Last Dance on the Starlight Pier, page 35
The one hitch was that someone beat the Amadeos to the punch. And that someone was Kane, who’d figured out early on that something was off about the show. And then it was Kane who’d seen the fate that awaited his friend. And it was Kane who, when the acting stopped, did the right thing, saved Zave, and covered both their tracks with his own fire.
A few of the pieces still aren’t clicking together, but each clue that adds up to Zave being alive is another weight lifted off my heart. Dampening my joy, however, is the knowledge that, if he is indeed alive, Zave is out in the world somewhere, contaminated with the belief that I wished the abomination of a lobotomy upon him.
Still, if Zave is alive, I might yet have an opportunity to explain. But how, I wonder, will I find him?
That is my last thought before I fall into the truest, deepest sleep I’ve enjoyed for months.
CHAPTER 85
November 3, 1932
I am still grappling with that question as I shake Post Toasties into a bowl and Sofie, who’d been in the other room chattering away on the phone to a cousin, hangs up, comes into the kitchen and asks, “Guess what?”
My mouth full of cornflake mush, I grunt, “Whuh?”
“Cleo and JuJu are back in town. And, get this, he’s divorcing Aunt Patti. Turns out she’s been cheating on him and is thrilled about the split.”
Skipping right over the divorce bulletin, I swallow hard and ask with too much urgency, “Where are they staying?”
“What bee is in your bonnet now?”
“Sofie, if Zave is alive, I’m sure Cleo knows where he is and how to get in touch with him. I have to talk to him. I have to explain.”
“Yeah, but Cleo isn’t exactly eager to see you.”
“You know I have to see her.”
“She doesn’t get up before noon.”
“She’s going to today. Where’s she staying? The Buccaneer?”
Her eyes dart away from mine.
“The penthouse suite?”
They dart even farther.
“Oh, Sofie, never play poker,” I tease.
A few minutes later, I am on Seawall Boulevard and nearly running to the Buccaneer.
“Just leave the cart in the hall,” Cleo croaks out when I knock.
In response, I hammer louder and cover the peephole.
“What the holy hell is the problem with you—?”
Cleo, or rather, a person who used to be Cleo, swings open the door, stopping dead when she sees me.
“You,” she says with disgust.
I hurl myself in front of the door she is slamming shut and burst out, “I know that Zave is alive.”
For a moment, she freezes, this new version of Cleo. This new Cleo who wears no makeup. Whose hair, once brittle from bleach and dye, has been cut short, and is the dark honey of her natural color. Who is softened and filled out instead of jagged and empty. This new Cleo who, instead of haunted and jittery, seems, of all things, contented.
At least she is until the shock wears off and she snarls, “Who have you been talking to?”
Her reaction makes me so happy, I would have kissed her if I wasn’t pinioned between the door and the jamb.
“So he is alive?”
She pushes harder.
“Listen, Cleo, I don’t care anything about the fire or the insurance money or the take from the show, or any deal you might have with the Amadeos. That is completely between you and them. Just, please, please, tell me, is he all right?”
The pressure eases.
“Who have you been talking to?” she demands again, this time with deadly intent.
“I haven’t talked to anyone and, Cleo, I never will. I don’t care about the fire. Or who started it. Or why. Or what an incredibly convenient cover story Zave’s supposed suicide was. Or why you spread the story about me driving him to suicide. I don’t care. I honest to God don’t care. All I care about is Zave. So, just tell me, is he alive?”
“Why the hell should I tell you a goddamn thing. You and your miserable ‘procedure.’ Was Zave so disgusting to you that you’d turn him into a vegetable? He shared a secret with you and you tried to use it to destroy him.”
Again, it’s a relief to hear the words I’ve battered myself with for months, to hear the truth, finally spoken aloud. I surprise her by saying, “You’re right. More right than you will ever know. You accepted Zave for who he is and I didn’t. But, Cleo, you have to believe this: I didn’t know what was in that journal. Neither Sofie nor I set eyes on that article and those hideous photos until after the fire.”
