“Well, now I feel just awful.”
Taking this as a gambit to hold my attention, I was about to say I was sure she would recover, when she added, “She did seem upset by our conversation. I thought she was … well, under the weather.” Rallying, she tried again to advance her cause. “But she’s quite wrong for a part played by Miss Fiske. I mean, she’s a chorus girl. The part requires real skill. In fact, Mr. Warburton said that very thing…”
“Did he.”
“Yes, he did. Mr. Hirschfeld got quite agitated about it, but Mr. Warburton said it was absurd to think of her in the part. In fact,” she added defiantly, “he said she shouldn’t even be in the show.”
That must have been when Leo threw the glass. Whether out of loyalty to his wife, rage at Warburton’s bullying, or concern for his own lost revenue should Violet record none of the songs—I could not say. Perhaps a mix of all three.
The brunette held out her hand. “Please—take my card.”
My mind already on other things, I took it. Then I went through the doors, thinking she really hadn’t been nice at all.
My mind was still rearranging the events of the night at Rector’s as I wandered into the main theater, where Nedda Fiske stood alone onstage. The rest of the cast, most unusually, was watching from the seats. As the first notes were played, I realized she was about to sing the song Leo had written for her, “The Things Everyone Says.” I turned sharply, headed to the stairs.
Then decided I might as well hear it.
Until now, all of Nedda’s songs in the show had been comic. This was different, the impassioned lament of a woman in thrall to a man who does not deserve her. She seemed to confide her troubles directly to the listener, eyes wide with anxiety that she might be judged. Gradually she grew more defiant and confident in her devotion, because it was something beautiful in and of itself. Yes, you could go through life attached to those who require no deep feeling, saying only the accepted words to the acceptable people. But safe was not true. Just as she had in her comedy, she made a mockery of our pretense to chilly virtue, even dignity, and yet, made us feel better for wanting, loving—even hopelessly. The song made … one … feel proud of every time you had let your heart rule your head and if you had never done so, well, the more fool you, you weren’t fully alive. We are the honest ones, she seemed to say, the open ones. Don’t let the prigs and prudes shame you into straitlaced misery. We all want love. Only the brave deserve it.
For a moment, I felt panicked: What if I had gone downstairs? What if I had missed this? It seemed a singular moment, something so raw and authentic, it would happen once in a lifetime. I was not the only one to applaud as the last piano note sounded. Mr. Harney, Mrs. St. John, even the Ardens. Overwhelmed, I looked to Leo at the piano. I thought of love and of loss. Of infatuation … and indifference. What it meant to be wanted, chosen. What it meant to be …
On instinct, I hurried to Harriet, and asked if I might look at her book. There was something I needed to check. Bewildered that I could be thinking of stage direction after what we had just witnessed, yet too emotional to object, she passed it to me.
Going to the back row, I turned to the beginning of the book. Here were Harriet’s first notes. On page one, the year “1914” was writ large, suggesting that this was to be the account for Warburton’s show for the year. At first, there were only a few names. Sidney Warburton, shortened to Mr. W, and the Ardens. With the arrival of the Ardens, the show’s first name: So in Love. The entry for March 7 recorded the agreement to hire Adele St. John.
I realized the Ardens had joined the show thinking it was to be a showcase for them—as all their other shows had been: the simple story of a boy and a girl, one poor, the other rich. The stage the domain of a single name, two people content to share the spotlight—but only with each other. No factory girl, no comic relief. No rivalry. This explained their constant sniping about love triangles and things the show did not need: namely anyone but themselves. I remember Claude’s words: This is not the show we signed on for, Sidney.
Then came Harriet’s note for March 28: Mr. Leo Hirschfeld hired to write songs. (Do contract.)
April 3: New role added at Mr. Hirschfeld’s suggestion: factory girl. Mr. W says Ardens are to stay the focus.
April 5: Auditions begin for role of factory girl.
There followed a suspiciously brief list of names, all with short, concise dismissals. Weak voice. No stage presence. Bad fit for C. Arden.
