“Well …” Margaret dug her fingernails hard into her palms, steeling herself to continue, and launched into the story she had mentally prepared while dressing. “Ah, you see, after school, some of us girls went to the ice cream parlor.”
“Margaret, really,” her mother scolded. “What have I told you about eating between meals? The beginning of the summer season is just two months away.”
“I know, Mother,” Margaret replied, gritting her teeth. “But I only had a Coke.”
“Still. You can’t be too careful. With your figure—”
“It was a special occasion!” Margaret blurted out. “It was … it was Evelyn Gamble’s birthday.”
She hadn’t planned to say that, but once the lie was out of her mouth, she realized it was the perfect alibi. Her mother was always after her to spend more time with Evelyn Gamble. That the two girls had hated each other virtually their entire lives was irrelevant; in Mildred Frobisher’s world, social standing was a much more important reason for being friends with someone than actually enjoying her company. But instead of the expected coo of approval, her mother frowned. “Isn’t Evelyn Gamble’s birthday in November? As I remember it, the dinner dance the Gambles hosted for her sweet sixteen was just before Thanksgiving.”
Rats! Leave it to Mildred Frobisher to remember every party to which the Gambles had reluctantly invited her. “Oh, well, it wasn’t her actual birthday! It was her … her …” Margaret’s eyes darted to a crack in the heavy curtains, through which she glimpsed a sliver of purple blossoms from the garden. “It was her … jacaranda birthday!”
“Her what?”
You want to be an actress, Margie? Start acting. “Her jacaranda birthday. For the … the Jacaranda Club. It’s kind of a secret … a secret society some of us have at school. It’s very exclusive, just me and Evelyn and”—she groped for some names of which her mother would approve—“Claire Prince and Mary Ann Nesbit and Jeannie McFarland and Eleanor Gump. And Doris, of course.” Even if it was an imaginary club, she didn’t want Doris to be left out. “The day you join, that’s called your birthday. So today was Evelyn’s birthday.”
Her mother looked horrified. “You’ve a secret club you’ve only just invited Evelyn Gamble to join?”
“Oh no! It’s um … the one-year anniversary of her joining.” Better to get back to the original story, and fast. “Anyway, there we were at the ice cream place, having a swell time …” Margaret stopped herself again; swell, along with bucks, nuts, and dump, headed the long list of words Mrs. Frobisher deemed unseemly for a proper young lady to use. “… I mean, a marvelous time, when a man came up to speak to me.”
“A man?” Mr. Frobisher looked up from his mashed potatoes for the first time since he had magnanimously extended his daughter her invitation to speak. “What the devil did he want?”
“Oh, he wasn’t being fresh or anything like that. Honest, Father. He was very polite. He just said that he’d noticed me and”—the words came out in a tumble—“and would I want to be an actress and if so then he’d like to give me a screen test.”
Her parents stared at her blankly.
Margaret forged on. “You know. It’s like a tryout for the pictures. First you have to take a test, to see how you photograph. They have you come in and you play a scene and see if you’re any good, and if you pass the test they offer you a contract.”
Her father gave her a long, disbelieving look. He opened his mouth as if to say something.
And then, to Margaret’s horror, he burst out laughing.
“You were right, Margaret,” he hooted. “That certainly was very interesting. Very interesting indeed. Mildred, I think you can have Emmeline serve the dessert now.”
“Wait!” Margaret had not raised her voice to her father since she was an infant mewling in her crib, but desperate times called for desperate measures. “This is real! He’s the real McCoy! Just look!” Frantically, she pulled Larry Julius’s creamy business card from her satin sash, where she had tucked it for just this moment, and thrust it into her astonished father’s hand.
“Julius,” her father grunted, examining the card as though it were a square of soiled toilet paper. “What kind of name is that, Roman? He must be a Catholic.”
“For Pete’s sake, Dad! He’s probably a Jew, but who cares about that? This is Olympus Studios!” Margaret was yelling now. It didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was that she got through to them, made them understand how important this was. “I know what you think about actors, but you’re wrong. Katharine Hepburn is from a society family. So is Franchot Tone. Diana Chesterfield—well, Picture Palace said that Diana Chesterfield happens to be a cousin of the king of England himself! There’s no reason a nice girl can’t go into the pictures if she wants to! And I want to. I want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my whole life!”
