Finding Dorothy

by Elizabeth Letts

  Maud watched them go with a pinch of irritation, worried that she had failed to get her point across. Bolger, with his slapstick and silliness, seemed perfect to play his role, but ever since lunch she had been thinking about something Frank wrote in the book: “Neither the Woodman nor the Scarecrow ever ate anything, but she was not made of tin nor straw, and could not live unless she was fed.” There was no helping the little girl he’d been thinking of then. But what about the girl they were trying to squeeze into Dorothy’s costume now? And she knew that Frank didn’t just mean that children needed food, but love and care as well.

  Back in the studio parking lot, light was glinting off the shiny chrome on the Bentleys and Duesenbergs, sparking up like heat lightning in a Dakota sky. Maud had read in Variety that The Wizard of Oz was slated to be M-G-M’s biggest-budget motion picture of 1939. As she made her way through the lines of parked cars, as elegant as a row of tuxedoed gents in a dance number, she was struck by the sheer amount of wealth contained in this studio parking lot. She thought of the dark-suited men who clustered around the stars in the commissary just as marsh wrens flocked to the Dakota sloughs. She remembered how people had swarmed around Frank—from the fans, to the publishers, to the newspaper hacks looking for a story. They had been happy to splash his great successes across the headlines. Each one of these elegant motorcars belonged to someone trying to earn a living on the backs of the few among them who possessed the inborn artist’s gift. It had been hard enough for Frank to bear, and he had been a grown man. What must the weight of so much expectation—of men, and their ambitions and desires—feel like on the shoulders of a lonely teenage girl?

  CHAPTER

  11

  SYRACUSE, NEW YORK

  1881

  On the night of The Maid of Arran’s debut, Maud fussed with her hair in front of the looking glass. What would it be like to see Frank Baum up on a stage with everyone looking at him? She chided herself for being so nervous—not just her own sentiment in seeing him again, but also a worry about what Mother and Papa would think of him. Frank’s play was appearing at the Syracuse Grand Opera House, and he had given them four tickets so that the entire family could attend. Even Papa was healthy enough to come.

  Maud’s father seemed at least neutral toward Frank Baum, but her mother was not yet won over to the young man’s charms. She had made several pointed remarks to Maud about his lack of education, his dubious career path, and her hopes that Maud would choose a college graduate. The main point in his favor was that he had declared his full support for women’s suffrage. That would have been enough for most men to obtain Matilda’s good graces, but in the case of a suitor for her Cornell daughter, even that was not enough to convince her of his merits.

  On the spring evening when they set out to see Mr. Frank Baum’s play at the Syracuse Grand Opera House, the sun was shining, the trees were blooming, and Maud’s spirits were high.

  In no time, they had entered the outskirts of Syracuse, and soon were arriving in the elegant district of Clinton Square. A sharp tang from the Erie Canal wafted over South Salina Street. Barges crowded up along the street’s edge, and the shouts and clanging from the docks vibrated in the air. Flanking the square on the other side was the towering turret of the Syracuse Savings Bank, topped with a flag that rippled in the light spring breeze.

  Just adjacent was the Syracuse Grand Opera House, where snippets of excited conversation floated up from a crowd of well-dressed patrons debarking from carriages.

  Mr. Baum had graciously provided a complimentary ticket to each member of the family, and Papa was suitably impressed when he learned that the price of a ticket was five dollars and fifty cents. His shopkeeper’s brain was always toting up numbers, and when he multiplied the ticket price by the more than three hundred seats in the Syracuse Grand Opera House, his esteem for the young theater man increased. Papa approved of any endeavor that turned a neat profit—especially those in which a man was his own master.

  The usher led them down the aisle to the best seats in the house, in the center of the third row, just behind the orchestra pit.

