Eleanor straightened like someone had shoved a rod down her spine.
“I am working on something unlike anything we’ve ever seen onstage. Lots of people will hate it. Some people will love it. But it will challenge everything that’s come before.”
“What is it?”
“A new musical,” he said. “With a fully integrated cast.”
She waited. Hadn’t Show Boat had an integrated cast, decades ago?
“Onstage and off,” he said, holding up a finger. She earned a smile, like he knew what she was thinking. “There’s going to be none of the face painting like The Mikado. We’re going to delve much deeper than South Pacific. No silent characters here. It’s going to be a full-blown checkerboard, half black, half white.”
Don was talking about something that had never truly been done before in Broadway musical theater. Even for Eleanor, who was game for anything he wrote, this was scandalous.
“What is it about?”
“That’s the best part. It will be a love story.”
Her cheeks went warm. “Really?”
“A Negro and an Irish girl in Chicago. They meet and fall in love. They sleep together, then elope. It will be called A Tender Thing.”
Eleanor looked down to hide her reaction. Don wanted her to be unfazed by this. But it was shocking. Where she came from, boys and girls didn’t even spend the night together. Getting pregnant out of wedlock could shame a girl’s family for decades. Eleanor had been taught that being fast and easy was as shameful as being a liar—worse, even. All that without adding race into it. Had she even spoken to a black man before? Had she ever had a reason? No. The idea of a girl like her with a man like that, making love to him no less, shuffled something in her. It wasn’t disgust she felt, necessarily, but a slippery, unsure fear. Whites and blacks didn’t mix. But with just a few sentences, Don had thrown a wrench into that. A white girl could sleep with a black man—Eleanor had been foolish to think the idea impossible. It was possible, but not done. She had never considered that before. Eleanor felt unbalanced. She could hardly imagine being nude in front of a man, even Tommy. She tried to imagine reaching that level of intimacy with someone so unlike her.
Don watched her face. Conscious of the heat in her cheeks, Eleanor focused on the sheet music. There were no song titles yet, just notes scratched onto a staff.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“No,” he said. “South Pacific had an interracial couple, but we won’t be doing it like that. This is no wartime infatuation, not a soldier imposing boyish savior ideals onto a Polynesian girl. It’s true love. Passion, sex, desire. It’s people sacrificing everything to build a real life together. And she’s a white woman. The ultimate affront. Her family would never be able to suffer the idea of a Negro in her bed.”
Eleanor’s stomach flipped, and she wasn’t sure if it was in fear or excitement.
“Do you know why I brought you here?”
She’d been so wrapped up in hearing about the musical that she had honestly forgotten to wonder. But with his words, she was slammed by anticipation, excitement, and, the most terrifying, hope.
Don continued. “The main character is named Molly. She’s innocent but strong, a girl who follows her heart but knows the practical way of the world. No drippy thing. A girl who knows when to nurse an animal back to health and when to put it out of its misery.”
Eleanor tucked her hands behind her back, clasped them together until her fingernails dug into her palms.
“The show wouldn’t work if she was too innocent.” Don turned his gaze to the half-finished work on the piano. “We won’t be making her a stereotypical ingénue. The audience needs to feel like Molly is in control, they can trust her to make this work. She’s naïve enough to believe in true love and strong enough to fight for it. Molly’s not sophisticated, but she’s not silly. Even so, society’s reaches are strong.”
He continued to outline the character, the arc of the show. Molly and Luke meet when she gets lost in the wrong neighborhood. It’s love at first sight and he walks her home. At the end, she steals a kiss despite the risk. Soon they’re meeting together, until at the end of act one, Luke crawls through Molly’s window and proposes. She agrees and invites him to spend the night in her bed. The second act opens on a city picnic. The couple tries to elope, but her parents find out. But at the last moment the couple gets away for a happily-ever-after.
Eleanor heard everything he said, but the words slipped over her. As he spoke, she searched for what she wanted to hear, heart beating so hard the blood in her face felt hot. Don began to lose himself in his work, and Eleanor grew impatient. She curled her toes in her shoes to keep from tapping her feet.
“I want you to play Molly.”
She closed her eyes to prevent the tears.
“I saw you at the audition for Charades and I thought, There she is. I prayed you could sing. You could. When you couldn’t sight-read I was crushed. New musicals are a lot of work, throwing songs in last-minute. You were too green. But that evening at the show . . . You were Molly. Sneaking your way in, nervous, foolish but determined. I thought, Green is good, if she’s strong. And you are. You’re perfect. Your voice. Everything, down to your freckles. Your body.”
He slid his eyes over her form as if seeing something being constructed in front of him. Everything that might have once caused her grief—her farm-girl hands, her height, her sturdy shoulders and legs—suddenly seemed new. She was strong, substantial, not something to blow away in the wind. His gaze had transformed her.
“I knew I could make it work. I had to.”
All along, she had been right. Don didn’t want an ingénue. He wanted a woman.
