Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family

by Sydney Taylor

  The thin man in the cane chair ceased his rocking. He pushed his cap back on his head. He leaned forward and his penetrating gaze seemed to be probing her very being.

  Ella felt momentarily unnerved by his scrutiny but she kept herself in hand. You’re not going to upset me, she challenged the ogling stranger. Who do you think you are anyway? Just you wait, and I’ll show you…!

  In a way his attention was flattering. To respond was irresistible. Soon she found herself singing especially for his benefit. She smiled, gestured coquettishly, the melody all the while lilting forth with ease and gaiety. At the finish, she curtsied, and stood waiting expectantly.

  Without a word, the thin man rose, grabbed her by the arm and led her toward the door.

  “My music …”

  “Get it, Mother, and come along,” he ordered.

  Ella hung back. “But Mr. Trent,” she appealed over her shoulder.

  “It’s okay, kid,” Mr. Trent assured her with a broad smile. “That’s Mr. Woods,” as if the mere mention of the name was sufficient.

  Before she knew it, she was out the door, down the stairs, and in the street. Up Broadway they raced, Ella running to keep up with Mr. Woods’s long-legged stride, with Mama following in bewildered pursuit.

  Mr. Woods led them down the block into another building. They rode up in an elevator and were ushered into an office. Ella had just time enough to read the gold lettering on the door—Joe Woods, Theatrical Agent. So that’s what he is, she telegraphed to Mama as they went inside.

  They found themselves in a large, square room with a receptionist seated at a desk facing the entrance. To one side, beneath a row of framed photographs, a number of men and women were seated. Upon Mr. Woods’s entrance, they stood up in a body and pressed forward. He waved them back with an imperious gesture as he rushed past.

  “I’m not to be disturbed,” he called out to the receptionist, and conducted Mama and Ella into a smaller private room. The door swung shut behind them.

  Skillfully, he tossed his cap onto a coat rack. “Sit down, please,” he said, indicating the leather chairs on either side of the desk.

  Leaning back in his chair, he rubbed a finger speculatively along the side of his nose, his shrewd eyes meanwhile measuring Ella. Somewhat flustered, she avoided his gaze and fell to contemplating her hands. Why doesn’t he say something? she wondered.

  Finally he spoke, addressing himself to Mama. “Your daughter has something. Something that’s much more important than just good looks. Something that can get across to an audience, like an electric current. And that’s what I’m always looking for.” He turned toward Ella. “And with that big voice coming out of that little body, you’ve got it, little girl! And I want it!”

  He spun around in his chair and pointed to the photographs hung on every side. “See those?” His arm swept out. “Stars, every one of them! And I made them! All of them! And I can make you, too!”

  Ella felt her temples throbbing with excitement. Yesterday was only hope. Now it was a reality. Always the dream had shimmered like a rainbow. Why then did the fulfillment of the dream suddenly seem so terrifying?… Everything’s happening so fast! I feel as if I were on a roller coaster. I’m all confused. I need time to think. She looked at Mama beseechingly. To her surprise Mama’s eyes were glistening. She was taking in every word.

  Mr. Woods tapped the ends of his long fingers together, all the while studying Ella. “What’s the matter?” he asked bluntly. “Don’t you like what I’m telling you?”

  Did her turmoil shown so plainly? Ella tried to compose herself. “Yes”—she faltered—“yes, I do.”

  He bent forward, jabbing the air with his finger. “Now listen, little girl.” His voice took on an almost fatherly tone. “I said I want you. But that’s not enough. You’ve got to want, too. You’ve got to want to be on the stage more than anything else in the whole world! Otherwise it’s no good. No good at all! Understand?”

  Ella nodded weakly.

  He sat back and surveyed the ceiling. “Of course, right now, you’re positively green. You need experience. The act Mr. Trent’s putting together is just the ticket. It’s a comedy act. It’s called ‘Nine Crazy Kids.’ It’s all about nine girls—those girls you saw, dressed up as schoolgirls, pestering their teacher. It’ll be very bright and fast-moving with lots of singing and dancing. You’ll work in that for a season out on the road. Then maybe you’ll be ready for the kind of show I’ve got in mind.”

