by Miley, Mary
Nor do you, Uncle Oliver, I did not say.
8
Tuesday, August 19, 1924. Opening day for The Return of Jessie Carr, a sensitive drama about a young woman’s return to the bosom of her family after years as a vaudeville sensation. The curtain was about to rise on the role of a lifetime.
I gave myself a critical once-over in my room at the Grande Hotel in Sacramento. I had twisted my thick auburn hair into a large chignon, then encouraged a few tendrils to escape around my face like a picture frame. It gave me a wistful, ingénue look that was complemented by my blue sailor-collar dress with its drop waist, crisp pleats, and matching white straw hat and gloves. Youthful but not juvenile. I had done my makeup with a light hand, blushing my cheeks for a little nervousness and applying just enough kohl and lipstick to add poise. My changeable eyes sparkled more blue than green today, persuaded by the color of my dress. I looked the part. For the first time in my life, I was the headliner.
With confidence that comes from years on the stage, I straightened my shoulders, lifted my chin, and walked out of the hotel like a duchess at court. The weather was sunny and fine as I made my way along the sidewalk past the gleaming white dome of Sacramento’s capitol building. My destination, the law offices of Smith and Wade, was four blocks distant on Ninth Street, where I had been summoned to meet with the trustees of Lawrence Carr’s estate. Bankers, accountants, lawyers, and one Methodist minister—an audience of eight old men—all waiting to meet me, hear me, watch me, test me, judge me.
There was still time to turn back, but I knew I would not. Easy Street was just around the corner.
Once Oliver became confident that I had thoroughly absorbed my role, we had parted, I to Akron where I took a room at a decent hotel, he to his mother’s house in San Francisco to wait for the inevitable call from Victoria Carr letting them know of my resurrection. I mailed my aunt Victoria the photograph and a penitent letter informing her I was alive and coming home, and begging her forgiveness for the anxiety I had caused her when I ran away. A stiff reply had come, not from Aunt Victoria, but from Mr. Severinus Wade of Smith and Wade, one of the trustees of the Carr estate, who suggested it would be wiser for me to meet with them in Sacramento before traveling north to the Carr home.
That was not the plan, but as in vaudeville, flexibility is everything.
“Good morning,” I said.
A sensibly dressed spinster with an iron-gray hair knot looked up, stuck a yellow pencil behind her ear, and examined me hat to toe. She nodded a crisp reply.
“I’m Miss Jessamyn Carr, here to meet with Mr. Wade and associates.”
“I’ll let Mr. Wade know you are here, Miss Carr. Won’t you have a seat?”
I elected to stand. One rarely sits onstage for more than a moment—standing was the better pose and I wanted every advantage.
The clerk came back into the reception room. “They are waiting for you in conference, miss. Right this way, please.”
My heart beat faster as it always does when I am in the wings, about to go on. The curtain rose. The clerk held open the door and motioned me to enter. I almost expected her to give my fanny a pat the way the emcees do when they send children onto the stage.
Eight chairs scraped the oak floor and eight men stood as I entered the conference room. The man I had pegged as Mr. Severinus Wade offered me his hand, not to shake but to hold, and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss it.
“Good morning, miss.”
The absence of my name was no accident. He and the others were pointedly withholding its bestowal until they had made their decision. The pleasantries took several minutes. I was introduced to the other seven men, offered a glass of water, and given a chair at the head of a polished mahogany table. Eight places had papers and files before them. My place had no such prompts. I was pleased to note that the eight were all old enough to be my grandfather; three were positively ancient. Old men make an easy audience.
I smiled.
We sat.
Everyone looked expectantly at Mr. Wade, who had obviously been chosen to lead this effort. It was not a role he relished. He removed his cheaters, took out his pocket handkerchief, and wiped the lenses deliberately. I waited, my hands folded demurely on the table. It was not I who had called the meeting.
