The Light of Luna Park Read online

  Praise for

  The Light of Luna Park

  “Is there anything better than falling into a novel that asks an ethical question and then answers it with a big story that arrows straight into the question’s heart? No, I would say: Nothing better. What would you do to save a child? Addison Armstrong asks in this assured debut that ushers us deep into a fascinating moment in history, where obstetrics and women’s choices and the shadow line between circus and science combine. The Light of Luna Park got me, took me, taught me, and in the end, shook me.”

  —Sarah Blake, author of The Guest Book

  “A dual timeline, a fascinating historical setting, a baby, a nurse, and above all, courage. This is my kind of story! Thank you, Addison Armstrong, for writing such an intriguing and heartfelt novel.”

  —Diane Chamberlain, author of Big Lies in a Small Town

  “At once a fascinating slice of history and a compelling story filled with relatable characters. Addison Armstrong has woven a beautiful tale around the sacrifices and hard choices made for love, and highlights the work of the extraordinary individuals who stood up against the widespread, harsh beliefs of the time. This is a wonderful debut. Congratulations to Ms. Armstrong!”

  —Louise Fein, author of Daughter of the Reich

  “Compassionate and evocative, filled with fascinating historical detail, The Light of Luna Park is the story of a woman finding the strength to face impossible decisions as she struggles to protect the life of a child.”

  —Fiona Valpy, author of The Dressmaker’s Gift

  “The Light of Luna Park is a gripping story of one woman’s determination to save a premature baby and a daughter’s quest to discover the truth about her mother, intertwined with the fascinating history of the incubator. It’s an emotional and at times suspenseful novel about the strength of love and the importance of perseverance that will capture the reader’s heart.”

  —Georgie Blalock, author of The Other Windsor Girl

  “In The Light of Luna Park, author Addison Armstrong re-creates the surreal time when most preterm babies were cast aside to die, while a few dedicated nurses and a doctor on Coney Island saved them, then offered them as an amusement park sideshow. It’s a story of a grieving daughter—a teacher of special-needs children—who must first unravel her own story by uncovering family secrets before she can understand and fully love herself, her husband, and her students. Taking place more than twenty years apart, these two stories collide in an unforgettable, heart-wrenching account of the power of a mother’s love.”

  —Tracey Enerson Wood, author of The Engineer’s Wife

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Addison Armstrong

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Armstrong, Addison, author.

  Title: The light of Luna Park / Addison Armstrong.

  Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2021. |

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021015009 (print) | LCCN 2021015010 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593328040 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593328057 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Nurses—Fiction. | Premature infants—Fiction. | Incubators (Pediatrics)—Fiction. | Luna Park (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3601.R5744 L54 2021 (print) | LCC PS3601.R5744 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015009

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015010

  Book design by Kristin del Rosario, adapted for ebook by Shayan Saalabi

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical persons appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

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  To my parents, Eric and Ellen Armstrong, who would have joined the Coney Island sideshow themselves if it meant making me happy—

  Thanks for everything, Mom and Dad. I couldn’t be luckier to have you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise for The Light of Luna Park

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Althea Anderson, June 1926

  Chapter Two: Stella Wright, December 1950

  Chapter Three: Althea Anderson, July 1926

  Chapter Four: Stella Wright, December 1950

  Chapter Five: Althea Anderson, July 1926

  Chapter Six: Stella Wright, December 1950

  Chapter Seven: Althea Anderson, July 1926

  Chapter Eight: Stella Wright, December 1950

  Chapter Nine: Althea Anderson, August 1926

  Chapter Ten: Stella Wright, January 1951

  Chapter Eleven: Althea Anderson, September 1926

  Chapter Twelve: Stella Wright, January 1951

  Chapter Thirteen: Althea Anderson, September 1926

  Chapter Fourteen: Stella Wright, January 1951

  Chapter Fifteen: Althea Anderson, September 1926

  Chapter Sixteen: Stella Wright, January 1951

  Chapter Seventeen: Althea Anderson, October 1926

  Chapter Eighteen: Stella Wright, January 1951

  Chapter Nineteen: Althea Anderson, November 1926

  Chapter Twenty: Stella Wright, January 1951

  Chapter Twenty-One: Althea Anderson, November 1926

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Stella Wright, January 1951

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Althea Anderson, January–April 1927

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Stella Wright, January 1951

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Althea Anderson, April 1927

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Stella Wright, January 1951

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Stella Wright, January 1951

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Althea Anderson Johnson, July 1946

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Readers Guide

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Althea Anderson, June 1926

  No baby is happy about being pushed into this world. But never have I seen one so entirely unprepared for its entrance. Three months premature, the infant before me contorts her shiny face to scream. Her tiny lungs convulse with the effort, and the skin on her chest stretches and snaps back to make room. Her matchstick legs kick; her coin-sized hands twitch. The girl’s mother wails, and I fear her deep, gurgling gasps may snatch away the oxygen so craved by her infant. I fix my eyes on the newborn as if I can send her what she needs.

