The Tumbling Turner Sisters

by Juliette Fay

  “It’s no worse than the hospital, Mother. In fact, it’s tame by comparison. And maybe this kind of knowledge could be useful.”

  Mother rested her head against the back of the leather seat and closed her eyes. “If you ever find me with a wound in my thigh, please just let me be. I’d rather die from blood loss than be trussed up like a Christmas turkey with a stick wedged in my groin.”

  Lyons, New York, is nestled in the patchwork of verdant farmland between Rochester and Syracuse. We got off and rolled our trunks toward town, crossing a short bridge over the Erie Canal. Looking over the railing, we could see the packed dirt of the old trails, where mules or horses once tugged the barges along the canal. Now most of the boats had engines of some kind, and the acrid smell of coal smoke and oil drifted upward toward us. However, this was soon laced with a brisk odor that became stronger as we headed into the town itself.

  “What is that?” asked Kit, sniffing to try and place it.

  “It’s minty, I think,” said Nell. “Smells a little like Colgate’s tooth powder.”

  “Lyons must have the cleanest teeth and freshest breath in New York,” I giggled.

  We came to Water Street, which ran along the north side of the canal, and it bustled with workers from the various loading docks, warehouses, and way stations for barges delivering goods on their way from one end of Upstate New York to the other.

  “Can you point us in the direction of the Ohmann Theatre?” Gert asked a man in coveralls blotched with grease.

  He smiled shyly at her, revealing teeth the color of mushrooms. “Why sure, miss. It’s just on Williams Street. Turn right at the Congress Hall, and go up a couple blocks.”

  The Congress Hall Hotel was a large four-story affair. The first two floors had wide sweeping verandas with arched columns; the top floors had little gabled windows looking out toward the canal. The ceilings were low on those levels, which we discovered when Mother strode into the lobby and booked two rooms.

  “Mother, I’m sure we can find something a little more reasonable elsewhere,” said Nell.

  “Who knows what we’ll find in this little backwater town. Some tinder box just ready for a lit match,” said Mother. We unpacked and headed to the theatre, passing a lovely little park with a crisscross of walking paths lined with benches.

  Mr. Burt Ohmann was the theatre’s owner and manager, and it was clear that he ran it as his own personal fiefdom. And yet, despite his gruffness, I sensed an evenhandedness. As performers arrived for the Monday morning rehearsal, he greeted us all with equal disinterest.

  We stood onstage waiting for rehearsal to begin, and my gaze caught on a strangely familiar face. At first I couldn’t place where I’d seen him, and then it came to me. The Cuba train station. It was the young man with the brown eyes who’d held the little girl’s hand!

  He stood wearing a black suit, white shirt, and gray bow tie. He and the little girl—his sister, I was fairly certain—both seemed nervous. Her eager eyes darted everywhere, taking in the other performers, the stage, and the lighting in the fly space above. Her brother’s eyes were hooded with wariness. And a sort of melancholy. Yes, that was there, too, and it tugged at me in the most peculiar way. I wanted to reassure him. Don’t worry, I wanted to say. It all looks a little crazy, but it’s just vaudeville. You’ll get used to it. As if I’d been riding the rails from theatre to theatre all my life!

  “Okay, let’s get started,” Mr. Ohmann said, waving his cigar in some indiscriminate direction. “Go on back and Albert here will call each act out when we want you.”

  The little girl looked over at me. “Where should we go?” she murmured.

  “Just backstage,” I told her. “Here, follow us.”

  Waiting for your first performance at a new theatre is the most nerve-racking part of vaudeville, and it never failed to make me tap my knuckles nearly black and blue. It didn’t help when Gert murmured in my ear, “By the way, you might want to lay off the cheese sandwiches, you’re getting harder to catch.”

  This took me aback. I’d noticed my costume feeling a little snug, but I didn’t think anyone else had. In the past, I’d always hoped to be bigger, to have curves like Gert or even Nell before she got too thin. Now, for the first time in my life I was worried I might grow.

