by Amy Stewart
“Ladies and gentlemen!” he called. “So good of you to come see me!”
That got a groan and a few cheers. He looked around in mock surprise.
“What, you didn’t buy tickets to get a look at Freeman Bernstein, manager of vaudeville’s most famous girl act?”
“Then it is him,” Norma said grimly, as if his appearance confirmed everything she’d suspected of him.
There were more jeers. A few small cabbages pelted the stage—obviously planted—which Mr. Bernstein dodged gracefully, to the delight of the crowd.
“Hey, now! Do you mean to say you didn’t line up around the block for old Freeman Bernstein, husband and manager of the renowned comedienne May Ward?”
He ducked this time and peered out anxiously from behind his hat to make sure there were no raw eggs forthcoming. Now the audience whistled and shouted and demanded May Ward.
He put out his hands to silence the crowd. “Now, you know Mrs. Bernstein—excuse me, she’ll punch me if I don’t call her Mrs. Ward—you know that my wife has a very important job today, and that is to see for herself the talent here in Paterson, and to decide if there’s a girl in this town who’s ready to join her on the stage. What do you think about that, folks? Are we going to find our next Dresden Doll today?”
There came another roar from the crowd and then, without any further preliminary, May Ward strolled on stage with the light, rhythmic stride of a dancer. She held her arms out in that peculiar way that performers have. When Mr. Bernstein took her hand, she gave a graceful twirl that raised her pink skirts and showed her kid slippers, along with quite a bit more. Norma grunted as May Ward’s knees—clad in white stockings—were revealed to an appreciative audience.
Constance elbowed Norma in the ribs. “She’s only dancing.”
“We used to know how to dance and keep our skirts down at the same time,” Norma said, without taking her eyes off Mrs. Ward.
“I don’t recall you ever knowing how to dance. I’m sure they’re to be judged on their abilities, and nothing more.”
“They’re to be judged on their ability to pay the five dollars. You still haven’t admitted to giving her the money.”
Constance pretended not to hear and leaned forward to get a better look at May Ward. She had always seemed, in the pictures Fleurette had pinned to her wall, to be a surprisingly ordinary-looking woman: fair-skinned and fine-featured, with thin lips, a frail nose, and eyes neither large nor expressive. With a good deal of paint on her face, anyone could be made to look striking, and Mrs. Ward did indeed look striking on stage. Her eyebrows were penciled into a state of comic curiosity. Her lips were stained a loud strawberry red. When she fluttered her eyelashes, they could not only be seen but counted from the back row. Every gesture she made—every turn of her wrist, every lift of her chin—had an air of theatricality about it calculated to make the audience understand that she was not at all like the rest of them.
As the applause died down, Mr. Bernstein turned to the pianist and said, “Jerry, do you think we can make this bird sing a few notes?”
The pianist resumed the song he’d begun earlier. May Ward pretended to protest and wave him away, but then she did give a verse, taking up a coquettish pose and singing in what was meant to be her good-girl voice.
There’s a little bit of bad in every good little girl
They’re not to blame
Though they may seem like little angels in a dream,
They’re naughty just the same.
They read the good book Sunday
And snappy stories Monday
There’s a little bit of bad in every good little girl
They’re all the same.
One verse was all they were meant to hear, to the raucous displeasure of the audience. As everyone around them cheered and stomped their feet, Freeman Bernstein took his wife’s hand and raised it high. His jacket fell open, revealing a red-and-white-striped vest.
“Now, you know we’d take every girl in this theater with us if we could!” Mr. Bernstein bellowed. “But there’s only room for one more Dresden Doll, and I just know we’re going to find her tonight. What do you say, Mrs. Ward? Shall we give them an audition?”
16
A LITTLE BIT OF BAD in every good little girl? It could have been Constance’s personal anthem. Sorting the good from the bad had become her main occupation of late. Even as she tried to take her mind off her work and give her attention to the auditions, she couldn’t help but scrutinize each girl and wonder what might someday become of her.