“You like my voice?”
“You have the right sound,” he said. “It’s sturdy yet pretty. Then there’s that roughness, vulnerability. I need to hear you sing the music, but I know it will be right. I’m never wrong about these things.”
“Let me try.”
He hit a chord, startling her, reached onto the back of the piano to riffle the papers. He found what he was looking for: three pages of handwritten music.
“I’ve got about eight songs finished,” he said, “and the musical language of the characters is in my head. This one is new, I wrote it last night. It’s Molly’s duet with Luke when they decide to run away. End of act one.”
Don’s music was never easy to sing, and sight-reading it was even more difficult. He tended to pack lots of words into the musical line and used notes that didn’t commonly follow each other. He liked to surprise the ear.
But when he began to play, Eleanor stilled. It was sweet music. The right-hand notes, legato and simple over a churning bass, seemed to ache. She took a breath. Perhaps it was the confidence he instilled in her, but she followed along. She missed some of the lyrics but filled in with nonsense syllables and never broke the vocal line.
The lyrics were simple, but combined with the deep blue tones of the music, they felt significant. Eleanor responded to the push and pull of the harmonies and felt herself relax into the melody. It was a tonal, lyrical line that spanned over an octave with a dramatic rush that expressed the heated determinacy of Don’s young lovers.
It was like nothing he’d written before. “Morning ’Til Night” was a real love song. None of his previous musicals had them; those songs were always about unrequited love, or desire, or jealousy. Don played Luke’s parts and Eleanor hung back, reading her upcoming lyrics before she breathed and came in again. “Morning ’Til Night” had yearning, had sensuality, warmth, and desire. He had turned into sound the very feelings she had for the theater, for Don. If she hadn’t been singing, she would have blushed. But Eleanor was an artist, and rather than blush, she sang with all the more candid ardor.
“I feel your breath on my cheek / Your hand warm my skin / And I pray all day / Th
at I can be with you again / From night ’til morning / Morning ’til night.”
Her voice was full and available to her, even without a chance to warm up. She felt her sound resonate in her face, her chest, until it was full and clear and—she knew—beautiful and alive.
Chills shook her spine when he hit the last note, the chord different than the one her ear expected and all the more striking.
He looked up at her, and she was surprised to see vulnerability there.
“Well?”
“It’s stunning.”
“It needs work.” Now he could afford to be rough. “As do you. You’re green. That’s good. We don’t want to polish all that away, but you have a lot to learn, and Harry is going to be hard on you.”
Eleanor bit her lip. She thought of Harry Flynn, the coolness of his gaze, the way he’d watched her audition like a scientist waiting for the correct chemical reaction.
“Did he like me?”
“He liked you fine,” Don said, “but he defers to me on certain matters.” He looked at her. “Matters like you.”
Don stood from the piano and walked her out of the room. They passed the living room, where this time she noticed a tank containing a turtle the size of a paperback book.
“That’s Sullivan,” Don said, noticing her gaze.
“As in Gilbert and?”
Don chuckled. “Of course.” He turned to her, the full force of his gaze hitting her. His eyes were pale gray and arresting. “So what do you say? Can you do it?”
Before he got the question out, she accepted. It wasn’t until she was in the cab on the way home, Don’s five-dollar bill in her hand for the fare, that she realized he hadn’t asked would she do it. He’d asked if she was capable.
She decided he would never have to ask that question again.
ACT TWO
Love Songs
Chapter Seven
Eleanor went out to the hallway to call her parents. Whispering—she wasn’t ready to share this news with the apartment girls—she told them what had happened. Her father wanted to know whether she had been alone with Don—“In my day you didn’t invite a girl home unless you were married to her”—while her mother brushed past the acting job in favor of her preferred subject: Tommy.
Eleanor thought about snapping at her parents—she had achieved her dream, after all—but stopped. Was she ready to tell them what the show was about? She thought of saying the words but could barely form them in her mind. Instead, she lied and said she’d purchased a slow cooker with her first paycheck.
After hanging up, she tried Rosie, but she was out. Eleanor dialed Pat, knowing at least he would understand the significance of the news. She expected the conversation to flow like it always did with him but found it awkward to speak over the phone. Pat’s voice was soft, and she often had to ask him to speak up. When she told him the news, she heard him pause, and when he congratulated her, he had tears in his voice.
Eleanor didn’t know what to say; she knew he wouldn’t come to New York to see her perform. She thanked him for pushing her to go. Dishwashing sounds clinked in the background, the sound of a record, and she said goodbye, oddly nervous about the exchange, like she had already left him behind.
In the kitchen, Lisa, the tall girl who’d accompanied Maggie to the audition, draped over the counter and picked her nail polish while Eleanor sniffed the milk. “How many auditions did you go to today?”
Eleanor poured cereal into the bowl. “I couldn’t make it away from the shop.”
Lisa sucked her teeth. “You do know it’s a numbers game? The more you go to, the better your chances.”