“Yeah, right,” she says with withering skepticism. “From what I hear you sure were selling something you didn’t know anything about awfully hard.”
“I was,” I admit. “I was trusting and stupid and wrong. But Cleo, I loved Zave. I always will. I thought we could have everything we dreamed of.”
Her voice is slightly softer, slightly less accusing when she says, “Everything the world told him he should dream of. We’re not all born with the same dreams.”
“I know that, Cleo. Now. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life making certain that as many other people as possible know it too. Just tell him, okay? You helped me once before. Back in Chicago when you showed me what I needed to see. Help me again. Please.”
“Look,” she says, a bit of the anger easing out of her rigid posture. “I can’t help you. Don’t know that I want to, but I could almost forgive you because I understand you so well. Better than you understand yourself.”
She stopped pushing.
“We don’t expect anyone to actually, truly love us, do we?” she asked without expecting an answer. “It doesn’t feel right. It’s not what we’re used to. We don’t trust it. Loving someone who can’t love us back feels like the real thing. And I should know. I went down that dead-end road for more years than I care to count. But, Evie, word to the wise, it’s not the real thing. I promise you, the real thing feels like the real thing. You just have to believe that you deserve it.”
She’s talking about her and JuJu and I’m happy for her. I should leave, but I can’t keep myself from asking one last time. “Tell me, Cleo, please. He’s alive, isn’t he? I need to know. I really, really need to know.”
She is almost the old Cleo, tough as nails again when she answers, “I already told you what you really, really need to know,” and slams the door shut.
CHAPTER 86
By the time I step onto Seawall Boulevard, the pain of Cleo’s denunciation has given way to jubilation. Her reaction confirmed my hope: Zave is alive.
That certainty reveals the obvious next step I must take in order to do everything within my power to stop the destruction of minds and souls that so-called medical science has unloosed upon the world and to make sure that no one else makes the same tragic mistake that I almost did. I have to get my pin because no one is going to listen to a wannabe nurse who couldn’t even get registered.
I make a brief stop at the apartment to pick up the ammunition that Sofie helped me gather—the album of newspaper clippings—before I stride back down Seawall. Back to St. Mary’s.
This time, when I pass beneath Mary’s sorrowful gaze, I want to tell Jesus’ mom to cheer up; it’s all going to work out. Inside the hospital, the smells of floor wax, carbolic acid antiseptic, and Flit mosquito spray hit me the way some people say the scent of apple pie and coffee affect them and I feel as if I’m home.
I’m just passing the children’s ward when a familiar voice cries out, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you’re back.” Sister Theonella claps her hands together in prayer position and raises them above her head saying, “Thank you, Blessed Virgin, for answering my prayers,” and then she wraps me in a hug. “I was wondering when you’d get around to visiting your old teacher.”
“I wanted to,” I answer. “But I’ve been kind of a mess since I got back.”
“I’ve heard bits and pieces,” she admits. “Tittle-tattle that I’ve not paid much mind to. I’ve been waiting to hear the whole story from you. Care to tell me about it?”
For the next hour, we sit in the sanctuary of the hospital chapel and I tell Sister T everything. She listens thoughtfully, bows her head, and when I’ve finished she doesn’t speak for so long that I’m certain I’ve exceeded even the limits of her ability to forgive.
There is a beatific glow about her, though, when she raises her head, muttering, “‘Indecent advances.’ How could I have been so blind? All the men I’ve seen in the emergency room who’ve been beaten within an inch of their lives, yet they acted as though they were the ones at fault? Refusing to press charges? Begging me not to put the visit in their records? And I simply acquiesced. Pretended not to see what I’d seen. Not to understand what I understood.”