“ENOUGH! That is enough!”
Margaret had never heard her mother shout before. It stunned her into silence.
“You are a lady, do you understand me?” Mrs. Frobisher hissed. “A lady. You are not going into the pictures. You are not even going to think of it. The only thing you are going to do is make a successful debut and find a suitable husband. That is your duty, to your father, to your family, and to me. Anything else, any other course, is unacceptable. Do I make myself clear?” Her face was as white as the china on the table.
“But I—”
“Do I make myself clear?”
Briskly, her mother snatched the business card from her father’s fingertips, ripped it to pieces, and dropped them into the congealing puddle of sauce and fat on her still full plate. She patted her hair and took a sip of water. Then she reached for her little brass bell.
“Emmeline, see that this goes in the incinerator.” Mrs. Frobisher smiled serenely as the quaking housekeeper materialized by her side. “And then you may bring in the dessert.”
With her flowered pillow packed tightly around her head to muffle her sobs, Margaret almost didn’t hear the first gentle rap of knuckles on her bedroom door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Emmeline. Can I come in?” The housekeeper seemed to take her silence for a yes. “I brought you up some pie. Thought you might be a mite hungry, seeing as you barely touched your supper.”
Pushing aside a stack of movie magazines, Emmeline set a domed plate on the desk, lifting the lid to reveal a huge wedge of lemon meringue.
“Take it away. I mustn’t eat between meals, after all.”
“Aw, now, Miss Margo,” Emmeline said, calling her by her childhood nickname. “You mustn’t be too hard on your mama. She only wants what’s best for you.”
“She’s got a funny way of showing it.”
“Maybe. But she’s just doing what she thinks she has to. Now you go on and eat up that pie, ’cause the kitchen’s closed for the rest of the night.”
Margaret stuck her face partway out from under the pillow. The sticky-sweet aroma of the perfectly browned meringue was too much for her to resist. Resignedly, she reached for the fork, and then she saw it.
Tucked under the folded linen napkin. Each piece had been carefully wiped and dried, then joined to the others with a layer of cellophane tape. The card was smudged and rumpled and still a little greasy to the touch, but it was legible.
Larry Julius. Olympus Studios.
“Emmeline.” Margaret’s eyes filled with tears. “I … How did you … How can I ever thank you?”
Emmeline made a harrumphing noise as she gathered up the tray. “Miss Margo, I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She paused at the door, looking over her shoulder. “But I’ll tell you what: you get me Clark Gable’s autograph, we’ll call it even.”
“And step-ball-change, step-ball-change, fan kick, pivot, fan kick, pivot, pirouette …”
Suddenly, Gabby Preston felt the scuffed soles of her tap shoes slide out from under her. She let out a little cry of pain as her ankle buckled and she crashed to the groun
d with a dull thud.
“No! No, no, no, no!” Tully Toynbee, Olympus Studios’ legendary director and choreographer, brought his bamboo cane down with a smack so savage Gabby jumped, as though the polished floorboards of rehearsal studio #3 were her own skin. “You don’t stagger drunkenly into the pirouette like a wino chasing a pigeon. How many times do I have to tell you, Ethel? You have to—”
“Pivot. I know.” Gabby hissed through the pain. “And stop calling me Ethel.”
“What else am I supposed to call you?”
“Gabby, for a start.”
Tully shook his head. “Gabby Preston is the name that was given to an Olympus star. A doctor isn’t called a doctor until he’s licensed to practice medicine. If you want to be called by the name of a star, you have to earn it. Right now, the only Olympus star I see in this room is Jimmy Molloy.”
“Aw, jeez, Tully,” Jimmy said. Having naturally pivoted perfectly into his pirouette, Jimmy was leaning against the ballet barre at the mirror, his feet splayed in a perfect fourth position. “Give the kid a break, will ya? She’s doing the best she can.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Tully sneered. “Because if falling on her ass every five minutes is the best she can do, we’re in even bigger trouble than I thought.”