A cherub-faced creature with ringlets of curls in a halo around her face sang “Daddy Has a Sweetheart and Mother Is Her Name” in a voice that had obviously received much adoration in her mother’s parlor and always would. A lanky girl decked out in a motoring costume tried to put some sauce into “Keep Away from the Fellow Who Owns an Automobile,” but it came across as shrill and condemning, which met with much approval from the parents in the audience. One aspiring actress dared to step out in a bathing costume (an old-fashioned one, the kind with the heavy skirt and the woolen stockings) to sing “By the Beautiful Sea,” and Constance just knew that she longed to roll off those stockings and show her beautiful legs but didn’t dare. Another attempted “In the Heart of the City That Has No Heart,” but she sang it so cheerily that it lost its sense of the melodramatic, and there seemed no danger of the city ever showing this particular girl how heartless it could be.
But when Fleurette took the stage, both Constance and Norma squirmed in their seats. It was obvious that something unusual, and possibly scandalous, was about to take place, and that it would have the Kopp name attached to it.
Fleurette skipped out in an elaborate ruffled gown, with an enormous satin bonnet on her head and a pink silk poppy behind her ear. Helen Stewart ran out after her, costumed in a man’s baggy suit, her thumbs tucked into suspenders and a top hat nearly covering her eyes. Above her lips she had painted on a black mustache, and she kept a pipe tucked between her teeth.
It was the very picture of practiced vaudeville. When Helen turned to the audience and doffed her hat at them, her red hair came tumbling down around her shoulders. A roar of laughter was her reward. She straightened her tie and took the first verse.
I’m a pushing young man that’s been pushed
My heart has been cannoned and crushed
I’ve heard about some people falling in love
Ah, but I didn’t fall, I was pushed.
Fleurette gave Helen a shove that sent the girl tumbling backwards and scrambling for her hat with the comedic exaggeration of a veteran showman.
Helen tried to stand up, but got only as far as her knees before Fleurette leaned an elbow on the top of her head and took the chorus, singing in the mock accent of a working-class city girl.
I pushed him into the parlour
Pushed the parlour door
Pushed myself upon his knee
Helen fought her way back to her feet and sang in a deep voice, hands on hips:
Pushed her kisser in front of me!
By now the audience was roaring and clapping and stamping their feet. Never had a crowd gone wild for such a silly song before, but then again, they’d never seen it done quite like this.
Fleurette took Helen’s hand and dragged her around the stage. Two young actresses stepped out into the lights, dressed according to their professions: first a jeweler with a monocle and a pile of costume jewels on a pillow, and then a minister in a black collar. Both girls were greeted with more laughter for their convincing masculine costumes.
Helen reached a hand out to the audience as if begging for help, and sang in an ever more frantic voice as Fleurette pulled her around.
She pushed me round to the jewelers
Near the Hippodrome
Pushed me in front of the clergyman
And then she pushed me home.
Constance could hardly hear the rest of it for all the applause showered upon poor beleaguered Helen, wi
th her empty wine bottle and the rent past due. Even Norma shook all over and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. When Helen sang, “I now push three kids in a pram” and wheeled out an enormous pram with three girls inside, their legs kicking, everyone in the theater was on their feet, and Helen and Fleurette took their bows together.
A few more performances followed, but they were light and frothy and quick to dissipate, like meringue. Constance hardly noticed them, so stunned was she by what she’d seen. Fleurette had only ever taken part in ensemble performances before. She’d sung a few solos, but she’d never taken command of the stage like that.
The youngest Kopp, Constance saw all at once, was becoming someone else entirely. She had ideas Constance never heard about, ambitions that exceeded her grasp, and friendships she wasn’t a party to. Fleurette thought of jokes but laughed about them with someone else. She was inventing a different version of herself, one Constance had no part in.
