by Vanda
“Oh, my God. When?”
“I was young. It was nothing. But believe me, Al, in their minds, we are all rolled up into one perverted, degenerate …” She coughed like she was going to choke or be sick.
“Easy.” I went to put my arms around her.
“No,” she coughed out, pushing me away. “Please.”
“Tell me.”
“It was nothing. I shouldn’t have brought it up; it’s only the article. I was a child.” She spoke as if it had happened to someone else. “After the beating, they visited me in the hospital, and threatened to … My mother came to the hospital every day and doted on me. I made up a story about some elusive gang of boys, because if I told her what really happened, those girls would’ve told her the truth about me. For a year, they had me running errands for them.”
“You? I can’t picture you … I’m sorry.”
“Disappointed?”
“Uh … no …” I was.
“One afternoon, the leader of the bunch ordered me on my knees to wash her shoes with my tongue. I punched her in the face. She went down. Hard.”
“I knew it! I knew you’d never—”
“The others ran away scared, and I was expelled. When Mother got over her anger, she found another boarding school. How about that? You like that story better?”
“Isn’t that what happened?”
She grabbed her purse. “I’ve got to go.”
“Go? Where? We have a rehearsal.”
“Tell Stan I’ll be back in an hour.” She threw the magazine to the floor. “I have to go to mass.”
Chapter 26
“PICK UP YOUR cue!” Marty yelled at me. We met in a diner not far from the school. Marty’s army buddy, Moshe Steinman, was there to rehearse the scene too.
We sat at a round Formica table, bright red, while the jukebox played Vic Damone singing I didn’t know what. His sound was so boring, I couldn’t tell what it was. The boys were finishing up their eggs. I couldn’t eat.
“Take it easy,” Moshe said, sipping his coffee from a thick mug. “You shouldn’t talk to a girl like that. It’s disrespectful.”
“Yeah!” I shot back at Marty.
“Nuts to that. She’s already been on Broadway,” Marty told Moshe.
“You have?” Moshe sounded impressed.
I wished I hadn’t told Marty that. Too much expectation.
“But I haven’t,” Marty continued, “and I don’t expect you to get in my way.” He waved an unlit cigarette at me. “Come on, Al.” And snapped his fingers in front of my glazed eyes. “Get with it.”
He didn’t know I’d only had two hours’ sleep. The coffee wasn’t helping, and I couldn’t look at the leftover egg on their plates. His face and voice softened as he lit his cigarette. “I didn’t mean to yell, but this is important to me. I’ve got plans and I’m starting late.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I haven’t been putting in the time.”
“What’ve you got to do?” he asked. “You’re only taking one course and waiting on tables. Don’t you care about your future?”
“Yeah, Marty, I do.” My own anger seeped through.
“Marty,” Moshe said. “Don’t speak to her like that. Soon she’ll get good sense, get married, have babies, and forget all this career nonsense. It’s a phase. Something lots of girls go through.”
“Oh, do we?” There went my ally.
Moshe always wore a dark suit jacket, often too small for him, and a bow tie, with a yarmulke on his head. Marty looked rumpled, dressed in his baggy corduroy pants and his tweed jacket with the patches on the elbows. He kept his tie folded in his pocket.
“Let’s go to my apartment.” Marty’s chair scraped along the floor as he got up. “Less distraction. We need to move around if we’re going to get this scene right.”
“We can’t,” Moshe said, nodding at me but addressing Marty. “It wouldn’t be right.”
“Alice doesn’t care about things like that,” Marty said. “She’s not like a regular girl.” He sprinted toward the door ahead of Moshe and me.
What did that mean?
* * *
Marty’s apartment was a one-and-a-half on 129th and Lenox, in a fourth-floor walk-up. I stood in the hallway looking in through the open door. “Well?” Marty said, “Aren’t you coming in?”
“I don’t know.” My insides were a jungle of heartbeats. “I can’t just go in there. Alone. With you.”
