That was the first time she’d mentioned her pregnancy since she’d told him about it. The prospect of working on this crazy idea had made her forget how unhappy she was. That was good.
And there was always the chance that he could make it work. If he could, it would be a whole new kind of act—with humor that was local and fresh each night. He didn’t know anyone else who was doing that. Plus, if he didn’t have a new act by tomorrow he’d be crawling away from his contract with his tail between his legs. Wouldn’t it be better to fail by trying something bold and daring? He pulled himself up tall. “How many newspapers do they have here in New Palton?” he asked.
The town boasted two, morning and afternoon. Joe and Ellie worked for the rest of the day, combing through every article for funny tidbits, and by evening he had his first monologue. He stood in the middle of the room and read the material through. When he had finished, one look at Ellie’s face told him all he needed to know.
“I’ll go to the stage manager in the morning and cancel,” he said.
“No. It’s going to work. Just make it sound like you just thought of it. You’re working too hard to make it perfect.”
When Joe went to bed that night he didn’t sleep. Throughout his professional life he’d believed in careful preparation followed by thorough rehearsal that left nothing to chance. But now he was getting ready to go on the stage with a monologue he’d thrown together in a few hours, and no one but a sixteen-year-old girl in the house to bail him out if he went dry. As he ran his words over and over in his head he wondered if anyone had actually ever died of flop sweat. But the next morning Ellie greeted him with a smile.
“You’re going to knock them dead,” she told him.
He was never really sure how he got to the theater that day; he assumed he had walked there with Ellie, but he couldn’t remember checking in or climbing the stairs to the dressing room. Ellie seemed to be all over the place, giving the stage crew orders about the new lighting they wanted and ordering Joe to tone down his makeup and leave his flashy white suit on the hook. “Work in the sweater and pants you’re wearing,” she told him. “Remember, you’re not an entertainer, you’re the neighbor next door. Just another ordinary Joe. Wear your street clothes.”
Finally they heard the orchestra in the pit start playing. “I’m going to go sit in the house,” she said. “I’ll be in the third row, second seat from the aisle if you need me.” Then she grabbed his hands. “You’ll be fine,” she said. And he realized that her hands were as icy as his own. She was scared too.
JOE ONLY LOOKED at Ellie twice during the act. And it wasn’t because he needed prompting. Some internal comic clock had told him the audience needed to hear another voice, so he turned to her for heckling. That same clock paced him as surely through his material as if he’d been doing a single all his life. Being onstage by himself felt as comfortable as wearing a favorite pair of old shoes. He knew the house was sensing his enjoyment and they liked him for it.
Meanwhile, a part of his brain was keeping track of what material was working and what wasn’t. They don’t like jokes about working people, he noted. They laugh when I poke fun at anyone who is rich or in charge. They want to hear me take on the bigwigs.
Ellie had come to the same conclusion. After the curtain had come down—and he’d gotten a respectable hand—he found her in the dressing room writing notes on a piece of paper.
“No more gags about waiters or shoeshine boys,” she said.
“Ellie, they liked the material.”
“But we’re keeping the jokes about the mayor—”
“They liked me! I think I can do this!” He shouted out loud because it was so hard to believe. She stopped making notes.
“Yes. You can.”
The dressing room door opened, and the stage manager stuck in his head. “What were you doing out on that stage?” he demanded. “Do you call that an act?”
“I cooked it up fast. My partner had to go home—family business, really urgent—and I didn’t want to leave you in the lurch.”
Ellie stepped in. “The audience laughed, didn’t they?” she said.
“Because the mayor is in the news today. By tomorrow those jokes will be old hat.”
“By tomorrow Joe will telling new jokes—in a new monologue.”
“A new monologue?” The stage manager looked bewildered.
“Joe will do a new one every day. We get the material from the newspapers,” Ellie said proudly.
The stage manager turned to Joe in disbelief. “Some performers, you know they’re nuts. I always had you pegged as one of the sane ones. Goes to show how wrong a man can be!” He walked out.