  He opened his desk drawer and brought out some forms. “I’m prepared to give you a contract right now. Of course you’ll have to sign up with me exclusive—for five years.”

  Five years! Ella gulped. Her eyes sought Mama’s. What should I say? she entreated silently. But Mama’s face too was a jumble of emotions: wonder, pride, concern.

  “You sign up with me, young lady,” Mr. Woods went on, “and for a start, I’ll get you thirty dollars a week. Not much maybe, but as I said, it’s just for a start.”

  Not much! Ella caught her breath. Why, it’s twice what I’m earning now!

  “Of course, you’ll have to pay your own expenses out of that while you’re on the road. Not transportation. That’s taken care of. But board and lodging will be your own responsibility. You can always team up with a couple of the girls. Save expenses that way. You’ll make out all right. You don’t strike me as one of those silly kids that’ll blow all her dough.”

  He turned to Mama. “Mother, you gotta look at it this way. This year will be a training period. If she works hard and sticks by me, I promise that she’ll go far. Very far.”

  A little while of silence and then Mama spoke. “Please, Mr. Woods, could we take the contract home with us? I’d like to talk it over with my husband.”

  “Sure, sure.” He folded the contract, slipped it into an envelope, and handed it to Mama. “Rehearsals will not begin for another week anyway. So you’ve got time to make up your mind.” He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Let me know just as soon as you decide.”

  That night, after the rest of the family had gone to bed, Ella sat in the kitchen with Mama and Papa, talking it over.

  “You’ve got to think about this very carefully,” Papa was saying. “Make sure it’s what you want so you won’t have any regrets afterward.” He paused. “You realize, Ella, this will change your whole life.”

  “I know, Papa. That’s what scares me.” She bit her lips and lapsed into troubled silence.

  “You don’t have to make up your mind this minute,” Mama said.

  Ella gripped her hands together. “I don’t know what to do. If I give this up, I’ll never again get such a chance. It’s what I’ve dreamed about all my life,” she cried out. “When I think about being on a stage singing before an audience, I could burst with happiness. But,” her voice quavered, “a five-year contract! It’s like signing my life away! Away from home and family. No time for anyone or anything.… And what about Jules?” His name trembled on her lips. A whole year away from New York! What would he say?

  She reached out pleadingly. “Tell me what I should do.”

  Papa shook his head. “No Ella, in this case you’ve got to make up your own mind. You’re not a child anymore.” He stood up and paced restlessly back and forth. “It’s your life and you’ll have to live it, not us. Take your time. Don’t rush. Think it over in your mind.” His voice softened. “You know that whatever you decide, we’ll stand by you and help all we can.”

  For a little while nothing more was said. Then Papa spoke again. “Before we do anything definite, I think we ought to have somebody who knows about such things look over the contract. After all, what do we know about show business and such things?”

  “How about your cousins, the Timbergs?” suggested Mama. “They’ve been in vaudeville for years.”

  “You mean Herman Timberg?” Ella exclaimed. “Why he’s a headliner! He’s even appeared at the Palace Theatre on Broadway. How is it you’ve never mentioned they were our rel
atives?”

  Papa shrugged. “Somehow we’ve never had much to do with them. Their lives have been so different from ours. I don’t know. We just never kept in touch. Actually Herman is a first cousin to me. I’ll call up tomorrow and ask his advice.”

  And that’s the way it was left.

  The next night Papa came home all in a dither. “Luckily the Timberg family was in town. When I showed Herman the contract and he saw Mr. Woods’s name on it, did he get excited. He said show people wait years for a chance to even get to see this man! He said Ella must really be something for him to take such an interest. When I began bringing up all sorts of objections, and how you couldn’t make up your mind, he got very annoyed with me. What kind of nonsense was I talking? he said. And that I ought to thank God that Mr. Woods was giving Ella such a chance. His last words to me were ‘It’s a lucky break. Sign by all means!’ ”

  8

  Decision

  Outwardly the rest of the momentous week flowed along as usual. Ella’s relationship with the family, her singing lessons, her job seemed untouched. But underneath her composed manner, the need for coming to a decision kept gnawing away.

