LITTLE BETTY SUE BOWERS

Theta sat at her dressing room mirror, cold creaming the last of her makeup. The mirrors were hung with scarves and boas. The wardrobe mistress had already put away the rapidly discarded costumes as the girls hurried to meet their stage-door Johnnies and stockbroker boyfriends. Except for her, the theater was empty. Theta had always liked the feel of an empty theater.

Theta was six when she made her debut in the Peoria, Illinois, musical emporium as Little Betty Sue Bowers in a pinafore dress of red, white, and blue, and silver tap shoes that sparkled under the lights. She sang and danced to “God Bless America” while her overbearing foster mother stood in the wings, mouthing every word. The audience was charmed. “The Ringleted Rascal,” they called her, and “Betty Baby Doll.” Soon she was playing the Orpheum Circuit throughout the Midwest. Theta hated vaudeville, hated the hours of work, the drafty backstage rooms, the leering “uncles” who invited her to sit on their laps. Crisscrossing the country, all those little towns and their dying music halls. Every night Mrs. Bowers would set her hair on rollers and smack Theta on the rear with the hairbrush, saying, “Don’t you ruin it.” Theta had been too terrified to sleep, afraid she’d muss those curls and get another, much harder smack come morning. She’d never been to school. Never had a birthday party or a real friend.

By the time Theta was fourteen, it was clear she was no longer the Ringleted Rascal. She was developing a woman’s body and face, with long, shapely legs and a pout of a mouth. She was too old to play the adorable little girl and too young to play the more risqué acts. Theta was on her way to being unemployable. They’d just signed on for a monthlong run at the Palace in Kansas City when Theta met a handsome soda jerk named Roy. She eloped with him two weeks later. That had proven to be an even bigger mistake than staying with Mrs. Bowers. At first, Roy had made her feel protected. But Roy soon became obsessed with her—what she wore, where she went, whom she saw. Once, he’d even locked her in the bathroom all night while he went out with his boys. Theta had picked the lock and crawled out of a second-story window to get away. Roy hadn’t liked that. He hadn’t liked that at all.

The next morning, with her eye swollen and bruised and her lip split open, she’d tried going home. She stood on the front porch of the boardinghouse with her small plaid felt suitcase. Her tears stung her raw mouth. “Please, Mama. I’m sorry,” she’d pleaded.

“You made your bed, you lie in it, Betty Sue,” Mrs. Bowers had said and shut the door.

Theta had tried to be what she thought a good wife should be, but every little thing seemed to set Roy off: Her stockings were crooked. The toast was too brown. Her long hair, thick as broom bristles, wasn’t put up like a proper lady’s, making her look “like some kinda Indian squaw!” The house wasn’t tidy enough. If she didn’t get a good cut of meat from the butcher, she was a terrible housekeeper. If she did get a good steak, well, then she must have been flirting. The sting of the hairbrush was nothing compared to the smack of Roy’s hand. Nights were the worst. She would grit her teeth and stare at the ceiling, waiting for it to be over. Once, she tried to get a part in a sketch at the Palace, but Roy forbade it, and anyway, pictures were the new fashion. The vaudeville theaters and music halls were being refitted as grand movie palaces. The days of vaudeville were coming to an end. Sometimes, when Roy was away at work and the heat from the diner below would rise up through the linoleum, baking the apartment in an afternoon haze, Theta would strip down to her slip, roll back the carpets, and dance to the radio, imagining she was Josephine Baker at the Folies Bergère in Paris. In these fantasies, it was not the imagined love and adulation of the audience, the collective desire, that fueled her. Rather, it was the sense of absolute freedom, of dancing because she could, dancing because she enjoyed the dancing and not because she was expected to do it.

“Why you gotta be such a mean old Daddy?” she’d sing along in her husky voice, the fingers of one hand splayed across the slim curve of her belly. With the other, she’d reach higher and higher, as if she might, at any moment, pluck a star from the heavens or punch a hole in the sky and make her escape. It was during one of those sultry, stifling afternoons on the prairie that Theta lost herself to this smallest of escapes, singing along to the radio (“Love me sweet, honey, like you ought to do”) and reveling in the gyrations of her body so completely—her limbs, her hips, hers, hers, hers only—that she didn’t hear Roy’s key in the lock.

“Well, well, ain’t this a picture?” he growled, and she turned with a gasp to see him taking up the whole of the doorway, chest bowed slightly forward, muscular forearms pressed against the doorjamb like a sinewy slingshot waiting to snap. “This how you spend your time while I’m off working?”

He’d come home drunk and mean. Her mind whirred with preparations, the many small ingratiations, the hopeful peace offerings and distractions from his anger she’d need to have at the ready in order to avoid a beating.

“You want me to get you some dinner, Roy? You just sit and relax and I’ll make you a sandwich,” she said, hoping the desperation didn’t show in her voice.