Ellie went back to her notes. “Don’t mind him, he’s an idiot,” she said. “I think we should call this act Ordinary Joe. Do you like it?”
Joe was still trying to take in what had happened. “I’m just an ordinary Joe,” he said softly.
“Exactly,” Ellie said. “It’s perfect for you.”
“Right,” Joe said. He was happy—of course—but he felt a little sad too. They’d had a modest success, and bigger things could come. They hadn’t had to cancel—that was the happy part. But it made him sad that she thought he was ordinary.
CHAPTER 27
There were sounds of final party preparations coming from the kitchen when I stopped typing. I would have liked to have continued working, but since the shindig was taking place in my house, that would have been rude. I had to get ready.
“Joe Masters was like Jay Leno or David Letterman, only better,” I told Annie, as I ran a brush through my hair and put on my gray velour sweatsuit. It wasn’t exactly a festive outfit, but I hadn’t had time to do my laundry. The sweats were clean—and hey, they were velour. “Those guys do a new monologue about current events every night. But they have a staff of writers. Joe had one teenaged girl helping him research his stuff and write it. Can you say amazing?”
Annie gave me her paw to shake. She hadn’t done the paw shake since my life had gone to hell with Second Book Syndrome. I tossed her one of her doggie biscuits as a reward. She gave it a disdainful little sniff, picked it up, and buried it under the bed. Then I remembered—my dog did not lower herself to eat store-bought treats anymore. Not since her Uncle Show Biz started baking homemade dog cookies for her.
Yes, my friends, there was food being cooked in our little home; well-balanced meals appeared regularly. Of course Show Biz had told me he liked to cook, but I hadn’t expected it to happen three times a day. The whole thing started when he found me forking congealed kung pao chicken out of a cardboard container one morning. He’d only been in residence about a week.
“Do you really like eating that?” he’d demanded.
“It’s breakfast,” I told him.
“No,” he said firmly. “It’s not.”
The next morning a high-fiber muffin made with blueberries and flaxseed oil showed up. It was fantastic. Talk about little gifts that come to you from out of nowhere. After that, we had new kitchen rules. I was allowed to wash up, microwave, and chop certain items under supervision, but the actual measuring, mixing, frying, and baking would be done by Show Biz. It worked out beautifully. For instance, he’d taken care of the food prep for the party we were throwing, and I was going to be the cleanup crew. And when I saw we were throwing this wingding, technically that was true, but it had been his idea. Show Biz was billing it as a celebration of his return to Manhattan. Or, as he liked to put it, God’s Country.
“You sure you want to do this?” I’d asked, when he proposed it. Images of Alexandra’s Bad Spaghetti Nights clashed with Sheryl’s finger bowls in my head, and I started gulping air. Entertaining at home has always been way too fraught for me. But Show Biz wasn’t even slightly overwhelmed. He invited all of his nearest and dearest, including the staff of Yorkville House and the Swinging Grandmas. Then, early that morning, he’d picked up Chicky and installed her in the kitchen. “Chicky knows how to cook for a crowd,” he i
nformed me. And for the next few hours the two of them rustled around the various appliances, producing amazing aromas.
Halfway through the afternoon, when I couldn’t resist the smells anymore, I took a break and went in. They had whipped up quantities of meat loaf, gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, macaroni and cheese, and several lemon meringue pies that had to be eight inches high.
“The food of my childhood,” Chicky said, as she wiped her hands on her apron. Then she paused. “Didn’t your mother ever cook comfort food for you?” she asked.
“My mother once said that the kitchen was the last bastion of slave labor for women,” I told her.
SHOW BIZ’S PARTY was a big success. The apartment, now decorated in Thrift Shop Chic, was warm and comfortable. The food was amazing, and the wine flowed nicely. And to my dismay, Chicky was telling everyone about her book.
“Wait until you read it,” I heard her crowing at one point. “Doll Face is doing such a great job. Somewhere my folks are smiling.”
