Prince of Air Read online

  “I know how awkward this must seem. It is awkward. But your father and I have been divorced for almost a year now and—”

  “But what would Daddy say if he knew?” Maisie insisted. Her stomach was doing that thing it did whenever she got upset, rolling and flipping. The taste of something sour filled her mouth.

  “You have to tell Bruce Fishbaum that you can’t go, that you’re practically married,” Felix said.

  “Oh dear,” Maisie moaned.

  Their mother fidgeted with her napkin, folding it and unfolding it, smoothing it on the table then folding it again.

  “I’m sure nothing will come of it,” she said.

  “Then why go at all?” Felix asked.

  “Oh dear,” Maisie said again, standing up.

  “Now sit down, sweetie,” their mother said.

  Maisie’s hand shot to her mouth, but it was too late to stop her from throwing up all over the table and her mother’s wrinkled, copper linen suit.

  That night, as she lay in the four-poster bed with the intricately carved animals and the raw silk canopy, Maisie tried to calm her queasy stomach and her overactive mind, which was racing with terrible images of her mother and Bruce Fishbaum. Maisie and Felix had met Bruce Fishbaum a couple of times when they went to the office with their mother to pick up files or something else that had been accidentally left behind. He was tall and wiry and balding, not at all handsome like their big, burly, curly-haired father. He wore those rectangular glasses that people wore when they wanted to appear cooler than they really were, and both times Maisie had seen him, his ties had had nautical themes: tiny, fat sailboats on one, yachting flags on the other.

  She couldn’t stop thinking of her mother kissing Bruce Fishbaum the way she used to kiss their father, lifting her face up and standing on tiptoes to reach his lips. Worse, she pictured her actually falling in love with Bruce Fishbaum. Maybe even marrying him. Then what? Where would they live? Would they move to what he always called his “perfectly restored historical house on Spring Street,” a place he liked to mention at the drop of a hat? Would they have to share rooms with his two kids, the boy and girl whose pictures on sailboats and in hockey gear grinned out from his desk? Maisie did not want to share a room with Allison Fishbaum, expert sailor and ice hockey goalie.

  All of this thinking made her feel like she might throw up again.

  Groaning, Maisie got up and went into the Princess Bathroom, a Pepto-Bismol–pink confection that made her even queasier. Princess Annabelle had apparently loved this very shade of pink, and everything here—sink, bathtub, shower stall, even the toilet—shone pinkily at Maisie. The tiles on the walls were the same pink, except inlaid on each one was a jewel of some kind. If you stood in the center of the room you could play a kind of connect the dots with the jewels and see they formed a giant crown, an exact replica of Princess Annabelle of Nanuh’s tiara. All that pink and sparkle forced Maisie to get on her knees, hold her hair back in a messy ponytail, lean over the toilet, and throw up some more.

  After she’d finished, she made her way on her wobbly legs back to bed. If they’d been in their apartment on Bethune Street or even upstairs in the servants’ quarters, someone would have heard her being sick and come and held her hair back, given her some ginger ale, and tucked her back in. But Elm Medona was so enormous that no one heard anything going on. Maisie felt lonely and sad and miserable.

  When she heard the door creak open, she expected to see her mother standing there. Instead, Great-Aunt Maisie—dressed in an old-fashioned, ivory silk dress, her hair twisted into an updo, and her Chanel Red lipstick in place—stood illuminated by the moonlight streaming in from the large hall window behind her.

  “Get up,” Great-Aunt Maisie ordered. “I have a plan.”

  “Doesn’t anybody know I’ve been throwing up?” Maisie cried. “I could have died in here and no one would even care.”

  “Pshaw,” Great-Aunt Maisie said. “Stop being so melodramatic and get up this instant.”

  “Fine,” Maisie said, throwing back the covers and climbing out of bed.

  Great-Aunt Maisie frowned at her. “What in the world are you wearing?” she demanded.

  Maisie looked down at her plaid pajama bottoms and Mets fleece vest.

  “You cannot go looking like that,” Great-Aunt Maisie said, her voice dripping with distaste.

