The Tumbling Turner Sisters

by Juliette Fay

  Castleberry frowned. “She all right?

  “Just a little tired,” Fred said quickly. “I’ll get her some coffee and she’ll perk right up.”

  Castleberry stormed off to bother some other act, and the young man stuck out a hand to Kit, who happened to be closest. “Fred Delorme,” he said with a friendly grin.

  “We’re the Tumbling Turners!” She pumped his hand like water might come out of his elbow. “You’re the dance-and-patter team, right?”

  “That’s right.” He glanced to his partner. “April, say hello.”

  “So very nice to meet you,” she said, and sat down on their trunk with a thump. She must’ve had quite a night for herself.

  Waiting for the show to start, we wandered around, sizing up the small theatre. Notices were stuck to the stage manager’s board: ads for lodging, train schedules, and a sheet of house rules with a list of forbidden words and phrases, like son of a gun, hully gee, and slob.

  This is what passes for cursing around here? I thought. I’d heard worse waiting tables at J. J. Wiley’s. I’d heard worse from my own mother, for cripes’ sake.

  The last line on the notice read, This is a respectable house, with women and children in attendance. We brook no so-called blue material.

  “What’s blue material?” Kit asked.

  Fred Delorme chimed in. “It’s big-time lingo for salty language,” he said. “If you use it, you’ll get a note warning you not to try it again or you’ll be kicked off the circuit, and might never work big time again. Apparently it comes in a blue envelope.” He gave a little chuckle. “I doubt they write a note and put it in a fancy-colored envelope around here. Earlville is strictly silo circuit—farms and fields. They’ll just show you the door, and that’ll be that.”

  Our act was mute, so we were in no danger of blurting out “hully gee!” We did have a respectability problem, though.

  “Do you think our costumes are too short?” I asked Fred.

  His cheeks went pink. “Why, no. They seem just fine to me. I’ve seen shorter.” He let out a bashful cough. “Onstage, I mean.” He backed away and headed for the stage door. “Well, I guess I’d better round up some coffee before the curtain goes up . . .”

  The worst spot on the program did have one advantage. We could watch the other acts and see how the lineup worked. As Birnbaum predicted, the opening “dumb” act was a juggler, so people didn’t have to worry that they were missing a punch line as they squeezed around one another to find their seats. The second act is called the deuce, and it was Fred and April Delorme. They danced and told jokes, and this made the audience settle in and pay attention. Then came a novelty act of a Spanish dancer in swirling skirts, her partner clacking little wooden disks in his fingers. The last act before intermission was a hefty soprano who belted out tired old tunes and led a singalong of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” She was a little off-key, but it was the high point of the first half of the show, leaving the audience wanting more.

  After intermission, the second half began with another dumb act, two people in black mime outfits who pretended to ride bicycles and have a picnic. It was silly, but it was better than the old juggler, who dropped things and pretended it was on purpose. Next came a magician who did tricks like pulling a full-sized cane from his breast pocket (from the wings, I could hear the pieces clicking into place as it telescoped out). For his finale, he sipped lamp oil and breathed fire like a dragon.

  Then, in the next-to-closing spot, came the headliner, supposedly the best of all the entertainers on the bill, and the highest paid. Even we knew that every vaudevillian’s dream was to headline. This turned out to be the clown with the dog.

  Then it was our turn to chase the audience out, a sorry start to our career, to say the least. But honestly, the other acts weren’t so fantastic; in fact, some were truly terrible. The juggler was booed, and the clown couldn’t get his little pooch to do half his tricks. It gave me a sympathy pain in my stomach. For the dog, not the clown.

  Kit whispered, “He should have the dog jump into the side of his head, like he did when we first came in. Now that was funny.” She mimed getting hit in the face and the cockeyed expression he’d made, then snarled, “Goddamn it, Rover!”

  We put our hands over our mouths to muffle our laughter. But it was like giggling in church—the more you tried to be serious, the more your shoulders shook.