And even though I’d said so confidently that I was sure the book would sell, when I saw how her little face glowed, I started to panic. Because you never do know. And the thought of disappointing Chicky was suddenly more than I could handle.
I was sitting in the kitchen, worrying, when I heard someone behind me. “Why aren’t you out there soaking it in?” Chicky demanded.
“Excuse me?”
“This night. It’s one of the good times, Doll Face. You’ve got the place running over with friends and good food, and in a couple of minutes Emmy’s going to have another glass of wine and start doing eye-high kicks. It doesn’t get better than this. You’ve got to soak it up while you can.”
“I have a couple of things on my mind.”
“Sure, so does everyone. But it’s a sin to let a good time go by without paying attention. And soaking. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that?”
I thought about my mother, who was always so busy. And I thought about all the times in California before my father died when I’d been too self-conscious to go swimming with him. And I thought about Jake begging me to take a vacation with him. “No,” I said softly. “I never learned that.”
“There’s no time like the present to start,” she said, and held out her hand. I started to go into the living room with her, but then I stopped.
“Hang on,” I said, and I raced into my bedroom.
All my pretty size fours were long gone, of course, but I did have one box of accessories left over from my Sheryl days. I pulled out a heavily ruffled pink chiffon scarf and wrapped it around my neck. Since I was wearing a gray sweat suit, the resulting fashion statement was just this side of Bag Lady Chic—but the scarf was so long it fluttered partway down my back in a way I found enchanting. And it was very pink. “Ready!” I sang out to Chicky. We made it back into the living room in time to see Emmy do the first of her Rockette kicks, and after a few more glasses of wine, I capped off the evening by joining the Swinging Grandmas in an a cappella rendition of “Shine On, Harvest Moon.”
THE NEXT MORNING, before I was out of bed, my phone rang. “Hey, Doll Face,” said a familiar little growl. “Now you can go back to worrying about the book and not disappointing me. Have a great day.”
So I swallowed the pomegranate smoothie Show Biz had left in the blender, walked Lancelot and Annie—separately, since Lancie still had his big dog paranoia going on—and hurried back to my room to work. And to worry about not disappointing Chicky. I think I’ve already mentioned how well I follow orders.
I opened my laptop and picked up the story where I’d left off. “Ordinary Joe and his monologues were a hit,” I wrote. “But he and Ellie had to take time off when the baby was born, so by the early twenties he was still playing the small-time circuits.”
CHAPTER 28
Shell Point Amusement Park,
Connecticut
1921
Ellie pushed the carriage over to the steps leading up to the boardwalk; then she stopped and peeked inside to make sure Baby was still sleeping. Baby—that was what she and Joe called her daughter. Ellie wasn’t sure why the nickname had stuck, but the child was almost a year old and it still seemed to suit her.
Ellie turned and began pulling the carriage up the steps. It bumped against the railings, and for a moment Baby seemed to waken; then she closed her eyes again. Ellie was determined to walk on the boardwalk. She had always loved the beach, but she and Joe didn’t have many opportunities to go there. It wasn’t as though they could take a Saturday off to lie on the sand and eat cotton candy like other people. Vaudevillians worked on weekends as well as weekdays—except when they were between engagements, and then they stayed home to save money. But Joe had landed a booking at a theater in a shorefront park, and Ellie was going to enjoy it.
Shell Point Amusement Park was not only one of the biggest and best amusement parks in New England, it was located on one of the prettiest stretches of the Connecticut coastline. The three beaches at Shell Point were famously rock-free, and the boardwalk was deep and long, lined with candy and picture-postcard stands, food stalls, games, and rides. There were piers that branched off from the boardwalk, featuring fancy restaurants with big windows overlooking the sound. At the tip of one pier was the park’s heart-stopping roller coaster. Ellie had never ridden it, but she’d heard that when you were going around the hairpin turns it felt as if you were going to plunge into the water below. She didn’t think she’d like that. There was enough danger in her life with opening nights, reviewers who could kill an act with a couple of sentences, and bookers who could cancel your tour on a whim, leaving you high and dry with a child to feed.
