“Well,” she said, in a puff of smoke. “I told her I’m contacting her sister, which I will do momentarily.”
“How did she react to that?”
“About the same. Inert.”
On the telephone, Milo had told Mrs. Smith everything, nearly everything anyway, leaving out the reason he’d gone running to Vivian’s apartment in the first place that one sweaty afternoon. A good girl like Mrs. Smith didn’t need to know about Allen, this much he knew.
“How’d you even know about the sister?”
“Oh, us girls in the typing pool have plenty to talk about. It won’t be hard to get a telegram to her, now that I’ve got out of Vivian that the sister married one Howard Mann and moved to this little town in Michigan named Ludington.”
“Michigan? She’ll freeze to death.”
Mrs. Smith turned to regard him with one eyebrow raised. “Mr. Short, it’s no farther north than New York. Did you flunk geography?”
“Call me Milo, I beg you. We don’t work together, you don’t have to act like I’m important.”
“Fine, then. And you may call me Beatrice.”
“It’s a nice name. I once knew a Jewish girl who went by Beatrice.”
“Well, now this makes twice.”
Milo’s mother came up to the sidewalk, and he trotted over to take her bags. He rushed through introductions while the trio went up the steps.
As they entered, he realized Vivian was nowhere to be seen. All three of them wordlessly began searching the apartment’s few rooms with alarmed energy.
It was Milo who bumped into her emerging from the bathroom. Vivian took a cold look at Milo’s face and deadpanned, “A girl can’t freshen up without a search party?”
Mrs. Smith smiled at her with a tilt of her head. “You look so pretty, Viv. Now tell me, where can we get the address of your sister? We really need to get in touch with her, don’t you think?”
At this, Vivian sat heavily into the nearest chair, a marionette with cut strings, staring at the floor between her stockinged feet.
New York, 1936
Allen’s face lit up yellow with the flare of his match, lighting a cigarette. “What’s eating you? This is the greatest night of your life and you look practically dead. What’s with the crepe-hanging?”
In the balcony seats at the theater, they were flanked by Max Gordon and his wife, Mrs. Garnett, Allen and his wife Dorothy, and of all people, Mark Bell and his missus. The orchestra was warming up, and the theater was packed to the rafters. Their first big show, hired on their own merits, not as stand-ins for other writers who washed out. This should have been, as Allen put it, the greatest night of his natural life.
But his parents refused to come, on account of it being the Sabbath and all, and his mother especially made it known how displeased they were that their son’s wonderful career would make regular observance next to impossible. The proximity of Allen and his glowering, large wife, not to mention Bell and his prim, pretty wife, were cranking Milo’s nerves. And through it all, his mind was torturing him with nightmare visions of Vivian throwing herself under the wheels of a train, with no one to keep an eye on her between New York and Michigan. What was to stop her from getting out in Pennsylvania and carrying on with what she started?
Well, all the drugs helped. Mrs. Smith had called a doctor and gotten Vivian tranquilized plenty tranquil, and Estelle Mann was on her way to Detroit to pick up Vivian at the station. It was all copacetic. In theory.
A sharp jab roused him. It was Allen. “Stop looking like that, like someone shot your dog. You’ll curse the show.” After a lifeless pause, Allen turned in his seat and leaned close to his ear. Milo used all of his force of will not to lean away from his whisper.
“It’s that broad, isn’t it? Bell told me she got her hooks in you. Didn’t I say she was trouble? Well, she’s gone, Short. Out of your life and not your problem. So snap out of it. Soon as this show gets going, I got a job for us in Hollywood.”
Milo crinkled his forehead at him.
“Yeah, Hollywood, did you think I was just telling stories before? It’s where the money is, and it’ll get your mind off that dame if you get out of the city. Now shut up and look alive before Gordon decides you and your long face are ungrateful.”
The house lights dimmed, and a wave of excited murmurs blended into the overture.