She had to take herself quite firmly in hand at that moment. Let Fleurette make herself unrecognizable to the very people who made her, she told herself. Isn’t that what she’s supposed to do? Isn’t that what we all do?
17
BACKSTAGE, THE AIR WAS ELECTRIC. Young actresses came running off after their final call, so giddy that they couldn’t stop and had to dance around in a circle. The unmistakable fragrance of the theater rose up in their wake: waxy face paint and curling cream, rice powder and stolen cigarettes, and an undercurrent of nervous sweat.
Helen and Fleurette found themselves in the middle of the commotion, accepting squeals of laughter and congratulation from all sides. Fleurette pressed palms and held her cheek out to be kissed, and patted at her hair to ensure the integrity of its elaborate arrangement—but she never took her eyes off the stage door.
When the door finally opened, and May Ward breezed in, followed by her husband, Fleurette lifted her head and inhaled an enormous draft of air in an effort to calm herself. She tried to remember to be modest and grateful, and to introduce Helen right away, and to call out to the other members of their small ensemble in the way a true professional would.
But there was no chance for any of that. May Ward rushed right into the very center of the flock of girls, her arms outstretched, a shriek of delight issuing from her painted lips. She wore a hat festooned in turquoise feathers and a gauzy wine-colored velvet frock coat with a frothy white fur around her shoulders, looking every bit like a picture in a magazine.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, and I don’t know when I will again!” she squealed. Mrs. Ward was, for some unimaginable reason, not looking directly at Fleurette as she said this, or at Helen, but twirling around and clutching at all the outstretched hands offered to her. “We ought to snatch up every last one of you and take you all with us.”
This gave rise to a great deal of giggling and whispering. The air was extremely close, and everyone was red-faced and damp from exertion. Fleurette, being at the very center of the crowd and half a head shorter than most girls, felt a little faint.
“I wish we could, darling,” Freeman Bernstein was saying from somewhere far away. “I wonder what their mothers would think if we took them on a spin through Philly and Boston.”
“We haven’t any mothers.” It was Helen who found her voice first. Fleurette’s head snapped up, and she slipped over to stand next to her friend.
Mr. Bernstein gave an exaggerated gasp. “No mothers! You don’t mean to say that you’re two poor orphan girls! Did you meet in the orphanage? Have you thought about working up an act about that?”
“We’re not from an orphanage,” Fleurette put in. “It just so happens that Helen’s mother passed on last year and mine did, too, the year before. My sisters used to look after me, but I don’t need looking after any longer.”
“Oh, we all need looking after,” Freeman said airily. “Now, listen here, girls, the theater is no kind of life. Take it from me. It’s a rotten existence. Nothing ruins the voice faster than singing in drafty old halls.”
“That’s not all we do, Mr. Bernstein,” Fleurette pressed on. “We’ve had lessons in dancing and elocution, and I play the piano and Helen knows the violin. We could show you.”
“Aren’t you gracious,” he said. “Now, don’t forget that your teacher has a signed portrait for each of you.”
“But what about the audition?”
“Mrs. Ward and I will talk about it tonight, and if the lucky girl was here today, she’ll hear from us. Now, if anyone would like an autograph, I’m sure my wife wouldn’t mind giving a few.”
The crowd pressed in on Mrs. Ward, every girl holding out a pencil and a ribboned autograph book. Fleurette looked around at them in disgust. How could they be so easily placated? Was this nothing more to them than a chance to meet an actress and collect a signature?
Just then May gave a little squeal, and all the girls around her stepped back.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” someone said.
“Is it torn?” said another.
“She didn’t mean to,” said a third.
Fleurette looked down and saw a length of satin ribbon ripped from the hem of May Ward’s dress, dangling from the cheap and lazy running stitch that held it on. She had a sudden impulse to slap the dress-maker who couldn’t be bothered to do better.
