by Juliette Fay
Now that we were in the big time, the cities we played had two, three, even five theatres, often within a few blocks of one another. Keith-Albee was a “two-a-day” circuit, so we only performed matinee and evening shows instead of the small-time “continuous” shows that might require up to six performances daily. We were working less and getting paid much more. In Columbus, Ohio, we made $650, and that was after Birnbaum got his 10 percent!
To my mind, this required a renegotiation of our percentages. But first I had to soften Mother up.
“Isn’t it lovely?” I said to her as we stood gazing up at the Southern Theatre, with its attached hotel. “And so safe! With all that brick and tile, they say it’s completely fireproof.”
Mother gave a predictable shudder, and I expected her to mention those poor girls in the Binghamton Clothing Factory fire, as she often did. “That’s what they said about the Iroquois in Chicago. “Absolutely fireproof!’ ” She shook her head. “Went up like a haystack, and six hundred souls right along with it.”
I had to wait until she had her feet up on the upholstered chaise longue in her room, free of her new toe-pinching, French-heeled oxford pumps, sighing at the luxury of it all. I decided to get right to the point this time. “It’s not fair for you to make $325 minus expenses, and for each of us to make only $81.25.”
She lifted her head to eye me. “Expenses have gone up, too.”
They had—but only a little. In small towns, we’d paid anywhere from one to two dollars a room each night for lodging. Here at the high-class Southern Hotel we paid $2.50. The train fare was higher because of the longer distances we traveled, and we did eat better. No more drugstore sandwiches—we went to actual restaurants. Kit’s love of Delmonico steak and German chocolate cake added to the bill, but Mother still banked far more than we did.
She had already seen that I could rally my sisters behind me, so it wasn’t hard to negotiate a flat 20 percent for each family member, with everyone kicking into a kitty for the expenses. Extras like new clothes or going out at night were on the spender. “If you want a new hat,” I told them, “that’s your business.”
And we wanted new hats. Oh, we certainly did. We tried to go on a shopping spree at the Lazarus department store in Columbus. Every floor had a thing called an escalator—moving stairs—all you had to do was stand there and not fall over! We only had an hour before the show, and we were so overwhelmed by six floors of choices we didn’t buy a thing.
“I’m going back tomorrow.” Nell held little Harry’s fingers and let him practice his walking backstage. “And I’m not leaving until I have three new dresses.”
“Why three?” I asked.
“Because then I can get rid of all my long skirts and shirtwaists. I’m done wearing those old-lady fashions like some secretary in a stuffy office building.”
The next day we all trouped back to Lazarus, and Nell didn’t let us leave the store until we each had our three dresses. What a shock it was, tossing our tight corsets, high collars, and pinched waists for the flowing lightness of the new fashions. Sleeveless, low necked, and dropped-waist, with shamelessly flimsy undergarments beneath, they made me feel like I was wearing a summer nightgown instead of a dress. On a whim, we all got bobbed haircuts at the salon on the third floor, too. Kit wanted bangs, Nell’s was parted on the side, mine tickled at the nape of my neck, and Winnie’s was the shortest of all, with little crescent curls at the ears.
We all felt lighter than air, but somehow it was Nell who shone the brightest in her new clothes and hairdo. Maybe it was being in two acts instead of one, doubling her vaudeville status; maybe it was the extra money she made as a result. But I’d wager that it was little Harry, growing like a weed, rising up onto two feet and eyeing the world from new heights that made Nell do the same. Her partnership with Fred Delorme had blossomed into an easy friendship. They laughed and talked and worked on their act like lifelong chums. Little by little, the trenches between Fred’s brows seemed to iron themselves out, too.
“It took him a few weeks to trust that I was really going to show up ready to work every time,” Nell told me. “He’s just happy to have a partner he doesn’t have to carry—literally.”
“Doesn’t it wear you out, performing twice as much as everyone else?”
