“Look.” Tony handed Chi Chi a telegram. “MRP 67 on HP. WABC played it 7 times in one day. LB.”
“When did this happen?”
“When you were on the train.”
Chi Chi put her head down.
“You’re not praying, are you?”
“What’s it to you?”
“You prayed to get here. You got here. You can stop praying.”
“I wish my dad were here.”
“Oh, I get it.”
“Are you going to write to your mother and father?”
Tony took a seat next to Chi Chi on the piano bench. “Why don’t we make a deal? I don’t ask you about your private business, and you don’t ask me about mine.”
“That’s a dumb idea. We know each other’s families.”
“I meant to say, beyond pleasantries.”
“Why?” Chi Chi asked.
“I don’t want to talk about them.”
“Who’s going to share your joy, Saverio?” Chi Chi asked as she unfolded the charts and placed them on the music stand. “I mean, Tony.”
Before he had a chance to reply, the Arena Dancers entered. The trio of young professional women were lovely, leggy, and game. “Toot sent us down here, something about a routine,” the lead, Shirley, said.
“Give me a sec, girls. I may need you to share my joy,” Tony said pointedly to Chi Chi, who ignored him.
Shirley frowned. “Is that the new dance out of South Bend? Odd name. Share My Joy.”
“Better than The Deer Tick Slide out of Duluth.” Ruby shrugged. “What are the steps?”
* * *
Chi Chi left the window open in her hotel room as she worked. The Lora Lodge in Elkhart, Indiana, was spare but clean. A fresh breeze ruffled the paper piano on the table and flipped the pages of her composition book. Chi Chi decided it was time to roll up the piano and put it aside with her composition book. She was hungry, and it had been a long day.
Before the Donatellis inherited their upright piano from Isotta’s cousin, Chi Chi had taken lessons at Kathleen Sweeney’s house on a Steinway baby grand. But when she returned home she couldn’t practice because the Donatellis did not own a piano. Mariano made his little girl a regulation keyboard using butcher paper and black paint. Chi Chi learned to hear the musical notes in her head as she played the paper piano. Years later, when Chi Chi began writing songs, and could compose them using the upright, she often chose to write them using the paper keyboard anyway because she didn’t want to make noise and disturb her family.
Chi Chi had never cooked anything on a hot plate but she was determined to try. She decided to attempt spaghetti. This tour would last a few months, and the thought of going that long without macaroni was inconceivable to her.
The front desk loaned her a pot, a couple of utensils, and a serving plate. Barbara’s basket of supplies was filled with essentials from their family cupboard: packages of dried macaroni, a bottle of olive oil, home-canned tomato sauce, jars of banana peppers in vinegar, and small vials of spices; a brick of aged Parmesan cheese; a bulb of fresh garlic; a small jug of wine; a tin of cookies, and another filled with oil pretzels, which would stand in for bread when none was available; along with a bag of ground coffee. Barbara had promised to replenish the basket and mail ahead when supplies ran low.
Chi Chi boiled water in the pot until it was rolling, added the macaroni, and stirred it, cooked it through al dente. She strained it as best she could using a slotted spoon and the lid of the pot. She put the spaghetti back in the pot and onto the burner for a few moments to burn off any moisture. She poured the steaming pasta into a bowl and covered it. She minced one of the cloves of garlic and glazed it in the pan with olive oil. As the fresh garlic danced in the pan, the scent made her think of home. She poured some of the tomato sauce over the mixture and cooked it until it bubbled. She removed the sauce from the burner. She was blending the sauce over the pasta when there was a knock at the door.
“Just a second,” Chi Chi called out before going to the door. Leaving the chain on the door, she peered outside.
“Hey, it’s me, I want you to meet someone,” Tony said.
Chi Chi dried her hands on the moppeen she had packed and took off the chain.
Tony brought a glamorous young woman into Chi Chi’s room. “This is Delilah Entwistle. She’s our girl singer.” Delilah had soft brown hair, gray eyes, and pale skin with a golden patina. She wore a day dress of lilac silk with a gold belt. Chi Chi liked her style instantly.