“Oh, come on. We’re friends. We’re going to rehearse. What do you think I’m going to do? Attack you?”
“No. But—I’ve never been in a man’s apartment alone before.” Well, there had been Max, but somehow, he didn’t count. I whispered, “What will people think?”
“Nothing, if you hurry up in here,” he whispered back, grabbing my arm and pulling me inside; he shut the door. “There. You’re in and I haven’t done anything to you. Yet.” He growled in my face and I jumped back. He laughed. “I promise; you’re safe with me. Here, I’ve got something to relax you.”
He took a small book off a makeshift bookshelf and handed it to me. “See how small it is? That one’s Ariel, the whole biography of Shelly in one tiny book. They were small like that so soldiers could carry them in their pockets. They didn’t cut any words out; they just shrunk the whole thing down.”
I felt the book lying in the palm of my hand. Marty was right. Just being close to a book was relaxing.
Marty’s poverty, or lack of interest in material possessions, was apparent from the décor: two wooden milk crates for sitting, an overstuffed chair with the stuffing coming out, and no rug. He had the type of bed that disappeared into the wall.
I looked over at his homemade bookshelf. “Wow, so many books.” I went to the shelf that held the tiny ones. “Gosh, you must have hundreds of these.”
“My mom used to send them to me.”
I took one in my hand. It opened backwards. It was a Jewish prayer book. It had Hebrew on one side of the page and the equivalent English on the other. In the very back of the book, that was really the front, in blue ink, it read: “Don’t forget to say your prayers. Mom” A warm feeling drifted through my body.
“Those books made the war easier to take.”
I put the book back on the shelf. “That must’ve been awful, fighting a war. I can’t even imagine it.”
“Good. You shouldn’t. You’re a girl. Your job is to look pretty.”
I turned to stare at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He sat on the edge of the arm of the overstuffed chair. “I’m sorry Mosh wouldn’t come up. He thought I was damaging your reputation, and he didn’t want to be a party to that.”
“He might be right.”
“Nah. He’s just a religious guy. He wasn’t, you know, before the war. Now, he’s trying to find himself as a Jew.”
“It was terrible what they … The pictures … What they did … It was awful. Did you, uh … did you have any family?”
“They were all my family, every single one.” He sighed. “Let’s rehearse that scene.”
“I’m sorry if I said anything wrong. I don’t know what to say to you. It’s all too huge for words.”
“That’s why it’s better to rehearse.”
* * *
As Marty and I arranged the student desks into a makeshift stage in the unoccupied classroom, Moshe stood in the doorway scowling at me. “Come in, Mosh,” Marty said.
He shuffled in, still staring at me. “Drop it,” Marty said, shaking Moshe’s shoulder.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“It’s nothing,” Marty said. “It’s—Look, I’m gonna tell her. Mosh thought you didn’t respect yourself by coming into my apartment.” He grabbed Moshe’s shoulders and shook him. “Cut it out. She’s my friend. It’s a new time. The war changed everything.”
“Not the rules of common decency,” Moshe said, looking at me. “No amount of time will change that. Beca
use of the war and everything that happened, we must cling tighter to morality, not throw it away.”
My own guilt bubbled up.
“Okay, you said what you had to say.” Marty released him and pushed another desk into our makeshift set. “Forget it. She didn’t do anything.”
Somehow, I’d become one of those little badminton feather-things that gets batted back and forth over the net. What I thought or felt didn’t seem to matter.
“I bet she didn’t do anything,” Moshe said.
“Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “I’m here, you know, and I don’t like what you said. I don’t go around doing what you think I go around doing. I thought you were a nice guy.”
“And I thought you were a decent girl, not one of those—”
“That’s it, Marty. I’m not staying here for this.” I grabbed my hat, coat, and purse and rushed out the door.
“Damn you, Moshe,” I heard Marty say behind me. “I wanna rehearse, dammit! I’m not gonna get a bad grade because of you.” He came alongside me in the hall. “He doesn’t mean it. It’s that religion of his.”
