The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard (48 page)

"I can only do what I know," Lisette said. "Your barn-dance scene comes to life because you could tell me what Carth's hair grease looked like."

"Smelled like," I murmured.

"You know how to tell it because you were there. If you're telling a story about a place, somebody needs to be there."

"You're saying you want me to go? Go out like a spy, and bring home the details for you?"

"Golly, Mother. Would you?" She smiled lazily. A joke was happening between us. "I guess you need to make a dress."

"Dresses I got. I need to steal away your beau for an escort." I'd meant it to be another joke, but if Lisette was amused, she wasn't letting on.

Two nights later, when George found me on the back stoop after dinner and wrapped my waist in his arms, I did not step away. "This is a story with a happy ending," he said.

"Has there been an ending? I must have missed it."

"It's right around the corner—a spectacular, with lions and girls in spangles. You'd do credit to a spangle."

"Aren't you the smoothie." I leaned back against his shoulder. "You didn't used to be smooth."

"I've learned some new moves."

"I didn't think you'd want to try them out on me."

"Who else, Nell?" I kept my mouth shut, proving that I had learned something. He said, "There's been enough disappointment to go around. It's like looking at a landscape after a tornado. Everything you used to know is twisted or gone. At first, all you can see is the loss. Then you start to get used to the way it is now."

"Keep talking that way, a girl could get her feelings hurt," I said, not moving.

"Let me finish. You start to see things you could never see before, when the old buildings were in the way. That bicycle that got blown up into the branches of a tree—it's beautiful up there. It's been remade."

"Silver-tongued devil."

He pulled at me lightly. "Come on. Let's go inside."

"Nope."

"It's allowed. We're married."

"Nothing doing."

"What do you want?"

"I want to be courted," I said.

"Aren't we a little past that?"

"Not a bit," I said. "The first time around we were too young to do it right. We were busy looking ahead and hardly looked at each other."

"I'm looking now," he said.

"You think you are. But I'll bet you can look harder."

"You're mighty sure of yourself, girlie." Impossible not to hear the admiration in his voice. Impossible, I'm afraid, for me not to preen.

I said, "Take me to a nightclub. Then we'll see."

The Casbah was, of course, just the same: the haze of cigarette smoke and perspiration and hot perfume; the shrill band—five members, on a baize-covered stand two feet above the dance floor, with two, three, four lights trained on them—the hectic crush of dancers and the patrons on every side, mouths loose, calling out names or trying to whistle. Onstage, wearing a blur of silver fringe, a girl sang badly and grinned broadly.

If you didn't mind the girls drunk enough to stagger, or the boy helplessly vomiting under his table, or the couples petting in so many of the booths along the wall that the space might as well have been reserved for that activity, a nightclub would make a picture that I'd take Mary to see. A girl in light blue shot silk was doing a carefully restrained Charleston on top of her table. She had good balance, or else the table was nailed to the floor. A man with joints like rubber bands engaged in a complicated bolero with his hat. A plump girl was dancing for everything she was worth, flinging drops of sweat onto hilarious patrons who scurried to catch the droplets on their tongues. Waiters tried to avoid the swinging arms and legs, but every other minute another tray of teacups crashed.

Tourist details. A girl could imagine this much without ever leaving Kansas. A good photoplay—a "scenario," the word both Lisette and Rose now used—did better than tour the landscape. A good scenario made the world new; it let us see what the star would see. What would Lisette's eyes see, fresh off the California Limited?

I squinted to bring the feverish room, a place designed not to be noticed, a place meant to be a backdrop, into focus. The square-topped tables were pretty sturdy. Maybe they'd been selected to withstand dancing. And the drapes were likewise of reasonable quality—brown brocade, a decent weight. They could have hung in the parlors of our mothers, if our mothers had had parlors.

The sensible teacups with the smart flower pattern might have come from Montgomery Ward. The tablecloths were made of easily laundered cotton, the ashtrays of brown bottle glass, and portions of the carpet not yet trodden to exhaustion still bore the marks of a sweeper. I wondered whether George and I had found our way to Los Angeles's only dowdy nightclub. Once I looked past the couples doing an Apache dance, there wasn't a thing in this room that wouldn't be at home in Kansas, including the patrons.

