“Oh you would, would you? You and hundreds of others, girlie.” He didn’t even turn to look at her. Instead, he kept his focus fixed on the catwalk. “Louie! A little lower! Any experience?”
His inattention disconcerted her, but she tried to sound confident.
“Sure and I’ve been singin’ me whole life.”
“Jeez.” He sounded disgusted. “How green can you be? I mean, onstage.”
Tara was crestfallen. This would be the end of her. “No.”
Glass finally tore his attention away from the stage lights and looked at her. His gaze was frankly admiring. “Well you sure got the looks kid, but you’re too honest. Next time somebody asks, tell ’em, ‘sure, I’ve got lots of experience.’ Make something up if you have to. Give ’em the names of theaters in Hoboken or Omaha if you have to, but never, ever, never say, ‘no’.”
“But it would be a lie!”
He shrugged. “That’s show business, kid. You got no experience, they’ll show you the door. Faster than you can sneeze.”
Heartbroken, she started to walk off the stage.
“So sing.”
“What?”
“You said you’re a singer, so sing.”
Tara, confused, looked uncertainly toward her friends. “Now? Right here?”
“Whaddaya think, I got time to throw a spotlight on you and take a seat out front? You wanna sing, sing.”
Tara hiccupped nervously and started singing the first song that popped into her head. It was an old folk song from back home.
Twas early in June I first spied the lad
who through so many years had made my heart glad
I met him on market-day and there we did court—
She’d only gotten through the first three lines when Glass said abruptly, “That’s enough.”
She was too surprised to protest.
“I’ll put you on the bill for one night. Audition night. Thursday nights, we try out all the schmoes who think they wanna be in vaudeville. Most of them have no business bein’ on a stage, so they flop. Even those that have talent have to have something extra—something that really grabs the audience. If they don’t, they flop, too. Be here at eight. And make sure you wear something a little flashier than what you got on.”
She looked down at her plain gray dress and scuffed high-button shoes and saw his point.
“Some rouge wouldn’t hurt, either. You’re pretty enough. Use your looks.” He turned his back on her and yelled again at the hapless light-adjuster. “Louie, you idiot! That’s the wrong angle!”
“Oh, thank you, thank you Mr. Glass!” She almost wanted to kiss him, she was so grateful.
“Don’t thank me, kid. The jokers who show up at audition night are one rough audience, like sharks who smell blood. If you don’t knock ’em dead with your singing, you’re out the door.”
Faster than I can sneeze, Tara thought to herself.
Chapter Ten
With only three days to prepare, Tara swung into action. The very next day she parted with some of her savings to buy sheet music for “Little Lou-Lou,” an amusing, nonsensical song about a girl who flirts with a milkman, along with the music for a tender ballad of unrequited love entitled, “Does He Ever Think of Me?” These she took with her to work and kept hidden beneath the fabric at her machine, surreptitiously learning them while sewing, thankful for the sight-reading lessons she’d had with Mrs. O’Shaughnessy.
Hap proved to be an unexpected ally in learning the songs. After hearing of Tara’s upcoming audition, he lifted the dusty lid of an upright piano in his parlor and played the arrangements for Tara to practice to, squinting at the music in front of him and frowning fiercely in concentration the entire time. He was probably a better mechanic than pianist. His large-knuckled fingers hit more than a few wrong notes and he demonstrated a sledgehammer-like subtlety with tempo, pounding relentlessly on the keys with the same heavy beat no matter which of the two songs he was playing, but Tara was happy to have his assistance. It was ever so helpful to rehearse to music.
But what about a dress? Tara could hardly wear one of her drab, lifeless workaday outfits to the audition. She was near despair as she surveyed her choices: a few worn blouses, a coarse brown skirt, the gray dress which Mr. Glass hadn’t thought “showy” enough, a pair of scuffed high-button shoes. These items no more belonged in the magical, thrilling, sequined, larger-than-life world of vaudeville than…than she herself did? Even if she had the time to shop for a suitable dress, she’d no money for one.
It was Kathleen who came to the rescue, pounding frantically on Tara’s door one night and throwing it open dramatically before Tara could even answer it.
“I’ve the perfect dress for you! Here—try this on!”