  Albert, the stage manager, called, “Tumbling Turner Sisters! You’re up next.” Despite my dismay over Gert’s comment, we performed well. I’m sure we had Nat and Benny to thank for that. As I trotted offstage, I noticed the brother and sister waiting in the wings for their turn. The young man was studying me.

  “Dainty Little Lucy!” called Albert. “You’re up!”

  They looked at each other, and he raised an eyebrow. She had a lacy shawl wrapped around her shoulders and she twisted the ends with her fingers for a moment, and then nodded.

  “Good luck,” I said, quickly adding, “I mean, break a leg!”

  His face registered an uneasy surprise.

  “No, it’s a good thing.” I offered a little smile to show it was meant with kind intentions.

  He smiled back. Oh, that smile. It nearly took my breath away. So unexpected coming from such a stoic expression. “Then I’ll try to break them both,” he murmured. He had the slightest whisper of an accent, so faint it was hard to tell if he might be foreign, or just from some distant American city.

  A piano was wheeled out onto the boards, and Lucy spread her shawl over it, smoothing it with her small hands. Her brother sat down on the piano bench, his long fingers hovering over the keyboard. She tugged at the sleeves of her little white dress and adjusted the wide pink sash around her narrow waist. Suddenly her face lit up, eyes like saucers, lips pursed adorably into a little O. He began to play a popular, bouncy tune. Dainty Little Lucy sang out:

  Everybody loves a baby, that’s why I’m in love with you,

  Pretty baby, pretty baby.

  And I’d like to be your sister, brother, dad, and mother, too,

  Pretty baby, pretty baby.

  Her voice was surprisingly strong, and she had quite a repertoire of expressions and gestures—smiles, pouts, finger wagging, shoulder hugging. This girl was a natural. She sang several more songs: “By the Light of the Silvery Moon,” “Red Rose Rag,” and “Meet Me in St. Louis.”

  There was a point, just before the last song, where she looked back at her brother, and from the wings I could see the look of pleading she gave. Almost imperceptibly he shook his head, then launched into “In the Good Old Summertime,” and the interchange was effectively ended.

  In the good old summertime, in the good old summertime,

  Strolling through the shady lanes, with your baby mine;

  You hold her hand and she holds yours,

  and that’s a very good sign,

  That she’s your tootsey wootsey in the good old summertime.

  At the end she performed a charming curtsy, while he bowed beside her. She held his hand and skipped along as they headed offstage, then dropped it when they reached the wings.

  “I’d give you crutches,” I joked, “but I think you two need wheelchairs.”

  Their smiles were grateful and virtually identical. I reached out a hand and said, “I’m Winnie Turner.”

  “Lucy Cole,” the girl chirped, giving my hand a pump.

  I glanced up at her brother, just the briefest flicker of eye contact to see if he might shake my hand as well. He looked down at me with those sad molasses-brown eyes, and I felt a strange connection, as if I could somehow feel his sorrow in my own heart. I wondered what had befallen him, and if I might be able to help.

  “I’m Joe. Very nice to meet you, Winnie,” he said, taking my hand. “Though I think I may have seen you before—at the Cuba train depot?”

  “Yes, that was me.” I was delighted that such a brief moment weeks before had made an impression on him, too.

  Mr. Ohmann called us all out to the stage. “First of all, I don’t believe in openers and chasers. You people didn’t travel a
s many miles as you did to get ignored while folks clamor around taking their seats. We open with a flicker, we close with a flicker.” We all looked at one another in surprise, happy that movies would take up the worst spots on the program.

  “Second thing. We have four dressing rooms. Those will go to the last four acts on the bill. Third thing. Lyons is a lovely town, and it smells far better than most human habitats, as you may have noticed. However, despite this generally convivial state of affairs, we do not suffer from an excess of population from which to draw audiences. In my experience, three performances are quite sufficient. Also, it gets me home to Mrs. Ohmann at a reasonable hour.”

  Most of the acts were happy for the lightened load, but the preening tenor was worried his voice might suffer from the cold as he traveled to and from his hotel between shows. “My vocal chords are delicate instruments,” he said, thick fingers held protectively at his neck.

  Mr. Ohmann took a puff of his cigar and blew it out. “Then I suggest you wear a scarf.”

