Last Dance on the Starlight Pier, page 26
I would have slapped her if the thought of touching her hadn’t repulsed me. My eyes narrowed, the fury I refused to speak building in me.
“Oh, now you play the goody two-shoes. Too pure to know what a faggot is even after you married one. Zave is a fruit, a fairy, a nancy boy. A goddamn queer.”
The question that went unasked my entire childhood bubbled out of me. “What made you so cruel?”
“Me? Cruel? Because I’m giving it to you straight? That makes me cruel? I suppose you think that Denny was better than me because he’d never call a spade a spade. Never say what the whole world knew about his precious little protégé. That the boy was a deviant and was poisoning the whole show with his corruption.”
“So it was you,” I said. “Of course it was you. You got him kicked out of the show. You forced a child out into the world alone.”
After a long, elegant draw on her cigarette, she hissed, “He was no child, believe you me.”
“You tried to ruin his life just like you tried to ruin mine by sending the Director those clippings.” For a fraction of a second, the truth took her by surprise and she blinked like an actress who’d forgotten her next line. That tiny hint at an admission of guilt was replaced by outrage at what a callous, vengeful, neglectful daughter I was. And how deeply, deeply, I had hurt her.
She watched me and waited for me to hit back. To hurl more accusations, rage anything other than the complete obliteration of the silence that I turned on her. She always needed to provoke some sort of reaction. Needed it to feed off of. To feel alive. I no longer had that to give her. And so she prodded. Taunting me with her familiar litany of laments about how I’d stolen her dreams of stardom by being born then proving to be such a disappointment.
“A bony scarecrow of a girl who couldn’t even keep her own hair brushed. Too bad you weren’t a boy. You should have been a son.”
“And you should have been a mother,” I stated with a calm finality.
“Well, I guess neither one of us was quite the prize in the Cracker Jack box that we wanted, were we?”
When I said nothing, Mamie played the wronged victim, ranting about all the hardships I’d forced upon her and how she had borne them with the patience of a saint. Even as the heat of her outrage grew hot enough to kindle actual belief in her ordeal, she seemed to slip farther and farther away. Soon her words felt as though they were being beamed to me from the distant past. From a different life. One that I had so little interest in being a part of any longer that I couldn’t ignite even the smallest ember of anger to lob back at her.
No longer caring what this spluttering stranger thought, I spoke the insight that her visit had sparked. “Mamie, I’m glad you stopped by.”
“Oh, again with the sarcasm,” she needled.
“No, I’m serious. You’ve just made me realize how wrong I have been.”
“I have?” she purred, perking up, waiting for me to beg her to take me back.
“You’ve made me realize that I was just about to act as horribly as you had.”
“Oh, what are you talking about now?”
“I’m talking about you never, not for one moment, loving me for who I was. I’m talking about how I’ve done the exact same thing because I have someone who loves me and I’m refusing to accept him for who he is.” With a sudden exhilaration I concluded, “I’m going to Galveston.”
“Back to your ‘husband,’” she said archly. “Why not? A girl who looks like you? A lavender wedding with a queer? You’re lucky to get that.”
“I am lucky,” I said, surprising myself with the revelation. “There is more goodness, more kindness, more true feeling for me in Zave’s little finger than there ever was in your entire body. Also,” I went on, “you had better leave the instant your latest sucker returns.”
“Just exactly who do you think you are? Speaking to me like that? With your filthy dance shows and your degenerate friends? I will leave when I am goddamn good and ready to—”
Gravel pinging, Monty singing, “Hi-dee, hi-dee, hi-dee ho!” along with Cab Calloway on the car radio, the big Packard came to a halt outside.
“Good, he’s back,” I said, standing and walking toward the door. “I think I’ll just go on out and have a little chat with ol’ Monty. Fill him in on a few details. You know, like, much as I wish it weren’t true, I am your daughter and you are probably as old as his mother. Perhaps I’ll also give him a quick inventory of all the suckers who’ve preceded him and of all your pathetic attempts to be a star.”