Milo tried to let himself bob along on their excitement. The darkness helped: here he could pretend no one else was around. All those months of writing, sweating, rewriting, worrying… And here it was, a crackerjack cast belting out his words and the crowd lapping it up like honey, he could sense it. It was there in the hushed attention, in the easy laughter bubbling down the rows, in the spontaneous explosions of applause, sometimes catching the actors by surprise, such that they had to make some stage business, pacing from place to place maybe, or fiddling with a prop as the crowd simmered down.
As the melodic opening notes of “Love Me, I Guess” struck up, with the two leads gazing at one another across a pool of yellow light, Milo’s throat closed up in excitement and fear.
He needn’t have worried, though, because they knocked it straight out of the park and halfway to New Jersey. John Garnett was tender, Marianne West’s faux-demure reactions were a hoot, the dance direction was perfect for the number. Garnett liltingly, charmingly, exquisitely professed his growing love, just in time for riotous and improbable second act complications.
As they danced their way into the release, Milo relaxed, at long, long last, and tears pricked his eyes. He almost didn’t notice Allen’s hand squeezing his knee.
Milo batted that hand away just as the curtain fell on the first act, and the audience roared its hearty approval.
He excused himself with just a curt nod at Gordon, racing down the balcony steps.
In the throngs of the lobby, he heard snatches of talk, like wonderful, and so much fun! and wasn’t that song just gorgeous?
And Milo was glad he wasn’t famous like Irving Berlin, because he didn’t want to talk to any single person who knew him.
“Mr. Short! I thought that was you.”
And there was Mrs. Beatrice Smith, smiling up at him, and Milo admired her hair loosened at last from its bun, though the tight little curls around her round face were controlled in their own way. Milo didn’t know from hair, but he imagined it took her a good while to fix it like that.
“Well, hello… Beatrice. Gonna take me some practice saying it. And please, call me Milo.”
“I guess I need practice, too.”
The crowd around them pushed them together. Milo noticed how tiny she was; even in her shoes she barely reached his chin.
“What brings you here?”
She smirked. “I’m not exactly selling tickets, am I? I’m watching the show, Milo. I saw Hilarity, too. Well done. I can really tell these words are yours; even if no one had told me you wrote it, I would still know.”
“Awww, gosh, thanks. People seem to be liking it.”
Small talk ensued, during which Milo found out that she had intended to come with a girlfriend, but her friend had ditched her at the last moment to go out for dinner with a man she was sweet on.
Finally, she fixed him with a canny, glinting look. “See, I shocked you the other day, didn’t I?”
“How do you figure?” Milo thought, boy, you don’t know from shocked.
“When I told you I was Jewish.”
“Well, it did come as a surprise, a bit,” Milo allowed, inwardly cringing that he might have noticed plenty about the efficient and businesslike Mrs. Smith, if he’d cared to talk to her about more than work and the weather.
“My late husband was not Jewish, hence the Smith. And honestly, sometimes it’s easier to just let people think what they will, these days.”
“I get it. My last name is supposed to be Schwartz. It’s funny, sometimes my folks don’t seem to mind my blending in. They barely blinked at me going from Moshe Schwartz to Milo Short. Bu
t my mother is horrified that I’m not observing Shabbat tonight. And my father can’t seem to decide how Jewish he wants to be. Sometimes he acts like he’s never seen a synagogue, other days he’s reading aloud from The Forward and shaking his fist at American Jewish Council rallies. I think it’s strange for him, having a foot in two places. Three, if you count the East Side. And he acts like his old tenement is lurking just behind him, all the time.”
Milo cocked his head at her. “Can I ask you something, Beatrice?”
“Of course.”
“Didn’t your people get upset when you married a gentile?”
“Until the day he died, they thought he was the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
“But what did you think?”
“I think I miss him, every single day. I suppose you’d better get back. You probably have front row seats.”
“Say, did you mention that your date to this soiree stood you up? And may I take it to mean you have an empty seat by you?”
“You may take that, yes.”
