“Mrs. McGivers?”
“Dead monkey. She pulled out, opened shop in Butte. Don’t ask what she’s selling.”
Something heavy settled on Pomerantz. “Okay, we’ll work it out. The paper wanted to interview her.” He stood on the platform—the town had an unheated station—counting his company, act by act. He seemed almost to forget his bride, who clung to his arm, her face strained in the dusk.
They walked slowly toward the clapboard-sided hotel, two stories with barracks windows in a military row. Pomerantz finally turned to Ginger.
“How did it go, sweetheart?”
She didn’t answer at first, choosing her words. “All right. I guess.”
“She’s off to a good start,” August said.
He and Pomerantz exchanged a glance. “And how’s the advance?” August asked.
“We’ve got a good house. We’ll sell out the matinee. Maybe the evening.”
They passed a building with a playbill plastered to it. Mary Mabel Markey, it said. Wayne Windsor. Mrs. McGivers and Her Monkey Band. The juggler. The trio, the Wildroot Sisters.
“Who’s that?” Pomerantz asked, pointing at Cromwell Perkins.
“New act, The Genius and Ethel,” August said.
For once, Charles smiled. “Where did he come from?”
“Ethel collected him from a saloon. He’s a bar rail comic.”
“What’ll he do?”
“Insult the crowd, I hope.”
Charles Pomerantz wheezed, laughed, and steered his weary bunch into the small hotel, which at last offered a modicum of comfort. “We’ll put on a hell of a show,” he said.
25
MRS. CHARLES Pomerantz lay abed homesick. The hotel room was small, mean, and cold. Barely enough morning light filtered through a listless curtain for her to see her quarters. Her husband had hastily abandoned the room, en route to Missoula again, to publicize changes in the show.
Her brief moment with him had been melancholic. From the moment he met the troupe, stepping off the bone-jarring coach, he and August Beausoleil had been consulting, and he had barely given her a kiss on the cheek, much less the warm embrace a newlywed woman might expect.
He had, finally, unlocked the door and entered, long after she had pulled the covers over her and tried to banish the chill. He lit a lamp, eyed her, kept his long johns on, and slipped into the narrow bed beside her.
“Glad you’re here, sweetheart,” he said. “Sorry to be so busy. But we’ll have some time in Missoula.”
“Oh, Charles…”
“I hear good things about your act,” he said.
“That’s more than I hear.”
“We’ve had to change the billing. You’ll be on the playbill. How’s that?”
Oddly, she didn’t care. “That’s more than I expected,” she said.
“I’m worn-out. Nothing but troubles these days, losing our biggest draws. I’ll be out of here before you’re up; see you down the road.”
He squeezed her cold hand, turned his back to her, and swiftly fell into a soft snore.
She didn’t sleep. The cold made the wooden hotel snap and creak and pop, startling her. The stranger she called husband lay inert, not caring, not holding her tight, not kissing, not even wondering how she fared, or how she had spent the long, hard day. Everything for him was the show.
She turned away, on the cold pillow in the cold room under the cold blankets, next to a cold husband, and wished she were somewhere else.
Like home.
A handsome, spacious, secure home. Her family. Comfort. They cared about her, showed her off. Pocatello was clean and gracious, with grand vistas in most directions. She had never shivered in bed in her life. Even the thought of her intense mother, who treated her like a windup doll, didn’t seem so awful, the way it had a few weeks earlier.
She wondered if she should go back. She could disappear back to her home, just as she had disappeared from her home, took a new name, and left no trail. She could abandon Charles Pomerantz, abandon the show, abandon Ginger, and walk through the door as Penelope, virginal, unmarried, a prodigy who was the wonder of southern Idaho. Not say a word; just return to her own home, her own spacious bedroom, resume the name she had abandoned, and let them wonder where she had been.
If she was not pregnant. She wished she knew.
