Last Dance on the Starlight Pier, page 20
“Yes,” I gasped, recognizing that name. “That’s what was printed on the one photo Mamie kept of my father. Actually, she only kept half of that photo, because she tore the other half off. The half that showed his partner.”
“Yeah, the one where he’s going … Here.” He shifted Cleo onto my shoulder and, with both hands free, Zave held an invisible top hat up and reached his other hand out to an invisible partner.
My mouth gaped as I realized, “You were on the half that was torn away. You were his partner.”
“I told you,” Zave said, shrugging off my amazement. “We had an act there for a while.”
For a moment, both of us saw the same photo in our minds and remembered the same man. This, I thought, this must be what it was like to have a sibling.
“Yep, it was a good act until Mamie cut me out. Literally. Good ol’ Mame,” he mused. “She must have been a bed of roses as a mother.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Mamie,” he concluded with a doleful shake of his head. “She was a real doozie.”
The feeling of having a sibling came over me even more strongly then as we both pondered the woman who had had such outsized power over our young lives.
“Hey, let’s go back to the part before good ole Mame entered the picture,” Zave suggested, to my wholehearted agreement.
“So,” he said, his tone buoyant again, “the miracle happens and a show was actually coming to our godforsaken corner of the world. I memorized the handbills pasted on every lamppost in town. Jugglers, comics, a magician, but, most wondrous of all, dancers.
“Well, everyone in five counties was in an uproar. Not even the circus had ever made it to our desolate patch of the Upper Peninsula and now a whole vaudeville show was coming.
“I squirreled away every penny I could. And finally, on the last day of the run, I scraped together enough for a ticket. When your father twirled onstage, Evie, there I was front and center. The tails of his black tuxedo flew out behind him. His spats, shirt, and smile were all blinding white in the spotlight. And when he danced…”
Zave stopped, lost in a memory that he knew meant as much to me as it did to him. He shook his head and went on.
“Evie, I tell you, in that instant I knew that I’d been right all along. There had been a terrible mistake and I had been born into the wrong place, the wrong family. But now, I was certain that there was a whole other world out there waiting for me.
“I don’t remember drawing another breath for the rest of the show. Comics shooting seltzer into each other’s pants, dogs with cone hats jumping through hoops, two ladies boxing. But the hit of the show was a dentist, Painless Parker this guy called himself, who numbed customers up with cocaine then pulled their rotten teeth out for fifty cents a pop. I barely noticed any of it.
“When the lights finally came up at the end of the show, I hid in the mildew-smelling canvas of the big tent. But a crew led by Mr. F. Andrews himself, the flintiest bastard who ever drew breath, came through beating the canvas with bats, chasing out anyone trying to stay on for the late show without paying.
“That set all the other freeloaders running. But when he conked me, I didn’t let out a peep. I’d grown up getting beaten on by experts.” He gave a mirthless chuckle, pretending that his father’s cruelty was a joke.
“After the late show, I threw myself on your father’s mercy. Told him I was an orphan. That the farmer who’d taken me in beat me. Luckily, my old man had broken my nose recently, and I still had the bruises all green and yellow around my eyes.
“Your dad,” Zave whispered, the light of a happy memory again shining in his eyes. “He had the most wonderful Irish brogue. First words he ever said to me were, ‘Aw Jay-sus, boyo, that’s not right.’”
In that moment, as Zave spoke, I was with my father again. His voice, his smell, his kindness, everything that Mamie had tried to take from me, they all came back. I used every word Zave spoke like bricks to rebuild the palace of memories that Mamie had tried to tear down.
“He found me a ride on the tent-and-prop truck, told the driver I was the new roustabout, and just like that I was part of the F. Andrews Traveling Vaudeville Show. An hour later Elmer, Michigan, was a bad dream I’d finally woken up from.
“Pretty soon, Denny started bringing me up onstage. I was comic relief at first. Me in my overalls and clodhoppers. Him in the tux, top hat. But the better I got, the less funny that was. From the start audiences thought I was his son. We looked that much alike.”
