“Lower your voice,” Cora whispered. The theater’s big foyer was crowded with men and women talking in little groups. A sign gave directions to the Men’s Smoking Lounge, but many of the women were smoking as well, and, from what Cora could see, neither gender seemed interested in separation.
“Mark my words,” Louise said, with only a slight decrease in volume. “When I’m on stage, I won’t smile just because someone tells me to. I’ll only smile when it’s real.”
Cora sighed, looking up at the foyer’s glass-dome ceiling. Every inch of the New Amsterdam’s interior was ornate, with swirling vines and flowers and birds carved into the walls, and matching patterns on the green and mauve carpets. In her opinion, just being in such a beautiful space, not to mention feeling the ice-cooled air blown in by electric fans, was worth the price of admission. All of it had cheered her spirits, taking her mind, at least temporarily, off of her quick defeat by Sister Delores. She’d had to pull herself together before collecting Louise, who apparently wasn’t as good at detecting a forced gaiety as she thought. Either that, or Cora was a better actress than the chorus girls.
And now, truthfully, she was enjoying the show, and grateful for all its distractions. She couldn’t wait to tell the boys and Alan that she’d gone to the Ziegfeld Follies and seen Will Rogers in person, not to mention funny Fanny Brice doing an impersonation of a ballerina. Cora thought the chorus girls were beautiful, though she didn’t see why, even in the number where each girl was supposed to be a different flower in a wedding wreath, they had to wear such immodest costumes, with nothing at all covering their legs and the midriffs showing on some. She would have preferred it if the chorus girls had taken off their elaborate, feathered headwear and used it to cover their thighs.
She turned to Louise. “How could you possibly tell if their smiles were fake? We’re in the back row of the mezzanine.”
“I could tell. They were that fake.”
Staring out into the crowd, Louise pulled her necklace up to her mouth, moving a bead in between her lips. Cora touched the girl’s hand and shook her head. It was hard to know when she was just trying to provoke or get attention, and when she just wasn’t thinking. Tonight, she was wearing a sleeveless dress as black as her hair, and when she wasn’t gumming her jewelry, she looked more sophisticated than any older woman in the room.
“I thought you loved theater,” Cora said. “Don’t stage people have to fake emotions all the time? Isn’t that their job?”
Louise winced before looking up at Cora as if she were the most tiresome idiot on the planet. Even with the blunt bangs, she could resemble Myra so much.
“Acting is not fakery, Cora. At least not good acting.” She shook her head, clearly disgusted. “A real actress, a real artist, feels whatever emotion she’s showing. You just saw Fanny Brice’s performance. You’re telling me that you can’t tell the difference between her expressions and those idiotic chorus girls’?”
“Fanny Brice is just being funny.”
“She’s a genius.”
Ah, Cora thought, smiling a little. Someone actually had the girl’s approval. Louise also admired her mother, of course, as well as the older girl named Martha at Denishawn who Louise said was the best dancer she’d ever seen. So it was a club of only three. Everyone else, as far as Cora could tell, only earned the girl’s scorn.
A silver-haired man in a dark suit walked by them, openly staring at Louise. Louise stared back, dark eyes gleaming, before turning to Cora.
“It’s an elegant crowd, isn’t it?”
Cora nodded. She had just been thinking how strange it was that this theater full of women in beaded dresses and silk gowns, so many with long strands of pearls or steel-cut beads, a few holding cigarettes in holders out for men in suits to light, was just some thirty blocks from the neighborhood by the orphanage. It was hard to fathom that they belonged to the same city, the same side of Manhattan, even. There might as well have been an ocean in between.
“You do think the crowd is elegant?” Louise looked at her, waiting.
“Certainly.” Cora glanced back at her, suspicious. It wasn’t like Louise to solicit her opinion on anything.
“Hmm.” Louise smiled, fingering the beads again. “You’ll notice many of the women are wearing paint.”