The shimmery bundle of midnight-blue satin she tossed onto the bed did, indeed, look like the perfect dress. Excited, Tara quickly slipped out of her own dress and into the blue one.
“Me cousin Margaret gave it to me, because she got too fat to fit into it and didn’t want it to go to waste. Do you remember me mentionin’ Margaret? She’s a maid in a mansion, and the lady of the house sometimes gives her her castoff clothes. Which was grand, of course, before Margaret took to eatin’ all of the leftover pastries and tarts in the kitchen. She grew plump as a piggy, don’t you know.”
“Kathleen!” Tara scolded. “That’s your cousin you’re talking so awful about. Would you do up the stays in the back? I can’t reach them.”
“Oh, Margaret wouldn’t mind about me callin’ her fat. She says the same herself. There. All done.”
Tara turned around to face her.
“Oh, Tara! It’s so becomin’ on you. Just grand, it is. And it fits you better than it does me, because you’re taller. I get a little swallowed up in it, but you look like a princess, that’s all there is to it.”
Tara studied herself in the mirror on the wall. The close-fitting bodice of the satin dress was trimmed with tiny bugle-shaped crystals that caught the light and reflected it as she turned this way and that, sparkling and rippling like moonlight on a moving river. Crystals also twinkled from the graceful folds of the skirt, tracing a spidery design from the gently gathered waist to the scalloped hem. The mirror showed her a stranger, a girl she hardly remembered. The shapeless skirts and blouses she wore every day didn’t show her slender, well-proportioned figure to advantage as this gown did. Just as a scarlet frock had more than a year ago, this dress freed a stunning young woman who’d been cloaked like a cocoon in dull wrappings. The girl who looked at her from the mirror-world was confident and poised. The short sleeves on the satin gown left her long, white arms bare; she extended them in a dancer’s pose, forgetting, for the moment, that Kathleen was still watching her.
In this dress, Tara knew, she could stand onstage with assurance. She was overwhelmed at the kindness of her friend.
“Kathleen,” she said tearfully. “You’ve no idea what you’ve done for me. In this dress, I… I…”
“You’ll thank me by doin’ well at the audition.” Kathleen clapped her hand to her forehead with a loud smack. “Heavens! I nearly forgot. Margaret gave me shoes to match. I do hope they fit you.”
She was back again quickly with a pair of midnight blue satin slippers that were only a little too large for Tara. She stuffed a bit of tissue into the toes and they fit just fine.
Tara sang on her way to and from work and—under her breath—at her sewing machine, after dinner with Hap at the piano and in her dreams at night. Still, she fretted that there was so little time to prepare. She tried to caution herself against hoping too much. She might fail miserably, and have to reconcile herself to sewing seams in cheap dresses for other women to wear for the rest of her life. It wasn’t good for her to make this one event so important to her. Disappointment, if it came, would be all the harder to bear.
Lotte and Kathleen promised to be there for audition night. Even Hap and Delores, who rarely ventured out of an evening, were looking forward t
o it. Hap surprised them all by producing a 1910 Stanley Steamer which he’d been storing in a friend’s warehouse. Tara’s mounting nervousness over the audition eclipsed any enthusiasm she might have felt over her first ride in an automobile. Like the few other horseless carriages she’d seen, this one was open on all sides to the weather. Delores, surprisingly, was tickled by Hap’s automotive preparations. “He’s been so…aimless…for such a long time,” she confided to Tara. “It’s good to see him take an interest in things. And it’s all because of you, Tara. We don’t have much excitement around here, normally.”
It was grand to have such kind people around her, when she needed it most, but maybe it would have been better for her to go alone, to fail or succeed in front of strangers only. There was something to be said for having no witnesses.
Ah, well. It was too late for that, she knew. The plans were laid. Oh, how she hoped she wouldn’t let her friends down!
There was only one thing she could wish for: that Reece would be in the audience Thursday night. Maybe if he could hear her sing, just once, he’d see right through to the heart of her, would know that she was more than just a wretched, ignorant immigrant girl who worked in a dress factory. The flame that fueled her dreams and ambitions could burn also for him, if only he could see that.
