by Vanda
I hurried into the kitchen and skidded to a stop when I saw her ; I tiptoed back out and leaned against the wall, hoping she hadn’t seen me. I couldn’t quit my work at the Canteen, but if that woman told about me ….
“Did you meet Virginia Sales, our new girl?” Miss Royle asked as she came around the corner.
“Virginia? Uh, no, I don’t think—”
“Come. I’ll introduce you.”
“I was going to wipe down some tables out here.” I backed up.
“I need your help putting out the food.”
“Yes, but—” My breathing was coming too fast; my head felt light.
“Over here, Alice. In the kitchen. Why are you acting so strangely? Virginia,” Miss Royle called. “I want you to meet Alice Huffman.”
Virginia Sales, Max’s fiancée, was at the preparation table making tuna fish sandwiches.
I stood there hoping I didn’t faint. Virginia was dressed to the nines: gold earrings, matching necklace, hair piled on top of her head, a creamy white dress that hugged her breasts and hips. And, of course, that ridiculous red and white checked apron.
I was sure Max had told her about Juliana and me. How much of what happened that night had I told Max? I couldn’t have told him the whole thing, all those things I did with her, but how much did I say? I was a wreck that night—I could’ve said anything, but whatever I said Max and Virginia knew I hadn’t gone to Juliana’s house to play gin rummy. If Virginia told, I could get kicked out or worse. What could be worse than the Canteen people knowing that about me? Everyone knowing that about me. People talk. I’d have no place on earth to hide. I saw that street near Hope House where the bums lived and my stomach quaked .
“I’ll leave you two to cart the last of the food out,” Miss Royle said, stepping out of the kitchen.
“Hello, Al,” Virginia said, her voice cold.
I pressed my breath into my lungs so I didn’t hyperventilate. “My name is Alice around here.”
“Is it?”
Yes, Virginia knew about Juliana and me all right, and she didn’t approve. She didn’t even like Juliana. I remembered back to that time at Max’s apartment at the Thanksgiving Day party. Virginia asked me if I was interested in Juliana, and I’d said Juliana was nice. Virginia cut me off saying, “No, she isn’t.” Then she was going to tell me something she said I should know. The party took over and she never told me. It suddenly hit me. She was going to tell me Juliana was married. She was the only one of those perverts who thought to do that.
“Virginia, dear,” Miss Cowl, my other boss, said, entering, “it isn’t necessary to cut the crusts off the bread. The young gentlemen who enter these portals are not very accustomed to finger sandwiches.”
“Oh? Really?” Virginia said, surprised.
Standing there in that kitchen with Virginia, everything came pouring back like an unforeseen cloudburst breaking over my head. Max—his party of perverts. Juliana—what I’d done with her. I could feel my whole body shrinking into shame.
“Virginia, what are you doing here?” I asked rather gracelessly.
“I volunteered. Didn’t you know that Max comes here weekends?”
“No.” I let out a scream on the inside. “I’m not usually here on weekends. Don’t tell me Max is in the service?”
“He enlisted the week of FDR’s speech. Don’t look so surprised. Max is very patriotic.”
“He is?” I said, doubtfully.
“As soon as he finished his basic training, Irving Berlin had him assigned to Camp Upton in Yaphank, Long Island where they’re currently working on a new Broadway show to raise money for the Army Emergency Relief Fund. Mr. Berlin was aware of Max’s reputation from the thirties and personally requested him. That’s the kind of man Maxwell P. Harlington the Third is.”
As long as I stay away from this place on weekends, I could avoid Max forever.
“He’s been made a sergeant, you know,” Virginia continued. “He is not the hopeless degenerate you imagine him to be. And since you’re checking credentials, I’m as qualified as you to be here. I acted on the stage, too, you know. Only one time. But that makes me as much a legitimate actress as you. I gather you are in charge of food distribution tonight, so where do you want me to put this?” She lifted the tray of sandwiches.
“Put them on the far table. We’re going to open the doors soon.”