  The caterwauling of tuning violins filled the grand chamber, and the crowd fell silent in anticipation. The light man fired down the gas table, dimming the theater, as the orchestra struck up a lively Irish tune. The heavy velvet curtain parted. Up on the stage stood Frank Baum—or “Louis Baum,” since he was going by his stage name. He was dressed in velvet leggings and a fitted brocade jacket that accentuated his slim form and height. Bathed in the silvery light of the carbon arc spotlight, he appeared ethereal. Even at this distance, his lightness and his wit were evident. Maud’s heart swelled each time the grand hall erupted with laughter or sounded with applause. When he bent down upon one knee to sing a plaintive love song, she was certain that he caught her eye.

  For the duration of the show, Maud was completely transported. She knew that Frank had built this marvel from the ground up. He was not just an actor, looming large on the stage. He had written the play, composed the music, created the lyrics, imagined the costumes, and engineered the elaborate and technically complex set. As she watched him, she realized that up until now, she had seen only bits and pieces of this remarkable person. Tonight, she was seeing the man in full. And she was enchanted. Never once since starting at Cornell had she been able to so fully escape the world and her place in it. It was as if the actors upon the stage had pulled back the curtain and revealed that there was another world on the other side of it—a world brighter, more colorful, more vivid, and more intense than the quotidian one in which she passed her days. It felt as if her humdrum heart soared and lifted out of her body and hung somewhere under the rafters—levitating as surely as the wooden table had refused to do when Maud had acted as the medium last Hallowe’en. For a few hours, Maud tasted a bit of the sublime. One thing she knew: she wanted more.

  * * *

  —

  THE FINAL CURTAIN SWEPT SHUT. The audience exploded into applause. Then the curtain swept open again as the actors took their bows. Maud glanced at her companions’ expressions and saw their unmitigated delight.

  In the foyer, a porter presented himself to Papa with a bow. He said that the Gage family was formally invited to visit the backstage area at the request of Louis F. Baum, and thus they were escorted away from the crowd, down a corridor that ran alongside the orchestra pit, up a flight of stairs, and onto a stage that surprised Maud with its size. From here, she could see that the set, a giant ship, which had appeared so real from their seats in the audience, was nothing more than a false-fronted wooden structure controlled by a complicated set of pulley ropes and guy lines.

  From the shadowy recesses of the backstage emerged Frank himself, still wearing his costume, as well as a layer of makeup so thick upon his face that Maud was startled at the sight of him. Frank looked so odd in his costume—not bad, mind you, she thought, as he was tall and svelte, but the makeup was so garish up close that he seemed like a parody of himself, and something made her think of the neighbor’s scarecrow that had terrorized her childhood.

  Maud’s mother began clapping, and Papa as well. Julia, usually reticent, proclaimed, “Magnificent!” Only Maud, tongue-tied, remained silent.

  “Thank you for coming. Did you truly enjoy it?” Frank, who was half a head taller than Papa, bent over and spoke in an urgent tone, as if the Gage family’s pleasure was a matter of capital importance.

  “The finest entertainment we have seen in Syracuse,” Papa said heartily.

  “We all found it most enjoyable!” Mother chimed in with an enthusiasm she usually reserved for the finer points of law.

  “Indeed we did!” Julia hastened to add.

  “Why, up close you look like Captain McNally Jackson Blair,” Maud exclaimed, then immediately clapped her gloved hand over her mouth, mortified that she had blurted out the very first thought that came into her mind.

 
Frank only smiled. “And who might this captain be?”

  Maud wanted to drop through the floor and she earnestly considered making up a story on the spot, but she did not get a chance as Matilda chimed in, “I certainly can see the resemblance…!” At the exact same moment, Papa said, “Like Bob Crouse’s old scarecrow? Why, not in the least.”

  Julia cast a sympathetic glance toward Maud.

  “Only in the sense that the makeup changes the aspect of your face,” Maud added, mortified that she could feel her face flushing red.

  “The songs were lovely,” Julia said, deftly changing the subject. “I should think it would take much courage to sing in front of such a large audience.”

  “Courage—no! Foolhardiness, rather,” Frank said.

  “Not foolhardy at all,” Mother said. “You have a pleasing singing voice.”