  “Where are we going?” Maisie said.

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  Maisie rolled her eyes. “Honestly,” she muttered.

  But she dutifully went into the walk-in closet and changed from her pajamas into her jeans and an old peasant blouse she’d rescued from her mother’s giveaway bag when they were moving from New York. The blouse was white and scoop-necked and flowy, with red and yellow and black flowers embroidered along the bottom. Her mother had bought it in Mexico on her honeymoon. Maisie stepped into her black flip-flops and went back to Great-Aunt Maisie.

  “Satisfied?” she said.

  Great-Aunt Maisie sniffed. “You look like a ragamuffin, but I guess it’ll do.”

  She grabbed Maisie’s arm and led her out into the hall.

  “We have to be quiet,” she whispered as they tiptoed across the hall.

  At the wall that hid the stairs to The Treasure Chest, Great-Aunt Maisie paused.

  “You and I are going on an adventure,” she said.

  Maisie smiled. Going on an adventure with Great-Aunt Maisie was the perfect way to escape her mother’s date with Bruce Fishbaum, having to be Felix’s assistant at Talent Night, all of it.

  “Excellent,” Maisie said.

  Great-Aunt Maisie pressed her palm to the wall. It opened easily, and she took Maisie’s hand in hers like they were best friends. They made sure the wall closed behind them. At the foot of the secret stairs, Great-Aunt Maisie reached into her white, fringed purse and pulled out the handcuffs.

  Maisie gasped. “You took those from The Treasure Chest?”

  Great-Aunt Maisie grinned at her. “In a way,” she said. “I’ve had them for over eighty years.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll explain upstairs,” Great-Aunt Maisie said. “There’s no time for chitchat. Who knows what Thorne is up to, that dog.”

  Maisie followed her great-aunt up the stairs.

  But at the top, Great-Aunt Maisie stopped abruptly.

  “Damnation!”

  “What’s wrong?” Maisie asked, trying to see past her.

  “What’s wrong?” Great-Aunt Maisie said, stepping aside.

  Maisie looked in disbelief.

  The door to The Treasure Chest was closed. Heavy chains hung across it, and three padlocks gleamed from them.

  “It’s locked!” Maisie said.

  Great-Aunt Maisie lifted her fist into the air. Her eyes seemed to be on fire and her face contorted with wrath.

  “Thorne!” she said. “Irascible, impossible idiot! Thorne!”

  Felix sat in the Samuel Dormitorio Room—he found it hard to think of it as his room instead of Samuel’s Dormitorio—practicing his magic act for the Talent Show the next night. At least he tried to practice. Somewhere downstairs his mother was waiting for Bruce Fishbaum to drive up in his BMW and take her on a date. An actual date. Felix did not . . . no, he could not witness any part of this.

  Earlier, he’d seen his mother bustle past with shopping bags, smelling like she’d tried on every perfume they offered at the Macy’s perfume counter. Her cheeks looked flushed, and her hair looked freshly styled. She’d smiled at him, but he pretended he didn’t notice any of it: the shopping bags, the blown-out hair, the smile. Instead, he met her eyes with a flat, unflinching gaze that he hoped she read as: How could you betray Dad like this? How could you betray all of us? With Bruce Fishbaum of all people?

 
; “I still see the red tail of the handkerchief,” Maisie announced as she marched into the room.

  Felix sighed. He pulled the handkerchief out of the fake thumb and started over, flapping it open with a dramatic flourish.

  Maisie walked over to the window and peered out. From this room, you could see part of the driveway. The part where Bruce Fishbaum’s car would appear at any minute.

  “Don’t look,” Felix said gently. “It’ll only make it worse.”

  “Note that he’s already ten minutes late,” Maisie said without turning her attention from the driveway below.

  “Who?” Felix said casually.

  Even though he couldn’t see his sister’s face, he could picture her rolling her eyes.

  “Maybe he won’t come,” Maisie said. “Maybe he’ll stand her up.” Then she added under her breath, “Serves her right.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Felix said to the bull’s head on the wall. “Here I have an ordinary silk handkerchief—”

  “An ordinary silk handkerchief?” Maisie snorted.

