“Everybody’s damaged,” Adele said off handedly. “Susi just has hers on the outside.”
Eddie didn’t know how to respond to that, but knew he didn’t want the evening to end. He offered to buy coffee at Joe’s Restaurant across the street, where they slid into a booth and ordered some joe. Adele talked a little about her family—she lived with her parents and two brothers on Cumbermeade Road in Fort Lee—then asked, “So you’re from Jersey?”
“Yeah, Newark. I left home a long time ago, though, to work carnies.”
“Your folks must have been happy to see you again.”
“I … haven’t been back.” He hesitated, then felt obligated to explain, “My dad is dead. He was killed in a foundry accident.”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry.”
“S’okay. It was a long time ago—1923.”
Such a foolish whim—pulling back the sheet covering his father’s body so he could say goodbye. Jack Stopka had been killed when a mold being filled with molten steel broke loose and fell on him. What remained no longer looked anything like Eddie’s dad; there was nothing left to say goodbye to. But the image had seared itself into his memory.
Eddie blinked back tears and hoped Adele couldn’t tell.
“What about your mom?” Adele asked.
“She remarried a couple years later,” Eddie said, the words still bitter in his mouth. “An art teacher at a vocational school. Guy named Sergei.”
Just saying the name, he felt again the sting of Sergei’s hand across his face, and, later, the pummeling of his fists.
“We—didn’t get along,” Eddie said. “My grades were never good enough, and I wasn’t artistic like my mom and sister—I liked carpentry. One day I was helping our neighbor repair the banister on his door stoop, when Sergei came out of nowhere, his fist slamming like a lug wrench into my face.” Adele’s eyes widened. “He screamed how I was disgracing his name—I was a Bajorek now, not some ‘peasant,’ some common laborer. Like my dad.” Eddie’s eyes flashed with anger. “And that was when he was cold sober.”
“Your mother—she didn’t try to stop him?”
“No,” Eddie said quietly. “He never hit my sister. I guess she thought I could take care of myself.”
But worse than all the violence was the day Eddie entered his room and saw his bed blanketed with gaily colored pieces of cardboard—like confetti. He quailed as he saw them for what they were: the meticulously shredded remains of his cherished baseball cards. Numbly he scooped up a handful, recognizing here and there a scrap of a favorite card his father had brought home, Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth. He sat there a long while, crying, then carefully gathered up the tatters and dropped them into a wastebasket, where they settled like debris from a long-vanished parade.
That night at dinner, Sergei had said without even looking up from his plate, “Now maybe you will have more time to tend to your studies.”
Eddie told Adele, “I caught out on the first train to anywhere else.” Anxious to change the subject: “So what does your dad do for a living?”
It was Adele’s turn to hesitate. “He’s … retired. He used to direct movies here in Fort Lee. Worth While Pictures, his company was called.”
“And you starred in some of his pictures?”
Her face lit up. “My first was called Babe in Arms, I was just six months old. I don’t remember a thing about that, but I’ll never forget the ones we shot at Rambo’s Hotel in Coytesville—at lunch we’d all sit outside under a grape arbor, eating the same meal every day: ham and eggs, biscuits, and fresh apple pie. I even sat in Douglas Fairbanks’s lap on one shoot.”
“No kidding?”
“I met Blanche Sweet too. And Daddy would always kiss me on the cheek after I did a take he liked. He used to call me his ‘little star’—‘My beautiful girl who will someday be the whole world’s beautiful girl.’” Then, embarrassed, she quickly added, “Didn’t quite pan out that way.”
“Not yet, anyway.”
She smiled at that. “I was Miss Bergen County of 1927, I thought that might help me land some parts, but no soap. I came to Palisades because the Schencks are in the picture business—they don’t spend much time here, but you never know when you might be spotted by somebody who knows somebody, so I try to get around the park, meet people.” The light in her eyes had dimmed; she looked at her watch. “It’s late. I should be getting home.”
“I’ll take you.”
“That’s okay. Just walk me to the trolley stop.”