May Ward mumbled something to her husband, and Mr. Bernstein said, “That’s enough for today, girls. I’d better get Mrs. Ward back to the hotel for a change of clothes.”
“No, no! Wait right here.” Fleurette darted away and returned almost immediately with a needle and thread. As she ran, she could hear the other girls assuring the actress that it would be made good as new.
“She’ll put it back just the way it was, ma’am,” one said.
“You won’t ever know the difference. Look at what she did to my buttons.”
“She makes the most even little stitches. It’ll be better than before.”
Fleurette dashed back with her kit and dropped to her knees. Her fingers held perfectly steady, and she didn’t doubt for a second that she could make the neatest, fastest repair Mrs. Ward had ever seen.
When she finished, she stood up and shook out Mrs. Ward’s skirts, then walked in a circle around her to check her work. She was met with a little round of applause and a handshake from Mr. Bernstein. Mrs. Ward leaned over and whispered her thanks into Fleurette’s ear, and those near enough to hear laughed and applauded again.
After the autograph books were signed, and the little portraits of May Ward distributed in their brown envelopes, there came a winding-down of the excitement, and a gradual disbursement of the girls gathered around. Even Helen drifted toward the dressing-room. Mr. Bernstein patted his coat pockets with the air of a man gathering himself together to leave.
Fleurette saw, with a rising sense of panic, that the evening was ending and she hadn’t been offered a place as the next Dresden Doll. The situation seemed so entirely out of keeping with her program for the audition that she wasn’t entirely sure, at first, that she had her facts straight.
The words came out before she could stop herself. “But, Mrs. Ward,” she called after the actress’s retreating figure. “What about me?”
A hush fell over the girls still lingering backstage. May Ward stopped and spun around on one heel. Freeman Bernstein crossed his arms and leaned back in the pose of an amused spectator.
Fleurette fought back her mortification and stared May Ward down. Now that the two of them were facing one another directly, Fleurette saw the creases around the actress’s mouth, lined in face powder, and the fatigue behind those brightly painted eyes. Her collar was ill-fitted and wrinkled from having been stretched and pressed too many times. Fleurette realized with a start that May Ward was as old as Norma, and possibly even as old as Constance.
Mrs. Ward allowed a smile to break across her face. “Yes? What about you?”
Fleurette looked around, wishing for Helen beside her, but Helen was frozen in the corner.
There was nothing to do but to blurt it out. “Well—wouldn’t you like me to join the Dresden Dolls? And my dancing partner? Didn’t you—didn’t you think our song was so perfectly suited to . . .”
Her voice deserted her. Mrs. Ward spoke slowly and kindly, the way one talks to a child. “We’ve seen so many auditions, darling, and there are more to come.”
Fleurette found herself reduced to begging and wheedling. “But—what about an understudy?” She knew she would hate herself later for talking like that, but she was under some sort of spell and quite unable to walk away or to laugh and pretend she hadn’t meant it.
Mrs. Ward glanced over at her husband and said, “Oh, that’s the reason we have eight girls on the chorus. We can always do with six or seven if we need to.”
Fleurette saw at last that Norma had been right: they hadn’t any intention of offering a spot in the troupe to a student. Her five dollars had gone directly into Mr. Bernstein’s pocket, and that was the end of it.
But what was she to do now? Go home as if nothing had happened? Start rehearsals for the spring variety show? At the very thought of it, something sank inside her.
“Besides,” Mrs. Ward went on, lightly, carelessly, “you don’t mean to make a career on the stage, do you? You know that my chorus girls must all be five feet and four inches. That makes them two inches shorter than me, but no more. You see, they’re chorus girls, and they must be —”
“The same,” Freeman Bernstein put in. “It’s the very idea of a chorus.”
No one had ever said a thing like that to Fleurette. She didn’t dare to look over at Helen—perfect, five-foot four-inch Helen. Had May Ward really just informed her that, for want of four inches in height, she had no chance whatsoever with the Dresden Dolls?