by Mary Miley
Her eyes welled up, but no tears fell. She sniffed, rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, and continued to fix me with that vacant, unblinking stare I’d come to despise. I delivered the coup de grâce.
‘I also know you can understand me. I know you can read lips.’
From her perch on the high stool, she glared down her nose at me for what seemed like several minutes. Then she sniffed and trumped my card with hers.
‘I can talk too,’ she said.
I nearly spilled my coffee.
TWENTY-ONE
The twitch at the corner of Kit’s lips hinted at her satisfaction at having gotten the best of me. It was a you-think-you’re-so smart smirk, and it came packaged with a glint of superiority in her eyes.
‘Oh!’ was my clever retort. A hundred questions jostled in my head. As soon as I’d recovered my wits, I started with the most obvious.
‘Are you really deaf?’
The single nod of her head had me worried that Kit’s brief foray into speech had ended as abruptly as it had begun. Determined to keep the conversation going, I asked a question that could not be answered with gestures.
‘I thought deaf people couldn’t speak?’
She looked for her pencil, and I could see her indecision. Write or talk? Finally she spoke. ‘People born deaf can’t speak.’
In my mind, I saw Helen Keller as she had looked that day on the vaudeville stage. Her almost unintelligible speech had to be translated by her helper for us in the audience to understand her words. She had not been born deaf either, but lost her hearing at a very young age, and therefore could learn how to make sounds. But although Miss Keller tried hard for years, she confessed that she was never able to reach the point where average people could understand her. Kit was easy enough to understand, although her voice had an off-key, monotonic quality about it.
‘So you were not born deaf?’
‘I was five. Meningitis. I was in the hospital for a year. I can still hear some things. Trains and thunder. And drums.’
I suspected she wasn’t hearing those sounds as much as she was feeling the vibrations, but I didn’t say so.
‘How did you learn to read lips?’
‘Everyone reads lips, a little. Deaf school taught me some. Mostly I taught myself.’
‘I thought you didn’t go to school.’
‘I don’t. They won’t let deaf kids go to regular school. They think we’re all simps.’
‘What about the deaf school?’
‘They were mean. I ran away. I told Ma if she sent me back, I’d run away again. Who did you live with when your mother died? And you can stop exaggerating your lips. It makes it harder, not easier.’
‘Oh. Well, then.’ It was my turn to speak. I steeled myself before stepping back into the unhappy aspects of my past. ‘My mother knew she was dying, and she set me up with Kid Kabaret, a flash act where the kids sing and dance and put on two-minute plays.’
‘What’s that?’
‘What’s what?’
‘A flat act?’
‘Flash act,’ I corrected her. ‘That’s a showy act with a lot of performers that brings its own scenery.’
She nodded and I went on. ‘My mother’s stage name was Chloë Randall, and she was a singer – a headliner.’ I can always hear the dreamy note in my voice when I say those words. My mother was a genuine headliner in her day, what they call a ‘star’ in the pictures, and I was very proud of her. ‘Most of the time, we both worked, but when she got sick – it was cancer that killed her – I was the only one bringing in money for more than a year. And let me tell you, kids in vaudeville don’t make a tenth of what adults make. That was a tough year.’ That was when I’d started stealing, but Kit didn’t need to know about that.
And all of a sudden, I was telling her about those days, and the telling was painfully honest. ‘That last year, I started stealing. Mother never knew. She’d have been so disappointed. At first it was food. After paying train fares and hotels, there just wasn’t enough money to feed us. Then it was aspirin and other medicines from the drug store. Soon, it was whatever I wanted.’
Kit’s eyes got wide.
