The Tumbling Turner Sisters

by Juliette Fay

  Mother was strangely silent on the matter of Gert’s nighttime solo jaunts. There seemed to be an unspoken deal struck between them, or if it was spoken, I hadn’t been privy to that particular battle of titans. The outcome, however, was clear. Gert would do what was necessary to keep the act’s trajectory moving skyward, and in return she could . . . well, she could do just about anything. The Biscuit Incident was her own personal moment of emancipation, and she was, in a word, free.

  I benefited from this new policy, and sailed along in the slipstream of Gert’s carte blanche. But it wasn’t just that. After she’d seen my command of the situation with Archie’s hand, Mother seemed to have a new appreciation for my own ability to navigate in the world. Not that wound stitching necessarily translated to self-preservation skills, but nevertheless, her expressions of concern over my wanderings with Joe took on a pro forma quality.

  “Are you girls going out again tonight?” Mother said, peeking her head in our door.

  “Just for a bit,” said Gert. She had recently taken to applying a touch of powder and lipstick. Not enough to be unseemly, but it did make her look like a woman of the world.

  “Well . . . all right,” said Mother, as if we’d asked for her permission and she was granting us provisional assent. “But not too late.”

  “Where are you going?” Gert asked. “I see you’ve got your best brooch on.” It was a little gold-plated clover with a green glass bead at its center, a gift from Dad on their twentieth anniversary.

  “Oh, this,” said Mother offhandedly. “Isadora is having a few of us up to her room.” She couldn’t help adding, “She’s on the top floor. It’s a two-room suite.”

  “Headliners can afford that sort of thing, I suppose,” said Gert, dabbing the excess lipstick away with a piece of tissue.

  All the while, I kept still and silent, hoping that Mother’s eagerness to take up her spot as Isadora’s best girlfriend of the week would outweigh her maternal concerns. And in fact, she did leave within moments, but not without one last meaningful glance meant to convey some sort of general message about being careful and not embarrassing the family. Gert held her eye rolling until Mother had closed the door behind her.

  The two of us went down to the lobby, and Gert proceeded on out the door, toward what assignation or adventure I had no idea. There was murmuring back toward the windows that overlooked the lake, and framed between the velveteen curtains I saw Nell and Fred Delorme, their heads bent toward each other. I nearly tripped over a potted plant, taken aback at the prospect of Nell’s face that near any man’s.

  “I won’t stand for it!” Fred said, his voice suddenly loud enough for me to hear. “That’s not the kind of man I am.”

  “No one’s asking you to be that kind of man,” said Nell angrily, “only to be practical!”

  Fred turned away from her, and his gaze caught on mine, standing stock-still as I was, afraid to go forward or retreat. “I’m sorry . . . ,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “That’s all right, Winnie,” said Fred. “The conversation was over anyway.” He strode past me and up the stairs.

  Nell shook her head. “They say we’re the irrational sex.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “No,” she said. “But there’s only so much I can do about that.”

  Joe came down then. “Oh, hello, Nell,” he said, slipping his hand to the small of my back. “Join us for a drink?”

  “You’re kind to ask,” she said with a hint of a smile. “But I wouldn’t dream of it. Besides, my little scalawag doesn’t care if I’ve had ten hours of sleep or two. He’ll demand breakfast at the break of dawn all the same.”

  Joe and I went to a bar on Castle Street called Pinky’s and prepared to part once again. Birnbaum had booked him and Lucy in a few small towns in Rhode Island and Connecticut, and then they would be back in Boston for the rest of the summer.

  “I want you to come for a visit,” he said. “Mama wants to meet this Winnie she’s been hearing about.”

  “You told her about me?”

  He took a sip of his beer, buying time to compose his answer. “Truthfully? Lucy blabbed about you in a letter home when we were in Lyons, and then I got a letter from Mama full of question marks.” He affected a thick Italian accent. “ ‘Giuseppe, who’s this-a Winnie? Is she italiana? Is she one of those-a loose vaudeville girls with the skimpy costumes?’ ”

  “So, she doesn’t really want to meet me, so much as make sure I’m not a . . . a . . .”