“A sandwich? That your idea of a home-cooked meal?” Roy shouted.

She’d chosen poorly. It wouldn’t matter if she cried out or screamed. She’d done that plenty of times. No one had come to see about it. Shades were drawn and windows closed against her misery. That was the way of the town. She’d learned to bear it in silence. It made the beatings shorter, she’d discovered. His hand had threaded through her hair, as a lover’s might, but there was nothing loving in the hard yank that made her eyes water, that bent her neck toward him, crooked her body so that she could only follow like a dog at its master’s heel. The first slap was a warning. Her cheek stung with it.

“You want to dance? Huh?” Slap. “I like dancing.” Slap. “Let’s dance, then. I want to dance with my girl.”

He’d pushed her onto the bed and pinned her arms above her head with one huge hand. She suppressed a cry when she felt him rip away the flimsy protection of her underwear, and again when that same hand rained down blows till her lips bled and her ear rang. Then his thighs were parting hers roughly, and she could only swallow her fear down with the metallic taste of her blood.

Her panic stoked some strange new feeling inside her, something she couldn’t control. She remembered her hands growing warmer and warmer, her body getting hot. She remembered the expression on Roy’s face: the whites of his eyes getting bigger, his mouth hanging open in surprise just before the scream was torn from him.

Theta shut her eyes tightly. Her mind always went blank after that part, like a motion picture with a reel missing. All she remembered was the train to another train and then New York City, where she’d arrived dirty, broke, and half-starved, then survived by sleeping on a series of park benches, taking refuge in the ladies’ room at Grand Central Terminal, and stealing into the picture houses to sleep all day, leaving only when she was chased out. Stealing milk bottles delivered to stoops in the anonymous night. Narrowly avoiding the rough men eyeing her from alleys and slow-moving motorcars. She might have gone on that way far longer if she hadn’t seen Henry sitting at a table near the front windows of the Horn & Hardart Automat on Sixth Avenue, scribbling away on thin white paper, uninterested in his food. Theta was close to fainting with hunger. She’d ventured inside and was hovering near his table, hoping to steal his scraps, when, without a word, Henry pushed the other half of his sandwich toward her. She hesitated at first—Theta had street smarts, and street smarts said don’t take anything from a stranger. But this sort of hunger was an animal that could eat you up from inside. The hunger beast won out, and she ate so fast she nearly vomited the sandwich back up. Still silent, Henry walked to the gleaming, lighted machines, plunked in two nickels, waited for the tray to revolve, opened the small glass door, and retrieved first a square of rice pudding and then a carton of milk. These he brought back to the crumb-strewn lacquer table, placing them before Theta and then watching her spoon the pudding into her mouth with machinelike precision and wash it down with four quick swallows of milk, not caring when it dribbled down her chin in two white streams. Afterward, she sat, glassy-eyed, in an almost drugged stupor, feeling both full and sick.

“How do you do? I’m Henry Bartholomew DuBois IV,” Henry had said in a slow taffy pull of syllables, extending a hand. He had the longest, most elegant fingers Theta had ever seen. Everything about him was fair: His thick, dun-colored hair, kept long. The soft brows and heavy fringe of pale lashes that made the heavy-lidded gaze of his narrow hazel eyes seem permanently sleepy. Faint constellations of freckles on his arms, cheeks, and nose, which only showed themselves in sunlight. Even his mouth, set in a perpetual smirk of amusement, was only a shade darker than his skin. You might look past him completely, except for his eccentric style of dress: a pair of tweed trousers held up by suspenders splayed across a stiff white tuxedo shirt worn under an open vest, and a jaunty straw boater hat with a red-and-blue striped ribbon around it perched on his head at an angle that hinted at mischief—or at least impertinence.

“Betty,” she’d managed to say, giving his fingers a quick shake.

Henry tilted his chin and looked down at her, appraising. “That’s an awfully dull name for such an interesting girl.”

She struggled to keep her eyes open.

“Do you need a place to stay?” Henry had asked quietly.

Theta’s eyes snapped open. She palmed the knife. “Try anything funny, fella, and you’ll be sorry.”

“Well, after everything, I would hate to meet my end with a simple butter knife,” Henry said as if he might be saying hello. “I can assure you, Betty, I’m a gentleman, and a man of my word.”

Theta was so tired. It was as if the hunger had been the plug holding back her emotions. Now it had been removed, and she sat weeping softly in her seat.

“It’s copacetic, darlin’. Come on.” Henry told her later that he’d never seen anyone so beautiful cry so ugly.