Then on April 15: Violet Tempest to play factory girl. (Do contract.)
I sat back, looking at Harriet’s perfect script. Violet Hirschfeld had been the original factory girl. The role that Blanche had called “a very, very good part.”
Leo had brought Violet in, created the role just for her. Had he done so out of loyalty to his wife? Instinct that audiences were eager to hear stories about people who were not rich? Or the desire to have a part of the show that was solely his?
Whatever Leo’s motives, the part—and its casting—caused problems. Harriet always kept the notes neutral in tone, but it was clear that the Ardens made their displeasure known from the start. There were arguments over the number of songs Violet got. Criticism of the way she performed them. I imagined that it would take a strong performer to persevere in the face of such hostility. Violet was not a strong performer. At one point, Harriet noted that Violet had still not learned her lines. At another: Mr. Arden left rehearsal early, so that others could rehearse more.
In early June, Harriet’s notes became even more terse, written almost in code. Songs for the factory girl were added by Leo. Their removal demanded by Warburton. Rehearsals ended at irregular hours, indicating blowups and walkouts. Then …
Mtg. W&H. Office. Funds. Is show “big enough” for further investment?
In other words, Warburton had threatened to pull his backing unless he got his way.
At the bottom of that entry: H agrees to change.
What that change was became clear on June 23: Nedda Fiske to audition for factory girl.
June 25: Nedda Fiske to play factory girl. (Do contract.)
Violet Tempest to play new role of maid.
I turned past the days immediately preceding Warburton’s murder to the days just after. Harriet had dutifully noted Nedda Fiske’s absence and Violet’s reinstatement in her old part. The entry for yesterday, the day Miss Fiske had returned, read:
July 27: Nedda Fiske to resume role of factory girl. Role of maid eliminated. “One Smart Gal” eliminated. Violet Tempest to work in chorus.
Returning to the first row, I gave the notebook back to Harriet. Then I went to Leo at the piano. Still flush with triumph, he whispered, “So, what did you think?”
“Wonderful. Where’s Violet?”
19
Violet was not in her dressing room. I hadn’t expected her to be. She was in Nedda Fiske’s dressing room. That, I had expected.
Although I hadn’t thought she would be holding Nedda’s voice tonic in one hand and a tin of Lewis’ Lye in the other.
For a long moment, we stared at each other, wondering who would be the first to state the obvious.
She said, “You could just turn around, pretend you never saw me.”
“I’m not very good at playing pretend,” I said. “I’m not an actress.”
“Me, neither.” She smiled crookedly. “But people like me better when I put on a show. You know…”
Eerily, she let her features fall into their customary look of friendly bewilderment.
The shoulders fell back, the bosom rose, the lips parted. Then she tucked it all back somewhere inside herself and said, “At least they hate it when I don’t.”
“Do they?”
“You know they do.” Now she squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and widened her eyes a fraction; when she clasped her hands at her waist, I recognized an impression of me. “‘Yes, Mrs. Tyler.’ ‘Yes, Mrs. St. John.’ ‘No, Mr. Lombardo. Let me go, Mr. Lombardo.’ I bet she nev
er apologized to you, did she?”
Knowing she meant Nedda Fiske, I said, “She did. In her way.”
“And you said, ‘Yes, Miss Fiske, thank you, Miss Fiske.’ The whole time, thinking…”
She articulated my thoughts in terms that were brutal. But not inaccurate.
“But you put on the show because otherwise you don’t get paid. How would Mrs. Tyler like it if you said what I just did. If you showed her what you really felt. I’ll tell you—about as much as Sidney liked it. Everything was fine as long as I was…” A brief transformation was achieved with a widening of the eyes and a slackness in the jaw; she really was more talented than people gave her credit for.
“I’ve been in this business since I was a kid. I know how it goes, I know the rules. You can’t just do whatever you want to do, you have to do what the people want to see. I understand that. My father said it, Sidney said it. But to my father, I was just … part of the act. Until I got too big and then I wasn’t. It was Sidney who told me I was special. That people would want to watch me. But I had to do something they’d come to see.”