  At home there was no further discussion about the contract. Ella was grateful for that. She sensed that Mama and Papa must have cautioned the sisters not to make mention of it. Only Charlotte, at dinner one night, said as if she were thinking out loud, “You know, Ella has a somewhere-else look on her face.”

  By Saturday Ella had made up her mind. She would sign the contract.

  That night, she and Jules strolled to their favorite bench in the park. The air was touched with the fragrance of early spring. The night tiptoed around them, the dark trees like fingers raised for silence. Afraid of breaking the feeling of oneness between them, Ella shrank from bringing up the subject. But finally she could not stifle the words; they came tumbling out.

  Jules listened, saying not a word. When she had finished, his head was lowered, his hands dug deep in his pockets. He seemed enveloped in a blanket of gloom. She wanted to reach out to touch him, but couldn’t. All she could do was sit by numbly and wait.

  He cleared his throat, as if it hurt him to talk. But when he spoke, his voice was calm, almost gentle. “Ella, I can’t—I have no right to ask you not to do this. I have no right to impose my wishes—my hopes and dreams—on you.” He laughed a bit ruefully. “If I did, some fine day, years from now, when I’m old and bald and fat, and we’d be sitting together, you’d look at me and think, And this is what I gave up a career for? I couldn’t stand that. Besides, what have I got to offer you instead? Nothing. Just me.

  “I’ll have to work very hard this fall, what with a job and school at night. Not that I mind. No matter how tough the going will be. Because I realize it’ll be working toward a future. Kind of selfish of me to imagine that my future, my career would be sufficient so that it would become yours too—our future. I keep forgetting that times are changing. Women are beginning to want to do more—to be more. Only”—he hesitated—“if you really loved me,” his voice cracked, the pain now plainly visible in his face, “I don’t think you’d even consider this contract. I’d figured that you’d want to help me, to encourage me, so I wouldn’t have to go it all alone. It never occurred to me that you’d want to be off somewhere in Kalamazoo or someplace, pursuing a career of your own.”

  That’s the male for you, Ella found herself thinking, resenting a woman’s wanting a career outside of housewife and mother. It was selfish, as Jules himself had said.

  Jules caught hold of her hand. “I’m sorry, Ella. I shouldn’t have said that. It was unfair. Perhaps people like you, with great talent, should not be held back by marriage at all.”

  Again he retreated into stillness and she was left feeling shut out and alone.

  She waited quietly until he said, “Maybe you should have this year, Ella. Maybe it will give you a chance to get this whole stage business out of your system.” He took a deep breath. “Oh Ella, I’ll miss you. The waiting—it’ll be terrible. But I want you to know, I’ll be here when you get back.”

  Tears trembled, hot and unbidden, beneath her eyelids. “I’ll miss you too, Jules.”

  She knew that from now till the day of her departure from New York, her decision would lurk like a shadow between them.

  Slowly they returned to Ella’s house. At the doorway, they clung together for a long time, then silently parted.

  Dismal and empty, Ella dragged herself up the stairs.

  The light was still on in the kitchen. As she opened the door, the smell of fresh coffee tickled her nostrils. Comfortably gathered around the kitchen table were Mama, Papa, and Tanta.

  “So—here’s Ella,” Tanta greeted her. “Just in time to join our coffee klatch. It’s apple Strudel this time. I baked it especially when I knew I was coming. It has a taste, whether you like it or not.”

  “How is it you’re all up so late?” Ella asked.

  “What do you think?” Papa replied. “Waiting for Henny. She and her boyfriends, they never know what time it is.”

  “Ella, I heard some wonderful news,” Tanta ventured. “You’re going on the stage! Oh my! What is it? An opera, maybe?”

  “No, it’s not an opera. It’s a show,” Ella replied shortly.

  “Hmm. Lena and Hyman took me to a show once. They had acts with dogs and monkeys.”