“Where are you from?” Chi Chi asked her.
“A sweet place called Dorset in England. It’s on the sea.” Delilah had a lovely accent.
“Me too! I come from a shore town. In New Jersey.”
“How do they live here?” Delilah wondered. “There’s no sea in Indiana.”
“But they have lakes,” Tony offered.
“You and your lakes,” Chi Chi joked, giving him the brush-off. “Tony will try and sell you on the Great Lakes. I’ll decide how great they are when I lay eyes on them. Are you kids hungry?”
“Starving,” Tony admitted.
“I’m famished,” Delilah said.
“Go get your plates. I made enough.”
“Are you sure?” Delilah asked. “We don’t want to impose.”
“No imposition whatsoever. I’d love the company.”
“It does smell like home,” Tony admitted.
Delilah clapped her hands together. “This is so much fun.”
A couple of boys from the brass section of the orchestra stuck their heads in the door. “Who’s cooking?”
“Who do you think?” Chi Chi joked.
“Do you have enough?” Tony asked her.
“There’s always enough.” Chi Chi laughed. “And I can make more.”
“Go get your plates, boys,” Tony told them.
The word spread in the Lora Lodge that there were good eats and a party in room 202. Soon, the room filled with anyone who was looking for a little camaraderie and a home-cooked meal.
“Look, Chi Chi,” Delilah said when she came back with some plates. “Dessert.” She placed a tin of Scottish shortbread on the table. The dancers from the act showed up with a loaf of French bread and butter, Tony fetched a bottle of wine from his room, while Kal the trombonist offered a jar of pickled zucchini and a jar of marinated mushrooms to add to the feast.
Chi Chi cooked more spaghetti. Every strand was eaten hungrily. As she cooked, she met Mort Luck out of Milwaukee, who played several horns; Bobby on trumpet; and Bill on cello; along with the dancers, Shirley, Bess, and Ruby. A few more boys who played keyboards, drums, and vibes joined them after dinner.
“And I thought I was going to be lonely.” Chi Chi laughed as she washed the spaghetti pot in the small sink.
“Oh no, you’ll love this crew. They’re a good bunch,” Ruby, the petite dancer, assured her.
“Jimmy will work us to death, but so what?” Shirley, a striking blonde, added.
Chi Chi felt a part of things, when she had wondered if she ever would. She looked around her hotel room. The SRO band was having fun. In the corner, by the window, Tony and Delilah had their heads together, talking.
“Those two.” Ruby nodded. “Already an item.”
“No kidding.” Chi Chi was not surprised. “Tony Arma is a genuine Latin lover. By way of Michigan.”
“They got ’em everywhere,” Shirley added dryly. “But somebody needs to warn the teacup.”
“She’ll be all right,” Ruby commented. “This ain’t her first duet.”
At the far end of the room Mort shouted, “Hey kids! They just said your names on the radio. Tony and Chi Chi . . . When the Saints Go Marchin’ In?”
“Mama’s Rolling Pin!” Chi Chi corrected him.
“What do you want from me? The signal’s weak out of Chicago.” Mort moved around the room with the radio, using the antenna like a diviner uses a stick to seek a hidden spring. Finally the radio signal came in steady and
strong.
The band shifted in the room and gathered around the transistor radio to listen to Tony and Chi Chi’s single. Delilah and Tony joined the group around the radio. Chi Chi looked at Tony and nodded, partner to partner. The room was quiet except for the song, which hummed and crackled out of the small radio with as much force as the mechanism would allow. The musicians closed their eyes, leaned forward, and concentrated on the music. The dancers let the uptempo rhythm move through their lithe bodies, as their toes tapped, knees bent, and fingers snapped silently, until the disc jockey broke the spell.
“And that was Mama’s Rolling Pin, a tune that’s traveled up and down the Eastern Seaboard and is now making its way across the Great Lakes and Midwest. It’s got charm and swing. That’s Tony and Kee Kee.”
“Chi Chi,” Ruby grumbled.
“That hit novelty,” the DJ was saying, “is finding traction on the Hit Parade charts at number sixty-seven out of the D Studios in Sea Isle City, New Jersey.”