Special. I remembered that conversation with Michael Behan, wondering why it was so important to have your name known. Then feeling so empty at the thought that no one would ever know my name. That I was in no way … special.
“And in case you think I’m an idiot and I didn’t know what ‘special’ meant to a man like Sidney, I did. I know he called a lot of girls ‘special.’ But he kept coming back to me. He gave me singing lessons, dance lessons, helped me build a new act. Because he believed in me. I never asked for things, I never made him promise. But when he did promise, when he said he’d do something and then he changed his mind—that’s when I got mad.”
Her voice rose and I began to hear the woman who had stomped off the stage. How petty of her, I had thought. How childish.
“One time I said to him, ‘You just put people on a stage, then sell tickets. You just sell, that’s all you do. You’re not any great showman. We put on the show. We’re the ones they come to see.’”
You’re not special. Strangely, the voluptuous chorus girl and the pop-eyed producer had that terror in common—that they would go unnoticed, unrewarded, discarded, even. Warburton had no talent to win applause, but he needed power and significance. If he could not be a star, he would put them in his debt—and make them feel it every single second. He would show other men he was their better by seducing their wives, show women that their beauty and talents were nothing without his imprimatur. His bullying of Leo came out of awareness that here was a young man ready to take over, even if he, Warburton, was not ready to let go. Violet had understood that fear, I felt, and instinctively exploited it when she took up with Leo. That, I imagined, had goaded her lover into the vicious contempt I had seen.
“What did he promise you?”
“That he would take care of me,” she said flatly. “That I would always have … a place with him.”
Like Roland Harney, I thought. But the comic’s arrangement with the producer had been different. He could grow old, grow fat, and still be beloved.
“But this year? He started forgetting about me,” she said. “On the show before this one, I had to make him give me a number. After everything we’ve … I shouldn’t have had to ask.”
I wondered what she had threatened to make Warburton agree. Violet had known the producer some time; it was likely she had quite a lot of information he would not want made public.
“I wanted to try something new. Everyone had already seen the staircase act, it was a joke in all the papers. I was tired of being a joke. But Sidney said Salome on Stairs, that’s who I was, that’s what I do. He gave me a terrible time in the lineup. I didn’t complain. Then through the whole show, he was mean. One time he tried to hurry me through my song, making me go so fast, I almost tripped. That would have put me out of work for weeks. I couldn’t believe he wanted me to do that.”
Because there were new women, I thought, remembering the star who wanted Violet’s time. But Violet wanted to stay in the spotlight, needed to, in fact. Without it, she had no paycheck. No living, no life. How angry Sidney Warburton must have been: a woman refusing to disappear when he told her to.
“But then there was Mr. Hirschfeld,” I said.
“Yeah. He understood about me and Sidney. He had to. Sidney gave him his career, same as me.”
I suspected Leo would disagree, but decided not to challenge her. “It was Mr. Hirschfeld who brought you into Two Loves Have I, wasn’t it? He created the factory girl part for you.”
“And I was good,” she said, reverting to the point uppermost in her mind. “But the Ardens wanted to be the stars and they kept messing me up. Then Sidney says, ‘We need to make a change. You can be the understudy.’ I told him he couldn’t do that to me. But he said he had to have a big star in the part. The Ardens weren’t enough, he had to have Nedda Fiske. And that”—a violent jab at Nedda Fiske’s robe hanging on a peg—“took my part. Never said sorry or nothing. Just walked in and took it like it was hers. She was never nice, treated me like nothing.”
She had. Like many talented people, Nedda Fiske had no patience for those who lacked skill, but presumed space in her domain. In fact, her competitive spirit was such, she could barely be civil to the Ardens, who were undeniably talented. Them, I didn’t worry about. But to Violet, she should have been kinder.
“She treated you like a chorus girl.”
“Right! Like I only had the part because of Sidney. Or … Leo.” She had trouble, I noticed, remembering Leo. Warburton loomed so large in her mind, she still wanted to believe he was her benefactor.
