The Trials of Nellie Belle

by Sydney Avey

  “Potter’s field is the final resting place for people with no means of support, Leone. What your grandmother is trying to tell you is that family ties are fragile and easily broken. Of all the connections you make in this life, it is your family you should be able to count on when times are hard.” Opal glanced over at Nellie. “It takes work to keep those connections.”

  Jane skipped awkwardly through the doorway wearing shoes a size too big for her. She twirled the flounces of her skirt in the flirty way of young girls and trained her large blue eyes on her sister. Receiving no response, she turned her charms toward Nellie, touching the shiny blue ribbon laced through her short bob and tied in a fetching bow just above her ear.

  Nellie stood up and put on her hat. “That’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m saying, don’t ever count on a man to take care of you. Take care of yourself.”

  Leone stood up and walked over to link arms with her grandmother. “That’s what I intend to do, take care of myself, but I have to graduate first.” She ushered her grandmother toward the door. Then she turned to hurry the others.

  Jane’s lower lip quivered. Opal held out her hand to her small daughter. White patent leather sandals scraped across the floor until she found shelter in the folds of her mother’s dress.

  “Jane, don’t drag your feet like that.” Nellie looked at Opal. “Where is Felix?”

  “Waiting for us by the curb; he’s warming up the car.”

  R

  The women paraded through the door. Leone, aroused by hope for her future, enjoyed the sensuous swish of her skirt against her silk-stockinged legs. Nellie, bolstered by memories of the past, balanced her steps in practical shoes she had broken in for the occasion. Opal, lithe and flexible, managed the present moment and all its implications with quiet grace. And Jane dragged her small feet in nameless fear.

  R

  Fifty-two young ladies graduated from St. Mary’s Academy. After the solemn ceremony, presided over by the archbishop of Portland, the young women joined their families. Faces shiny with a sense of achievement and endless possibilities, they sparkled at restaurant tables and home gatherings. Private parties would follow.

  Leone’s circle of friends was small but intimate. After a dinner Felix had arranged in Portland’s Chinatown, she would sneak away to a party in a stately home, a bottle of fine bourbon whiskey stowed in her handbag. It was a gift from Felix, slipped to her after the ladies left the table to take Jane to the restroom. On the occasions that the dapper little Frenchman treated Leone like an adult instead of a schoolgirl, she almost liked him. Because her mother and grandmother would disapprove, the subterfuge was even more delicious.

  During a dessert of green tea ice cream and fortune cookies, Nellie presented Leone with a new Elgin watch, its square face attached to a black-ribbon band. Opal handed her a fancy card with a check in it, and Felix slipped a legal-sized envelope by the side of her napkin. Another gift? Leone reached for it, but Felix placed his hand on top of the envelope and shot her a warning look.

  “Save that for later.” He flashed a jovial grin to his wife and his mother-in-law and then returned his attention to Leone. “Read us your fortune, why don’t you?”

  Leone was used to Felix’s teasing ways. She picked up the crisp twist of sweet-smelling cookie and cracked it in two. Carefully unfolding the paper inside, she frowned. “I’m not sure I understand what the cosmos is trying to tell me.” She handed her fortune to Nellie.

  Always observe propriety, but not at the cost of your higher nature. Nellie recited the words to the family. “That’s true. If there is one thing I learned in my career, that is it.”

  “But what does it mean?” Leone asked.

  “It means behave yourself, but don’t be a sellout,” Felix said.

  “I think it means you best mind your manners and follow the rules, but do not allow others to rob you of the passion God has placed in your heart,” Opal said.

  What a thought, the idea that God might be the author of the feelings that swirled inside of her. Leone screwed her mouth sideways. Nellie leaned over and patted her hand. “Be kind to others. Be true to yourself. Give the Almighty His due. That’s all your mother is trying to say.”

  “You all make it sound so easy, but Einstein says that the cosmic religious experience is a challenge to make clear. You have to believe in the rationality of the world structure to experience faith.” All eyes were on Leone now. She sat up straight and floated her words above the din in the restaurant. “Einstein says it is the function of art and science to keep hope alive.”