Mr. Wade asked if my hotel was comfortable. I said it was. He asked if my breakfast had been satisfactory. I said it had been very good. He asked if the train trip from Ohio had been difficult. I said it had been quite uneventful. He asked if I thought Sacramento was a nice city. I said it was charming. Fearing we would all remain trapped in this limbo forever, I departed from plan and spoke my lines.
“Mr. Wade, gentlemen,” I began, letting my eyes linger on each man’s face in turn as I spoke. “It has been many years since we last met, and I confess I do not remember you at all. I was only eleven at the time and quite dull with grief. You cannot remember me well either, and I suspect I have changed far more than you.”
This prompted a dry, nervous chuckle that fluttered around the table like wind through dead leaves. I had seized control of the interrogation.
“I quite understand why you have asked me here, and I am completely in agreement with your intention to make sure that I am, indeed, the same Jessie Carr who ran away seven years ago. Of course, I am not really the same. I am older, wiser, and more appreciative of my home and family than I was as a spoilt child. I am quite ready to answer your questions so I can prove to you beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am not an impostor.”
There was a satisfied muttering at this speech. One man pulled out a photograph of thirteen-year-old Jessie from the folder in front of him and compared her features to mine before passing it to his right.
“When and where were you born?” asked a man who looked older than Methuselah. A sadly unimaginative start, but I responded graciously enough.
“Who were your parents?” asked another. “How did they die?”
“Where did you go to school?” asked the minister, and I noticed they seemed to be taking turns clockwise around the table.
“Where did you grow up?” I elaborated a little on that one, although I knew full well embellishment was tempting the Fates. Stick to the questions, Oliver had stressed. No more, no less. Oh, all right.
One of the lawyers spoke out of turn. “I visited your parents at their home in Florence in 1911,” he said. Uh-oh. That was unexpected. Oliver had been sure no family members had visited the Carrs, but he hadn’t known about business acquaintances.
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t remember you. I would have been only seven or eight then.”
“Exactly. A precocious little lady, too, if I might add. But the house. You remember it?”
“Certainly.”
“What do you remember about it?”
“Let me think. It was in the Via del Corso close to a pretty church, and there was a park very near where we would walk and play outside whenever the weather was fine. I remember that the house itself was quite old. Or so it seemed to me. It had lots and lots of rooms, and stone floors that were cold on bare feet where the rugs didn’t cover them. All the walls had old paintings on them, all of strange people and places I didn’t know, and the ceilings were very high. There was a grand staircase and so many crystal chandeliers I couldn’t count them all. The maids needed a ladder to clean them! I had a lovely room upstairs next to the schoolroom, and my governess was next to that.” I went into eloquent detail about my own bedroom and the kitchen, as it was certain no visitor had been in those parts of the house. My wide-eyed sincerity charmed them. “The entrance hall had a large table with a tall vase for fresh flowers—usually roses, my mother’s favorite. And there were lots of statues of naked people.”
“Ahem, yes.” He coughed to cover up his embarrassment at my use of the word “naked.” “Nude” was acceptable in polite conversation but not “naked.” I had done it on purpose of course, to fluster him enough to change the subject, and it worked. “Now then,
my dear, why did you run away from home?”
I gave a deep, pained sigh at the recollection. “At the time, I could not have told you the reason. I hated everyone. I thought everyone hated me. I took what money I had and caught the train to Portland, thinking only about having a good time for a few days, shopping and seeing shows. A real adventure. The first night, I went to a theater and loved the show so much, I joined a dance act and never looked back. I think if I hadn’t been hired so quickly, I’d have come home when I ran out of money.”
“Why did you neglect to contact your family? Why did you let them worry so, thinking you were kidnapped or dead?”
“I suppose I was punishing them for the pain I felt. Oh, I know now it wasn’t their fault. I blame my loneliness and my orphaned state. My cousins had parents—I had none. Life seemed unbearably unfair.”
“Tell us about the past seven years.”