  “As you can see, I have nothing in my hands—”

  Maisie spun around to face him. “How can you be practicing magic tricks at a time like this?” Her nostrils flared and her eyebrows furrowed, not unlike the bull’s head.

  “If I’m concentrating on this,” he said, waving the handkerchief, “then I don’t have to think about—”

  As if on cue came the sound of a car pulling into the driveway.

  Despite his determination to avoid anything about this date of their mother’s, Felix ran to the window, too. He stood beside his sister and watched as Bruce Fishbaum emerged from his shiny silver BMW.

  Maybe Bruce Fishbaum was once considered handsome, Maisie conceded. But now his hair was salt-and-pepper bristles cut short around a big bald head. He had on a blue-and-white-striped button-down shirt and a tie that no doubt had a nautical theme. Blue jeans. The gut hanging over the belt.

  “Ugh,” Maisie said. “Look at him.”

  Felix did, his heart doing funny flips the whole time.

  “He’s fat,” Maisie said.

  Felix watched the top of Bruce Fishbaum’s head, his bald, tanned scalp, disappear. He swallowed hard.

  “He’s—” he began.

  “Bald,” Maisie finished for him.

  “He’s—”

  “Conceited? Full of himself?”

  Felix swallowed hard again.

  “He struts!” Maisie said. “Like a rooster!”

  His sister’s face grew blurry through Felix’s tears.

  He shook his head.

  “He’s not Dad,” Felix finally managed to say.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Maisie said later that night as she and Felix lay in wait in the Library for their mother’s return.

  They had eaten two bags of microwave popcorn, the extra buttery kind; the funny-shaped lemon cookies that Cook had made earlier; the ends of three different kinds of ice cream; a sleeve of saltines and a bag of stale miniature marshmallows. And still their mother was not home.

  Felix’s eyes threatened to droop shut, but as soon as his lids began to close he saw an image of his mother kissing Bruce Fishbaum, like a scene in a movie, and he bolted wide awake again.

  “Are you listening?” Maisie demanded.

  “Yes,” Felix said through a yawn.

  “I’ve been thinking about Great-Uncle Thorne.”

  “Was that a car?” Felix said, getting to his feet quickly.

  He waited.

  Nothing.

  Disappointed, he plopped back down on the red leather sofa.

  “Where has he been all this time?” Maisie said.

  When Felix didn’t answer her, she poked him.

  “Huh?” she said. “Where?”

  “London?” Felix said. “I thought he said something about London.”

  “Yes, but where exactly?”

  “How should I know? I don’t know anything about London,” Felix said, exasperated. Who cared about Great-Uncle Thorne’s former address when their mother was out kissing Bruce Fishbaum?

  “But was he in a house? Alone?”

  “Maisie?” Felix said. “What’s your point?”

  “My point is that I think we brought him back, too.”

  “Back?” He sat upright. “Was that a car?”

  Maisie sighed one of her big dramatic sighs. “I think he was old and decrepit,” she paused, mentally searching her vocabulary words. “Infirmed,” she continued triumphantly. “Just like Great-Aunt Maisie. And our time traveling revived him, too.”

  Felix twisted his face free from her grasp.

  “Well,” he said, “that makes sense, I guess.”

  Maisie looked at him expectantly.

  “Don’t you see?” she said, frustrated.

  Felix slumped back into the sofa. “I guess I don’t,” he admitted.

  “We’re twins, right?”

  Felix nodded, even though this was yet another rhetorical question.

  “And so are Great-Aunt Maisie and Great-Uncle Thorne, right?”

  And another one, Felix thought.

  Maisie leaned closer to him. He could smell her fake butter, lemon cookie, mint chocolate chip, salty breath.

  “That’s the missing piece,” she said. “You need to be a twin to do it.”

  Felix sat upright again.

  “You need to be a twin to do it,” he repeated slowly.

  Their mother’s voice cut through the room.

