“The admiral’s pilot let me borrow his car for the weekend,” he said.
Eleanor raised an eyebrow, the door still open between them.
“Well, I’m supposed to be taking care of it while he’s out of town, at least. Have you been to Coney Island yet?”
Tommy drove well, albeit with a lead foot, and was excited to take her to Brooklyn. He looped around the Belt Parkway, taking her to his family’s neighborhood, Bay Ridge. Eleanor had expected something dingy, since Tommy often mentioned how little money his family had, and she’d heard the stories her own family had about Irish immigrants. But when he pulled off onto Bay Ridge Avenue, she encountered a lovely neighborhood, if humble; he drove them past stone houses, pausing for children playing in the street. Some of them stopped and ogled their dark Cadillac.
He turned onto Ovington Avenue and slowed. Eleanor had been wondering if he planned to take her to meet his family and felt herself get very nervous. He idled outside a neat house in the middle of the street, with window boxes filled with bright flowers.
“Is that yours?” Eleanor asked.
“Indeed.”
“All of it?” It was two stories, three windows wide.
“Shucks no. We have the top-floor front apartment. The building houses four families. But Mama does all the windows. The woman downstairs is getting on.”
“That’s nice.”
“They’ll be having Sunday dinner right about now.”
She turned forward, avoiding his eye. When she didn’t respond, he drove on.
* * *
Eleanor had never been to the beach. When they reached the Coney Island shore she found that the salty wind exhilarated her in a natural way. It was too cold to swim, but she dipped in her toes. On an impulse, she reached down and scooped some seawater in her hand, then brought it to her mouth. It tasted wild.
When she looked up, Tommy was grimacing.
“Why did you do that?”
“I wanted to know.”
He then took them to the boardwalk, where they played games and rode the Cyclone, and she ate cotton candy.
“This all new for you, too?”
“Are you kidding?” she asked. “I’m from the Midwest. Land of the state fair.”
They made their way back to the sand. She removed her shoes and dug in her toes. The cold sharpened the brackish smell all around her.
Tommy offered his jacket. She shook her head and he put an arm around her.
“I’m enjoying the air,” she said.
He looked over at the ocean. “I love the sea. I know this isn’t the best place, with the roller coasters and all that. I’ve heard the beaches in California or Mexico can bring a guy to his knees. But even this is beautiful.
“You know, when you cup your hands like this”—he brought his palms around his eyes—“and you block out all the tourists and umbrellas and things, we’re looking at exactly the same thing the Indians used to see. I take the train down here a lot, early in the morning. Watch the storms come in. It’s peaceful.”
Eleanor dug some of the sand up and let it slip through her fingers until it formed a pile in front of her.
“Why did you want to be a pilot then?”
“What I do for a living is just one part of me. If I love to come to the sea on Sundays, it doesn’t mean I have to be there all year round. I also like baseball, and hamburgers, and talking to you.”
“I’ve known exactly what I want to do since the first time I heard a Gershwin record.”
“Nobody knows anything for sure, though, do they?”
There was no way to explain it to him. “Don’t you want things?”
“I want to buy a house someday. With a yard.”
Eleanor went back to digging. “I’m never leaving the city,” she said. “Ever.”
She didn’t look at him. She’d felt pleasure in needling him before. Now she felt clumsy and mean. She dug until she reached wet sand, deep down. It was so cold it hurt her fingers.
“I’m getting hungry,” he said, standing up and brushing sand off his pants. “Shall we?”
Her hands were filthy, and she wiped them on her skirt, feeling childish.
“I have to get home,” she said. “Lines to memorize.”
Tommy was still smiling, but Eleanor sensed that he was upset. That, in turn, bothered her. She didn’t want to hurt Tommy, and moreover, she didn’t want him to be hurt by the things she wanted. But she couldn’t help them. If she looked too hard at his pain, she might start to have regrets. That was not an option.
“Let’s get you home, then,” Tommy said.
* * *
Tommy stayed over that night, then walked her to the studio where they’d rehearse from then on. They stopped on the sidewalk outside the front door. Eleanor saw Don approaching from down the street out of the corner of her eye. Her heart picked up, but she didn’t look at him. She wanted him to see her with a boy.
“Dinner tonight?” Tommy asked.
“I need more time with my lines.”
He stroked her face. “Okay. I can wait.”
Don was closer now; she felt his gaze on her face like a warm light. Tommy grinned, thinking it was his words that had earned her blush.
“Don’t be shy,” he said. “I think we’re past that.” He leaned down and kissed her. Don would see. She angled her face to deepen the kiss as much as was acceptable in public. Tommy laughed, deep in his throat.
“I’ll call you,” she said.
He grinned, that open smile that Eleanor knew girls must love. But her entire body was attuned to Don, who passed them without stopping.
Tommy touched her cheek. “Have a good day. Don’t miss me too much.”