  “Puttana.”

  I raised my eyebrows in question, and he said, “It means what you think it means.”

  His mother knew about me! Of course, my mother had known about him all along, but that wasn’t remotely as fascinating as the idea of a woman I’d never met demanding to know if I was good enough for her son. It felt grand and also a little terrifying that my name was being spoken somewhere I’d never even been.

  “What did you tell her about me?”

  He reached across the table and took my fingers, studying them, running his thumb across the nails. Then he looked up. “I told her the truth. That you are smart and beautiful and everything good. And that I love you and I need to find a way for us to be together.”

  I brought his hand up to my cheek. “What did she say?” I whispered.

  He raised his other hand to my face, cupping my cheeks, his long fingers slipping into my hair. “She said, “Well you better bring her to Boston, then.’ ”

  38

  GERT

  The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing.

  If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

  —Groucho Marx, actor and comedian

  Sunday morning, we had breakfast in the hotel dining room with Joe and Lucy, as usual. Then Fred Delorme came toward the table eyeing Nell as if she might bite him. Winnie told me she’d seen them arguing. But Nell slid her chair away from mine and made space for him anyway, saint that she is. As he pulled a seat over from another table, he murmured, “I’m sorry, Nell. I was harsh last night, and I had no right to be.”

  “You have a right to your opinion, Fred. I just don’t share it.”

  “I can’t let you carry me,” he insisted. “A man doesn’t lean on a woman like that.”

  I shot a look to Winnie, but she didn’t seem to know anything, either.

  “This is vaudeville,” Nell whispered, just as insistent. “We help each other because it’s the only way we get by sometimes. And besides, as a dear old friend once told me, whether you’re in the business or not, it’s the only way to live.”

  I was so focused on Nell and Fred I didn’t notice a familiar brown suit approach. “Room for one more?” he asked.

  We scrambled like the Keystone Kops to get Birnbaum a chair and rearrange ourselves around him.

  “That was some show last night, wasn’t it?” he said, tucking his napkin onto his lap and shaking his head. “Some show, all right!”

  Wasting no time on subtlety, Mother asked, “What did the booking agent think?”

  “Well, he was mighty impressed—with all of you!” He smiled and looked around until his eyes caught on Fred, and his brow furrowed. Then he went back to smiling. “He was definitely interested.”

  The waitress took his order, poured him coffee, and got him a clean spoon because the first one had something stuck to it. All the while I felt as if my head was about to pop off! What would be our future? Only God and Birnbaum knew.

  Kit crumbled to curiosity first. “Are we going back on the road? In the big time?”

  Birnbaum took a sip of his coffee. “Well, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The booker will report back, he’ll make some inquiries, see what spots he’s got to fill. These things don’t happen overnight. It’s a work in progress, but I expect good news.”

  Nell spoke up. “Mr. Birnbaum, I’m sure you noticed that I’m in two acts now—the Tumbling Turners, of course, and Delorme and Delorme.”

&
nbsp; “Yes, I did indeed.” He cut his eyes to Fred. “The dance-and-patter act.”

  “Would it be possible . . . ,” she said, “is there a way that I could . . .”

  “You want your gentleman friend to travel with you so you can do both acts.”

  “Oh, he’s not my gentleman friend,” said Nell quickly. “That is, he’s a gentleman and we’re friends, but we aren’t . . . attached.”

  “Are you related in any way? Because if he were, for instance, a cousin, I could make the argument that you should perform together for the sake of the family.” He put a finger up. “However, adding that kind of a clause to a contract generally means less pay. It’s the price of your convenience. And if big-time bookers want the Tumbling Turners more than the dance-and-patter, you’ll all play smaller houses.”

  “And if the situation is reversed,” said Nell, “Delorme and Delorme would be the one held back.” Either way, someone got the short end.

  “Nell,” I said. “Fred has to find someone else. It’s best for everyone.” I turned to Fred. “You understand, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. I didn’t like the idea to begin with—no sense hobbling you all with my problems.” He ran a hand over little Harry’s downy blond head. “Nell, you’re the only one he has now. You could make a boodle, and I won’t stand in the way of that.”