I glanced up at Zave and the face on that torn photo melded into his.
“Can I tell you something?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“I tell everyone that my birthday is August nineteenth. But that’s not the day I was born. That was the day that your father surprised me with a tuxedo he’d had made for me and a pair of proper dancing shoes, and asked if I wanted to be an official part his new act, The Dancing Devlins. A father-son act. That’s what he called us. And then…”
Zave’s voice trailed off into the saddest sigh I’d ever heard.
“And then what?” I prodded gently.
He shrugged. “And then Mamie. But even worse than her was what I did later. Or failed to do later. I wasn’t there when he needed me. Didn’t even visit when I heard he was sick. Didn’t do a goddamn thing to help the man I owe my life to. That weighs on me, Evie. It weighs heavy.”
“Oh, Zave,” I tried to reassure him. “If Mamie didn’t want you around, there wouldn’t have been any way you could have seen him.”
“There are always ways, Evie. I owed him so much.” Brightening a bit, he added, “But you’re here now. Do you believe in fate?”
“I believe that life deals some crappy hands and we have to do the best we can to play them.”
“No, I mean, do you believe that there are reasons things happen, because I believe the reason you walked onto the floor back at Jake’s and fixed my ankle was so that I could try to pay back a little of what I owe your father. I think Denny wants me to help his daughter to make up for not helping him.”
“I don’t … I’m not sure. I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. My job now is to help you the way your father helped me and I should have helped him. So your pin? That’s what you want most in this world, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Okay, who do I need to talk to to get it for you? Because, believe it or not, I can be very persuasive when I want to.”
I smiled at the thought of Zave attempting to sweet-talk the steely Director.
“Go ahead, laugh,” Zave said.
“I’m not laughing at you. You just don’t know the Director. Nothing short of a bomb going off in the middle of Galveston is ever going to change her mind.”
“So we have to make a bomb go off,” Zave concluded. “Metaphorically speaking.”
Seeing the doubt in my expression, Zave asked, “You want to be a nurse, right?”
“More than anything.”
“Okay, then, be back here tomorrow and we’ll figure out a game plan.”
It was almost dawn when I left the auditorium. Though I’d had hardly any sleep and would have to be back on duty in a couple of hours, I almost started skipping. I was part of a “we.” Me and Zave, “we” were going to figure out how to get my pin.
Whether Zave could really help me or not, knowing that I had someone on my side, someone looking out for me, even someone who cared enough about me to tell me lies to raise my spirits, was exhilarating. The cool early-morning air outside the arena could have been helium, I was that light and springy.
When a slovenly fellow with a bottle in the pocket of his bagged-out suit veered toward me, smiling and winking, I realized that I was grinning like an idiot.
“Hey, honey, you lookin’ for company?” he asked with a leer.
On any other day since Detroit that leer would have made something inside of me shrivel away in shame. Made me feel as if, somehow, I had invited such lechery. But not today.
“Not yours, buddy,” I told him with grin. “Never yours.”
“Can’t say as I blame you,” he said.
The sun rose. I strode briskly toward it.
CHAPTER 47
Early the next morning I was back, pacing the darkened floor beside Zave and a snoring Cleo. He asked me what I intended to do about getting my pin.
After I told him he questioned me. “So, your plan is to get some kind of steady job, and save up enough to go to Austin and present your case to this nursing board? Sounds bureaucratic. Sounds like a bunch of timid rule-followers who are looking for a reason to say no. And, as soon as this Director witch tells them you faked your school records, they’ve got their reason, right?”
“Right. Which leaves me exactly nowhere.”
“Don’t say that. Tell me, who pulls the Director’s strings? Who does she answer to?”
“The Bishop? The Motherhouse? God? The Virgin Mary? I don’t know.”
“Come on, we all answer to someone.”