Cora rolled her lips in. So there was the trap. Before they left the apartment that evening, they’d had an argument over whether or not Louise could wear rouge and lipstick out to the theater. Cora had held firm, and made Louise wash her face clean. She had not believed the girl’s protests that Myra regularly allowed her to paint her face like a harlot. As far as Cora knew, obviously painted cheeks and lips marked women of a certain profession.
Looking around her now, however, she saw that many, if not most, of the women in attendance had unabashedly shadowed their eyelids and lined their eyes, and reddened and glossed their lips. More than a few wore skirts that just grazed their knees. Of course, compared to the very painted and nearly naked Ziegfeld girls that they had all just applauded and paid to see, the women in the foyer looked like nuns. None of it would have been conceivable when Cora was Louise’s age. Maybe Louise was right. Maybe the old rules were changing. Cora caught sight of herself in a gold-framed mirror: her long, high-collared dress, her pinned hair, her unpainted face. When she’d left the apartment, she’d thought she looked nice, wearing her good rose gown with the sash that made her waist look small, or smaller. But none of the younger women in the foyer wore a skirt as long as hers, and none had a collar as high.
Maybe she was falling behind the times, as provincial and outmoded in her thinking as in her dress. Maybe she was like the old women who had told her generation that they were behaving unnaturally, bothering legislators and asking strangers in the street to sign petitions, trying to get the vote.
Yet Cora couldn’t believe all standards were truly so ephemeral. And how far would these new fashions go? Where would it end? Would women be expected, in a few more years, to walk around with their thighs and midriffs showing or risk being called a prude? Or maybe women wouldn’t be clothed at all? They would just wear makeup and underwear. All for the sake of being modern? How would you tell if a particular woman was of a certain profession if all women started dressing the part?
She turned to Louise, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Even if wearing paint is more common now, I still think it looks tawdry. And many people agree.”
“You just said they looked ele—”
“By elegant I meant wealthy. But wealthy or not, obvious paint makes a woman look desperate. Everyone knows that. A woman wearing rouge might as well put a sign around her saying, ‘Hello. I’m really trying to be attractive.’”
“What’s wrong with trying to look pretty?”
“It’s not about trying to look pretty, Louise. You look perfectly pretty right now, a soap-and-water girl, fresh-faced. You’re prettier than any of them.”
“I know that.”
“I mean the paint. Women wearing that much paint just look…” She glanced over each of her shoulders. “Available.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
Cora looked away. She would not be roped into another ridiculous argument over something so obvious. Louise just liked to fight, to bounce back every answer like a ball off a stoop. Cora wished she could take the girl down to Fifteenth Street and let her go head-to-head with Sister Delores to see who would get the last word. She didn’t think Louise would make any more headway than she had, but just imagining the two forces in full combat was entertaining.
“I wish we had better seats,” Louise said.
Cora turned back to her, grateful. It wasn’t much of an olive branch, but she had at least tried a subject they could agree on.
“I do, too. My neck hurts from trying to see around that balcony support. We’ll get tickets earlier from now on.” She’d had no idea the show would be nearly sold out on a weeknight, especially in such a big theater. “I saw a few empty se
ats that were closer. We could try to move up.”
Louise wrinkled her nose. “How will we know if the seat belongs to someone just getting back late? People could come back for their seats after the show is started, and we’ll have to move. How embarrassing.” She scowled out at the crowd. “I have a better idea. I’ll be right back.”
She was already walking away. Cora had to pull her back by her elbow.
“Where are you going?”
She looked down, clearly offended, at Cora’s hand on her elbow. Cora didn’t let go.
“I’m going to talk to an usher.” She lowered her voice to a hostile whisper. “Cora, it’s true he’ll likely be male. But neither of your prior objections to me talking with a man holds up in this case. One, we aren’t in Wichita, nor are we surrounded by Wichitans. We are surrounded by strangers who cannot affect my reputation back home. Two, we are in a crowded foyer of a theater, and you, my watchful chaperone, will only be about twenty feet away, making it difficult, even for me, to be assaulted.”