  All this while, Maud found herself inexplicably mute after her outburst about the scarecrow. Since when did she find herself so witless? Maud, who always had something to say, Maud, who spoke even when it was more advisable to stay silent, suddenly found herself as silent as an aspidistra. Frank was standing close enough to her that she could catch his scent—sweat and greasepaint and wool—but still her tongue lay thick and useless in her mouth.

  “Mr. Baum!” A short bald man, stuffed into a grubby tweed suit like a sausage into its casing, gestured to Frank from behind the scenery. “We need your assistance!”

  “I’m terribly sorry!” Frank said to the Gages. “Please excuse me, but I want you to know that I’m deeply grateful that you came.”

  Before he left, he said, “Good evening,” extending his hand to Papa, who grasped it and pumped it several times.

  “It has been our pleasure. Seems like you’ve got a good business going here,” Papa said.

  Maud watched her mother attentively. Mother appeared pleasant, as always; her cheeks had a hint of pink flush, making her look younger; and her manners, also as always, were cordial and kind. That she had enjoyed the play, Maud had no doubt; but whether this had swayed her in the young man’s favor was impossible to tell.

  He gallantly held out his hand to Matilda and said, “I hope to see you all again soon.”

  The stagehand gestured again urgently, and Frank’s eyes darted toward him as he started to back away. In a moment, he would disappear behind the black curtains that formed the backdrop of the stage.

  But just as he was about to duck behind the curtains and disappear, Matilda called out, “You must come visit us at our home in Fayetteville.”

  “I would not stay away,” Frank said as he bounded away from them backward, waving his hand merrily as he went, until he tripped over a guy line bolted to the floor, sending the wooden set into a paroxysm of shuddering above them. He managed to right himself in such a comical manner that Maud burst out laughing, and at last regaining her composure, which had fled her at the first sight of him, she called out after him, “Goodbye!”

  In a moment, he was gone, and Maud came down to earth, where she noticed that Julia had raised an eyebrow and was staring at her with a merry look on her face. Maud could read her sister’s expression well enough to know that Julia had divined the true state of her emotions.

  All the way back to Fayetteville, Maud was silent, but she felt immersed in a glow, as if a trailing fire of limelight had come along, flickering along behind them, leaving a bright tail of sparkles in the darkness.

  In a matter of days, Frank would pack up the costumes and sets and take to the road. The tour was winding down, but the show had garnered such success that he was going to spend a week in New York City—on Broadway itself! It was as if Frank Baum had flung open a door and allowed Maud to peer through it, and what was on the other side was a magical land, all heightened colors and remarkable illusions, and that pathway led to something that, Maud suddenly realized, she wanted more than anything: freedom. It dawned on her that she and Julia shared the same deep yearning. Like convicts in adjoining cells who whispered feverishly through the bars to each other about their impending jailbreak, they were both longing to escape.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS LATE MAY, and Maud was packing her trunk, preparing to leave Sage College for the long summer break. The window to her dorm room was flung open, and a spring-scented breeze floated in. Outside, Cayuga Lake glittered, a jeweled blue, ringed by trees crowned by minty fluttering wreaths of new leaves. Maud folded up the yellow dress she had worn on her first night, a tightness aching at her throat. What high hopes she had had back then, as she’d descended Sage’s broad staircase in her elegant frock, her new friend Josie at her side. But that memory had been irreparably colored by what had followed—the high-spirited dancing that had been just the beginning of her troubles here. Maud had carried a heavy mantle upon arriving—the hopes and dreams of Mother and her friends, their lifelong fight for women’s equality, of which Maud’s diploma was to be a shining symbol.

  Maud had nursed her own secret dreams, however: of bursting out of the confines of other people’s expectations, of finding her own strengths and her own ambitions. Being mothered by one of America’s most outspoken women made it hard for Maud to find a voice all her own. Yet she had to admit to herself that in this respect, her first year away from home had been a failure. Her academic marks were excellent. She was progressing toward her mother’s cherished diploma. But somehow Sage College had ended up feeling even more cloistered and stuffy than her life at home. Even worse, Maud had yet to discover her own passion—something that burned from inside her, not the handed-down deferred dreams of the previous generation. If she asked herself what this quest for a diploma was for, she could give herself no answer.