As the northbound trolley approached, he told her, “I had a nice time tonight, Adele.”
“So did I, Eddie,” she said. She squeezed his hand. He took that as a signal and leaned in and kissed her—a light, gentlemanly kiss—on the lips.
The trolley clanged to a stop. Adele said, “See you back on the midway,” then boarded the streetcar, which continued down Palisade Avenue and into Fort Lee. Eddie looked after it, a big dreamy smile on his face, and decided it was such a nice night he would walk home.
* * *
If he hadn’t saved that poor kitten, Adele might never have given him a second glance. But his kindness made her ashamed for how she had treated him. When by way of apology she invited him to the sideshow party, he broke into the sweetest smile, making her very glad that she had.
Now that she really looked at him, too, he was a pretty good-looking guy … an open, honest face, wide shoulders, a nice build. The evening lasted longer than she’d planned, but she didn’t mind—she found that she liked him, liked being around him. He was down-to-earth, good-hearted, uncomplicated. God knows she had enough complications in her life.
And that smile of his warmed her in ways few things had of late.
It wasn’t an easy courtship, since concession agents worked seven days a week, but they were able to share some egg foo yung at Yuan Chen’s or a midnight dinner at Joe’s. And on days of bad weather and slow business, they could visit each other’s stands as much as they wanted. There was nothing so miserable as an amusement park on a rainy day: sheets of mist rippled across the empty midway like watery carpets being shaken out; the roar of the roller coasters, rudely silenced, was replaced by the incessant beat of rain on a concession’s wooden or canvas roof; everywhere you looked were the glum faces of concessionaires sitting in their booths, smoking, playing solitaire, and above all, losing money.
On one wet day in June, Eddie was loitering at Adele’s empty root-beer stand, making her laugh with some carny story of his, when she suddenly looked past him and said, “Holy cow, will you look at that.”
Arthur Holden—the durable, champion high diver who had been appearing at Palisades since 1908—was striding casually up the midway in his white diving trunks. Tall, slender, graying, Holden was trim and fit for his age—fifty-three, though he liked to tell people he was eight years older because it sounded more impressive—and presumably on his way to his twice-daily dive from a 122-foot platform into a tank filled with five feet of water.
“Art,” Adele called out, “where do you think you’re going?”
“It’s almost four o’clock,” Holden replied. “Time for my first show.”
“There’s more water out here than there is in your tank!”
“This? This is nothing.” Holden took time to walk over to them, smiled. “Back in 1915, I think it was, there was a terrific cloudburst that came out of nowhere. I was standing atop a ninety-foot pole when a bolt of lightning suddenly hit one of the guy wires, threw me off balance, and I fell off the platform like a sack of russet potatoes.”
“Jesus,” Eddie said. “What happened?”
“I twisted and turned in midair, trying to right myself, but I hit the edge of the tank with my right shoulder and I was knocked cold. Luckily I just dislocated my shoulder, and I was back to work within the week. Now that was a rainstorm!” He looked up at the drizzle falling from cloudy skies and scoffed, “This is just nature taking a piss on me, that’s all.”
They laughed as, trou
per that he was, he headed for the free-act stage.
The weather cleared up by evening, and Adele got wind of another impromptu party being planned for after closing. She hurried across the midway to tell Eddie: “Pool party tonight!”
“What?” he said. “But I don’t have any swim trunks.”
“There’s plenty in the bathing pavilion.” She gave him a grin. “Or you can swim in your underwear. C’mon, it’ll be fun.”
The Palisades pool was drained each night, a million and a half gallons of salt water emptied back into the Hudson River from which it had been pumped the previous night. Massive filters purified the water before any bather ever dipped a toe in it. It took hours to drain and employees were technically prohibited from swimming after closing, but the pool manager, Phil Smith, appeared not to notice as Eddie, Adele, and a few other concessionaires, men and women, slipped into the bathing pavilion. Johnny Duke gave them a wink as he left.