  Keep breathing, I will the baby girl.

  Her torso is the size of two fists, the size of two beating hearts.

  Though we both know it, the doctor is the one to say the truth aloud. He puts down the for
ceps and sets his mouth in a firm line. “She won’t live.” He does nothing to sugarcoat the truth.

  The father’s neck tenses, tendons like claws. The poor mother’s eyes widen, and she wipes her left as a drop of sweat drips into it from her brow line. Yes, the doctor’s words are blunt, but he leaves out the perspectives that would render them downright cruel. He doesn’t reveal that the medical term for a baby like this one is weakling. He doesn’t suggest, as many doctors would, that such infants are better off dead. But still the reality stands stark. Already, the girl is struggling to breathe; she is unable to suckle. Her body temperature and weight are low.

  Three months early, two pounds, two ounces. She has little chance of survival.

  “Cybil,” the girl’s mother breathes. Her voice comes out half whisper, half sob, but it echoes in my mind like a scream. The baby has a name now.

  “Nurse Anderson.” Dr. Bricknell breaks through the litany of my thoughts. “The hallway.”

  I trail obediently after him, nervous. I’ve rarely had direct conversation with the doctor, but our head nurse is out today.

  I look one more time at the family clustered together as I go. However much my medically trained hands itch to do something, anything, for baby Cybil, the parents deserve a moment alone with their infant.

  In the corridor, Dr. Bricknell checks his wristwatch and grunts. “I can’t stay.”

  I wait. The doctors never bother speaking to me unless orders are coming.

  “But you’ll need to make sure the parents see her suffer as little as possible.”

  I nod, mentally running through the list of small mercies I can provide: a heated water bottle, a blanket. I only wish there were something I could do to save the baby rather than merely ease her transition into death, and I ball my hands into fists at my side. They brush against the scratchy fabric of my uniform, and paper crinkles. I stiffen. The article! I’d cut it from the paper when I began my obstetrics cycle weeks ago, hoping to ask the doctors about it once they came to know me. As Dr. Bricknell has proved himself a rather stuffy, unapproachable sort, I’d completely forgotten. But with the head nurse back tomorrow, this may be my only chance.

  “Doctor.” I pull the crumpled newspaper clipping from my pinafore. “I do wonder if there is a way to save the baby.”

  Dr. Bricknell’s brow creases. More in annoyance than interest, I’m afraid, but I press on. “It’s about the incubator wards at Coney Island. There’s a doctor there who takes premature babies free of charge—”

  The doctor interrupts. “Free for the parents, but it costs ten cents a person to get in and see the babies.”

  “See them?”

  “They’re part of a freak show, Nurse Anderson. That ‘doctor’ is nothing but a quack.”

  A freak show. I picture Cybil lost in a woman’s bristly beard or held in the grip of a man with three arms. I see her trampled under the feet of a giant or squeezed between the two heads of conjoined twins.

  No. I’m a nurse, not a dime novelist. I deal in information, not imagination. “The article reports that Dr. Couney has saved thousands of premature infants,” I say, “some of them as tiny as Cybil at birth.”

  “Cybil?”

  “The baby.” I gesture behind us, struggling to hide my disgust that he’s already forgotten her name.

  Dr. Bricknell sighs. “I’m sorry, Nurse Anderson, but that baby simply isn’t fit to live. No freak show or circus man can change that.”

  “Should I ask the parents whether—”

  “No, Nurse Anderson. It is not our place to question God’s plan. Now”—he checks his wristwatch again—“I really must go. I trust you will do as I have asked of you—and not do anything to jeopardize your job?”

  He leaves me standing in the hallway, crumpled article clenched in my fist.

  I purse my lips and fight tears as I fold the paper to put back in my pocket. A nurse does not cry on the job. However much she may wish to.

  My expression softens as I reenter the hospital room. Cybil is cradled in her mother’s palm, her tiny arms the length of her mother’s bloated pinky but half as wide.

  It is not our place to question God’s plan, Dr. Bricknell said. But surely God cannot want this baby to die. I swallow the urge to burst out into the hallway, chase the doctor down, and shake him. God brought Dr. Couney to Coney Island, I want to scream. This is his modern miracle.

  But it is not my place. If I defy Dr. Bricknell, I will lose my job, lose everything I’ve worked for my whole life. Without nursing, I would have nothing; it’s my lifeblood, my purpose. With each infant I safely help to deliver, the debt I owe my mother eases.