At the opposite end of the boardwalk, away from the screams of the roller-coaster riders, there were two vaudeville houses. Joe was playing the bigger of the two, the Grand. He’d been booked there for a split week. Ellie drew in a deep breath of fresh air, happy that they would be staying in one place for three days. She pushed the carriage to a bench and sat in the sunshine.
Joe was sleeping back in their room at the hotel. Ellie tried to get out with Baby before he woke up in the mornings. He needed all the rest he could get when he was performing, and they shared their room with the child, who could get fussy. But now, lulled by the sea air, she was sleeping too. Ellie leaned back, closed her eyes, and let her mind wander.
The Grand was a good theater—not big-time but very close—and booking it was a step up for Joe. He’d corrected her when she said that. “No, Ellie, it’s a step up for us.”
“I’m not out on that stage every night,” she’d said.
“But we’re a team, all the same. We’re partners.” He always insisted that he was her partner.
Her partner—and her husband. That’s what it said on the all-important marriage license they’d signed two years ago. That’s what it said on her daughter’s birth certificate. They were husband and wife, a respectable couple, with a child who had a respectable last name. And what else were they? Ellie opened her eyes and sighed. She’d been with Joe for two years and she still didn’t know.
They had gotten married in New Haven, one morning before Joe’s matinee. At his suggestion, they’d had breakfast together in the coffee shop around the corner from their hotel before going to the courthouse in the center of the town. The restaurant breakfast was more expensive than the one they could have gotten at the hotel and she’d been moved, thinking he was trying to make this day special. But then he’d pulled out a newspaper.
“We need to start on the monologue for tonight,” he’d said. “I’ll do yesterday’s material at the matinee, since we’re busy this morning.”
She’d wanted to reach across the table and slap him. She’d wanted to tell him she was sorry if being “busy” marrying her was getting in the way of his damn work. She wanted to break down and cry because this was not the way it should be for a girl on her wedding day.
But it wasn’t a real wedding day. She and Joe were simply taking care of a problem. And
he was doing her a big, big favor. She had no right to be angry. So she’d grabbed half the newspaper, said brightly, “The show must go on,” and started skimming the front page. By the time they had to leave for the courthouse, they’d written half the monologue.
The justice of the peace who pronounced them man and wife had cut himself when he’d shaved that morning. Their witnesses were two strangers the town clerk rounded up for them because they hadn’t known they’d need any. After they’d muttered their I do’s, she and Joe had kissed like a brother and sister being forced to be affectionate at a family party. She didn’t have a bouquet, and there wasn’t anyone playing music. They were back out on the street in twenty minutes. That was how long her wedding had lasted from start to finish—twenty minutes. Then she and Joe had stood in front of the courthouse and stared at each other.
All she could think about was Benny. If she’d been marrying Benny, he would have found a way to make it a happy day. He would have laughed because the justice of the peace had a bandage on his chin. He would have given her a red rose. In spite of the nasty little ceremony, he would have found a way to make her heart sing.
“I’m not hungry yet, are you?” Joe’s voice had broken into her thoughts.
“No, we just finished breakfast,” she’d said.
Benny would have arranged for a grand lunch of lobster and champagne. At the very least, he would have grabbed her hand and run with her to the ice cream shop across the New Haven green to buy her a hot fudge sundae.
But Joe had seemed relieved that she didn’t want him to make a fuss. “If we go back to the hotel and get to work right now, maybe I can still do the new monologue at the matinee,” he’d said. She had looked at her husband—the kind, matter-of-fact man who had been so very good to her—and thought, He’ll never make my heart sing.
But that night, after the show was over, she found she was grateful for Joe’s matter-of-fact personality. Because they had to start living in the same room. This was something they had agreed on.
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