The first time Adele saw Eddie in bathing trunks—his lean, muscled body and incongruously boyish face—she felt a thrill pass through her. Eddie was similarly impressed by the way she filled out her swimsuit.
“Last one in’s a rotten egg foo yung,” Adele said, and raced down the beach. The pool was about two-thirds full; once in the water the men and women paired off, stealing kisses beneath a faint sliver of a moon.
Eddie did the same with Adele. She didn’t object.
Adele suggested, “Let’s go swim under the waterfall.”
They swam to the back of the pool and through the falls, which pelted them like a heavy rain. In addition to its roar they could now hear the hum of the motors that powered the pool’s artificial wave machine, and they saw the tangle of pipes that fed water to the falls. There wasn’t a lot of room back here but the water was shallow enough for them to stand. Screened from prying eyes by the curtain of water, Adele draped her arms around Eddie’s neck and kissed him with a hunger that surprised and aroused him. He slipped his arms around her waist to draw her closer, but she said, “Wait.”
She stepped back, and to Eddie’s astonishment began to undo the straps of her swimsuit, wriggling out of it until it floated like a jellyfish on the water. She stood there completely nude, the water just covering, though hardly obscuring, her beautiful breasts. They embraced and kissed with an urgency Eddie had never known before. The roar of the falls muted the sounds of their lovemaking, their pleasure magnified by the sensuality of the water as well as the danger, however small, of being discovered.
Finally, Adele slipped back into her swimsuit, then took Eddie’s hand as they dove under the falls. As they broke surface again Eddie took a big gulp of the briny air. They looked at each other and giggled. Eddie wished the sun would never come up, that he could feel this way forever.
It wasn’t until the next day, when he happened to glance at the calendar tacked up on the inside of his coat closet, that Eddie realized what day it was yesterday. He looked at the date and laughed.
June 24, 1930: St. John the Baptist Day.
* * *
In late August, after Adele had missed two of her periods, she went not to her family doctor but to one she picked out of the phone book. When the test confirmed her suspicion, she worked up her nerve over dinner one night and said, “Eddie, I … I’m pregnant.”
To her relief she saw joy, not horror, on his face. “You’re sure?”
She nodded.
“That’s swell,” Eddie said, breaking into that big endearing smile of his. “That’s just terrific.” Then, trying to read her face: “Isn’t it?”
She smiled. “Yes. I think so.”
Eddie quickly proposed marriage. Adele wasted no time accepting.
But now came the moment she had long dreaded: when she informed her parents, they quite naturally wanted to meet their prospective son-in-law.
“So this is the man my little star wants to marry,” Franklin Worth said, soberly shaking Eddie’s hand. “Pleasure to meet you, son.”
“Thank you, sir, I’m pleased to meet you.”
Adele was relieved—her father seemed to be on his best behavior. As they sat down to a dinner of ham, biscuits, and sweet potatoes, Franklin told charming stories of his precocious, performing daughter. “Her first featured role was in a picture called Lost in the Pine Barrens,” he said, reaching for his coffee cup. “Adele was the little girl who leads her idiot parents out of the woods. She was only three years old, but a beauty even then.” He took a swallow, added, “We shot it in Coytesville, where one of Edison’s so-called ‘detectives’ tried to shut us down by confiscating my camera.”
A shiver of dread spidered down Adele’s spine.
“Thomas Edison?” Eddie said. “He invented the movies, right?”
That ignited a spark of fury in Franklin’s eyes. “Oh, that’s what he’d like you to believe,” he said acidly. “But he only created the Kinetoscope, which you had to view like a peep show! The Lumière brothers of France invented the projection process that’s used today, not Edison.”
Franklin put down his cup, and now Adele, sitting opposite it, caught a whiff of what was in it—and it wasn’t coffee.
“That miserable son of a bitch, pardon my French,” Franklin said, warming to his subject, “tried to put independents like me out of business. He sent goon squads to disrupt our shooting—one thug split open my camera like a cantaloupe, ruined an entire reel.” He took another swig from his cup. “Thomas Alva Edishit, that’s how he was known in this house.”