  “What’s he worried about?” whispered Kit. “It’s not even that cold out.” The weather had finally turned springlike, and without the fierce lakeshore wind, it seemed downright balmy.

  “He’s just trying to establish himself as star of the show,” murmured Gert. “Practicing to be a spoiled big-time star.”

  Kit smirked. “He can be the king of the monkeys.” One of the acts involved two trained orangutans that did tricks, pretending to play the violin and banging on a set of drums, while their trainer played the banjo. They were dressed like a boy and girl—him in knickers and a cap, her in a flouncy blue dress, with lipstick that she repeatedly licked off. The trainer, a tall, older man named Jackie O’Sullivan, had to keep reapplying it, which was quite a sight.

  Mr. Ohmann, we soon learned, simply ignored anyone who made the slightest fuss, and so the complaining tenor was left to stand there with his small face soured like old milk.

  “I don’t quite have the lineup yet,” Mr. Ohmann said. “I’m waiting to see if one more act is coming. He’s a disappointment act, though, so it’s only fair to give him a little extra time.”

  “If he’s so disappointing,” I whispered, “why is he getting a break for being late?”

  “He’s not a disappointment,” Kit snickered in my ear. “It’s a disappointment act. It means the act who was supposed to be here didn’t show up, and he’s filling in.”

  At that moment, the stage door opened behind us and everyone turned toward the sound. Gert saw him first and let out an involuntary gasp.

  It was Tippety Tap Jones.

  18

  GERT

  I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name right.

  —George M. Cohan, singer, dancer, and songwriter

  Tip.

  My heart began to pound so hard it felt like it might knock right out of my chest. Stop that! I said to myself, but it went right on pounding. You think your heart belongs to you, and you can order it around, but you can’t. You belong to it.

  “Sorry to be late, sir!” said Tip, making straight for the front of the stage, dragging his huge wheeled trunk behind him. He was breathing hard, as if he’d run right up the street, and he didn’t notice me at first. “Train was slow. Cows on the track, I believe, sir.”

  “No trouble at all, Mr. Jones,” said Ohmann. “I saw you at the Pratt over in Albion a while back. I know what you can do.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Tip. From behind him, I saw his back expand with a deep breath, and then return to its usual broad state, shoulders squared like a soldier awaiting inspection.

  Mr. Ohmann listed the first half of the show, pointing his stub of a cigar at each act. “After the opening movie, we’ll have Willie “Watermelon’ Lee.” The man’s white skin was smeared with cork, except for his mouth, which was covered in white greasepaint. A big ragged top hat sank down to his ears. His pants were too short and had three blue patches sewn cockeyed, as if by a half-drunk five-year-old. For his act, he squawked out coon songs and danced around with a crooked walking stick.

  “He can’t even sing,” said Kit. “That getup does the act for him.”

  We’d seen coon shouters before, of course. Lots of vaudeville shows had some kind of blackface minstrel act. But when I saw Tip cut his eyes toward Lee, the difference between them struck me. Tip in his neatly kept suit, polished shoes, and spotless white spats, well mannered and hardworking. Lee in his ridiculous outfit, playing the stupid, lazy Negro. I wondered if Tip was thinking, That’s not me, and it’s no one I know. That’s what I would’ve been thinking.

  Mr. Ohmann poked his cigar around some more, and the next spot went to Dainty Little Lucy. “The last spot before intermission is the Tumbling Turner Sisters,” he said. It was quite a promotion. It meant we were good enough to whet the audience’s appetite for the second half.

  “Dressing room,” whispered Kit. “We get a dressing room!”

  You would have thought my mother and sisters had just been handed diamond tiaras instead of the chance to sit in a tiny room for a week. I’ll admit I was happy, too. But that happiness was a sort of pleasant background music to the thrill of seeing Tip again.

  Mr. Ohmann said Tip would open after intermission, then Earl Grayson the tenor, and finally Mike and Mary the orangutans would headline before the show closed with another short film. Grayson got pouty. His small head was swabbed with pomaded black hair. He was about Tip’s height, but most of his pounds sat on his lower half rather than his chest and shoulders. The man was the shape of a teardrop.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Ohmann. Mr. Ohmann!”