She didn’t know much about anything, and there was no one she could ask. Maybe she couldn’t go home again; maybe she couldn’t be a vaudeville player, either. Maybe she would be a mother whether she wanted to or not, at age eighteen. She corrected herself. Nineteen, if it happened. That made her all the more homesick. Maybe she couldn’t go back home. Maybe she was doomed, a castaway of some worldly impresario, who probably had more women than he could remember.
She watched him awaken, get up, vanish down the hall to the water closet at the end. She had barely seen a man do his morning rituals, scrape away beard, comb his hair. Men were mysteries. One moment he was fawning over her, kissing and seducing, and the next he was doing business. He would soon return, dress, abandon her without a word unless she lit the lamp and waited for his morning greeting.
She did that. She lifted the glass chimney, struck a match, and lit the bedside kerosene lamp. It slowly bloomed to life.
When he returned, he was shaven and combed.
“Well, well,” he said, discovering her staring, the lamp spilling yellow light over her and piercing into the dark corners of the room.
“Are we married?” she asked.
“I’d have to check,” he said.
“I don’t think I like this business, and I might go away somewhere.”
He paused. He was buttoning a clean shirt, but he stopped.
“Ginger, this is rough on you. Some people aren’t cut out for it. Some people try hard, and it defeats them. I hope you’ll give it a chance. As for marriage, it’s for you, not for me. You’re a girl from a proper home, and marriage is the way you feel comfortable in a hotel room with a man. It’s what you need.” He smiled. “But I’m glad we did it. I’m glad you’re my wife.”
“I guess that’s your declaration of eternal love,” she said, and from somewhere a big laugh boiled up in her.
He didn’t say a word, but leaned over and kissed her. She tasted mint on his lips.
“I’ll stick,” she said.
“After Missoula, it’s Spokane, and then a few days of down-time. Just right for us to figure out who we got married to,” he said. “Damned if I know.”
“If I don’t find another gentleman first,” she said.
That startled him more than it startled her. “I think you’re gonna fit right into the business,” he said, but she thought there was an edge in his voice.
She watched him tie his blue polka-dot cravat and straighten it, shrug into his fawn waistcoat and button it, climb into his gray woolen suit coat, and eye himself. These theater men were natty dressers; they were careful with appearances. He looked to be a man of substance, no matter what condition the show was in.
“We’ve got a big rendezvous in Missoula,” he said. “It’ll knock your socks off.”
“We’ll see whose socks come off,” she said.
His eyes lit up.
He lifted his black bowler, saluted her with it, collected his bag, and vanished. She stared at the door. That had been her husband and now her husband was going away to a town she knew nothing about, but was probably evil since it harbored the state college.
She wasn’t homesick anymore. In fact, she wanted only to find a place to practice, to try some other songs she knew, to see about hugging her entire audience. The hour was early, the sun not yet sailing, but she could not bear her hotel room another minute. It took only a little while to don her gray travel suit and slip outside, discovering an oddly mild day and an orderly city in a broad valley, built around a smelter. Philipsburg lay in the heart of a silver mining district, but the mines were well away from the town.
She saw hardly a soul on the streets, and certainl
y did not expect to discover any of her troupe. Show people rose late and retired late. But she had always flown into each day from its very start, because that’s how she was. She would soon sing to those who lived in this place. Who were they? What would they enjoy? Could she please them? The one thing she had garnered from her brief visit was that this town was orderly and its cottages well kept. But what did that imply for her performance? She felt a little foolish for even wondering about it. What was she? An eighteen-year-old prodigy? A genius, able to fathom an audience and respond to it? A canary in a cage.
She was amused by her own presumptuousness. She felt the weight of her parents’ expectations, and knew it was a millstone on her back, and she should escape that burden once and for all. That was one thing about vaudeville: she wasn’t in a concert hall singing grand opera.
She spotted a well-lit café, and decided it was time for breakfast. Uneasily—she had yet to live life on her own terms, her own volition—she entered, discovered an all-male patronage, with one exception. Ethel Wildroot sat at a table, a coffee cup before her. Ethel saw her at once, and hailed her. Hesitantly, Ginger joined the mother of rival singers, wondering where all this might lead. Discomfort, probably.