‘I’m not proud of that, but I don’t see as I had much choice. After my mother died, I stuck with Kid Kabaret for a year or so; then they traded me to an acrobatic act because I was light and limber and could do the really high stunts. After that, I learned to fend for myself and found work with any act that would have me: magicians, song-and-dance, Shakespeare. Sometimes I worked a week or two with an act; other times a whole season. I was small and kept my child-like appearance even as I grew older, so I fit into lots of acts that needed a kid. My last gig was with a family song-and-dance troupe called The Little Darlings. I was with them for several years. I really liked that gig. It was almost like having a real family. I wish it had lasted, but nothing lasts forever, I’ve learned that lesson all too well. Then I washed up, as they say, in vaudeville.’
Kit scowled me the question.
‘It means failed. No one wanted me for kiddie roles any longer, not when they could hire a real kid for a fraction of what they would pay an adult. And I was good at singing, dancing, acting, comedy, acrobatics, magic – just about anything on stage – but I wasn’t exceptional at anything. Have you heard the old saying, “jack of all trades, master of none”? That’s me. I couldn’t find honest work, so I took some jobs that were not so honest. Afterwards, I moved here. A vaudeville friend knew of a job coming open at Pickford-Fairbanks Studios, and he put in a good word for me.’ I skipped over the part where I should have admitted I no longer had that job. ‘I like it here just fine. In my whole life, I’ve never lived in one place longer than a week, so this seems like paradise to me. Some things in vaudeville I miss a lot. But not enough to leave what I have here.’
I waited for Kit to digest this large helping of information, and when she didn’t speak, I went on. ‘So … your mother was like mine, I guess. A singer. What kinda of music did she sing?’
‘Current songs. Gershwin. Porter. Jazz. She liked jazz. Everyone said she could sing anything and make it sound good.’
‘What did you do while she was working?’
She looked up, startled, and I thought for a moment she wasn’t going to answer.
‘She didn’t usually start ’til ten o’clock. Mostly, I went with her to the club or speakeasy or cabaret, wherever she was singing. Usually they had food and someone would give me something to eat for free. I’d watch people. I’d stay up ’til I fell asleep on a table, or if there were booths, I could lie on a bench.’
‘Why the charade? Surely your mother knew you could read lips.’
She gave a careless shrug. ‘I can read half what people are saying by their lips; the rest I figure out. Ma usually wrote down things to make sure I understood everything.’
‘And what about talking?’
The child pulled her knees up to her chin and picked at her bare toes. ‘When I talk, people make fun of me. Ma’s voice was so beautiful, it hurt her to hear me talk, like singing out of tune, she said. So I stopped. Except with animals and fish. After a while, Ma probably forgot I could talk.’
Kit had lost her hearing relatively late, so, unlike Helen Keller, she had several years of speaking to fall back on. Yet I understood what she meant about others making fun of her – her speech did not sound natural, and she mixed up certain sounds, like sh and ch. Anyone could understand her if they tried, but she would have to risk their laughter. It was a lot to ask of a child. Too much for this one.
‘Tell me about when you saw my mother.’
‘I’m sure Helen told you everything.’
‘You tell.’
The kid was checking my story against Helen’s. I had to be careful not to contradict whatever Helen had told her last night.
‘Well, then, Officer Delaney went with us. When your mother didn’t show up, I asked him to check the hospitals in San Francisco, where she had been when she sent us the la
st telegram. When he turned up nothing there, he contacted police headquarters throughout the state, and that’s when he learned there was an unidentified woman in the San Diego morgue. He wanted Helen to see if it was your mother. Helen wanted me to come along for moral support. The medical examiner said she had died several days earlier from alcohol poisoning.’ Then, because I didn’t know if Rose Ann’s funeral would have an open casket or not, I laid the groundwork for her battered face. ‘Her face was scraped up, from a fall, the doctor said, but Helen could tell for certain it was your mother.’
Kit disappeared inside herself for long minutes. I cleaned up the coffee cups and then made a proposal.
‘How about we cook dinner for everyone tonight?’
She shook her head.
‘I don’t know how to cook either,’ I said, reaching on a shelf for the Fanny Farmer cookbook. ‘But Melva has this swell cookbook, and we both know how to read, so let’s choose what we want to eat and get started.’