I stared after Virginia as she carried the heavy tray out of the kitchen. I supposed I should’ve helped her .
Miss Cowl, in the main room, looked at her watch and called out. “Are we sufficiently prepared for our servicemen? Then I shall allow them to enter forthwith.”
Miss Jane Cowl was a genuine star. She was a big hit in Old Acquaintance the season before I came to the city. Miss Cowl always enunciated every single one of her words just like Mrs. Viola Cramden said to do. Sometimes she talked a little funny, but she was nice. She stood straight as a pin like any great star would.
I hurried to carry a tray of pies that had arrived from Sardi’s to the serving table. Henry, one of the volunteers, joined me.
“Hi,” he said, “I thought you weren’t going to make it tonight.” Henry was 4F, so he wasn’t in the army. He’d had polio as a child, and as a result, his right foot dragged behind his left as he walked. He used a cane to help him get around.
“I got stuck at Gimbels. You wanna get the bottles of Coca-Cola over to the table? Here they come.”
Whatever you gave Henry to do he found a way to do it without comment, so I practically forgot he was crippled.
Swamped with young men crowding the table, we handed out food as fast as we could.
“Alice, could you get this new junior hostess set up?” Miss Royle asked as she dashed by.
An attractive young woman, probably a little younger than me, all smiles, said, with an English accent, “Hi, I’m Angela Lansbury. What do you want me to do?”
“I’m Alice. Why don’t you start mingling with the men that are sitting around the tables? See if any of them want to dance.”
“Hey, Alice,” Henry came up behind me. “Can I take you out for a cup of coffee after we finish tonight?”
“Uh … no. I have to get up early for an audition.”
“I understand.”
“I gotta go see about the entertainment,” I told him.
Henry’d been asking me out for a cup of coffee for a few weeks now, but I kept saying no.
“Hey, Angela,” I called as I walked toward the orchestra. “Go talk to that soldier over there sitting by himself in the corner.”
Ethel Merman ran up to me. “Where’s my piano player?”
“I saw him back there a moment ago. The orchestra’s gonna play for a while so the boys can dance, and then you’ll be on afterwards so you have time to find him.”
Dickie grabbed the two Philip Morris cigarettes the junior hostess handed out as the men entered and came over to me. He wore his navy blues. “Have you seen Aggie?”
As soon as war was declared, Dickie gave his notice to All’s Fair before he even had a chance to go to Boston and sign up to be a sailor. He reported right away to The Great Lakes Training Station in Chicago.
“Dickie, what are you doing home?”
“Didn’t Aggie tell ya? I finished up radio school so I got a twenty-four-hour pass before shipping out to the South Pacific.”
“Dickie, no.”
“I’ll be okay. Gonna kill me some Japs, show them they can’t push us Yanks around, and come back home to dance on Broadway.”
Henry came over to us. “Dickie, I want you to meet Henry. Henry volunteers here too.”
“Hi,” Dickie said. “Aggie was sposed to meet me here.” Finally, Dickie had the right haircut: bald. No stalks sticking up anywhere. “But I don’t see her.”
“She’ll be here. She’s here every Sunday night when the theater is dark.”
“Look, Al, please.” He looked at Henry and signaled me to walk with him. “As a friend, as my
friend, you gotta watch Aggie for me. You know what I mean.”
“Aggie’s gonna be fine. You’re the one who’s gonna be fighting Japs.”
“I know, but I keep thinking … this volunteer job—her dancing with all these guys—I’m afraid she’s gonna go off with one of them, and who knows what. Does she have to dance with them?”
“That’s her job but don’t worry. She’s married to you. That’s a solemn contract.”
“Isn’t there a rule against meeting the guys who come in here after hours?”
“Yeah, but no one follows it. She’s your wife, not some girl.”
“All these guys everywhere, tempting her. Please, you gotta watch her.”
“Have a Coke and sit down. Aggie’ll be here soon, and she’ll dance with you .”