  Nell said nothing, only gazed down at the baby sitting on her lap.

  I don’t fancy myself a mind reader, but I do know my sisters. And if I were a gambler, I would’ve bet all my earnings that Nell was thinking of Nat’s kindness, Tip’s courage, and of her own Harry, whose heart had been bigger than any of ours.

  “I won’t go without Fred,” she said quietly. “I’ll stay home with Dad and take in laundry if I have to, but I won’t perform.”

  “Nell Turner,” Mother hissed, “you’ll do what is best for this family!”

  Nell smiled at Mother as if she were soothing a cranky toddler. “I know you want so much for all of us, Mother. But I have to do what’s best for my family. How can I teach him to stand up for his friends if I don’t stand up for mine?”

  Atta girl! I thought. The awful sadness of Harry’s death had kept her from busting out of Mother’s control, but now she was taking the reins. Nell was going to be okay. By the peaceful look on her face, I knew she felt it, too.

  I turned to Birnbaum. “Fred’s in.”

  Fred looked as if he didn’t know whether to spit or go blind. “Nell . . . ,” he said.

  “You’re in, Fred,” said Winnie. And that was that.

  Breakfast arrived and we all began to eat, but I could see Winnie eyeing Birnbaum, waiting till he’d gobbled down most of his poached eggs and corned beef hash before asking, “What did you think of Joe and Lucy?”

  “Stupendous,” he said. “Brought down the house.”

  “I’ll bet the booking agent was impressed.”

  “Had to give him my handkerchief. The guy blubbered all the way to the train station.” He stopped loading hash onto his fork and looked at Joe. “I was worried, I don’t mind saying. But I gotta hand it to you, you pulled it off. I got a meeting with him next week to nail down a schedule for the Turners, and Dainty Little Lucy is on my list of topics.”

  Lucy chimed in, “I knew you’d like that song!”

  “Little girl, I loved it. But what’s more important is the audience loved it. And if the audience loved the sound of a chicken clucking “My Country ’Tis of Thee,’ I’d love that, too.”

  “Mr. Birnbaum,” said Joe suddenly. “I’d like to make a request.”

  Oh, for cripes’ sake, I thought. Not you, too.

  Birnbaum gave him a warning look, but Joe went on. “Lucy and I have become close friends with the Turners, and on the road you need friends. Well, I suppose you don’t absolutely need them, but they certainly make it more pleasant. I’d like to ask that, if it’s in your power, we’d like to be booked with the Turners.”

  Birnbaum dropped his fork with a clatter onto his plate, and his glare scanned the table. “Now listen. Are you people in this for business or pleasure? Because if it’s just a Sunday jaunt in the countryside for you, we should go our own ways.”

  “Business!” Winnie blurted out. “He’s in it for business—we all are.”

  “All right, then,” said Birnbaum. “Can we just eat now?”

  We sat in silence watching his fork move from his plate to his mouth like a conveyor belt. When he was done, he got up, tossed some coins onto the table, and said, “I’ve got a train to catch. All I can say is, I’ll do my best.”

  We all had trains to catch, all heading in different directions. Winnie and Joe didn’t have much time to talk before we had to be on our way.

  “Business?” I heard him murmur. “How could you think money is more important than being together? I never thought of you as that kind of person, Winnie, the kind who values the weight of your purse over the people you care for. If you even care for me!”

  Winnie must have whispered some sort of assurance to him as we parted because he looked a little less like a bear who’d been poked with a stick.

  “He sounds like a girl,” I said as we waited on the train platform.

  “Gert, really.”

  “Prove your love! Be poor! Let me be poor! We can be poor and unsuccessful together!”

  She laughed despite my meanness to the man she loved. “I told him I didn’t do it for the money,” she said. “I did it for us. If he lowers his prospects for me and doesn’t make enough to keep his father’s land, he’ll regret it. And eventually he’ll resent me.”

  She was one step ahead of him. She was one step ahead of me, too, but instead of envy, I felt proud of her. “You’re getting kind of good at this.”