“You’re up early. A rara avis in show biz,” Ethel said. “Park your little rear in the chair, and tell me about it.”
There was always something a little edgy in Ethel, and it made Ginger smile. She settled in the chair, and soon was ordering a bowl of oatmeal and tea. Ethel was demolishing a breakfast steak that a smelterman would have considered large.
“So, how do you like the Beausoleil show?” she asked, sawing a piece of pink meat loose.
Ginger was discreet. “I don’t think I’ll be in it long,” she said. “All I really want is to be a good mate to Charles.”
“Oh, horse apples. Your act isn’t catching on, and I can tell you why.”
“August wants me to sing to my audience, and I’m doing that.”
“Well, that’s half of it,” Ethel said, sawing another slab of meat off the steak. “You’ve got everything you need. Great voice, fine training, poise, all that.” She waved a knife. “But you can’t just be the goddess, singing songs.”
Ginger braced herself. Something was about to knock over the tenpins.
“Girl like you, you should talk to them. You go out there, smile, start a song, and you never talk to them. That’s a killer. You come from a concert background. I can tell. Concerts, you just stand there and sing. Or start playing the piano, or whatever. Well, that’s what the fuddy-duddies want. Hold your hands together, stare at the far wall, and sing. But this is vaudeville, sweetheart. Quit being the Virgin Queen.”
The waiter arrived with a bowl of cereal, and Ginger made a great show of spooning it.
“Talk to them, dammit. Don’t just clasp your hands together and start warbling away. Hey, they’re people, just like you. And don’t be so polite, either. Don’t thank them. August, that’s his job. He thanks them for coming. You, though, that’s not your job. You need to connect with them. Just get it through your head. Be their best friend.”
“What would I say?”
Ethel masticated the beef a little, and then smiled. “Hey, that Mexican drill. Don’t just sing it. Say it’s cold around here, and maybe the way to warm up is to sing something south of the border, and maybe something about a señorita. And tell all those miners, they’d like to hear something about a señorita.”
“I’d need a script, Ethel.”
Ethel waved her spoon. “If you need a script, you shouldn’t be in vaudeville. All you do is introduce the song, tell them about it, about yourself a little.”
“Myself?”
“Tell ’em you’ve been singing all your life, and it’s much more fun singing for a lot of grown-up men. You’ve been waiting for the chance!”
“That’s too forward, don’t you think?”
Ethel sighed. “You probably shouldn’t be in the business, sweetheart.”
The curtain rolled down, or so Ginger thought. But Ethel wasn’t done. “You’ve got the best voice in the company. Sure beats my girls and LaVerne. That kind of voice, you can wind a man around your little finger. It’s sweet and sultry.”
“Sultry?”
“You haven’t been married long enough to figure that out, Ginger.”
“I haven’t figured anything out yet,” Ginger said.
“Charles, he’ll be a good husband if you keep a leash on him.”
“So far, it’s been a few hotel rooms. Neither of us know why we did it. It sort of bubbled up. But he just smiles and says it’ll be fine.”
Ethel eyed her assessingly. “Beautiful, naïve, innocent maiden.”
Ginger pulled into herself. Somehow, marriage, show business, this new world, were full of shoals that could sink her. These were worldly people, and she knew she was nothing but a small-town girl adventuring into a hard world.
“Hey, Mrs. Pomerantz, if you need any crystal ball reading, call on me. I know a few things about men,” Ethel said.
Ginger was itching just to spill out everything she didn’t know, every mystery of marriage, every odd thing about males, why they shaved, what they expected, who they thought they were, and how a wife fit in.
Ethel sensed it, and patted Ginger’s hand. “You’re the star of the show, sweetheart. You just don’t know it yet.”