  Felix swiveled his head from the table on their left to the table on their right. He lowered his head and squinted his eyes. “Is that what they taught you in Catholic school?”

  “Hardly, but as the convent is not my vocation, I took it upon myself to read other points of view.”

  Jane dropped her ice cream spoon, and Opal bent down to pick it up. “Are you going on vacation?” the child piped up.

  Leone dabbed her lips with her napkin. Setting the cloth stained red with her lipstick aside, she looked around the table. She lifted her chin and prefaced the speech she had been preparing for weeks with a few words to Jane.

  “It’s vocation, not vacation. A vocation is a calling to a profession you feel suited for. I agree with Dr. Einstein that the hope of the world lies in the pursuit of art and science. I believe that my calling is to be an artist.”

  “You mean dancer?” Opal wiped the spoon she had rescued with her napkin and handed it back to Jane.

  “What about a writer?” Nellie spoke up. “The field of journalism is a door worth knocking on.”

  “Neither of those occupations pays very well.” Felix signaled the waiter and reached into his back pocket for his billfold.

  Leone gave her stepfather a withering look. “There are worlds without money, Felix. I will get by.”

  Felix sputtered a mouthful of coffee out through his nose.

  “You got coffee all over my new dress!” Jane set up a howl. A waiter rushed to the table and began to clear the dishes away. It seemed the appropriate time for the small party to gather their coats and for Felix to pay the bill. The rest of Leone’s speech would have to wait.

  After Nellie had been dropped off at her boarding house, after Felix chauffeured his wife and daughters back to their cottage, Leone popped into the house to drop her gifts in the bedroom before heading out for a round of parties. The envelope in her handbag remained unopened.

  Felix sat on the davenport, his short legs splayed out. He waved a hand at Leone as she passed through the front room into the hallway and then summoned his wife, patting the cushioned spot beside him. Opal dropped down with a sigh and pulled off her shoes. Leone paused in the hallway where she could observe her parents without being noticed.

  “What did you give Leone for her graduation?” Opal pulled her feet up onto the sofa cushion and massaged her aching arches.

  Felix took a cigar out of his shirt pocket and rolled it between his fingers. “I gave her a train ticket.”

  23 - Discovery

  23

  Discovery

  Hollywood, 1929

  The summer after she graduated, Leone spurned the lead roles her mother continued to offer her in the popular Barry School of Dancing recitals.

  “The thought of one more polka or tambourine dance at the Odd Fellows Hall depresses me beyond measure, Mother. I need a bigger stage.” Leone reached up to the top of her small closet and pulled down a valise she had recently purchased using her graduation money.

  “You know I’ve rented the Orpheum Theatre this year.” Opal’s perpetual hopefulness annoyed Leone. Laying out the valise on top of a tangle of sheets on her bed, Leone turned to face her mother. Opal’s small frame presented an obstacle that prevented her from retrieving her clothes from the dresser drawers, so Leone reached for a piece of paper she had concealed in a novel on her nightstand and held it out for her mother to see.

  “An a
ppointment slip. See?” Despite her best intentions not to lose her temper, she raised her voice. “Look here.” She held the small ticket up by the corner tips in front of her mother’s face. “This is a memorandum for artists.” She slipped the coveted record of her first employment outside her mother’s dance studio into her handbag. “I’m an artist, Mother, not a fancy dancer. I have an engagement next week at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. In the Gold Room.” Now was as good a time as any to let that cat out of the bag.

  Opal’s face froze. Leone followed her mother’s eyes, glazed with moisture, as they searched the room for something to focus on and found a framed photograph on Leone’s nightstand. In the photo, Opal sat posed in a chair. Felix stood on the right behind his wife, chest puffed out, one hand resting on her shoulder, grinning into the camera. Jane sat front and center on her mother’s lap, looking solemn. Leone stood off to the left, hands hanging down—a stranger, Leone thought. She recognized the expression on her face. It was the smile she practiced in the mirror, a sweet smile, the one she switched on when the occasion required.

