Last Dance on the Starlight Pier, page 19
And, gads, did the crowds ever eat it up. The day after my photo appeared in the Chicago paper, a group of teen girls dressed in white blouse and skirt combos showed up. They reminded me of the suffragettes who’d protested and campaigned and marched and been jailed and finally won the right for women to vote a dozen years before. The difference was, these girls had a hankie or a napkin pinned to the tops of their heads to resemble nurses’ caps and held up signs announcing that they were “Zave’s Zaviors.” Those girls and a dozen other clumps of “Zaviors” shrieked their heads off when Zave and I danced at the break.
“Look at that,” Zave said, beaming and waving at the girls, who screamed even louder at any attention he gave them. “You’ve got a cheering section.”
“Zave,” I corrected him. “That is not my cheering section. They are, clearly, your fans.”
“Want to bet on that?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve got a dime that says they’ll go even crazier if you wave to them.”
“You’re as nutty as they are. I’ll take that action.”
“Okay, but you got to sell it.”
“And you have to lower your head so they won’t just be clapping for you.” As he buried his face in my shoulder, I raised my arm, switched on the highest-wattage smile I could manage, and waved my hand like I was drowning.
The applause stunned me. Of course, it rose to a deafening level when Zave lifted his handsome head.
“You owe me a dime,” he said. “They love you.”
“Sure they do,” I joked.
“Well, they love us.”
“Or they’re all certifiable lunatics.”
But the numbers of the coo-coo birds grew. More and more white-clad Zaviors, waving signs and cheering my brief appearances, showed up. I did my best to ignore the bizarre hubbub, since it had almost nothing to do with me and everything to do with Zave, and concentrated instead on dancing. It paid off. Every time we soloed during a break, a little bit more of the rust got knocked off of my dance instincts. Luckily, Zave was a complete pro and knew how to make his partner look good. Pretty soon, though, he didn’t have to cover for me and I could follow him better than his own shadow.
Much as I came to love our moments together, I wished that Pops would stop making Zave dance through so many of his precious breaks, since the lack of rest was taking a heavy toll. By the fourth day, Zave was staggering so badly that I had to take over the lead and support him. It was during one of those moments when Zave depended on me and I took care of him that a dangerous thought first crept into my head: maybe Pops’s fake romance might not be one hundred percent, entirely make-believe.
This delusion gained strength because, when we weren’t doing requests or specialties during the breaks, Zave took to visiting me in the infirmary. Everyone, especially Alonzo in his daily radio broadcasts and Pops in his Daily Dance News newsletter, made innuendoes about the “private procedures Nurse Devlin was performing on the Handsome Hoofer when they’re alone in the infirmary.”
Though it would have made pretty poor copy, mostly what Zave did during the times when we weren’t on the floor was sleep. In the few minutes before he passed out, though, we found out how much we had in common.
I learned that he’d had a childhood as lonely and as tough as mine. His father owned a dairy farm in a little town on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He and his six siblings were expected to carry their weight from the moment they were old enough to tug on a teat or muck out a barn. Like everyone else they knew, the family were staunch Lutherans.
“Yeah, Jesus and cheeses,” Zave joked with a hollow laugh. “That’s all they thought life was about. And there I was singing ‘Shine On Harvest Moon’ to an audience of Guernseys and trying to tap-dance on a milk pail.”
I didn’t learn much more, certainly not about what interested me the most, my father. Though his face always lit up when I mentioned him, and Zave would tell me what a great guy, “the greatest,” he was, he seemed almost evasive when I pressed him for details. Especially about how they’d met. I was starting to suspect that it pained Zave to recall my father as much as it did Jake and I shouldn’t press for information.
It was after one of these snooze sessions, just as a trainer was dragging Zave to his feet, that Pops entered and we both watched the trainer sleepwalk Zave back to the floor.
“Good-looking guy, huh?” Pops commented.
“Do you need something?” I asked sharply.
“Yeah, these came for you.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a dozen or so letters.