But it was not to be. Wednesday night at dinner she asked after Reece, in as nonchalant a tone as she could manage.
“Reece? Why, he’s in Italy right now.” Hap helped himself to some of Delores’ corn bread.
Tara was surprised. “Italy?”
“They’re building—if one can believe the rumors—a damned big airplane. Bigger than anything in the air right now, anyhow. Reece got himself hired onto the design team. I get the impression his fiancée’s in a tizzy about it,” Hap added. “Wants him to stop gallivantin’ around and set a date for the wedding.”
“It’s not been set yet?” Was she being absurd, to feel a small glimmer of hope at this detail?
Delores joined in the conversation. “Reece is a hard man to pin down. He enjoyed his bachelorhood for years, steppin’ out with any number of fine young ladies that were clamoring for his attention. Of course,” she added hastily, “he doesn’t do that anymore.”
Hap chortled. “He sure doesn’t. Miriam Sedgewell sees to that. She’s got him roped and hog-tied. Now she’s just waiting to put her brand on him. Gonna burn it right into his hide, soon as she can get him to walk down the aisle.”
“Reece doesn’t…seem the type,” Tara said carefully. She wanted badly to hear more about Reece, even though every tidbit of information brought a fresh wave of pain to her.
“I wouldn’t a thought so,” Hap agreed. “Maybe he’s trying to get back in his daddy’s good graces. They had quite a falling out, the way I hear it. It might not be a coincidence that Miriam Sedgewell’s father owns some big timber interests in New England.”
“And Reece’s family has a lumber mill.” The cynical reality of it took Tara by surprise.
“Sounds like a marriage made in heaven, doesn’t it?”
Delores patted Hap on the arm and chided him. “Now Hap, you’re making this far too complicated. You’ve seen them together. They look like two people in love to me.”
“Maybe,” Hap said stubbornly. “Maybe not. All I know is, Miriam Sedgewell is not the type of gal to marry a man with no prospects—which is what Reece is right now. She wouldn’t be prepared to tie the knot with him unless she was expecting to share in the Waldron fortune.”
Kathleen’s face registered disbelief. “You mean Reece would marry a woman just to get his father’s money? He doesn’t seem like that kind of man at all to me.”
Hap shook his head. “Me, neither. Not really. But Reece wants to design and build airplanes, and that takes capital, and lots of it. The kind of money his father has.”
Delores shushed them all firmly. “Good heavens! If we gossip this way about a good friend like Reece, think how badly we’d talk about someone we didn’t like.”
“I just want to see what’s best for him. And Miriam Sedgewell ain’t it.” And that was Hap’s last word on the subject.
It was not surprising that Hap was so in the dark about his friend’s motives, Tara thought. Men didn’t talk to each other the same way women did.
She didn’t know which possibility bothered her more—that it was true love between Reece and Miss Sedgewell—as Delores suggested—or that it was a business merger, as Hap maintained. Both existed in a realm beyond her ken. Love between a man and a woman was something she’d only wondered about, like a child with her face pressed against the windows of a store, able to see the shiny new toys inside but knowing they were not hers. Even silly, good-natured Kathleen, who usually couldn’t see beyond the end of her nose, was better off than Tara. She had James. He existed, had substance, came calling for her and took her on outings where, Tara imagined, he pretended to listen as she prattled on and on. One Sunday he even brought Kathleen a nosegay of violets. Despite those improbable ears, inside that thin man lurked a dash of tender romance.
Of the other possibility Tara was equally in the dark. The rich did things differently, and for different reasons, than everybody else. As comfortable as Reece was at the boarding house or strolling down Hester Street, he would always inhabit a different level of society than hers. To pretend otherwise would be madness.
But for one night, at least, he’d held her, and stroked her hair, and made her feel cared for. She would have to content herself with that memory.
• • •
“GET OFFA THE STAGE!”
“GO BACK TO IOWA!”
The quaking comedian who stood center stage tried one joke after another, but it was an act of futility. The audience decided during the first two minutes of his routine that they had no use for him, and so began the merciless barrage of shouted insults.
“…and so the angry father said, ‘You’re an idiot.’ ‘I know,’ said the young man. ‘But I don’t suppose you’d mind having another one in the family’.”