  “One minute and you’re on.” The stage manager was stumped when he saw us cracking up. “The guy’s not that good,” he muttered, which made us laugh all the more. Even Nell smiled.

  Our makeup ran, and Nell pulled a handkerchief out of her bosom to wipe our streaks, which got us chuckling again. I got into position, excited and slightly terrified for our first paid performance. If we didn’t do well, Mr. Castleberry might fire us and that would be the end of it. I didn’t have time to worry, though. In another minute, we were onstage.

  The Tumbling Turner Sisters never gave such a giggling performance as we did on our first paid job. Some of those haircuts did walk up the aisles to leave, but many stayed to see the silliest girl acrobat troupe this side of the Susquehanna River. For the finale, as I clung to Kit’s shoulder, I whispered, “Make the hit-by-a-dog face.” When she did, the audience burst out laughing, and clapped hard when we curtsied.

  Our first turn as vaudevillians was a thrill, and I was only sorry to have to wait two hours before I could go back onstage and do it all over again.

  After each performance we worked out what had gone over and what had fallen flat. We’d practiced so many times, but it was a whole other ball of wax to perform with a theatre full of people reacting to every move. To do that five times in a day was worth a hundred practices.

  Kit’s silly faces were a hit, and she came up with different expressions for each point in the act. We made a face when something didn’t go right, so the audience would think it was a gag. I saw that I could flirt with the audience, like you would with any boy, and I’d widen my eyes at a difficult stunt or wink after I did a flip. I even blew a kiss to a catcaller way up in the gallery—there was a lot of guffawing and foot stomping after that.

  Mother made it back for the last show, and she stood in the wings with the sleeping baby in her arms, grinning like a madwoman at all the applause.

  As the stagehands hurried to shut down the theatre and head home for the night, Mr. Castleberry stopped us. “You’re on first tomorrow,” he’d growled.

  “First?” Mother said, stunned.

  “Yeah, first. As in not last. But if you’re late, you’re out altogether, you get me?”

  We tried to be casual about it as we lugged our bags down the darkened street, picking our way around chunks of frozen slush. But once we were about a block away Kit let out a whoop and we laughed like we’d gone completely off our rockers. Opening act! Our first day and we were already coming up in the world.

  We headed to the Fayette Hotel, listed on the stage manager’s board with the catchphrase “We Cater to Theatricals!” Once we got there I wondered why we’d hurried. The building had paint peeling off the clapboards and a hedgerow that had practically taken over the yard. It was about as worn out as I felt after twelve long hours at the theatre.

  Just then the headlining comedian with the dog, an older fellow with red hair that stuck out from the sides of his head, walked out the front door. “Coming or going?” he said. “And if it’s going, don’t bother, because there’s nowhere else to go!”

  He introduced himself as Roscoe McSorley, then took a bag from Mother and another from Nell, and walked us up the steps. “A few of us are heading over to the diner on Main Street. Hope you’ll join us.” He twitched his bushy eyebrows at Mother in a rakish way.

  A girl doesn’t think of her mother as being of any real interest to other people. She’s “my mother,” emphasis on my, with no real usefulness beyond her motherhood. It never occurred to me that the forty-one-year-old woman who’d spent the better part of her life scrubbing fl
oors and ordering my sisters and me around might actually appeal to someone. She was old and sturdy. The light from the bare front porch bulb made her crow’s-feet seem deep as dry riverbeds.

  “Well, we’ll see,” she said with a coy smile.

  We’ll see? I wanted to yell. We are dead-dog tired. We are going to bed!

  Mother didn’t seem tired, though. If anything, there was a happy little glow about her, the type of thing people respond to without even knowing. The notion of our mother as attractive made me shudder.

  Inside, the craggy old owner of the Fayette Hotel made us pay six dollars for the full three nights up front. “I’ve been left short by you people too many times,” she complained.

  “Your advertisement says you cater to theatricals,” I pointed out.

  “And I do,” the woman snapped. “But not by choice.”