Adele’s hopes foundered in the bitter seas that had once again claimed her father, his conversation degenerating into stinging recriminations about Edison, about Hoover, and how, in the face of the coal shortage, movie companies fled to warmer climes like California and motion picture production in Fort Lee became nearly as mythical a beast as the Jersey Devil.
“Why didn’t you go to California, too, then?” Eddie asked innocently.
His eyes not quite focusing, Franklin stared down at his dinner plate and muttered, “I … I had obligations. Debt. I had a wife and three children to think of. So I did the responsible thing—stayed here, worked to pay off the debt. And I did it.” He threw his wife a sullen look. “Didn’t I, Marie?”
Marie winced even as she agreed, “Yes, Franklin. You did.”
Franklin pushed away from the table and stalked into the kitchen, presumably for another shot of the bootleg whisky he had hidden there.
Adele glanced at Eddie; the shock on his face was easy to read.
When Franklin returned, Eddie waited an appropriate number of minutes before announcing, “Gosh, this has been swell, but we’ve got to get back to the park—they only gave us half a day off. Right, Adele?”
The two of them had actually wangled the whole day off, but Adele quickly concurred, “Yes, that’s right.”
Franklin muttered a goodbye and headed for his den, where, as usual, he could retreat into his bottle like a worm in tequila.
As Eddie and Adele walked away from the house, she thought: That’s it. It’s over. And I’m pregnant. Oh God, what am I going to do?
After walking in silence a long while, Eddie finally spoke up.
“That can’t be a picnic for you,” he said quietly.
“No,” she said. “Not hardly.”
He waited a moment before adding, “You must want to get out of there pretty bad.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “You can’t imagine.”
“Oh, I think I can.” He stopped in mid-stride, looked at her. “Adele, just tell me straight: do you love me?”
She looked into his eyes, saw the fear and hurt in them, and she said, “I do, Eddie. Yes, I want to get out of there. But I really do love you.”
He took her hand in his, and that big smile of his made her smile.
“I love you too,” he said. “So let’s get married.”
* * *
When word of their engagement got out, the park’s publicist, Perry Charles, came to Eddie and Adele with a
curious offer: “Palisades will pay all your wedding expenses,” he told them, “ring, bridal gown, license, even a three-day honeymoon in Atlantic City—if you get married on our Carousel.”
Eddie laughed, then realized, “You’re not kidding.”
“No, trust me, it’ll be a great stunt. I guarantee it’ll make all the papers, and I bet we can get Pathé or Fox to cover it too.”
Publicity—which might be seen by his family—was the last thing Eddie wanted. It also reminded him a bit too much of the carny tradition of a “Billboard wedding”: couples sent a notice to the trade paper that they intended to live together as man and wife, and after the carnival closed for the night, they boarded a Carousel, someone waved a copy of The Billboard over their heads like a sacrament, and the couple simply cohabited together.
But Adele was transported by the idea:
“Oh, Eddie, the newsreels! What if some producer sees my picture and offers me a part? What an opportunity!”
She was so excited, Eddie couldn’t bring himself to say no.
And so that Labor Day weekend, Edward Stopka and Adele Worth began married life at Palisades Amusement Park, with Adele’s family in attendance along with a park photographer and a newsreel cameraman. Franklin was stone sober and Marie seemed only slightly mortified as her daughter prepared to take her vows on a merry-go-round.
Adele, in her white bridal gown, sat astride a red-and-gold-painted pony. Eddie, wearing a black suit, and a justice of the peace climbed aboard adjacent horses. Perry Charles called, “Start ’er up!” and the Carousel began turning, with calliope music in place of a wedding march.
“Wait a minute!” Eddie cried out. “We’re actually gonna ride this thing during the ceremony?”
“Of course!” Perry called back. “It’s good action for the newsreel.”
“Dearly beloveds,” the justice of the peace began, “we are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony…”
Palisades Park Page 4