Gabby looked anxiously toward her mother, who was perched on her usual folding chair in the corner next to the battered piano. She wasn’t going to get any help from that quarter. Viola was wearing what Gabby’s older sister Frankie used to call her “thousand-yard vaudeville stare.” Gabby had seen it a million times, starting back when she and Frankie were still a double act. “I don’t care if you’re tired, or sick, or scared,” Viola would say, with that stare that peeled paint from the walls of rehearsal halls and dressing rooms and flea-infested vaudeville theaters from Secaucus to San Diego. “You better go out there and sparkle or there’s not going to be any dinner tonight, and most likely no breakfast either.” So Frankie and Gabby—which was what everyone had called little Ethel ever since she could remember, supposedly because she could never stop talking, she would just gab, gab, gab away—would go on and sparkle, and everything would be all right again.
But three years ago, Frankie had run off with Martini the Magnificent, the magician who’d been opening for them in Grand Rapids, and after that, nothing had really been all right again. Gabby had been thirteen, maybe fourteen; she wasn’t sure. Viola had always been a little vague about ages—if a theater booker wanted her girls younger, they were younger; if he wanted them older, they were older; and as for birthdays, they just celebrated them all together on Christmas. “If it’s good enough for the Baby Jesus,” Viola would say, “it’s good enough for the Preston girls.”
It had been Christmas Day when Frankie eloped with Martini. Gabby had stood in their hotel room in Detroit, in front of the pine branch she and Frankie had stuck in a coffee can and decorated with popcorn strings, watching Viola tear Frankie’s goodbye note into little pieces before Gabby even had a chance to see it.
“Good riddance,” Viola had said, stuffing the shreds of the note into the little blue velvet pouch where she kept her well-worn rosary and an old pipe that Gabby’s father, “that no-good hobo,” had left behind. “The act’s better off without her anyway. You’re the real talent, baby.” As much as she missed Frankie, Gabby had to admit it was true. She’d spent ten years trooping around the vaudeville circuit with Frankie in a kiddie sister act, getting nowhere fast; now, after three years on her own, here she was in Hollywood, living in her own little house off Fountain Avenue with a Cadillac in the driveway and Viola in mink, rehearsing a number at Olympus Studios for the newest musical extravaganza by the great genius Tully Toynbee.
In the days when he’d been just a whimsical name at the end of the opening credits, Gabby had imagined Tully Toynbee as a twinkly, benevolent figure with spectacles and a big white beard: a Santa Claus who made movies instead of toys. Like most things in Hollywood, the fantasy couldn’t have been further from the truth. The real Tully Toynbee was a stern, unsmiling taskmaster, knife-edge thin in his skintight pants and India silk scarves, who whacked the backs of her legs with his Japanese bamboo cane whenever she missed a dance step.
Singing was a different story. All she needed was to hear the opening notes of her music, and suddenly it didn’t matter that she was barely five feet tall, with stumpy legs and unruly curls the color of mud; when she sang she was beautiful. But Leo Karp, the president of the studio, had told her before she signed her contract that there was no place in the pictures for a singer who didn’t dance. So Gabby was in the rehearsal room at dawn and stayed there until nine, ten, eleven o’clock at night, learning everything the studio had to offer: tap, ballet, jazz, ballroom, flamenco, even that newfangled “modern dance” stuff, for which they’d brought in a special teacher, a coat hanger of a woman who’d been flown out from New York City at ten times her usual salary. Gabby had thrown her back out twice. She had a torn muscle in her groin and tendonitis in her right ankle. Her knees ached when it rained—thankfully, not often in Southern California—and her bleeding toes had ruined the inside of every single pair of shoes she owned.
And I’m still a lousy dancer, Gabby thought bitterly. Gingerly, she prodded her throbbing ankle, trying to determine the extent of the damage. No tears, she commanded herself, gritting her teeth against the pain. Sparkle.
“We’ll take it again,” Tully said carelessly. “The kick into the pirouette. And try to stay upright this time.”