  She shrugged, but she liked the compliment, I could tell. “You’ll always be better at it, though.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I would have done it for the money.”

  Back in Johnson City, as we waited to hear from Birnbaum, Winnie settled in like a hen warming a nest full of eggs, happily pecking away at her schoolwork. I didn’t even go back to school. I just picked up more shifts at the Arlington, and flashed my vaudeville smile for the big tippers.

  “If you don’t go to school, how will I know what papers to write?” Winnie whined. “How will you take your tests?”

  “I’m not taking them.”

  “Then you won’t graduate!”

  “I never cared about that—you did.”

  “You’re this close! What’s the harm of going to your last two weeks of school?”

  “The harm is in doing something I absolutely don’t care about. Winnie, get this through your head: there is no acceptable future for me that requires a high school diploma.”

  “For cripes’ sake, Gert!” she yelled, and my eyebrows nearly hit my hairline at the sound of saucy language coming out of her mouth. “If there’s anything we’ve learned this year with this whole”—she waved her arms around in frustration—“Dad’s hand and vaudeville and Tip and just . . . everything, it’s that we can’t possibly know what the future will bring! Maybe you’re right, and you’ll never need it. But what if things don’t go as planned—because they almost never do—and it comes in handy? Would it be the worst thing in the world to have it in your back pocket, just for insurance?”

  I stared at her, dumbstruck—more because of her yelling and sassing and waving her arms around than by what she’d said. It was a whole new side of her!

  “Oh, forget it!” she huffed, and stormed out of the room.

  Once I got over the shock of it, I did think about what she said. I still didn’t agree with her, but I was impressed by how much she wanted me to have “insurance,” the kind only she could offer.

  The next morning as I dozed in my bed while she and Kit got ready for school, she suddenly stomped into my room. “Okay, I’ll pay you.”

  I opened my eyes. “You won’t, either.”

  “Will, too. I�
�ll buy you a graduation dress. Don’t you want to wear a pretty dress and parade around in front of all those snotty girls you hate?”

  Oh, I really had her—or she had me, I’m not sure which. The idea of showing up all those gossiping ninnies was like a pack of Necco wafers I couldn’t stop eating. I pursed my lips, pretending to consider. “And shoes,” I said finally.

  I failed all my tests. Technically I didn’t pass history class at all, even with the good grades on the papers Winnie wrote for me, but I sweet-talked that pigeon-toed Mr. Finkhausen into giving me a D-minus instead of an F.

  And so on June 22, 1919, despite all my best intentions, I graduated from high school. I crossed the dais and collected my little piece of paper, and when I walked back to my family afterward, Winnie was grinning like she’d just won the Kentucky Derby. I handed her the diploma and whispered in her ear, “Congratulations.”

  Birnbaum called the next day.

  “It’s summer,” he told Mother over the phone while Mrs. Califano stirred her tomato gravy and eavesdropped. “A lot of big-time acts don’t like to play in hot theatres. People go to the beach instead of shows. I got you and the Delorme act booked in some pretty high-class houses. But don’t expect it to last,” he warned. “Come September, you’ll probably only get closing at the shabby end of big time.”

  “What about Lucy and Joe?” asked Kit, when Mother returned and told us what he’d said.

  “He didn’t mention them.”

  “Did you ask?”

  She drilled Kit with a dark look and said simply, “No.” Kit was only thirteen. It would be years before Mother would give up her right to fire warning shots.

  A week later we left for Altoona, Pennsylvania.

  The Mishler Theatre had big time written all over it, from the long row of huge doors lining the front, to the four paintings of fancy old-time women above them. The lobby had thick marble columns and gold-painted carved trim all around the ceiling. Inside the theatre there was red carpet and silk drapes, and a crystal chandelier that dropped down from a painting of the sky dotted with half-naked angels. The best part was the green leather seats—there were almost two thousand of them! The building was pretty, but in my short time in the business, I’d learned that it was the size of the crowd that made for success, not gilded babies and curlicues on the ceiling. With all those seats, the Turner Sisters were on our way.