“I’d like to see the show out in the house. It’s too nervy up there with all the big shots. So, may I come sit with you, then? Is that okay, Beatrice?”
“Sure, that would be swell. And why don’t you call me Bee? My close friends call me Bee.”
Milo almost couldn’t watch his own show, so busy he was sneaking looks at Beatrice. Bee.
Her face had a serenity and stillness that made him think of painted portraits.
So it was a kind of magic when Bee’s serenity cracked open with a raucous laugh, or a smile uncurled itself on the breeze of a quiet sigh. And with sinful pride and arrogance he reveled in the fact it was his show, his words, that made her do that.
Not just his words, though. His and Allen’s, and the actors, Max Gordon and his hustle and purse strings. It seemed impossible, all these things from a chorus girl’s sequins to the instruments and the spotlights… It was like an army up there, all in service of making the audience happy, making this one young lady happy, far as he was concerned.
When the curtain went down, and the audience roared, and stood, and stood longer, and there were bows, Milo felt the tears pushing at his eyes again and he just let them go because why the hell not? What was it gonna hurt?
It was no sacrifice to Milo to skip out on the party. He rushed back to the balcony long enough to share some back-slapping and explain that he had run into a girl he knew who was all on her own, and he had to do the courteous thing and escort her home safely.
Gordon elbowed him. “Make sure she’s not too ‘safe,’ eh, Milo? Ha ha, good for you.”
Allen wouldn’t look at him, which was noted by the others, as Milo could tell by all the eyes sliding back and forth between them, and raised brows.
He cared not a bit as he nearly skipped down the steps, squinting until he saw a tiny gloved hand stretch above the heads of all the people leaving. As he weaved through the people to reach Bee, the name for this feeling hit him solid, right in his chest, in fact. Safe. He suddenly felt safe.
New York, 1999
I draw my fingers down the page, watching Vivian’s spiky cursive spooled out under my finger. That steno book. She’d saved it when she went away. Or maybe it wasn’t her choice. She was all but catatonic, after all, when they poured her onto the train, I heard later. Bee and my mother had packed her things, including Gone with the Wind. I’d handed that book to Bee so maybe Vivian could read on the train. I knew for damn sure I didn’t want it lying around my apartment. Then I’d phoned up Bell and explained Vivian was ill and would be heading home. Bell had, in one burst of chivalry or guilt or possessiveness, helped Bee escort her to Penn Station. I wasn’t there to see her off.
It’s been some days since they came in to draw my blood and Naomi went bananas about it. Eleanor came in that day to tell me that she’d smoothed it over, at least for the moment, unless and until that blood test confirmed what we’d all begun to believe was probably true. In that case, all bets were off, but that was probably always the case. Eleanor’s furious, I can tell, but I can’t be mad at Naomi, not really. For one thing I love all my grandkids flaws and all, and for another, it’s just her way of protecting us. She can’t save me from aphasia, from dying, or Bee from her heart attack or David from cancer. So she suits up for battle whenever she can.
That day I was so worn out from the excitement I slept most of the rest of the day, and Alex has been scarce around the house if there was any chance Naomi might be around, so it wasn’t until today that I finally remembered that mysterious box he brought, and made myself understood enough that they would show it to me.
And the first thing I saw was that steno book, my God. Bee and Bell or whoever packed up, they might’ve just thrown this notebook in a trunk or box or suitcase, paying it no mind, having no idea what was in it. Vivian might have just staggered into bed back at her sister’s place and never looked inside it again for all I know. After all, she died young, not so long after her return to Michigan. Return? More like exile, at least partially because of me, partially because of Bell, too. He seemed eager enough to send her packing. Vivian’s instincts were probably right about him tiring of her.
I would like to ask exactly how she died, but of course I cannot, and I am too tired to try to mime or spell it with the alphabet board.
How different would it have been if she’d stayed? If she’d somehow calmed down and perked up and was able to get back to her own sharp-witted self?
