The Point of Vanishing - Maryka Biaggio (large ebook reader TXT) 📗

young. Be reasonable. You must use your head, not just your heart, in these matters.”

“Did you use your head when you abandoned Mother, me, and Sabra? How can you possibly tell me to use my head after what you’ve done? When Mother’s been worrying all this time about how to pay for food and housing?”

“And where’s your mother now? Now that you need her?”

Barbara shook her head, trying to clear her outrage. “At least she’s given me money to live on.”

“Look, we have to talk about what you’re to do now.”

“Now you care about what I’m to do?”

“Yes, in fact, I do. Surely you don’t want to stay in detention indefinitely. And have your name smeared all over the papers. Do you know you were in the Times yesterday? ‘Girl novelist in custody in San Francisco.’”

“Maybe you should order them to release me so I can get on with my life. Privately.”

“You’re a minor. Some arrangement needs to be made.”

“After you told me all my life I could do whatever I wanted, now you decide to treat me like a child? That’s rather ludicrous, don’t you think?”

“I’m coming out there. So I can see you and get this situation under control. And make some decision about where you’re to live.”

“I’ll make my own decisions, thank you very much.” She slammed the receiver onto its cradle.

CHAPTER THIRTY

BARBARA AT FIFTEEN

Pasadena, October 1929

October 16, 1929

Dear Shipmate,

This confinement grates to the bone. There I was, with freedom in my reach, and the police descended on me as if I were some murdering menace. Now my flighty (and dare I say, hypocritical) parents insist I need a guardian to watch over me. Since I refuse to live under the Schultz regime, I’ve been committed to the Russells’ care. I rely on you to hold a steady course for us. Please assure me I can soon claim my freedom and set out on the sea of my dreams. Meantime, like a hearty sailor, I shall buck up and brave the headwinds.

My father is now on a train hurtling across the country, and Mother, too, will soon return. For a string of weeks, I was utterly parentless, and now I must endure both of them swooping down on me at once. I didn’t invite my father. And I would certainly prefer Helen not abandon her Honolulu mission. But my father says he wants to take up where Mother left off and show me he is and always has been a loving parent to me. (It should be great sport watching him manage that!) And once Helen heard of his plan, she insisted on returning to protect me from his “unsavory influence and rash interference.” Imagine both parents arguing over me when all I want is to be done with them and venture out on my own. Fie on this fickle universe.

I’ve learned Alice’s age. She’s forty-eight, twelve years older than Mother. She’s a great friend to me—more understanding than a mother and as sympathetic as an aunt. Have I told you she’s published some lovely little stories? That’s how our families became acquainted, though I won’t credit a certain parent who supposedly steered her career forward. (That parent has done nothing to advance mine lately, but then I wouldn’t ask this of someone I have no respect for.)

The most meaningful part of my hidebound life is editing Alice’s stories. It’s flattering, being entrusted with the work of an older writer. But each time I take it up, I scold myself for my own stalled work.

You see, my new novel is a whirling nebula of the mind, a sprawling thing waiting to find form. It’ll be, like The House Without Windows, an adventure of the highest order and, like The Voyage of the Norman D, a seafaring exploit. But it’ll also be altogether new, for I refuse to write the same book over and over. (That precious lick of wisdom comes compliments of the shamed and unnamed one, who is supposedly working on his magnum opus. I find I have the most cutting desire to show him up as a writer—without the tiniest bit of assistance from him. It doesn’t matter if he approves of the topic. I no longer require his praise.)

My book will be the grandest adventure I can imagine, with a mighty sea storm, a shipwreck that only two survive—might they bear some resemblance to thou and thine? —and a tropical island full of nature’s bounty. Contemplating the glossy chrysalis of it leaves me aglow with dreamy anticipation.

Have you ever experienced the kind of storm that might bludgeon a sturdy galleon into submission? I have seen three big blows, but never were my two goliath steamers or trusty schooner at any risk of sinking—though I dared the seas to try these ships. For wouldn’t it be terrifically thrilling to battle a brutal squall and set off in a lifeboat with only salvaged food and water? To sail the unbroken, sun-soaked sea and catch flying fish bare-handed? To drift at night under a blanket of stars? And then, just when thirst and hunger threaten to overcome, to glimpse an island on the horizon? An uninhabited isle with a thick forest at its heart, fruit-bearing trees and sandy beaches ringing it, and colorful fish darting about its reef-laden waters.

There, I’ve given away my vision of Lost Island. Doesn’t it strike you as a wonderfully exotic tale? And I’m uniquely prepared to write this adventure, with a girl at its heart, for I want to show that such grand perils are not only for males. I have all my knowledge of ships and tropical islands and the plants and fruits found in those places. But don’t ask how it will end. That remains to be discovered.

I close until another day and look forward to your next fortifying letter.

Your struggling but sturdy mate,

Barbara

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

BARBARA AT FIFTEEN

Pasadena, November 1929

Barbara doubted her private reunion with her mother would be as civil as the public