  Our rooms had two twin beds each. Mother, Nell, and the baby took one; this left Kit, Winnie, and me to the other. Kit was too big to share, so Winnie and I had to sleep head to foot on a mattress with a body-shaped dip down the middle. We kept sliding into each other, which annoyed me no end. Winnie annoyed me enough as it was.

  I tried to distract myself by thinking about Roy, his devilish smile, his big plans.

  But plans of my own were starting to sprout like dandelions—plans that didn’t necessarily include Roy. I never would’ve thought I’d like performing, and it was hard work, all right. But it was also different. Completely different from anything I’d known before. I liked getting on a train and just . . . going.

  When I’d told Roy about our tryout in Earlville, at first he thought it was a gag. Then he saw I was serious, and he recovered quickly, I’ll give him that.

  “That’s a swell little jaunt,” he said. “Sounds like fun.”

  “It’s not fun,” I told him. “It’s work.”

  But it was fun, too, as it turned out. More fun than a boring old restaurant, that’s for sure.

  My mind drifted to Fred and April Delorme. I figured they’d be lucky to last till the end of the year together. I was impressed that Fred didn’t flirt more; April would never have noticed in her state. I wondered how many marriages were really and truly happy. My own parents didn’t seem terribly thrilled, but I saw couples who appeared not to mind it so much. Like a bag full of cats, the idea of marriage never seemed to keep a permanent shape, so I was wary to go blindly down the aisle to my possible doom.

  That bed was a tool of torture. There was no possible position that could keep Winnie and me from rolling into each other, her sharp little elbows in my ribs, her toes in my hair.

  “It’s like sleeping in a frankfurter roll!” I tossed off the blanket and stood up.

  “Where are you going?” I don’t know why she felt the need to whisper. Kit was snoring so loudly it would’ve taken cannon fire to wake her.

  “I’m going to that diner,” I said, “and I’m not coming back until I’m too tired to care where I sleep.”

  “You shouldn’t go alone. What if . . .”

  “What if what?”

  “What if there’s someone out there with bad intentions?”

  She had a point. “Get up.”

  “Me?” she squeaked. “I can’t protect you!”

  “Two against one is always better,” I said, “even if one of the two is you.”

  We put on our coats and scarves. I opened the doorknob slowly and we slipped out.

  “Girls?” We froze, then turned around.

  Standing in the hallway was Mother.

  7

  WINNIE

  Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite,

  and furthermore always carry a small snake.

  —W. C. Fields, comedian and actor

  I could have put my foot down and refused to go to the diner, even threatened to tell Mother. But I’d learned the hard way that going toe-to-toe with Gert could have unexpected consequences. One of your boots might go missing just long enough to make you late for school. Oatmeal might be accidentally spilled on your homework. These days she had the perfect opportunity for revenge: she could drop me onstage and make it seem like a sight gag.

  To be honest, a part of me was intrigued about the diner. Did all the performers go? What did they talk about? Maybe we could learn something useful. But first we had to get past Mother.

  “What on earth!” she hissed. “And where do you think you’re sneaking off to?”

  Gert leveled her gaze. “The same place you’re going, with your coat all buttoned up and your hair freshly pinned.”

  “Absolutely not! That is not the kind of thing that young women . . . it is far too late—”

  “Mother, it’s research,” I cut in. “Gert and I just thought we could learn something about the business, and maybe that would help us to . . . um . . . be more successful . . .”

  Mother squinted at us suspiciously. “Well, that’s the very reason I’m going, as a matter of fact,” she said. “Just to pick up hints and tips. And then to come right back.” She turned on her heel and walked down the hall, and since she had not forbidden us, we followed.

  “Research,” Gert muttered in my ear. “That’s rich.”

  The three of us trudged through the icy streets, boots crunching loudly under a sky busy with stars. When Mother opened the door, the warmth of the overheated diner enveloped us. It smelled of strong coffee and toasted bread, a scent that must have clung to the vinyl booths. Two square tables had been pushed together under the central light in the room, an overturned bowl-shaped fixture with the bulb hanging down like a small sun in the solar system of the diner. Around the table slumped the performers: McSorley, Fred and April Delorme, even the magician who’d ended his act with a fire-breathing stunt.