I pulled the reluctant child into the selection process and after much deliberation, we settled on meatloaf and scalloped potatoes with glazed carrots for vegetables. And sugar cookies for dessert. After Kit had made a list of the ingredients we needed, we walked to the butcher’s for chunks of beef and pork, and then to the market for the rest. Taking turns at the meat grinder, we ground the beef and pork into mush and mixed it with breadcrumbs, beaten eggs, celery, onion, ketchup, and the spices called for in the recipe, then pressed the whole unappealing glop into a loaf pan. I hoped it tasted better than it looked. It was too early to light the oven, so we covered the pan with a clean dishrag, set it in the icebox, and turned our attention to cookies.
By the time the others got home that evening, Kit and I were relaxing on the patio, our stomachs full of tea and sugar cookies.
‘Well, well. I can see what you two have been doing today,’ said Helen, throwing me an appreciative smile. ‘You’ll turn into wife material any day now, Jessie. A good home-cooked dinner is the path to any man’s heart. And cookies! I can’t wait. You girls have been busy.’
‘And we’ve got good news,’ I said, giving Kit a verbal nudge.
‘So have I,’ said Helen. The words came out in a rush. ‘I just heard from Mother who just heard from her brother who sent word that he would not be able to come all the way from Baltimore for Rose Ann’s funeral, but he would be happy to cover all of her final expenses himself, and I was so relieved, as you can imagine, and he said some nice things about Rose Ann, too; memories from when they were young, which he had more of than Mother since he was closer to her age than Mother was, and he’s promised to send some money for Kit.’
‘That’s wonderful, Helen,’ I said, inserting myself into the conversation when she finally came up for air. Now that I knew Kit could read lips, I didn’t want Helen saying anything indiscreet. ‘We have good news, too, don’t we, Kit?’
Kit scowled and stared into the fishpond.
To get her started, I announced in a chipper voice, ‘Kit can read lips.’
‘Oh, my,’ said Helen, sounding slightly confused. ‘How wonderful! When did she learn that? Does that mean we don’t have to write things down any longer?’
If Kit thought I was going to pull the entire load, she was mistaken. The news would go over better coming from her. Helen looked from me to Kit and back again, waiting for enlightenment, until finally Kit spoke up.
‘I can talk too.’
Helen’s jaw dropped.
I took over from there, smoothing the way. ‘Since Kit didn’t lose her hearing until she was five, she already knew how to talk. Most deaf people are born deaf and can’t learn to talk, you know.’
‘I, uh, geez, no, I didn’t know any deaf people could talk. Deaf and dumb, you know, they go together, I thought.’
‘Great news, huh?’ I said cheerily, giving Helen an I’ll-talk-with-you-later look. Fortunately, she caught my meaning. ‘Why don’t you light the oven, Helen, so we can get that meatloaf started. I’ll boil the water for the carrots.’ Once in the kitchen and out of sight, I filled her in on Kit’s transformation.
Dinner started awkwardly, since the girls all felt they’d been conned by a kid. Which was true. I knew they were trying to think back, wondering if they had said anything in Kit’s presence that they hadn’t meant for her to hear. I know I had done that. But everyone’s concern for Kit’s loss soon took the edge off any hard feelings.
Only later that night, when I’d retired to my room to reread David’s letter did I notice its peculiarities. It sounded stilted, not like David at all. ‘Very dear Jessie?’ He usually called me ‘kid’ never ‘my girl’. And ‘everlasting gratitude’ sounded like a syrupy film title. I figured some prison guard standing over him while he wrote it must have rattled him.
I lay in bed thinking about how the lines were aligned on the left but uneven on the right. People didn’t write sentences like that; they wrote to the right-hand edge of the line before they moved down to the next. Was there some hidden message that I’d missed? Something he didn’t want the guards to see? I dismissed that idea. If that were the case, he could have told Mike Allenby and had him relay the message to me.