With a bored glance at her fingernails, Mamie said, “Go ahead. He’ll never believe you. As soon as Vonda Kay comes in, I’ll have her fetch the sheriff and have you removed from her property.”
I watched Monty standing beside the Packard, angling his head from side to side to catch a glimpse of his reflection as he combed his hair.
“Fine,” I said idly. “But you should probably know that since my grandmother is terrified of you and since you can make her do whatever you want, I had her sign the deed to the farm over to me.”
Mamie jerked to attention. “What are you talking about? This farm is mine. It is my legacy.”
Outside, Monty pocketed his comb and strode toward the house.
“The farm,” I answered coolly. “The only thing of value that you haven’t managed to steal from her, I own it now. So, technically, if we decide to call the sheriff, you would be the trespasser.”
I hadn’t had my grandmother sign her farm over to me, but Mamie believed me because it was what she would have done in my place. What she thought anyone who wasn’t a sucker would do. Her eyes went glacier blue as she calculated the worth of making a scene and having her age revealed now that there was no possible gain.
The screen door creaked open.
Mamie stood, all expression falling from her face. Hate, love, annoyance, guilt, nothing registered. That beautiful face I had idolized was as chillingly blank as that of a rider on a crowded subway who had blotted out the unpleasant strangers around her.
“Oh, Monty, hello,” I said. “I was just telling my—”
“Monty, you’re back,” Mamie exclaimed, drowning out my next word as she rushed forward, tears, wonderfully cinematic tears of wronged victimhood, trembling in her fathomless eyes, and threw herself into the hapless sap’s arms.
“Uh-oh,” he said, “did you two sisters have a little spat?”
“It’s nothing, darling,” Mamie purred, curling into his embrace. “Maybe just a bit of the green-eyed monster that I have such a handsome beau.”
“Jealousy,” Monty chuckled, pleased by his own wisdom. “Happens in every family. It’s all about ‘Who did Mother love the most,’ right?”
Knowing that these would be the last words I would ever speak to the woman who’d given birth to me but had never let me call her Mother, I looked Mamie in the eye and answered, “Not in this case, Monty. You see, our mother was a bitch and I don’t care anymore who she does or does not love.”
As a plume of dust rose in the hot, still air behind the Packard, I caught a whiff of a fragrance lingering in the doorway. Before I could identify the scent, a spasm of grief squeezed my heart like a fist.
Beadex and Shalimar.
CHAPTER 62
As soon as Mamie left, I packed up. When I told my grandmother I was leaving, she made a dozen hard-boiled eggs for me to eat on the road and gave me a pair of my grandfather’s pants, boots, and his old hat.
“I surely do wish I had enough put aside to buy you a ticket. But if you’re bound and determined to hitchhike, keep your hair tucked up in the hat. And don’t walk dainty. Walk like a man. Act like you own the place. The way men do. You’ll be safer.”
I had to hike through Litchfield and all the way back to the main road before I could hitch a ride. When I finally made it to Lubbock, I stopped at the Western Union office. There was no time to shoot Pops a wire and wait for him to shoot me the fare, so I sent Sofie the shortest, cheapest telegram I could. COMING HOME STOP.
I was trying to hitch a ride out of Abilene when a cop pulled over and told me he’d run me in if I didn’t move on.
“On what grounds?” I asked.
“’Less you got fifty dollars in your pocket and a home to go to, you’re a vagrant.”
“So being poor is illegal?” I said, feeling like Ace.
“One more word out of your smart mouth and I’m booking you. Now get out of my sight.”
Furious, I stomped off toward the “Hooverville” at the edge of town. What Pops had said about the hypocrites who protested the dances because they threatened “morals” was right. They didn’t give a damn about the contestants and their “morals,” they just didn’t want to be reminded that people were hungry and homeless. They wanted the suffering to be done conveniently out of their sight.