She’d have seen me and Allen try to go to Hollywood, and scamper back on different trains, me because Leah landed in the hospital with what would turn out to be a fatal bout of pneumonia, poor kid. I was promising Allen that I would come back even as I boarded the train, but I already knew I’d break the promise whatever happened. Sorry, my friend. I should’ve just said forget it right away and spared you the disaster that was to come. Instead, I let my sister’s death be my excuse and for that I’m ashamed.
I lost my nerve for a lot of things in 1936 and it took me some years to get it back. Or did I ever? Maybe not.
Allen and I were supposed to be writing an Astaire-Rogers picture, but they kept throwing out our songs and having other people change them and telling us to get lost if we complained. Allen stuck it out after I left for a while, writing with Yip Harburg, who was no slouch, lyrically speaking. He was palling around with George and Ira Gershwin by then, and when a brain aneurysm snuffed out poor George, Allen came back looking ten years older and ten drinks drunker.
Maybe I’d have had lunch with Vivian to tell her that my old rehearsal pianist friend Finkelstein had an idea for a show, from a novel by Edith Wharton, and that he thought it would make a great serious musical play if he only updated it a bit for modern times. I could have told her how everyone thought he was nuts, and me too when I went around trying to get investors for him. But then Oklahoma! was a smash without any sequins or leggy chorus girls and suddenly a musical play with songs that actually have something to do with the plot seemed like the smartest idea since coast-to-coast plane travel.
Then when the Age of Innocence knocked everyone’s socks off, I figured out I liked this producing thing, whereby I could find all my favorite people to work with, and put them all in a room, and smooth-talk rich types into giving up their money, calling on my old tailor shop charm, back when making the customers happy at Schwartz and Sons was my only skill. And sometimes I could sit in with the book writer, or the dance director, and give them an idea or two, or get out of their way, and settle squabbles, too, calming people right down when they were about to tear each other’s heads off. Seems some people found my presence soothing. Go figure.
Would Vivian have been happy to hear about me and Bee getting married and moving into this here townhouse? Would she have enjoyed my later shows, the peppy shows of the upbeat fifties, the weird, experimental shows of the sixties and seventies I produced off-Broadway, when people thought the world was upside down and I thought of the Depression and Hi
tler and figured, eh, we’ll get through?
Would she have mourned with me as my son died too young, and we lost Bee too soon after? Would she think I’d done a good job with my kids, and looking after my granddaughter, all but orphaned?
What would Vivian have done all that time if she’d grown old, too? Would she have married eventually, and mellowed with age? Become a white-haired grandmother doing her knitting and listening to a scratchy phonograph of Paul Whiteman and thinking about the time we danced at the Stork Club?
It seems impossible, but then, but who guessed about things like the Holocaust? The moon landing? A president shot during a parade, and now these computers, and telephones you carry around in your pocket and people can call you anyplace? If I learned nothing else in eighty-eight years, I learned not to say “never” about pretty much anything.
I’d almost forgotten Eleanor and this other kid watching me stare at the notebook. I can tell what they’re thinking, though they haven’t said it out loud. Besides the fact they think I knocked up Vivian, they also think “Love Me, I Guess” was hers. I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, I erased her from my memory, from conversation, from life. When she pops up—Bernie Allen’s kid knew about her, who knew?—and I deny her again, what are they to think?
I never should have gone there that day. With sixty years of hindsight, despite my pretending that I was only blindly wandering and only accidentally found myself outside her place, despite me acting like I only needed a friendly face when I went in there … No, that was all nonsense. Truth be told, there was some animal, frightened part of me that knew exactly what’s what. That primitive, thoughtless part wanted to make it known that Milo Short was a man for sure and no arguments, and Vivian was the closest girl at hand I could prove it with.
By now I’ve gotten to know plenty of men with the proclivities of Allen and realized what they were up against back then, and how it would have been a particular kind of torture, all that pretending, with few options. How lonely that life must have been, how complicated it would be to read and speak and say everything in code, to be so terrified of being found out, or at least found out openly because some people knew anyhow.
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