Truth is easy, but nonetheless, I had rehearsed my response to this question as well. As two of the men took notes, I recounted my travels with the various acts, ending with the Darlings. I pulled playbills and theatrical photos from my handbag, described my roles and as many of the cities we visited as I could recall, and told them how to address mail to any act in care of the theaters listed in Variety, current examples of which I thoughtfully provided for them—a disarming tactic I thought of myself. They planned to hire a Pinkerton or two to run down the details, and this would help their investigation immensely. I professed myself happy to oblige.
Like all civilians, they were intrigued with my tales of vaudeville life, and I deliberately dropped names they were likely to know, all carefully vetted to include only those I had met during the past seven years.
“I got to know Benny Kubelsky, a violin and patter man who has changed his name several times. Now it’s Jack Benny.” A few nods. Some had seen Benny in San Francisco. “I played on the same stage with little Milton Berlinger—you may have seen him in several pictures with Mary Pickford, where they cut his last name in half. And I’ve shared billing with Mary Jane West—you know her as Mae.” To a man, they scowled and feigned disapproval, but I knew better. No male of the human species who had seen Mae West perform didn’t silently lust after her and wish his own wife possessed some of her brassy charm.
When we had passed a cheerful hour, there came a knock at the door behind me. All heads turned as a petite lady with white hair, about eighty years of age and dressed in widow’s weeds, stepped into the room. She smiled at me, and all heads turned again, to watch my reaction.
“Jessie!” She breathed my name in a melodramatic sigh often used by amateurs.
It took me all of two heartbeats to figure out what they were up to. A shame Oliver wasn’t there to appreciate my agility. I had studied enough photographs to know Jessie’s grandmother’s every wrinkle. I merely stared at this stranger, my face a mask of bewilderment.
“Well, Jessie,” prompted Mr. Wade. “Don’t you recognize your grandmother Beckett?”
Now, really.
Timing is everything, so I counted to five before I turned my wide eyes toward Mr. Wade. “I am certain I would recognize my grandmother if she were to walk into this room, sir. That nice lady is not my grandmother.”
At that, the room broke into a hullabaloo, with little Jessie’s eyes demurely cast down as the interrogators shook hands all around, exclaiming their apologies for the dastardly trick. Only one of them—the youngest of the old men—remained in his seat, eyeing the others as if they were sums on a ledger sheet that were not quite adding up. I heard him clear his throat and say something about a governess to the man next to him.
But the show was over. There was no turning back now. Ring down the curtain. Applause, applause for Jessie Carr.
9
That milestone was but the first on the road to riches, and while gratified by my success, I knew it was not yet time to pop a champagne cork.
I returned to the Grande Hotel to find my room had been searched during my absence. The signs were subtle but unmistakable to someone who had prepared for it. I dropped my hat and gloves on the bed, kicked off my shoes, and surveyed the premises. The two drawers I had left not quite closed were shut tight, the clothes hanging in my closet had shifted as pockets were searched, and the suitcase I had positioned in the corner precisely between two purple flowers on the carpet now sat directly on top of one of those blossoms.
The intrusion caused me no alarm. The trustees had hired someone to scour my belongings for clues while I was away. He had found nothing. There was nothing to find. Only one thing could harm me, one item that would, in the wrong hands, utterly destroy our plans. My most precious possession—the collection of publicity photos and playbills from my mother’s career and my own early years.
I knew back in Cleveland that I should destroy the lot, but I could no more have done that than I could take an innocent life. They were all I had of my mother and of my childhood. I knew I could not keep them with me. Nor could I give them to Oliver to hold. I dared not even remind him of their existence. He was not above destroying them himself if I refused to.
Finally, I had separated out the playbills and pictures of recent vintage to serve as props for my charade, and wrapped the others in plain brown paper. On the front of the package, I wrote a note that read, “Treasured photos and personal papers belonging to Leah Randall. Do not throw away! Please hold until she returns to claim them.” Before leaving Randolph Stouffer’s mansion in Cleveland, I placed the package in a bottom drawer of the desk in his study, a desk that looked as if it hadn’t been disturbed by Mr. Stouffer in years. With any luck, no one would even see the package until I was thoroughly ensconced in my new life and could return to claim them without fear of exposure. I regretted the risk, but life was risk and I was a player.
