“Ziegfeld doesn’t want me.” I saw looks of shock cross their faces. We all thought we were invincible until our time was up.
“How are you ever going to find yourself another fella now, without the allure of the Follies?” Pauline continued in a low whisper, too stunned to hide her horror.
A few girls were stepping away, sorry, I guessed, for having pestered me.
“Everyone knows about what happened with Archie,” Pauline went on. She never did know when to stop. “But I suppose it will blow over eventually. Someone else will come along.”
I shook my head. “Honestly, it’s the last thing on my mind.”
I glanced over to Lillian, and when she caught my eye, she looked away. I wanted to ask her if she’d heard anything from Evelyn from her hometown, but I could already tell from the look on her face that she knew something.
“Is it true, Lillian?” I didn’t want to show my weakness. In fact, I’d told myself I wasn’t going to ask, but I couldn’t help myself, I had to know. “Is it true what the papers said?”
“What do you mean?”
“About Archie, that he’s going back to his former fiancée?”
Everyone went quiet and looked from her to me. It was obvious that they’d already talked about it.
“Go on, Lill,” Gladys said finally. “Tell her what you know.”
“I don’t know much, I only know what Evelyn told me,” she said, shrugging. “She hasn’t been home for a while, alls I know is that they’re getting married. The wedding is back on. They’re having a Christmas wedding or something like that. At his mother’s house.”
Her cheeks turned pink—she was embarrassed for me, and it felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach all over again. Though I’d read it in the papers with my very own eyes, I couldn’t stand hearing from Lillian that it was true. I tried to take a deep breath, but it felt as though someone were wringing out my insides.
“He has every right to move on,” I managed to say as I pushed through the circle they’d formed around me in the kitchen.
Ruthie stood rocking the baby in the bassinet; he was cooing and she was smiling down at him, but when I reached her, she looked up with concern.
“I have to get to work,” I said.
“So soon?”
“Sorry, I…”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s a tough crowd,” she added, nodding toward the kitchen, where we could hear them whispering. “Come back again when it’s just you and me, and we can talk.”
I hurried out of there even though it was only five o’clock and I wasn’t expected to show up at the club until eleven. The hours in front of me seemed terribly long. All I could think to do was find myself a stiff drink, dull the pain, forget what I’d heard. Maybe I should just head down to the Village; I could kill a few hours at Chumley’s. I knew I shouldn’t, but I didn’t know what else to do to calm my mind. How could he marry that woman, how could he move on so quickly and simply forget about me?
It didn’t feel as if I had a choice any longer: going to Europe might be the best thing, the only thing, left for me to do—Archie was getting married. Nobody wanted me here, not Ziegfeld, not my parents. Addie was too little to guess who I was, who I could be, and they weren’t letting me change that.
And yet, while performing with a world-renowned opera singer could potentially open doors to an entirely new level of artistic achievement, while earning money doing what I had somehow believed I was born to do, it all felt so daunting. How could I leave Manhattan now, knowing that Addie was just a few miles away, my own daughter? She might not know me as her mother, but might there be something I could do, some way to change that awful reality, despite my parents? At the very least, I would be close to her. And I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving for Europe without seeing Archie again. By the time I returned, he’d be married.
“Excuse me, miss,” said a man, bumping into me as he hurried past.
I’d been standing at the street corner, paralyzed by indecision, only dimly aware of my surroundings. My mind raced. Being close, was that enough if I couldn’t see Addie? With Archie gone? The cards were stacked against me here, now. I needed to think boldly, but not impetuously, think ahead for once in my life.
If I made money in Europe and was successful, then maybe I could return to New York able to afford a proper place to live. It might be my only chance to show that I was fit to take care of a child. An opera singer was not a chorus girl. I crossed the street, walking absently with the flow of people on the sidewalk, not knowing where I was going. I went down several more blocks, thinking one thing, then turning it on its head, feeling a glimmer of hope in one instant, feeling useless the next.
One thing I knew: I couldn’t keep falling back on the hooch to quiet the constant questions in my head, to dull the pain of all these feelings. Instead of walking into a speakeasy, I headed in the direction of Saint Agnes. I was certainly no churchgoer, but I was desperate. Maybe just being in the presence of nuns would give me the grace I needed. Dinnertime was approaching, and it wouldn’t kill me to make more of an effort with some of the girls there. A distraction, maybe, and at least they didn’t know anything about me or my past.
I sat down at the dinner table, a little sheepish for not being more sociable until now, but the girls from my floor made a space for me.
“Come and sit with us, Olive,” Betty said.
“Are you coming from work?” Helen asked.
“No, just back from visiting a friend. I had some time before my shift tonight, so I thought I’d come down for dinner.”
I helped myself to a plate of boiled chicken and carrots set out in metal dishes on the side table. The last time, the only time, really, that I’d spoken to the other girls, Kay had been about to go on a date with a stockbroker, so I asked her how it went. She laid her head on the back of the chair and smiled, pretending to fan herself.
“Yes, tell us, how did it go?” Betty repeated, laughing. “She hasn’t stopped talking about him since.”