“When Nedda came on, I was polite. Friendly. First day, Leo says, ‘This is your understudy, Miss Fiske.’ You know what she did? Looked me up and down and laughed.”
“That was very wrong of her.”
“Fiske and Arden, they think they’re better because they started different from me. They don’t know who I am, they don’t know what I can do. After she took my part, I asked Sidney, ‘What do I do now?’ And he said, ‘What you always do, bend over.’ I said, ‘I can’t keep doing that, Sidney. I have to have something else.’ But he just said, ‘What Sidney says…’”
Bizarrely, as she quoted the producer, her face began to crumple. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t mean to, I swear it. I just got mad, you know?”
“What happened at Rector’s, Mrs.…?” I was still not sure what to call her. Mrs. Hirschfeld was an absurdity. Violet presumptuous. I settled for not calling her anything.
Violet gazed down at the table, unwilling—perhaps unable—to say what had made her mad. I thought of Warburton’s insults, how he had called her a bicycle. But that wouldn’t have been enough. He had insulted her so many times before. Then I remembered the producer’s liverish lips descending on the lovely brunette’s hand.
“Mr. Warburton was going to audition another girl for the understudy, wasn’t he?”
“My part!” She slammed her fist against her breastbone. “That was written for me. I couldn’t believe it. I thought, Maybe I heard wrong. Maybe I didn’t understand. I just wanted to talk to him. Truly, that’s all I wanted. Talk to him alone and say, Why? Why are you doing this to me? First you say you don’t want me around you—says, mind you. Believe me, he changed his mind quite a few times.”
Remembering the reports of meetings at the apartment, I said, “I believe you.”
But Violet was deep into her rant against her lover. “Then you don’t want me in the show. Then when I am in the show, when I’m good and I’m working as hard as I possibly can, you give my part away. Then you try to give my songs away. Now this? I deserve better than this.”
“What did he say to that?”
“Oh, I didn’t say any of that. That was all in my head. I just asked if I could talk to him.”
Here she went quiet, pulled at her fingers. “He said no.”
That would have been the last mistake Sidney
Warburton made.
“But you didn’t give up.”
“No, I did not give up,” she cried, pleased that I understood. “I didn’t. I thought of it, but then I thought, No, I am going in there, and I am going to make him see, I don’t care if it’s the men’s toilet. Believe me, it wasn’t anything new.”
Believe me—it was something she liked to say. The demand of a woman used to being dismissed.
“What happened then?” I asked. “What did he say?”
“He just said, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Violet.’ ’Cause I’d followed him into the men’s room. And you know, I felt embarrassed? I thought, Yeah, that was pretty dumb of me. You can’t do that.”
She frowned, as if trying to reassemble the pieces of something broken. “But in my head, that turned into He can’t. He can’t do that, he can’t. And I just took out the gun and I…”
Unable to say the words, she shook her finger at the wall. “Right through the door.”
I wondered, would she have been able to shoot her lover in cold blood? Would the fear in his eyes have stopped her? Then I remembered the gun. She had had it in her purse for a reason—two reasons, really—and she had had it for days. Once it was in her hands, the fantasy had started. The dream of standing up to Sidney Warburton, with the power all on her side and the terror all on his. For once, he would feel what she had felt. He thought he could make her not exist. But she would obliterate him.
“I just got mad,” she whispered.
But not so mad that she had forgotten to place Floyd Lombardo’s gun at the scene of the crime. Glancing at the lye, I said, “And you were mad when you stole Floyd Lombardo’s gun. Because you knew he owed money to some very impatient people and maybe if he didn’t have that gun, he couldn’t stop them the next time they came to break something. And you knew that if Nedda didn’t have Floyd, she might not be able to perform.”
“In my part.”
“In your part, yes. So, you had to get rid of Floyd. First by taking his gun, and then by getting him kicked out of the theater and Nedda’s life.”
Death of a Showman Page 20