She winked at him, then walked inside. Don was probably up the elevators already. Now that she was away from Tommy, she felt her shoulders drop. Music was already coming from inside the studio. She was ready to sing.
* * *
When she walked inside, Don nodded at her. Eleanor averted her eyes, embarrassed both by what he’d seen and that she was glad he’d seen it. He approached her, coffee in hand.
“I hope you’re more careful in your own building,” he said.
“Sorry?”
“The boy who walked you to rehearsal. I’m assuming you spent the night with him?”
Her cheeks flamed.
“You must have been at your own apartment, or else your clothes would be worn. Landlords here might seem different than your neighbors in the dairy state, but they aren’t far off.” He gave her a look. “And besides, you can’t do the show if you’re knocked up.”
Eleanor stared back at Don. He did not seem scandalized, but every principle with which Eleanor had been brought up taught her she should be ashamed. She felt like a naughty child.
“Don, I—”
Don held up a hand. “Don’t get distracted.”
She swallowed over the lump in her throat, humiliated. Don met her eyes, and she was surprised by the sadness in his expression.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She took her things to the side of the room. Charles came up behind her, setting his bag down next to the mirror. She hadn’t seen him since the first rehearsal and stumbled through a greeting. Had he heard her conversation with Don?
“Are you all right, Eleanor?”
She nodded. He didn’t seem to believe her but smiled and patted the seat beside him.
They kept to small talk: the weather, how far along they were on memorizing their lines. More people entered the room one by one, but Eleanor didn’t know them—were they the rest of the cast? A young white man greeted Don with a handshake. Harry kissed his cheek before he began to stretch beside the mirror. He looked over at Eleanor, and she turned away, too shy to introduce herself.
“He’s the dance captain,”
Charles said, holding a hand up to wave across the room. “Freddie. Incredible mover.”
Harry approached and clapped his hands. “Good, you’re talking. I don’t want to do all the work.” He told them to leave and spend the day getting to know each other.
Eleanor clutched her script to her chest, feeling the need to hide her body. “You don’t want us to rehearse?” She’d been excited to do more work.
“I can’t do anything with you until you’re comfortable together,” he said. “Get out of my sight, and come back friends.”
It was a tall order; Eleanor normally had plenty to say to people, but she was still getting used to Charles—his experience in the theater, his connection to Don, and their impending kisses. But she was grateful for a day off; she didn’t think she could look Don in the face today.
“What about the Met?” Charles asked. It was a stunning September day.
“The opera?”
“No, the museum,” he said. “We can look at the paintings, then walk through the park.”
Since she had no other suggestion, and his saved her from the possibility of staring at him across a dining table, she agreed.
They burned through all the easy questions while riding the subway. How had Charles ended up in show business? He was born in Harlem and was plucked out of a nightclub by a music producer in Tin Pan Alley.
“The last gasp of the renaissance,” he said, “but sometimes producers still go there. The clubs are great. Anyhow, the man wanted me to front a quartet. It wasn’t exactly my style, pop music, but I loved to sing and it sounded great to get paid for it. Don heard the record and liked my sound, and came to the club to watch me sing. That was ten years ago.”
“It must have been incredible, meeting him.”
Charles made a strange face, then shrugged. “He has this way of watching you, do you know what I mean? Like he can see straight to your bones.”
Eleanor nodded. She understood.
“I thought he was crazy, honestly—he followed me, asked me to sing for him, told me he could make me a star. When he didn’t go away, I agreed to give him five minutes. Then he played his music for me.”
He raised his eyebrows. Eleanor knew what it was to hear Don’s music for the first time.
“What about you?” he asked. “How’d you make it? All I hear’s Don plucked you out of an open call.”
“I think I badgered him into it,” she said. Other train passengers stared at the two of them, but Charles either didn’t notice or ignored them. He looked over at her with an easy smile, waiting for the rest of the story. “My audition didn’t get me into the show. It was all I wanted, to be in a Don Mannheim show. When I ran into him at a performance of Charades, I bullied him into taking me seriously.”
“Nobody can make Don do something he doesn’t want to do. You must have been good.”
Good enough at convincing him. Good enough at singing, maybe, but acting? Don hadn’t even asked her to read lines. Her personality had been enough to get her in the door. Who knew if she could follow through? She looked away from Charles, before he could read the anxiety on her face.
“Well, it’s like Molly, isn’t it?” When she spoke, now that she knew the script, she understood what Don had meant. “She did what she felt was right, damn all else.”
“Don is a genius,” Charles said. “He saw something in you. You’re a star now.”
He was right. If Eleanor was going to be a star, she would need to banish this feeling of being an imposter. She tossed her hair, straightened her neck until it was long and ladylike. “No matter how I got it,” she said with as much dignity as she could, “it’s my role now.”