26
SHOW DAY. August Beausoleil hurried through a late November chill to the glistening opera house operated by Marshal McFarland. It stood a block from the hotel, seven or eight from the smelter grounds. The hotel had been cold, and his body felt numb. He found the place, noted that it was devoid of ornament, a utilitarian frame and fieldstone structure washed white. A playbill in a case at the front touted the Follies. He found a side door and entered, only to meet with a blast of icy air. A side corridor opened on the auditorium, also bone cold and dark, and led to a small cubicle where, August hoped, he would find the proprietor.
That office was as cold as the rest, but at least McFarland was present, wrapped in a woolen waistcoat, gray woolen pants, and a woolen coat. A loose scarf lay about his neck and fell down his chest.
“Beausoleil, is it? You’re late,” the manager said. His mantel clock announced the time as 9:15.
“Sorry, the hotel was slow to serve.”
“There’s some messages for you, sir,” McFarland said, all business. “The Methodist women wish to conduct a bake sale in the lobby before each performance. I said I would let them know as soon as you appeared.”
“Bake sale? Breads, muffins, tarts?”
McFarland glared at him. “They raise money for injured miners.”
“What are the buyers supposed to do? Sit with an apple pie in their lap during the show?”
“Usually, they throw whatever’s in hand at the performers, sir.”
“No. No bake sale.”
“Then there’s Mrs. Wall. Josephine. Wife of the general manager of the Granite Mine. That, sir, is one of the finest silver mines in the country. You would do well to accommodate her.”
“Which is what?”
“She wishes to play her harp during the intermission.”
“Harp? It takes a couple of strong men to haul a harp around.”
“She has footmen in abundance, sir.”
“What will she play?”
“She tends toward light airs, sir.”
“Is she good?”
“I reserve judgment.”
He didn’t want her, but knew that rebuffing powerful people might have consequences. “Are you going to start heating up the building?”
“Firewood’s dear in Philipsburg, Mr. Beausoleil, and it’s a habit in town to get along without it.”
“I will want the building fully heated as soon as possible.”
“Your footlamps will do it, sir. Light the lamps, and your limelight, and you’ll have plenty of warmth. That and a full house, warm bodies.”
There was some rea
lity in it, but not much. “Mr. McFarland, our contract provides that you’ll supply a house suitably prepared in all respects. And that includes heat.”
McFarland looked annoyed, but finally rang a bell, and soon a lackey appeared. “Start the stoves,” he told the man.
He turned to Beausoleil. “There are two potbellies flanking the stage.”
“I have new acts, and people wish to rehearse, and disease has already damaged my show, sir. We had a death, and the loss of an animal, and that meant two acts down.”
“So I heard. We’re hardy people here, sir. We don’t need all that coddling. Miners are used to having bad lungs, so cold air makes no difference to them. That’s reasonable. I’ll add a firewood surcharge.”
“Surcharge! The contract calls for suitable conditions.”
“You’re in Montana, Beausoleil. What’s suitable here is not suitable for hothouse flowers.”
A great clatter interrupted them. McFarland leapt up, opened the door upon two footmen hauling a great, gilded harp on a dolly. And they were followed by a formidable woman, swathed in layers of gabardine formed into a high-button suit.
“That stair there leads up,” she said, steering the liveried footmen toward the stage. She spotted McFarland and Beausoleil. “I shall be with you directly, once we station this up on the platform,” she said.
Beausoleil wondered how much choice he had in any of this. He watched silently as the experienced men slid the great gilded harp up and onto the dark stage.
“There, that’s done,” she said. “Marshal, put the heat down. It will affect my arms when I play. I don’t want droopy arms.”
“This is Mr. Beausoleil, whose company will perform today,” McFarland said. “And this, sir, is Madam Wall.”
“Mrs. Wall, I’m pleased to meet you. I only now heard of your proposal to play during the intermission, but I’ll have to decline your generous offer. All the acts are paid, of course, and the budget doesn’t permit the slightest change. But it’s most generous of you.”
Her face pinched up. “Then put me on. I will play for you, sir.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. We have a regular troupe, you see…”
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