Theta followed Henry home to his one-room apartment with the leaky roof on St. Mark’s Place, where he offered her a pillow and a blanket. While she cradled them both to her middle, still distrustful, he dragged an old cane chair to a battered piano beside an airshaft window. He hummed softly and made notes on those same sheets of paper filled with scratchings and blots of ink. “You’re welcome to stay,” he said without looking up. “There’s no cleaning lady. The pipes leak. The bathroom down the hall is shared with ten very eccentric neighbors. It’s cold in the winter and hot as the devil in summer. All in all, it’s not much better than the street. But you’re welcome all the same.”

She figured he’d want something in exchange, but he never tried a thing. Theta slept through the night and well into the next day. When she woke, she found a doughnut on a chipped plate, and beside that, a wobbly daisy stuck into an empty milk bottle, which propped up a note:

Hope you slept well. I’d ask you not to steal anything, but there’s nothing to steal. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.

Sincerely, Henry DuBois IV

She had nowhere else to go, so she ate the doughnut and washed the plate. Then she washed the other dishes and put them away. Henry came home to a room so clean he had to leave and come back in to be sure he’d entered the right apartment. “Your name wouldn’t happen to be Snow White, would it?” he asked wryly. They shared a bowl of noodles from a shop downstairs and talked until very late.

It was Henry who had convinced her to bob her hair. Arm in arm, they’d walked to the barbershop on Bleecker Street, Theta dressed in Henry’s clothes. She sat perfectly still, eyes forward, as the shears bit through her thick ringlets. Hair fell in feathery piles around the barber’s chair. Theta felt her head growing lighter, as if she were being shorn of the weight of memory, the ghosts of her past. When the barber swiveled the chair around so she faced the mirror, Theta’s mouth opened in an astonished O. Gently, she petted the smooth skin of her neck, reveling in the shock of stubble high up her nape, where her shingle cut formed a provocative V. In the mirror, she caught sight of Henry biting his lip.

“What are you gawking at, Piano Man? You never seen a flapper before?” she said with a wink.

“You are the most beautiful girl on this street,” Henry said, and Theta waited for him to kiss her. When he didn’t, she felt a strange mix of disappointment and relief.

They’d celebrated with champagne at a bohemian nightclub in Greenwich Village off MacDougal Street where, away from judging eyes, beautiful boys danced elegantly together, chest to chest, holding one another up, exchanging longing looks across tables decorated with decorative men. Theta had heard that such places existed, and she’d known men who favored other men—“sissies,” Mrs. Bowers called them with a sneer, and Theta could feel the shame of the word coil around her heart—but she’d never actually been to such a nightclub. She was afraid she wouldn’t be welcome there, but she found that she was.

In the dark of the club, Henry leaned back in his chair and watched the scene, his gaze coming to rest again and again on a handsome, dark-haired young man who looked back shyly from time to time. In that moment, Theta understood at last. “I’m on the trolley, kiddo,” she’d said. Then, with a performer’s flair, she’d sauntered over to the dark-haired young man, pulled up a chair, and said, “My pal, Henry, is going to be the next George Gershwin. You should ask him to dance before he gets rich and famous.”

Much later, they all sat in a heap on a velvet sofa, Theta on one side of Henry, the handsome boy on the other, along with two boys from a college in New Jersey and a sailor originally from Kentucky, laughing and drinking, singing songs and trying on one another’s ties. They tried to come up with a new name for Theta, who, Henry announced, simply was not a Betty. They’d run through all sorts of names, from the glamorous—Gloria, Hedwig, Natalia, Carlotta—to the silly—Mah Jong, Merry Christmas, Ruby Valentino, Mary Pickaxe.

“Maybe you could be Sigma Chi!” one of the college boys said, breaking them up all over again.

“That’s terrible,” Henry drawled between laughs. His cheeks had the slightest flush. It made him look like a debauched altar boy.

“Alpha Beta! Delta Upsilon! Phi Beta Kappa! Delta Theta!”

“Wait—what was that last one?” Theta had asked.

“Theta,” the college boy said, and his companions all repeated it. They were loud with a contagious drunken happiness.

“Theta,” she’d said, liking the feel of it on her tongue. “Theta it is.”

She insisted on Knight for her last name. It made her feel strong and bold. A name of armor. For she would defend herself in this new life.

“To Miss Theta Knight,” the boys toasted, and Theta drank to her new name. Laughing, they’d danced in a circle under a chandelier that bathed them in dappled light, and she’d hoped the night would never end.

A week later, Theta woke Henry so early that the daylight was no more than a blue-tinged thought bleaching them both of color. Her eyes were puffy and red, her cheeks stained with tears. It had been two months since she’d left Kansas and Roy, since he’d hurt her for the last time.

Henry pushed himself up onto his elbows. His voice was thick with sleep. “What’s the matter, darlin’?”

She told him what had happened back in Kansas, managing not to sob until toward the end. She’d been so light these past few weeks, as if she’d been rescued from the drowning current of a rain-sodden river and had warmed herself on the bank under a hot sun, only to wake later and find that the river had risen in the night, pulling her back out and under.