“Not at all,” she said. “It’s good for me. I’m too busy remembering my lines and too tired from all the stunts and dancing to worry like I used to. Traveling and meeting new people all the time brought me out of myself. To be honest, I think vaudeville might have saved my life.”
As it turned out, Birnbaum had booked Dainty Little Lucy at three of the same theatres we played, and one at a different theatre in the same city. This made Winnie and Joe nauseatingly happy, of course, but it also was nice for Kit to have Lucy again.
Though we now had enough dough to get our own rooms, Winnie and I still shared with Kit and Lucy. Maybe this was just habit, or protectiveness over the young girls. But it was also about freedom. Mother had practically given up pestering us altogether. We could go anywhere, do anything we pleased, and we took full advantage. But after an evening out on my own, there was something nice about coming back to a room with my sisters in it. I might’ve been willing to do that for the rest of my life if I’d had the chance.
Winnie went off with lover boy, of course. Whatever direction they headed in, I went the opposite. Out of jealousy, of course—why subject myself to their billing and cooing. But then I began to love the daring of being out in the night, a woman alone. I had always looked and acted older, and now with my new fashionable dresses and a bit of makeup, people took me for twenty-five at least. Occasionally I had to raise my voice, a lady in distress, or once even throw an elbow into some cad’s breastbone. But the greater the risks, the more alive I felt.
Living large enough for two. It was the best medicine for a heart that felt like it would always be just a little bit broken.
39
WINNIE
Fire has always been and, seemingly, will always remain,
the most terrible of the elements.
—Harry Houdini, magician and escape artist
“Dio mio . . . ,” Joe muttered when he saw me. “Your hair! What did you do?”
“Thanks a lot!”
“No, I . . . I think I like it, it’s just so short. And modern.”
I took that as a compliment, though I knew Joe didn’t necessarily mean it that way. I wanted to be a more modern version of myself. I would turn eighteen on Friday, and it seemed the perfect time to make adjustments, inside and out.
My net worth was growing. Each week, Nell, Gert, and I wired money to our bank accounts. When we learned we’d be going back on the road, Nell had helped Kit set up an account with Nell as the trustee. Mother hadn’t liked that one bit, but Nell played it off as something they’d done on a whim one afternoon. I think we all just wanted Kit to have a little something of her own, without Mother’s interference.
Though I did occasionally splurge on new clothes and books, I didn’t spend any of my hard-earned savings on July 25. It was my birthday and Joe insisted on taking me to a fancy restaurant called The Maramor after the evening show. The windows must have been ten feet high along the front wall, and delicate chandeliers lit the room with cottony warmth. There were upholstered chairs and thick cloth napkins, and the waitress was so attentive you would have thought we were royalty instead of teenagers on our first real date.
“We’ll have a couple of Singapore Slings, please,” Joe said to the waitress, who smiled and nodded at his good taste. I did see her consult with the restaurant manager a few moments later, however, the two of them eyeing us suspiciously. Then the manager simply shrugged. Prohibition was breathing down the necks of every restaurant owner in the country. With the prospects of lost income from the sale of alcohol, they were apparently willing to take in every penny they could before the well went dry.
“What’s a Singapore Sling?” I asked Joe.
“It’s this new drink from the Orient. Gin, cherry brandy, pineapple juice, and soda water. You’ll like it, it’s sweet.”
It was very sweet and very pink and just bubbly enough to taste like a sort of fruity Dr Pepper. I liked them a little too well, and so did Joe. I had never seen him order anything other than beer, which he generally drank at an unhurried, disinterested pace. But these frothy, candied cocktails went down quickly.
We were all smiles by the time our plate of mixed pickles came, giggly when the imperial baked ham with champagne sauce arrived, and lacked all caution as our spoons did battle over the English apple cake à la mode that we were too full for, but witless enough to order anyway.
We should have ordered coffee and poured some bitter black sense into us.