My heart leapt: Sofie had finally answered. I grabbed for the letters. Pops bumped me away with a solid hip check.
“Hey, those are mine,” I protested. “It’s a felony to interfere with the U.S. mail.”
“Yeah, but see?” He waved an envelope at me. “They’re in care of me. Pops Wyatt.” He fanned through the stack. “Let’s see, we’ve got Peoria. Duluth. San Diego. Holy mackerel, the West Coast.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your fan mail, sport. It’s nothing compared to the boxes of cards and letters that Zave gets, still it looks like that AP story must have been picked up all across the country.” He ripped open an envelope and started to read. ‘Dear Evie, My name is blah-blah-blah. You have shown all the girls like me that we can be career gals and still catch the eye of a real dreamboat like Zave. I never thought that an ordinary girl like me, you know, nothing special, could do either of those things.’”
While I was reeling from the idea of a stranger, even one who thought I was nothing special, would write me, Pops tore into another.
“Let’s see what Mobile, Alabama, has to say.” He scanned the letter, only stopping to read: “‘I love you both and am not even jealous because you give me hope that if you can get a guy like Zave anyone can. I figured I’d leave school when I finished eighth grade, but you have inspired me to be a nurse like you.’”
Pops blinked a few times then said, “Who’da thunk it? Gravy, you’re an inspiration.”
“Hand ’em over,” I said, desperate to find out if Sofie had written.
He was passing the stack over when a return address caught his eye and, letting me snatch the others away, he jerked that one letter back and asked, “Galveston? Who do you know in Galveston?”
Sofie. She had written.
“Give me that.”
He twisted from my grasp and read aloud, “Sofia Amadeo? You know the Amadeos?” he asked incredulously.
“What’s it to you?”
“No, seriously, Evie, tell me. Do you know the Amadeos?”
“Could I have my letter, please?”
“Not until you answer my question.”
“Why do you care?”
“Why do I care? Because I am trying to get us all out of Chicago alive. Because I have been bustin’ my balls trying to set up a show in Galveston for forever. Because it’s the one town in America that dodged the Depression. Because it’s the only virgin town in the country worth going after.”
“Virgin?”
“You know, hasn’t been burned by a lousy promoter who skips out on a bunch of bad paper. Doesn’t pay off the prize money.”
“You mean like you did in Houston?” I said, ripping my letter out of his hand.
“Jeez, you’re a pain in the ass, Devlin. Houston was an emergency situation, okay? Would you rather we were all sitting in the can right now? Galveston, though, if I could put on a show in Galveston it would be pure class all the way. No corners cut.”
Sofie’s letter was burning a hole in my hand. “Well, good luck. See yourself out,” I said, motioning toward the curtain and already opening the envelope.
“Evie, listen, you don’t understand. The situation here is…” His gaze darted around. This time he didn’t have to act nervous or pretend that he was confiding in me. This time when he leaned in to whisper in my ear, his fear was so real I could smell its acrid odor on him.
I leaned away. “Pops, if you want to set up a show in Galveston, set up a show in Galveston. You don’t need me.”
The promoter snorted a derisive laugh. “Oh, you sweet little innocent babe, if you actually knew as much about the way the real world works as you think you do, you’d crap your panties. Never mind. If you really had any connections there, you’d know that Galveston is a closed town.”
I bit my tongue. I was not going to tell him that I’d made a three-year study of the way the “real world” worked in Galveston, Texas.
In a low voice, Pops lectured me, “Not even the mob can get into Galveston. And believe me, everyone from Al Capone to Lucky Luciano has tried to carve out a piece of that juicy action. And they have all failed. No one gets in ’cause those son-of-a-bitching Amadeos have got that city sewed up tighter’n a nun’s hooha. Shit, they even have the Texas Rangers in their pocket. So sure, waltz in, set up a show,” he said in a mocking tone. “Great idea. For someone who’s tired of living.”
“Sorry, I can’t help you.”