“Just hold on a minute, Tully.” Jimmy Molloy, his rosy skin even pinker than usual under its slick sheen of sweat, knelt at Gabby’s side. “Are you sure you’re all right, Gabs?”
Viola stood up. “Of course she is!”
“I was asking Gabby.”
“I’m fine,” Gabby said quickly. “I’m a trouper, you know that.” Even through the pain, she managed to turn the corners of her mouth up in her best sparkling grin, sucking her cheeks in slightly to show her dimples off to their best advantage, the way Viola had taught her. The last thing she wanted was to look like a wimp in front of Jimmy Molloy, who had performed the famous barnyard number in Donny Daley Had a Farm, involving a somersault off the top of the corn silo onto the back of a waiting Holstein to a hot jazz arrangement of “Old McDonald,” with his ankle fractured in two places.
Jimmy shook his head. “I don’t think so.” His ginger forelock dangled down his forehead as he prodded the top of Gabby’s sore foot with expert fingers. “The tissue here is awfully swollen; the tendon could have snapped. Honestly, I think you’d better see the doctor.”
Jimmy pursed his wet rosebud mouth in gentle concern, and Gabby wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to kiss him. Not a movie kiss, with the klieg lights and microphones all around, and of course, the camera, big as a golf cart and noisy too, practically pressed against their faces. A real kiss. All alone, someplace dark and private. The beach, maybe, walking along the wet sand in their bare feet, the pounding surf ringing in their ears. They’d stop to look up at the full moon, and then Jimmy would turn to her, his beautiful cherub face all glowing and grave, and he’d brush a dark curl away from her cheek, and press his body to hers, and …
“The doctor!” Tully brought his cane down with another smack that made even Viola jump. “Why didn’t I think of that? That’s an excellent idea! By all means, take her to the doctor—”
“Tully—”
“And tell him the only way to save this movie is to amputate both her feet. Then she’ll be out of the picture and they’ll let me borrow Judy Garland from MGM like I wanted in the first place.”
“Mr. Toynbee, please!” Viola was already on her feet, her dark eyes large, a hand fluttering beseechingly over the director’s chest. “There’s no need to talk like that. Gabby is just fine. She’ll work harder. We’ll bring in more private instructors. She’ll go from dawn to midnight, if that’s what it takes. Won’t you, Gabs?”
“Sure,” G
abby said weakly.
Tully sighed. “I appreciate your commitment, Mrs. Preston. But I’m afraid all the training in the world would do nothing to address the underlying problem.”
“What’s that? Tell us and we’ll fix it. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Soundlessly, Tully pivoted on the heel of his soft-soled oxford to glare in the mirror at Gabby’s body, still crumpled in an undignified heap on the floor. “Observe,” he said, pointing his cane at her as though she were a cadaver on the dissection table, “the short neck, the barrel chest. An excellent build for a singer—or indeed, a longshoreman—but for a dancer?” He shook his head. “There’s no flexibility, no grace. A dancer’s neck should resemble that of a swan, her carriage, a gazelle’s.” He cleared his throat. “The height, or lack thereof, is not ideal, but since Jimmy is rather … abbreviated himself, in this case, it’s not a problem. But then there’s this.” The bamboo cane moved swiftly down the mirror to point accusingly at Gabby’s thigh, exposed almost in its entirety by the brief rehearsal romper the studio required her to wear. She knew she should have worn ballet tights or even stockings, but she’d torn the ones from the day before, and she’d woken up too late that morning to bother digging through her laundry pile for an undamaged pair. “No wonder she can’t make the quick turn into the second kick sequence,” Tully continued, “with this thing quivering, wobbling about like a jellied ham. You see, Mrs. Preston, the problem with Gabby isn’t that she’s a lousy dancer.” He brought his cane down to the wooden floor with a sickening crack. “The problem is that she’s just … too … fat.”
Going over this scene later in her mind, Gabby would come up with all kinds of stinging comebacks for Tully Toynbee. Something along the lines of “The problem with Tully Toynbee isn’t that he’s a derivative egomaniac whose pictures haven’t made a dime for at least five years, the problem is that he has an asshole where his mouth should be.”
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