There were no clean spoons. Eleanor washed one. “And how many did you go to, Lisa?”
“Six.” She picked up an apple. “And five yesterday. It’s the only way to do it.”
How she wished she could share her news—but not yet. She kept her face blank. “Thanks for the tip.”
“Glad to help.”
She was pouring milk when someone knocked. Lisa opened the door, and judging by the way her voice went up in pitch, it was a man.
Eleanor poked her head around the wall and smiled. Tommy.
He had his hands behind his back. “I have a surprise and couldn’t waste it on the fellas.” He leaned across the threshold and kissed her cheek.
“I have something to tell you, too,” she said. “But what’s the surprise?”
He brought his arms to the front. He had a live lobster in each hand, their claws tied shut.
“What in the world?”
He was laughing, looking both pleased and surprised at his bounty. “The admiral’s pilot took me along today on his flights. We went to Maine. Here you are, my lady—fresh lobster.”
“Holy cow.”
“So? Shall we cook them?”
Lisa shook her head. “I’ll be in my room,” she said, taking her apple with her.
Neither Eleanor nor Tommy had ever made lobster before, but they found a cookbook of Maggie’s and left it open on the counter while Eleanor filled a pot of water and he opened some beers. Though she thought she would burst with her news, she wasn’t sure how to tell him. With Tommy, she felt completely normal in a way she never had before; she’d always been removed from her peers. But with this news, she felt herself separated out once more. Would being on Broadway ruin their dates in the park, when they did nothing but talk and french? Those days felt quotidian now in the face of what she was about to do.
When it came time to kill the lobsters, Tommy plunged them one by one into the pot, manfully holding the lid down as they thrashed inside. He looked at Eleanor, perhaps waiting to receive praise or offer comfort, but found her leaned against the counter, serene.
“You aren’t squeamish?”
“I grew up on a farm.”
The lobsters succumbed to the heat. He approached Eleanor and put his hands on her waist, his lips on her neck. “Practical little thing.”
“Hardly the most romantic compliment.”
He nipped her ear; she shivered. “I like it,” he said. “Sturdy girl.” His hand dropped lower, to the swell of her backside. She was tense, and he left his hand there without a squeeze, waiting until she relaxed in his arms before he felt the shape of her. “I wonder what it would take to rock you,” he whispered. “I wonder if you’d let me.”
She pulled away. “Tommy.”
“I like you so much.”
She hid her face against him. She knew it was naïve, but Tommy’s gentlemanliness had convinced her he didn’t have the same needs that women had always told her in warning tones all men possessed. But after they’d been out a few times, they were kissing and he moved her hand from his arm to his erection. She jerked away, shocked, and by the time she’d gathered herself enough to want to try it again, he had apologized, mistaking her inexperience for modesty. She wanted more, but Tommy thought she was a certain kind of girl. Until recently she’d assumed she was, too.
“It’s okay, Eleanor.” He kissed her forehead. “Are you hungry?”
She nodded, still flustered but happy for the subject change. As many times as they’d fooled around, Eleanor had yet to think about him when she touched herself. Amorphous male images flooded her brain, erotic enough in their distance to help her stroke her body into passion. It was as if now that she had the option of making love to a real man, the reality frightened her so much that she clung harder to the fantasy. Evidence of Tommy’s humanness, from the smell of his sweat to the hairs on his arms, made her nervous. Though she tried to think of him—and she did love the way he touched her—the scene gradually morphed, until she imagined being underneath someone else entirely.
Tommy retrieved a lobster from the pot with tongs, now brilliantly red, and presented it to her with a triumphant smile.
“I was offered a part on Broadway,” Eleanor said.
“So, I’m going to be very busy.”
“We’ll figure it out.” He clinked his beer against hers.
“It won’t be anything like your friends, with the girls who wait for them after their shifts,” she said. “I’ll have a job of my own. A big job.”
“You’ll be on Broadway.” He smiled. “I’m so proud of you. You really did it.”
She looked at the lobster, unsure how to open it. “You know, I always knew I would.”
* * *
There was lots of business to get through before she could begin rehearsing. She met Harry Flynn, who gave her a look of such contempt that she was afraid the role would fall through, before Don mentioned that he looked at everyone that way. Harry encouraged her to find an agent and sent her away with names and business cards. Then she was measured for a costume. It would be a long process of rehearsals in New York so Don could finish writing A Tender Thing, then a run in Boston to get out the kinks. They wouldn’t open in New York until March, seven months away.
Over the following week, she didn’t see Tommy at all—she postponed dinner with his parents—but met with five agents. She chose a man named Geoffrey Bennett, who wore a bright green suit and was the only one who didn’t act like she was terribly lucky to be in his office. He looked over her contract, which was valid for the first leg of rehearsals, and noted what they would improve when they signed for the Boston run. After that, she joined Actors’ Equity, the performers’ union. She wouldn’t be allowed in a production of this caliber without joining.
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