“Yeah, someone with power,” I put in dourly. “Which counts me out.”
As Zave started to refute my gloomy claim, two ghostly forms materialized beside us. The light was so dim and they were so quiet that until one of them started giggling, I didn’t realize that they were a couple of teenage Zaviors.
The non-giggling one, a rawboned girl with a lantern jaw whose all-white outfit included work pants that made her resemble an intern, stepped forward and said solemnly, “Hello, Nurse Devlin, I’m Clarice Allred, and this is my friend.”
“Alice,” her friend chirped nervously.
“We don’t want to disturb you—”
“Or Zave,” Alice, who appeared on the verge of swooning, interjected.
Zave bestowed one of his patented heart-melter smiles complete with a wink that caused the giggler’s knees to wobble. She reached out to her friend for support.
Clarice shoved her away and continued. “But, well,” she stammered before thrusting a notebook with “Class Autographs” embossed on the cover. “Would you mind?” She uncapped a pen and held it out to me.
“You want me to…”
Clarice blushed, her brusque front crumbled, and she explained uncertainly, “Give me your autograph? ‘To Clarice.’ If it’s not too much trouble.”
Alice shoved a book at Zave and babbled, “I’d love to have yours, Zave. We come to every show, but the guards won’t ever let us get close. Then this friend of mine’s uncle who’s the night janitor here tipped her off about coming early.”
Zave took her book and pen and, directing every molecule of his attention at the giddy girl, said, “Alice, darling, it would be my pleasure.”
As I signed Clarice’s book, she told me, “You’re my inspiration. You’re doing something important with your life. That’s what I want. I want my life to mean something.”
Touched by her raw honesty, I shared my truth. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Clarice, listen to me, if I can do it, I’m certain that you can.” It was a lie, since I hadn’t actually done “it.” The sparkle of hope that lit up Clarice’s expression, however, was as real as gravity and made me think of how my life would have changed a lot sooner if I’d ever even glimpsed a woman who looked like me wearing a nurse’s uniform.
As the girls left, Zave announced, “Gravy, your problem is solved. There, right there, is your power.”
“What? The power to get girls to dress up like milkmen?”
“No, the power of publicity.”
I gave him a Popeye squint of incredulity.
“I’m serious. You’re Nurse Gravy, the Angel of Mercy. People know you from coast to coast. Wait until they hear about you in Galveston.”
I didn’t interrupt to tell him about the clipping that Sofie had sent.
“Local girl makes good. Hometown papers love that stuff. They’ll probably run that AP story on the front page.”
I was impressed that he’d called the Galveston paper’s reaction so perfectly, and joked, “You got that all wrong. They ran it on the front page of the Entertainment section.”
“See? That proves what I’m telling you. Publicity gives you power in this country. You just have to know how to use it right.”
“Maybe in Chicago, but not down in Galveston. The well-bred girls at school liked to say that a lady only got her name in the paper three times: when she was born, when she was married, and when she died.”
“They sound like a real barrel of monkeys. All I’m saying is that we can work this hometown hero angle. It’s all about getting your story out before the other side does. Trust me, Gravy, that’s the way the world works now. Those well-bred girls are living in the past.”
Zave tapped his lips thoughtfully as we strolled. Halfway around the floor, he said, “Obviously, we have to figure out how to get your side of the story out in Galveston. That’ll give us the leverage we need.”
Though I adored being a “we” with Zave, he didn’t know the Director, or her grudge against me.
“Don’t look so worried,” Zave said. “I promise you, I will fix this for Denny Devlin’s daughter. Come here.” He moved Cleo over to his left shoulder and held his right arm out to me. Feeling like a shipwreck victim who’s finally been fished out of a dark sea, I stepped into his embrace.
This, I thought, was what having a brother, maybe even a boyfriend, someone on my side, must feel like. I didn’t want the feeling to end. Didn’t want to go back to belonging nowhere and to no one. The calculations I’d made about Pops and his show shifted a bit and I saw that the promoter and I both actually wanted the same thing. I wanted the show to continue. Maybe I even wanted to be part of the next one.