  Opal rubbed her temples, pressed her lips together for a moment, and then said, “You will dance in the chorus, I imagine. What kind of dancing?”

  “A Spanish dance.”

  “Fancy.” Opal swiveled and left the bedroom. Leone followed, her fingers balled into fists. In the front room, Opal gathered her music books and dance bag. Leone peppered her mother’s back with a volley of words.

  “You don’t understand. It’s a start.”

  “Oh, but I do understand.” Opal turned again to face her daughter. “I was younger than you are now when I went to New York. It’s a hard life, Leone. If you start in the chorus, you will end in the chorus. And chorus dancing is a short career. At least get your education first, and start preparing for a career that can sustain you when you can’t dance anymore.”

  Leone’s face turned red. “You have to take the fun out of everything, don’t you! I’m meeting people. Important people who can help me get roles in Hollywood. I’m not just a dancer. I’m going to be an actress too.”

  “Oh for pity’s sake, Leone. Is that what you want?” Opal released the overstuffed dance bag from her shoulder back down to the floor. “We are in a depression. I might lose the studio. We might have to move to San Francisco to help take care of Felix’s parents. You think you are going to just trip off to Hollywood?” Opal folded her arms and waited for an answer.

  “Well.” Leone lowered her voice and spoke her words slowly. “I can tell you this. If you are planning to move to San Francisco, then I am moving to LA sooner rather than later.”

  “Let her go, Opal.” A chair scraped along the kitchen floor, and Nellie appeared in the doorway. “At least she’s not going clear across the country like you did. We won’t be so far away if she needs us.” Nellie walked over and stood beside Leone, who reached for her grandmother’s hand and squeezed it.

  No one had noticed Jane’s presence. During the argument, the little girl had snuck into the room and buried herself under the afghan on the davenport. She sat up now, pulled the covering off her head, and narrowed her eyes at them. She turned green, clutched her stomach, and with a wail, threw up her breakfast.

  “That child.” Nellie shook her head.

  Leone glared at Jane.

  Opal rushed to the kitchen for wet towels.

  R

  Nellie paid for Leone’s room at the Hollywood Studio Club out of the meager savings she had squirreled away. Young women poured in from every region of the United States, seeking employment in the entertainment industry. The newly renovated residence hall sheltered wide-eyed ingénues from rural America, a comfort to their parents.

  Leone’s new life was a whirlwind of dance classes and auditions. Evenings she would compare notes around the communal dinner table with young women from small towns and big cities across the country. In the beginning, she did more listening than she did talking. A Catholic education and one trip to Omaha had not prepared her for the sophistication of the New England girls, who had years of summer stock experience under the slim belts that circled their small waists. Nor for the soft speech of their southern sisters, a smokescreen for steely resolve. Queen of the hive at Saint Mary’s, more often now, Leone found herself buzzing about on her own.

  She was by herself the day she ran to catch a trolley to the dance studio. Out of breath, she set her foot on the step and lost her balance when the streetcar started rolling. She slipped. She tumbled into the street and landed hard on her left arm. Pain shot from her wrist to her elbow, and she blacked out.

  As soon as the driver realized that a girl lay in the street beside the trolley, he braked. When Leone came to, the hand of a kind stranger reached out from among the bystanders gathered around her. Slowly she regained her senses as she felt herself being tugged to her feet and handed up into the car.

  Leone ignored the murmurs of sympathy and sat very still on a bench seat, taking stock of herself. Her arm hurt like the dickens, but everything seemed to be in working order. Several blocks later, though, as she stepped back down onto the street, she experienced an odd sensation. She could not feel the pavement with her left foot. By the time she reached the dance studio, she was limping badly.

  Madame Smolina, the ballet mistress, stood in the center of the classroom. “And one, and two, and three, and four.” She counted in heavily accented Russian. She didn’t have to look up to detect the halt in her favorite student’s step.

  “Leone, what has happened? The class continued their battements, en avant, à la seconde, and en arrière. Madame glided to Leone’s side.

  “A slight accident, Madame; I’m feeling quite weak on my left side.”