Anguished, she confesses, “Evie, I’ve stood by in silent approval as Kaufman recommended the very procedure you’ve spoken of.” With a sudden fierceness she declares, “Oh, this must stop. As long as the Director is in charge, I won’t be allowed to invite you to speak to my classes on this topic, but I’m certain that the more progressive instructors at the Sealy College of Nursing will want you to address their classes immediately.” Then, wincing, she adds, “There is just one thing…”
“My pin,” I supply.
“Right,” she confirms.
“So, I’d better get my pin,” I conclude.
Sister T accompanies me to the reception desk and calms the poor probie who explains frantically that “The Director is busy. She’s left very strict orders that she’s not to be disturbed,” while I enter the Director’s office without knocking and lock the door behind me.
The Director tips her head up and, again, the lenses of her glasses become the two blank silver orbs that once filled me with shame.
Not today.
The Director’s mouth, squeezed between starched white linen, pleats into a severe frown as she orders, “Leave or I shall have you removed.”
“No,” I correct her, amused that I could ever have let this small-minded martinet bully me. “You are not going to do that.”
I allow her a second to funnel steely disgust at me. She reaches for her phone. I take the receiver firmly out of her hand and hang it up. “You’re not going to call anyone.” My tone is as flat and even as it was the last time I spoke to Mamie.
She rises. For the first time, we both notice that I am a tall, strong, young woman and she is a short, doughy, old woman and we are alone together in a locked room.
“What do you want?”
“My pin.”
Her laugh is a rusty, bitter thing. “Oh, the cheek of your kind. You really have no shame, do you?”
“And what is it, exactly, you believe I should be ashamed of?”
“Don’t play the innocent with me, my girl. You know I have photographic proof of your depravity.”
“Photographic proof,” I echo. “I’m glad you brought that up because I would like you to take a seat and examine my photographic proof.”
This time, I am the one to slide clippings across her desk, an album full of them. “Please, do sit down and have a look.”
She snorts a raspy, belittling laugh, but she sits. With a bored sigh, she flips through a few pages before slamming the album shut. “Such a tawdry masquerade,” she pronounces. “Impersonating a nurse. All this proves is your complete unfitness to be certified.”
“And yet,” I say, turning the pages slowly back to stories that appeared in Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York, Dallas, Houston, St. Louis, and a dozen other cities, “in all these photos and press accounts, I am the very embodiment of fitness.
“It also appears,” I say, slowing down at the clippings from the Galveston paper, featuring photos of the “Hometown Heroine,” “that the editors right here have taken a particular interest in my story. How do you think those same editors would react now if I were to share with them the details of how my time at St. Mary’s was cut short?”
“I shall not submit to this vile attempt at blackmail. If you won’t leave, I shall.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, closing the album and standing. “I thought you cared about the reputation of St. Mary’s. You leave me no choice now but to agree to the interview requests I’ve received from papers around the country curious as to why, exactly, I have been denied my pin.”
“Why should I care about the sordid tales you tell?”
“Yes, elements of the story of my girlhood are sordid, aren’t they? Imagine then if I were to tell that girl’s entire story to the sympathetic reporters, whose readers already know her as the Angel of Mercy?”
“I knew from the second I laid eyes on you that you were no good.”
I lean forward, my hands resting on her desk as I hold her gaze and answer, “Is that so? Because I knew from the second I laid eyes on you that you were a bully. Turned out we were both right.
“So here is what you’re going to do. As soon as I leave, you will call the Texas Board of Nursing in Austin and explain your terrible error in not submitting me for registration earlier.”
She snorts an infuriatingly dismissive laugh.
I snatch a pencil from the cup on her desk and scrawl Sofie’s number on the first piece of paper I can stab the lead into. “It is now eight fifty-three. You have until noon to correct your error. If you haven’t called the board by then, I will begin alerting the papers.”
I storm out of her office. For the next three hours, as I pace the apartment, I feel as if I’m back on the marathon floor wishing the clock would hurry up.
Noon comes and goes and the phone remains silent.
