this? “Dinner. Can I have a lemonade? Put it on Mrs. Moskowitz’s tab, room 208.”
“Sure,” he said, with a look of amusement, as he pulled a pitcher from the fridge behind him. He filled a glass with ice, poured the lemonade, and set it in front of her. “On the house. What are you reading there?”
“A Wrinkle in Time.”
“Never heard of it. Good stuff?”
“It’s great.”
“I don’t get much time to read these days, unfortunately.”
Len busied himself cleaning something, and Alice addressed herself to the book once more. Then, with all the force of a good narrative turn, it struck her: Len was the clue. The good witch had known he’d be down here.
“Do you have a clue for me?” she said.
He turned. “Excuse me?”
“A clue. For where I should go next.” She suddenly felt childish and stupid, but continued. “I’m on a search.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. Something interesting.”
He looked at her, at her book, then another smile creased his handsome face. “Yes, I do.” He cast a quick glance at the man at the end of the counter, making sure he wasn’t eavesdropping, then he leaned in. She strained up to hear his words, and felt goosebumps sprout on her neck when he whispered, “There’s a door.”
“A door?”
“A magic door.”
“Where is it?”
“I can’t tell you, that’s the thing. It moves around. You have to find it.” She stared up at him, and he wagged his head at her solemnly. Then, breaking the spell, he straightened and said, “What time are your parents done with dinner?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Make sure you’re done with the search by then, okay?”
“Okay.” She drained her lemonade and rose, the sugar amplifying her excitement as she exited the coffee shop. How could she have doubted there was more than meets the eye? You just had to be receptive, open to the world, and it would bestow these discoveries on you, these adventures. She walked slowly back across what her parents reverently called the Great Hall, scanning the enormous room. Sofas, paintings, shelves with books and knickknacks, lots of people moving to and from the ballroom and lounge, up and down the big stairs that curved up to the floors above. A gilt-edged clock ticking on the wall in a nearby alcove told her she had only fifteen minutes before her hour of freedom was up, fifteen minutes to find the magic door. For a moment, she despaired: the Neversink was so big, it would be impossible.
Then she saw it. A small metal door below the grand staircase. It was half-hidden in the shadows and set obliquely to the main sitting room, so that you had to be walking toward the stairs and looking carefully to see it. Her heart quickened—this was the door, without question. But did she dare enter? There were so many guests around, plus bellhops and maids scurrying this way and that. She stopped and opened her book, pretending to read as she stood—just a strange, bookish girl, nothing to see there, pay her no mind, as she edged into the darkness under the stairs.
Still, she paused. She didn’t want to get into trouble, and she was about to give up the pretense of following the clue, when she thought about the book in her hands. What would the story be like if Meg and Charles Wallace and Calvin didn’t enter the tesseract? If they were too afraid? They would never have had any adventures, never have rescued Mr. Murry from IT. There wouldn’t have been a story at all. With a sharp intake of breath, as though to clear any sensible argument from her mind, Alice pulled the handle and ducked in, shutting the door quickly behind her.
A small wooden staircase led downward. The lights were on, but they were low and yellow, and she had a feeling of being underwater. The basement hall’s floor was tile, and the walls were stone, the foundation of the building. She had the feeling of being privy to an enormous secret—the thing below the surface she’d sensed and sought after. It was here, down here.
But now that she’d followed the witch’s clue, what next? There was no more down. What there was was more doors, a line of them down the hall, terminating with a large exit at the very end, a hundred or so yards away. The lights flickered overhead, seemingly responsive to her thoughts. Which door should she pick? The first ones, to her left and right, were locked. The third, to her left, was also locked. A tiny shard of disappointment lanced the fun of the moment, and she saw herself as she probably was—a bored little girl playing make-believe.
But the lights above her flashed, and the door on the right opened. She stood before it, peering into the darkness as her eyes made sense of the shapes. Shelves piled with all manner of cans and bottles, though she couldn’t see what they contained. Dozens, hundreds of them, all filled with magic potions, she thought, poisons and serums and elixirs. She entered, and the door, heavier than she’d realized, closed behind her. The small square window let in a little light, but not enough, and she reached around on the wall, trying and failing to find a light switch.
Did something move in the corner of the room? Surely not. She pulled on the door handle, but it seemed to have locked behind her. She steeled herself and looked again at the corner, resolving to wait for her eyes to adjust, refusing the trick of fear and darkness that was making her see a man. A gray, faceless man, looking at her. Then there was a clicking sound, and light. A light radiating from the man who couldn’t be there, who was there in the corner smiling at her. As hard as she’d wished before for the hidden to be real, she now wished it was all make-believe, wished the man away, but instead he drew nearer, and at last she screamed.
A custodian in search of an errant mop handle discovered her in the morning, sixteen hours later. A pair of paramedics carried her upstairs, emerging into the almost intolerable aboveground light, to the sound of her mother’s sobs. She’d been examined by a doctor called to the hotel, who touched the necklace of purple bruises around her throat and said it was a miracle she’d survived. Groys nes, he’d repeated, over and over. She’d overheard him talking to the police. There had been another body down there—the remains of a child who’d been less lucky than she had. Her attacker must have thought she was dead, she overheard one policeman say to another. They asked her a few questions about the man, took down what she could remember, thanked her, and gave her father a business card. The hotel detective, Mr. Javits, didn’t ask her anything, just seemed relieved she was okay—over and over he said what a brave little girl she was.
She’d been driven home in a car filled with terrified gratitude, as though her parents were afraid she’d be taken away again if they opened their mouths. They’d installed her in her bedroom, put a stack of books by the bed, and there she’d stayed, reading and writing, and eating food when her father brought it in on a tray. It was kind of great, actually—she could miss school if she wanted, the entire semester. Elise seemed a little jealous, even. You owe me, she told her sister with a laugh—no more trips to the Neversink!
But at night there were the stairs, the room, and the man in the corner. The queer light he cast all around him. His kind smile as he approached, the arms encircling her, and a darkness so consuming and total that even when she regained consciousness it was like she was dead. This she could not think about, could not talk about, even when her parents brought a therapist in to see her. This she would bury so deep it could never be unearthed. Each morning, the sun streamed in through her blinds to tell her she was safe, and she would finally sleep, knowing as she drowsed away that she would never go down, would remain above, always.