“Isn’t his religion your religion too?”
“Sorta. I’m pretty loose about my beliefs. I don’t go in for most of the rigmarole. I don’t mean rigmarole. I respect the folks that follow tradition. It’s just that for me, well—I do Yom Kippur to make my mother happy, but even she’s less religious since my father walked out when I was ten. Come on, Alice. Let’s rehearse. You don’t want to fail your midterm, do you? Ignore him; that’s what I do.”
“But Marty, don’t you see? He might be right. I did go into your apartment.”
“We rehearsed. That’s all. Come on.”
We got through rehearsal. When we presented the scene in class the next evening, we were a hit, and received A’s for our effort. “We need to go to a club and celebrate,” Marty said, walking between Moshe and me toward the quadrangle. “No excuses, Alice, call in sick. Mosh, you were terrific too. Come with us.”
Moshe, pouting, walked ahead of us into the quad. Marty dashed after him. “Do you have to be this way?” Moshe stopped, and the two of them talked.
“Look, Marty,” I called. “You and Moshe go. I have work.” I was about to leave when suddenly, they were laughing. I stopped. I didn’t think Moshe was capable of laughing.
Marty walked toward me. “Moshe decided not to go so you and I can—” Suddenly, Moshe was on Marty’s back, his arms around his throat. He tossed Marty to the ground near my feet. I jumped back. Marty threw Moshe off him, and the two pounded their fists into each other’s faces.
Two big guys strolling down the walk with their girls ran into the scene and grabbed Marty and Moshe off each other. Once they were dusted off, I looked into their bleeding faces and said, “I’m not going anywhere with either of you. You’re both certifiable.” I headed toward the gate.
From behind me I heard Moshe say, “So I guess that means you and I can go somewhere. Huh, Marty?”
Chapter 27
November 1949
JULE RECOVERED FROM her panic over the article, but the calm she’d exhibited in October evaporated. I wished she’d tell me more about what had happened at school. She didn’t seem like the kind of person anyone would beat up. Although she pretended she was fine, she wasn’t for the whole week before she opened at The Onyx. I made her lots of hot Turkish tea and hired her a private yoga teacher. By opening night, she was completely certifiable and had no energy to pretend she wasn’t. I sat with her in her dressing room, trying to get her to do her yoga breathing exercises, convincing her she wasn’t going to fail, and keeping Richard out; he made us both a wreck.
“I can’t do it, Al! I can’t.” She paced frenetically back and forth in the dressing room while I leaned against the make-up table.
“Of course you can.” I laughed, hoping to lighten her mood. “You have to. There’s an audience out there waiting for you.”
“Send them away.”
“You know we can’t do that.”
“This is your fault, you know. You got me into this. I am such a disappointment. A disappointment to you, to Shirl, to—”
“You’re not. Look at me.” I held her by the shoulders to stop all that frantic activity. “Your mother is looking down on us right now, and she is so proud. You are not disappointing her. You are fulfilling her. She’s going to be here tonight, helping you, loving you, and bursting her buttons.”
“Do you truly believe that?”
“Tonight, I do.”
“Then you’re more nuts than I am, but—I’ll do it. For Mother.”
And she did.
I know it was my imagination, but when she started in on her first song, I swear I saw some filmy … Ridiculous. Cigarette smoke. And yet—something deep inside me wanted to believe she was there, and was maybe even looking down on me, too, pleased with what I was doing for her little girl.
The reviews were glowing. The critics especially liked her rendition of “Girls Were Made to Take Care of Boys.” The New York Times called it “sweet.” Many adjectives could be applied to Juliana, but “sweet” was not one of them; we had to be doing something wrong. I campaigned to have the song cut, but Stan wouldn’t hear of it. The real success of the evening, though, was her dancing with guys from the audience and singing, “If I Were the Only Girl in the World.”