* * *
Eleanor had suspected the museum might be boring—paintings and sculptures lacked the dynamic emotion of music. But the pure grandeur of the museum affected her with its power: an homage to the greatness of New York, art, and people with enough will and money to put it all in one place. As they wandered from exhibit to exhibit, topic to topic, they attracted glances. It was a weekday, so the museum was filled with mothers and children, a school group, retirees, and tourists, many of whom raised their brows at Charles and Eleanor. But no one commented. The public space allowed them privacy in conversation without appearing intimate. Eleanor knew Charles had chosen it for that reason.
Charles had a surprising knowledge of religious portraits. “My mother collects prints of the saints,” he explained.
“So does mine.” The topic of her mother brought a mixture of comfort and disquiet. Eleanor wondered if she’d ever be able to think of her calmly again.
Charles laughed. “My little brother, Davey, broke the one of St. Theresa one day. He had to eat standing up for a week.”
“Your saint day is coming up. November,” Eleanor said.
He looked over at her, impressed.
“In my family, name days are more important than birthdays,” she said. “We keep the calendar on the fridge.” Her name day was August 18; her parents had sent a card, but she had not responded. Even their forgiveness made her feel guilty. She looked at Charles and the feeling intensified.
“You should come with us to church some Sunday,” Charles said. “My mother always cooks a massive feast for after.” Then a strange look crossed his face. “Well, maybe not. I don’t know about you coming all the way up to Harlem.”
“That’s all right.” They had been going along at such a clip; she didn’t want this moment to spoil it. “But thank you for the offer.”
“What about you?” he asked. “I’m married, we covered that. Do you have a sweetheart?”
“I’m seeing someone—he’s a nice enough guy.”
“I don’t know one man who wants his girl to say he’s ‘nice enough.’”
“His name’s Tommy. He’s a yeoman in the navy. He can fly planes.”
Charles whistled. “I always wanted to fly a plane. Is he all right with you doing the show?”
Eleanor clenched her jaw.
Charles looked at her with sympathy. “I’ve been in the business awhile. I’ve seen lots of girls drop out because their men take it hard.”
“He’s the first sweetheart I’ve ever had.”
Charles just nodded.
“Does Gwen ever get jealous? Of the girls in shows?” She realized she was implying there was something to be jealous of and was about to backtrack when Charles shrugged.
“Not especially. I haven’t done a romantic lead before,” he said, “but it’s just acting. Gwen is my wife.”
His tone held a seriousness that made Eleanor feel silly. He sounded grown-up. She thought of Tommy again and the fun they had together, the way it made her feel good to meet a boy after rehearsals, to have someone to kiss. It didn’t seem on the same plane.
* * *
After the museum, they walked through the park. They went to buy frankfurters and endured an awkward moment when the seller ignored them, helping two customers behind them first. Eleanor had to cough, then speak up, before the man served them without apology.
“You must have an interesting social life,” she said when they finally had their food in hand.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re always around . . .”
“White people?”
She blushed, but Charles smiled.
“It’s all right, Eleanor. Sure, I spend a lot of time with white folks. What are you asking?”
There was so much to ask, she wasn’t sure where to start. “Is it different, to be with us?”
“It never really goes away, that feeling of being the only black guy in the room.”
She thought of their rehearsals, where she was the greenest one there. “What do you think of the show, then? Molly, falling in love with Luke. I think it’s so beautiful, that true love would of course see straight through anything. Au
diences always root for love. So they’ll be forced to question what they believe about race.” She crumpled her napkin. “I don’t . . . I don’t think race matters,” she said. She worried Charles might laugh at her, but he didn’t. “Maybe it’s because of where I’m from in Wisconsin. I’m a Catholic, and my mother didn’t want me to talk to the Lutherans. It’s all so silly to me. Consubstantiation and transubstantiation—such silly things to dictate your whole life. So I guess I assumed it was the same, with race.”
His face was gentle, but Eleanor flushed, conscious of the clumsy simplicity of what she’d said. “I think it’s complicated,” he said. “Even if on some level we’re the same, our lives are so different that it doesn’t matter. But somehow, the musical seems to understand that. How different their lives are, but that they see each other despite all that. Don understands that Luke is the one taking the real risk, not Molly.”
She furrowed her brow. It was true; Luke had a song in the second act in which he debates running away with Molly. At the beginning of the song, he weighs sense against love. At the end, Luke realizes that allowing fear to dictate his actions would be locking his own handcuffs. So he chooses Molly, but it’s calculated, and clear how frightened he is.
“That part gives me chills,” Eleanor said.
“I was surprised, you know—a white guy writing this show. But he did a good job.” Charles shrugged. “Some parts are off, but he clearly understands something about it all.”
She was curious and asked, even though she thought it might not be a good idea, “Would you ever date a white woman?”
He waved a hand, showing his ring.
“I don’t mean now,” she said. “In theory.”
They had reached the bottom of the hill, the gate to the zoo.
“I don’t know, Eleanor,” he said. “I guess I’d like to believe it’s possible, but I don’t know.”
It was, she thought, an honest answer.
* * *
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