  “The Turners!” Fred called out, and they all raised whatever they had—cups of coffee, glasses of root beer, even a bowl of soup. They pulled up chairs for us—McSorley was quick to tug a chair over next to him for Mother—while Gert and I interspersed among the rest.

  April Delorme took a dented flask from her coat pocket and put it to her lips, where blood-red lipstick had smudged and seeped into tiny cracks.

  Fred sat to my right, and I heard him mutter, “Not so much tonight, will you?”

  Her look could’ve frozen molten lava. “Who wants to join me?” she called out. “Never say I don’t share!” She handed the flask to Fred, who took a hesitant, embarrassed swig. He started to hand it to me, and I reached out instinctively for something extended to me.

  Then he balked. “Say, what’s the idea? You’re too young for this!”

  “I’m seventeen,” I said, head high for an extra half inch. “Want to check my birth certificate?”

  This brought on a burst of laughter around the table, except from Mother, who was too busy giggling at Mr. McSorley’s little jokes to notice that I was about to imbibe alcohol.

  “Sure, kid,” Fred said, grinning. “As if you and every other underage performer doesn’t have a fake to show the Gerrymen.”

  I’d read about Gerrymen. They were from the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Its leader, one Elbridge Gerry, was obsessed with child actors, calling them “slaves of the stage.” But the law said once you were sixteen, you could perform without interference from these so-called do-gooders.

  “I don’t need a fake,” I insisted, “because I’m actually seventeen.” And with that, I took the flask and downed a sizable gulp.

  It’s a strange and unaccountable thing that a liquid poured in your mouth can seem as if it has seeped into your eyes, ears, and nose, as well. It felt like they’d been dowsed in lamp oil and ignited, and if I’d ever been keen to learn fire breathing, it was quelled right then and there. I put the back of my hand to my mouth and coughed as my lungs tried to expel the dragon. Though my eyes watered, I forced a wide smile. The group erupted in laughter again, clapping or raising their mugs. Gert rolled her eyes at my inexperience.

  “How’d that feel
?” asked Fred.

  “Just fine.” My voice sounded scorched, even to me.

  “Care for another?”

  “I don’t want to take more than my share.” I passed it to the fire-breathing magician, who had enough sense to send it on to the next person without partaking. He nibbled at dry toast to soak up the lamp oil that had trickled down his throat during his act.

  Tired and slowed by the effects of the alcohol, I only listened as they all compared notes on towns (“More chickens than people”), theatre managers (“He could show Kaiser Wilhelm a trick or two”), and agents (“I’m pretty sure he presses his suits by sleeping in them”).

  They shared hints on makeup removal: if you couldn’t afford cold cream, you could use Crisco, which didn’t work quite as well as pig lard, but smelled better. Apparently it was cheap pig lard that had inspired the term ham, meaning a poor-quality performer. They counseled one another on improving their acts (“Don’t come in so fast after the line about the scarecrow on a diet—you’re stepping on the laugh”). And they heckled one another good-naturedly.

  The fire breather, who’d been trying in vain to flirt with Gert, complained that he hadn’t had a date in six months. McSorley said, “Well, that’s because kissing you is like sucking on a lamp wick. Girls are worried they’ll burst into flames—and not from ardor, my friend, not from ardor!”

  His bushy eyebrows flew up in fascination at Mother’s every word. “Now why aren’t you part of the act?” he asked. “You could pass for another sister any day of the week!”

  “Oh, now, you,” she said, giving his arm a playful tap. “It’s sweet of you to say, but those days are gone for me.” He asked about her time on the stage and she didn’t lie, exactly, but it was a honeyed-up form of the truth as I knew it.

  “Well, I had a little song-and-dance act, back before I got married.” She neglected to mention that she’d never performed anywhere except her high school talent show, the county fair, and for us when we were little. “I like to think I had an Eva Tanguay kind of appeal.”