Dickie and Aggie got married at City Hall by a Justice of the Peace right before he left for Chicago. Since it was an emergency, Aggie accepted the temporary ring Dickie got at J.C. Penny’s, but I never saw her wear it when Dickie wasn’t around. Aggie’s mother and father and Dickie’s mother, father, and younger sister came to the city for the ceremony.
Aggie didn’t get to wear the beautiful, white wedding gown she’d been eyeing for the last year at Saks. With the war on, no one thought it was right to dress too fancy, not even for a wedding. Aggie wore a simple off-white day dress that I helped her pick out at Macy’s.
“It’s not fair,” I heard her mumble when the salesgirl handed her the package.
As I listened to them say “I do,” I knew I was going to be an old maid, someone to feel sorry for ’cause I didn’t have a man. But I did have a man. I just lost him. Somewhere. Danny kept me safe from a life of humiliation, but now that was gone.
I gave out food and Cokes till my feet felt like they were gonna fall off. The orchestra played and the hostesses danced with the guys. Dickie found a hostess to dance with him. I bet that girl never had a better jitterbug partner. The orchestra broke out with “Puttin’ on the Ritz” and Dickie became the entertainment. Without dancing, Dickie would probably wither up and die.
At some point the orchestra stopped playing, and people gathered around the tables listening to Ethel Merman sing. Her voice rang out over the din of talk and laughter.
“Oh, that voice,” I said to Henry.
“You don’t like Ethel Merman’s voice?” Henry laughed.
“Shhh. It’s okay on a Broadway stage. But up close ….”
Henry shook his head and took a pack of Old Golds from his pocket. “Do you mind?” He handed me his cane.
“Not at all.”
He lit his cigarette and took back the cane. “You look beat. How about a little break out in the alley?”
“I don’t know.” I looked over at Miss Cowl who was making more sandwiches in the kitchen. “I really shouldn’t.”
“You’ve been working hard. Surely no one’ll—”
Suddenly, shouting came from the other side of the room. I tore over there and pushed through a circle of soldiers. It was Dickie and a Negro soldier. They both had their fists pointed at each other.
“You stay away from her, nigger,” Dickie yelled.
“We were only dancing,” Aggie pleaded.
“Take it easy, kid.” Henry put a hand on Dickie’s shoulder.
“Get off me, gimp.” Dickie shook Henry off.
“Dickie!” Aggie shouted.
“Don’t blame me,” the colored soldier said, “if your girl wants a real man to dance with instead of a sissy, faggot sailor boy who can’t hardly get his pants down to get the job done ’cause of them thirteen goddamn buttons on your pants.” The colored soldier and his colored friend laughed.
I pushed back through the crowd calling, “Thomas! Thomas!”
“Okay, that’s it, nigger,” I heard Dickie shout.
“’The Star Spangled Banner,’ ”I yelled across the room. Suddenly a phonograph record of “The Star-Spangled Banner” began to play and everyone snapped to attention, silent, soldiers saluting, the rest with their hands over their hearts.
“Nice move,” Henry said.
“Not my idea. Miss Cowl and Miss Royle’s.”
“You ready for that break now?” Henry asked.
“Sure am.”
As we walked toward the side door, Henry said, “That kind of thing is bound to happen when you put whites and Negroes in the same room.”
“Miss Cowl and Miss Royle insist on complete integration at the Canteen. Those Negro boys are serving their country just like the white ones. It was the Theater Wings’ idea. ”
“I don’t mind it, but I think trouble has to be expected.”
“White hostesses can’t even work here if they refuse to dance with Negro soldiers and the same rule applies to the Negro hostesses dancing with the white soldiers. Aggie was just following the rules.”
We opened the door and went out into the alley, which was lit by a single, bare lightbulb. Henry balanced his cane against the wall and took out another cigarette. “Does my not being able to serve bother you?”
“Why should it?”
“You’ll never go out for a cup of coffee with me. All the girls want to be seen on the arm of a uniform. I wouldn’t blame you for feeling like that.”
“It must’ve been hard for you. Getting polio. How old were you?’