  “Tell me.”

  Leone described her mishap. Trying to make light of it, she joked. “I was seeing stars, Madame, and not the kind that show up in class between auditions and performances.”

  Madame frowned and clucked her tongue. “Tell me exactly what you felt.”

  Leone tried to recall what had happened. “When I fell, a sharp pain gripped my hip. I think it weakened my leg. The pain shot up my arm and exploded in my head.”

  “Stand up straight and let me have a look.” Madame reached her slim hand out and touched Leone’s hip with two graceful fingers. It was as if she had pulled a rug out from under Leone’s feet. One minute, the injured girl was telling her story, and the next minute she lay crumpled on the floor, her eyes darting wildly, her body unable to move. She could feel her lips attempt to form a response to Madame Smolina’s anxious questions.

  “What are you saying? I can’t understand you.” Leone could hear her own words, but they did not seem to reach the teacher’s ears. Madame’s lips were moving, but she sounded as if she were speaking from the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

  Leone’s eyeballs continued to dart around in their sockets, desperate to hold onto the light, but now the teacher’s face loomed like a featureless moon above her. Then the light dimmed and went out, and Leone was sucked into a darkness from which she would not emerge until a voice she did not recognize called her forth.

  R

  For a week, Leone lay in a Los Angeles hospital bed, trapped inside her body, unable to move, see, hear, or talk: utterly senseless. Hospital physicians could not explain how a minor injury led to such devastating consequences. Despite their reluctance, after exhausting all their resources, they called in a psychiatrist.

  Years later, Leone would wonder why the long wait to consult their esteemed colleague? Then she would remember. He was not esteemed by the hospital staff. Dr. Cecil Reynolds was a celebrated student of hypnotism. As such, he was highly suspected of selling snake oil.

  It was not the nature of Leone’s accident, its dire consequences, or her miraculous recovery that conspired to give her the headlines she had so desired. It was the celebrity of the man the medical establishment finally summoned. A leading proponent of the physiological theory of hypnotism, Dr. Reynolds also hap
pened to be personal physician to Charlie Chaplin. Thus the stage was set for a dramatic recovery.

  What was it like, to be called out of darkness? An odor like fingernail polish remover laced with alcoholic sweetness seeped into Leone’s consciousness. She became aware of her body, but she could not move. Neither could she see, speak, or hear.

  Get up now, and walk.

  Her limbs like dead logs began floating downstream. By what volition she maneuvered her body from the grave of her bed to the bank of pillows that now supported her in an upright position, she did not know.

  Get up now, and walk.

  She reached for the arms of an unseen partner. Her legs swung over the side of the bed, and her bare feet slipped onto the floor. Weightless, she emerged from a dense fog and stumbled into the arms of a nurse, who supported her weight and murmured into her ear, “That’s very good; rest now.”

  Over a period of a week, this exercise repeated itself. With each halting journey from Leone’s bedside to Dr. Reynolds’ arms, her body grew stronger. Still, she remained in darkness. How she yearned for light. Toward week’s end, the step of her feet lightened, but a gray blur continued to cloud her vision.

  Will I see again?

  Each day, Leone stepped briefly into a hazy clearing until one day, she stayed. When the haze cleared, the first thing she saw was the doctor’s handsome face.

  “Welcome back, Leone.” Under his imposing, heavy, dark eyebrows, the doctor’s warm, brown puppy eyes pooled with compassion. The nursing staff clasped their hands to their hearts. The attending physicians whispered among themselves. Voices! She could hear voices, but not her own.

  Will I sing again?

  A few days later, doctors surrounded the bed where she lay. An anesthesiologist administered a mild sedative that lulled her into a waltz-like state of well-being. By now she trusted Cecil so completely that she had no fear of regressing. She studied the faces that crowded around her bed, the raised eyebrows, the pursed lips, the jutting chins and tilted heads. Only Cecil smiled and leaned in to search her eyes with his. Speaking magic words, he turned the lock on her vocal chords a notch. Her throat let go, and a few raspy sounds escaped her lips.