Standing on tiptoes, craning to see, Kansas crowded into the Casbah. The pockmarked man with the greasy hair who was stacking his teacups in a pyramid might have just ridden in from Wichita, pulling his overstarched collar from his valise only an hour ago. The sheik and sheba performing a nervous dip surely hailed from Cimarron, where land was so acrid even the tumbleweeds looked puny. The girl with the feather cocked rakishly from her headband had family off to the east, by Missouri, where the people put on airs. And of course, seeing on every side what I had never been able to escape, there was me: scrawny shoulders, meager hips, no need for a flattening brassiere like the one Aimée groaned her way into every morning. Little as a Kansas pickerel, I was hardly bigger than a child. A baby. A baby with a hammer, I had knocked down everything I could reach.

"I never meant to," I said aloud. Anyone would think I had been drinking, which I had not yet.

I had made my way with the lot I was given. I had tried to survive and regretted that survival had been so selfish. Lisette, Aimée. Lucille, Amelia, Mary. Lisette's baby. George. I shuddered: Jack, Mama, Pa. Not a one of them wouldn't have benefited by never knowing me. The tears that dripped onto my champagne lace dress made my whole chest shudder. No one paid attention. Weeping was something patrons of the Casbah did: right in my line of sight, a girl with tinselly hair was wailing while her escort crushed her face against his shoulder. Maybe he had told her about his wife. Maybe she had been cut from a chorus line. If Lisette were here, she would know, and tell me.

It would have been good at that moment to have my sharp-tongued daughter beside me, leaning over to whisper an assessment of the gentleman whose toupee was beginning to slide, or of the bored-looking trombone player who barely swung his instrument to his mouth in time for his solo, or of the plain girl sitting at a table with three wolfish beaus, a story in the making if ever I'd seen one. Lisette would know the words of the story. "This is easy," she would say scornfully. Knowing that, I cried harder. Lisette was gone, as good as left. She had returned to me, I treated her badly, and she was going to leave just as I was learning to love her. Why was I surprised? I had left Pa, who loved me. People created children so the children could leave. This thinking was wrong, I knew, and addled, but I couldn't keep my thoughts from sloshing under me. Hoping for reassurance, I glanced at my husband.

Blanketed by the noise around us, cheerful and inquisitive, he had no idea that his wife was dolefully crying at his side. He was surveying the room, beating out the band's rhythm against his leg, neither goggle-eyed nor louche. If Lisette's gift, like mine, was a never-ending supply of desire for whatever was just beyond reach, George's gift was contentment. I had known that once. I had thought he would give his gift to me. In fairness, he had tried.

He put his fingers to his mouth and whistled when the emcee, skinny as a mink, took a new singer by the hand and led her to the little round stage. I didn't see him actually pull the first singer away from the microphone, and swiveled toward the stage only when I heard the band change songs in midnote:

This honeybee wants her stinger.
She wants her stinger so bad.
I said she wants this stinger—
she wants her old stinger so bad.
She's gone so long without her stinger,
the sweetest sting she ever had.

The audience cheered, either at the departure of the first singer or the arrival of their favorite new tune. "Show us some leg!" called a fat man in a striped suit, and the singer obligingly did. Singing like a street-corner hooker and showing her plump thigh to anyone who cared to look, she still had a face like a cherub. She could have come from Abilene. Now that I'd started seeing Kansas, I couldn't stop.

"Now, where's that beehive? That ol' beehive big and round," sang the girl angelically.

"Do you want to dance?" George said, then glanced at me harder. "Are you all right?"

"I could use a drink. Why is it taking so long?"

The crush made it hard to signal a waiter or even to see one. Too much cigarette smoke—and maybe reefer, too, which I hadn't smelled for years—veiled the air; too many dancers jostled for space, too many beads and sequins and rows of fringe scattered the light. I peered at the dark booths cloaked in brocade curtains. Reaching the end of her song, the singer swung without pause into "It Had to Be You," a transition that made me giggle, even though my eyes were still brimming. George laughed, too.