  Everyone laughed. Even Ella managed a smile. “Oh Tanta.”

  “All right, all right. So there’s no dogs with monkeys. So what kind of a thing is it?”

  “It’s an act with nine girls and one man. It’s called ‘Nine Crazy Kids.’ ”

  “ ‘Nine crazy kids’? It sounds meshuga [crazy] to me. For that you needed all those singing lessons?”

  Ella winced. “I’ll be singing. It’s just a beginning. After all, I have to get some experience. It’s just as my cousin Herman told Papa—if I only learn to walk across a stage properly, I will have learned a lot.”

  “I never heard of such a thing! What’s the matter, you don’t know how to walk?” Tanta asked. “What are you, a baby all of a sudden? You walk, like everybody, with the feet.”

  Ella’s spirits began to lift a bit. Right now, Tanta is a godsend, she reflected. Even the Strudel was tasting better with every bite.

  “So what do you intend?” persisted Tanta. “Are you going to walk or no?”

  Ella contemplated the last morsel of Strudel on her plate. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am.”

  “Then it’s settled!” Papa cried. “You’re going to sign the contract!”

  Ella nodded. She could feel Mama’s searching gaze on her.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, Mama.” Ella’s voice was firm. “I’m sure.”

  “I wonder, is this a life for a nice Jewish girl?” Tanta asked.

  “Nowadays there are plenty of nice Jewish girls on the stage,” observed Mama.

  “If they asked me,” Tanta continued, “I wouldn’t do it for a million dollars.”

  “First of all, Tanta, nobody is asking you,” Papa declared. “Besides, Ella has to make her own choice.”

  “Choice-schmoice! She’s still just a child.”

  “A person can’t stay under her parents’ roof forever,” Ella retorted. “A girl leaves home when she gets married, doesn’t she?”

  “That’s different!” scoffed Tanta. “When you get married, your husband takes over. Marriage and stage, they don’t mix. It’s one or the other. You wanna give up Jules?”

  “I don’t have to give him up. He’s willing to wait.”

  “You think so, huh? Well, from what I see, there’s plenty of other fish in the ocean, and with you away, some girl will snap him up just like that!” Tanta snapped her fingers. “Well, I’ll never learn to keep my mouth from talking. You should excuse me for speaking out my mind. But you know I love Ella like she was my own child.”

  Mama put up her hand. “It’s all right, Tanta.”

  She turned to Ella
. “Tanta has expressed her feelings. Now let me tell you how I feel. I didn’t say anything before. But now that you’ve made your choice, I can tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Listen and you will understand. When I was a child,” Mama began, “I sang too.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I know that story,” Tanta interrupted. “Remember I was there.”

  Papa chuckled. “I know it too, even if I wasn’t there.”

  “Please, the both of you, let me tell it to Ella,” Mama pleaded. “So she’ll appreciate it—and maybe you will too.”

  Tanta waved her on. “Go ahead and tell. Don’t mind me.

  “Many people praised my singing,” Mama continued. “Everyone said I had an unusually fine voice and I was always asked to sing—in school, at parties and weddings.

  “Of course, those were different days,” she went on wistfully. “A career in the old country as a singer was a fantasy. At least that’s what people like my parents believed. But my brother, the eldest in the family, he was different. He was sure that somehow, there was a great future in store for me.

  “One day—one wonderful day—I must have been about ten years old, my brother took me to a voice teacher. And I sang for him.” A poignant smile played around Mama’s mouth. “He said that my voice held great promise but that I was still too young for training. He told my brother to bring me back when I was fourteen and he would be more than happy to take me on as one of his pupils.

  “You can imagine how thrilled I was.” She sighed; it came from deep inside her. “My brother was resolved to pay for the lessons. My parents couldn’t. But by the time I was fourteen, my brother was already in the army.” She halted, her hands opening in a gesture of futility. “Then he died … my one hope.… Pneumonia, they said.… And that was the end of my singing career.

  “It is something you never forget for a whole lifetime. That is why Papa and I always managed to squeeze out a little extra for your piano and singing lessons.”