The poor man mopped his brow with a red-and-white polka-dotted handkerchief and waited for a reaction. A few people tittered halfheartedly. The rest jeered and hurled ridicule at him. Some hurled worse. An overripe tomato whizzed past him and struck the curtains with a muffled thump. The next one found its intended target, landing above his left eyebrow with a wet-sounding splat.
Now the audience laughed. They roared, in fact. Tara, from her waiting place in the wings, observed the audience’s mean-spirited merriment with horror as the would-be comedian was escorted from the stage, stumbling as he tried to wipe tomato juice from his eyes. These were not the same polite people who’d attended the vaudeville show she’d seen. Far from being an exaggeration—as she’d thought—Mr. Glass’ description of an audition night audience now struck her as brutally accurate. Every timid vaudeville aspirant who stepped out in front of them was fair game for their barbs and vegetables.
She should just leave now. What kind of insanity compelled her to hold herself up for this kind of ridicule? No one was forcing her to do it. And besides, everything was wrong. The songs she’d selected really weren’t in her range. Her throat didn’t feel clear. Was that a cold coming on? Maybe the conductor would misplace the sheet music she’d given him and she’d have an excuse for not going on. She felt absurdly overdressed in the midnight-blue satin gown. They’d realize that she was a fraud, a mere working girl in a borrowed dress. The shoes felt large on her even with tissue stuffed into the toes. Surely she’d trip and go sprawling, as soon as she took her first step onto the stage.
Two black-haired girls who gamboled clumsily through a song and dance act fared little better than the lisping comedian. The next three acts were shot down viciously, like unarmed peasants who’d wandered clumsily into the path of some savage, advancing army.
And then it was Tara’s turn. She’d lost her chance to flee.
How could she feel this nauseated when she hadn’t even eate
n dinner? Her stomach lurched and did a half-double wagon wheel of its own. A sickly chill circulated through her arms and torso. She knew that if she raised her hand at that moment, it would shake uncontrollably.
The unruly audience was still making noise when Tara walked slowly to center stage and stood in a spotlight. She swallowed convulsively and cleared her throat, knowing that if she attempted a smile they’d see how badly her lips were trembling. She waited a moment for them to quiet down, then nodded stiffly to the orchestra leader. He tapped his baton on the wooden music stand in front of him and lifted his arms, leading his musicians into the opening bars of the song.
Tara started singing, but the tremulous, pathetic croaking she heard didn’t sound like her voice at all. It was thin and quavery, lacking the power that controlled breathing—the technique she’d practiced for hours and hours with Mrs. O’Shaughnessy—would have given her. It could not be summoned now. She felt as if invisible hands were gripping her throat, slowly strangling her. Each note was a struggle, each line of the song like falling deeper into a dark abyss.
Little Lou-Lou said, leave an extra pint
when you come again tomorrow…
The audience was brutal. “GO ON HOME TO YOUR HUSBAND, SWEETHEART!”
“I BET YOU GOT OTHER TALENTS BESIDES SINGIN’!”
Someone in the balcony laughed, a few others hissed. Tara bowed her head in defeat and hoped she could make it to the wings before the tears came. She’d not give them that satisfaction. The walk to the wings felt a thousand miles long.
“Sing, Tara!” Was that Lotte’s usually demure voice, shouting from the back of the house? It couldn’t be quiet Lotte, could it?
“Sing, Tara!” That was definitely Hap. There was no mistaking his raspy bellow.
Tara stopped dead in her tracks. In an instant of suspended time, dozens of thoughts and images raced through her mind. The wrinkled, patient face of Mrs. O’Shaughnessy flickered and was gone, but not before smiling encouragement to her from an ocean away. The memory of Molly’s somber brown eyes, fixed on her as she sang, was replaced by that of her parents, still alive in her heart, and the utter conviction that they dearly wanted the best for her. A lifeboat full of weary, demoralized people was adrift in the distant reaches of her mind. She thought of the Titanic, and Padraig. She’d been through much worse than this, and had survived. What was singin’ a ditty on a stage, compared to what she’d already endured?
A Song Across the Sea Page 13