Henry had listened soberly. When she’d finished, he’d scooped her close and held her against his bare, smooth chest. “I’ll marry you, if you want,” he’d said.

She kissed his palms and brought them to her face. “I can’t have this baby, Hen.”

Henry nodded slowly. “I know somebody who might be able to help us out.”

He’d said it like that—us. And Theta knew then that they’d never part, that they’d always be like this, two halves of the same whole, the best of friends.

They had the name of a man, and an address, written on a scrap of paper hidden tightly in Theta’s palm. It was raining as they threaded their way down an alley and into a shabby building where two men paced and smoked, looking scared, and then made the heavy climb up five crumbling flights of stairs, past closed doors behind which children squalled and were shushed. The odor of cooking fish wafted down a long, dark hallway, turning Theta’s stomach, and she had to will herself not to vomit, and then finally they reached the top floor and knocked at the plain brown door of an apartment that smelled strongly of Lysol. A wiry man with a lined face ushered them into a dirty sitting area with three mismatched chairs. Off to the right was a bathtub half-filled with bloody water and a collection of carving knives. Behind a drape, a woman moaned. Theta gripped Henry’s hand so tightly she thought she’d break it off. The wiry man pointed to a cot with a sheet and told her to undress and lie down. The woman cried out again, and Theta bolted down the winding stairs and out into the soggy alley, not caring that she was getting soaked.

“It’s okay,” Henry said when he caught up. He was out of breath. “We’ll find the money.”

Henry sold his piano and they found another doctor, expensive but clean. After it was done, Theta lay on Henry’s bed, cramping and groggy with ether, promising she’d get him a new piano if it was the last thing she did. Henry squeezed her hand and she drifted into sleep. Two weeks later she’d gotten the job in the chorus at the Follies. She’d had to lie about her name, her history, and her age, but everyone did. It was what she loved about the city—you could be anybody you wanted to be. When their rehearsal accompanist left to play for a nightclub uptown, she suggested they hire Henry. With the extra money, they’d rented a bigger apartment in the Bennington, posing as brother and sister, which was laughable, really, their appearances being as different as their souls were alike. And every week, Theta put a dollar in an old coffee can marked HENRY’S PIANO FUND.

She’d thought it would just go on like that forever, Theta and Henry, neither belonging to anyone but themselves and each other. But she hadn’t counted on meeting Memphis. It wasn’t just that they dreamed of the same strange symbol, which was certainly big enough. No, it was Memphis himself. He was kind and strong and handsome. Being with him filled her with a lightness and hope, even though the idea of their being together seemed completely hopeless. And if Flo ever found out, she’d be banned from his show.

Daisy had left a pair of ruby earrings on her makeup table, one of her many gifts from this stockbroker or that theater critic. Theta had half a mind to sell them and give the dough to an orphanage, just to teach the frivolous cow a lesson about taking care of her things. Instead, she left them and flipped off the lights, making her way through the darkened theater by the dim glow of the work lights. She had just reached the wings when she heard a sharp whistling somewhere in the theater that stopped her cold.

“Wally? That you?” she called, her heart beating quickly.

The whistling stopped. There was no response.

Theta quickened her steps. If some chump was playing a joke, he just might get a sudden sock in the jaw for it. Theta swung her legs over the stage and leaped nearly into the front row. She heard it again—a jaunty whistle coming from somewhere inside the theater. She wished she’d left all the lights on.

“Who’s there?” she cried. “Daisy, if that’s you, I swear you won’t be able to dance for months after I break your legs.”

But the whistling didn’t stop, and she couldn’t pinpoint its source. It seemed to be coming from everywhere all at once. She raced down the right aisle, banging her leg against the armrest of a chair in the dark, but she didn’t stop. She threw herself against the closed theater doors only to discover that they were locked.

Where was the whistling coming from? She backed down the aisle, peering up into the balconies. A spotlight came on suddenly, blinding her. Blinking away the black spots, she turned and ran back toward the dressing rooms, the hollow song following her. Every door was open, and Theta inched her way down the long, ill-lit hallway, fearful that whoever was doing that whistling might leap out from behind any one of those doors. Theta was truly scared now. Beneath her gloves, her skin was very warm and itchy.

“No,” she whispered. “No.”

A sliver of light shone at the end of the hall; the stage door was ajar. She ran for it. Her fingers burned with unwelcome heat. The whistling was louder now. It seemed to come from right behind her. The work lights flickered and whiffed out as she passed. She tripped and skidded on her knees, wincing in pain. She placed a palm against the wall and felt the wood grow hot. Gasping, Theta pushed away and raced for the door. The door, the door, the door. The stage door, her means of escape. The stage door, which even now was swinging shut.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 640