“He took me to the Hotel Lafayette for French food, it was grand! And I’m seeing him again Thursday!”
We laughed at the exaggerated way she swooned about him; she was obviously smitten. The girls at the other end of the table joined in, too. I’d seen them in the halls but didn’t know their names. Once the laughter subsided, one of the girls, freckle faced with ginger hair, still seemed to be chuckling. I looked over to her and realized it might be something else.
“Do you need water?” someone asked. She put one hand to her throat and the other was holding on hard to the edge of the table. Her face was getting pinker and pinker and she didn’t seem to be getting any air in or out.
“She’s choking!” someone yelled. Sister Theresa and Sister Dorothy ran into the room. “Someone help her, she’s choking!”
“Olive,” Sister Dorothy shouted, “you know what to do.”
I immediately stood up from my chair but then froze. I had no idea what to do.
“Olive!” she screamed this time. “Do something!”
“Do what?” I screamed back. The girl was collapsing forward now onto the table, her face turning a darker shade of red. “I don’t know any first aid.”
The nuns ran to her side. Sister Dorothy gave one mighty blow to her back and then another and another, but nothing seemed to be helping. Everyone was crowding around her now, watching helplessly. Sister Theresa pried her mouth open and swabbed around the back of her throat with her fingers. At last a piece of carrot dropped to the table, and the girl gasped for air.
“Thank the Lord,” Sister Theresa cried out, falling back, making the sign of the cross. They got the girl back in her chair and sitting upright. Everyone was fussing over her, getting her water, rubbing her back, but Sister Dorothy had a steely glare for me.
“Olive, in the office in ten minutes,” she said, and walked out of the room.
The girls were turning toward me, wondering, no doubt, why a nurse’s assistan
t couldn’t have done more. I hurried up to my room and packed my belongings back into my trunk—there was no point in prolonging this, and I rushed to get it done. I closed up the trunk with trembling fingers and went downstairs to Sister Dorothy’s office.
“Take a seat, Olive.” There were three older nuns sitting in the room, staring at me gravely, and Sister Theresa squeezed into a corner seat.
“It has come to our attention that you have not been entirely truthful with us.”
“I’m very, very sorry,” I said. I had said that so many times over the past few weeks, and I meant it. They had been nothing but kind.
“Obviously, you do not work as a nurse.”
I shook my head, my eyes glued to the floor.
“And we have just learned,”—she paused to glare at Sister Theresa—“that not last Thursday but the Thursday morning prior, you returned to the house later than usual, after the sun was up, smelling not of hospital disinfectant, but of cheap perfume and alcohol. You do not even work at a hospital, do you, Olive.”
“No,” I said. I couldn’t believe Sister Theresa had spilled on me, but when I looked her way, she was sobbing quietly into her handkerchief. They waited for me to speak again, and the silence was painful. “I’m a show girl.”
One of them gasped. If I hadn’t been in such dire circumstances, I might have laughed. God forbid a show girl was in the house.
“I work at the Three Hundred Club, singing mostly, a little dancing,” I said. “I knew you wouldn’t let me stay if I told you the truth.”
“You’re absolutely right, we wouldn’t have. We do not condone that kind of lewd behavior among the girls who are in residence with us, and we certainly don’t appreciate being lied to,” Sister Dorothy said. “I’m afraid we are going to have to ask you to pack up your things and leave immediately.”
I nodded. I knew they had no other choice than to send me on my way, but the thought of finding another residence, getting whatever reference letters that would require, again, and having to settle into someplace new, at night, all felt overwhelming.
“Is there any other way? Could I make it up to you? Could I at least have a few days to make other arrangements?” I was set to perform at the club in just a few hours; I couldn’t ruin things with Texas, too.
“Rules are rules, Olive. We’ve been accommodating you in good faith. We have to maintain the highest standards, or the rest of the girls will think they can break the rules too. We must ask you to collect your things and leave.”
“All right,” I said, nodding slowly.
“You may make one phone call. And then you must be on your way.”
* * *
I held the receiver to my ear, waiting for the operator to connect me, still unsure of what I was about to say.
“Mother,” I said when I heard her voice, “it’s Olive.”
Silence greeted me on the other end. I waited a moment, hoping she would speak, but she did not. I wished I could tell her everything, how wretched I felt, but she hadn’t even said hello. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her I’d been kicked out of Saint Agnes. How could I possibly drop any lower in her estimation?
“I was thinking, I was thinking, perhaps I could come home.”
There was a sigh. “Why would you do that? We’ve already discussed this. We will take care of the child.”
“But wait, I’m not saying that. I mean, I could come home, to help out with Addie.” Somehow, as I said these words, they made sense to me. Hope sprang up inside me as the words tumbled out. “I would like to. Mother, I’ve been thinking seriously—”
“Oh, Olive. Have you? It’s not a good idea,” she said tightly. “Your father is very angry.”
“Well, maybe it will help if I’m there. I could help smooth things over.”
“You do the very opposite of smoothing things over, Olive.” She was speaking quietly; my father must have been in the next room. “You make a mess of everything.”
“I won’t this time. I promise. It could be good for Addie, if I were there to help.”