Unless he didn’t trust Allenby any more than he trusted the guards.
I sat up in bed, switched on the lamp, and took another, longer look.
TWENTY-TWO
Dawn had just painted pink and blue stripes on the eastern sky when I hopped an early-morning Red Car heading east on Hollywood Boulevard. Half the sun had risen by the time I stepped down at the corner nearest Whitley Heights. I had to restrain myself from breaking into a gallop, so eager was I to reach David’s house and search for the cash. For there had been a hidden message in the note he’d sent me. The first letter on the left-hand edge of each line, when read vertically, spelled out V-A-L-I-S-E-C-A-S-H. I should have spotted it sooner, but Kit’s confession had temporarily blinded me to the peculiarities of David’s note.
House key in hand, I approached the front door, fretting every step of the way that someone else had beaten me to it. A month had passed since David’s unexpected arrest, a whole month when the house had been empty. Anyone could have come in and ransacked the place, and no one would have known.
As secret messages went, David’s wasn’t all that hard to crack, but I reasoned that he’d been forced to write in haste, without time to develop some unbreakable spymaster’s code – and even if he had, I wouldn’t have known to look for it or how to decipher it. The guards routinely read outgoing mail, and I knew Allenby had read it as well. If David had trusted Allenby, he’d have given him the message verbally, but he obviously did not. He trusted no one but me, and I’d not let him down. All I could do was hope no one else had caught his meaning and cleaned out the hidden cash last night.
The modest – for that neighborhood – three-level house with its red tile roof clung to the hillside like a white stucco waterfall. I let myself in the front door. It had always seemed so cheerful when David was there; now my footsteps echoed eerily on the polished wood floor. The rooms had that empty, stale smell that signaled abandonment, and a layer of dust covered the polished furniture. David had been arrested without warning, meaning he hadn’t had the chance to close up the house properly. Someone – Allenby’s secretary, presumably – had removed the food from the icebox and emptied the drip pan, so no odor of rotting meat assaulted me as I entered.
Where would a man stash his luggage? I opened the small closet by the front door first, but it held nothing but a few coats. I climbed the stairs to the top story and looked in the closets in each of the three bedrooms. No results. In David’s room, the unmade bed with its tangled snow-white sheets conjured up vivid images of frolic and laughter from the last night I’d slept there. A whole month ago! Distracted by the memories, I backed out of the bedroom and went down to the lowest level, where I had been but once, to search the maid’s room closet and the storage room beside it. David had no live-in servant, but fancy houses like t
his one were built with such expectations.
Eureka! A trunk, two suitcases, and a grip. One by one, I pulled them out and opened the clasps. I made sure to root around in the linings, in case he’d stuck some hundred-dollar bills beneath the fabric, but there was nothing. I rapped my knuckles on every inside surface in case there was a false wall built into the case. The largest valise felt heavier than the rest. It was locked, which gave me hope that I’d hit pay dirt. It took me some minutes to find a suitable tool in a kitchen drawer and another few minutes to pick the cheap lock. Heart pounding, I opened the lid, only to find some old clothes. Thinking he might have stashed a roll of bills inside a pocket, I turned every one inside out. Empty.
Undaunted, I ransacked every nook and cranny of the lower level. It didn’t take long. There was no more luggage or bags of any description to be found. I returned to the main level and conducted a thorough search of kitchen cabinets, a narrow broom closet, and the cupboard in the den, to no avail. David had lived here only a few months, and he wasn’t a pack rat. A typical man – he needed very little, and he owned very little. There were not that many places one could hide something as large as a valise.
I had already examined the bedroom closets, but it now occurred to me there might be an attic with a ceiling opening. I went back upstairs and looked up at every hall and room ceiling. I spied cobwebs but no attic door. Nor did the house have any storage closets tucked into the eaves. There was no garage and no outdoor shed. And two of the bedrooms were entirely empty of furniture. I checked their closets. Nothing.