  Ohmann’s face went flat with forced patience. “Yes, Mr. Grayson.”

  “My agent told me I’d be headlining.”

  “I’m sure your agent told you the bill is set at the discretion of the manager. If he didn’t, you might want to consider hiring a new agent.”

  “I headline everywhere I go! I’ve never been in any other spot.”

  “Well, then this will be a nice change of pace for you.” Ohmann waved his cigar around at the lot of us standing onstage. “Shows are at one, four, and eight o’clock. Do not, under any circumstances, be late.”

  Mother and Kit scampered like jackrabbits back toward the dressing room with Winnie and Nell, holding little Harry, not too far behind. Albert, the stage manager, pointed to the farthest door. “You ladies are in the sleeper jump,” he said.

  “Why’s it called the sleeper jump?” asked Kit.

  “Because it’s so far away you practically need an overnight train to get there.”

  The sleeper jump could wait, as far as I was concerned, and I slowed my pace, pretending interest in the other rooms I passed, hoping Tip would catch up. The first was the size of a small bedroom, with a threadbare love seat on one side, a scratched kidney-shaped dressing table and chair on the other. Jackie O’Sullivan and his orangutans got this one. O’Sullivan was a handsome older man, wearing his hat at a jaunty angle, and swaggering along with a shiny black wooden cane. Maybe he just wanted to make sure people could tell him apart from his monkeys.

  Each room was a little smaller and shabbier than the last. The tenor’s had a tired old wing-back chair instead of a love seat. Tip’s had a couple of mismatched ladder-back chairs. And ours? Well, it was practically the size of a coat closet. There was one rickety Windsor chair in the corner with a Hotchkiss peppermint oil crate in front as a footstool, and the mirror was so speckled with tarnish it was impossible to see your entire face at one time. The one thing I’ll say for our closet: it was just big enough for little Harry’s play yard to be wedged in at the back.

  “At least when he takes a nap he won’t be woken by a cymbal crash,” said Nell.

  “We’ll do just fine back here, won’t we, Harry?” Mother said, and the baby grinned, two new teeth sprouting from his lower gums. I wondered how much time Mother would actually spend in the cramped space, away from the
company of the performers.

  The room was so crowded with people and furniture it was easy to slip back out into the hallway and down a few feet to Tip’s dressing room next door. He was unpacking that huge trunk of his, and it was like watching a giant set up in a doll’s house.

  “How’ve you been?” I asked calmly, my voice a lie to cover the thumping in my chest.

  He glanced up at me, catching my gaze and holding it for a moment, taking its measure.

  “I’ve been all right,” he said, and turned back to his unpacking. “How’ve all the Tumbling Turners been?”

  “Oh, just fine.” I leaned against the doorjamb. “Except for when we got robbed.”

  His eyes flicked back up to mine. “Robbed?”

  “In Cuba.”

  Full lips gave up the tiniest little doubtful smile. “Cuba Cuba?”

  “Cuba, New York, of course. Is there any other Cuba?”

  He grinned. “Oh, Cuba, New York. Why didn’t you say so?”

  “Well, it’s so big-time, I assumed you knew.”

  “Course I did. It’s almost as big-time as Scotland, Georgia.”

  “And how big is that vast city?” I asked.

  “Depends on whether you count the farm animals. Doubles the number.”

  I laughed at this and he grinned. But then the humor slid away from his face. “Robbed,” he said. “You all right?”

  I shrugged. “She took all our money, but no one got hurt or anything.”

  “She?”

  He stood next to the now-empty trunk with his hands in his pockets. There were two chairs in the room. The stain was worn right down to the wood on the arms, but they worked, and I would’ve liked an invitation to sit down. But he just stood there waiting for my story.

  So I told him about that conniving Sissy Salloway, happy as a fool just to be in the same room, entertaining him with impressions of the squawking singer and stone-faced banjo player.

  But why didn’t he ask me to sit, as any gentleman would? It irritated me almost as much as my own silly bliss at his attention. The idea that he was being disrespectful by making me stand grew until I came to the part about Billy.