Chi Chi hoped her father had heard the announcement, wherever he might be.
Tony had his arm around Delilah’s waist. He put his other arm around Chi Chi’s shoulder. “We did it, Cheech. It sounded pretty good.”
“Yeah, it did,” Chi Chi agreed with him politely. But in truth, she was not pleased. As the song played over the airwaves, all she heard were flaws. There were so many things she would do differently with the song, now that she had tested it on the road. She hoped the record was good enough to lead to the next opportunity, but this was show business. Chi Chi knew better than to expect anything more to come her way. And if by chance it did, she knew it was all about luck, and she did not mean Mort Luck of the SRO Orchestra, she meant the mother of all luck: fate.
* * *
Chi Chi checked the clock. It was 4:30 a.m., and she couldn’t sleep. Instead of fighting it, she leaned over and turned on the bedside lamp. This was her sign that a song was about to be born. So she put on the coffee, rolled out her paper keyboard, and set out her composition book. She pulled on her robe and tightened the belt.
She cracked open the window. She was surprised to find fresh snow on the sash. It was thick, like the Ivory soap flakes she had packed to wash her clothes. It turned out that Barbara’s Almanac was correct. She’d have to write to her sister and tell her the prognostications were correct. Chi Chi pulled the bottle of cream in from the ledge and shook it. She poured some into the cup.
The scent of fresh coffee filled the room. No matter where she was in the world, the aroma of coffee made it home. Chi Chi poured the steaming brew over the cream, and stirred it. She unwrapped the heel of French bread she had saved from the night before, and set it out on a plate. She placed a napkin on her lap, buttered the heel of the bread, and dunked it into the hot coffee and cream.
Here in Elkhart, Indiana, in an old boardinghouse, in a clean, plain room with a window and nothing more than a hot plate, bed, chair, and table to make it home and with nothing more than a simple breakfast to sustain her, Chi Chi felt blissful. She was the happiest she had ever been in her life. She had hours of work ahead. She would spend the day engaged in the creative enterprise of writing a song, hopefully a good one. All she needed was a pencil and paper. The rest would come from within her, from her imagination, which had regenerated overnight as she slept. Now she was wide awake and ready to create anew. The silent hours before sunrise, when the rest of the world is asleep, are God’s gift to writers.
Out of Chi Chi’s window, Elkhart, carved out of the flat fields of northern Indiana, had a haunting beauty. There was a thin crust of white on the ground, an expanse of blue revealing a rickrack pattern of old roads. Tiny daggers of diamonds floated from the sky, violet in the morning light, as purple as the robe of a queen. It gave her an idea, and she began to write.
Poor Delilah
Does she know?
The tins are empty and the funds are low
Poor Delilah, so long on the road
Met many a frog, once kissed a toad
Chi Chi plucked out the notes on her butcher-paper piano. She pulled the pencil from behind her ear and made notes in the composition book. She shoved the pencil back behind her ear and played the notes on the silent piano again. She softly sang the chorus a cappella as she invented it, discovered the words as she went.
A queen knows she’s a queen
Whether or not she marries a king
And if she settles her whole life long
Forsaking home, family, fun, well, everything
It’s her time to waste, life to squander and
Chi Chi fluttered her hands over the keys until the words came.
It is her right to mope
The songwriter raised her hands in victory before placing them back on the silent keys. She sang:
because life is what it is when you love . . .
A . . . Big . . . Dope.
Chi Chi read back over the lyrics, and realized what she had written.
She erased the name Delilah and replaced it with Mariah.
6
Dolcemente
(Sweetly)
1941–1942
Chi Chi picked up the Chicago Tribune at the front desk of the Drake Hotel. She opened it and flipped through the pages until she found the review of their engagement at Danny Galloway Presents, a new nightclub on the lake.
Jimmy Arena and his SRO Orchestra swung into Chicago on the strings of a cello and rode the “L” on the power of the best brass section since Guy Lombardo toured through in the spring. Notables: The delectable Delilah Entwistle. Comedy sketch with woodwind ballet with specialty singer Chee Chee was noteworthy.