The last guy she took up on stage was horribly shy and stared at her. She led him through the foxtrot while she ran a red rose over his face, played with his hair and winked at him. At the end of the song she kissed him on the cheek and walked him back to his wife or girlfriend sitting with their friends at the table, laughing. Applause exploded as soon as she got back on stage. “Memorable,” The Herald called it. Walter Winchell on the radio said, “Item: Songbird Juliana at The Onyx will fly away with your heart.” After those reviews, Joe Helbeck called Richard, who passed the phone to me; Joe wanted to extend Juliana’s contract from a week to three months. Richard negotiated a hefty increase.
* * *
Richard and I waited for a seat at the bar in between shows one night. The place was packed. Waiters were running everywhere, carrying trays of drinks, the bartenders sliding orders down the bar as fast as they could make them.
“Interviews,” I said. We took our drinks and squeezed onto two stools that had been vacated. “We need to set up some interviews in national magazines. Do you know anyone who can help us?”
“Can I get you another sidecar?”
“No. Tell me. Is there anyone you can contact to get this going? I’m hiring a full-time publicist tomorrow—not Franklin Dodge. He’s creepy. But we should milk your contacts as much as possible.”
“Well, I have a friend who’s a big shot at Life. Is that the sort of thing you mean?”
“Richard, I could kiss you. Do you think you could get him to set something up?”
“He owes me a few favors. I advised him to buy a couple of stocks that are now tripling. I’ll call him tomorrow.”
“Now I absolutely love you.”
He looked down, embarrassed. “Uh, Al, I want to tell you how grateful I am for all you’ve done for us.”
“Us? Oh, us.”
“Helping Juliana get her career on the right track saved our marriage. Not that she’d ever divorce me.”
“What?”
“Our religion doesn’t permit divorce.”
“Yeah, I know, but some Catholics must get divorced.”
“Bad ones. The ones that get excommunicated. That would kill Juliana.”
“It would?” A cold chill ran up my back.
“She loves our religion. To be separated from it would be worse than death for her.”
“But she could still be Catholic and divorced.”
“Not in the truest sense. She’d never again be able to partake of the Holy Eucharist, and you know how serious that would be.”
“Uh, I guess.”
“Not being permitted to take the Holy Eucharist,” Ric
hard explained, “would be the same as being pushed from the bosom of Holy Mother Church.”
What was he saying? “Then she could be something else. Some other religion.”
Richard chuckled. “You obviously don’t know Juliana very well. There is only the one true church, and Juliana knows it. Nothing could ever substitute for that in Juliana’s heart.”
Richard continued to talk, but I couldn’t make out his words. I kept thinking how I’d done all of this for Juliana so that one day I’d be rid of him, but … Never?
“I was afraid she’d leave me,” Richard was saying, “and live a separate life like her mother and father did ...”
Yes, she could do that. Hope.
“…We were always arguing. But we’re much closer now, all because of you.”
“Because of me? How nice.” I took a few swallows of my drink.
“I hope someday,” Richard went on, “to return the favor. I don’t want to interfere, but don’t you think you should start seriously considering marriage?”
I took another sip of my drink. “I’m married to my career, Richard.” After he’d bashed in my guts, the last thing I wanted to talk to him about was marriage.
“But it must be such a lonely life.”
“No. Not lonely at all.” Leave me alone before I punch you.
“I’m going to start looking for you. In my travels, I meet lots of nice, young fellows with promising business careers.”
“How is Johnny coming along with his drinking?” I asked. “Or should I say his not drinking?”
“Good. I rarely see him take a drop. Sometimes, a few of us fellows go down to McSorley’s and he’ll have a beer, but I don’t think you could call that drinking.”
Chapter 28
January 1950
“AL, IT’S SO good to see you. Just a minute. Let me give Bertha my coat.” Virginia stood near the hatcheck booth, sliding her fox fur down her arms and smiling at Bertha, our new girl. “I suppose it’s terrible of me to stand here without an escort, but I’m sure Max will be along soon.”