Strings Attached (11 page)

He took a step toward me, and I was in his arms.

He held me against him. Slowly, our breaths came together. There were nights in his car that I felt this way, so close, heartbeat to heartbeat. “If we could just be together. Really together,” he said. “If I could just have all of you. If I could just bury myself inside you.”

His words were like an electric shock. I felt something drumming inside me. Our mouths crashed together. Hunger, and then falling. Falling. That’s what it felt like as we kissed, and we just held on.

I knew what he meant. There was a certain distance between us, and wasn’t it because he had to pull away? But something always held me back, Delia’s face rising in my mind, and Da’s, disappointment and shame, and that was stronger than desire, stronger than need. It wasn’t so much what the Church had taught me, but what I’d seen around me in Fox Point: girls pregnant, their lives over, every dream now swirling in the dirty wash water, spiraling down the drain. My mother had died because of babies. That made it easier to be good.

I stepped away, breathing hard, conscious of the windows, of Daisy maybe looking out, or the landlady. “I’ll get my suitcase. Let’s get out of here.”

“I’ll get your suitcase.” He smiled, still holding me in the circle of his arms. He reached down to nuzzle my neck, and his breath sent me trembling again.

I put a hand on his chest and pushed him lightly. “It’s in the kitchen. And I left my sweater in the theater last night. I’ll be back in a second.”

I cut through the backyard and down the hill to the theater, the short walk I’d made all summer, in all stages of exhaustion and exhilaration. I was glad to get away for a few moments, glad to feel my heartbeat settle into a more comfortable rhythm. The stage door was open and a few workers were already there, striking the last set. I waved at them and found my sweater, forgotten in a dressing room.

I stood in the wings for a moment. This stage felt like home to me, such a difference from how nervous I’d been when I’d arrived.

I jumped off the stage, walked down the aisle, past the seats, back into the lobby. To my surprise, I saw Jeff Toland there, dressed in a light summer suit and tie.

“Come to say a last good-bye?” he asked.

I held up the sweater. “I left something behind.”

“Accidentally on purpose, maybe.” He smiled. “I like to say a last good-bye, too.” He leaned against the wall, regarding me. “How old are you, eighteen?”

“Almost.”

He smiled slightly, the smile that had made Judy Garland and June Allyson fall for him in the movies. “Think you’ll stick with it?”

“Yes.”

“No matter what?”

“No matter what.”

“No matter what the boyfriend says?” I felt my face redden.

“Yes, I saw him last night. We all did. He was jealous.

Welcome to the theater, baby doll. They always end up jealous.”

“No,” I said. “He wants me to act, to go to New York. He wants what I want.”

“C’mon, I have to go meet my ride. Heading to New York. You?”

“Home. Providence, Rhode Island.”

“Providence, Rhode Island,” he repeated, as though it were a joke.

He opened the door into the bright morning sun. “Maybe I’ll catch you there sometime. I’m in a play this fall and there’ll be tryouts in Boston. Come and see me?”

“I’ll try.”

He leaned over and kissed my cheek. It lasted about half a beat too long — not enough time for me to pull away, but enough time for me to know it was lingering.

“Thanks for the dance, Providence,” he said when it was done.

Billy was out front, and he’d seen the kiss. Jeff looked off balance for only a moment. He smiled at Billy, a practiced, flashing grin, and waggled his fingers in a wave. Then he ambled away, hands in his pockets.

Billy’s face was a mask, set and still.

I tried to smile, and started toward him, knowing the first words out of my mouth would have to be explanation.
I really
did
leave my sweater. I had no idea Jeff would be there.
It all sounded so… weak. I knew what it looked like — that I had made up an excuse to say good-bye to Jeff.

“Hey, I —” I started, but he turned away abruptly.

I watched, my mouth still open, as he jumped back in the car and slammed the door. The motor roared to life. He stepped on the gas and I watched him fishtail out
of the parking lot. I stood, watching the car disappear down the road, too stunned to cry.

Daisy pulled up as I was still standing there wondering what to do. My purse had been in the car, my suitcase, everything except the sweater in my hand.

She tipped her sunglasses down. Even in the middle of my misery, I reminded myself to remember that gesture. She looked so racy and confident.

“Looks like you need a ride after all.”

“Thanks.” I tossed my sweater in the backseat. Daisy headed down the Cape highway, driving fast and expertly, talking the whole time. I let the talk go on. I was thankful not to think.

We were almost at the bridge when I saw something pink suddenly fly by the window. I turned back and saw the scrap of fabric stuck on a bush. Another white blur — a shirt — flew by.

“Son of a gun,” Daisy said. “What’s going on?”