As our little trio made a slow loop, me tucked under Zave’s arm, Patsy plodded past and cackled, “Hot cha, Zave. One girl ain’t enough for you?”
A couple other guys passed and saluted Zave with wolf whistles.
“Mind your own beeswax,” he tossed back with a laugh.
“I’m glad to see you lovebirds are in such a good mood.” Even before I saw him, I knew from the smell of cigar smoke that Pops had joined us.
I quickly pulled away from Zave.
Around the floor, the other dancers, who’d previously been as alert as a bunch of coma patients, were all jolted back to life at the sound of the promoter’s booming voice. It was a rare occurrence for Pops to deign to actually come onto the floor except during prime evening hours when “the boys” were in attendance.
A sudden appearance like this usually meant that one of the pros was going to get warned about smoking marijuana or had been caught messing around with an underage local. It was amazing how inventive some of the guys could be about finding time and a hidden place to disappear with a willing girl.
Or, if the offender was expendable—either an amateur or a dud with the crowd—there would be no warning and Pops would simply hand the offender his walking papers. No farewell. No silver shower. Just one more empty cot in the rest area.
“Pops,” Zave said, tipping his chin to greet the promoter. “Whatcha need?”
Slump-shouldered and long-faced, even among a bunch of sleepwalkers, he was the weariest-looking soul on the floor. Glumly, he answered, “A miracle.”
“What variety?” Zave joked back. “Raise the dead? Or fish and loaves?”
“Naw, just the usual keep-Capone’s-nephew-from-putting-my-feet-in-a-bucket-of-cement-and-dumping-me-in-the-middle-of-Lake-Michigan-type miracle.”
Though the early-morning air was still cool, Pops was sweating and twitchy. “And guess what?” he asked, attempting a joking tone. “I can’t swim.”
No longer kidding, Zave advised, “Pops, calm down, man. Breathe.”
The concern in Zave’s voice undid Pops. His bluff exterior fell away, revealing the raw terror beneath it. He was breathing hard, and his eyes were wide with panic when he said, “Zave, the boys aren’t happy. The lovebird bit between you two was working great there for a while. Goosed up attendance enough to get the boys off my back. But the numbers are back down. Worst of all, the swells and the photographers ain’t showing up anymore.”
He winced and massaged a spot right below his sternum where, I suspected, an ulcer was flaring up. Pops’s fear vibrated across the floor like the first tremor of a deadly quake, and even the slumped dancers farthest from us perked up and shot glances at their boss the way scared children will look to their parents to see if they should be worried.
His fear was genuine. Also genuine was the fact that he was now using it to work me. I’d spent my life around chiselers and con artists, so it was about time I figured out what the game here was and if there was any way I could win.
In a woebegone tone that he overplayed a bit, Pops said, “I don’t know how we’ll save the show.”
Carefully studying the two men, I cut to the chase. “Probably by asking Zave and me to put on some kind of a showstopper.”
I was relieved that no glances were exchanged: Pops wasn’t in cahoots with Zave. Even if Zave was in on setting me up, though, I might have gone along with the play, but since he wasn’t I was almost eager when I asked, “What do you have in mind?”
“Would you two mind telling me what this showstopper you’re talking about is?” Zave asked. “Because I’m telling you right now, I’m not letting you freeze Evie alive.”
“No,” I said. “Pops has already eliminated that possibility, haven’t you, Pops.”
Pops eyed me shrewdly, trying to suss out what my game was.
“Okay, then what…?” Zave stopped as a light dawned on him. “No, Pops, no way. If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, we are not interested.”
“Interested in what?” I asked. “Because beyond showstopper, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Should I tell her?” Pops asked.
“Go ahead,” Zave answered. “Because it is never going to happen.”
When neither man spoke, I prodded, “What? What is never going to happen?”