The trustees had advised me to alter my plans, to go directly to San Francisco to visit my grandmother. As matriarch of the Beckett family, she deserved my first allegiance. From her house I could proceed to the Carr estate near the coastal town of Dexter, Oregon.
My first reaction had been to ignore them. Our plan was for Oliver to stay as far from me as possible so that even the most suspicious mind could find nothing to link us, but a little reflection brought me around. The most difficult part of this deception would be convincing those who knew Jessie best—the aunt and the cousins—that I was Jessie reincarnate. How much stronger would my claim be if I arrived having already won the recognition of the trustees as well as my grandmother and uncle? I would appear at the Carr estate a veritable fait accompli.
So I had dutifully deferred to the trustees and accepted Mr. Wade’s offer to send a wire to my grandmother and arrange a short visit to San Francisco the next day. That was when Mr. Wade informed me that my uncle Oliver happened to be staying with her.
“I’ll be glad to see Uncle again,” I said. “He used to visit the house in Dexter often and brought me presents.”
“I’m sure a reminder of some of those presents will convince him of your true identity,” Mr. Wade offered. I thanked him for that excellent idea and for his offer to send a train ticket to my hotel this evening. I had no money, but Mr. Wade seemed disinclined to part with cash.
The afternoon was fine, and I had no desire to spend it cooped up in my room. I would do some window-shopping, enjoy a nice meal at the Grande Hotel, and have a long, hot bath before retiring.
No sooner had I stepped out onto the sidewalk than I felt hostile eyes on my back. It took only a few adjustments in my pace and direction to determine the owner of those eyes—an ordinary-looking man in a brown sack suit and fedora who resembled every other businessman in the capital that day. He was following me.
This gave me the willies. Searching my room was fair play, but I did not appreciate the trustees setting a bloodhound on my trail. I ducked into a lingerie shop, left by a rear door, and continued my stroll in peace. But I was not surprised that when I returned to the hotel a couple hours later, he was there waiting for me,
leaning against a lamppost across from the entrance. For all I knew, he intended to follow me to San Francisco, perhaps to Oregon. That I would not tolerate.
I reminded myself that I was trying to appear trustworthy, not arouse anyone’s suspicions. I would have to lose Brown Fedora in a subtle, natural manner. Returning to the privacy of my room, I had my hot bath and ordered up a lovely dinner. After the sun had set, I packed my valise. At the front desk, I found the promised train ticket—a first-class reservation on tomorrow’s 1:10 to San Francisco. Making sure Brown Fedora was still out front, I left the hotel by a side entrance and walked the distance to the train station under cover of darkness, my valise in hand.
A glance at the departures board told me there were no trains to San Francisco tonight.
“Good evening,” I said to the ticket clerk. “I’d like to exchange this ticket for an earlier train. And make it second class, please.”
I left with a reserved seat on tomorrow’s 9:35 A.M. and a couple of bucks’ refund—enough to pay for a room at one of the cheap hotels that cluster around every train station in America. I crossed the street, checked into the nearest one, and fell asleep.
The following morning I spent my last few coins on a cup of coffee, a cold roll, and a copy of the morning Sacramento Union to read on the trip. It wasn’t until the train had left the station that I looked at the front page. My original hotel, the Grande Hotel, had caught fire last night. They were still counting the bodies.
10
I arrived at the Southern Pacific station in San Francisco where I found a line of taxis waiting outside the Third Street entrance. I knew the city from having performed in several of its theaters as a child with my mother. I remembered it as a brash town that wore its gaudy glamour on the surface like greasepaint on an actor’s face. Mother and I had not stepped far beyond the theater district, so the San Francisco I was about to experience—the tame residential portion—was entirely new to me.