  But I’m not the only one who might suffer. If Dr. Couney is the con artist the doctor believes, Cybil would die despite it all. Her parents would lose their hope and their daughter a second time. Could they survive that?

  I cannot give them hope and then destroy it, not when I know nothing about Couney beyond what’s in the papers.

  So I gather the blankets as Cybil’s cries turn into desperate gulps for air. I tuck her bony legs under the fabric and swaddle the girl’s shivering body. I think of Dr. Bricknell’s words, circuses and freak shows, and I bite my tongue.

  I nearly swallow it as I watch the girl die.

  I have seen babies die before. I’ve helped deliver the stillborn and seen infants’ hearts stop before the expulsion of the afterbirth. Is it wrenching every time? Of course it is. But when those babies have passed, they have done so because we were unable to save them.

  Not because we decided not to try.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Stella Wright, December 1950

  December 15: Mom’s been gone three months to the day. It’s not the date’s reminder that stings, for it’s not as if I have the luxury of forgetting her on the 11th or the 13th or the 27th. Every day, I grieve her.

  What burns is the fact that it’s been three months: that three months after Mom died, I still haven’t “gotten over it.” Foolish me; I thought a month would be enough to start waking up with a clear head. Instead, I’m lying here after ninety-one days with a skull that feels as if I’ve stuffed it with weights. I wonder sometimes if I cry in my sleep, the way my skin feels so tight and stretched in the morning, but I’m too afraid of the answer to ask my husband.

  On cue, Jack enters the room with a tray. His silhouette in the light of the hallway glows, and his curly blond hair is ablaze. I never thought I’d marry straight out of college, if ever, but this right here is exactly why I did. Jack’s barely cooked a day in his life, but here he is with his first pancakes: lumpy, misshapen, and made with care. Somehow they make me chuckle despite my pain. That’s Jack’s gift—he can always make me smile, make me laugh. Our second wedding anniversary will be in June of next year, just as I finish my second year of teaching, but his easy laugh and sense of humor never get old.

  Jack sets the tray down beside me, almost spilling the glass of orange juice balanced precariously on its edge.

  “Jack.” I chuckle again to see the pancakes up close. “I’m almost afraid to eat these.”

  He shrugs. “They’re good, I had one.” He licks his lips and then turns briefly serious. “I thought it might be a tough day for you.”

  I squeeze his hand. He is thoughtful in a way that I’m not, my husband. If only I knew how to be as supportive of his episodes as he is of mine.

  But it’s different. He knows what I’m feeling and why, whereas I don’t have that luxury. I’ve witnessed dozens of Jack’s war flashbacks over this first year and a half of our marriage, but I can’t see inside his head. I watch him thrash, tangled in the sheets of our bed; I watch him collapse under the weight of a thunderclap. But I cannot see past his reactions to what’s inside, and I’m left to imagine the worst. Is he reliving near misses from his time in France? Maybe he just avoided crawling over a land mine at Normandy, a c
omrade blowing to pieces in his stead. Maybe a spray of bullets grazed his chest, so close he couldn’t breathe.

  Maybe, had he moved a fraction of a second earlier or later, I wouldn’t even have him.

  The alternative is almost more frightening. My husband—sweet, light, always armed with a joke—could be mired in guilt rather than fear. How many men did he kill? Could he see their faces as he pulled the trigger?

  I shake my head to rid myself of the image. I sleep next to Jack every night, our bodies cleaved together. I don’t want to imagine him a killer.

  I look at him now. I’d be able to support him so much better if he would just tell me what he sees, but I don’t have the energy to coax him out of his stubborn silence today, exhausted as I am by my own grief.

  My mother died at forty-eight. We should have had decades left together. Her death robbed us of a future.

  “Damn cancer,” I whisper.

  “Damn cancer.” Jack squeezes my hand.

  I take a sip of the orange juice. It’s fresh and tangy enough to dispel the fuzz in my brain, and I exhale with relief. I gulp down the whole glass as Jack dresses, but I can’t stomach more than a bite of the pancakes. Too heavy on a day I already feel like I’m dragging. Too sticky with syrup when I already feel stuck and immobile.

  I force myself from bed and dress for school as Jack brushes his teeth in the bathroom. My kids’ lives are hard enough without my looking like a zombie, so I make up my face and curl my hair. I eschew my typical dresses for a green blouse and cigarette pants; let the principal say what he will. Today is not a day I want to worry about whether I can cross my legs reading a story.

  Jack pops up like he’s reading my mind. “Am I allowed to say your legs look good in those?”

  I swat Jack’s hand away as he reaches for my waist and tugs at my tucked blouse. “Even breakfast in bed can’t get you that far.” I raise an eyebrow at him. “Not right before school.”

  “The kids would never know.” Jack raises his eyebrows in return.