  “You need to be a twin to do what?” she said.

  Maisie and Felix sipped the hot chocolate their mother made for them and studied her face for signs of love.

  She had taken them down to the vast Kitchen, with all its gleaming stainless steel and subway-tiled walls and industrial-sized everything after they’d jumped up and shouted: “You need to be a twin to understand!”

  “Understand what?” she’d said with that tone of voice that let them know she knew they were up to something.

  “To understand . . . being a twin!” Maisie had said, and Felix had nodded enthusiastically beside her.

  “Hmm,” their mother had said. She’d stared at them a few seconds more, then thrown her hands up in surrender. “I think we all need some hot chocolate,” she’d said finally.

  The hot chocolate was made with unsweetened chocolate, cream, vanilla, cinnamon, and a touch of chili pepper in it, just the way they liked it. Maisie and Felix knew that their mother had learned to make hot chocolate this way on her honeymoon in Mexico with their father. They took it as a good sign that she made it for them now, fresh off her date with Bruce Fishbaum.

  She peered at them from over the rim of her mug.

  “Were you two actually waiting up for me?” she said.

  “Yes,” Felix said at the very same time that Maisie said, “No.”

  “Bruce Fishbaum and I are just friends,” their mother said. “FYI.”

  FYI? Maisie thought in horror. Their mother didn’t say things like “FYI.” That was definitely Fishbaum-speak.

  “But he wore a tie,” Felix pointed out.

  Their mother laughed. “He always wears a tie. Twenty-four seven.”

  24-7? More Fishbaum-speak!

  “But it’s so late,” Felix said.

  “We got caught up discussing the Holbrook case,” their mother said.

  Felix tried to give her the same look she gave them, the one that let her know he didn’t buy what she was saying. Not for an instant.

  They each sipped their hot chocolate in silence.

  Then their mother said, “Twins run in the Pickworth family.”

  “Obviously,” Maisie said.

 
“Even Phinneas was a twin,” their mother said.

  “Who was his twin?” Felix asked her.

  “Amy Pickworth.” She shook her head sadly. “She disappeared in the Congo or somewhere when she was only sixteen.”

  “And they never found her?” Felix said.

  Their mother shook her head again. “Sad,” she said, collecting the empty mugs.

  She yawned. “Some of us have work tomorrow,” she said.

  “On Saturday?” Felix said, trying not to whine.

  “The Holbrook case,” their mother said.

  Maisie narrowed her eyes. That meant Bruce Fishbaum again.

  “But you’re coming to the Talent Show, right?” Felix asked.

  Their mother smoothed his cowlick. “Wouldn’t miss it,” she said.

  In that moment, Felix chose to believe that his mother and Bruce Fishbaum really were just friends, colleagues, and workers on the Holbrook case. But when he met Maisie’s eyes, he knew his sister didn’t believe that. Not one bit.

  A buzz ran through the crowd in the Anne Hutchinson Elementary School auditorium as Felix, Maisie, and their mother arrived with Great-Uncle Thorne and Great-Aunt Maisie for the talent show. Thorne and Maisie Pickworth were legendary among so many of the Newport families there. Stories about them—their eccentric father, the grand parties thrown at Elm Medona, even the rumors that Elm Medona was haunted—still swirled around at cocktail parties and fund-raisers in certain circles.

  Great-Aunt Maisie cut quite a figure in her vintage navy-blue Chanel suit, her back erect, her head held high, a flat-brimmed boater sitting at an angle atop her white hair. Behind her, Great-Uncle Thorne rhythmically tapped his walking stick with the replica of Elm Medona on it along the polished hardwood floor. He wore a violet three-piece suit with a lavender-and-white-striped shirt and a bow tie covered in every shade of purple polka dot imaginable.

  “Fop,” Great-Aunt Maisie had said to him when they got in the car.

  “Prig,” he’d said right back to her.

  “Dandy!” she’d shouted.

  “Stop, you two!” Maisie and Felix’s mother had ordered them, just the way she would have ordered Maisie and Felix. “Honestly,” she’d muttered.