  Room emptied, goodbyes given, trunk loaded onto the train, Maud once more watched the quilt of towns and fields pass, and the closer to Fayetteville she got, the more she realized that she was shrinking, smaller and smaller, until soon she would fit in the palm of her mother’s hand.

  * * *

  —

  AND INDEED, WITHIN A week of Maud’s arrival back home, the walls of the Gage house seemed to be closing in on her. She received letters from school friends reporting on vacations filled with boating parties, picnics, and travel, but Maud had no time for fun. Papa’s health had declined rapidly over the past few months, and Julia, who was no doubt worn out from nursing him, promptly fell ill with a prolonged sick headache, leaving the running of the household to Maud. Mother was distracted and cranky—with Papa no longer able to run the store, she worked feverishly on her writing, hoping to bring money into the household from royalties. Maud heard the sound of her mother’s fountain pen scratching until late into the evening. Money was short, and it pained Maud to realize how much the family had been sacrificing to make her studies possible—and how little she was able to appreciate it.

  But then, in late June, Maud received a letter from Josie with an interesting piece of news. Frank Baum’s play on Broadway had closed after just a few days. He was returning to Syracuse and planned to remain for the rest of the summer before heading back out on the road. Josie hinted that his decision might have had something to do with his desire to see Maud again. The hope of spending time with Frank made the household drudgery more bearable, until at last a date was set for him to call at the Gage home, on the second Sunday of July. Maud took pains to hide her excitement from Mother—fearing that if Matilda sensed the true state of Maud’s emotions, she’d do more to discourage his visits—but there was no hiding from Julia, who watched and clucked as Maud tried and discarded different dresses and fussed with her hair. Maud remembered her awkwardness during their encounter at the theater, and the oddity of their conversation in the cloakroom at Cornell. This time, she was determined to show herself as cool and collected.

  Maud was waiting for Frank to arrive when she was distracted by a soft vibration, like a finely plucked string, that sounded as i
f it was coming from upstairs. In the front-facing bedroom, the sound grew louder. Now it sounded like a strangled cry. She looked around the bedroom, even peering under the bed, but the room was empty. Maud realized that it was coming from outside the open window. She leaned out and saw a calico kitten, swaying on a spindly branch of the dogwood tree, mewling pitifully.

  “Poor kitty,” Maud purred, stretching an arm out the window. The kitten, which looked to be only a few months old—just barely weaned—was almost within her grasp. Leaning as far as she dared out the second-story window, she could touch the tip of the branch where the kitten was clinging for dear life. Maud angled herself a bit more and grabbed hold of the foliage that was within reach, but the twigs snapped, leaving her with a handful of green leaves.

  Maud hastily stuck her now-mussed hair back into her combs and straightened her blouse as she ran down the stairs and burst out the front door. The kitten peered down at her wide-eyed. The tree trunk was studded with familiar footholds from her younger, short-pants-wearing, tree-climbing days. Now she was all hemmed in with heavy skirts, petticoats, and a corset, just when she needed to be limber. But the kitten’s pitiful cries were too much for Maud. Without further thought, she hitched up her skirts and shinnied up the tree, then slowly inched forward along a bending branch, trying to get close enough to the kitten to reach out and grab it. But before she got there, a loud crack sounded and the branch swayed, boomeranging the kitten into the air. At that exact moment, Frank Baum strolled up the front walk. Maud watched in silent horror as the ball of calico fur tumbled down, knocked Frank’s hat askew, then somehow gained purchase on his shoulder, where it clung for dear life.

  “Now, what in the name of all that is holy!” Frank exclaimed. One hand flew up to retrieve his hat, while the other grabbed at his shoulder. When he realized that a live kitten was fastened to his wool morning coat, he reached up and ever so gently coaxed the terrified animal into unhooking from his jacket, then cradled it against his chest, crooning.