“Sixteen. Up until then I’d been an active kid. Baseball, football. I still swim when I can. It’s killing me that I can’t be in this war. That’s why I volunteer here. To feel like I’m doing something .”
“What’s that sound?” I asked.
“What?”
“Over there. Is it a cat in trouble?”
“Let’s look.”
We tiptoed to the end of the alley and found a boy on his knees, his head and arms curled into his lap, crying.
I crouched down. “Hello?”
The boy looked up.
“Tommie?” His face was streaked with tears, but it was Tommie with an ie , all right. My past was ganging up on me all in one night. “What’s the matter?”
He looked up in Henry’s direction.
“Henry, I don’t mean to be rude, but ….”
“Sure. But you didn’t answer my question. You won’t go out with me because I’m not in uniform, right?”
“I didn’t say that. Do we have to talk about this now?”
“So the no uniform doesn’t matter, and you would go out with me?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Tonight.”
“What?”
“I’ll meet you at the door after we close up.” He started to walk away.
“Wait! I didn’t say—”
“You don’t want to stand me up, do you? A poor cripple?”
“Oh, that’s low.”
“I know,” he said and was gone.
“That guy really likes you,” Tommie said, wiping the tears with the back of his hand. He was wearing a maroon tie with a dark jacket and pants, which made him look very strange to me. I was used to seeing him in his underwear or feathers and a grass skirt.
“Is Max in there?” he asked.
“No. ”
“What am I gonna do? I gotta see him.” The tears started coming again.
“What happened?”
“I … got rejected.”
“From what?”
“What do you think? The army. They called me 4F—does that mean flunky or failure, something like that?”
“It means you’re sick.”
“I’m not sick.”
“But, Tommie, you’re not old enough to enlist. That’s probably why they—”
“I turned eighteen today.”
“You did? You don’t look eighteen.”
“Max says that’s gonna be to my advantage when I’m his age, but right now, it’s not so good. Max told me everything to do. He picked out this suit for me. It’s so drab. But Max said I had to wear these dull colors, so I did. He taught me how to walk and burp and everything, but the psy
chiatrist said I was a homosexual.”
“You are,” I whispered.
“Well, I know that, but how’d he know?” I had a fleeting image of him throwing kisses to the generals as he wiggled off to war.
“Oh, Tommie.” I pushed back a few strands of blond hair that had fallen over his brow.
Tears poured again. “I want to be a soldier. I want to fight for my country like everybody else.”
“Why don’t you volunteer at the Canteen? That’s another way of fighting for your country.”
What am I doing? Inviting another one of them into my world?
“You think I could do it?” He jumped up and down. “You could help me to do a good job. I really want to do a good job.”
“Well, uh, now that I think of it, your volunteering here might not be such a good idea.”
“No. It’s a terrific idea, Al.” He kissed me on the cheek.
“Alice . You can’t tell anyone here why you’re 4F. We’re gonna have to make something up, like, like … heart murmur. I heard that gets a person a 4F.”
“Heart murmur?” Tommie said, pleased. “I like the sound of that. Heart mur-mur.” His body swayed to the sound. “It’s like the swish of whispering mermaids.” His hands danced above his head. “Mur-mur.”
I pulled his hands down. “No. Don’t do that.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Henry and I went up the steps leading to a soda shop.
“You sure this place is open? Most places like this are closed before midnight these days,” I reminded him. Black curtains were pulled down over the windows like all store owners had to do.
Everything was dark in the city now since the army had ordered all the lights dimmed. That meant no more neon signs. Cars and taxis had to put hoods over their headlights and many traffic lights were shut off completely. There were no more bright lights on Broadway or Swing Street, just weak ones. You couldn’t read on the trolley anymore ’cause it was too dark.
Henry pointed to a small, handwritten sign near the bottom of the door. Open.
Inside, a few dim bulbs and a couple of candles sitting on the counter lit the place. The proprietor sat at the end of the counter turning the pages of a newspaper. He wore loose suspenders and a hat pushed way back on his head.