With that, she twisted her arm so her elbow moved out of Cora’s hand. “Give me three minutes.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “If you do, it won’t work as well.”
From where Cora stood, she could see two ushers, each man standing by an exit. They wore the same light gray coats and white shirts and black ties. Both men, oddly, were tall and very thin, though one didn’t look much older than Louise, and the other was at least Cora’s age. Louise stood between them for a moment, looking at one, and then the other, before she made her way through the crowd to the older man. When she reached him, she kept her hands laced behind her back, twisting her body back and forth a little. Cora watched as the man leaned down to better hear her voice. His face was kind, but he shook his head no. Louise gestured toward the auditorium, the same hand then grazing her hair, then touching her bare shoulder. The man touched his ear and shook his head. Louise stood on tiptoe, her heels just leaving the floor, her hand balanced on his arm.
Cora moved as quickly as she could, excusing herself as she cut through the crowd, her gaze angry and hard on the back of the girl’s head. But she was only halfway across the foyer when Louise turned around and pointed her out to the usher. The usher glanced at her, and nodded before smiling back down at Louise. Louise stepped away from him, turning back to Cora with a smile.
She looked like a child. It was something in her face, an easy, naive pleasure in her smile, with no sign of the strong will or cynicism that Cora had come to know in her. It was so strange, the way she seemed to be able to change from younger than she was to older than she was, then back again, with so much ease. Had the usher, with his small authority, brought the little girl out in her? Or had she brought out the look of a girl like a trusted tool before he even spoke a word?
“Louise,” Cora said sharply.
“Cora!” She was still smiling, but the sharpness returned to her eyes. “So glad you found me.” She looked back over her shoulder and said something to the usher as Cora took her by the arm. “For a minute there I felt like an unleashed dog.”
“Do we need to go home?” Cora hissed, steering her back across the foyer.
“Home?” Louise looked at her with wide eyes. “You mean the apartment? Or are you threatening Kansas again?”
“Stop it.”
“I don’t see why we should consider either.” She leaned in. “Especially because my new friend said when the lights start to flicker, we can follow him to our box seats.”
Cora stopped walking and stared.
“I know.” Louise shrugged. “Certainly not my first choice. Mother says box seats are for people who want to be seen at the theater, not for people who want to see theater. But they’ll be a lot better than the back row of the mezzanine.”
“Louise, did you make some kind of arrangement with that man?”
“Don’t be revolting. I just asked him nicely. That’s all most men really want.”
Cora gave her a wary look. But she wasn’t sure what to do. Really, maybe Louise hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d gotten what she wanted, with no real risk or harm. No sense in faulting her for her confidence and the generosity of ushers. Maybe she, Cora, was the one with the crass mind, an old Mrs. Grundy harping on the young, seeing sin and scandal at every turn.
“You can thank me later,” Louise said, the black eyes gazing up as the lights began to flicker. “Next time, if you want orchestra seating, you might let me wear a little rouge.”
She wasn’t anxious so much as silently frenzied, as if she’d had too much tea, or sugar, her mind alert and focused, even in the midday heat. For almost twenty minutes, she’d been waiting under the shade of a striped awning outside a drugstore. Her watch was back at the apartment, along with her pearl earrings and wedding ring, but if she turned and looked through the window of the drugstore, she could see the clock over the counter, next to a picture of the Holy Virgin and an advertisement for Juicy Fruit gum. She was a block away from the orphanage. In three minutes, she would start walking.
It had rained that morning. She’d used an umbrella when she walked Louise to class, and by the time she returned to the apartment alone, her hair was still more or less dry under her hat, but her curls, enlivened by the humidity, had begun a wild mutiny, with several strands springing free of her hairpins and making her reflection in the bathroom mirror appear, as she saw it, a little deranged. She’d redone her hair, pulling it up into a new and tighter twist, though a few frizzy strands had again broken rank during the miserable subway ride.