“Naw, it ain’t you, kid. It was never gonna happen anyway. Far as I know, there isn’t even a hall in the whole city big enough to stage a show you can make any real dough on. Forget it. Go on. Read your letter.”
A hall. Big enough to stage a show.
I didn’t say another word.
Not about the Amadeos.
And not about the family’s enormous white elephant.
The Starlight Palace.
CHAPTER 45
I tucked Sofie’s letter into my bra, where it stayed nestled next to my heart until I could read it in the privacy of my room that night.
The instant I was alone, my hands trembling, I opened the envelope. The sight of Sofie’s handwriting—the gentle forward slope of her letters, the careful precision of the cursive the nuns in grade school had taught her—overwhelmed me with a surge of homesick longing for all I’d had. All I could have had. All I’d lost.
A clipping from the Galveston paper fell out. There I was above the headline “Local Girl Saves Show.”
Dear Evie,
You’re famous! Criminy, Devlin, I’m so happy you’re not dead that I’m almost not mad you haven’t written. Or called. Or sent a wire. Or anything.
My hands dropped to my lap. Sofie hadn’t cut me off after all; she’d never gotten my letters.
I’m sending this to the arena in Chicago that the article mentioned. Sure hope you’re still there. Sure hope you’ll do a pal a favor and pick up a pen and write sometime.
Don’t worry, considering the whirlwind you’ve been in, I’m really not that mad. Okay, I’m a little mad.
Oh well. Let me fill you in on my news. Evie, I LOVE my job. I’m working at the Galveston Sanatorium. That’s right, the booby hatch. But it’s not what you think it is. Or what I thought it was. The advances being made today in psychiatric science are astonishing. Patients who have been locked inside the prison of their own minds for years, decades, are starting to be released with some of the new treatments that are just now starting to be put into wide practice.
Oh no, look at me rambling on already. Gads, I can’t help myself. The only thing the girls I work with want to talk about is whether Clark Gable or Errol Flynn is “dreamier.” I miss having someone to talk with who isn’t mostly interested in medicine for the “cute” interns. Shoot, Devlin, I miss YOU! Maybe if you’d write a pal every now and then, I wouldn’t have to blurt it all out at once. But since you haven’t, here it comes.
Do you remember the doc who gave a lecture during our psych rotation? Dr. Kaufman? He talked about all the latest research from Germany? Well, he is the director of my unit and he wants to bring the treatment of the mentally ill out of the Dark Ages. He even knows about this new procedure that he says is as simple as getting a wisdom tooth removed that can instantly cure mental diseases from schizophrenia to catatonia. Can you believe that?
Oh, Evie, I really wish you were here. It’s so exciting to be part of this new movement. Dr. K is going to study with the leading expert on the procedure in this country, Dr. Walter Freeman, who’s head of the Neuropsychiatry Department at George Washington University and has successfully performed hundreds of these simple surgeries. And, Evie, guess what? Dr. K has already asked me if I’d be interested in being part of his surgical nursing team.
Evie, it’s what we always dreamed of doing. Helping—really, truly, helping. The days of dunking maniacs in barrels of ice water then leaving them to freeze on a stone floor in Bedlam to calm them down are over. We can finally cure these terrible diseases.
Needless to say, my parents are horrified. They tried to bribe me with the offer of a new car—a Cadillac, no less—into not taking the job. They actually believe that, somehow, they can stuff me back into my old room where my old Flossie Flirt doll is still sitting on my bed and I’ll forget all about nursing. Or having any kind of a life that they don’t dictate and control.
So I moved out. Not to the boardinghouse where we were going to rent rooms, but to my own apartment. They blew another gasket about that, so I stopped even going home for Sunday dinner and only communicated with them through Uncle JuJu.
Gosh, I love JuJu. He says we’re the family “black sheep.” He’s not, but it’s great to have him on my side. Truth to tell, he owns the building I live in and he gave me a special “niece discount” on the rent so that I could afford it on my salary. Not to drop too many hints, but it does have two bedrooms and one of them is sitting empty.