It was dusk by the time I reached the sprawling hobo encampment composed of dozens of clusters of homeless wanderers gathered around fires. Though most of the campers were men, there were a surprising number of women, children, and gangs of kids barely into their teens. At the center of the camp, men stirred pots of food balanced on rocks over the flames, smoked, played cards, talked and argued in raucous voices. When they started passing a bottle around, the jovial spirits brightened even more.
On the edges of the camp, though, other men sat, grim and oddly prim, wearing what had once been decent business suits. The eyes of the broke businessmen were haunted and made me think of all the stories about Wall Street brokers and big bankers jumping out of skyscrapers. Being poor was new to these gents. It frightened and shamed them and they wanted to pretend it was temporary. That they’d found their way to the dead end of a dirt road among hoboes and panhandlers because of some terrible mistake that would soon be cleared up.
Off in the shadows of several shacks and lean-tos made out of scrap lumber and old highway signs, I spotted a few rawboned women and malnourished children. It made me sad to see how resigned they seemed to be to life on the far edge of a dismal town.
I took my grandfather’s hat off, shook my hair out, entered the women’s camp, and handed out the hard-boiled eggs to the children and a few of their mothers by way of introduction. The women saw that I had lived a version of their hard lives, that being poor wasn’t a shocking new catastrophe, and they welcomed me to share their fire.
The stories they traded were about lives that had been lived on the edge long before the stock market went sideways and about the nudge that was all it took to send them over that edge. A child falling ill. One missed payment on a mortgage. A windstorm ripping young plants from the earth. The rain that never came.
All the stories were sad. But the saddest came from the small gang of kids, many not even teens yet, who proudly announced that they were “ridin’ the rails” together. A skinny brown-eyed girl, her hair in a bowl cut, told me in a matter-of-fact tone, “My parents had to turn me out ’cause I et too much. They’s eleven of us and I et the most, so they had to turn me out. What else could they do?”
I didn’t have an answer other than to give her the egg I had been keeping back for myself and my grandfather’s hat with the advice to keep her hair tucked up in it and to walk like a boy.
CHAPTER 63
I hit the road again at dawn after a sleepless night and made good time catching rides. My luck turned bad outside of Dime Box. Darkness fell and, no matter how badly I wanted to make it to Galveston by the date specified on the contract, I couldn’t risk hopping into a car when there wasn’t enough light to size up the driver. I also couldn’t hang out on the side of the road and risk getting picked up, since I didn’t have enough cash on me to beat a vagrancy charge. I had to hike forever before I finally reached an all-night diner.
Careful to hang on to the last few coins I had so that I could send Sofie another wire and buy a ticket on the Interurban from Houston to Galveston, I ordered a cup of coffee. With cream. After I finished the first pitcher of cream and half of the sugar dispenser, the waitress, a kind soul, brought me another pitcher of cream and I finished that one as well. As nice as she was, I knew that she would have to throw me out if I dozed at her booth. So, with her supplying endless refills, I dragged myself through another sleepless night.
GALVESTON
CHAPTER 64
I made it to the downtown Houston train depot late the next afternoon, sent Sofie a wire saying that I was on my way, zipped into the ladies’ room where I quickly cleaned up and changed into a dress, and caught the first Interurban to Galveston.
Bracing myself against the gentle sway of the train that was trying to lull me into sleep, I sat up straight and reviewed my battle plan. My thoughts, however, kept skipping from memories of dancing in Zave’s arms to the image of a nursing pin, my nursing pin, glowing in a dark haze.
I wanted them both.
Could I, could any woman, have them both?
Who knew? All I was sure of was that I was going to fight like hell to get them.
My first order of business was to get the information about a cure for Zave from Sofie. After that, I would tell my story so often to any reporter who would listen that the nursing board in Austin would know it by heart. And they would be so solidly on my side that even the Director couldn’t sway them.
Sofie was waiting for me at the station. The sight of her, my friend who had never doubted, undid me. We collapsed into each other’s arms.