Chi Chi laughed at the quartet of e’s in her name (no journalist ever spelled her name correctly, it seemed) and tore out the page to send home to Lucille, who would add it to the stack of clippings she had compiled from reviews around the country. When her sister found the time, she would paste them into a scrapbook already fat with reviews from every outpost with a band box between the Jersey shore and Phoenix.
Jimmy Arena and his SRO Orchestra had extended the first tour from the fall of 1939 four times. What began as a three-month commitment had turned into a rolling tour with no end in sight. The band thrived on the steady bookings. When a trumpeter fell out, another fell in, and so it went throughout the orchestra to percussion, from brass to strings through the woodwinds. However, even with replacements and the infusion of new energy, time on the road was taking its toll on the regulars.
Chi Chi dug into the experience of living and performing on the road, using the time to write as many songs as she could, and when she was not writing or performing, she sewed. “Don’t send me food,” she had written to Barbara earlier that year. “Send taffeta!”
Chi Chi folded the newspaper. She was headed to the elevator bank at the far end of the lobby when the doors peeled open and Delilah Entwistle stepped off the lift. Wearing a cinnamon-brown velvet hat and a matching coat, a purse dangling from her wrist, Delilah looked straight ahead as she pulled on her gloves in a state of agitation. A bellman followed, pushing a cart loaded with her luggage.
“Where are you going, Delilah?” Chi Chi asked.
“East. As far east as the train will go without dropping into the Atlantic.”
“You’re leaving the band?”
“I cannot stay.”
“What happened?”
“Ask Mr. Arma.”
“What did he do?”
“What doesn’t he do, with every shopgirl, waitress, and bobby-soxer he meets?”
“I’m sorry.” Chi Chi felt she had to apologize for Tony. After all, he was the other half of their act.
“It’s too bad. I liked this band. I liked you.”
“You sing like an English lark, a dream. I feel awful about this. Is there anything I can do? Do you want the charts for your songs?”
“Keep them. I’ll never sing Mariah again. Even though it’s a lovely song.” Delilah began to walk away but turned back. �
�The songs you write?”
“Yes?”
“Try writing one for the brokenhearted. You peddle joy, but it’s not real.”
Chi Chi watched as Delilah left through the hotel’s revolving door. The doorman flagged down a cab on Michigan Avenue. He and the bellman put Delilah’s luggage in the trunk and helped her into the car. The driver snapped the trunk closed before sliding into the front seat and pulling out into traffic.
Chi Chi was furious. Delilah’s sudden departure meant another girl singer to break in, new songs to write, and older songs to rearrange to fit the new singer’s voice and range, all because Tony could not resist the ladies who could not resist him. She had avoided addressing it for a year, but now she was forced to have a conversation with her paisano. Someone had to. It was time for Tony Arma to grow up.
* * *
There was a soft rap at Chi Chi’s hotel room door.
“Come in,” Chi Chi called out as she stirred soup in a pan on the hot plate.
“You busy?” Tony stuck his head around the door.
“Yeah, I’m busy writing another opener, because Delilah quit the tour.” Chi Chi speared a pickle from the jar and put it on the plate next to the ham and butter sandwich she had made. “Nice going, Valentino.”
Tony closed the door behind him. “She overreacted.”
“That’s your story?” Chi Chi handed him a napkin and motioned for him to sit down.
“It’s the truth.” He sat and put the napkin on his lap.
“It’s always somebody else’s fault, isn’t it?”
“You’re not on my side?”
“Not anymore.”
She handed Tony the plate with the sandwich and pickle.
“This is your dinner.”
“I’m not hungry. You eat. You need your strength. Evidently.” She snapped the cap off a cold root beer with a bottle opener and set it on the table.
“You’re being awful mean to me,” he said as he sipped the root beer.
“You’re being awful stupid.”
“That hurts.”
“Is it getting into that thick head of yours?” Chi Chi ladled tomato bisque soup into two mugs. She tore a French baguette in two, handed half to Tony, and placed the soup on the table between them.
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