“No. It would be very confusing for the girl.”
“I’ll go along with your wishes, I’ll be her cousin, if that’s what you want me to be. I need to know her. Why won’t you let me?”
“Because you can’t be trusted—you proved that in Rockville. And we can’t have your brothers finding out. That’s the last thing we would need. We cannot have this family dragged through the dirt with you revealing your relationship to the child when it pleases you. It’s not fair to the other members of this family.”
“But, Mother—”
“It’s not a good idea, Olive, it will only make things worse. I’m not doing this to punish you, I’m simply trying to do the right thing, and not have our family crumble apart because of it. And let me tell you, things are precarious at the moment, very precarious. Your father is having a very difficult time with the news you sprang on him. And he’s furious with me for lying to him.” She added in a whisper, “He’s barely speaking to me.”
I heard crying in the background.
“Is that her?” I asked, suddenly feeling desperate. “Wait, does she need something?”
“I have to go, Olive,” she said, and the line went dead.
* * *
I showed up at the 300 with everything I owned packed in my trunk. Texas took one look at me and shook her head. She agreed to let me sleep in the dressing room for a few nights but said I’d have to make more permanent arrangements after that.
But I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned all night, thinking of Addie. Her cry at the other end of the phone line stayed with me. I’d heard about women who, after having a child, developed a new instinct when their child was hurt or needed them. They could be fast asleep, and the whimper of their child two bedrooms over would immediately wake them. I didn’t know what it was I had developed since finding out the truth about Addie, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I pictured her eating at the dinner table, chasing the birds, falling asleep as I read to her, but I kept playing those few brief memories over and over in my head. They were all I had, and I yearned for more.
In the morning, I dressed and walked east to Fifth Avenue and West Thirty-eighth Street. The last time I had set foot in Lord & Taylor felt like a lifetime ago, though it was really just before I met Archie. I remembered splurging on the red dress and a few weeks later waiting impatiently for him to call on me so that I could wow him in it. Archie. I bit my lip at the thought of him.
I took the escalator up to the children’s floor and wandered among the dresses, touching the delicate embroidery on the collar of a crisp white frock. I picked up a pale grey wool coat that had a dramatic flare. I imagined Addie putting it on and spinning. A tiny pair of patent-leather Mary Janes caught my eye—I’d had a similar pair as a girl. How was it possible that these past two years had unfolded—my performances, my nights out on the town, my falling in love—all of it transpiring while Addie was living with Aunt May? I should have known, should have been with her, watching her grow.
“Good morning, madam,” the salesgirl said, startling me. “Are you shopping for something in particular? For someone special?”
“No,” I said, suddenly flustered. “Not in particular. But yes, for someone special.”
She looked at me expectantly.
“For my, I’m looking for my—my daughter,” I stammered.
She gave me an uncomfortable smile and nodded. She was sensing something, as if she knew I was a fraud.
“For my daughter,” I tried again. “She’s two.”
“Right this way,” she said, turning to walk to another area. “You’re looking in the wrong section. Age two and up is over here.”
I followed her and glanced back in embarrassment at the clothes I’d been admiring. The shoes and dresses did seem small. My God, I didn’t even know how to buy clothes for a child.
“This is brand new.” She held up a soft knitted cream sweater with lace-trimmed cuf
fs and collar. “And it goes beautifully with this pinafore.” She showed me a black velvet ensemble.
“It’s very pretty,” I said. But would she like it? Did she like to wear sweaters and pinafores? Would she care about her clothes at this age? I had no idea what she liked. The only person who had truly known was Aunt May, and she was gone, and along with her, all the memories of Addie’s first years.
“Do you sell toys?” I asked.
“Toys?”
“Yes, toys, you know—the things children play with?” She was starting to get on my nerves.
“One floor up,” she said, folding the sweater and placing it back on the table and then walking away with a sigh.
Upstairs there were dolls and cars and balls and hoops. A toy train, a pull-along duck, a sheep, a bugle. A building set, wooden blocks, a Tinkertoy set and more dolls—small, medium and large—knitted, molded, with hair, without. I ran my hand along them, waiting for one to call out to me, then I stopped at a white-and-brown rocking horse. Its head was probably taller than Addie. It had real horsehair for its mane and tail, a leather bridle and a saddle, all on a sturdy wooden rocker. I imagined telling her someday about the mare and her foal at the Pines, how the little one had wobbled at first on those spindly little legs, but once she got used to the feel of them under her, she couldn’t stop prancing around. She just needed time to get used to her own strength, to know what she was capable of. I smiled at the thought of it, the thought of all the things Addie had yet to learn.
The size and shape of the thing made it awkward to carry up Fifth Avenue, and I had to stop a few times and set the bulky horse down, shake out my arms and stretch my back. I’d spent every dollar I had in my purse and was left with only a few coins to spare, but it felt good to spend it, and I had a little more that I’d saved tucked away in my trunk. I received some stares as I walked back to the club and offers of help from a few gentlemen.
“I’m fine, thank you,” I said, walking on, struggling, but wanting the struggle, needing it.
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