"If the home folks could see us now," he said.

"They're here already. Lisette and I were talking about that very thing."

"Lucky you. She won't talk to me anymore."

A girl with white-blond finger curls tried to skid on her belly across the splintery floor. A ring of men formed around her, shouting encouragement and pouring gin on the wood for better sliding. They were especially loud when I asked George, "While you two were alone in the house, did Lisette tell you she loves you?"

"No," he said. He hooted as the blonde banked to the left, avoiding a table.

"Did you tell her that you love her?"

"Why would I do that, Nell?"

"Because it's true?" If Lisette had been there, I would have told her it was the gin talking, though I hadn't yet drunk any. It would be interesting to see what the gin said next.

"That's crazy talk, Mama."

"What do you think—" I started, but George's whoop cut me off. Making another try, the blonde slid the length of three tables, her best yet. The dress, of course, was a wreck. Blushing nicely—not Abilene at all, but Dodge City—the singer finished "It Had to Be You" and prepared to descend from the stage, rackety despite the tufty baize, but when she tried to step down, the shouting crowd pushed her back up again. A few feet from where George and I stood, the first singer reclined in a booth with a fellow who had fleshy lips and a visible flask. I hoped idly the man was the mayor, or we would be locked up before the night was over, even though the raids hardly happened anymore. The girl was knocking back drinks with an experienced wrist. Shawnee.

"I know how to make Lisette talk to you," I said.

"Did I ask for your help?"

"Tell her a story about a nightclub."

George finally got the slippery eye of a waiter and made a hoisting motion. "We're not here to talk about Lisette."

"I promised to bring her details from glamorous Hollywood nightlife."

"Me, too. She says you and I never notice the same things." George's grin was enormous. He'd been saving this for me.

"What did you tell her?"

"To pay attention. She was seeing the secret to happiness."

"Says you," I said.

"Nobody you meet will ever know better." He no longer had the young man's eagerness that had drawn me to him, or the strut. He was a mature man rooted into his mature life. A smart girl would spread her skirts close to that solid trunk.

Suddenly abashed, I couldn't hold his gaze. Instead, I gestured at the hot Casbah, filled with such determined frenzy. "What are you planning to tell her? We'd better make sure our stories don't match."

"I'll tell her that there was a police raid, and we barely got out in time."

I couldn't remember the last time I'd read about a raid and swatted his arm. "Quit beating your gums, daddy. Police raids are yesterday's news."

"I'll tell her that nobody in this burg can dance a decent Charleston, and the band is strictly sticks. You?"

"All over the room, dames and daddies were flying into each other's arms. Right there in the Casbah, sheiks and shebas found their hearts' desires."

"Dry up. You'd never get through it with a straight face. What are you really going to tell her?"

"Every person here looks like they're from Kansas. The whole crowd could have been rounded up in Wichita."

"Nell, what are you talking about?"

"Lisette will know."

"Is this one of those blood-thicker-than-water things?"

"You'd better believe it, daddy."

The band swung into another fast number, and George held out his arm. "Come on, Kansas girl. Dance with a fella."

He had not known the Charleston a month ago. To my relief, he didn't know it very well now. We were doing our best with the low kick and the swivel when the banging finally came at the door. Wood really did splinter under the policeman's baton, and girls did scream. "This is a raid," yelled the agent, a florid man who didn't sound especially worked up. Galena, maybe, or Elgin.

At the side of the room, men pulled back curtains to reveal good-sized windows. Girls squirmed through them, gripping their wraps and their handbags. The action seemed rehearsed, down to the shrieking flapper by the stage. Although George and I had not managed to get near a drink and were guilty of nothing, I let him lead me to the nearest window while policemen matter-of-factly smashed tables and an agent read some proclamation. The emcee stood at the biggest window, helping girls get through without putting runs in their stockings. I counted five policemen. Lisette would want to know. Not until one of them lifted a lazy baton to the stage lights did I jump out the window. I counted on George to follow me into the darkness.