Clothes were flying out of the window of a car up ahead. A multicolored skirt. A pair of blue shorts. A white bra.

They were my clothes. Up ahead, Billy must have been grabbing items from my suitcase and tossing them out the window. I stared as my sleeveless madras shirt got impaled on a bush. A sneaker flew out and bounced on the shoulder.

“Somebody’s going to need a new wardrobe,” Daisy said.

She hadn’t recognized my clothes. I was grateful. I watched it all, the wardrobe I’d saved up for in my job at the luncheonette, the soda I’d wiped up, the rolls I’d sliced, the coffee I’d slopped into cups. Getting up to open the place
at six. Soaking in a tub to get the grease out of my hair and off my skin. All those days and nights. Out the window.

He’d known it, too. He’d known how hard I’d worked. Now something else was flying by, too. Paper, ripped into pieces.

I knew what they were. My head shots. Little pieces of me, all over the road.

Thirteen

 

New York City
November 1950

I said good-bye to Daisy at the door of Bonwit’s and walked quickly crosstown. I had a plan.

It would start with my hair. I kept remembering how Nate had looked at me, how the Lido Dolls all had to have the same hairstyle, the same teeth, the same smiles. The cans of hair spray, the bobby pins scattered on the counter. All it took for us to get our hair to stay up there — our slippery, springing, disobedient hair.

I’d hardly started working there, and already I wanted to shake up the joint. I wanted control of just one small thing.

I ducked into a barbershop nearby, a place I knew from Shirley, who had endlessly debated whether she should get the short haircut we were beginning to see on the fashionable girls, the ones who wore cropped black pants and ballet slippers with their fur coats, and sunglasses even in November.

When I walked out, I had a haircut like a boy, just wisps around my face, and the cold wind on the back of my neck felt like freedom.

 

I slammed through my front door two hours later, pirouetted through the hall, and leaped onto the couch. I bounced three times and then fell on my rear like a kid.

My first callback. And not on a turkey like
That Girl From Scranton!
But for a real show,
A Year of Junes,
with a famous director, an up-and-coming choreographer, and real Broadway stars in the cast.

I’d run almost all the way home. But I’d made sure to stop to buy a postcard of Times Square and a stamp. I’d scrawled
White mink and diamonds!
on the back, and addressed it to the Florence Foster Studio of Dance.

In a few weeks, I could have a part. I could quit the Lido and get away from Nate. I had been there almost three weeks already; I’d have almost three hundred dollars. That was walking-away money. Maybe I could really start again.

With a glance at the clock, I ran for my bedroom. I couldn’t show up at work in dungarees. I was pulling on a dress when the phone rang. I ran for it, hoping it was Billy.

“Good, you didn’t leave yet.”

Nate. I sank to the floor, cradling the receiver against my ear as I pulled on my stockings. “I’m late.”

“I want you to do something for me. Just a little thing.”

“It’s always a little thing.”

There was a pause, and I knew I’d annoyed him. “I can’t get to the club tonight. I want you to tell me if Ray Mirto is there. You remember him?”

“The guy in the red tie.”

“Just give me a call at midnight. You have a pencil? I’ll give you the number.”

I wrote down the number. It was a New York exchange, so Nate was in town. “Why do you want to know?”

“No big reason. I just want to know if he’s around, that’s
all. It will help me out. See who he talks to, if you can. If he’s drinking.”

“What am I, your snitch?”

“Don’t be crazy. It’s just a favor. Come on, you can’t say you don’t owe me a few.”

No, I couldn’t say that. That was the problem with this apartment, with these clothes. With the job. With everything. He had me boxed in, and I hadn’t even seen it coming.

“All right,” I said, and put down the phone.

 

“You cut your hair.” Ted Roper put his hands on his narrow hips.

“We all think it’s darling,” Polly said.

Mickey broke in. “Honey, it suits you.”

“I’m not talking to you,” Ted said to the girls, and they all turned and pretended to powder their faces or reach for a cup of coffee.

He turned back to me. “You’re a Lido Doll. You wear an upsweep. That’s your look. You don’t go cutting your hair without
talking to me
!”

“I didn’t know,” I lied. “It was just an impulse. I’m sorry.”

He nodded slowly, staring at me, as though he was trying to figure me out. “You know, I
can
fire you.”

“I know,” I said. I kept my gaze down.

“Aw, c’mon, Ted,” Mickey said. “We’re not Fords on an assembly line.”

“Yeah,” Darla said. “Why can’t the kid cut her hair if she wants?”

He put up his hands. “No ganging up on the boss.” I was off the hook.