By two, I know that the Director has called my bluff.
And won.
Battling with a nun in the tabloids is not how I want to get my message out. I sink onto the sofa and take stock of my situation. I’ll probably have to go back to nursing school at Sealy Hospital. I accept that my path will be hard.
When, though, had it ever been easy?
CHAPTER 87
Tuesday, November 8, 1932
Election Day dawns as bright and breezy as Sofie and I feel: we’re going to vote in a presidential election for the very first time. I count all the buttons with FDR’s face and slogans like “A Big Man For A Big Job” and “Vote For A New Deal” and announce gleefully, “Not a single one for Hoover in the lot.”
“Promise me again that FDR is going to win,” Sofie pleads.
“Of course he’s going to win,” I assure her. “There won’t be any America left to save if Hoover gets four more years.”
Sofie waves her hands in front of her face as if to erase the nightmarish possibility of Herbert Hoover being reelected. “Change to a happier topic? What are you planning to wear tonight?”
“Not sure. Maybe a bulletproof vest?”
“Stop,” Sofie insists. “I told you Cleo’s feelings about you have softened. JuJu says she wants to bury the hatchet.”
“In my skull?”
“No, she really wants you to come to this soiree she’s hosting.”
“Are you sure?”
“Trust me,” Sofie promises. “I explained your whole mission and swore that neither of us had seen that damn journal until after the fire. I mean, if she’s going to hate anyone, it should be me. So?”
“So what?”
“So what are you going to wear?”
“Sofie, thanks for putting in a good word for me, but I’m still not quite ready to go out.”
“But Danny is going to bring that classmate of his that I told you about.”
“The one that you maintain wants to meet me?”
“Don’t say it like I’m lying to you. You have quite a few secret admirers.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.”
“If you’re going to be Miss Modesty, look at it this way. There aren’t a heck of a lot of girls hanging out at the Sealy library. Let’s just say, you have been noticed.”
I start to scoff at that, but Cleo’s advice about feeling like I might deserve the real thing comes back and I listen instead.
“It’s true, Evie, for the guy smart enough to see it, you are a real head-turner. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that you’ve been in the papers. What med student wouldn’t want to date the country’s most famous nurse.”
“Most famous unregistered nurse,” I correct her.
“Oh, come on,” Sofie insists. “That’s just a matter of time. As for tonight, it’s an election party. Much as you go on about your hero FDR, you have to come.”
“But what if he loses?” I moan. “I won’t be able to stand it if Hoover wins.”
“In that case, you’ll be at the perfect place. Cleo’s arranging everything and you know what that means? Plenty of alcohol to drown our sorrow. Plus, it’s going to be at the Hollywood Dinner Club. And they’re going to serve Baked Alaska. How swanky is that?”
The past few months have stripped away so much of the tough shell I’d had to develop with Mamie that tears now seep through at the memory of the party JuJu was going to have if everything hadn’t gone wrong. I blink hard, swallow the lump in my throat, and admit in a soft voice, “I don’t think I’m ready to go out.”
“I’ll be with you,” Sofie promises. “I’ll always be with you.”
My vision blurs. I hide the gush of emotion behind a lame wisecrack. “Wow, you really want that Baked Alaska.”
“I really do. And, for your information, it’s Baked Amadeo in Galveston.”
I notice a gap has opened up in front of us and announce brightly, “Come on, let’s go in there and get FDR elected.”
Sofie takes my arm and my best friend and I step forward, ready to do our part to end the Depression.
CHAPTER 88
That evening, our cab can barely crawl along Seawall Boulevard, it is so jammed with hopeful revelers. Sofie sticks her arm out the window and raises her flask in solidarity to the carousers getting drunk either to celebrate FDR’s election or to anesthetize themselves against the nightmarish possibility of his loss. The chaos of neon, happy shrieks from the roller coaster, and the velvet feel of the night air make me grow sentimental as Galveston once again vanquishes dreariness.