Anyway, to my amazement, my parents missed me just a little bit more than I missed them, and they’ve actually accepted that I am a nurse and I have my own life. It doesn’t hurt that they really like this fourth-year med student, Danny Reid, that I’ve brought home a couple of times. Don’t jump to any conclusions. I’m not one of those girls we talked about who were always more interested in getting their MRS. instead of an RN. It’s not serious with Danny and me. Or well, not too serious.
Evie, I hate the way we said good-bye. I had so many questions about why you left that I went searching for Sister T and found her crying her eyes out. She told me the whole story about the clippings and Detroit.
Which we do not give two figs about.
I stopped and reread those sentences several times until I actually believed in her blithe dismissal.
I’m not even mad that you never told me the whole story about Detroit, because, as you know, there sure are things about my family that I never mentioned to you.
Anyhow, Sister T and I went straight to the Director. I wish you’d been there when that little dynamo lambasted her for blaming you for being used by your mother. She really gave that witch what for.
Oops, I just checked the time. Gotta scoot. I’m working double shifts because we’re short-staffed. Even with the job market the way it is, we still have a hard time hiring nurses. People’s thinking about mental illness is in the Dark Ages.
Oh gosh, Evie, I sure wish you were here. I miss hashing everything out with you. In general, I just miss you. Like CRAZY. I pray that this letter reaches you at the show. I didn’t know where else to send it.
Your Pal 4Ever, Sofie
P.S. Come home. STAT. That’s an order.
Seriously, Evie, come home. I miss you. I really, REALLY miss you.
CHAPTER 46
Though I stayed up late that night writing Sofie the fattest, juiciest letter I could fit in an envelope and send to the right address, I woke the next morning long before the sun rose filled with new energy, new hope, and rushed to the arena. It would be an agonizing wait until I heard from my best friend again, but I had decided to make good use of it: I would corner Zave and make him tell me about my father.
As I expected, the place was dead. Dim economy lights cast a murky glow over the floor. The far reaches of the stadium, where sleepers and those enjoying other horizontal activities were tucked away, were completely dark. All the dancers seemed to be either unconscious or operating on automatic pilot and they barely noticed as I edged onto the floor.
Zave, reading one of his neatly folded newspapers while he managed a thrashing, snoring Cleo, offered the only spark of life. “Gravy,” he greeted me with a surprising heartiness. “What a nice surprise. What are you doing here? Your shift doesn’t start for a couple more hours.”
Suddenly shy, I faltered. “I thought maybe this might be a good time to finally talk about my father.”
“Denny,” he said, savoring the name. “Yes. Great idea. Here, you take these.” He handed me his papers. “And I’ll get Cleo settled down.” Dodging a flying elbow, he arranged his partner into a more comfortable sleeping position and, her head resting on his broad shoulder, she stopped struggling. The one judge on duty, an overweight guy sprawled on a folding chair, twirled his finger to signal a warning to Zave to keep moving and I fell into step beside him.
“Okay, where should I start?”
“At the beginning,” I said eagerly. “I want to know everything. Right from the start. Don’t forget a single detail.”
“I couldn’t if I tried. Every second of that first night I set eyes on Denny Devlin is carved in my memory.”
For a moment or two, Zave stared off into the distance. His obvious affection for my father was like rain on parched earth after a childhood of listening to Mamie disparage him for “unforgivable betrayals” like dying.
“It was a miracle,” Zave began. “No other way to describe it. There I was marooned in Elmer, Michigan, where, from my earliest memories, I was out of place. I just didn’t belong. Especially not in my own family. You know?”
“Completely,” I answered.
Shaking his head as if to get rid of the memory, he went on, “Anyway, it was the summer of 1913, right after I turned ten. Not that anyone in my family noticed.
“No matter,” he hurried on, brightening again. “That was the day that the miracle happened. The F. Andrews Traveling Vaudeville Show, the World’s Greatest Tented Amusement Enterprise, came to town.”