“I was so worried,” Sofie said. “When you didn’t show up on the date of the contract you signed … Well, let’s just say, everyone has been worried.”
I knew that meant that JuJu was furious, but I was too joyful to get into that mess and just said, “Oh, Sofie, I’m so happy to see you.” Normally, I would have stopped there, but between all that had happened with Zave and Mamie I felt stripped bare, and from that moment of nakedness, the truth emerged: “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Sofie. You’re my sister.”
“I know,” she answered simply. “Ditto for me.”
I’d always heard about the phenomenon of no time passing after not seeing a friend for a while, but I’d never experienced it until then. Which was why the next thing to pop out of my mouth was “You cut your hair,” as if that were something she’d sneaked away to do over a lunch break.
“So?” she asked, brushing the curls framing her face.
“So? I love it,” I said, fluffing the curls with my fingers. “You have the perfect hair for this style. It makes your eyes look huge.”
“Quit talking about my stupid hair. You’re the one with the big news. Ever since the show was announced all the paper writes about is our ‘Hometown Heroine.’ Everyone is wild about the big reopening of Starlight Pier. Just look!”
Handbills for the show were plastered everywhere throughout the station and they all featured Zave and me in our wedding finery. Cringing at the sight of my face on such public display, I fought the irrational desire to rip down every one of them by reminding myself of Zave’s wisdom that, in this new world we inhabited, publicity was power.
“Zave! What a dreamboat,” Sofie gushed. “Tell me the whole story. And don’t leave out a single detail.” Then, as if the realization had just struck her, she said, “Evie, you’re a married woman.”
“Well, engaged.”
She blinked. “Engaged? But the photos? That gown?”
I glanced around the station, crowded now with happy families bustling in to start the long Fourth of July weekend early, lowered my voice, and confessed, “It’s a long story.”
“Gotcha,” Sofie said. Just as we had from the very beginning, we didn’t have to explain; we simply understood each other. She leaned in close and whispered, “Sounds like this might be a story for a quiet corner booth at Gaido’s. You hungry?”
“Famished.”
“Why did I even bother asking?” she joked. Taking no notice of my exaltation at the small miracle of someone knowing me, knowing my habits, she hooked her arm through mine, we set out for the Seawall, and, just like that, I was home.
For one moment, the familiar soundtrack of the excited chatter of tourists, the slap of gentle waves, the low wail of a jazz horn escaping from a club, made me feel as if Sofie and I were bright-eyed probies all over again. That my dream, all of it, my pin and Zave, was still waiting if I worked hard and was bold enough to claim them.
The sun was almost down by the time we reached Gaido’s. The Starlight Palace at the end of the pier was a dark silhouette against streaks of crimson and turquoise. Even from this distance, though, I could tell that the entire pier was a hive of activity. Activity that I had set in motion. The pounding of hammers and the rasp of saws rang out as teams of carpenters prepared for opening day. Though we were too far away to make out faces, I still strained to catch sight of Zave.
“Is he there?” Sofie asked as I stared. Not even trying to deny who I was looking for, I shook my head. “Do you want to check in before we eat?”
“No. Not yet. Tomorrow’s soon enough. We need to talk first.”
“Definitely,” Sofie agreed eagerly.
I was sure she was anticipating an evening of juicy girl talk. That was an evening I couldn’t deliver. Though she was the most compassionate and discreet person I knew, I suddenly became acutely aware that she also belonged to a church that considered homosexuality the “crimen pessimum,” the worst crime, and had a long history of burning offenders.
“That one,” Sofie told the hostess, pointing to an isolated booth in the far corner.
I waited until the waitress had delivered our sixty-five-cent deluxe shrimp platters and left before, after swearing Sofie to secrecy, I told her everything. She listened with her whole heart and I saw the wise, compassionate caregiver she had become, the one who would never judge, the one hundreds of lucky patients in her future would trust implicitly. Only when Sofie clasped my hands in hers did I realize that, even in the heat, they’d gone icy cold.