“So what are you waiting for? Get into your costume,” he said. “Full house tonight! They’re carrying in the tables to the front, so watch your step, we’ve got a whole lot less floor out there.”

It was a packed house. We could hear the noise as we gathered our skirts and headed for the wings.

Darla fluffed out my skirt for me as we waited for our cue. “So what did he think?”

“What did who think?”

“Mr. Benedict. About your hair.”

I glanced over my shoulder at her, puzzled. Why should Nate have any say-so about my hair? “He hasn’t seen it yet.”

The band had swung into our cue, and I heard our introduction from Danny, the announcer —
Ladies and gentlemen, the Lido Dolls go to Mardi Gras!
— and I stepped out into the lights.

I knew the routine so well now that it was easy to scan the audience and not miss a step. I didn’t see Ray Mirto. The first show was usually full of couples, wives and husbands, young people out on dates, tourists.

It wasn’t until the second show that I spotted him at one of the tables that had been added as the crowd grew, right on the dance floor. He was with a woman this time, and another one of the men from the night before.

I would call Nate later, between shows. I would do this favor because I owed him. But I would get to a place where there were no more favors, I vowed, only the ones I wanted to give.

It was easy to say that while I was dancing, while I was joking with the girls over cups of coffee and plates of food,
but when midnight came I had to run to the phone, the one in the hallway where the girls passed back and forth during the break. I dialed the number I’d memorized. Nate picked up on the first ring.

“He’s here,” I said. “With a date and one of those guys from the other night.”

“Joe Adonis?”

“No, the giant one.”

“Is he drunk?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

“Tell me if he’s still there at closing.”

“You mean I have to call again tonight?”

“Just a quick one.”

I waited and he waited. I didn’t want to call again. I didn’t want to be on the end of this string, jerked whenever he raised a hand.

“Just do it,” he said, and hung up.

 

I was still feeling shaky when I hit the street at three a.m. I’d made the call and told Nate that Ray Mirto was heading up to the lounge. I felt dirty, like I was some kind of spy. I
was
a spy, but it was for a side I didn’t believe in, in a war I didn’t understand.

Hank was waiting outside the back door. I was never so relieved to see anyone in my life. Hank with his open face, his open life. He wasn’t buried in secrets. He wasn’t tied up in lies. I didn’t deserve his friendship, but I wanted it. I wanted somebody to look at me like he did, like I was good.

“You look kind of shook,” he said. “Everything okay?”

“Fine. Just a long night.” I swung into step next to him.

We didn’t say anything for a few minutes. “You know,” Hank said, “when I was a kid and I had a lousy day and didn’t want to talk or anything, my mom had this routine. I’d have to come up with one thing — just one thing that had made me happy that day. Like, I had pudding with lunch. Or I rattled a stick along a gate on the way home from school. Anything, no matter how little.”

We took a few more steps. “Actually, something good did happen to me today,” I said. “I got a callback.”

“Great! You see?”

We walked a few more steps. “What’s a callback?” Hank asked, and we laughed a little.

“I went on an audition, and I made the cut. I’m one of three girls up for a part in a new musical. A small part. But it’s good! It’s called
A Year of Junes.
I get one whole song, and a dance with the lead. And this choreographer, it’s his first show, his name is Tom Cullen — but he’s been doing work in Hollywood, and he’s the next Jack Cole, that’s what everyone says.” As I told Hank the news, I started to get excited again.

“Jack Cole.”

“He’s a famous choreographer. But this guy today — you can’t imagine how he makes me move — it’s a whole different extension. You should see what I had to do with my hands! Like this.” I bent my wrists, thrust out a hip, and did a slow slide step. “Hardest audition, I had to
changement, changement, aire plié
…” I burst out laughing at Hank’s expression.

“Yeah, I do that every morning when I brush my teeth,” Hank said. “And you cut your hair, too. I like it. It suits you.”

“Thanks.”

We were crossing Third Avenue, and a train roared overhead. Hank waited until it was gone. “Okay, we need to celebrate.”

“But I didn’t get the part yet.”

“Callbacks deserve celebration, don’t they? Let’s go ice-skating at Rockefeller Center on Monday — after school. You have time, don’t you?”

“Sure. But I don’t have skates. And… I can’t skate.”

“Don’t they have ice in Rhode Island?”

“Sure.” But we never had money for skates.

“You can pick it up in two seconds. And you can borrow my mom’s skates, or we can rent a pair. Say yes,” Hank urged. “You need a day off, don’t you?”

A day off from everything. The breeze quickened, and for the first time, I smelled snow in the air. It was almost Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving meant Billy. All of that was ahead, but right now I could take a few hours and learn to skate.

“Yes,” I said.