She looked back at the drugstore’s clock again. At exactly half past noon, she started walking. She’d thought it all through the night before, lying awake in bed, Louise asleep beside her. If she had miscalculated, if Sister Delores or another nun answered the door, she could say she was missing her parasol, and just wondering if, the other day, she had left it behind. She told herself this, rehearsed saying it, even as she walked down Fifteenth Street, even as she climbed the steps to knock.
The handyman opened the door, wearing the same pair of overalls. Or a different pair. They looked clean.
“I’m sorry,” he said, no sign of friendliness. “The sisters have Mass. Every day at this time.”
She stepped away, and had to turn quickly to check the stairs behind her. He was German. She hadn’t realized before—he’d said so little. But now she was almost certain. During the war, there were vaudeville skits about the Kaiser, usually some jokester with a fake curling mustache, marching around and yelling with an accent until he got a pie in the face.
“Oh,” she said. “May I wait again?”
He nodded.
“Thank you,” she said, her smile as friendly as any Ziegfeld girl’s.
He stepped aside, gesturing into the entry. He was only a little taller than she was, though his shoulders were broad, his forearms thick. She moved past him, waiting as he closed and locked the door. Upstairs, the girls were singing, the piano playing along.
He led her down the hallway, keys jangling from a side loop on the overalls. Her gaze focused on the balding back of his head, the blond hair cut short at the sides.
“It was a nice rain we had this morning, wasn’t it?” she asked. “So refreshing.”
He barely looked over his shoulder, but he nodded. She followed him through the kitchen into the dining room. Three of the long tables were as clean and bare as they’d been the other day, but the table in the far corner was covered by a white oilcloth, and on top of that sat a mahogany box about a foot high, surrounded by tools and screws.
“You would like some water?”
“Oh! Oh yes! Thank you.” She continued to smile. “You were so thoughtful the other day, and today, too, of course. Offering water again, I mean.”
He gave her an odd look before moving back into the kitchen. She touched her hair beneath the brim of her hat. She was talking too quickly, perhaps. Maybe his English wasn�
��t so good. She turned, looking out the cross-barred windows as she unbuttoned her gloves. There was no point in thinking of Alan.
He didn’t always think of her.
“Sorry for the mess,” the German said, handing her the water. “I am working on something.”
“Thank you so much.” She took the glass and walked over to the far table, moving lightly, like Louise, she hoped. She didn’t have to be herself. She could be anyone. She would never see this man again. “Your mess looks interesting. What is it?”
“Well,” he said, following, “it was a radio.”
She looked at the box, which she now saw was missing its front panel, an interior of black wires and clear tubes exposed. The front panel, with one of the glass dials shattered, lay flat on the table. But she recognized it as the same model that Alan had showed her in a hardware store just before she left. He was going to decide between it and another model while she was gone. She would love having a radio, he said. Wichita’s new station was still mostly broadcasting crop prices and weather reports, but they were going to add in more music and lectures, things she would be interested in.
She touched a finger to the shattered dial. “What happened to it?”
“It was going on or coming off a ship. I don’t know which. Someone dropped it, and it broke, and they throw it away.” He stood beside her, looking down at the radio, his arms crossed in front of his chest. “My friend told me, and I went to get it.”
“Oh. Are you good at fixing things?”
“Sometimes.” He looked at her again, his eyes small and green behind the spectacles. She smiled, and with her free hand, touched her shoulder. She had worn her only short-sleeved dress.
“What are you hoping to listen to?”
He gave her another odd look. His thinning hair, she saw, made him look older than he was, at least from far away. He was around her age, with only a few lines around his eyes. “For the girls,” he said, pointing at the ceiling. “For them to listen.”
“That’s so nice of you!”
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