Instead we went back to Joe’s room, took off our street clothes, and got into bed, as we had done any number of times before. But with my new fashionable dresses, I no longer wore voluminous drawers. Instead I wore step-in panties with a little camisole on top. There was just so much more bare skin involved, and what wasn’t bare was readily identifiable under such gossamer coverings.
We began to neck and pet, our senses brought to entirely new levels of hot pink frothy ardor, fueled as it was by gin and cherry brandy. We pressed against each other as if our sanity could only be found in the skin of the other person. Our hands roamed to previously unexplored places. There were things I learned about a man’s body that I hadn’t fully understood before, no matter how many half-naked figures were displayed on my prized Esmarch bandage. There were things I learned about my own body, as well.
While most of me was clutched in the arms of love and lust, another little part of my brain took notes. Gosh, would you look at that, I thought, or Holy smokes, I had no idea! I found myself heartily impressed by the design of the human body, male and female perfectly suited and aligned—and so devilishly inspired!—to re-create itself.
I knew about sex. I had worked in a maternity ward; the mechanics were fairly unmistakable. What I had never learned, or even guessed at, were the feelings, the desperate inexorable draw of one body toward another, of how my lips and hands and hips would act as if detonated, speeding toward Joe just as his rocketed toward me.
I thought I would faint. Or he would. Or we would both die right there, victims of our own passion. And then, breathless and spent, it was over.
Suddenly all the other knowledge I had, which my brain (or whatever organ had wielded its mighty control) had conveniently hidden from view, came flooding back. Insemination. Conception. Implantation. Cell division. Cervical dilation. Delivery.
Motherhood.
I burst into tears.
“Winnie! Are you in pain? Carissima, did I hurt you?”
“I don’t want to be a mother!” I wailed.
As silly and carefree as the evening of my birthday had been, the wee hours were spent making contingency plans and regretting our carelessness. Actually, I sensed less actual remorse on Joe’s part than his words indicated. He was sorry and he took responsibility and said he would marry me and stand by our family, if in fact that was what we would become. But he dozed off once or twice, something the high-pitched screech of my anxiety would not allow me to do. And his comforting hugs and kisses sometimes veered back toward amorousness.
“Stop!” I muttered at him once when his reinflated desire became particularly evident. “Can’t you turn that thing off?”
He chuckled. “Yes, of course. There’s a little switch right underneath. Just feel around and I’m sure you’ll find it.”
I punched him in the stomach. That flipped the switch, all right.
Eventually I did sleep, a fitful torpor barraged with dreams that I couldn’t quite remember, but left me reverberating with fear and self-loathing as I woke. Joe was staring at the ceiling, dark lashes flicking up and down in the dove-gray light of early morning. After a moment he sensed my consciousness and turned toward me without touching me.
We gazed at each other for several minutes. It was the first near-peace I’d felt in hours.
“I would never abandon you,” he whispered.
Altoona, Pennsylvania; Dayton and Toledo, Ohio; Terre Haute, Indiana; Columbus, Ohio; Bay City, Michigan; Lexington, Kentucky; Knoxville, Tennessee; Augusta, Georgia; Lynchburg and Norfolk, Virginia; Wheeling, West Virginia. It was September and our twelve weeks on the Keith-Albee circuit was up.
I was not pregnant. Nor was I foolish enough to provoke fate by chancing it again, thanks to nurse Margaret Sanger’s tireless campaign to promote “birth control,” as she termed it. Though she’d once gone to jail for it, Mrs. Sanger’s efforts made barriers to pregnancy far more readily available, and Joe acquired the necessary supplies.
“You’re not being stupid, right?” whispered Gert as I slid into our bed early one morning. “Because you can’t depend on men not to be stupid. You have to be the smart one.”
“I’m not stupid, and neither is Joe.”
“You can’t let down your guard, not even for a minute.”
“I won’t. I promise.” Of course, I didn’t mention that I already had. But one night of tearful regret was enough to teach me that particular lesson.
Birnbaum didn’t like Keith-Albee’s terms for another run on their circuit. “It’s time we twist the arm of fate,” he said. “If Albee won’t bring you to New York, we’ll see what Martin Beck can do for us.” While Keith-Albee was the major eastern circuit, Beck’s Orpheum circuit controlled the big-time theatres in the West. Our tour would take us across the northern states and then down the West Coast to California.
“Hollywood!” said Kit. “That’s where all the new film studios are. Paramount, United Artists . . . I want to see how they make movies.” As always, Kit was more interested in what happened offstage than on.
Fred Delorme would once again travel with us, but Birnbaum made them change the name of the act to Delorme and Herkimer. “Your jokes are all about courtship,” he said. “Delorme and Delorme sounds like you’re already hitched.”
Mother got it into her head to update the name of our act, too. “Turner has got to be the most boring name on the face of the earth,” she said. “I almost didn’t marry your father, knowing I’d have to be boring old Mrs. Turner for the rest of my days.”
This was highly unlikely. We’d never heard her disdain her married name before, and it was the kind of thing Mother would’ve enjoyed saying all these years, if only she’d thought of it.
The foreign acts had “cachet” she said, and spent the better part of an afternoon in the Wheeling, West Virginia, library one day, poring over a French-English dictionary. The verb trinquer means “to toast, to drink to,” and she decided it meant we’d be the toast of the town. She lopped off the final r and added the accented e to make it look more French.
“The Tumbling Trinqué Sisters!” she announced triumphantly. “The perfect name to get us to The Palace.” To her surprise and disgust, no store in Wheeling, West Virginia, sold berets. She had to wait until we began our Orpheum tour in St. Louis to complete the picture of Frenchness she was so anxious to present. Funny how a word and a hat can change your ancestry in the blink of an eye.
The western circuit was known to be a bit more forgiving, as audiences on that side of the continent weren’t as likely to have seen big-time acts. This made it easier for Birnbaum to book Joe and Lucy at the same houses we played. We all settled into an easy rhythm, with the occasional fracas here and there. We were Turners after all, no matter what name was listed on the playbill, and each had streaks of contentiousness of varying widths, set off with a regularity that our traveling companions seemed to get used to after weeks together on the road.
St. Louis, Missouri; Champaign and Galesburg, Illinois; St. Paul, Minnesota.
Mid-October found us in Seattle, Washington, and there was something about the city I liked right away. Twenty years before, the Great Fire of Seattle had taken a good portion of the city to the ground, but it had bee
n quickly rebuilt with an eye toward the future. The Smith Tower had gone up in 1914, and at thirty-eight floors it was the tallest building west of the Mississippi. The city sat on the shore of Puget Sound, which was both bustling with activity—shipbuilding, commerce, and traveling—and also quite lovely. On the second day the cloud cover cleared and we saw the towering snow-tipped Olympic Mountains in the distance across the sound.
“Are those the Alps?” Kit asked.
“No, and you need to go back to school,” I chided her. “Specifically geography class.”
The Lincoln Hotel was an extravagant choice for lodging, but with our wages at eight hundred dollars per week, we were now paid more than our father had ever made in an entire year. The rooms were large and comfortable, with two big soft double beds piled with coverlets and down-filled pillows, and there were actual closets for our clothes. Heavy red damask curtains hung at the windows, and burgundy patterned carpets covered the floors. As much as I enjoyed the luxuriousness of the room, I loved the rooftop garden even more, with its delicate greenery and panoramic views of the city.
In the morning, Joe and I strolled from the hotel on Fourth and Madison down to Pike Place Market.
“It reminds me of Haymarket in Boston,” he said. “The people, too. So many languages spoken. It’s a different mix, of course—there are definitely more Orientals here than in Massachusetts. But still, it feels familiar.”
He traded quips with an Italian fishmonger in one of the stalls at the market.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He said he’d trade his biggest salmon for you. He thought you’d weigh about the same.”